Mirabile (31 page)

“Bet those runners interlace a lot.”

“Bet they do too. But it’s still odd enough to be surprising.” I pushed back from the computer to give him a smile. “That’s what I like about this business. You never know when nature’s going to do something truly interesting.“

The smile back should have gotten an award. “That’s what I like about you

, Annie.”

I stood up and we did some variations on that theme, including some on how much I liked him back. After a while, I realized we had an audience. I tapped Leo to let him know and we broke, both of us expecting to find Mabob, I think.

It wasn’t. It was Nikolai. Damn if the kid didn’t have Leo’s ability for quiet appreciation of a scene as well as the other traits I’d already noticed.

Nikolai grinned at both of us. “I came to apologize to Annie.”

Leo laid an arm across my shoulders and said, “You didn’t tell me Nikolai’d been misbehaving.”

“He hasn’t,” I said. “Unless he knows something I don’t.”

Nikolai made a wry face. “That’s exactly what the apology’s for. —Annie, I haven’t been relating my fossils to Mirabile’s current wildlife. Not sufficiently, at any rate. You didn’t think of paleontology, I hear—but I didn’t think of contemporary biology, so we’re even.”

He spread his hands wide and gave me the most engaging grin this side of Leo’s.

“I spent the morning as instructed: going over my notes to gloss them before I loaded them into ships’ files. And I found—well, if you’ll let me hunt through the fossil cabinets a minute, I’ll show you what I found.”

“You’re on,” I said. So he went rummaging, while I sat on my impatience as hard as I could.

Given Leo’s example, it was easier to wait, but not much.

By the time Nikolai said, “Ah,” I was not just sitting on my impatience, I was bouncing on it.

Nikolai carefully hoisted a foot-long chunk of shale from the cabinet and carried it over to the table. With me treading on his heels.

He held the slate to his chest a moment longer. “If I’d been paying attention, I could have told Lalique her Dragon’s Teeth were Mirabilan.”

With that, he set the slab of rock—carefully—on the tabletop. “This is a chunk of shale from the upstream end of the island. You tell me, Annie—is that the same plant as the calf-catching canes or isn’t it?”

I’d never had any practical experience at examining fossils, but I was willing to give it a go under circumstances like that. What I was looking at was the imprint some plant had made in long-ago mud. Must have been very fine silt, come to think of it. The detail was extremely fine—after I’d gotten the hang of looking sort of sidewise to catch the shadows—I could make out not just the canes themselves, but leaves and even the slightly pressed image of a flower as well.

And short of doing a gene-read on the thing, which I damn well couldn’t, I was sure. “Looks the same to me,” I said. “Leo?”

Leo’d been doing some sidewise looking of his own. “Dead ringer for the calf-catchers. See here.” He pointed at the flower. “The detail’s good enough to see the structure of the calyx—that’s almost as good as a gene-read.”

“So I apologize,” said Nikolai. “I promise never to hold out on you again.”

“Good,” I said. “Now tell me how common they were and when that was.”

“

When is something I can’t tell you. I don’t have enough information yet, and I haven’t been able to convince the factory I’ve need of a carbon-14 dating machine.

But—how common? Annie, there’s practically a stall-full of specimens just like it in the barn. We only put the best of them in the cabinets. In the interests of my baby science, we couldn’t throw any of them away—”

“Thank god for that!” I said.

“I take it that means I get to keep both my ears,” Nikolai said.

“Yes,” said Leo and I simultaneously.

Both of Nikolai’s hands came up to grab his earlobes, as if to reassure them they weren’t to be parted. But he was laughing out loud, now, and so were Leo and I.

“Well,” he said, “the cane was as common in that level of shale as Mabob’s cousin was. If you like, I can show you every single one of those we’ve found.”

“I like,” I said.

“Me, too,” said Leo. “Mirabilan wildlife is still my province, Annie.”

Mabob whistled and rattled happily.

“And just where did you come from?” I asked him.

He whistled at me earnestly, for all the world as if he was answering the question.

Too bad I don’t understand Thinga. Then he swiveled his head to watch Leo, wide-eyed.

Leo was checking the door. “Latched,” he reported.

Mabob whistled a few phrases at him, sounding smug.

“Right,” I said. “We’re going to the barn to look at Nikolai’s fossils, Mabob.

Want to come?”

