Fossil Hunter (30 page)

“You’re changing,” supplied Toroca. “You’re coming into heat.”

She swung her muzzle to face him directly. “How do you know that?”

“Your age. Your manner.” Toroca shrugged amiably. “Your smell.”

Babnol’s muzzle tipped down. “Then you can understand why I must go.”

“No,” said Toroca. “I don’t.”

She looked off into the distance. “Regardless, the decision is mine. I don’t owe you an explanation.”

“Yes, you do, Babnol.” Toroca’s tone was gentle. “I’m your friend.”

At last Babnol nodded. “All right. Soon, as you say, I will feel the urge to call for a mate.”

“Very soon, I’d warrant,” said Toroca.

“Exactly. And I do not want to couple.”

Toroca’s inner eyelids fluttered. “But why not?”

Babnol spread her arms. “Look at me.
Look at me
. I’m ugly.” A pause. “Deformed.”

“I don’t know what…” But Toroca stopped when he felt the warming that meant his muzzle was flushing blue. He tried again. “I don’t consider you ugly.”

“I’m a freak,” said Babnol. “A freak of nature. This
pastak
nose horn.” The swear word was one rarely spoken.

“I find it…” Toroca sought the appropriate word. “…intriguing.”

Babnol lifted her muzzle again, and at last Toroca understood that the gesture was not one of haughty arrogance, but rather a subconscious desire to reduce the apparent size of the horn. “It has not been intriguing to go through life with this defect, Toroca.”

Toroca nodded. “Of course. I didn’t mean to minimize your experience.”

“You yourself told me once about the work that was done with lizard breeding,” she said. “It demonstrated the inheritance of characteristics.”

Toroca looked blank.

“Don’t you see? My offspring might indeed be similarly deformed. I can’t risk that. I have to go away, to be alone, until after the mating urge passes. Then I can safely return to the company of others for another full year — for eighteen kilodays.”

“One is never completely safe. My mother was only sixteen kilodays old — well shy of her first year — when she was moved to mate with Afsan.”

“The risk is minimal at other times. It’s monumental now.” She paused again, then, wistfully: “I must leave right away. Goodbye, Toroca.”

“No, wait,” he said.

She hesitated, and, for a moment, it seemed as though she really did not want to go.

“You’re not a freak,” said Toroca. “You’re special.”

“Special,” she repeated, as if trying the word on for size. But then she shook her head.

“Look,” he said, “you know about my theory of evolution. It’s not the things that make us the same that increase our survivability. It’s the differences, the things that make us unique.”

“I’ve listened to you more attentively than that,” said Babnol. “A novelty can be either good or bad. A difference is just as likely —
more
likely — to be a bad thing.”

“Any difference that lets an individual survive to breeding age is, by definition, beneficial, or, at the very least, neutral.” He adopted a teacher’s tone. “To artificially remove yourself from the breeding population is unnatural.”

“All of our selection is unnatural, Toroca. The bloodpriests do for us what nature can no longer do: select who should live and who should die. It’s only because all egglings have birthing horns that the bloodpriest of my Pack did not realize I was defective. I’m just compensating for the error of that selection process.”

“You worry about the bloodpriest’s culling?” said Toroca.

“I suspect many people do. Seven died so that I might live. Only you, you who never underwent the culling, are probably immune from the self-doubt engendered by that process. I suspect that that is much more the real reason why people rarely speak of the bloodpriests. We avoid the topic not because it’s bloody — we’re carnivores, after all! — but rather because it makes is wonder about whether we really were the ones who should have lived.”

Toroca said nothing about how he, too, had wondered about the culling of the bloodpriest, how he had suspected that he would have not been allowed to live. He felt closer to Babnol ever.

“But you’re special,” he said again. And then, bolder, “Special to me.”

She looked up, perplexed.

“I like you, Babnol.”

“And I like you, Toroca.”

“I mean I like you
a lot
. I was hoping we could spend more together.”

“We already spend a good tenth of each day together, Toroca. That’s more than I spend with anyone, and, to be honest, as much as I can take. We need our privacy.”

