Donald Moffitt - Genesis 02

computer-generated hologram showed three skeletons in the same scale. The center one was a life-size projection of Ame’s most complete longfoot skeleton— the one Bram had noticed when he first entered the work-bay. He recognized the skeleton on the right, too. It was Doc Pol’s familiar ultrasound figurine, the textbook example that Doc had learned his own trade from and that he now required his apprentices to memorize.
    The third skeleton was something else entirely. Though the computer had made the bones stand in an upright position, the proportions were grotesque. The torso was absurdly long, with tiny little hands and feet and a head that was much too large for it. The bones would have been too spindly to support the creature in normal gravity. Bram saw immediately that the creature must have been a very small animal that the computer had brought up to the size of the other two skeletons for purposes of comparison.
    Ame touched a button, and lines flashed from the center skeleton to the other two, showing correspondences. Though the longfoot skeleton and the human skeleton were superficially similar, it was immediately apparent that the disproportioned skeleton on the left had more in common with the longfoot specimen.
    “You can see that what appears to be a backward-bending knee is actually what became a heel,” Ame said. “The creature would have walked on its toes. The shaft of the leg bone became a long, narrow foot. And of course, the tail is there, bone for bone.”
    “Ame, this is marvelous,” Bram said. “I’m enormously impressed. How did you do all this?”
    She looked pleased. “We had a breakthrough. Literally. One of the digging machines broke through to a layer where the stratigraphy had been disturbed. The longfoots had been busy there. They had a—a sort of museum of their own there. And a library. And biosample vaults. They had brought up and catalogued a whole biological cornucopia preserved by Original Man. It must have come as a wonderful revelation to the longfoots. They were interested in their own ancestry, you see. Original Man’s records predated their own fossil records.”
    Jorv’s plump face beamed complacency. “Original Man did all the work for them,” he said, “and they did all the work for us. ”
    “We don’t have enough archaeologists to go around,” Ame said, “but all the amateurs are well trained by now. As soon as the digging machine operator saw what he was bringing up, he stopped, roped off the place, and notified the proper people.”
    “As soon as they saw they were bringing up biological specimens, they got us, ” Jorv bubbled. “You wouldn’t believe it! There were mounted skeletons. Arranged in classifications. And metal plaques to explain them. And supplementary materials—actual books preserved in nitrogen. And tapes and holochips. In Inglex and Chin-pin-yin. The longfoots probably couldn’t read them, but we could—right away!”
    The attenuated paleobiologist, Shira, ran nervous fingers through stringy brown hair. “And there were actual tissue samples, too, still in a remarkable state of preservation. The rat-people—longfoots—had broken some of the seals, but others were intact. We were able to extract enough DNA and protein for sequential analysis.”
    “There’ll be more,” Jorv interrupted. “We’ve only scratched the surface with this find. We’re trenching now, looking for the rest of it. And they thought zoology was a theoretical science! Bram-companion, when we get to our world, we’ll be able to recreate species! Stock our streams with trout, our forests with trees other than poplar! Did you know that Original Man had his own biovehicles—a sort of walker called a horse!”
    “Well, that’s certainly a program for the future,” Bram said noncommittally.
    Shira continued serenely, as if used to interruptions. “Until now, we’ve lacked the capacity to do molecular taxonomy in any meaningful way. Oh, we’ve been able to use cytochrome c sequencing to demonstrate that human beings are very far removed indeed from yeast— forty-five amino acid differences—not quite as far removed from cabbages, and closer still to heterochronic eggs. But now, of course, we have all those lovely tissue samples.”
    “Horses,” Jorv said dreamily. “Zebras. Giraffes. Rhesus monkeys. Wolves. Original Man preserved them all.”
    “And of course we’ve brought up scads of mouse bones from our deeper excavations. Man