Toroca was disappointed. He’d expected to see enormously complex gearworks within the thing’s smooth blue shell. Instead it seemed to contain no moving parts at all: a tight packing of solid cubes, a cylinder of some kind of metal, and two mutually perpendicular flat boards covered with geometric patterns in red and black and gold. Connecting the crammed components were flexible strands of some material as clear as glass.

But no moving parts.

What the object had been used for remained a mystery. How it worked was also elusive. But slowly it dawned on Toroca that this was not a disappointing discovery — not at all. Rather, he’d learned something that had never occurred to him, or, he was sure, to anyone else: it was possible to build devices that surely did complex work without resorting to mechanics. Solid blocks could do — what, he did not know. But they could do something. And Quintaglio engineers would eventually be able to figure out what they did, and how they did it. And knowing that such devices were possible — laying the egg of that idea in their heads — might let them develop similar devices themselves kilodays before they would have stumbled on the concept on their own.

Layers.

Layers of rock.

Layers of mystery.

Standing on the beach at sunset, Toroca’s eye roamed over the cliff face, searching.

The sacred scrolls were written two thousand kilodays ago.

And they said the world was created five thousand kilodays before that.

But the erosion here and, now that he thought about it, almost everywhere in Land that he’d been would have taken more than seven thousand kilodays to happen. Much more. Jodor’s tree, clinging to the precipice…

…like Toroca’s preconceptions.

A Quintaglio might live for seventy kilodays or so. But it would have taken far, far more than one hundred lifetimes to deposit the layers he was now looking at. Indeed, just to accumulate the fifteen vertical paces of rock between the Bookmark layer and the top of the cliff would take far longer than that…

…and add to that whatever amount of time it took for those layers to get pushed up into the sky, until they towered overhead as they did now…

Staring up at the cliff face, Toroca felt a wave of vertigo.

The world was old, inconceivably ancient.

And even life, although it had appeared very recently in the overall geologic record, must have arisen much more than seven thousand kilodays ago.

Layers of mystery. Toroca exhaled noisily.

The sacred scrolls described a gradual unfolding. First plants, then plant-eaters, then carnivores.

The rocks showed nothing like that. In them, all forms of life appeared simultaneously.

All.

The sacred scrolls must be wrong, not just about the age of the world, but about the sequence of events.

Toroca was reminded again of how the layers of sediment that made up this towering cliff looked like the pages of a massive book seen edge-on. If only he could open that book, browse through the pages, see, really see, what had happened.

And, in his hand, heavy, indestructible … the blue object, the six-fingered artifact, the thing.

He knew where it fit in: right near the top, just below the Bookmark layer.

What he didn’t know yet was how it fit in.

But he would figure it out, he would peel back the layers, he would uncover the truth.

The chill wind cut him. As always, darkness came quickly.

But it would not last for long.

*11*

A Quintaglio’s Diary

I felt some odd stirrings today, a kind of excitement I hadn’t really known before. That I was reacting to some pheromones, as when on the hunt, seemed obvious, but we were not hunting. No, I was simply waiting in an anteroom for an appointment. The only other person in the room was my sister, Haldan.

It was she. I was reacting to her.

She must be coming into receptivity. I’d have thought her too young — she was just sixteen, after all, and estrus normally began in one’s eighteenth kiloday, but, then again, these things were not written in stone.

My reaction was slight, as if she was not yet fully in heat, but rather was just beginning to be open. Perhaps she herself wasn ’t yet aware of it.

I didn’t like the effect it had on me. There was something inappropriate about it. Yes, I was eager to mate myself, but, somehow, to mate with my sister seemed wrong.

Without a word, I got up and hurried from the room, terrified that my dewlap would puff in front of her.

With Pack Tablo on the outskirts of Edz’toolar

In the last moments of his life, the irony was not lost on Mek-Lastoon, the bloodpriest of Pack Tablo. Oh, the circumstances were not quite reversed. Here, it was a mob of adults chasing a single other adult — him — instead of him, the purple robe of his priesthood swirling about his body, chasing squealing egglings.

But the ending would be the same.

Lastoon’s triple-clawed feet threw up globs of mud as he continued to run, his back held almost parallel to the ground, his thick, muscular tail outstretched behind him.

He was surprised that he could still think clearly. Surely those pursuing him were now deep in dagamant, the killing rage clouding their thoughts. But all Lastoon felt was fear, naked and raw.

They’d come for him at the creche shortly after the sun, a sharp white disk not much wider than a point, had risen above the volcanic cones to the east. Lastoon had immediately been wary — their pheromones were all wrong — but had hid his hands in the folds of his robe. A priest should never show outstretched claws to any member of the Pack.

Eight adults had formed a semi-circle around him, like the crescent shape of one of the many moons. "How are the hatchlings?" Jal-Garsub had asked him abruptly, with no ceremonial bow of greeting. A female of middle age, she was the Pack’s hunt leader. The respect she commanded was equal to that accorded a bloodpriest.

"Good Garsub," Lastoon had replied, tipping from his waist. "I cast a shadow in your presence." He looked into her solid black eyes, seeking any reason for this rude intrusion. "The hatchlings are fine. They’re eating fresh meat now, instead of regurgitated flesh."

"And how many are there?" asked Bon-Cartark, standing on Garsub’s right, massive green arms crossed over his torso.

"How many?" Lastoon repeated. "Why, six — one from each clutch of eggs laid this kiloday."

"And how many were there?" said hunt leader Garsub.

"How many were there when?" asked Lastoon.

"How many were there originally? How many children stumbled out of eggs onto the birthing sands?"

Lastoon dipped his head in puzzlement. "One does not speak of those who were dispatched, Garsub. The Eighteenth Scroll says…"

"I know what the scrolls say, priest." Garsub brought her right hand into plain view. Her claws were unsheathed.

Lastoon was silent for a moment, watching the polished talons glint in the morning sun. "There were six clutches of eight eggs apiece," he said at last. "One of the eggs never hatched; that’s not an uncommon occurrence. So, there were forty-seven hatchlings originally."

"And now there are six," said Garsub.

"Now there are six."

"What happened to the other forty-one?"

"Why, what always happens," said Lastoon. "I dispatched them."

"You ate them."

Lastoon did not like Garsub’s tone. "Good hunter, you use such a harsh turn of phrase. Perhaps next time the chief provincial priest visits our Pack, you can discuss the theology with her. I think she’s due back in less than a kiloday…"

"You ate them," Garsub said again.

Lastoon turned his head so that all would know that he was looking away. "That is the prescribed rite, yes."