Manifold: Origin

by Stephen Baxter

  The tunnel was long now, and filling with an oily darkness. Her face was like a distant beacon, a point of light like a star in a telescope, and he struggled to see her. There was a dim awareness of hands working his body, hands pounding at his chest, heavy hands, not human.

  The light went out, the last light.

  Soft lips brushed his brow, gentle as a butterfly's wings, yet the most vivid event in all the collapsing universe.

  Enough, he thought, gratefully, fearfully.

  Manekatopokanemahedo

  It was time for the Mapping to the crater that promised to reveal the secrets of the world engine.

  The people stood in a rough circle at the center of the platform. The yellow floor was bare again, the temporary structures it had borne unraveled, spacetime allowed to heal. The great turning Map of the Red Moon had been folded away also, having served its purpose. There was nothing left but the platform, and its cargo of people.

  Beyond there was only the unmanaged forest, where, perhaps, curious eyes gazed out at the creatures they had learned to call Daemons.

  Manekato sought out Nemoto. The little hominid stood alone, ignored by the rest. She wore her much-repaired blue coverall, and over her shoulder she bore the bag of parachute fabric that contained her few artifacts.

  Manekato knew that it would serve no purpose to tell Nemoto that possessions were meaningless, for anything desired could be reproduced at will, over and over. Mapped out of the raw stuff of the universe itself. In this, oddly, Manekato's kind had much in common with the more primitive hominids here. The Hams and Runners would manufacture tools for a single use and then discard them, without sentiment or longing. Perhaps Manekato shared with them some deep sense of the unstinting bounty of the universe – there would always be another rock to make a hand-axe – an intuition that Nemoto, caught between the two, coming from a culture of acquisition and limits, could never share.

  Manekato sighed, aware of the drift of her thinking. As always, just as Without-Name had complained, too many philosophical ruminations! – Enough, Mane. It is time to act.

  She took Nemoto's hand; it lay against her own, tiny and white and fragile. "Are you ready?"

  Nemoto forced a smile. "I have been fired across space by a barely controlled explosion devised by primitives. By comparison you are masters of space and time. I should feel confident in your hands."

  "But you don't."

  "But I don't."

  Manekato said gently, "A Mapping is only a matter of logic. You are a creature of logic, Nemoto; I admire that in you. And in the working-out of logic there is nothing to fear."

  "Yes," Nemoto said softly. But her hand tightened in Manekato's.

  In due course, the Mapping was expressed.

  Hand in hand, the people and their Workers – and one frightened Homo sapiens drifted upwards from the platform. The great shield of Adjusted Space folded away beneath them, leaving a disc of light-starved, barren, crushed land. But Manekato knew that the denuded patch would soon be colonized by the vigorous life forms here, and she felt no guilt.

  Then the Mapping's deep logic worked into her bones, and she was smeared over the sky.

  She hung among the stars, suspended in a primal triumvirate of bodies: Earth, sun and Moon, the only bodies in all the universe that showed as more than a point of light to a naked human eye. But this was not Nemoto's Earth, or her sun; and it was nobody's Moon. How strange, she thought.

  She had no body, and yet she was aware of Nemoto's hand in her own.

  "Nemoto?"

  "...How can I hear you?"

  "It doesn't matter. Can you see the Red Moon?"

  "I see it all at once! – but that is impossible. Oh, Mane..."

  "Try not to understand. Let the logic guide you."

  "But it is a world. It is magnificent," Nemoto said. "It seems absurd, grandiose, to suppose that this is a mere cog in some vast machine."

  It took Manekato a moment to secure the translation of "cog". "Look at the stars, Nemoto."

  "I can't see them. The sun dazzles me."

  "You can see them if you choose," Manekato said gently.

  "...Yes," Nemoto said at length. "Yes, I see them. How wonderful."

  "Are they the same stars as shine on your Earth?"

  "I think so. And they are just as silent. Are we alone in all the human universes, Manekato?"

