Expendable - James Alan Gardner [71]
Why had it taken me so long to remember New Earth was artificially constructed? Stupid, Festina: very stupid. But now that my eyes were open, everything made sense.
Some time far in the past—long enough ago that history didn’t record it—members of the League must have visited Old Earth. They made the same proposal then that they made to humanity in the twenty-first century: prove your sentience by renouncing violence, and we will give you the stars. As in the more recent contact, some prehistoric people must have said yes while others said no…and those who agreed not to kill were given a new home elsewhere in the galaxy.
Here on Melaquin.
This planet must have been built by the League to duplicate Earth at that long-ago time…including the presence of passenger pigeons. Somewhere Melaquin must also have dodos, moas, and other species that hadn’t survived recent times on our Earth; unless the humans who came to Melaquin had killed those animals all over again.
No, I thought to myself. They didn’t kill the animals, they killed themselves. Either they developed bioengineering on their own, or they received it as a gift from the League; and they had turned themselves into glass creatures like Oar—tougher, stronger, smarter, and a complete evolutionary dead-end.
“Festina,” Oar said, “are you becoming crazed again?”
I must have been standing frozen, thinking it all through. “No,” I answered, “I’m not crazed…although you may think I am when I tell what I want to do.”
“What?”
“We’re going to find rocks and look for creatures that probably aren’t there.”
Paleontology
There is one simple difference between Old and New Earth: the original planet has fossils; the duplicate does not. When the League gave New Earth artificial deposits of sandstone, limestone or shale, they didn’t enliven the rock with simulated remnants of ancient life. For the sake of raw materials, they did create fields of petroleum, coal, and other fossil resources…but not the fossils themselves.
I bet Melaquin didn’t have fossils either.
The most promising excavation site within view was the shore of a creek half an hour ahead of us. Water cuts down into soil, exposing stones that would otherwise require digging to bring to the surface. The creek bank should have a good sample of easy-to-pry-out rocks; if I checked a few dozen without finding fossils, I could be fairly confident my hunch was right.
“We’re going to that creek,” I told Oar.
“Yes, Festina,” she answered patiently. “Going around it would take a long time.”
Creeks were plentiful in that part of the prairies. Most were a few paces wide and barely thigh-deep, so crossing them was no challenge—just cold and wet. The one we approached now was larger than average, but still too small to deserve the name “river”: thirty meters across, sluggish and barely over our heads in depth. In spring, it might be deeper; but now the water level was low enough to leave a healthy sweep of gravel uncovered on the near shore.
“Perfect,” I said. “As good as we’re going to find on short notice.”
“Do you want me to clap in admiration of the creek?” Oar asked.
“No need.” I climbed down the dirt bank to the gravel and stared around appraisingly. The top layer of stones were worn smooth by water action—whatever fossils they once contained could have eroded to invisibility. Still, I might find better samples underneath; and there were other places to look for exposed