Manifold: Origin

by Stephen Baxter

  But a net was thrown over him. He did not resist. His hands and arms and feet and legs were tightly bound, and then his legs folded behind his back and tied up to his waist.

  Wrapped in the net, he was dragged out of his cell.

  Outside was a long, narrow cavern. There was no daylight, but fires burned in pits on the wall. He saw only the floor and walls, the lumping shadows of his jailers as they dragged him, letting his bruised limbs and head rattle on the floor.

  They paused, and there was a clanking, clattering noise. Joshua lifted his head dully.

  He was facing an open cell. A man sat in the cell, a Skinny. But this was a Skinny like none Joshua had ever seen. He had no hair on the top of his head, none at all, although stubble clustered on his cheek. And his clothing, though filthy, blood-stained and torn, was not like the skin the Zealots wore. It was blue: a blue membrane, like the wings of the sky seed.

  Joshua, electrified, gasped with recognition.

  The man was looking at him. "My name is Reid Malenfant," he said gently. "If you get out of here, remember that, Malenfant."

  Joshua worked his mouth; it was crusted with blood and his lips were cracked. "Mal'fan'."

  Malenfant nodded. "Good luck to you, friend."

  And then the door was slammed.

  Shadow

  She stayed away from the others. She slept in nests at the periphery of the crater-wall forest, and fed from trees and shrubs far from the movements of the rest of the group.

  She searched for cobbles in streams and on the exposed, eroded crater walls.

  She had not grown old enough to acquire more than the most basic tool-making skills. So it took her many tries, chipping at cobbles with stones and bits of bone, before she had manufactured something that felt right. It was a lens shaped cobble, with one crudely sharpened edge, that fit neatly in her hand.

  Through these days her determination burned, clear and unwavering.

  Burned until she was ready.

  Joshua

  Joshua was in a new place. The walls were white, like snow. The floor shone, smooth as a bamboo trunk.

  Joshua stood naked at the cell's center. Heavy ropes bound his hands before him and his feet, and the ropes were fixed to a great bar dug out of the rock floor beneath him. There were big holes in the walls covered by palm fronds, and through them Joshua could see daylight. He sniffed deeply, but his cavernous nostrils were clogged with snot and blood.

  There were people in the walls.

  The marks on these walls were not mere scratches. They were vivid images in bright blood-red and night-black, and in them Joshua saw the thin, bearded man. The man was much clearer here than in the deep cell – so clear he never went away – and there were many of him, shining brightly, even one version of him fixed to a tree trunk and bleeding.

  Joshua cowered.

  "Well might you avert your eyes from the Lord's countenance."

  Joshua turned. A man had spoken. A Skinny. He was taller than Joshua, his hair gray, and his black clothing swept to the ground. His black robes were skin, finely worked, black like charcoal from a hearth.

  Joshua cringed. But no blow came. There was only a hand on his forehead, light, almost curious, exploring his brow ridges.

  "Well might you hide your face for shame of what you are. And yet you called out for the Lord's help – so the brutes assigned to break you assured me... Stand up, boy." Joshua received a hard toe cap to the side of his leg. "Up, Ham."

  Reluctantly Joshua stood.

  The man had a sharp nose, and warts on his face, and eyes such a pale blue they made Joshua think of the sky. He walked around Joshua, and touched his chest and back. His hands were very soft. "I did ask for you to be cleaned up," he said absently. "Well. You may call me Praisegod Michael. Do you understand? I am Praisegod Michael. Praisegod."

  "Prai'go'."

  "Praisegod Michael, yes." Praisegod peered into his eyes. "What brows, what a countenance... And you, do you give yourself a name?" When Joshua didn't reply, Praisegod pointed to his own chest. "Praisegod Michael." And he pointed to Joshua.

  Joshua spoke his name. When he moved his mouth his smashed tooth hurt; he could feel pulp leak into his mouth.

  Praisegod laughed. "Joshua. My fathers named your fathers, when they found themselves sharing this Purgatorial place with you... And now you pass on the names one to the other, down through the generations, like heirlooms in the hands of apes. Very well, Joshua. And what are you?"

