Chap. 105 The Skull

Chap. 105  The Skull

K'ndar had flown to Landing to turn in a notebook (and get a blank one in return). He'd learned his way around Landings many buildings by now, and was sitting in the dining hall. It was different from his own, of course. He wouldn't say anything, he thought, but Hariko's staff of cooks and bakers were far better than Landing's.

He wondered if he dared bother Raylan, or look up Francie, to ask questions about the recovery of the skeleton. But, as he sat contemplating what action to take, Jansen, one of the techs, joined him.

"Hello, K'ndar! It's been a while! Mind if I join you?"

"By all means! Sit down! I was going to try and ask Raylan about the recovery of the skeleton. Do you know if they're going to start it in the next day or week?"

She looked at him in shock.

"Oh, my, no, K'ndar. It's going to take a few months just to arrange things."

"Months? What…what sort of things? I thought it would be just a matter of a couple of dragon lifts."

She shook her head. "No, no, my dear, it's a full-fledged logistical...I won't say nightmare, but it's going to take a LOT of planning  before we do so much as move a toe bone. Or whatever the diver used for toes."

"Like what?"

"Well, everything from weather and tides lining up just so, to getting a bunch of people down there to stay for the time it's going to take to bring it up here. It's not just, dig it up and tote it by the nearest dragon."

"Oh. Is there something I can do to help? To,um, speed things up?"

She smiled. "No, K'ndar, you've been incredibly helpful to begin with."

"Have you been to see the skeleton?"

"I have. The first thing we do is get a GOOD look at what is there. We'll be going back shortly to begin cataloging the bones, assigning them numbers, that sort of thing. Part of the problem is that none of us have ever done this before, so we've been digging through the database to find out first, what to do before we do anything. For instance, we have to look at the sand surrounding the skeleton to get a good date on when it was deposited, or even if it WAS deposited on the beach or if it washed up."

"But…the dolphins say the diver beached and then died."

She touched his hand, gently.

"Sometimes, dolphins can be wrong. They have a different way of telling time or keeping track of history than we do. We don't know if this specific creature was killed by being harpooned, or if it was harpooned years before, and just happened to beach in the same spot as the shipwreck-there's a lot of things that we need to check, to gather data. Not that I think the dolphins would lie, but they can be mistaken, just like us."

"Oh. Okay. I guess, then, for the moment, I can continue doing whatever it was I was doing before all this came down?" he asked. 

She laughed.

"Yes, I would say that's a pretty safe thing to do. Do you have some notebooks for us?"

He shook himself from his reverie, and dug the copies he'd made of his field notes out of a pouch. He handed them to her.

She leafed through one of them.

"Such good work, K'ndar. You have a real knack for sketching, and I have to say, you've improved a LOT in your collection and annotation of data," she said.

"Thank you. Sorry I don't have a camera, though."

"No, it's okay. Of course, being that you brought one in, you have pretty much free rein to use any of the artifacts whenever you choose. The copies, I mean…we've got the originals in safe storage. But K'ndar, a camera, while nice, isn't always necessary.  Sometimes a good sketch tells more than any photo. Oh, don't let me forget,  I've some blank notebooks for you in the main lobby," she said.

"By the way," he asked, "were you ever successful in getting anything out of the notebook that was in the capsule I turned in?"

"We are taking that very carefully. Each page is fragile as an eggshell. The ink has faded, so we have to be oh so gentle with each one. I'm not the one doing the examination, but from what I understand, it's Jason Harmon's diary, more of a day to day logging of his personal life and his feelings rather than a scientific notebook, like yours. For instance, he had fallen in love with a girl and she didn't even acknowledge his existence, and it was tearing him up. That sort of thing."

"Kind of…personal, I guess? Not science?

"Aye."

"Such a strange name, Jasonharmon," he reflected.

"Why do you say that?"

"Well, we have just short names. Like Jansen, or Kandar, which is what my name was before I Impressed. But Jasonharmon is such a long one."

"I think you misinterpret it. It was TWO names, Jason and Harmon. In the old days, everyone had two names, or even three, like Wind Blossom Ping, Kitty Pings daughter."

"Strange," he said. 

"True, but…we're used to our way. They had their way." 

"How about the skull?"

"Would you like to come see what we've done to it?"

"I would! What do you mean, what you've done to it?"

"Come and see!"

Shortly they were in the inner inner sanctum of Landing's labs. They'd stopped in the main lobby so that Jansen could retrieve two brand new note books. He tucked them into his shirt. They were precious to him.

As they moved through the various labs, K'ndar looked around him, fascinated by the myriad things that were being done there. 

"Since you brought the capsule in, we've had a lot of folks bringing stuff for us," she said, wending her way around tables and counters. K'ndar wanted to stop and look at everything, but followed dutifully.

"That's what Raylan said," he agreed. 

"For which we are so grateful, because up 'til now, such donations have been few and far between. Lord Toric, it appears, had a stranglehold on discoveries," she said.

"I know. He's got a price on my head, for that."

She stopped, shocked.

"What?"

"You didn't know?"

"Know what?"

"The last gather at Toric's Hold, I, and a group of dragon riders from my weyr went to enjoy the festivities. Toric had half a dozen men out in the crowds, hunting for ME. Spies were everywhere, listening in on people's conversations, trying to find me so that Toric could…I don't know, put me in a cell?  Hurt me? He was angry, and still is, that I turned the artifacts in to you. He considers everything found on this continent HIS, and he was NOT happy when he learned I'd turned the capsule into you, here. He considered it theft."