Mabob strutted toward Leo, with a quick glance over his shoulder to see if we were following.

We did.

I’d heard that door latch when Savitri left the house. Still, maybe she’d tired of playing with him and let him in before she went elsewhere.

Between the canes and Mabob—not forgetting Leo—life was getting damn interesting around the Imbamba place.

Looking at fossils gets easier with practice, and we got a lot of practice that afternoon. Nikolai hadn’t been exaggerating one whit when he’d said a “stall-full” of them. And the most interesting thing of all was that Mabob’s cousin kept showing up in the same geologic period as the canes.

(So did the fuzzwillies; made my theory look better all the time.) From the looks of it, cousin had the same eating habits as Mabob—if it moves, eat it; if it doesn’t, eat it faster. Any fossil that gave us a bit of cousin’s stomach area gave us the bones of small creatures of every description.

A lot of them I’d never seen live. When I said as much to Nikolai, he whipped out a pad and started taking notes and asking a stream of questions that would have put Elly’s youngest in second place.

The ones I could answer, I did. The ones Leo could answer, he did. The ones neither of us could answer, well—“That’s your bailiwick, Nikolai. You’re the paleontologist. You tell me!”

I don’t think I’ve seen anybody that excited since Leo took up reading genes.

Nothing like enthusiasm to brighten your day.

Unless it’s just plain good luck…

“Here, Annie,” Nikolai said, shoving yet another chunk of shale at me. “Tell me what you make of this one. It looks like it’s been eating peas. Or maybe eyeballs.”

“Pretty solid eyeballs to have lasted all this time,” I said.

But the stomach was full to brim with round objects. If I hadn’t held them in my hand a few hours earlier, it never would have occurred to me. I stared at the fossil.

There were enough scales and enough to the rib cage to tell me beyond doubt that here was Mabob’s cousin again, with a stomach full of what looked for all the world like cane seeds.

“Sacrifice one of the eyeballs for science?” I asked Nikolai.

He hesitated a moment, looked down as if counting the number of “eyeballs” and nodded.

I shoved the chunk of shale into his lap, got up and went to the next stall over, where Lalique was feeding the bison calf. “Two questions,” I said. “Have you got a microlaser—and who’s got the finest hand at operating it?”

Luck was with me. She nodded. “Orlando,” she said. Saved me the trouble and impatience of having somebody from the lab fly one in.

“Where’s he?” I said. And when she told me, I said, “Three questions. Third one: do you have to weed canes out of the vegetable garden?”

“God, yes, Annie, hundreds of them. How did you know?”

“Paleontology,” I said.

As soon as Orlando could be spared from farm chores, I put him to the task of slicing open one of the cane seed samples and one of Nikolai’s fossil eyeballs. “I don’t know how much fine structure the fossil retains, Orlando, but do your best.”

I guess some of my excitement had rubbed off. “You bet!” he said, with real enthusiasm for the job. You’d never know the man had had maybe twelve hours sleep in the last two weeks—and only eight of it the night before.

“You think those are fossil cane seeds, don’t you, Annie,” Nikolai said. Except for the twinkle, it would have been an accusation.

“Bet money on it,” I said. “Orlando, you folks still use slurry for cooking gas?”

Orlando gave me an absent “Sure,” without looking up. That’s how absorbed he’d gotten in his fossil botanizing.

“Right.” I headed for the door. Didn’t realize till I was already out and around the house that both Leo and Mabob were right behind me.

Wondered why Nikolai was missing, but it only took a bit of thought to figure that one out—he’d stayed behind to protect his fossils from Orlando’s zeal.

The methane slurry was right where I’d remembered it. I lifted off the lid, reeled a bit from the smell, then rolled up my sleeves and dipped in.

Before I knew it, Leo had his sleeves rolled up too and was up to his elbows same as me. “Might help,” he said, trying to talk without inhaling, “if you’d tell me what I’m fishing for.”

“Round hard objects,” I said, trying to do the same. It didn’t work but that didn’t matter—my hands had found exactly what I’d expected them to. I breathed in happily, not caring a bit about the stench I got with the breath.

“Got some,” I said. I came up with a handful, in fact, all just the right size and shape.

Leo brought up a handful more and between the two of us we got the lid back on the slurry.

“Right,” I said, grinning and dripping.

“Right,” said Leo.

