Peter Dickinson - A Bone From a Dry Sea

Dr Wessler had (typically, Vinny guessed) got out of doing the heavy preliminary work of opening up the second trench, and he and the Hamiskas and anyone else who could be spared were spread out surveying the rest of the outcrop for possible further sites. Meanwhile, Watson Azikwe and Michael Haddu were hacking out the soil above the fossil-layer and carting it down to the tip. They were both Africans. Michael was a grizzled, roly-poly man who (Dad had told her) had left school when he was twelve. He’d been on a lot of expeditions like this in other countries, starting as a labourer but becoming interested, so that by now he knew more about field-work than a lot of highly-qualified experts.

Watson was Dr Azikwe, but Vinny couldn’t think of him like that. He was quite young, for one thing, only twenty-something. He wore three gold chains under a gaudy open shirt. Vinny thought he was fun. She enjoyed his style, and the way he assumed that all the world was going to like him as much as he liked himself. The trouble was, Dad didn’t.

It was Watson’s fault. While Michael was hacking out a fresh barrow-load of spoil, Watson squatted by Dad’s trench, chattering away about his time in Europe and America, and the well-known palaeontologists he’d met. Dad was crouched out of sight. Vinny heard one or two grunts – snorts, more like, to Vinny’s ears – but Watson treated them as encouragement to keep the conversation going. It wasn’t that Watson was shirking. As soon as Michael called to him he gangled himself up and wheeled the full barrow down the slope. Dad straightened in the trench, wiped his face with his shirt and took a swig of water from his bottle.

‘I’ve had about as much of that chap as I can stand,’ he muttered.

‘Poor Dad. Do you want me to try and distract him?’

‘It would be like trying to distract the Victoria Falls.’

‘I’ll ask him to explain about something.’

‘Why not? Try him on these – he says he’s done some work on molluscs, and he seems to know his stuff, in spite of everything. Keep them with the H-layer material – that bag there.’

He passed out his latest collection of shell-fragments. Vinny lashed her parasol to an awning-pole and laid out the pieces in its shade. By now Watson was doing his stint with the pick and shovel while Michael rested, so she had a bit of time. Most of the pieces were from something like a mussel, about the size of her thumb-joint, but there were three from a creature which must have been about as big as her palm. The H-layer was important – it was the one which had had the hominid fossils in it, immediately above the tuff. She sorted through the bag and found several more pieces of larger shell.

Watson straightened from his work, sweating. Michael rose and took the barrow. Watson took a few more thumps with the pick, but as there was nowhere to shovel the spoil to now he laid it aside and climbed out of the trench. Vinny looked innocently up.

‘Do you know what these are, Watson?’

Affably he crouched beside her.

‘Bivalves, you know,’ he said. ‘Some kind of Tridacna, this one.’

‘What about this big one? I thought I’d try and fit the bits together.’

He picked up the largest piece and turned it over.

‘Don’t know for sure,’ he said. ‘Mytilacea, maybe. Take a lot of comparison, lot of studying, be sure of something like that.’

‘Can you tell if it was fresh water or if it came out of the sea? It would be terrific if it came out of the sea. Do you know about Elaine Morgan’s sea-ape theory?’

Watson laughed, macho-contemptuous.

‘That woman,’ he said. ‘Hey! Sam! What you been telling your daughter?’

Dad hadn’t heard, or was pretending he hadn’t. Vinny knew she’d made a bad mistake. If Watson started teasing him in front of the others about his daughter’s wild ideas he’d clam up completely. Dr Hamiska would probably join in. She was with one part of her mind aware that she ought to try and repair the damage, change the subject or laugh at herself and her own silly ideas, but another part of her mind refused to let her. It mattered, in ways she didn’t understand, that she shouldn’t pretend about this, shouldn’t play the part of an ignorant little girl who couldn’t think for herself. May Anna said the ideas might be wrong, but they weren’t crazy. Vinny was certain she knew more about them than Watson did. Her reaction now was to get angry, the way Mum would have when something like this happened.

‘What do you mean, that woman?’ she snapped. ‘What difference does it make she’s a woman? I bet you haven’t even read her book. You tell me why you’ve got a layer of fat under your skin, like sea-mammals, and fur like an otter’s when you were in your mother’s womb, and a rotten sense of smell, and a lot of people have webbed fingers and toes, and all sorts of things land animals don’t need. Go on. Tell me. Don’t bother Dad about it. Tell me!’

He forgot about the macho bit, hunkered down beside her, shrugged amiably and giggled. She glared at him.

‘Don’t know about the fingers and stuff,’ he said. ‘About the fat, I think the idea is you get these cold savannah nights . . .’

‘Fur would be much better for that. Yes I know, we lost our fur because we got too hot running after antelopes and things. But in that case why didn’t any of the others? Cheetahs and so on? Losing fur’s a rotten way to stay cool. Look at the amount we’ve got to sweat compared to other animals . . .’

‘I don’t know . . .’

‘Well, you ought to, and what’s more . . .’

He laughed again. It was difficult to be angry for long with him. They were still arguing when Michael called to him to empty the barrow.

‘Finished?’ muttered Dad.

‘I’m sorry. It just came out. I’ll think of something else next time.’

‘I thought you were going to try him on the shells.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Here’s some more, anyway.’

She took the pieces and sorted them through. There were two more from one of the larger creatures, and one of them fitted exactly on to a piece she already had. Now, from the curving growth-lines, she could see how the others might go. Sorting through the bag again, with eyes that knew what they were looking for, she found several chips she had missed first time, making up two complete patches and a few outlying bits. Laid out all in place on the ground they let her imagine the whole shell.

Feet crunched and a shadow moved on the sunlit slope.

‘What are you up to, Vinny?’ said Dr Hamiska.

‘I was putting this shell together so that Watson could tell me what it was.’

‘I can’t have you distracting my work-force, young lady.’

Vinny looked across and saw that the barrow was almost full again.

‘I was trying to stop him distracting Dad,’ she muttered. ‘Can’t you do something about it?’

Dr Hamiska crouched to bring himself nearer, and whispered like a spy in a thriller.

‘I’m afraid Sam’s going to have to put up with him. Watson’s uncle is Minister of the Interior. But I give you permission to distract him when he’s not actually working. In fact I’ll give you a hand.’

He winked at her and took out his magnifying glass. Rather obviously play-acting he picked up the largest piece of shell and pretended to study it as Watson came strolling across.

‘Vinny’s doing a fine job here,’ he said. ‘She was asking me how the shell came to get broken . . .’

‘Rocks rolling around, maybe,’ said Watson. ‘You get a lot of that in earthquakes.’

‘But there aren’t any rocks in the fossil-layer,’ said Vinny. ‘Couldn’t . . .’

She stopped, suddenly aware that something had changed. Dr Hamiska wasn’t play-acting any more. He passed the shell and glass up to Watson.