Malenfant took another banana, peeled it and bit into it savagely. "You're a real smart ass, Nemoto, you know that?"
"Malenfant, all the species here should be familiar, more or less. We have the hominid samples who fell through the portals to the Earth. Although their species is uncertain, their DNA sequencing was close to yours and mine..."
A shadow moved through the forest behind Nemoto: black on green, utterly silent, fluid.
"Holy shit," Malenfant said.
The shadow moved forward, resolved, stepped into the light.
It was a woman. And yet it was not.
She must have been six feet tall, as tall as Malenfant. Her eyes locked on Malenfant's, she bent, picked up the banana Nemoto had dropped, and popped it into her mouth, skin and all.
She was naked, hairless save for a dark triangle at her crotch and a tangle of tight curls on her head. She held nothing in her hands, wore no belt, carried no bag. She had the body of a nineteen-year-old tennis player, Malenfant thought, or a heptathlete: good muscles, high breasts. Perhaps her chest was a little enlarged, the ribs prominent, affording room for the larger lungs the theorists had anticipated, like an inhabitant of a 1950s dream of Mars. There was a liquid grace in her movements, a profound thoughtfulness in her stillness.
But over this wonderful body, and a small, child-like face, was the skull of a chimp. That was Malenfant's first impression anyhow: there were ridges of bone over the eyes, a forehead that sloped sharply back. Not a chimp, no, but not human either.
Her eyes were blue and human.
"Homo erectus," Nemoto was muttering nervously. "Or H. ergaster. Or some other species we never discovered. Or something unrelated to any hominid that ever evolved on Earth... And even if descended from some archaic stock, this is not a true Erectus, of course, but a descendant of that lineage shaped by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution – just as a chimp is not like our common ancestor, but a fully evolved species in its own right."
"You talk too much, Nemoto."
"Yes... We have seen the reconstructions, inspected the bodies ejected from the Wheel. But to confront her alive, moving, is eerie."
The hominid girl studied Malenfant with the direct, uncomplicated gaze of a child, without calculation or fear.
He stepped forward. He could smell the girl: unwashed, not like an animal, an intense locker-room smell. He felt a deep charge, pulling him to her. At first he thought it was an erotic attraction – and that was present too; the combination of that clear animal gaze and the beautiful, fully human body was undeniably compelling, even if he sensed those stringy arms could break his back if she chose. But what he felt was deeper than that. It was a kind of recognition, he thought.
"I know you," he said.
The girl stared back at him.
Nemoto fidgeted behind him. "Malenfant, we were given protocols for encounters like this."
He murmured, "I should offer her a candy and show her a picture card?" He returned his attention to the girl. "I know you," he repeated.
I know who you are. We evolved together. Once my grandmother and yours ran around the echoing plains of Africa, side by side.
This is a first contact, it struck him suddenly: a first contact between humanity and an alien intelligent species – for the intelligence in those eyes could not be denied, despite the absence of tools and clothing.
...Or rather, this is a contact renewed. How strange to think that buried deep in man's past was a last contact, a last time we met one of these cousins of ours: perhaps a final encounter between one of my own ancestors and a girl like this in the plains of Asia, or a dying Neandertal on the fringe of the Atlantic, when we left them no place else to go.
The girl held her hands out, palms up. "Banana," she said, thickly, clearly.
Malenfant's jaw dropped. "Holy shit."
"English," Nemoto breathed. "She speaks English."
"En'lish," the girl said.
Now Malenfant's heart hammered. "That must mean Emma is here. She is near, and she survived."
Nemoto said cautiously, "We know very little, Malenfant; there is a whole world around us, a world of secrets."
There was a crackle behind Malenfant: a twig breaking, a footfall. He whirled.
There were more of the ape-people, eight or ten of them, male and female, all adults. They were as naked as the girl, though not all as handsome; some of them sported scars, gashes and even burns, and some had hair streaked with gray. They were standing in a line, neatly fencing off Malenfant and Nemoto from the lander, and they were all gazing hard at the two of them.
