Brushing sweat droplets from the tips of his whiskers, Anson leaned back into the shade cast by the wall of rock and wondered—as he usually did about this time on every dig—why he was even out here.

It wasn't like there was any money in archeology or even much prestige. His fellow raccoons didn't seem to care much about the past, he'd noticed over the nearly three decades he'd been doing this. And it wasn't like he was anti-social. He didn't mind being alone for weeks at a time, sure, but he hadn't actively sought out a career where running across someone he needed to talk to during the course of his daily routine would be an unusual experience.

No, he'd just sort of fallen into it while studying the various languages and cultures of all the assorted people who filled the world. But he had to admit that he'd never tried too seriously to fall out of it once he'd fallen in...

He shook his head, grabbed his canteen, and swigged down a couple warm, metallic-tasting swallows. This brought his gaze up to the reddish-brown flatland rolling away from the rock behind him, and there—

The monster's fossilized skeleton rose out of the ground like a whale frozen in the act of breaching and stripped of its skin and meat at the same instant that every drop of water for hundreds of hectares in every direction had dried up and vanished.

Not that Anson had ever seen a whale. He'd read books about their floating cities and heard sped-up recordings of their operas, and he knew that this whole part of the country had been at the bottom of a sea millions of years ago, but those sorts of studies didn't pull on him the way archeology did.

Besides, not every drop of water was completely gone around here either. He wouldn't've been able to survive during his digs without the little springs that popped up here and there throughout the desert.

But discoveries like this one were what kept him coming back year after year. Looking up and across at the huge empty eye sockets, the teeth, curving and pointed in its jaw and each bigger than he was, the spikes jutting up from every exposed vertebra, he couldn't stop a shiver despite the temperature hovering in what his father had always called "the mid damn-it's-hots."

Still, it wouldn't be getting any cooler around here for quite some time, and he had plenty of work he needed to do before nightfall. Today, after all, was the first day he'd be venturing into the belly of the beast, as it were, slipping through the space between the creature's clavicle and the neck bones that jutted out a full twelve and a quarter taillengths to where the skull rested in the dirt and sand.

Again, the scale of the thing made him all shivery, but he tightened the laces on the boots covering his hind paws, pushed himself up, and spent the next few hours recording the last batch of measurements and observations that he needed before he could squeeze inside and start on that stage of the dig.

Finally, then, with the sun a few pawspans above the horizon and all the proper pre-entry steps checked off his list, Anson got out the notebook he'd entitled "The Interior," strapped the little forehead light into place between his eyes, cinched his utility belt, and padded the hundred or so taillengths over to where the skeleton emerged from the crumbly red rock.

It took some effort not to trot, but Anson made that effort. In all his years exploring the deserts, he'd only ever heard two or three stories where the sedimentary material around a fossilized skeleton wore away like this and left the creature's remains so incredibly intact. That he was actually seeing the event with his own eyes made his breath catch whenever he thought too hard. So he was doing his best to move slowly, carefully, step by step, not wanting to do anything that might jeopardize the site.

He made notes about the condition of the regolith he was stepping across—more like dried clay than he'd expected—about the temperature—so hot, he could feel it even through his boots—about the humidity—there pretty much wasn't any as far as he could tell—about everything he thought might be important and about everything that he hoped would keep him from breaking into a run.

He did reach the side of the thing eventually, though, the ribs curving up from the ground to meet at the exposed spine a good six taillengths above his head. And since he barely stretched the measuring tape to two taillengths, this creature was definitely going to end up being one of the largest ever found out here.

Another bit of effort tamped down his fevered thoughts of students and assistants, all working under his supervision. Instead, he focused his mind and his attention on what was actually here in front of him. Because it was peculiar enough without any imaginings on his part.

Between the ribs, for instance, the regolith hadn't worn away, something that mystified Anson. Maybe a reaction to the fossilization process? After all, since the bones hadn't weathered the same way as the surrounding sediment, they must've contained some unknown element that managed to strengthen the crystals as they slowly took the place of the organic material. If that element had leached out into the mud way back when, that might be enough to produce the effect he was seeing, but he'd need to carry out more tests before he could do more than wildly conjecture.

More tests. Anson let himself chuckle in glee at the thought, then flicked on his headlamp, stepped up to the gap between the collar bones and neck bones, and lowered his head to peer in.

A hideous face peered back at him: skin reddish-black and shiny; two bulging, compound eyes the color of smoldering coal; wavering antennae that had to be nearly as long as his forearm; sharp-fanged mandibles big enough and dangerous enough to bite his thumb clean off.

With a squeal, Anson stumbled back, tripped over his own paws, and fell back to sit on the hot, sandy soil. This brought back a sense of scale, and he realized that the creature was actually an insect not much bigger than his thumb that was sitting two pawspans away from him on a little ledge carved into the fossilized bone. That ledge, though, was right at eye level when Anson had bent to look in, and he was already telling himself that he hadn't thought even for an instant that it was a demonic entity intent on chewing his face off.