“Gronk!” said Mabob—reacting either to our triumph or to the partial relief from the smell.

We headed back to the house at a quick trot. I wouldn’t know for sure until I’d rinsed off the seeds for a closer look.

When we got to the door, I realized neither of us had a hand clean or free to open it. The two of us stopped, looked at each other and sighed in unison. The pause was just long enough for Mabob to reach the door ahead of us.

He cocked an eye first at Leo, then at me. Then, whistling cheerily, he caught the door handle with his beak, twisted it open, and stood there holding the door for us.

“That answers that question,” I said. And I stepped through, followed by Leo, followed by Mabob.

Lousy lack of manners, I realized. Stopped and turned back—just in time to see Mabob catch the inside handle and pull the door to until it latched. Then he let go and whistled brightly at me.

“Thanks, Mabob,” I said. “Leo?”

“I saw,” he said, very quietly.

Mabob whistled another few bars and set to preening his scales, while Leo and I looked at each other.

Nikolai broke the spell, bounding across the room to demand, “Where’ve you been—?” He recoiled from our combined smell in almost comic fashion.

I’d forgotten we were both still dripping. “Up to our elbows in cow shit, if you really must know,” I said. “How about turning on some water for us so we can get cleaned up?”

“Maybe we should ask Mabob,” Leo suggested. “A handle is a handle.”

“Better make sure he knows how to turn that off,” I growled. “Otherwise you’ll have water running forever.”

Having missed what had gone before, Nikolai ignored that and led us in to wash up. The washing up made the seeds look all the more like cane seeds.

Except for one thing, which Leo had already thought of. He put one of the seeds he’d retrieved from the slurry on the floor and put his foot on top of it. He didn’t step hard, either, but the shell gave way with a crackle.

“Dragon’s Teeth,” he said, smiling. “From cows.”

“But hardly from their genes,” I said. Then I got another thought. “One thing I do want to know: Nikolai, can you spare one or two of the sample cane seeds that still have the dried fruit pulp surrounding them?”

“Living samples are Orlando’s department,” he said. Which was perfectly true, so we all trooped back into the common room to make the same request of Orlando.

“Yes,” said Orlando, before I could even open my mouth. “The fossil seeds and the cane seeds are identical, as far as I can tell. See for yourself: the structure of the—”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I said. “Spare me one or two of the newer ones, with pulp still attached?”

Orlando gave me a long look, then cast about the tabletop and scooped up a couple of uncut cane seeds and poured them into my outstretched hand.

“Here, Mabob,” I said. “Hungry? Want a snack?” I held them out to him.

Mabob dipped delicately into my palm and picked up a cane seed. Touched his tongue to it.

Looked thoughtful.

Then, using only beak tips and tongue (and the tongue had to be prehensile!), he peeled the dried fruit from the seed and swallowed it. A quick check of the tongue to make sure he’d gotten all the good stuff, and then he laid the cleaned seed back into my palm and rattled happily as he took a second.

“Won’t eat eyeballs,” I said. “Poor fuzzwillies.” I dropped the cleaned seeds back on the table and rounded on Nikolai. “Given a choice,” I said, “would you rather go on scouting new territory or be a paleontologist full-time?”

If Nikolai had had orange irises, he’d have given me as good an eye-blaze as ever
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Mabob had—and his jaw dropped open as well.

When he got it together what came out was: “That’s easy, Annie. I’d rather spend all my time with the fossils but…”

“But me no buts.” I grinned. “Orlando, I can tell you where those canes are coming from—and after I’ve done that, I’m going to call Sabah and tell him why we need a full-time paleontologist on the team.”

“Not without Lalique,” said Orlando. “Wait right here. I’ll get her.”

I was laughing by then. I couldn’t help myself. “I promise not to say a word until Lalique gets here.” As he charged for the door, I shouted after him, “But hurry! I don’t know how long a wait Nikolai can survive!”

It wasn’t just Lalique that Orlando rounded up, but every free hand on the place.

They crowded around, milling and muttering and generally working Mabob up into a state of such excitement that he forgot himself and gronked…

After which he tried to make himself invisible, which wasn’t easy, given that the background wasn’t the right color for vanishing into. “It’s all right, Mabob,” I said, and reached over to rub his head. “You forgot, that’s all. These guys aren’t being particularly quiet either.”