A Bone From a Dry Sea (12 page)

There was nothing in the first two layers, but on the next Dad said, ‘Let’s have the steel rule. Thanks. Got a label? 13.5; 26.1; 11.8. Now the dental pick. Thanks.’

He pecked delicately at what looked like a scrap of seashell, got it loose and handed it out. Vinny put it into a bag and attached the label. Deliberately she didn’t ask what it was – he’d tell her if he wanted to. There were more bits of shell in the next layer, which he photographed in place and told her to put into a single bag, and more still in the next, with what looked like the tail of a lizard projecting from the wall of the trench. Dad painted it with hardening fluid and was cutting round it when Vinny heard the growl of an engine as the driver changed gear to cross the dry river-bed.

‘Someone’s coming,’ she said.

‘Joe,’ said Dad. ‘We’re lucky to have had this long.’

He went on working. A few minutes later the truck appeared, nosing its way through the hummocks and scrub below the outcrop. It stopped and several people climbed out. Dr Hamiska pointed and gave instructions and then the others started to unload while he came striding up the slope with Dr Wessler trailing behind him.

Dad had stopped work to watch him come.

‘By the way,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t show anyone your sketch for the moment, and don’t say anything about those marks on the scapula. I’m not trying to hide anything, but I can do without a lot of crazy unsubstantiated theorizing till we’ve got a bit more to go on.’

As soon as he was in earshot Dr Hamiska stopped and flung up an arm as if he was posing for a war memorial.

‘I can call spirits from the vasty deep,’ he cried.

‘I’ll settle for a cold lager,’ said Dad.

Dr Hamiska loosed his great laugh, strode on and peered in under the awning.

‘Terrific, Sam,’ he said. ‘You must have been sweating your guts out. Found anything new?’

‘Nothing much. Some shell-fragments. That lizard there. I’m getting on fairly fast now I’ve got the spoil cleared. The layer above the tuff seems to be only about twenty centimetres deep.’

‘The land was rising. The lake would have dried out.’

‘Possibly. What was that about spirits?’

‘I put a call through to Craig. I wanted Amanda to know her trip out here wouldn’t be wasted.’

Dr Hamiska glanced at Dad to see how he’d take it. Dad stiffened.

‘You told Amanda what we’d found,’ he said flatly.

‘Naturally. She has a right to know.’

‘You want the world’s press flooding out here?’

‘Who said anything about the world’s press?’

‘Amanda will have been on to the agencies within ten minutes of getting your call.’

‘Oh, Sam, Sam. You suppose I didn’t tell her not to spoil Craig’s big day with a premature announcement? I’m not telling the media anything till I’ve got a whole skeleton to show them.’

‘Supposing it’s there.’

‘Of course it’s there. But meanwhile I’ve got to strengthen Amanda’s hand so that she’s in a position to fight her corner for funds inside Craig. And that’s just what I’ve done. She called me back. She’s still coming Thursday, of course, but now she’s bringing John Wishart with her!’

Dad looked at him and sighed, as if it was the worst news he’d heard for months. Dr Hamiska responded with another bellow of laughter. Baffled, Vinny looked at Dr Wessler, who was standing beside her, smiling thin-lipped, like a spectator enjoying a sour sort of comedy.

‘Dynamic Dr Amanda Hutt,’ he said, ‘is the recently appointed head of the palaeontology department at Craig Museum. John Jedediah Wishart Junior is the Museum Director, the big cheese.’

‘The absolute Gorgonzola,’ cried Dr Hamiska. ‘So you see, Vinny, it’s up to you now. You must work your magic for us again.’

Not wanting to make things worse for Dad, Vinny managed to smile.

‘I’ll do my best,’ she said.

‘Of course you will. I’m relying on you. What shall we have? A tibia, do you think, Fred?’

‘How about an artefact?’ said Dr Wessler, joining in the tease of Dad.

‘Oh, yes! Vinny, would you please see that in addition to a further selection of hominid bones your father unearths a primitive but unarguable example of a stone tool.’

