“Tricones.” Jonas nodded.
The molluscan soil makers of this planet were a problem in that respect. There were some fossils to be found in the mountains, but only there. Out here the tricones crunched up nearly everything solid down to a huge depth. All that could be found below the deep soil layer was the chalk, then limestone remains of the tricones themselves.
“Maybe there’s a parasitic reason for the thick shell,” Shardelle suggested. “I’m thinking in terms of the Earth parasite of snails that thickens the snail’s shell to protect itself.”
“But that results in the snail being unable to breed. There’s always some balance to be upset. I’d also expect to see some hooders uninfected-thin-shelled.” He shrugged. “Then again, a general infection of them all may account for their low population.”
“Perhaps you’ll find the answers on that beach.”
“Perhaps.”
Abruptly Shardelle slowed the ATV. He glanced at her and saw she was peering intently at the further edge of the crater. There were figures over there, humanoid.
“Dracomen,” she whispered excitedly.
Jonas initiated a visual program in his aug, magnified what he was seeing and cleaned up the image. Six dracomen, two of them carrying some animal corpse strapped to a pole between them, the other four scattered around them. Two of the others were small-dracoman children.
This was the first time Jonas had seen them and he studied them closely. Though humanoid, their legs hinged the wrong way, like birds. Their scaling was green over most of their bodies but yellow from groin to throat. Their heads were toadish, jutting forward on long necks. They carried rifles of some kind.
Shardelle set the ATV moving again, altering its course to intersect with theirs.
“What are you doing?” Jonas asked.
“I want to talk to them.”
“We’re not here to study dracomen. There’s a whole branch of ECS that does that-military, now dracomen are being recruited.”
“Not study. You’ve got your corpse, but I still want mine. Dracomen hunt, as we can see-I’d just like some information on what exactly they do hunt.”
The dracomen obviously spotted that the ATV was heading in their direction. The two carrying the pole laid it down and then they all stood waiting. As Shardelle and Jonas drew closer, and he could see them more clearly, Jonas began to wonder if this was a good idea.
These creatures looked dangerous. Then he dismissed the idea as unworthy. They may have looked like something out of a VR hack-and-slash fantasy, but, from what he knew, they might well be more sophisticated and technically advanced than most Polity citizens. Shardelle parked the ATV on the brow of the crater edge ahead of them. Turning on their masks, the two of them left the ATV.
“Good morning!” said Shardelle, holding up a hand and advancing.
One of them moved forward, its head tilted as it eyed her, almost like a cockerel coming to inspect a grub.
“We greet you,” it said, halting.
Jonas eyed the rifle this one carried. It appeared to be made of translucent bone and something shifted inside it like visible organs. It seemed alive.
“If you don’t mind,” said Shardelle, “I have some questions I would like to ask.”
Jonas now saw that their catch was a mud snake: a fat grublike body terminating in a hard angular head that looked a bit like a horse’s skull. Yellow ichor ran from something that was stuck in the body just behind the skulclass="underline" a short glassy shaft to the rear of which were affixed two testicular objects. The dracoman tracked the direction of his attention, then abruptly stooped and pulled the object from the mud snake. He now saw that this thing possessed a barbed point. It looked like a greatly enlarged bee sting. The dracoman did something with its rifle and the side of the weapon split open. It shoved the barbed object inside and closed the weapon up. All the time it did not take its eyes off Jonas.
“Ask,” it said.
“You hunt many animals,” said Shardelle.
That was not a question so the dracoman did not dignify it with a reply.
“Do you hunt gabbleducks?” she asked.
The dracoman exposed its teeth in something that might have been a grin. It glanced around at its fellows who grinned similarly.
“No,” it replied.
“Why not?”
“We only hunt prey.”
“Not predators?” She gestured to their catch. “Surely mud snakes are predators.”
“All predators are prey.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes.”
“Do you hunt hooders?” Jonas interjected.
By the amount of exposed ivory he guessed that was a hilarious question to ask.
Shardelle waved a hand as if to dismiss his question. “Why don’t you hunt gabbleducks?”
“They are protected.”
“Under Polity law, yes, but I thought your people had been allowed hunting rights to feed yourselves … within limits.”
Some unspoken signal passed between the dracomen, for the two bearers once again took up the pole.
“Wait! You have to give me something!” said Shardelle.
Jonas glanced at her, realizing by the tone of her voice how desperate she was to find answers about the gabbleducks. The dracomen began to move off.
“Please,” she said.
One of the dracoman children halted and gazed up at her.
“The meat is forbidden,” it lisped, licking out a black forked tongue. It glanced at Jonas.
“Except to hooders.” Then the child scampered off after the adults.
“Delphic, just like their creator,” said Jonas.
“There was probably a wealth of information there, if we could figure it out,” Shardelle replied. She peered down the slope to where a tricone about half a meter long had breached.
This creature consisted of three long cones joined like Pan pipes, each revealing in their mouths gelatinous nodular heads which extended sluglike to lift the creature up, then propel it narrow end first back down into the ground.
“We will,” said Jonas, turning back toward the ATV, “given time.”
They made love on the second night, slowly, leisurely, and most of the time Jonas remained in the tent with her while she slept. He did not have to do that, but she was glad he did.
“In the morning we should come upon your big friend,” he said at one point. “What do you intend?”
Shardelle grinned at him, suddenly unreasonably happy. “Well, I’d like to ask him what he and the rest of his kind have been talking about. Do you think he’ll tell me?”
He smiled. “You know there’s a kids’ interactive book you can find here. The technology is Polity stuff but the stories were created here-distortions of old Earth fairy tales. When I said to you it moves like a bear, I was thinking of one particular fairy tale: Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but in this case the three bears were gabbleducks.”
“Your point?” Shardelle asked.
“Well, she crept into their house to try their food and their beds….”
“Yes, I know … and baby gabbleduck’s bed was just right….”