Origin m-3

by Stephen Baxter

  And even if she did know what Sally was suffering from, what could she do about it? Her pocket-sized medical kit was gone, lost with the rest of her meagre kit as they had fled from the huge skin-clad creatures called Hams. She began to go through the pockets of her ragged, filthy flight suit, hoping to find even a single antibiotic tablet that had gone astray.

  Sally convulsed again, and her vomit turned more clear, just a thin, stringy fluid.

  Maxie, squatting with the other children, watched all this in wide-eyed dismay. He had been silent since they had left the shore, and now he watched Emma wrestle with Sally as if she were a side of beef, no doubt storing up more problems in that tousled, bewildered head. Later, Emma; one patient at a time.

  After an hour of random drifting, the raft began to approach the river’s far shore. Shallow beaches strewn with purple-black pebbles slid by. More by chance than design, the Runners were completing the crossing of this huge, sluggish waterway.

  Sand glimmered rust-red, a few feet beneath the surface, and it was snagging the raft’s branches. The raft creaked and spun. It began to break up, its component branches drifting apart. The Runners cried out. One skinny woman fell into the water with a fearful hoot.

  “Emma!” Maxie came stumbling to her, his little feet plunging into brown river water. He threw himself into her arms, and she clutched him close.

  More of the Runners fell into the water, or leapt away from the raft towards the shore, splashing noisily and yelling with fear. They seemed to have a lot of difficulty swimming, and Emma wondered if their heavily muscled bodies were denser than humans’. Wading clumsily, grabbing onto each other and their children, they began to flop out of the water and onto the beach, where they lay like sleek, muscular seals. They shook their heads to rid their tightly curled hair of water; droplets fell back to the river with eerie low-gravity slowness.

  Emma felt cold water seeping into the legs of her track suit. Maxie cried out and squirmed higher up her body.

  There was simply no way Emma was going to be able to get both Maxie and his mother across those few yards of deeper water.

  Fire was one of the last to leave the raft. He actually stood upright on the raft, precariously, and its branches cracked and parted under his feet. Then, hooting, he leapt feet-first into the water. He staggered as his feet sank into the mud, but kept his balance. He looked down at the water lapping around his waist, as if amazed.

  Emma called, “Fire! Help us. Fire. Fire Fire Emma Maxie!”

  He looked around dully.

  Emma held Maxie up above her head. The kid squealed and kicked; Emma wasn’t going to be able to hold him like this for long. She cried, “Fire Fire!”

  Fire reached out with a liquid motion. With one hand he grabbed Maxie under his armpit and lifted him away from Emma, as if the child was as light as balsa wood. Then he turned and began splashing his way to the shore, holding Maxie high.

  Without allowing herself to think about it — without even looking out for crocs — Emma pushed away the last branches, the last of the raft, and let herself and Sally slide into the water. Sally lay face-down in the water, passive, but Emma managed to roll her onto her back. The makeshift sling was filthy, stained by blood and the muddy river water. Emma got the inert woman’s head against her belly, and cupped her fingers under Sally’s chin. Then, working with her feet and her one free arm, she began to swim backwards, towing Sally’s floating form.

  She was soon exhausted. Her soaked clothes were heavy and clinging, and her boots made her feet feel as if they were encased in concrete. It seemed an age before her kicking feet began to sink into a steeply rising river bottom. She stood up, gasping.

  Sally was still floating, so Emma grabbed a handful of cloth at her shoulder and, still supporting her head, began to drag her out of the water. Nobody came to her assistance — nobody but Maxie, and he was more hindrance than help.

  At last she got Sally out of the river, far enough that her feet were free of the lapping, muddy brown water, and she fell on her back with exhaustion.

  On this side of the river, there was less evidence of the ash falls that had plagued the Runners for days. But beyond the narrow, pebble-strewn beach, the shore was heavily wooded. The Runners huddled together in suspicious silence, peering at the dense green banks above them.

  Night was coming.

  With barely a word exchanged, some of the Runners crept cautiously into the woods. Others walked down the beach, tentatively exploring, and Fire and a couple of the women began to drag branches from the edge of the forest, building a fire. Fire cast shy glances at Emma; evidently he remembered, in some dim way, how she had managed to start a fire even when he had lost his treasured handful of embers, probably a key moment in his tortured young life.

  First things first, she thought.

  She pulled Sally further up the beach. She turned Sally over once more to the recovery position, unzipped Sally’s trousers and with some difficulty wrestled them off her, followed by her panties. The clothes were filthy, of course, from faeces and river mud, and they clung to her flesh; but Emma was reluctant to use her knife — this was Sally’s only set of clothing in the whole world, after all. When she had the pants off she used handfuls of leaves to clean Sally up as best she could, and covered her with her own T-shirt, briskly stripped off.

  Then, leaving Maxie with his mother, she walked briskly down the beach. After fifty paces she came to a small stream, decanting from some source in the forest. It had cut itself a shallow, braided valley. Two of the children were playing here, splashing and wrestling. Emma walked a little way upstream of them and began to rinse out Sally’s trousers and underwear in the shallow, sluggish water. When she was done she cleaned off her arms and hands, splashed cold water over her face, and took a deep drink. Then she dug her plastic bag out of her pocket — one of the few artefacts she had yet to lose — and dipped it to the stream to fill it with water.

