Manifold: Origin

by Stephen Baxter

  Something was flopping in the air before him. It was his seat. He still had hold of the ejection handle, connected to the seat by a cable.

  He knew he had to let go of the handle, or else it might foul his chute. Yet he couldn't. The seat was an island in this huge sky; without it he would be alone. It made no sense, but there it was.

  At last, apparently without his volition, his hand loosened. The handle was jerked out of his grip, painfully hard.

  Something huge grabbed his back, knocking all the air out of him again. Then he was dangling. He looked up and saw his chute open reassuringly above him, a distant roof of fully blossomed orange and white silk.

  But the thin air buffeted him, and he was swaying alarmingly, a human pendulum, and at the bottom of each swing G forces hauled on his entrails. He was having trouble breathing; his chest labored. He pulled a green toggle to release his emergency oxygen.

  The artifact hung above him, receding as he fell.

  He had been flung west of it, he saw now, and it was closing up to a perfect oval, like a schoolroom demonstration of a planetary orbit. There was no sign of the other planes. Even the T-38 seemed to have vanished completely, save for a few drifting bits of light wreckage, a glimmer that must have been a shard of a Plexiglas canopy.

  And he saw another chute. Half open. Hanging before the closing maw of the artifact like a speck of food before the mouth of some vast fish.

  Emma, of course: she had ejected a half-second before Malenfant, so that she had found herself that much closer to the artifact than he had been.

  And now she was being drawn in by the buffeting air currents.

  He screamed, "Emma!" He twisted and wriggled, but there was nothing he could do.

  Her chute fell into the portal. There was a flash of electric-blue light. And she was gone.

  "Emma! Emma!"

  ...Something fell past him, not ten yards away. It was a man: tall and lithe like a basketball player, stark naked. He was black, and under tight curls, his skull was as flat as a board. His mouth was working, gasping like a fish's. His gaze locked with Malenfant's, just for a heartbeat. Malenfant read astonishment beyond shock.

  Then the man was gone, on his way to his own destiny in the ancient lands beneath.

  A new barrage of turbulent air slammed into Malenfant. He rocked viciously. Nursing his damaged arm he fought the chute, fought to keep it stable – fought for his life, fought for the chance to live through this day, to find Emma.

  As he spun, he glimpsed that new Red Moon, a baleful eye gazing down on his tiny struggles.

  Fire

  The Mouth is gone.

  The new people are nearby. The smallest is a child. They are all yelling. Their skin is bright, yellow-brown and blue. They are trying to stand up, but they stumble backwards.

  Fire's legs walk forward. He walks over the soaked fireplace. The ashes are still hot. He yelps and his feet lift up, off the ashes.

  Sing is nearby, on her branches, weeping.

  Fire's eyes see Dig. They can't see Loud. Fire calls out. "Loud, Loud, Fire!" But Loud is gone.

  Shrugging, the rain running down his back, he turns away. Fire will never think of his brother again.

  A new person is coming towards him. This stranger has blue and brown skin on his body. Fire can't see his member. It is a woman. But he can't see breasts. It is a man.

  The new person holds out empty hands. "Please, can you help us? Do you know what happened to us? What place is this?"

  Fire hears: "Help. What. Us. What." The voice is deep. It is a man.

  Stone is standing beside Fire. "Nutcracker-man," he says softly.

  "No," says Fire.

  "Elf-man."

  "No."

  "Please." The new person steps forward. "I have a wife and child. Do you speak English? My wife is hurt. We need shelter. Is there a road near here, a phone we could use –"

  Stone's axe slams into the top of the new person's head. The head cracks open. Gray and red stuff splashes out.

  The new person's eyes look at Fire. He shudders. He falls backwards.

  Stone grunts. "Nutcracker-man." Stone slices off the new person's cheek and crams it into his mouth.

  Fire hoots at the kill. Nutcracker-folk fight hard. This kill was easy.

  Other people's legs bring them running from the trees to join Stone at his feast. They have forgotten the rain. They get wet again. But they are all drawn by the scent of the fresh meat.

