Strata

Batley and Bernard Pearson)
    WHERE’S MY COW?
(illustrated by Melvyn Grant)
    THE ART OF DISCWORLD
(with Paul Kidby)
    THE WIT AND WISDOM OF DISCWORLD
(compiled by Stephen Briggs)
    THE FOLKLORE OF DISCWORLD
(with Jacqueline Simpson)
    ---------- Discworld Maps ----------
    THE STREETS OF ANKH-MORPORK
(with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player)
    THE DISCWORLD MAPP
(with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player)
    A TOURIST GUIDE TO LANCRE –
A DISCWORLD MAPP
(with Stephen Briggs, illustrated by Paul Kidby)
    DEATH’S DOMAIN
(with Paul Kidby)
    A complete list of Terry Pratchett ebooks and audio books as well as other books based on the Discworld series – illustrated screenplays, graphic novels, comics and plays – can be found on www.terrypratchett.co.uk
    ---------- Non-Discworld books ----------
    THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN
    STRATA
    THE UNADULTERATED CAT
(illustrated by Gray Jolliffe)
    GOOD OMENS
(with Neil Gaiman)
    -- Non-Discworld novels for younger readers --
    THE CARPET PEOPLE
    TRUCKERS
    DIGGERS
    WINGS
    ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND*
    JOHNNY AND THE DEAD
    JOHNNY AND THE BOMB
    NATION
    * www.ifnotyouthenwho.com

 
    STRATA

 
    I met a mine foreman who has a piece of coal with a 1909 gold sovereign embedded in it. I saw an ammonite, apparently squashed in the fossil footprint of a sandal.
    There is a room in the basement of the Natural History Museum which they keep locked. Among other oddities in there are the tyrannosaurus with a wristwatch and the Neanderthal skull with gold fillings in three teeth.
    What are you going to do about it?
    Dr Carl Untermond
    The Overcrowded Eden

 
     
     
     
    It was, of course, a beautiful day – a Company brochure day. At the moment Kin’s office overlooked a palm-fringed lagoon. White water broke over the outer reef, and the beach was of crushed white coral and curious shells.
    No brochure would have shown the nightmare bulk of the pontoon-mounted strata machine, the small model for islands and atolls under fifteen kilometres. As Kin watched, another metre of beach spilled out of the big back hopper.
    She wondered about the pilot’s name. There was genius in that line of beach. A man who could lay down a beach like that, with the shells just right, deserved better things. But then, perhaps he was a Thoreau type who just liked islands. You got them sometimes; shy silent types who preferred to drift across the ocean after the volcano teams, dreamily laying complicated archipelagos with indecent skill. She’d have to ask.
    She leant over her desk and called up the area engineer.
    ‘Joel? Who’s on BCF3?’
    The engineer’s lined brown face appeared over the intercom.
    ‘Guday, Kin. Let me see now. Aha! Good, is it? You like it?’
    ‘It’s good.’
    ‘It’s Hendry. The one who’s the subject of all those nasty depositions you’ve got on your desk. You know, the one who put the fossil dino in—’
    ‘I read it.’
    Joel recognized the edge to her voice. He sighed.
    ‘Nicol Plante, she’s his mixer, she must have been in on it too. I put them on island duty because, well, with a coral island there is not the temptation—’
    ‘I know.’ Kin thought for a while. ‘Send him over. And her. It’s going to be a busy day, Joel. It’s always like this at the end of a job, people start to play around.’
    ‘It’s youth. We’ve all done it. With me it was a pair of boots in a coal measure. Not so imaginative, I admit.’
    ‘You mean I should excuse him?’
    Of course he did. Everyone was allowed just one unscripted touch, weren’t they? Checkers always spotted them, didn’t they? And even if one went unnoticed, couldn’t we rely on future paleontologists to hush it up? Huh?
    Trouble was, they might not …
    ‘He’s good, and later on he’ll be great,’ said Joel. ‘Just gnaw one ball off, eh?’
    A few minutes later Kin heard the machine’s roar stutter and stop. Soon one of the outer office robots came in, leading—
    —a squat fair-haired youth, tanned lobster pink, and a skinny bald girl hardly out of her teens. They stood staring at Kin with a mixture of fear and defiance, dripping coral dust onto the carpet.
    ‘All right, sit down. Want a drink? You both look dehydrated. I thought they had air conditioning in those things.’
    The pair exchanged glances. Then, the girl said, ‘Frane likes to get the feel of his work.’
    ‘Well, okay. The freezer’s that round thing hovering right behind you. Help yourself.’
    They jerked away as the freezer