Novato was leaning forward. “Fascinating!” She turned to Dybo. “You see, Your Luminance? This is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping the Geological Survey would turn up: new resources to make our exodus more feasible.” She swung her muzzle toward her son. “Toroca, where is this specimen?”
He looked at the floor. “It’s lost, I’m afraid. It fell overboard on the Dasheter.”
“Toroca!” There was shock in Novato’s tone. “Your muzzle shows some blue.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I mean, it was thrown overboard.”
“By whom?”
“My assistant, Babnol.” He paused, then, as if the coincidence of praenomens might forestall his mother’s wrath, said, “Wab-Babnol.”
“She’s clearly unstable,” said Novato. “I’ll have her replaced.”
“No,” said Toroca too loudly, and then once more, “No. She and I have discussed the incident. There won’t be a repetition; that I guarantee.”
Novato looked dubious, but nodded. “As you wish.” Seeing that she’d clearly swished her tail into something unpleasant, she sought to move the conversation along. “What else did you discover of value?”
“Well, the south polar cap is, as myth had it, nothing but ice and snow. We now have a map of its coastline, but even that’s of limited use, since it seems that it will change over time as ice cracks and melts. So, no, there’s nothing there, unfortunately, that will be directly useful in getting us off this world. Nothing, that is, except the lifeforms that inhabit it.”
Toroca waited for that to sink in.
“Lifeforms?” said Novato and Afsan simultaneously, and, a moment later, “Lifeforms?” said Dybo.
“Yes.”
“What kind of lifeforms?” asked Novato.
“Wingfingers,” said Toroca. “Except that these wingfingers don’t fly.”
Dybo, no savant himself, took a certain pleasure in catching his intellectuals in errors. “Then they can’t be wingfingers,” he said. “By definition, wingfingers fly.”
“Umm, forgive me, Your Luminance,” said Toroca, “but that’s not the definition set out by the Arbiter of the Sequence. A wingfinger is a type of animal, basically reptilian, as we are, but also as we are, warm-blooded, and, unlike us, with bodies covered with hair. But the diagnostic characteristic—the one thing that determines whether an animal is or is not a wingfinger—is the structure of the hand. If the four bones of the last finger are enormously elongated, as if to support a membrane, then the creature is a wingfinger.”
“All right,” said Dybo, sounding a little disappointed at Toroca’s recovery, “so they are wingfingers. But if they can’t fly, how did get to the south pole?”
“That’s a very perceptive question, Your Luminance. How indeed? My guess is that they used to be able to fly.”
“You mean,” said Dybo, “that the wingfingers you found are old and feeble?”
“No, no, no. I mean their ancestors used to fly, but, over generations, they lost the ability to do so, and instead used their gated fingers for other functions.”
Afsan, rapt, was no longer leaning back on his tail. “Changed over time, you say?”
“Aye,” said Toroca.
The blind savant’s voice was a whisper. “Fascinating.”
Dybo, ever pragmatic, said, “But how does this aid the exodus?”
“It doesn’t,” said Toroca, “at least not directly. But I’ve brought back many specimens of the lifeforms from down there. The variations in wing architecture and design should help Novato in her studies of flight.”
“I’m sure they will,” said Novato. “And, I must say, this is all very intriguing.”
“Indeed,” said Afsan.
“Wait a beat,” said Dybo, at last catching up to the meaning of what Toroca had said earlier. “You’re saying one kind of animal changed into another?”
“Yes, sir,” said Toroca.
“That’s not possible.”
“Forgive me, Your Luminance, but I believe that it is.”
“But that’s sacrilege.”
Toroca opened his mouth as if to speak, apparently thought better, closed it, and was then silent for several moments. At last, looking at the floor, he said, “Whatever you say, Your Luminance.”
Afsan stepped closer. “Don’t be afraid, Toroca. Dybo has learned from the past. Haven’t you, Dybo? He would not punish one simply for engaging in an intellectual inquiry.”
“What?” said Dybo, and then, “Umm, no, of course not. I only suggest you not speak such thoughts around the priests, Toroca.”
Toroca was looking now at his blind father, who had lost his eyes at Dybo’s order all those kilodays ago. “I’ll gladly heed that advice,” he said softly.
After the briefing with Toroca, Afsan and Dybo headed off to the dining hall. There was never much meat on the pieces Afsan ordered for his meals with Dybo—at least, not much by Dybo’s standards. Today they ate hornface rump, not the best flesh, but not bad, either. Afsan had said it was important that Dybo learn to think of food simply as nutrition and not a sensual experience.
Although perhaps it wasn’t the best choice of mealtime topics, their conversation turned, as it often did, to the murders of Haldan and Yabool.
“You have to acknowledge the pattern,” said Dybo.
“That both murder victims are children of mine?” said Afsan.
“It can’t be coincidence.”
“No, I suppose not. Although they’re both savants, both—”
“It’s possible,” said Dybo, “that they were killed by someone wanting to get at you.”
Afsan’s shriveled eyelids made a strange beating, the closest he could get to the fluttering of nictitating membranes that normally denoted surprise. “At me?”
“You have enemies. More than I have, I daresay. You took God out of the sky. You started the exodus, something not everyone is in favor of. Some Lubalites still see you as The One, but others consider you as false a figure as Larsk.”
“I’m a blind person. If someone wanted me dead, it would not be difficult.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps someone merely wants to frighten you.”
“They’ve succeeded.”
“Or perhaps it has nothing to do with you at all. Perhaps Novato is the key. They are her children as well, and she now leads the exodus project.”
“That’s true.”
Dybo was silent for a long moment. Then, slowly, he said, “How well do you really know Novato?”
Afsan’s claws extended. “I do not like the tone of that question, Dybo.”
“No doubt you don’t, my friend. But it’s something I must ask. As you said so eloquently, a leader rarely has any choice in what he or she must do. I ask again, how well do you know Novato?”
“Very well. I do not suspect her of the murders. Not at all.”
Dybo shrugged. “I don’t suspect her in particular, either,” he said. “But that means, I think, that I must suspect everyone in general. Certainly she has a connection—indeed, a relationship—to the victims.”
“She is beyond reproach. You might as well ask me whether I was responsible for the crimes.”
Dybo spoke softly. “Afsan, if I thought that you were capable—physically, I mean, not emotionally, for who really knows what another thinks?—of such violence, yes, I would ask you, too. I do not underestimate you; I know your hunting prowess. Even now, even as I train to face the blackdeath, I would not favor myself in a contest with you. But you are indeed blind. The method employed in these killings was not one a blind person could successfully manage.”
“There is such a thing as trust, Dybo. There are individuals whom you do not question, whom you believe in implicitly.”