He went sulking away down the path to the temple, muttering to himself.
Startrio's mother watched him go, shaking her head sadly.
"He has to learn," she told herself in her soft ceratopsian dialect. "What better a lesson than the Code?"
 Â
Startio disagreed. The lean adolescent triceratops followed the path south- easterly from the Gate, heading for the set of temples he had seen on the long pilgrimage in with his family. There had been a great, collapsed structure of ruins that stood above the jungle canopy, composed and silent.
He was too caught up in his anger to really think about the project his mother had assigned, but as he left the central grassy meadow of the Gate behind he began to think through the Code in all its entirety.
Survival of all or none, he thought to himself as the he followed the unused trail around a great slab of rock and up marble steps. Exactly opposite of the predator edict. Â And yet, the predators are a necessary part of everything. The ecosystem can't exist without them, so some must not survive for them to continue, in turn, allowing all to survive.
He was used to lots of exercise from working in the fields outside Bent Root, and he climbed up the steps easily, finally finding an abandoned flight platform made of stone. Walking to the edge, he looked down and then out over the jungle. His mother thought everything was so wonderful, but she had never met any of the raptors or other carnivores in the Basin.
The survival of the majority, he decided as he stretched out on the platform, looking out over a beautiful Rainy Basin glimmering in the late afternoon sun.
One raindrop raises the sea is Grandfather, he looked to the southwest and felt a sense of longing for his days with the hermit. One philosopher living in the Basin for so many years only to leave it in the end to return to the cities with more knowledge than anyone else about predator ways and values.
He sniffled and quickly looked back to the jungle below him, where the wind ruffled leaves and the trees swayed in concert with each other. Weapons are enemies, even to their owners. Even with good intentions. There is no excuse for holding a weapon to someone, no excuse for owning or even just touching one. To allow a weapon's existence is to make yourself responsible for whatever is done with it.
That was what his mother would have loved to hear him say, but even as he finished the careful sentence, he was shaking his head to himself and looking out to the far-off mountains with a pensive look on his face. Weapons are living things that are sacred to their owners, he thought fervently. When they are used indiscriminately they lose their purpose and should be destroyed, and the saurian responsible should be punished.
A memory came to mind, an image of four troodons performing an intricate dance of steel and death in concert, perfect control and beauty in the way they used their swords and daggers in the stilled, awestruck air of the performing hall.
It is a horrible thing to have hurt, but in the Basin it is a different world. There is appreciation of control and fatal beauty. Amazing how one island can be be separated into two ... no, three worlds, each as different as night and day.
How perfectly that thought captured Startrio's feeling about the fault of the island. He wasn't angry at anyone, just frustrated at the lack of understanding between those cultures. The Mountains were isolated and left to the mammals, Thermala and Sky City only visited by tourists. Very few humans ever made the journey, and those were usually just the skybax riders, who may have bridged the land and sky but had not ever built a bridge to the jungle.
Waterfall City and Sauropolis are hailed as the perfect cities on the island, but they have no idea what it is like to live in the Basin under our rules. Â So many people don't even realize we have rules.
He thought of the next line and felt the first moment of complete agreement. It is for the betterment of everyone, in every society, if everyone gives more and takes less. Â But with the act of taking is the act of giving, and both are required for balance.
The carnivores often acted in tandem. The larger ones went and killed prey, finished what they could, and left the rest to the smaller scavengers. And in return, the scavengers could track the prey easily, without being seen, and alert their large cousins to the presence of dinner. Others first, self last. Not always in specific instances, but always in the approach to life. The survival of the majority is the survival of all. Species is more important than the individual.
Observe, listen, and learn.
What he was doing now, no? He had spent five years in Basin as soon as he was old enough, observed and listened to his grandfather carefully, and only now, back six months, was he starting to sort through everything and decide where his place in Dinotopia was going to be.
Judging from his reaction to the Code, it wasn't going to be in downtown Sauropolis. Â Which, he realized with a snort of laughter as he looked back over his shoulder at the two enormous pillars of the Gate, was exactly what his mother had hoped he would learn.
Do one thing at a time, he thought, in complete agreement with the sentiment. The only way to get something done effectively is to do it the first time through as best one can, and to do that is to give full attention to it without distractions.
Which is why his grandfather had taken himself to the Basin in the first place .. to do some deep thinking and get in touch with everything he'd lost in the daily bustle of a million things at once. Perhaps, Startrio reflected. It was only the ones he studied with that made him so flustered, and so he overreacted by taking refuge.
Whatever the reason had been, though, everyone who knew him had seen him come home in the Basin, becoming fascinated with the differences in cultures.
