White Gold - Last Section and Beyond

Recap: Doniel found out about the fossil, Meri was a dead end. Saderick doesn't know what to do!

This is the last part of the story. I'll start with a new story next week.

The sunlight dimmed as Lockhart’s parent star faded across the western mesas and I abandoned my excavations to await Meri’s call. As I rounded the mesa corner, I felt a beam of pride seeing the type specimen of Rostimperator lakii. However as I approached, I caught a quick glint flash of sunlight on metal.

An observation drone, marked with the sigil of the California Academy of Natural History, hovered in front of my fossil, scanning and recording it. He had sent a drone to follow me. I’d become wrapped with the fossil and forgotten the possibility existed.

I froze, as I watched my future broadcast away to my greatest enemy. This isn’t how it goes. I willed myself to move and snatched the closest rock, hurling it like a thunderbolt. It slammed into the drone’s side, spraying rock and metal in a fountain of sparks. Its impellers sputtered, forcing the tiny drone to jerk through the air as its internal compensators fought keep it stable. Sparks sprayed from the side, its mechanical death rattle, and it smashed to the ground.

I scrambled to the fallen machine, another rock clutched in my hands. I slammed the stone again and again, shattering the drone into debris. As if fate herself mocked me, the California Academy of Natural History’s sigil somehow survived intact.

How much had Doniel seen? My stomach plunged into my feet. More than enough.

My transmitter hummed to life, emanating the annoying jingle signaling an incoming call. I froze. It’s just Meri. As long as I repeated that, everything was fine. Doniel knew nothing.

The jingle began again, the cheerful ditty honing my fear into a fine terror. Finally, I broke, accepting the call.

It wasn’t Meri.

“Well, just when I thought you’d found the Valley of the Kings, you just had to go and dig up Troy. I’m impressed, Saderick. You don’t need to show off,” Doniel said.

“This is my find, Doniel. Not yours.” My voice was of an enraged animal.

He laughed. “No, it was your find. Mine now. But I’m a fair man. Since you found it for me, I’ll play nice and give your Crazy Cliff bones back. You can’t say I’m unreasonable.”

“I’ll pulverize it before I’d let you touch it.”

His jovial nature vanished. “You wouldn’t dare. A find like this? You’d sooner destroy the Sistine Chapel. Now just scram away from my find and we’ll all be happy.”

The line died. I stared at the transmitter for what felt hours. From emperor to pauper in under an hour. He’d seize the find, the glory, and everything between. The Craggy Cliff fossils seemed rubbish compared to this.

I’m not letting you win without a fight. It’s my find. Mine. Not yours. Don’t think I’ll destroy the Sistine Chapel? I will make Michelangelo weep. I spotted a massive chunk of sandstone and picked it up, before staggering back to the Rostimperator lakii. I’d used explosives before to obliterate entire hillsides to prevent Doniel from getting his greasy fingers on my fossils. This was no different.

He thinks I’ll blink? I stepped up to the beaked skull, the skeleton’s most fragile part. If I could destroy only one section, it would be this. Without it, the skeleton was a pale shadow of its true majesty.

During his life, Rostimperator lakii must have been the true king of the jungle. Whatever he wanted, he got it. But even his strength failed against the sand dune whose collapse ended his reign. A pang of gloom settled over me, that he had come so far to vanish now. The marvel I felt while considering his journey bordered the divine.

I realized suddenly I couldn’t recall the last time I’d felt that marvel, nor the last time I stood mesmerized by relics of creatures millions of years departed. How long has it been?

As I looked at his skull, again I transported back to my American Museum of Natural History, three decades ago. Those enormous giants reached high above me, seemingly conjured from another world. My parents, the gala, all faded to nothing as I wandered amid this graveyard. My wonder turned into ecstasy in my young mind.

My parents finally had to forcibly drag me from the museum, and before we arrived home, I knew what I wanted to do. That sense of wonder carved my destination into stone.

I wouldn’t be standing here amid those alien mesas and plains, if not for those fossils. Their discoverers were men like me, with flaws and rivalries, but they never lost faith.

Numbers beyond reckoning preceded this titan. How many followed after? The legacy of his species may perhaps exist only in this solitary fossil. Enduring as he had seemed miraculous.