THEN

IT WAS LIKE
living in a dream, alone at the water-caves, just the six of them and the baby, no clamour, no quarrels, no scurry, no press of bodies to lie down among at night, no song to wake to in the morning. The rhythms of their normal life were so strong in them that as the moon reached full they woke at midnight and all except Presh went down into the high tide to hunt for shrimps, though there were none here. They returned and huddled in the cave, mourning their loneliness and the emptiness of stomachs used to being crammed at this hour.

They’d piled a bed of seaweed for Presh near the mouth of the cave, where the rising sun struck in to warm him as the day began but climbed out of sight before its heat grew too much to bear. Most days Li would untie the bundle round his leg and she and the other females would inspect the swollen limb, and stroke it for a while, and then Li would fasten the bundle again. As she became more skilled she was able to reduce the padding. The swelling subsided, and soon Presh could hunker himself about without much pain, and lie in the water during the heat of the day. Till then the females brought water in their cupped webbed
hands
to wet him, as they’d have done with a sick baby.

It was always poor foraging in the bay, and worse so soon after the tribe had passed through, so they foraged in turn along the outer shore. Hooa, bewildered by the change, was inseparable from Ma-ma, and Rawi usually went with them, so Li foraged with Goor. At first Goor had been almost as bewildered as Hooa, but realizing that he was the only healthy male in the party had given him confidence, especially when he was away from Presh’s commanding presence. Unlike some males he was generous in sharing the food he found, and not too old, after feeding, for catch-as-catch-can and diving games along the rocks.

Li was poised twenty feet above clear water when she saw the dolphins. She hadn’t expected them here. In her mind they belonged with the other bay, but now five of them were coming towards her in formation, surging out of the water with arched backs and then plunging under. She dived, crying
Follow
to Goor as she fell, and raced to meet them.

Before she’d dived she had seen the spattered surface in front of them, where the shoal they were hunting broke through in panic flight. By the time she was nearing them Goor had caught her up, and the shoal must have seen the two bodies in the water as two more hunters ahead. It swung aside, now heading directly for the bay. Where the rock spit loomed it might have turned again, but the leading fish saw the single channel of clear water ahead and took it, and the rest of the shoal, bound into formation by instinct, swirled through behind them.

The dolphins were unable to follow, but Li and Goor, racing along behind them and now wild with the thrill of the hunt, splashed across the bar and harried the shoal around the bay, yelling
Come-help
to the others. Goor actually managed to grab a fish and fling it out on to the rocks, and Rawi caught another, but the rest of them had no luck and simply rushed and yelled and splashed, keeping the fish in a state of panic until the leaders found the entrance of the bay and headed through.

The dolphins were waiting for them. Deliberately, as if they were used to this way of hunting, they raced past the shoal, turned it and headed it back towards the bay. Li and the others, gasping at the entrance, saw the catspaw ruffle in the water racing towards them and waited ready. As the shoal rushed through, packed by the narrows into an almost solid mass, they were able to snatch fish after fish and fling them over their shoulders to flounder on the rocks. Then they plunged into the bay, and knowing now what they were doing harried their prey around along the shore and out again into the open sea where the dolphins waited.

Twice more the cycle was repeated before the remains of the shoal escaped, scurrying along below the southern crags. As Li stood panting on the rock spit, two of the dolphins came cruising through the clear water beside her. All around her lay dead and dying fish. She picked a couple up and flung them out, and the dolphins rose and took them just as they hit the surface. Almost at once the other dolphins arrived and hung below her, waiting expectantly. Ma-ma, Hooa and Rawi were already harvesting the fish on the other side
of
the entrance. Goor was carrying one up for Presh. The ones this side, Li felt, were rightly the dolphins’ share.

When she had all but cleared the rocks around her she picked up the last two, slid down into the water and kicked gently towards the dolphins. They backed away so she waited, treading water, with a fish held in each hand until they became inquisitive and drifted in. Two of them took the fish, but suddenly they backed away again.

Goor had appeared beside her. She made a
Be-still
sign and then they waited, rising to the surface only when they needed air. Li knew the dolphins were still nearby because of the sounds they made, their wailing whistles and clicks, call and answer, filling the sea around her. Shadowy shapes loomed, neared, took shape, came close, circled until she could stroke the long flanks as they passed, and returned to caress themselves against her body.