A fascination Startrio had found in himself.
Sing every day. Â Exercise imagination. Â All good things to do on a daily basis, surely, he thought, and realized he didn't do nearly enough of it. He never sang, though he did listen to the wind in the trees and walk by the river running through the forests near his Bent Root home. And as for exercising imagination...
Imagination is important for philosophers. Not idle dreaming, but the dreams of life and the island, the dreams of the way everything connects together, even when it doesn't.
Startrio felt a pang of frustration at the next line of the Code, and he had to think about it for a long few minutes as the sun slowly sank beneath the horizon. Eat to live. Â Don't live to eat. That's true enough, because if one lives to eat there will soon be nothing left. And the predators don't really just kill everything they have an urge for, they usually just play ... the raptors, at least.
He recalled with fondness the velociraptor pack his grandfather had followed for weeks two years before. They were rowdy and fearless for their size, but they knew their place in the world and in their own clan. The more Startrio thought, the more he became certain that this line was something so ingrained in every living saurian, it was never necessary to speak about it.
Though... he had a sudden flash of his grandfather shaking his head and speaking disdainfully of the attitudes of dolphinbacks, the selfish ways they carried themselves until the atmosphere of the island affected them enough that they mended their ways. For humans in the Outer World, perhaps it is necessary. But I know those who work with us at Bent Root. They are Dinotopian. It was true .. they followed the Code wholeheartedly, and it would have been foolish to put the attitudes of the exceptions on the race as a whole.
Still, there is a reason the Code exists.
Satisfied with that, Startrio remembered the last line of the Code and had a sudden flash of inspiration.
Don't presume to know what you haven't ever seen and cannot understand.
  Â
Nabalan got to his feet as he saw his son walking up the trail towards the meadow. He exchanged a glance with his mate and she rose to stand with him.
Startrio carried himself differently than when he had left. He still looked slightly resentful, but there was an idea in his eyes, and when he got closer he looked at them both and said, quietly, "I will go to the Basin to carry on Grandfather's work."
He knew his mother had known he would make his decision, and he did not expect surprise or elation, so she gave him none. Still, both Triea and Nabalan looked at their son with pride and the three triceratops walked up into the middle of the meadow to share in the potluck as it began, surrounded by burning torchposts and the ruins linking the jungle to the island reaching above them to sky.
"He has to learn," she told herself in her soft ceratopsian dialect. "What better a lesson than the Code?"
 Â
Startio disagreed. The lean adolescent triceratops followed the path south- easterly from the Gate, heading for the set of temples he had seen on the long pilgrimage in with his family. There had been a great, collapsed structure of ruins that stood above the jungle canopy, composed and silent.
He was too caught up in his anger to really think about the project his mother had assigned, but as he left the central grassy meadow of the Gate behind he began to think through the Code in all its entirety.
Survival of all or none, he thought to himself as the he followed the unused trail around a great slab of rock and up marble steps. Exactly opposite of the predator edict. Â And yet, the predators are a necessary part of everything. The ecosystem can't exist without them, so some must not survive for them to continue, in turn, allowing all to survive.
He was used to lots of exercise from working in the fields outside Bent Root, and he climbed up the steps easily, finally finding an abandoned flight platform made of stone. Walking to the edge, he looked down and then out over the jungle. His mother thought everything was so wonderful, but she had never met any of the raptors or other carnivores in the Basin.
The survival of the majority, he decided as he stretched out on the platform, looking out over a beautiful Rainy Basin glimmering in the late afternoon sun.
One raindrop raises the sea is Grandfather, he looked to the southwest and felt a sense of longing for his days with the hermit. One philosopher living in the Basin for so many years only to leave it in the end to return to the cities with more knowledge than anyone else about predator ways and values.
He sniffled and quickly looked back to the jungle below him, where the wind ruffled leaves and the trees swayed in concert with each other. Weapons are enemies, even to their owners. Even with good intentions. There is no excuse for holding a weapon to someone, no excuse for owning or even just touching one. To allow a weapon's existence is to make yourself responsible for whatever is done with it.
That was what his mother would have loved to hear him say, but even as he finished the careful sentence, he was shaking his head to himself and looking out to the far-off mountains with a pensive look on his face. Weapons are living things that are sacred to their owners, he thought fervently. When they are used indiscriminately they lose their purpose and should be destroyed, and the saurian responsible should be punished.
A memory came to mind, an image of four troodons performing an intricate dance of steel and death in concert, perfect control and beauty in the way they used their swords and daggers in the stilled, awestruck air of the performing hall.