Could he inspire some youth sometime in the future as those Museum fossils inspired me?

I couldn’t destroy it, it wasn’t right, and I dropped the rock, sighing. Doniel was right. Meri had been right too and I felt worse knowing that. Where did it all go wrong?

Wait. I grabbed the transmitter and saw the dots representing Doniel and Turner, approaching. Maybe there was time yet to make amends.

I dialed Meri’s number and hoped I could get through to her.

#

“I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop, Saderick,” Meri said as we stood a distance off from the fossil excavation. “What’s your angle?”

The sound of her excavation drones filled the air with a cacophony as they chiseled and incised the rocks. The more rock removed now lightened the load, but each pristine fossil still needed an absorptive barrier to protect them while in transit.

“No angle. Just paying off debts,” I said before taking another long drink from a canteen. Meri grunted a response.

Doniel glowered some distance away, scowling while he watched the excavation. Meri beat him here by almost two hours, more than enough time to get setup. He could do little after I’d wired enough money through Travers to Meri to purchase the land. He’d fumed and fussed, but after he saw the skeleton, he fell oddly silent.

“What are you calling it?” she asked.

I sighed. Rostimperator lakii was a ridiculous name. “Me? I recall you excavating it and you owning the land. It’s your find. You pick the name.”

She thought for a moment. “Aureus titan.”

I blinked. “What’s it mean?”

She smiled. “It means Gilded Titan.”

I raised my eyebrow. That works.

###

White Gold Part 6

Recap: He discovered this new fossil, but he has no way of extracting it out. He thinks up a scheme to trick his former grad student.

There was a long pause, and I thought she disconnected, but she finally spoke. “What’s your angle, Saderick? You’d never talk to me unless your reputation was at stake or you had a huge collector waiting.” She used the word like a doctor referring to diseases.

She isn’t taking the bait. “It’s the truth, Meri. I’d be happy to leave you be, but I need to borrow a hoversled to get to Dubois. I can’t very well saunter over there, can I? I’d be more than glad to pay--”

She interrupted “You’re right on one account, Saderick. I would rather be left in peace.”

“And I’ll gladly leave you to it. Look, I don’t expect charity from you. I’m willing to offer the coordinates for this as payment.” I tapped several buttons on the transmitter and it keyed into the wireless signal on my neural drive, accessing the image archives. I selected the best shots of the Craggy Cliff site and started an upload to her.

“This is prime fossil grounds. I can’t extract anymore without gear. It’s open for anyone and if you don’t take it, Doniel will.”

“What, you didn’t explode this one?”

I decided silence was the best retort. The upload finished and she must have begun examining the images as she said nothing more.

After some moments, she spoke. “This is a pretty imposing find, Saderick. Better than what I’ve seen. I’ve never known you to share regardless of the circumstances. Why the sudden change of heart?”

“Because… I’d rather you get them than Doniel does.”

She gave an exasperated groan. “Again with your idiotic rivalry, Saderick. Do you ever stop and notice your war with Doniel does harm than good?”

“Harm to what? I’m protecting the paleontological community’s integrity from that heathen. They must know the misdeeds he’s enacted. Why I’m--”

“Out of all the fossils you’ve published on, how many do you own? None? You collect enough data to call it research and then sell to rich collectors who hide them away in their mansions. Do you know why I wanted to work with you?”

I could imagine several good reasons, but I wondered her perspective.

“On Earth we watched reports of the great Saderick Lake and his magnificent discoveries. Bought his own starship ticket, funded his research, and pioneered a new branch of paleontology. The man I revered wasn’t the one I worked with. Somewhere, you decided research mattered less than crushing a rival. I doubt you remember the names of half the fossils you’ve discovered.”

My fists clenched. “I was young and naïve like you,” I said. “But I discovered idealism doesn’t keep you funded. I’m all that’s keeping Jacobs from turning us into a laughing stock, and sacrifices became necessary to prevail. You, of all people, know how expensive this work is. You’re not being fair, Meri.”