  "Perhaps." She glared at the unchanging stars. "But if we are alone, the stars have no purpose save what they can offer humanity. My people have sat in their Farms for two million years," Manekato said, "a vast desert of time we could have spent cultivating the sky. Long enough, Nemoto. When this is over – Ah. I think – "

  And then the Mapping was done.

  The platform coalesced, as spacetime adjusted itself for the convenience of the expedition. People moved here and there, speaking softly, trailed by Workers. Few of them showed much interest in their new environs; already the first shelters were coalescing, sprouting from the platform like great flat fungi.

  Once again Manekato found herself injected into a new part of the Red Moon.

  This place was bright, more open than the forest location. And she could smell ocean salt in the air. To the east, the way the gentle, salt-laden breeze came, the land rose, becoming greener, until it reached a crest that was crowned by a line of trees. As she studied the ridge of rock, she saw how it curved away from her. It was the rim of a crater. To the west was a broad plain of rock and crimson dust, all but barren. In the far distance, beyond a rippling curtain of heat haze, hominids ran across the plain. They moved silently and without scent, like ghosts.

  Nemoto had slumped to the ground. She peered into her bag, rummaging through its contents, as if unable to believe that a Mapping could be completed without losing some key piece of her battered and improvised equipment.

  Babo came to Manekato. "Interesting. She behaves like an infant after her first Mapping. But then we arrive in the world knowing that reality has certain properties. Deep in our hind brains, the parts we share with these sub-human hominids and even more ancient lines, we store the deep intuition that a thing is either here or there, that it either exists or it does not – it cannot spontaneously leap between the two states. And Mapping violates all that. Perhaps we should admire Nemoto for keeping her sanity."

  "Yes." Manekato rubbed his head fondly. "For now our companions are all too busy rebuilding their houses to have much to complain about. Shall we investigate what we have come so far to see?"

  He raised his hand, preparing to execute another short-range Mapping.

  She grabbed his arm. "No. Renemenagota was a monster. But I have come to believe that some of her intuition was sound." Deliberately she walked forward, knuckles and feet working confidently, until she had stepped off the platform and onto the raw native ground. She scraped at the dirt, and clouds of crimson dust drifted into the air. Soon her feet and lower legs were stained a pale pink.

  Babo grinned, showing white teeth. "You're right, Mane. We are creatures designed for walking. Let us walk." He jumped off the platform, landing with hands and feet flat, evoking more billows of dust.

  Side by side they loped away from the compound, and began to scale the wall of the crater.

  Shadow

  The Nutcracker-woman was eating her way through a pile of figs. A child played at her feet, rolling and scrabbling in dead leaves. The woman was about the same height as one of the Elf-folk, and she was covered in similar black-brown hair. But her belly seemed swollen compared to an Elf's – it housed a large stomach capable of fermenting her low-quality feed – and her head was a sculpture of bone, with a great crested ridge over the top of her skull, and immense cheekbones to which powerful muscles were anchored.

  A rock hurtled out of the surrounding foliage. It slammed into the trunk of the fig with a rich hollow noise, then fell to the earth.

  The Nutcracker-woman screeched and scrambled back. She stared at the fallen stone. At last, cautiously, she poked
it with one finger, as if it were a living thing, a bat that had stunned itself on the tree. But the stone lay still, unresponsive.

  And now a stick came spinning from another part of the foliage.

  The Nutcracker-woman got to her feet, gathered up her infant, and looked about suspiciously, sniffing the air with her broad, dirty nostrils. She took a step away from the fig tree.

  Shadow struck.

  Manekatopokanemahedo

  The ground rose steadily.

  Manekato could feel a layer of hard, compact rock beneath a thin skim of dust. Green things grew here, grass and shrubs and even a few low trees, but they struggled to find purchase. It was dry; there was no sign of the springs that sometimes could be observed bubbling from the shattered walls of craters. And, though the rise of the slope was steady, it was not becoming noticeably steeper.

  The morphology of this formation was like no other impact crater or volcanic caldera she had encountered. The rim of a crater this size should be more sharply defined: a circular ridge, perhaps eroded into hillocks, with a splash plain of rubble and ejecta beyond. There was none of that here; the "crater" was just an upraised blister erupting from an empty plain.

