Peter Dickinson - A Bone From a Dry Sea

‘Your every wish catered for, Sam.’

There was something in the tone of the remark, or perhaps the laugh that followed it, that made Dad look questioningly at him.

‘It was his idea, Sam,’ said Dr Hamiska. ‘We were talking about Vinny’s shell last night and I said it would be useful to have an accurate identification. Dating, you know. Something to tell the Craig people. “Some kind of Myaceae” sounds a bit feeble. Watson offered to drive back to his department and get the references.’

‘They won’t have that sort of thing here.’

‘He’s got access to the university computer. He can call up a data-bank. It would take me or anyone else a week to get permission.’

‘He’ll tell everyone what we’ve found.’

‘No way I could stop him, Sam, seeing whose nephew he is. I don’t want Wishart turned back at the airport. And it’s not that much of a risk – if Watson’s the only palaeontologist in the country, who’s going to listen or understand? And in any case, anyone who knows him will reckon he’s shooting a line.’

‘Well, it’s done now. OK, Vinny, I’ll be wanting the A-layer bag.’

The morning wore quietly on. It was at least as hot as yesterday, and Vinny found it even more shattering. She’d been hoping to get used to it fairly quickly, but now she realized she’d be lucky if she did before she left. Dr Wessler was in the second trench beginning to work his way into the fossil-layer the way Dad had done, and Vinny looked after both lots of bags and labels. Michael and another African called Ali started to clear the topsoil for another trench, further along, while Dr Hamiska and Nikki made a systematic series of shallow excavations all along the sloping line of tuff, trying to chart how far the fossil-layer extended. Mrs Hamiska drifted over the plain below, just looking.

Dr Wessler was held up by a crocodile-jaw jutting sideways into his trench. It was large but fragile, so that he had to scrape round it and burrow into the side wall, hardening it section by section with resin as he went. Dad found pig-teeth, the leg-bone of a small deer, and in the second section of H-layer some fragments of another clam, and then more in the third section. There were no hammer-marks on them, but when Vinny did a jigsaw with them she found that though there was still a lot missing the chips near the centre were the smallest and seemed to make a sort of star-pattern with a crack curving round it, just what you might get, she thought, if the shell had been broken first go, with one good bash. The actual point of impact was missing, but those chips would be tiny, so perhaps Dad had missed them. He was tipping the loose soil from the fossil-layers separately on a plastic sheet, to be sieved through later.

‘Can I have a look in your bucket, Dad, if you’re not using it?’

‘Hold it.’

The words were little more than a murmur, but she could hear something in them – total absorption, interest, excitement. Ducking under the awning and peering into the trench she saw Dad crouched below, picking the clay away, crumb by crumb, from around a little cylinder of fossil.

‘Is it a toe-bone?’

‘Looks like it.’

‘Don’t forget about the webbing.’

Grunt.

‘Shall I get Joe?’

‘Five minutes.’

But Dr Hamiska was already there. Usually he made a point of crunching round in his heavy boots as if he wanted to tell the world that the great Dr Hamiska was coming, but this time, he must almost have tiptoed down. He leaped off the boulder beside the trench and squatted by the awning.

‘Got it sorted out now, Sam,’ he said. ‘What we’ve got must be something like a stream-bed running into the lake. That’s just this nine-metre stretch. You’re near the top of it – there’s nothing beyond the boulder here – and it peters out just beyond the new trench. That’s all. Just this one needle in the haystack, and we’ve found it! How are you doing?’

‘Come and look.’

Dad hardly had time to stand aside before Dr Hamiska was in the trench, gazing at the new fossil, touching it with his forefinger, peering through his magnifying glass.

‘Terrific!’ he said. ‘I knew it was there! I knew it! This’ll show ’em. Fred! Fred! Come over here! Someone tell Jane!’

He climbed out and waved his cap and hallooed to Mrs Hamiska, who heard him, waved back and started to come. By the time she arrived everyone else had had their turn to crouch and gaze and revere the tiny object, and now they were standing round, oblivious of the battering sun, talking like kids after a concert. In the middle of it all, Dr Hamiska laughed as if he’d thought of a new joke. They looked at him.

‘And Sam didn’t want to tell me!’ he crowed.

‘What do you mean?’ said Dad.

‘I heard Vinny ask if she should fetch me and you said no.’

‘Oh, rubbish,’ said Dad.

‘I’m not deaf, Sam.’

Dad gave an exasperated sigh but said nothing.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ muttered Vinny.

‘Of course it wasn’t,’ said Dr Hamiska. ‘But I must insist that the moment any object of significance comes to light I am immediately informed, and that no further excavation takes place till I have seen it.’

‘Are you suggesting that I was in some way trying to keep this to myself?’ said Dad.

‘My dear Sam! Don’t be so touchy. Everyone can keep in mind what I’ve said and we’ll say no more about it. Now, let’s imagine a stream running out of the hills, from roughly that direction. There has recently been a volcanic eruption which has altered the course of the stream into a new channel. It deposits its silt here for a number of years and then alters its course again, but in the meanwhile a number of creatures have died, leaving their bones to be preserved in the silt-layers. One of them is our friend here. She dies. Her body lies in the water. The flesh decays. The skeleton falls apart. The flow of the stream gently sifts the bones, scattering them in a regular pattern before the silt-layers harden and hold them. We come along and find three points in that pattern. Can we from those three points deduce the rest of it?’

For a moment he made it sound actually possible. Dad shook his head unbelieving. Dr Wessler giggled.

‘It’s a lovely line, Joe,’ he said. ‘I hope John Wishart buys it.’

Dr Hamiska ignored him, entranced by his vision.

‘Sam?’ he said. ‘You’re the taphonomist.’

‘Not a hope,’ said Dad. ‘For a start, it needn’t have been a stream, and if it was how can we yet tell which direction it came from? I’d need to get the whole area cleared and mapped and do a series of computer-simulations, and even then the best I’d be able to show you would be some probability-curves. But if you want to tell Wishart that there was a stream and that the creature was female and died of hiccups on a Thursday afternoon, I’ll keep my mouth shut.’

Everyone laughed. The row seemed over as soon as it had started, and the others went back to their work. Vinny looked at her shell-fragments, but felt too worn-out with heat even for something as simple as that, so she sat in the shade of the awning, looking out over the shimmering grey plain and trying to imagine it with water, and reeds, and pigs, and crocodiles, and something (someone?) sitting where she was sitting, looking out over it then. Dad seemed not to have noticed she was there, but he must have, because he spoke without looking round.

‘It’s all so unnecessary,’ he sighed.

‘I suppose he wants to find everything himself. He’s got to make it his, somehow.’

‘What have you done with that shoulder-blade?’

‘It’s in the tent, with my drawing things.’

‘We’d better get it back into its bag. I don’t want any more fuss. This evening, after he’s gone.’