“Not fair?” She gave a contemptuous snort. “You want to talk about fairness? How many years did I work with you? And throughout those years, how often did my name appear alongside yours? None. Zip. Zero. The paleontological revolution of a lifetime, and you wrote me out of it, you bastard.”

I tried to correct her, but she interrupted me. “You want to talk fair? I scour the boondocks, scraping what samples I can while you and Doniel intimidate or buy out anyone who dares to infringe on their territory.”

Her misconceptions were wrong, of course. She made me out to be some villain. Again, she spoke before I could defend myself. “I’ve nothing to show for my work, Saderick. Nothing. My parents tell me I’m wasting their money and my life, and are going to cut off my funding. I understand ‘publish or perish’ but there was no excuse. I could be someone, but you put an end to that.”

She paused long enough for me to interject. “Now wait a moment, Meri. I didn’t remove you. I wanted to wait until you were ready. Your skills were immature. I--”

“Until I was ready?” She gave a bitter laugh. “The only juvenile one is you, Saderick. Doniel can have your damn field and whatever else you’re hiding. I won’t be your footstool again.”

“I’m offering you the find of a lifetime, Meri. Send me the hovercraft, I’ll send you the coordinates. That’s all I want.”

She answered by clicking her radio off. I stared at the device for a moment. I hadn’t cut her out for personal gain. I suppose she could have come to that conclusion through jealousy. I’d stayed successful because I played Doniel’s game. Meri hadn’t and now realized she had plenty to learn.

That conclusion would come to her eventually. Later in the day, probably toward evening, she’d call back. I’d heard frustration in her voice. She was desperate for anything to validate her failed career. Meri would brood, but eventually realize she had to take my offer.

The result was inevitable and we both knew it. Just wait. I set the transmitter down and walked back to my discovery. It seemed even more marvelous now. A few more hours and you’ll be mine. It needed a name. Something powerful and fierce, on par with Tyrannosaurus rex.

I puzzled through some possibilities. My Latin skills extended only to forming binomial nomenclatures used with animal classifications. I’d find a name later. You don’t rush these decisions.

I gazed at his glistening beak and the three pairs of talons. Long ago, this area wasn’t badlands, but floodplains. He lived as an apex predator, without equal. Powerful as an avalanche, whatever beast stood against him, died.

A thought entered my head. All the animals living on Lockhart’s surface mated for life, never separating from each other by more than a few dozen meters. It felt logical this behemoth had a mate.

I stood back, startled at the idea. Judging by the pristine nature of this fellow, he’d been buried in a sand dune collapse like the Velociraptor and Protoceratops in Mongolia. And if the collapse caught him off guard, it might have caught others.

I crept into the gully, circling the mesas. No signs betrayed the presence of another but that meant little. Fossils weren’t exactly a surface phenomenon. Using a thin chunk of sandstone I ground at the sides of the mesas, trying to break through the tough rock.

The morning and afternoon went without event but I remained optimistic as I excavated through the sandstone using a fragment of rock. Even if I didn’t find it, I could conduct further excavations later but I might as well keep busy.

The sandstone in front of me shattered as I rammed my stone into it. The rupture sprayed a puff of sand into my face causing my already parched throat to burn. Further excavations should be delayed until Meri calls.

All I needed was the species. Given I made the discovery; I allowed myself some vanity. Rostimperator lakii. I doubted the UN Committee on Paleontology cared if I attached my name. Those old fossils would be too captivated by this new fossil to care.

White Gold - Continued

Recap: Saderick has been traveling through the arid badlands and was attacked by some animal. In an effort to scare it of, he rolled a boulder down a hill, and the boulder cracked open a mesa face, revealing a massive fossil.

I scrambled down the gully, ripping my notebook open as I scuttled over the broken debris. They’d called me a barbarian for insisting on paper, but after losing a full month of data to a corrupt hard-drive, I’d gone hard copy and now it paid off.

Only a little strain marred the fossil, likely due to compaction from overlying sediments. The fossil wasn’t pristine, but that didn’t distract from its magnificence.

I jotted down notes rapid-fire, using my shorthand to record every pertinent observation. Spatial coordinates. Dimensions of exposed bone. In situ skeletal orientation. The bones obviously no longer sat in their original positions. Beyond the disarticulated jaws, the arms jutted up into the torso, while the skull rotated forward ninety degrees from the neck.