  The man's thin face, with its flat brow and high, bulging forehead, terrified Joshua. He had no idea what Praisegod wanted.

  Praisegod produced a short, thick whip. With practiced motions he lashed at Joshua's shoulder. The pain was great, for that was the site of Joshua's spear wound. But the skin was not broken.

  "If you do not answer, you will be treated so," Praisegod said evenly. "But let me answer for you. You have a man's name, but you are not a man. You are a Ham. That is another name my father gave yours, and it is appropriate. Do you know who Ham was?"

  A failure to reply brought a fresh lash of the whip.

  "Ham, father of Canaan, son of Noah. He failed to respect his father. 'Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.' Genesis 9:25. A servant of servants, yes; that is your place, boy. But then you know nothing of Noah, do you? You are an animal – a magnificent one, perhaps, and yet an animal even so. From your misshapen head to your splayed feet you signify antediluvian stock – if not pre-Adamite, indeed." Praisegod seemed to be growing angry. Joshua watched him dully. "The world was cleansed of your kind by the waters of the Flood. But you survive beyond your time in this dismal pit. And now you call on the Lord Himself – "

  Another lash to the shoulders, and Joshua flinched. Then a blow to the back of the legs forced Joshua to his knees.

  Praisegod Michael grabbed Joshua by his hair, making him raise his head. "Look on His merciful face. What can you know of His benison? Do you know what my fathers suffered to bring the Word to this world? When they fell here, they had nothing: nothing but the clothes they wore. They were set upon by beasts like yourself; they starved; they fell prey to diseases. And yet they survived, and built this community, all by the strength of their hands, and their faith.

  "And in all this they remembered the Word. They had no Book with them, not a single copy. But they remembered. They would sit around their fires and recite the verses, one after another, seeking to recall it for their children, for they knew they had no way home.

  "And that is how the Word of the Lord came to this pit. And now you, an animal of the field, with your thunderbolts of stone, you presume to call on Him for help?..."

  Joshua folded over himself, letting the whip fall. He felt his flesh break, and the whip dug deeper into the wounds it had made.

  Shadow

  The fungal growth now framed her vision, black as night.

  When she heard the roosting calls of the people, she slid through the trees. The people nested, silhouetted high against a cloud-laced earth-blue sky. She recognized One-eye by the grunting snores he made, the stink of a body she had come to know too well.

  She slipped up the trunk of the tree, her long hands and feet gripping. With scarcely a rustle, she clung to branches above One-eye's rough nest.

  He lay on his back, hands wide, legs splayed, one foot dangling over the edge of his nest. His mouth was open, and a thin stream of drool slid down his chin. He had an erection, dark in the Earthlight.

  She clung to the branches with her feet and legs, and hung upside down over him. She took his penis in her mouth and sucked it gently, rubbing the shaft with her lips. In his sleep, he moaned.

  Then she bit down, as savagely as she could.

  He screamed and thrashed. She could hear answering hoots from surrounding nests.

  She flung herself down on him. His eyes were wide and staring, and she thought she could smell blood on his breath. He was stronger than she was, but he was already in intense agony, a
nd she had the advantage of surprise. He pushed feebly at her face with one hand. She grabbed the hand, pulled a finger into her mouth, and nipped off a joint with a single savage bite. He howled again, and she spat the bloody joint into his open mouth, making him gag.

  Then she raised her shaped cobble and slammed it against the side of his head.

  Joshua

  A day and a night, here in this white place, without food or water.

  Men scrubbed him roughly. They mopped away the blood and shit from the floor.

  Praisegod was prone to swings of mood, which Joshua neither understood nor could predict. Sometimes there was coldness, cruelty, beatings. But sometimes Praisegod would gaze at him with bright eyes, and run his hands over his battered body, as a mother might stroke a child. Joshua quickly learned to dread such moments, for they always finished in the most savage beatings of all.

  And yet he longed for Praisegod Michael to stay, rather than leave him alone.

  He lay on his side, staring at the marks on the walls – not the face of Chee-sus, but strange angular lines, the loops and whorls. Bewildered by pain and exhaustion, he stared and stared, trying to lose himself in the lines, trying to see the faces there.