"These do not seem quite so friendly," Nemoto murmured.
"Oh, really? You think now's a good time to start the sign-language classes?"
"Malenfant, where are the guns?"
"...In the lander." Shit.
The silence stretched. The ape-people stood like statues.
"I am loath to abandon the lander," Nemoto hissed. "We have not even packed the contingency samples."
Malenfant suppressed a foolish laugh. "There go our science bonuses."
One of the ape-people stepped forward. Straggles of beard clung to his chin, though the longer strands seemed to have been cut, crudely. He opened his mouth and hissed. Malenfant thought his teeth were stained red.
Nemoto said, "Malenfant, I think –"
"Yeah. I think he's about to take a sample of us."
The big man raised his arm. Too late, Malenfant saw he was holding a stone in his fist. Malenfant ducked sideways. The stone missed his head, but it sliced through the layers of cloth over his shoulder, and nicked the flesh.
"Plan B," he gasped.
The two of them broke and ran for the forest. They pushed past the girl, who made a half-hearted effort to grab them. For a heartbeat Malenfant nursed a hope that he had made some connection, that she had on some level decided to let them go.
But then he was plunging into the green mouth of the forest after Nemoto, and there was no time for reflection.
The forest, away from the sunlight, was suffused by a clinging cloudy moistness that seemed to linger around every bush, and made every tree trunk slippery under Malenfant's palms. Soon they were both shivering.
And it was almost impossible to walk. Malenfant had done a little jungle survival training during his induction into the Shuttle program. But this forest was almost impassable, so deeply layered were the tangled roots, branches, leaves and moss over the uneven ground. Malenfant was acutely aware that this was not a place for humans.
Still they blundered on, slipping, crashing, blundering, falling, making a noise that must have echoed off the flanks of the Bullseye itself.
He imagined the frantic activity in the back rooms of Mission Control in Houston, the buzzing calls to paleontologists and anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists. For once in his life he would have been glad to hear the tinny voices from the ground. But, though there was a hiss of static from the tiny speaker built into his shoulder pack, he could make out no voices.
Once he thought he confronted one of the ape-people. He caught a glimpse of someone – some thing – in the dense green gloom ahead of him, upright like an ape-person, but smaller, chimp-sized, maybe hairy. It jabbered at him, reached up its long arms, and slipped out of sight into the forest canopy above.
After that, Malenfant found himself looking for possible threats upwards as well as side to side.
At length, breathing hard in the thin air, shivering, they came to a halt, crouching close to the ground by a fat, fungus-laden tree trunk. Malenfant's face was slick with sweat and forest dew.
Nemoto's eyes were wide in the gloom, glancing this way and that, like a cornered animal.
"We haven't been too smart, have we?" he whispered.
"We were not expecting to come under immediate attack by a troupe of Homo erectus."
"Yeah, but it's taken us a bare half-hour after opening the hatch to lose the lander, our supplies, and our weapons. I'm not even s
ure which way we're running."
"We will recover the lander."
"How do you know?"
"Because we must," Nemoto said simply.
A shadow slid across his field of view. It was subtle, difficult to distinguish from the swaying motion of a branch, the shifting coins of dappled sunlight that lay over the forest floor.
The camera on his shoulder swiveled to look into his face, and he forced a grin. "If you guys have any suggestions, now would be a good time..."
Eight, nine, ten shadows moved, all around them, shadows that coalesced into ape-people.
"The Erectus. They have been hunting us," Nemoto said. "Their intelligence is advanced enough for that, at least." She seemed calm, beyond fear.
The ape-people advanced. Some of them were grinning, and one of the men, perhaps excited by the prospect of a kill, sported an impressive erection.
Malenfant stood up slowly. The camera on his shoulder swiveled back and forth, whirring, somehow the most distracting object in his universe. He said, "I think –"
A vast, heavy creature came running out of the depths of the wood. It hurled itself at the largest ape-man. They rolled on the floor, wrestling.
