Fossil Hunter Read Free Page A

equally renowned, was Wab-Novato, inventor of the far-seer which had aided Afsan in his research. Novato and Afsan together had taken the truth about the Face of God one step further, determining that their world orbited much too closely to the Face to be stable, and that it would disintegrate in only a few hundred kilodays into a ring of rubble, just like those around the neighboring planets of Kevpel and Bripel. Shortly after Toroca had hatched, Emperor Dybo had named Novato director of the exodus project: the all-consuming effort to get the Quintaglio people off their world prior to its destruction.
    Yes, knowing who his parents were was a difference, but it wasn’t the major one.
    Toroca also had brothers and sisters. Since the dawn of time, the bloodpriests had devoured seven out of every eight hatchlings, leaving only the fastest one alive. But Toroca’s father, Afsan, had been taken to be The One foretold by Lubal — the hunter who would lead the Quintaglios on the greatest hunt of all. And the bloodpriests, an order closely allied with the Lubalites, made a special dispensation for the children of The One, allowing all eight of them to live.
    Knowing his parents; knowing his siblings: these indeed made Toroca different.
    But beyond that, he was different in a more fundamental way, different to the core of his being.
    A crowded street. A room with ten or more people in it. A ship full of other travelers. None of it bothered him. If another Quintaglio accidentally stepped on his tail, Toroca’s claws remained sheathed. When from his vantage point high up the cliffs of Fra’toolar he’d seen Delplas and Spalton bobbing up and down from the waist on the verge of dagamant , Toroca had felt no need to reply in kind, had no difficulty turning away from the sight as he scaled his way down the cliff. Indeed, he’d been able to rush into the battle and literally pull them apart, all the while keeping his claws sheathed, his rationality at the fore.
    Toroca seemed to lack the instinct for territoriality, lack the urge that drove other Quintaglios apart.
    He’d never told anyone. Never said a word. It was liberating, this difference. Empowering.
    And more than just a little bit frightening.
    Toroca had left the other surveyors back at the great cliffs on the storm-swept coast, looking for any fossils at all from below the Bookmark layer, and cataloging the myriad forms they found above it. Rather than talk at length about how he’d managed to intervene rationally in the territorial battle between Delplas and Spalton, he’d simply left, hiking north toward the port town of Otok. This trip had been planned for some time, after all, and it afforded an ideal excuse to avoid conversation on this topic. It was a three-day hike into the town, where he was to rendezvous with Dak-Forgool, an eminent geologist from Arj’toolar newly assigned to the Geological Survey.
    Otok was a pleasant enough little town. It consisted mostly of amorphous adobe buildings, the kind easily repairable after a landquake. The streets were simply dirt, pounded down by the caravans of hornfaces. The town square, the only part paved with cobblestones, contained only two statues: there was one of God, Her arms ending in stumps below Her shoulders, and another of Dy-Dybo, the Emperor, who in naked white marble looked even rounder and fatter than he did in the flesh.
    Toroca had arranged to meet this Forgool at the foot of Dybo’s statue. He was looking forward to the encounter; Forgool had written much of value about the erosion of uprocks into downrocks. Toroca glanced at the sun, tiny, blazingly white, sliding down the purple bowl of the sky. It looked to be about the fourth daytenth, but…
    Bells from the Hall of Worship. One. Two. Three. Four. Yes, Toroca was bang on time. But where was Forgool?
    Toroca was wearing his geologist’s sash — he’d brought along needle and gut ties and had sewn the two ripped pockets during a break in his long hike.