  "What is it you see, boy? Can you read? Can you read the Lord's words? Do you hear what they tell you?" Showing his sporadic, chilling tenderness, Praisegod Michael was kneeling on the floor, with Joshua's head on his lap.

  His mouth dry, his tongue thick, Joshua whispered, "People."

  "People?" Praisegod Michael stared at the marks. "These are words, and these are pictures. The words speak to us... Ah, but they do not, do they? Marks on the wall do not speak. They are symbols, of the sounds we make when we speak, which are themselves symbols of the thoughts we concoct... Is that what you mean?" His hands explored Joshua's body with a rough eagerness. "What lies inside that cavernous head of yours? The words you utter are themselves symbolic – but your kind have no books, no art. Is that why you cannot understand? Would you like me to tell you what those letters say to me?" He pointed at the wall. " 'After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in Heaven.' Revelation 4:1."

  "Heav'n," Joshua mumbled.

  "The sky, child, where we will pass when we die."

  Joshua twisted his head to see Praisegod's face. "Dead."

  "No." Praisegod was almost crooning, and he rocked Joshua back and forth. "No, you poor innocent. You are alive. And when you die, you will be alive again in Christ – if His mercy extends to your kind..."

  "Dead," said Joshua. "Dead. Gone. Like Jacob."

  "Dead but not gone! The corpse in the ground is the seed that is planted in the earth. So we will all bloom in the spring of the Lord. 'And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened.' But I am talking in symbols again, ain't I? A man is not a seed. But a man is like a seed."

  Suddenly he pushed Joshua away. The Ham's head clattered on the floor, jarring his aching tooth.

  "You can know nothing of what I speak, for your head is empty of symbols... Ah, but what if my religion is nothing but symbols – is that what you are thinking? – the symbol of the seed, the Mother and Child – a dream concocted by words rattling in my empty head?" Now Joshua felt kicks, hard, frantic, aimed at his back and buttocks. "O you witness to the Flood, O you underman! See how you have planted doubts in my mind! How clever you are, how cunning! You and that Daemon of the forest, Renemenagota, she of the ape build and mocking, wise eyes... The Daemons make me promises. They can take my vision and make it real, make this antediluvian island a godly place. So they say. So she says. Ah, but in her dark eyes I sense mockery, Joshua! Do you know her? Did she send you?... How you madden me! Are you agents of Satan, sent to confuse me with your whispers of God's work?..."

  But now Praisegod leaned over Joshua again and grabbed his face. Joshua saw how his eyes were red and brimming with tears, his face swollen as if by weeping. "Can sin exist here? The brutes who serve me have their Runner women, their whores with the bodies of angels and the heads of apes. I, I am not of that kind... But now, here! Here!" He grabbed Joshua's bound hands and pushed them into his crotch; Joshua could feel a skinny erection. "You are destroying me!"

  And the beatings went on.

  Joshua lay on the floor, his own blood sticky under his face. Pieces moved around in his head, just as they had before: when he saw the sky seed fall from the sky, when he put together the cobble from the bits of shattered stone.

  The kind Skinny's face peered through a cloud of pain and black-edged exhaustion.

  He whispered, " 'Fore me was door standin' open Heaven."

  Praisegod Michael was here. Panting, he gazed into Joshua's eyes. "What did you say?"

  But Joshua was, for now, immersed in his own head, where the pieces were orbiting one another, the flakes sticking to the core of the cobble one by one. The Gray Earth. The seed that fell from the air. The door in the sky.

  Joshua was, in his way, a genius. Certainly none of his kind had experienced such a revelation before.

  "Heav'n," he said at last.

  Praisegod Michael pushed his ear close to his mouth to hear.

  "Heav'n is th' Gray Earth. Th' seed. Th' seed takes th' people. Th' people pass through th' door. Door to heaven. To Gray Earth."

  "By God's eyes." Praisegod Michael stumbled back. "Is it possible you believe?"

  Joshua tried to raise his head. "Believe," he said, for he did, suddenly, deeply and truly. "Th' door in th' sky. Th' Gray Earth."