The ape-men gathered around the combatants, hooting and hollering, their teeth showing between drawn-back lips – perhaps a rictus of fear – and they slapped ineffectually at the rolling figures.
Nemoto clutched Malenfant's arm, and they backed away.
Nemoto said, "I thought it was a bear."
"No," Malenfant said grimly.
No, not a bear: a man – yet another sort of man, shorter than his naked opponent, but much more heavily muscled, and dressed in animal skins that were tied to his body with bits of red-black rope. Though the ape-man on the ground was a formidable opponent – surely more than a match for any human in hand-to hand combat – the bear-man was stronger yet, and soon he had the ape-man pinned to the ground by sitting on his chest.
The bear-man snarled, "Enough?"
Once again the use of English, distorted but clear enough, startled Malenfant. Was it really credible that Emma could have taught the use of English to not one but two species of other-men? But if not, what was going on?
The man on the ground snapped at the hand that slapped him, but it was clear that the fight had gone out of him. The bear-man sat back and let him up.
The ape-man rejoined his companions and, his defiance momentarily sparking, he growled at the bear-man. "Ham! Eat Ham good eat!"
The bear-man – the "Ham" – opened his huge mouth wide, exposing a row of flat brown teeth. He ran at the ape-people, making them scatter, and with a broad, bare foot he aimed a heavy kick at the naked rump of the last man.
Then the bear-man walked up to Malenfant and Nemoto. He was a good head shorter than Malenfant – no more than five five, five six – but he was broad as a barn door. Under the skins which wrapped him loosely, Malenfant could see muscles moving. His walk was somewhat ungainly, as if his legs were bowed, or his balance not quite perfect. His skull was long and flat, with a bulge at the back that showed beneath a sprawl of thick black hair. He had a vast cavernous nose, and brown eyes glinted beneath bony brows like two caves. Sweat had pooled in a hollow between the brow ridges and his low forehead.
"Neandertal," Nemoto muttered. "Or possibly Homo heidelbergensis. Most probably Neandertalensis, of the so-called classic variant. Or rather a lineage evolved from Neandertal stock, in this unique place."
Malenfant could smell beer on the Neandertal's breath. "Holy shit," he said. Beer?
The Neandertal – or bear-man, or Ham – grinned at them. "Stupi' Runners," he said. "Scare easy." He stuck his tongue out and lunged forward. "Boo!"
Both Malenfant and Nemoto took a step back. The bear-man's voice was gravelly and thick, and his vowel sounds slurred one into the other. "But," Malenfant said, "he speaks better than I do after a couple of hours at the Outpost."
Now there was a crashing from the forest that resolved itself into clumsy, unconcealed footsteps. A new voice called, "What the devil is going on, Thomas?"
Malenfant frowned, trying to place the accent. English, of course – a British accent, maybe – but twisted in a way he didn't recognize.
The bear-man called, "Here, Baas. Runners. Chase off."
A man walked out of the shadows towards them – a human this time, a stocky man, white, aged maybe fifty, with a grubby walrus moustache. He was dressed in a buckskin suit, and he had a kind of crossbow over his shoulder. What looked like a long-legged rabbit hung from his belt.
When he saw Malenfant and Nemoto, he stopped dead, mouth a perfect circle.
Malenfant spread his hands wide. "We're from America. NASA."
The man frowned. "From where?... Have you come to rescue us?" Malenfant saw hope spark in his eyes, sudden, intense. He walked towards Malenfant, hand extended. "McCann. Hugh McCann. Oh, it has been so long in this place! Are you here to take us home?"
Malenfant felt a light touch on his shoulder, a soft crunch. When he looked, the camera he had worn there had gone, disappeared into the paw of the Neandertal.
Emma Stoney
The spaceship had been quite unmistakable as it drifted out of the sky, heading east, Shuttle-orbiter black and white under a glowing blue and white canopy. Her eyes weren't what they used to be, but she'd swear she made out the round blue NASA meatball logo on its flank.