Then they swam together, dolphins and people, through the greeny-golden sea-world, not in a wild dance full of rush and foam but in a slow, close, gentle weaving of bodies in the friendly water, while the dolphins’ song went on and on, filling the sea like the wavering sunlight. Li understood it to be song because the only sound she knew at all like it was the song of the tribe waking in the morning to greet the returning day.

The dolphins left without a signal, but the song continued in the water, dwindling as they went, until they rounded a headland and it was lost. Li and Goor waited a long while, hoping, but they didn’t come back.

Gulls had gathered screaming for a share of the
fish
, but Ma-ma, Hooa and Rawi had by now carried almost all that was left to the back of the cave, where it was cooler and the meat might last a little longer before it stank (though the tribe had strong stomachs, and needed them). Li took one to eat and rested in the blood-warm shallows. Thoughts drifted through her mind – the hunt, the dance, the song. These things had a meaning, a pattern she could almost see. It didn’t cross her mind that it might be part of the dolphins’ hunting technique to harry a shoal towards the shore and pen them in some inlet to catch them there, and that they’d never meant to chase this one into the bay, where they couldn’t get at it. If there hadn’t been helpers in the bay to force the shoal back again they’d have had a poor hunt. To her it was obvious that the dolphins had come because she needed them, because she was hungry and they were her friends. They were so much wiser than she was. They knew where the sun was born.

A few days later the dolphins came again, nine or ten of them and herding a large shoal. Goor saw them first and called
Come-help
. The others were racing to the bar when the shoal swept through on a wave-surge. They chased it out, and this time, as the tide was lower than before and the water at the bar shallower, the fish had to thresh across in a packed mass where they were almost as easy to pick out as anchored mussels. The dolphins drove them in again, but were less lucky with the wave and half the shoal jibbed at the bar and broke free. Next time the rest escaped, but by then the shelving rocks beside the bar were covered with silver bodies, and Li and Goor could fling plenty out to the cruising dolphins, leaving masses still
to
be carried back to the cave. The dolphins didn’t stay, but as soon as they’d fed enough flipped on their sides and swam off.

That evening in babble and clamour the tribe arrived. They were hungry. Tong and Kerif were still disputing the leadership, with three other males joining in temporary alliances which stopped anything being settled. The tribe’s journey to the shrimping beach and back had been governed not by whether they’d stripped all they could from a feeding-ground but by one of the contenders trying to enhance his prestige by getting the tribe to move against the other’s will. So the tribe had come to the shrimping beach in separate groups and found poor harvesting there, with the sea not calm and the high tide less than usual. By the time they reached the bay with the water-caves their stomachs were rumbling with hunger.

It was Kerif’s fault, and Tong’s. When times were good, leaders accepted the prestige, but when times were bad the blame was all on them. It was in this mood that the tribe streamed into the bay and saw Presh sitting by a cave mouth in the evening shadow, chewing the back-muscles out of a succulent fish.

He rose, supporting himself against the rock but managing to look as if he had expected their return. His leg was still too weak to bear his weight, but Li had decided only that morning that it would be safe to take the splint off. The bone had set crooked above the ankle, and the calf muscles were shrunken, but otherwise Presh was in fine fettle. He had eaten well, drunk fresh water, rested in the healing sea, been cosseted by females and slept untroubled in the cave. His
muscles
moved easily under the blue-black skin and his mane was glossy with health.

The tribe had half-forgotten, during the separation, that Presh existed, but now they remembered and scampered up the rocks with cries of greeting. They fawned on him, inspected his leg and wheedled for his fish. At this point Hooa came out of the cave with a fish of her own and stood in baffled happiness, staring at the newcomers. Presh took her fish and passed it to Kerif with a lordly
I give
, and the same for Tong with the one he’d been eating. He barked
Fetch
to Hooa, meaning her to get him another one, but by then the tribe, eager for fresh water, were pressing into the caves, jostling to reach the thin sweet trickles down the rocks.

They found the fish by smell in the dark and squabbled over them till they realized that there were enough for even the weakest to get a share, so they finished the day feasting on the spits by the mouth of the bay, where the rocks still held the warmth of the sun. It was obvious to all of them that Presh had arranged this feast as a reward for their return to his unquestionable leadership. He accepted their fawnings and touchings with great good humour. His prestige was immense.