"He…he can't do that, he has no jurisdiction over any weyr, or hall, or, for that matter, anyone outside of his Hold. For that matter, it's not THEFT, it's Pern history!" she said, getting worked up.

"Aye. But still, he tried. Right now, most dragon riders are refusing to provide him dragon transport because of it."

She was shocked. 

"I wish someone had told us this," she said, "it explains a lot. People have brought us the most t common of things, and even before you turned in the capsule, they always seem to be a little nervous. Some even begged us to keep their donations  secret. Now I understand. Did anyone think to talk to Benden about this?"

"Um..Jansen, I'm just a junior dragon rider. I don't have any say in how things are run in my weyr, never mind talking to Benden."

"I understand. But…well, you don't have any reason to, but I will definitely bring this up to Lord Warder Lytol and the commissioners."

"But…but..I don't want to.."

"Get in trouble?"

"Yes," he said.

"You won't. We have open lines of communication here. No one is punished for bringing things to the attention to the commissioners. Don't worry. Okay? You needn't worry. Now here we are, here's the skull," she said.

It looked so much bigger in the confines of the lab than it had on the beach. 

He could see what she meant by having 'done something to it'. It had been cleaned of unknown number of year's accumulation of sand, grit, wind drift, and moss. It gleamed dully in the light from the ceiling. It had been very carefully prised apart, and now he could see the teeth.

"It's so beautifully preserved," she said, running a hand gently over the top of the skull, "it's really a lovely specimen."

"You know, of course, the dolphin's promise to the divers, don't you?"

"Yes," she said, "and we intend to make sure everyone who sees this knows, too. We won't allow any of them to be harmed. But we also want to make Pernese aware of what a magnificent creature this thing is. We intend to not only display it when it's completely uncovered, but also to…to write a book about it."

"I would like a copy," he said, instantly.

She laughed. "That's fair. We might even interview you on how it was found."

"Um…….okay, I guess."

"So, take a look at the teeth in the mandibles," she said, " note anything odd? Or different?"

He looked closely. "They're…not like anything I've ever seen. Not that I have spent a lot of time looking at teeth, but they're not like horse's teeth, or human teeth."

"Well done, K'ndar! You ARE a scientist! No, they look like..like what?"

He thought hard. He'd seen something like this before. Somewhere common, somewhere one could see it every day..ah.

"Like…the stones used to grind grain on. The hand ones, I mean. Not the ones that are being used these days."

"Correct!" she cried. "See the front teeth? The ones on the lower jaw? Because…what's on the top mandible? They look like…what?"

Guessing games again. Sigh.

But this was science.

"This ..It looks like a cow's upper mandible. No top teeth in the front, at all.  The ones on the lower jaw, they look like…um, shovels."

"Correct. Now put the two together," she said, loving the opening of his mind. 

His mind stuttered.

He shook his head, and she said, "Think, K'ndar. How do dragons' teeth help with catching prey? Or a cat? Or a dog?"

He flogged his brain. He thought of Raventh's teeth, the ones they used to call 'hunting teeth'-not the ones that crushed firestone. Those were called "stonecrushers".Fire lizards didn't have stonecrushers, their entire set of teeth were those of a carnivore.

 Dragons, having been created by Kitty Ping tweaking fire lizard DNA, seemed to have been created to do something that carnivores didn't do…crush firestone. 

Ping had left the front teeth alone, though, knowing that dragons couldn't digest firestone nor survive on it. Like other predators teeth, dragons had… "Fangs! Fangs! The sharp fangs catch and hold the prey long enough for the back teeth to bite…like a tunnel snake."

"Yes! Like what we think the mosar's teeth look like, because we KNOW they're predators. But this isn't a mosar. What did the dolphins tell you? About where divers live?"

"They said they live on the bottom and eat…clams! The front teeth dig up the clams and," he looked at the back teeth," these flat teeth, here, crush the clams!"

"There you are! That's the beauty of teeth, they tell you their story of how they work. That's what we hope to learn from the skeleton…what else it does. Does it dig? Does it swim fast? We will learn these things, hopefully, and maybe…maybe even convince the dolphins to teach us more."

"Jansen. Do you think…do you think Kitty Ping copied dragon's stonecrusher teeth, from the diver's?"

"Huh," she said. "Huh. That thought never occurred to me. My goodness, K'ndar, you're a better biologist than I thought. Of course. She HAD to have had a blueprint, so to speak. I've got to look at a dragon's skull, but I'd bet my boots the diver's 'clam crushers', or molars, are the base design for a dragon's 'stone crushers'. It HAS to be the case."

"I can tell you, these teeth look just like a dragon's 'stonecrushers'.

"Molars."

"Molars. Just like 'em, although dragons are smaller, of course, and if a dragon is going to have teeth problems, these are the ones that cause 'em."

"This means, K'ndar, that the Ancients knew about 'divers'. Which means, somewhere in the database, there's a name for them, there's information about them. And I know just the person who can find that information."

"I do, too," he said, smiling.

"You do?" she responded, doubting him. 

"Aye. It's YOU. Whether you know it or not, you've got a reputation for being able to find out just about anything about anything, given a computer and some time."

She blushed.

"Thank you," she said, smiling.