  She glanced at Babo. She saw his mouth was working as he studied the rock, the vegetation, the dust, thinking, analyzing.

  Babo saw her looking, and grinned. "I know what you're thinking," he said. "Artificial. But then, we know this Red Moon is a thing of artifice, and we suspect this crater may be the key to its secrets. Why should we expect anything but artifice here, of all places?"

  The climb had already been long, and Manekato halted and rested her weight on her clenched knuckles. Babo raised a handful of crimson dust and let it drift off in the air; she could smell its rich iron tang, and some of it stuck to the sweat-soaked palm of his hand.

  She glanced to the west, over the landscape from which they had climbed. The Adjusted Space platform nestled at the foot of this slope, a bright splash, oddly ugly. Beyond it a plain of crimson dust stretched away, its color remarkably bright, marked by the pale green of vegetation clumps. The horizon of this small world curved noticeably, a smeared band of muddy gray. The sky was a dome littered by high clouds, and to the west she saw the dingy stain of volcanic dust streaking the air.

  It was not a spectacular view, but something in its sweep tugged at her imagination. If she were anywhere on her Earth she would see the work of people, and it had never before struck her quite how claustrophobic that could be. This was an empty, unmade land.

  Babo pointed. "Look. Down there."

  She saw that near the foot of the crater wall a group of hominids were working their way through the sparse coating of vegetation towards a fig tree. She thought they were Elves, the small, gracile creatures Nemoto called Australopithecines. They moved with stealth, and they approached the tree from several directions, surrounding it.

  "I think they are hunting something," Babo said. "...Ah. Look, there. Under the tree. It is another hominid."

  Manekato saw it now: a burly black-furred form, with a bony, crested skull and distended belly, this was the alternate variant of Australopithecines called a Nutcracker. This hominid had swollen, milk-laden breasts: a female. An infant huddled close to this mother.

  The Elves crept closer.

  Manekato murmured, "Must this world see more sentience dissipated needlessly?"

  "It is not our affair. Mane," Babo said gently. "They are only animals."

  "No," she said softly.

  Shadow

  The Elf-folk charged into the clearing.

  The Nutcracker-woman squealed, dropped her child, and scrambled up the fig tree for safety. The child tried to climb after her, but her hands and feet were small and poor at grasping, and she fell back again.

  Shadow was the first to grab the infant.

  Shiver had the temerity to attempt to snatch a limb of the infant for himself; they might have torn it apart between them. But Shadow pulled the infant to her chest, in a parody of parental protectiveness, and bared her teeth at Shiver.

  The Nutcracker-folk mother dropped out of her tree, screaming her rage, mouth open to show rows of flat teeth. Nutcracker-folk were powerfully built, and were formidable opponents at close quarters. She charged at Shadow.

  But Stripe lunged forward. His big bulk, flying through the air, knocked her flat. But the Nutcracker-woman wrapped her big arms around Stripe's torso and began to squeeze. Bones cracked, and he howled.

  Now more of the men threw themselves at the Nutcracker-woman. Shadow saw that some of them had erections. This was the first time they had hunted one of the Nutcracker-folk. The men had grown accustomed to using the Elf-women of the forest before killing them. Perhaps this Nutcracker-woman, when subdued, would provide similar pleasure.

  Shadow took the Nutcracker infant by her scrawny neck and held her up. Her short legs dangled, and huge eyes in a small pink face gazed at Shadow. But she could never be mistaken for the child of an Elf; the exotic bony ridges of her skull saw to that.

  Shadow opened her mouth, and placed the child's forehead between her lips.

  Manekatopokanemahedo

  As the Nutcracker mother fought for her life, as the wild-looking Elf-woman, battered and scarred, lifted the helpless infant by its neck, Manekato raised her head and roared in anguish.

  Shadow

  ...And there was a flash of bright white light, and searing pain filled her head.