I only realized night had fallen when I could no longer see my notebook. Somehow, the hours I’d spent absorbed in my work turned the outside world became inconsequential. My mouth burned, and my stomach twisted in knots while groaning for food.

Only then did I realize my real problem. How do I get it out of here? I had no extraction drones and no transport. There existed no way to call Dubois, or any orbiting stations. I had no engineering ability and couldn’t fix the FTL uplink. So what option do I take?

Legally, nothing. In the rush following the first fossil discoveries, UN regulators produced several regulations. Unless I owned the land, any fossils still in situ were fair game until extracted. Maybe I could rush into radio range and buy the land. I’d hold legal backing, but I’d need to leave the fossil unattended.

I checked in with Travers again, but there was no improvement with the situation. The authorities weren’t going to be any help in this event. Station 74 seemedout of the question as well. Most colonial authorities were little more than mercs who would steal my find at their first chance.

Me, Doniel, and Mary were the only ones immediately nearby along with the station where rescue hopefully awaited. But if I left, Doniel could discover the find. I wasn’t far away from the Craggy Cliffs, and he might follow my footprints here

I sighed. At the same time, even if I stayed, my presence wouldn’t deter him. He knew what a discovery of this magnitude entailed. He’d destroy me as I plotted to destroy him. And I knew already he wasn’t above brutality to seize what he wanted

No matter how I saw it, he held the advantage. I leave and he wins. I stay, he wins. My earlier excitement vanished away as my stomach dropped into my knees. I hadn’t been blessed with this find. Someone owned a cruel sense of humor.

I stood in the darkness for an eternity, paralyzed with indecision. The seconds ticked, and every passing moment was wasted. If necessary, I’d destroy the fossil. I’d lose the fame and money, but so would Doniel.

But as I saw the moonlight illuminating the dead creature, I wondered if I really could. It would be tantamount to burning the Mona Lisa, or bulldozing the last pyramid at Giza. But it may be my only option left. If my hands became tied, I’d have to destroy it.

Maybe Meri would help? No. That was a worse result. I and Doniel already sat in the limelight. Meri however, was working her way out of obscurity and someone in a similar position had everything to gain. If she knew of such a find, she’d nab it and run like a thief. And I couldn’t use her to relay messages to Dubois. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

I laid down against the cool rock, but remained awake, pondering my choices. Some option existed. I just need to find it.

The solution came hours later as I lay on my stone bed. I didn’t need to tell Meri about this fossil. She was looking for a career-maker, and I knew a good substitute. The Craggy Cliffs. I’d give her the coordinates, and in exchange she’d give me a hoversled and possibly extraction drones. She came from a wealthy family and had purchased more gear than me and Doniel combined. She could spare them.

As I stood up, my legs jellified and I collapsed to my knees, sending pain slicing up my legs. My mouth held less water than the Sahara, and my lips: more cracks than a dry lake bed. My stomach roared again, no longer begging but demanding food. I needed to finish fast and get to Dubois. Grab the hoversled, jet to Dubois, file a claim and get back. Just spin Meri the right story and I was home free.

I activated the transmitter and called. If Doniel was watching for my signal, he’d know where I was now. I waited several moments, longer than necessary until she picked up.

“I told you to go away, Saderick.”

“Wait, wait, wait, don’t hang up. Hear me out,” I said.

“What, Saderick?”

“I’m stranded. My sled broke down and my transmitter is going haywire. You’re about the only person I can call.”

“Really?” She didn’t sound convinced.

“I was returning from a find, and my repulsors gave out. The transmitter shattered during the crash and I can’t contact Dubois.”

“Why can’t you just relay through my uplink?”

“I don’t know, it isn’t working.”

There was an awkward pause before she came back. “What do you need?”

“I just want one of your hoversleds. That’s all.” I decided not to try my luck at extraction drones. “And I can deal in trade for it.”

There was a long pause, and I thought she disconnected, but she finally spoke. “What’s your angle, Saderick? You’d never talk to me unless your reputation was at stake or you had a huge collector waiting.” She used the word like a doctor referring to diseases.