  The new person's skin yields easily to Stone's axe. It comes off in a sheet. Fire's finger touches the sloughed skin. It is blue and brown, thick and dense. Fire is confused. It is skin. It is not skin.

  The flesh under the strange skin is white. Stone's axe cuts into it easily. The axe butchers the body rapidly and expertly, an unthinking skill honed across a million years.

  The other new people are screaming.

  Fire had forgotten them. He straightens up. He has a chunk of flesh in his mouth. His teeth gnaw at it, while his hands pull on it. The new people's legs are trying to run away. But the new people fall easily, as if they are weak or sick.

  Grass and Cold catch the new people. They push them to Stone. One of the new people is bleeding from her head and staggering. Its arms are clutching the small one. When it screams its voice is high. It is a woman.

  The other new person has no small one. It has blue skin all over its body. "We don't mean you any harm. Please. My name is Emma Stoney." Its voice is high. It is a woman.

  Shoot's hand grabs the hair of this one, pulls her head back.

  The new woman's elbow rams into Shoot's belly. "Get your hands off of me!" Shoot doubles over, gasping.

  The men laugh at the women fighting.

  The woman with the child speaks to Stone. "Please. We're American citizens. My name is Sally Mayer. I – my husband... I know you can speak English. We heard you. Look, we can pay. American dollars." She holds out something green. Handfuls of leaves. Not leaves. Her arm is bleeding, he sees.

  I. You. That is what Fire hears.

  The woman has fallen silent. Her eyes are staring at the top of Stone's head. Her mouth is open.

  The top of the woman's head is swollen.

  Fire makes his hand run over his own brow. He feels thick eye ridges. He feels a sloping brow. He feels the small flat crown behind his brow. His fingers find a fly trapped in his greasy hair. He pulls it out. He pops it into his mouth.

  Stone studies the new woman. Stone's fingers squeeze the woman's dug. It is large and soft, under its skin of green and brown. The woman yelps and backs away. The child, eyes wide, cringes from Stone's bloody hand.

  Fire laughs. Stone will mount the woman. Stone will eat the woman.

  "No."

  The other new woman steps forward. Her hands pull the other woman behind her. "We are like you. Look! We are people. We are not meat." She points to the child.

  The child has no hair on his face. The child has wide round eyes. The child has a nose.

  Nutcracker-folk have hair on their faces. Nutcracker-folk have no noses. Nutcracker-folk have nostrils flat against their faces. Running-folk have no hair on their faces. They have round eyes.

  They have noses.

  Stone's axe rises.

  Fire takes a step forward. He is afraid of Stone and his axe. But he makes his hand grab Stone's arm.

  "People," Fire says.

  "Yes." The new woman nods. "Yes, that's right. We're people."

  Slowly, Stone's arm lowers.

  The smell of meat is strong. One by one the people drift away from the new people, and cluster around the corpse.

  Fire is left alone, watching the new people.

  The fat new person is shaking, as if cold. Now she falls to the ground. The other puts the child down, and cradles the fat one's head on her lap.

  The other's face lifts up to Fire. "My name is Emma. Em-ma. Do you understand?"

  Fire carries the fire. That is his name. That is what he does.

  E
mma is her name. Emma is what she does. He doesn't know what Em-ma is.

  He says, "Em-ma."

  "Emma. Yes. Good. Please – will you help us? We need water. Do you have any water?"

  His eye spots something. Something moves on a branch on the ground nearby. He has forgotten that he used these branches to make a bower.

  His hand whips out and grabs. His hand opens, revealing a caterpillar, fat and juicy. He did not have to think about catching it. It is just here. He pops it in his mouth.

  "Please."

  He looks down at the new people. Again he had forgotten they were there. "Em-ma." The caterpillar wriggles on his tongue. His hand pulls it out of his mouth. He remembers how he caught it, a sharp shard of recent memory.

  He makes his hand hold out the caterpillar.

  Emma's eyes stare at it. It is wet from his spit. Her hand reaches out and takes it.