  When Shadow could see again, the men were lying on the ground, some clutching their eyes, as dazzled and shocked as she was. Of the Nutcracker mother and child there was no sign. The men sat up. Stripe looked at Shadow. There was no prey, no meat. Stripe bared his teeth and growled at her.

  Manekatopokanemahedo

  Babo touched Manekato's shoulder. "You should not have done that," he said regretfully.

  "The Nutcracker-woman knew, Babo. She knew the pain she would endure if she lost her infant. Perhaps the child itself knew."

  "Mane –"

  "No more," she said. "No more suffering, of creatures who understand that they suffer. Let that be the future of this place."

  One by one the scattered Elves were clambering to their feet. Still rubbing their eyes, they stumbled back towards the plain – all but one, the woman who had captured the infant. She stood as tall as she could on the rocky slope, gazing up in suspicion. Manekato and Babo were well sheltered by the trees here, and the creature could surely suspect no causal connection between Manekato and her own defeat anyhow. But nevertheless the Elf howled, baring broken teeth to show pink gums, and she hurled a rock as far as she could up the slope.

  Then she turned and loped away, limping, her muscles working savagely even as she walked.

  Manekato shuddered, wondering what, in this creature's short and broken life, could have caused such anguish and anger.

  Babo sat on his haunches. "An Air Wall," Babo said. "We will erect an Air Wall to exclude unwelcome hominids, and other intruders. We will move the platform inside the cordon."

  "Yes..."

  "No more blood and pain, Mane."

  They turned, and began to clamber further up the crater wall.

  It was not long before they had reached the summit of the crater rim wall – and found themselves facing a broad plateau. A thin breeze blew, enough to cool Manekato's face, and to ruffle her fur. The rock here was crimson-red, like a basalt or perhaps a very compact and ancient sandstone. It was bare of vegetation and very smooth, as if machined, and covered by a hard glaze that glistened in the sun's weak light. There was little dust here, only a few pieces of scattered rock debris.

  It was as if the crater had been filled in. "I don't remember this from the Mapped image," Babo said, disturbed.

  Manekato dug her fingers into the fur on his neck. "Evidently we have limits."

  "But it means we don't know what we will find, from now on."

  "Isn't that a good thing? Isn't that why we came? Come, brother, let us walk, and let us remembe
r our humility."

  They walked forward, for perhaps a mile. And then they came to a circular pit, geometrically perfect. It was only yards across. Light leaked out of it, trapped by dust motes, a shaft that reached dimly to the sky.

  Manekato's imagination quailed. She reached for Babo's hand, reluctantly reminded of how she had guided Nemoto through the strangeness of the Mapping.

  Babo grinned at his sister. "This is strange and frightening – perhaps it is our turn to be humbled now – but I am sure we will find nothing that will not yield to the orderly application of science."

  "Your faith is touching," she said dryly.

  He laughed.

  "But it is not time to approach it yet," she said.

  "No. We must study it."

  "Not just that." They regarded each other, sharing a deep instinctive wisdom. "This is not for us alone, but for all hominids."

  "Yes," he said. "But how long must we wait?"

  "I think we will know..."

  There was a blue flash, painfully bright, that seemed to fill Mane's head; it reminded her uncomfortably of the punishment she had imposed on the Elf-folk.

  She raised her head. "...Ah. Look, Babo."

  In the sky swam a new world. It looked like a vast ball of steel. Its atmosphere seemed clear, save for streaks and whorls of cloud. But beneath the cloud there was no land: not a scrap of it, no continents or islands, nothing but an ocean that gleamed gray, stretching unbroken from pole to pole. There weren't even any polar caps to speak of: just crude, broken scatterings of pack ice, clinging to this big world's axes. The only feature away from the poles was a glowing ring of blood-red, a vast undersea volcano, perhaps. And here and there she saw more soot-black streaks of dust or smoke, disfiguring the world ocean; drowned or not, this was a geologically active world.

  It was a startling, terrifying sight – Manekato's hind brain knew from five million years of observation that things in the sky weren't supposed to change suddenly, arbitrarily – and she tried not to cower.