It is a horrible thing to have hurt, but in the Basin it is a different world. There is appreciation of control and fatal beauty. Amazing how one island can be be separated into two ... no, three worlds, each as different as night and day.
How perfectly that thought captured Startrio's feeling about the fault of the island. He wasn't angry at anyone, just frustrated at the lack of understanding between those cultures. The Mountains were isolated and left to the mammals, Thermala and Sky City only visited by tourists. Very few humans ever made the journey, and those were usually just the skybax riders, who may have bridged the land and sky but had not ever built a bridge to the jungle.
Waterfall City and Sauropolis are hailed as the perfect cities on the island, but they have no idea what it is like to live in the Basin under our rules. Â So many people don't even realize we have rules.
He thought of the next line and felt the first moment of complete agreement. It is for the betterment of everyone, in every society, if everyone gives more and takes less. Â But with the act of taking is the act of giving, and both are required for balance.
The carnivores often acted in tandem. The larger ones went and killed prey, finished what they could, and left the rest to the smaller scavengers. And in return, the scavengers could track the prey easily, without being seen, and alert their large cousins to the presence of dinner. Others first, self last. Not always in specific instances, but always in the approach to life. The survival of the majority is the survival of all. Species is more important than the individual.
Observe, listen, and learn.
What he was doing now, no? He had spent five years in Basin as soon as he was old enough, observed and listened to his grandfather carefully, and only now, back six months, was he starting to sort through everything and decide where his place in Dinotopia was going to be.
Judging from his reaction to the Code, it wasn't going to be in downtown Sauropolis. Â Which, he realized with a snort of laughter as he looked back over his shoulder at the two enormous pillars of the Gate, was exactly what his mother had hoped he would learn.
Do one thing at a time, he thought, in complete agreement with the sentiment. The only way to get something done effectively is to do it the first time through as best one can, and to do that is to give full attention to it without distractions.
Which is why his grandfather had taken himself to the Basin in the first place .. to do some deep thinking and get in touch with everything he'd lost in the daily bustle of a million things at once. Perhaps, Startrio reflected. It was only the ones he studied with that made him so flustered, and so he overreacted by taking refuge.
Whatever the reason had been, though, everyone who knew him had seen him come home in the Basin, becoming fascinated with the differences in cultures.
A fascination Startrio had found in himself.
Sing every day. Â Exercise imagination. Â All good things to do on a daily basis, surely, he thought, and realized he didn't do nearly enough of it. He never sang, though he did listen to the wind in the trees and walk by the river running through the forests near his Bent Root home. And as for exercising imagination...
Imagination is important for philosophers. Not idle dreaming, but the dreams of life and the island, the dreams of the way everything connects together, even when it doesn't.
Startrio felt a pang of frustration at the next line of the Code, and he had to think about it for a long few minutes as the sun slowly sank beneath the horizon. Eat to live. Â Don't live to eat. That's true enough, because if one lives to eat there will soon be nothing left. And the predators don't really just kill everything they have an urge for, they usually just play ... the raptors, at least.
He recalled with fondness the velociraptor pack his grandfather had followed for weeks two years before. They were rowdy and fearless for their size, but they knew their place in the world and in their own clan. The more Startrio thought, the more he became certain that this line was something so ingrained in every living saurian, it was never necessary to speak about it.
Though... he had a sudden flash of his grandfather shaking his head and speaking disdainfully of the attitudes of dolphinbacks, the selfish ways they carried themselves until the atmosphere of the island affected them enough that they mended their ways. For humans in the Outer World, perhaps it is necessary. But I know those who work with us at Bent Root. They are Dinotopian. It was true .. they followed the Code wholeheartedly, and it would have been foolish to put the attitudes of the exceptions on the race as a whole.
Still, there is a reason the Code exists.
Satisfied with that, Startrio remembered the last line of the Code and had a sudden flash of inspiration.
Don't presume to know what you haven't ever seen and cannot understand.
  Â
Nabalan got to his feet as he saw his son walking up the trail towards the meadow. He exchanged a glance with his mate and she rose to stand with him.
Startrio carried himself differently than when he had left. He still looked slightly resentful, but there was an idea in his eyes, and when he got closer he looked at them both and said, quietly, "I will go to the Basin to carry on Grandfather's work."
He knew his mother had known he would make his decision, and he did not expect surprise or elation, so she gave him none. Still, both Triea and Nabalan looked at their son with pride and the three triceratops walked up into the middle of the meadow to share in the potluck as it began, surrounded by burning torchposts and the ruins linking the jungle to the island reaching above them to sky.