Bram waved back, frowning within his helmet. “I wonder where they got that,” he said. “They’re supposed to leave things in place till an archaeologist can have a look at the site. There are too many helpful amateurs wandering around.”
“Does it matter?”
“Very much, apparently. Ame says that the way finds are sited tells them as much as the finds themselves. And with bones especially, there’s a question of missing pieces.”
“Those long-footed skeletons?”
“She’s got some fairly complete ones. There’s a question about the dating. She sent word that there’s something she wants to discuss with me.”
“And lots of Cuddly bones?”
“Yes, and some they can’t identify. She thinks that they may have been pets of Original Man.”
Mim gave a subdued shudder and linked arms with Bram. “Ugh—bones! Still, it makes a good excuse for an excursion. The view gets more spectacular all the time.”
They both looked toward the horizon at the half-risen disk. It was a swollen red orb that stretched across most of the sky, its oblique angle squashing it out of shape. A smaller disk, back-to, made a black shadow across the glowing field. With the overhead moon brightening up, the diskworld was a reasonably well lit place these days—about on a par with the Father World nights when the lesser sun had been in the sky.
They had been in the system long enough for the diskworld’s rotation to bring this segment of the rim down almost to the plane of orbit. Yggdrasil, after some complicated maneuvering, was about a quarter diameter behind them again and catching up fast. At present, the trip from the tree took eleven days, the trip back even longer, but that didn’t stop the excursionists. With Yggdrasil renewed and the crust of the diskworld itself to tap, there was fuel literally to burn.
They continued their shuffling stroll. A Cuddly popped up out of a hole in the ground in front of them, sat up on its haunches, and gave them a fearless, big-eyed stare. The little animals had quickly allowed their natural curiosity to overtake their initial caution of human beings, and now they were all over the place.
Mim gave a cry of delight. “Aren’t they cute? Look at those clever little paws! They’re almost human! Can we take one back with us?”
“Why not? Half the people on the tree seem to have adopted a Cuddly. Or vice versa. They’re easy to tame, they eat anything, and they’re nice to have around.”
There had been some fear at first that the little burrowing beasts would spread uncontrolled through Yggdrasil’s vessels and passageways and perhaps interfere with the tree’s internal ecology. But that hadn’t been the case. The Cuddlies seemed to prefer human company, and they hung around the living quarters, attaching themselves to a particular person or family. They were affectionate little things, rubbing against a person’s leg until picked up and stroked, or even forcing matters by climbing up themselves to an arm or a shoulder. They were also shameless little beggars. Few people could resist them. They had quickly discovered all the outside exits, and during Yggdrasil’s “night” they liked to prowl about in naked space, among the leaves and branches. They could go an hour or more without breathing, living off the compressed oxygen in their accessory lungs or trapped in their amazing fur with its overlapping erectile follicles.
“Oh, look, I think it’s begging for food,” Mim exclaimed. “Do you have anything with you?”
“Afraid not. I had half a cornwich in one of my seal-pockets, left over from the shuttle snack bin, but I threw it away when we helmeted up.”
The big-eyed little furball, its coat fluffed out for vacuum, was balancing itself on one foot and its tail, holding out its right paw and right foot in tandem, like a pair of tiny human hands. It held the pose for a long moment, decided that Bram and Mim weren’t worth bothering with, and scooted off to find a better prospect.
“Oh!” Mim said, disappointed. “What are they, Bram? Were they brought here by Original Man?”
“Ame doesn’t think so. They’re too recent. She’s found the bones of what seems to be a transitional form they may have evolved from—and that only goes back about twenty million years. Before that, there’s a gap. All we know so far is that they have terrestrial DNA.”
The avenue they were walking along was one of the spokes of the great circular plaza that centered on the moon ladder—the initial dig had started here, and so far about a square mile of the surrounding city had been dug up. Now, as Bram and Mim emerged into the open spaces of the plaza, they both looked up.
A climber was coming down from the moon, an angular leggy shape that was silhouetted against the eerie red glow of the rising disk. As they watched, the artificial creature detoured around the stalled moon car, stepping carefully over the smooth surface and finding a foothold on the rope below. The climber was wearing a transparent ten-legged space suit that had been designed by, of all people, Marg; it included an extra tuck of material that fit over the passenger cup and billowed out to provide a habitable bubble for the five-hour climb.
“They’ve found Cuddlies on the moon, too,” Bram said. “Whole colonies of them. They’ve been established there for millions of years—and apparently they still travel back and forth. We’ve found fresh footprints around the rope. How they do it is a mystery. Even with a stop at the turnover station. Young Jorv thinks they have some way of taking extra air along, but that seems farfetched, clever little beasts though they are.” He gave a wide grin. “Of course, now they’re spoiled—they hitch rides with us in the climbers.”
“Are they digging up there, too?”
“Yes. We’ve found the remains of some tremendous engineering structures—extrusion devices on a scale that can hardly be imagined. Evidently, the original engineers played out the supporting filament from both ends when they were manufacturing this world.”
“So Ang told me. Jao can hardly contain himself now that his theory of suspension construction’s been vindicated.”
“We’re trying to verify it at this end, too. We’ve sunk several shafts at a slant and found that the moonrope extends as far down as we’re able to reach. We’ve gone past the crust now—it’s easy with digging machines in this low gravity—and penetrated through to the foamed understructure. We have to proceed carefully, though, to avoid disturbing the Cuddly burrows. They’re thick in the vicinity of the rope—it seems to be a main travel route downward. When the excavators started, they burst some of the bubbles and let the air out.”
“Oh, Bram, did they—”
“Relax. You can’t kill a Cuddly by taking away its air—they had plenty of time to squeeze through their little tunnels to the adjoining cavities. We messed up their gardens, though, No wonder the little rascals are such beggars.”
“Gardens?”
“Yes, we’ve uncovered a whole ecology down there. Jorv thinks that the ancestors of the Cuddlies carried seeds back from their surface foraging expeditions to the old granaries and warehouses of Original Man. Buried the seeds in their dens or excreted them—and some were still viable enough to sprout. Millions of years of evolution would have done the rest. And they would have carried bacteria, fungus spores—even algae—too. There’s insect life down there as well, marvelously adapted to the environment.”
“How can things grow in the dark?”
“There’s no visible light, true, except for bioluminescence. But the whole interior of the diskworld is suffused with infrared because of its energy-trapping structure, and the plant life’s learned to use it. For that matter, the Cuddlies themselves see quite well in the far red. Jorv suspects that the Cuddlies may even take a hand in cultivating some of the edible plants. That’s not unheard of in the animal kingdom. Something called an ant once did it—grew a fungus crop in its nest. Planted it, fertilized it, even chewed leaves to mulch it.”