Toroca shook his head. “Others need their privacy. I don’t.”

Her inner eyelids fluttered in puzzlement. “I don’t understand.”

He shrugged. “I don’t feel oppressed when others are around. I don’t feel claustrophobic, trapped.” He indicated the space between them. “I don’t feel territoriality.”

Babnol tipped her head to the side. “You don’t?”

“Nope. Never have.”

“But that’s — forgive me — that’s sick.”

“I feel fine.”

“No territoriality, you say?”

“None.”

“What’s it like?” she said.

“I have nothing to compare it with.”

“No, I guess not. But, then, how do you react if other people are around you?”

“If they are people I like, I want them to be closer.”

“But they move away.”

Wistful: “Yes.”

“How does that feel?”

“It hurts,” he said softly.

“I can’t imagine that,” Babnol said.

“No. I don’t suppose anyone else can.”

“And you want to be close to me?”

“Especially to you.” He took a step toward her. “There are perhaps seven paces between us now.” He took another step. “And now six.” Another. “Five.”

Babnol stood up straight, taking her weight off her tail. “I could come even closer,” he said. “How close?”

He stepped again, and then, boldly, once more. “Very close.” Only three paces between them now. Toroca felt his heart racing. Three paces: much greater proximity than protocol would normally allow, and yet, still a tremendous gulf. He lifted his left foot, moved another pace nearer.

Babnol’s claws popped out. “No closer,” she said, an edge in her voice. She shook her head. “What you’re saying is alien to me. Alien to all of us.”

Toroca spoke softly. “I know.”

Babnol looked uncomfortable. She backed off two paces. “I have to go.”

“No,” said Toroca. “Stay.”

“Soon,” she said, “my body will be crying for a mate. I to be alone when that happens. I have to go.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” said Toroca “A horn on your face? What significance does that have?” He spread his arms. “And there’s nothing wrong with me. I see what territoriality has done to our people. We’d be better off if more were free of it.”

Babnol said nothing.

“Stay. When it comes time for you to call for a mate, call for me.” He looked directly at her. “I would be honored.”

More silence from Babnol.

“The bloodpriests are currently in disrepute, so I hear, but even if they are reinstated and only one eggling gets to live from our clutch, I’m sure it would be special. Perhaps it would have a horn throughout life. Perhaps it would be less territorial than most. Those are wonderful things, not things to be avoided.”

Babnol’s tail swished slightly. “Your words are tempting,” she said at last.

“Then stay! Stay here. Stay with me.”

There was a long, long moment between them. The sun slid behind a silvery cloud.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I have to do what I think is right.” She turned and walked away.

Toroca kept her in his sight until she was lost among the folds of the landscape.

For the first time in his life, he felt the urge to go out and hunt.

Afsan lay on the grass outside of the palace, the sun warming his back. Next to him lay Gork, its thick tail touching Afsan’s own. Afsan tried to conjure up a picture of the grounds, but it had been so long. Grass: green, of course. And the sun, brilliant white. The sky, mauve, most likely, and cloudless, judging by how warm the sun felt. Daytime moons? Surely. This was noon on the 590th day of this kiloday. He calculated. The Big One would be high in the sky and waxing. Swift Runner would be much lower and almost full.

Still, it had been so long since he had seen any of these things. The picture still came when he willed it, but how true the colors were, how accurate the details, he could no longer say.

Sound was more real, as was smell, and touch. He could hear the buzzing of insects — a small swarm above his head, larger chirpers over in that direction, the smell of pollens, of grass shorn by domesticated plant-eaters that had been tethered near here. And the hard ground beneath his belly, the roughness of the grass blades, a pebble under his thigh, not exactly comfortable, but not irritating enough to warrant changing his position.

And now the ground vibrating slightly. Someone walking toward him. Afsan lifted his head.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Dybo.”

“Dybo.” Afsan relaxed again, letting his long jaw rest against the ground. “Your step is lighter than it used to be.”