Malenfant. Who else?
She knew immediately she had to follow it. She couldn't stay with the Ham troupe any more. She couldn't rely on whoever had drifted down from the sky to come find her. Her destiny had been in her own hands since the moment she had fallen out of the sky of Earth into this strange place, and it was no different now. She had to get herself to that lander.
She gathered up her gear. She equipped herself with stone tools and spears from the Ham encampment – without guilt, for the Hams seemed to make most of their tools as they needed them and then abandoned them. With her hat of woven grasses and her poncho of animal skin, all draped over the remnants of her air force coverall, she must look like the wild woman of the woods, she thought.
She attempted to say good-bye to the Ham who had first found her, and to some of the others she had gotten to know. But she was met with only blankness or bafflement.
After all, since nobody ever went anywhere, nobody said good-bye in a Ham community – except maybe at death.
She slipped into the forest.
Shadow
Thanks to extended pulses of volcanism, this small world was steadily warming, and temperate forests were shrinking back in favor of more open grasslands. The range of Shadow's family group was only a little smaller than the remnant of forest to which they clung; with invisible, unconscious skill, Shadow's elders had always guided her away from the exposed fringes of the forest.
But now her people had turned on Shadow. And to escape them she would have to leave her forest home.
Emerging from the trees, she found herself at the foot of a shallow forest covered slope, a foothill of taller mountains which reared up behind her. She faced a wide plain, a range of open, park-like savannah, grasslands punctuated by stands of trees. To the right of the plain a broad river ran, sluggish and brown. Away to the left a range of more rocky hills rose, their lower slopes coated with a thick carpet of forest. The hills marched away in a subtly curving ring; they were the rim mountains of a small crater.
She longed to slink back into the dark cool womb of the woods behind her.
She looked again at that smudge of green covering the crater wall. Forest: the only other patch of it in her vision. She thought of food and water, nests high in the trees.
She took a step out into the open.
The sun's heat was like a warm hand on her scalp. She saw her shadow at her feet, shrunken by the height of the sun. The forest behind her tugged at her heart like the call of her mother. But she did not turn back.
She ran forward, alone, her footsteps singing in the grass.
But as she ran she turned this way and that, fearing predators. A cat or a hyena would have little difficulty outrunning her, and still less in bringing her down. And she watched those remote woods. To her dismay they seemed to come no closer, no matter how hard she ran.
She came to a clear, shallow stream.
Unbearably thirsty, panting, she waded straight into the water. The stream was deliciously cool. The bed was of cobbles, laced with green growing things that streamed in the water. At its deepest the stream came up a little way beyond her knees.
She slid forward until she was on all fours. She rolled on her back, letting the water soak into her fur. She raised handfuls of water to her mouth. The water, leaking from her fingers, had a greenish tinge, and it was a little sour, but it was cold. She drank deeply, letting the water wash away the dust in her mouth and nose. She saw a thin trail of dust and blood seeping away from her.
A thin mucus clung to her wet hand. She saw that it contained tiny, almost transparent shrimps. She scraped the shrimps off her palm and popped them in her mouth. Their taste was sharp and creamy and delicious.
She stood up. With her gravid belly stroking the surface of the stream, she put her hands in the water, open like a scoop. She watched carefully as the water trickled through her fingers, and when the little crustaceans struck her palm she closed her hands around them.
Her thoughts dissolved, becoming pink and blue, like the sky, like the shrimp.
When she had had her fill of shrimp she clambered out of the stream, her fur dripping. She reclined on the bank. She folded her legs and inspected her feet. They were bruised and cut, and a big blister had swollen up on one toe. She washed her feet clean of the last of the grit between her toes, and then inspected the blister curiously; when she poked it with a fingernail the clear liquid in it moved around, accompanied by a sharp pain.
Manifold: Origin Page 22