Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick

Author:Michael Swanwick [Swanwick, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), Speculative Fiction
ISBN: 9780380812899
Publisher: HarperTorch
Published: 2002-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

*****

Leyster took a compass reading from the top of

Barren Ridge, and they started west-southwest. Each carried a spear in one hand and another tied to the back of their packs, all of them (except for Tamara's Folly) with points of sharpened tyrannosaur ivory. In addition, Leyster carried the axe in a holster on his left hip. He was careful to keep the compass away

from it.

The forest closed around them, and the shouted

farewells of their friends faded away.

They walked.

For the first few hours they didn't talk much,

concentrating instead on making a good start. But the longer the silence lasted, the more time Leyster had to think. And the more he thought, the more he came up with speculations he wanted to know if the others shared.

Finally he said, "If tyrannosaurs and anatotitans do communicate with each other—and I'm not saying they do—what would they have to say to each other?"

" 'Surrender, Dorothy,' " Chuck said in a deep, rex-ish sort of voice. " 'I'll get you and your little dog, too.'

" Tamara tried to choke back her laughter, and snorted instead. Then she said, "You remember last year, after the titanosaurs had eaten their way

through the valley and were gone, how the Lord of the Valley stalked around the perimeter? And then, a

couple of days later, the herds came pouring in?"

"Yeah?"

"Suppose he was staking out his territory, the way hawks do. He makes his claim to the valley and

everything in it. Then maybe he's actually calling the herds in. Telling them that the territory's ready."

"Why would they come, though?" asked Leyster, who'd been thinking along the same lines himself.

"What's in it for them?"

"A nice lush valley with plenty to eat, and a

promise that if any other tyrannosaurs try to move in on them, the Lord will kick their butts. We've seen him drive away several bachelor rexes over the past year."

"You've got to admit," Chuck said. "It makes for an attractive package. Good food, good company, an

absolute minimum of predation. If I were a hadro, I'd go for it in an instant."

They were walking through a stretch of old-growth

forest. The tree trunks were far apart from each

other, and the floor was a soft and silent carpet of pine needles. They could talk quietly here, and

without fear.

"As long as we're speculating," Tamara said, laying emphasis on that last word, "there could be any number of interspecific communication loops. Say

the herds got too large for the carrying capacity of the valley, the rexes could split off smaller fragments of the herds and drive them away. We've seen behavior

that looks very much like that."

"How would they know to do that?" Leyster asked quickly.

"Infrasound again," Tamara said. "If there's too much of it around, too many trikes and titans gossiping back and forth, the rexes get irritable."

"Only one thing can cure this headache," Chuck said. "Scaring the crap out of a few herbivores."

"Don't forget," Tamara said, "the behavior doesn't have to be intentionally mediated. Ants engage in

complex social behavior, and their brains are

negligible, even by dinosaur standards.

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