  Praisegod Michael stalked around the cell, muttering. "I have never heard an ape-thing like yourself utter such words. Is it possible you have faith? And if so, must you therefore have a soul?" Again he stroked the heavy ridges over Joshua's eyes, and he pressed his gaunt body close to the Ham's. "You intrigue me. You madden me. I love you. I despise you." He leaned closer to the Ham, and kissed him full on the lips. Joshua tasted sourness, a rank staleness.

  "Graah – " Praisegod rolled away, lying sprawled on the floor, and vomited, so that thin bile spread across the shining floor.

  Then he stood, trembling, striving for composure. "I would kill you. But if you have the soul of a man – I will not risk damnation for you – if you have not damned me already!" He smiled, suddenly cold, still. "I will send you out. You will spread the Word to your kind. You will be a Saul of the apes." He raised his pale eyes to the light from the window. "A mission, yes, with you as my acolyte – you, a pre-Adamite man-ape."

  Joshua stared at him, understanding nothing, thinking of a door in the sky.

  But now Praisegod stood over him again, and again he spoke tenderly. "I will help you." He reached into his clothing and produced a knife. It was not of stone; it glittered like ice, though Joshua could see how worn and scuffed it was. "No beast should speak the Word of God. Here." He put his fingers inside Joshua's mouth. The fingers tasted of burning. He pushed down, until Joshua's mighty jaw dropped.

  Then, without warning, he grabbed Joshua's tongue and dragged it out of his mouth. Joshua felt the slash, a stab of pain.

  Blood sprayed over Praisegod Michael.

  Shadow

  The next morning the women surrounded Silverneck, as usual. With their infants clambering over them, they munched on figs.

  With a crash, One-eye fell from his tree. His hands and feet left a smear of blood where they touched bark or leaves, for several of his fingers and toes had been nipped off. White bone showed in a huge deep wound on the side of his head. And his penis was almost severed, dangling by a thread of skin. His fur was matted by blood and piss and panic shit.

  The women stared.

  He looked about vaguely, as if blinded, and he mewled like an infant. Then he stumbled away, alone, into the deeper forest.

  Shadow walked out of the tree cover.

  Silverneck moved aside for her. One of the younger women growled, but Shadow punched her in the side of the head, so hard she was knocked sideways. Shadow sat with the group, and clawed fi
gs into her mouth. But nobody looked at her, nobody groomed her, and even the children avoided her.

  That night, when the roosting calls went out. One-eye did not return.

  Reid Malenfant

  Malenfant was kept chained up in a dark, filthy cell. It was just a brick-lined pit, its damp mud floor lined with packed-down filth. The only light came from a grilled window high in the ceiling. The door was heavy with a massive wooden bolt on the outside.

  He reached out to touch the walls. The bricks were rotten. Maybe he could dig out handholds and climb up to that window.

  And then what? What then, after you climb out into the middle of Praisegod's courtyard?...

  You are not dealing with rational people, Malenfant.

  It was true Praisegod had built a place of relative order here. But this was an island of rigidity in a world of fluidity and madness, a world where mind itself was at a premium, a world where the very stars regularly swam around the sky, for all Praisegod's zeal and discipline – just as, Malenfant suspected, Praisegod's own inner core of horror constantly threatened to break through his surface of control.

  There was nothing he could do, nothing to occupy his mind.

  Sometimes the most courageous thing was doing nothing. Do-nothing heroics: was that a phrase from Conrad? If there was really, truly no way you could change your situation, the last thing you wanted to do was to pour so much energy into fighting your fear that you burned yourself up before the chance came for a break.

  As he sat in the dark and the filth, utterly alone, Malenfant wondered how long his own do-nothing heroics would sustain him.

  At last he was brought before Praisegod Michael.

  At Praisegod's chapel-residence Malenfant was kept waiting, standing before Praisegod's empty desk bound hand and foot, for maybe an hour.

  Finally Praisegod walked in, slowly, contemplative, his Ham boy at his side. Praisegod didn't look at Malenfant. He sat at his desk, and a Ham girl brought in a tray of chopped fish set on slabs of hard, dark bread, with a bowl of what looked like mustard and a wooden goblet of wine. Praisegod ate a little of the fish, dipping it in the mustard, and then he passed the rest to the Ham boy, who sat on the floor and ate ravenously.