Chap. 83 The Telltale Bones

Chap. 83  The telltale bones

The expedition on the steppe was continuing. They had penetrated deep into the heart of the steppe. It seemed to go on forever. They knew there had to be sources of water, but only the wildlife knew where it was.

While they worked, something kept niggling in D'mitran's mind.

They'd found the carcass of a brown dragon a few weeks before. D'mitran had taken a buckle off the dry rotted harness, but none of the weyrs reported a brown dragon missing in the time period the dragon presumedly had died. The fact that it was still in harness was what was troubling D'mitran. One only harnessed a dragon when one was about to ride it.

What in the world had happened?

"D'nis," he said, "I want to go back to that dragon skeleton, near K'ndar's Find. Something's been bothering me about it."

They were taking a break from surveying. 

B'rost perked up. "A SKELETON? I've never seen a dragon skeleton."

D'mitran said, "Do we have time?"

D'nis shrugged. "I never put a schedule on this expedition. We've put in a fair amount of work today, accomplished a lot. Let's go back to the skeleton and see what's been bothering you about it."

K'ndar had sketched it, and only B'rost and his dragon, Rath, hadn't been there. 

Raventh, show Rath the coordinates. Or…he can just take it from Siskin.

Rath says he sees it.

"Everyone ready? Launch!" D'nis said.

Being that the skeleton was completely dry and weathered, there were no insects or scavengers to deal with. 

This time, D'nis took photos of it, and D'mitran took readings. After entering the data, he walked up to it and looked hard. He began to talk to it in his mind.

What are you trying to tell me, he asked it. You are saying things. I can't hear you.  Why are you here. Who are you. Where did you come from. Did you lose a rider?

Now he had the time to examine it more closely. 

What happened to you?

He began to move bones.

Underneath the skeleton, the soil was damp, having been protected from the drying winds and sunshine. D'mitran's mind was whirling. Something it's telling me. Something…

There was still wing fabric on the ground side wing bones. Wing fabric was delicate but completely meatless, more like canvas on the spars of a ship. Wings were thin bones…oh. 

Oh.

The wingbones on the ground side had been broken and crushed. The dragon had landed on its side. Had it?

He tugged at the immense pelvis. The others took hold in several spots and pulled.

Astonishingly, it fell into several good sized hunks in their hands.

Did bones DO that?

"That's odd, I wouldn't have thought a pelvis would be so…easily broken up," D'nis said.

D'mitran reached for the skyward side of the pelvis. It did NOT break into pieces.

"This shouldn't be so easily broken, I agree. I think this dragon fell out of the sky onto its side, fracturing its pelvis and wings." D'mitran said.

K'ndar sketched hurriedly, making notes and wanting things to slow down a bit. D'nis took pictures of the pelvis pieces.  

"And shoulder girdle," B'rost noted, "The whole left side of the dragon is broken. See the ribcage?" Putting his hands through the fenestrated ribcage, he could feel shards of bone sticking up. There was something under the ribcage. Rocks. Part of the harness. Hunks of dried flesh that the scavengers had missed, something solid, with corners.  

"There's something here!" he said, excitedly.

It didn't take long, with four excited men pulling the skeleton away to further expose the ground side of the ribcage.

D'mitran dug down into the damp soil. 

He pulled out a square saddle bag, still attached to the harness. With trembling hands, D'mitran cut it away. It stank, but they didn't smell it in their excitement.

They all looked at each other.

"WELL OPEN IT MAN!" B'rost yelled, then quailed as D'mitran and D'nis both glared at him. But they knew why.

D'mitran opened the saddle bag.

In it was a pair of gloves, made of fine wherry hide, and…a datalink.

"Whoa." said K'ndar.

"It looks like a data link, but not like the one you gave me, K'ndar." D'mitran said. "It's much smaller. It looks, well, better made."  Now accustomed to how to use one, he attempted to turn it on.

How did this rider get a datalink? ran through K'ndar's mind, only much much later for it to actually register in his mind. 

It refused to turn on. Yet, D'mitran's datalink suddenly went 'peep'.

He looked at his. 

"Mine says this one is here. So I think that means it is working.  WHY didn't we look at this earlier?"

"No time. No matter," D'nis said, "this is what we do…explore and learn."

"Find things!" B'rost said.

"Well, my link says this one is at least viable.  But I think we have to.."

"Take it to Landing," the three others said in unison.

D'nis sighed. 

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"If I had the time, I'd be right with you dragonriders," Raylan said, envious of the marvels they were bringing to him. 