  The caterpillar is in her mouth. She chews. He hears it crunch. She swallows, hard. "Good. Thank you."

  Fire's nose can smell meat more strongly now. Stone's axe has cracked the rib cage. Whatever is in the new person's belly may be good to eat.

  The other new woman wakes up. Her eyes look at the corpse, at what the people are doing there. She screams. Emma's hand clamps over her mouth. The woman struggles.

  The people crowd close around the corpse. Fire joins them.

  He has forgotten the new people.

  PART II

  RED MOON

  Emma Stoney

  Her chest hurt. Every time she took a breath she was gasping and dragging, as if she had been running too far, or as if she was high on a mountainside.

  That was the first thing Emma noticed.

  The second thing was the dreaminess of moving here.

  When she walked – even on the slippery grass, encumbered by her clumsy flight suit – she felt light, buoyant. But she kept tripping up. It was easy to walk slowly, but every time she tried to move at what seemed a normal pace she stumbled, as if about to take off. Eventually she evolved a kind of half-jog, somewhere between walking and running.

  Also she was strong here. When she struggled to drag the woman – Sally? – out of the rain and into the comparative shelter of the trees, with the crying kid at her heels, she felt powerful, able to lift well above her usual limit.

  The forest was dense, gloomy. The trees seemed to be conifers – impossibly tall, towering high above her, making a roof of green – but here and there she saw ferns, huge ancient broad-leafed plants. The forest canopy gave them some shelter, but still great fat droplets of water came shimmering down on them. When the droplets hit her flesh they clung – and they stung. She noticed how shrivelled and etiolated many of the trees' leaves looked. Acid rain?...

  The forest seemed strangely quiet. No birdsong, she thought. Come to think of it she hadn't seen a bird in the time she'd been here.

  The flat-head people – hominids, whatever – did not follow her into the forest, and as their hooting calls receded she felt vaguely reassured. But that was outweighed by a growing unease, for it was very dark, here in the woods. The kid seemed to feel that too, for he went very quiet, his eyes round.

  But then, she thought resentfully, she was disoriented, spooked, utterly bewildered anyhow – she had just been through a plane wreck, for God's sake, and then hurled through time and space to wherever the hell – and being scared in a forest was scarcely much different from being scared on the open plain.

  ...What forest? What plain? What is this place? Where am I?

  Too much strangeness: Panic brushed her mind.

  But the blood continued to pulse from that crude gash on Sally's arm, an injury she had evidently suffered on the way here, from wherever. And the kid sat down on the forest floor and cried right along with his mother, great bubbles of snot blowing out of his nose.

  First things first, Emma.

  The kid gazed up at her with huge empty eyes. He looked no older than three.

  Emma got down on her knees. The kid shrank back from her, and she made an effort to smile. She searched the pockets of her flight suit, seeking a handkerchief, and finding everything but. At last she dug into a waist pocket of Sally's jacket – she was wearing what looked like designer safari gear, a khaki jacket and pants – and found a paper tissue.

  "Blow," she commanded.

  With his nose wiped, the boy seemed a bit calmer.

  "What's your name?"

  "Maxie." His tiny voice was scale-model Bostonian.

  "Okay, Maxie. My name's Emma. I need you to be brave now. We have to help your mom. Okay?"

  He nodded.

  She dug through her suit pockets. She found a flat plastic box. It turned out to contain a rudimentary first aid kit: scissors, plasters, safety pins, dressings, bandages, medical tape, salves and creams.

  With the awkward little scissors she cut back Sally's sleeve, exposing the wound. It didn't look so bad: just a gash, fairly clean-edged, a few inches long. She wiped away the blood with a gauze pad. She could see no foreign objects in there, and the bleeding seemed mostly to have stopped. She used antiseptic salve to clean up, then pressed a fresh gauze pad over the wound. She wrapped the lower arm in a bandage, and taped, it together.