A tiny voice buzzed at him, and he recognized that particular buzz as the Muscan word for "Halt!"

Not sure he'd heard correctly, Anson pursed his lips and buzzed out as well as he could, "You speak Muscan?"

"I speak the Queen's language!" the voice came back, and the creature—an ant, Anson's quickly clearing perceptions told him, but maybe the biggest any he'd ever seen—brought the stone spear it had clenched in the tarsal claws of its forelegs into a straight up-and-down position that looked to Anson very much like a salute. "How does a demon like you speak it?"

Poorly, Anson wanted to say, but this was no time for jokes. "I'm not a demon," he got out: insectoid languages didn't work that well with mammalian lips and teeth and tongues. "I'm a civilized creature such as yourself."

"Ha!" That sound was universal, but the rest of the ant's speech fizzed and rattled in Anson's ears almost too quickly and highly-pitched for him to follow. "All the old stories say that you demons don't do anything but get in the way of civilized people doing civilized things! So be off with you, or I might have to get upset!" It shook its little spear in Anson's direction.

Of course, Anson had gotten bigger splinters stuck in his paw than the ant's spear. And he shouldn't think of the ant as an "it." Warriors like this one were always female, if as remote a tribe as this one followed the same rules as ever other insectoid society.

"Forgive me," he said, a phrase he'd learned how to say in every language he'd studied no matter how hard it might be on his mouth. "I'm Anson Rubelkit, a scientist from the Procyon Republic. My job is to investigate ancient dead creatures like the one you're living in."

Even as he was focused on saying the words as clearly as possible, other parts of his brain were whirring with conjectures. Was it possible that the skeleton here was so completely preserved because of the ant colony inside it? Did they have some way to keep the bones from—

"Investigate?" The ant's antennae pulled back, a gesture that Anson recalled meant disbelief. "That's the sort of thing that separates us ants from you demons, so you're likely only saying it to trick me! You demons are supposed to be extremely tricky, after all."

Taking care to move slowly, Anson moved from sitting to kneeling, bringing his paws down to his utility belt. "May I show you some of the tools I use when investigating?"

"Me?" The ant's antennae pulled back even further, and she shook her spear at him again. "Do I look like a scientist to you?"

"No," Anson had to admit. "But you do look like someone who could ask a few scientists to come out and investigate this strange but civilized creature who's appeared on your doorstep."

He'd very deliberately chosen to use the word 'investigate' earlier in the hope of sparking this reaction. Because yes, she was a warrior ant. But a desire to investigate ran deep in ant people, all the books he'd read said. So if he could catch her imagination, he might be able to—

"Tricky," the ant said, but her mandibles were quivering in a way that he thought meant she was feeling unsure of herself. "Just like the stories say."

It wasn't a denial, but she wasn't making any move away from her post, either. If he was going to convince her—and the figurative dominoes tumbling down inside his head were insisting that he had to convince her—he would need something really compelling.

Well, she was a warrior... "What if I surrendered?" He raised his paws and pressed his wrists together. "You could take me inside as your prisoner, and the scientists could examine my stuff while you stand guard over me!"

Her antennae spread. "Don't be stupid. Even if I stabbed you in one of those big black things that might be you eyes, I doubt it would do more than provide a momentary discomfort."

A part of him grumbled at how poor a translation that was of what she'd actually said—too formal, like dictionary definitions instead of the rougher language she was actually using—but he didn't have the time right now to do any revisions in his head. "But think of the stories!" he said, trying to shake his thoughts back into useful channels. "You'd be legendary, bringing a demon in on your own!"

This time, her antennae came together and pointed directly at him. "You said you weren't a demon earlier. So which is it?"

Damn it! He needed get his story straight before she—

Or wait. He didn't need a story at all!

"Look," he said. "It's like I said: I study these big monster skeletons out here in the desert. But, well, there aren't a lot of big skeletons like this because the bones turn to rock and the wind wears them down before scientists like me can ever even find them! So what we'd do, see, is get the Queen's scientists to find other big skeletons like this while they're still buried! That way, your people could do whatever it is you did here to strengthen the bones, and we'd be able to know a lot more about the big monsters of the past than we know now!"

The ant stared at him for a moment, the only sound the hot, heavy breeze stirring the dust. Anson's every breath bit at his nose, his throat drier than he thought it had ever been, but if this worked, if he could show giant skeletons like this to other raccoons, then maybe they'd actually get interested in the past, interested in what he did, interested in him...

"So wait," the ant finally said. "You're offering to find more colony sites for us? Places like this one where Our Queen could send her daughters instead of, you know, having to bite their heads off before they depose her and bite her head off?"

Part of Anson froze at the thought—were they so primitive out here that they actually did that?—but the rest of him grabbed hold with all available claws. "Yes!" he managed not to shout at the absolute top of his lungs. "That's exactly what I'm offering!"

With a nod, the ant lowered her spear. "Then I think we might have a basis for negotiations," she said.