D'nis showed him the pictures of the skeleton.

Jansen, the computer wizard, was right alongside. D'mitran  handed her the datalink. 

"It wouldn't wake up for me, but…do you think you can make it work?"

"The thing I'm learning about these artifacts is that, for the most part, they were built to take abuse, like explorations and weather," she said.

"If anyone can make it work, it's Jansen," Raylan said. Turning to the girl, he said, "You, my dear, are the best one to coax this thing to talk to us." 

Smiling, she examined it, then said, "I'll have to find a cable, I think, it doesn't seem to want to link up with our computers." She took it into her workstation.

In a few minutes, they heard her whoop. And then gasp.

"I'm sending the data to you, Raylan," she called in a voice that held portent.

His workstation monitor lit up.

A young man was on the screen. The scene was frozen.

"I'm looking through some files, there aren't many. This appears to be a personal data link, not one used for exploration. More for communicating with other people. Is it playing?" she called.

"Nay, just a picture of what looks like a man, I'd say 22, 24? years old."

"Um……." her voice was suddenly stricken.

"Um? Um?" Raylan asked, perplexed.

"I have to come out there. I think I have it so that it will at least work enough for us to get some information."

Jansen came out, looking ashen.

She fiddled with his work station's keyboard.

The picture started and stopped, started and stopped, the words garbled.

The main computer lost its temper and blacked out the picture. 

"NOOOO!" the dragonriders all cried.

"It's okay. It's…fixing it," Jansen said, "and it doesn't want its elbow jostled. Just a few moments, it's telling the link who is boss, and downloading, it's having a problem with the download, and now I know why. But it can still…"

The picture came back. The computer, now having learned to do lingual shifts with artifacts, said it was about to do so, and then applied the shift. 

The young man grinned from the monitor. 

"Hi, Danly, I'm going to do it. It can't be as dangerous as everyone says. How many others have tried it?  It's not that hard. I've done it twice, just not so far back. Don't you dare tell my dad, I'm still grounded but I'll be back before he knows it.  I know what I'm doing. I'll bring back the boulder. Okay? See you!" He flashed a hand signal and the screen stopped.

"What? What?"

Jansen said, in an odd voice, 'look at the date on the bottom of the screen, sirs."

The tiny print said 6 7 2610

They read it...and gulped. 

"Twenty SIX? Twenty SIX?"

"and ten…" D'mitran added.

"That's fifty years from now," B'rost said.

"Fifty two, to be exact," Jansen said.

"This kid…timed it. He came back here, in time," D'nis said.

The concept that someone would time it back to their time was so novel a one that they were all flabbergasted. They knew people from their own time had gone back, and brought Oldtimers forward, but for someone from THEIR future to do the same thing had never occurred to them. Not a one.

K'ndar found his voice, first. "You wonder, what happened to him. Why did his dragon die or land so hard.  Where did he go? What happened to him? "

"The skeleton looks to be no more than two years dead. I wonder if the rider is out there, somewhere on the steppe," D'mitran said.

D'nis thought, no, I don't want to waste time looking for the remains of an idiot. A disobedient idiot with a dragon, an idiot who came back here to…

"Wait a minute," D'nis said, "can you replay that? He said something about the boulder?"

Jansen made it replay.

…"I'll bring back the boulder."

They all made the connection. Everyone knew what boulder the man meant.

"I never thought of people coming back to OUR time. I wonder, I wonder, how often has that happened? Why…" Jansen said.

Raylan said, "I wonder how many artifacts have been taken by people from the future."

"I would bet my boots, " D'nis continued, "that we've had visitors from the future come more often than we know. In this case, it smells to me that this young man had plans on stealing B'rost's Boulder…for what reason, I can only imagine." 

"I'd bet it had something to do with money," Raylan said, flatly.

"But it's obvious that, one, it didn't happen, and two, it hasn't, even 52 years from now." 

D'nis said.

More as a warning to the young dragonriders beside him, young men very close to the same age and same foolish and  testosterone driven actions as the one of the screen, D'nis continued in a cold voice,

"It's why I think Benden's ban on timing it has been probably the one law that it demands be obeyed.  Because, obviously, this turned out very badly for this young fool."

"To be coldly honest about it, he had it coming. You don't steal things like this boulder. You just DON'T," Raylan said. "That's OUR history. His. Mine. All of ours."

B'rost said, "Bet his parents were pissed."

"Or relieved," Jansen said. 

K'ndar remembered thinking about going back in time to see the steppe before humans arrived. His blood ran cold.

Told you so  Raventh said.