“Yes,” said the Emperor, who, judging by the way his voice had changed location, was crouching a few paces to Afsan’s right. “How do you feel?” asked Afsan.

“To my considerable surprise,” said Dybo, “I feel better than I’ve ever felt before. But I’ll tell you: when all this is over, I I eat an entire hornface as a reward.” Dybo paused. “That is, of course, if I win.”

Afsan’s tail was sticking up in the air. He flicked it absently to disperse insects. “Think positively, my friend. And, by all means, Keep thinking of that hornface, if it motivates you.”

There was quiet between them. The comfortable quiet of two old friends, a quiet that neither felt a need to fill. The bugs in the distance continued to chirp.

“Afsan?”

“Yes, Dybo?”

“How do you assess me, compared to Rodlox?”

Afsan reached over to Gork, and slid his hand soothingly over the beast’s leathery hide. “I have never seen Rodlox.”

“No, of course not. But you must have an opinion.” Cork’s hide had warmed mightily in the sunlight. If the lizard had been alone, Afsan was sure it would have shuttled into the shade, but Gork was always reluctant to leave its master. Afsan pushed himself up onto his feet and followed the slight swelling of the ground caused by distended roots in toward the trunk of a nearby tree. Gork padded along next to him, hissing contentedly. The shade was cool. “Rodlox is loud and belligerent,” Afsan said at last.

“And I am not,” said Dybo, as if it were a failing to not be those things.

“You are peaceful and, well, pleasant.”

“He’s stronger than me, Afsan. Even after all of this training, sure he’s still stronger.”

Gork nuzzled against Afsan’s legs. “Physically, yes.”

“And, Afsan, I have lived in awe of your intellect since we first met. I know I’m not the brightest person in the world.”

Afsan said nothing.

“If I’m not the strongest, and I’m not the brightest, then perhaps Rodlox is right. Perhaps I should not be the leader.”

“There is something else to consider.”

“What else can there be, besides intellectual and physical prowess?”

“There’s goodness, Dybo. There’s moral rectitude. There’s doing the right thing when the wrong thing would be easier. Those are your strengths, Dybo. And those, more than anything else, are what a good ruler needs.”

Dybo was silent for a time. “Thank you,” he said, and then: “But those traits sound flimsy against muscle and brains. Do I really have a hope of winning against the blackdeath?”

“If there’s a god in heaven, you’ll win.”

Dybo answered wistfully. “Coming from the person who took God out of the heavens, that does little to comfort me.”

Afsan’s expression was carefully blank.

The blackdeath had been held captive for many dekadays now. Its pen was a giant area just north of the arena, hastily walled off by fences of stone. Indeed, the pen itself was bigger than the actual arena. The blackdeath had tried to scale the stone walls, but could not, and, although it occasionally still tried — perhaps having forgotten its previous attempts — it had mostly settled into its life of captivity.

At the south end, the pen’s walls connected with the pointed apex of the walls to the diamond-shaped arena. Through a gate in the arena wall, a shovelmouth was driven into the pen every ten days or so, to provide food for the blackdeath.

Dybo often watched the blackdeath. Ladders had been built up to the top of the stone wall, and Dybo sat for great lengths of time on the edge, his feet dangling down the inside of the wall, his tail dangling off the outside. He observed that the blackdeath only seemed happy when it was stalking and killing the shovelmouths.

It was a horrendous beast even here, even caged, but it had a beauty and a nobility about it. Dybo’s observation perch was upwind of the creature, and so long as he sat still, it paid him no attention. Next to him on the wall’s upper surface lay a small satchel containing books, papers, and writing leathers.

Dybo was surprised to hear the sound of flexing wood made by someone coming up the ladder he’d leaned against the outer wall. He swiveled his head around and saw that Rodlox was ascending. Dybo got up and walked along the wall’s top edge — it was barely wide enough for that — until he was about five paces from the top of the ladder.

Rodlox reached the top and instead of walking five paces in the opposite direction, thereby putting the traditional territorial buffer between himself and Dybo, he simply sat directly down. Everything about the governor of Edz’toolar bespoke challenge.