  ...Was that right? How was she supposed to know? Think, damn it. She summoned up her scratchy medical knowledge, derived from what she had picked up at second-hand from Malenfant's training – not that he'd ever told her much – and books and TV shows and movies... She pressed Sally's fingernail hard enough to turn it white. When she released it, the nail quickly regained its color. Good; that must mean the bandage wasn't too tight.

  Now she propped the injured arm up in the air. With her free hand she packed up what was left of her first aid kit. She had already used one of only two bandages, half-emptied her only bottle of salve... If they were going to survive here, she would have to ration this stuff.

  Or else, she thought grimly, learn to live like those nude hominids out there.

  She turned to the kid. She wished she had some way to make this experience easier on him. But she couldn't think of a damn thing. "Maxie. I'm going to find something to keep the rain off. I need you to stay right here, with your mom. You understand? And if she wakes up you tell her I'll be right back."

  He nodded, eyes fixed on her face.

  She ruffled his hair, shaking out some of the water. Then she set off back towards the plain.

  She paused at the fringe of the forest.

  Most of the hominids were hunched over on themselves, as if catatonic with misery in the rain. One, apparently an old woman, lay flat out on the floor, her mouth open to the rain.

  The rest seemed to be working together, loosely. They were upending branches and stacking them against each other, making a rough conical shape. Perhaps they were trying to build a shelter, like a tepee. But the whole project was chaotic, with branches sliding off the pile this way and that, and every so often one of them seemed to forget what she was doing and would simply wander off, letting whatever she was supporting collapse.

  At last, to a great hoot of dismay from the workers, the whole erection just fell apart and the branches came clattering down.

  The people scratched their flat scalps over the debris. Some of them made half hearted attempts to lift the branches again, one or two drifted away, others came to see what was going on. At last they started to work together again, lifting the branches and ramming them into the ground.

  It wasn't like watching adults work on a project, however unskilled. It was more like watching a bunch of eight-year-olds trying to build a bonfire for the very first time, figuring it out as they went along, with only the dimmest conception of the final goal.

  But these hominids, these people, weren't eight-year-olds. They were all adults, all naked, hairless, black. And they had the most beautiful bodies Emma had ever seen, frankly, this side of a movie screen anyhow. They were tall and lean – as tall as basketball players, probably – but much stronger-looking, wi
th an all around grace that reminded her of decathletes, or maybe Aussie Rules footballers (a baffling, sexy sport she'd tried to follow as a student, long ago).

  With broad prominent noses and somewhat rounded chins, they had human-looking faces – human below the eye line, anyhow. Above the eyes was a powerful ridge of bone that gave each of them, even the smallest child, a glowering, hostile look. And above that came a flat forehead and a skull that looked oddly shrunken, as if the top of their heads had somehow been shaved clean off. Their hair was curly, but it was slicked down by the rain, showing the shape of their disturbingly small skulls too clearly.

  The bodies of humans, the heads of apes. They spoke in hoots and fragmentary English words. And not one of them looked as if he or she had ever worn a stitch of clothing.

  She had never heard of creatures like this. What were these people? Some kind of chimp, or gorilla? – but with bodies like that? And what chimps used English?

  What part of Africa had she landed in, exactly?

  The rain came down harder still, reminding her she had a job to do.

  She made her way out into the open, working across increasingly boggy ground, until she reached her parachute. She had been worried that the hominids might have taken it away, but it lay where it had fallen when she had come tumbling from out of the sky.

  She took an armful of cloth and pulled it away from the ground. It came loose of the mud only with difficulty, and it was soaked through. She'd had vague plans of hauling the whole thing into the forest, but that was obviously impractical. She hunted through her pockets until she found a Swiss Army knife, kindly provided by the South African air force. She quickly discovered she had at her disposal a variety of screwdrivers, a can and bottle opener, a wood saw, scissors, a magnifying glass, even a nail file. At last she found a fat, sturdy blade. She decided she would cut loose a piece of cloth perhaps twenty feet square, which would suffice for a temporary shelter. Later, when the rain let up, she would come back and scavenge the rest of the silk.

  She began to hack her way through the chute material. But it was slow work.