  More barely remembered medical lore came back to her. Diarrhoea and vomiting led to dehydration, which you ought to treat with sugar and salt, a teaspoon of each to a litre of water, if she remembered right. Fine, save that she had no sugar or salt, and no teaspoon for that matter…

  She glanced up the beach.

  Stone was squatting beside Sally. He had removed the T-shirt from her lower body, and was running his hands up her thigh. Maxie had cowered back to the edge of the woods, watching the huge man grope his mother.

  Emma put down the water, straightened up, and began to walk back to Sally. She felt around her neck for her Swiss Army knife. She got to within a foot of Stone without him noticing she was there.

  So where are you going to stick your blade, Emma? In his cheek, his rock-hard penis, his back? What makes you think this tiny little bee-sting blade will do more than goad him anyhow? He’ll kill you, then do what he wants with Sally anyhow.

  She pulled out the foldaway lens and lifted it up. She angled it so she caught the sun, and focused a bright spot on the back of Stone’s broad neck. He howled, slapping his neck, and jumped up, whirling, his penis flopping. As calmly as she could she tilted back the lens so the spot of light shone in his eyes. He raised his hands, dazzled. She said, “Keep away from her. Stone, you asshole, or I will bring down the sun on you. Stone sun Stone sun! Understand?”

  He growled, but still the light shone in his eyes. He stumbled away, his penis wilting.

  Trembling, trying to give an impression of command, Emma walked back along the beach, picked up her bag of water, and hurried back to Sally.

  Sally still lay on her side, her head resting on her good arm, eyes closed, mouth open. There was a bubble of saliva at her mouth. That bubble of saliva popped, abruptly.

  “Oh shit,” Emma said. She grabbed Sally and pushed her on her back. Sally sighed once, and then was still. Emma pinched Sally’s cheeks until her lips parted. The skin was cool and waxy. She dug her fingers in Sally’s mouth, and scooped out gobbets of vomit and flung it on the sand. Then she
placed one hand under Sally’s chin and tilted her head back. She could hear no breath, not a whisper.

  She ran her hands over Sally’s torso, seeking the end of the breastbone. Then she pulled her hands to the middle of her chest, placed the heel of her hand a little higher, and began to press down. “One-and-two-and…”

  A child leapt out of the woods, a lithe hairy child, its face twisted into a snarl. Maxie scrambled away, screaming. Emma shrank back from Sally, gasping with terror.

  …No, not a child. It was an ape, an adult — a female, in fact, with two small empty dugs, a skinny, naked body covered in spiky black-brown hair. She was maybe three feet tall. She had the face of a chimp, with lowering eyes gazing out of ridged sockets, and a protruding mouth with thick wrinkled lips covering angular teeth. Emma could have cupped her brain pan in one hand. But she walked and ran upright, human-style, like a clumsy mannequin — her feet were more human than not — and in one curved, bony hand, dangling below her knees, she clutched what looked like a shaped pebble.

  She was a caricature, a shrunken, shrivelled, spellbound mix of ape and human, a dwarfish sprite: an Elf, just as the Runners called her kind. This ape-woman ran up to Emma and capered before her.

  Emma picked up a handful of sand and hurled it in the Elf’s face.

  The Elf howled and staggered back, rubbing her eyes.

  Fire came running out of the forest’s shade. With a single, almost graceful swipe, he slammed a rock against the side of the Elf’s head.

  She fell sprawled on the beach, unconscious or dying, half her face crushed.

  Now there was screaming and yelling. All along the beach. Elf-folk were boiling out of the forest. They ran along the shore, rocks and sticks in their hands.

  But the Runners fought back hard. Mothers grabbed their children and ran into the sea, where the Elf-folk seemed reluctant to follow. Men and women threw rocks at the scampering Elf-folk, and swung at them with their fists and feet.

  But there were many, many of the Elf-folk, and they fought with a mindless intensity that seemed to overwhelm even the Runners.

  Emma, trying to ignore this hideous drama, threw herself back at Sally.

  After fifteen compressions Emma pinched Sally’s nose, clamped her mouth on Sally’s, and breathed hard and deep. She tasted vomit and blood. She pulled her head away, let Sally’s chest deflate, and tried again. After two breaths she searched again for a pulse, found none, and slammed the heel of her hand into Sally’s chest once more.

  The conflict went on, crude, animal-like.

  It’s not my battle, Emma told herself. These aren’t people. If they are humans at all they are some kind of predecessor species. Really, they are just two breeds of animals fighting for space. But one breed was at least hollering simple words — “Stone!”

  “Stone, Blue, Blue!”

  “Away, away!” — and she couldn’t help a deep sense of gratification every time one of those spindly Elf bodies went down, under Runner fists and feet.

  Now Stone broke out of the squabbling pack. He had two Elves clinging to his back. One had its teeth sunk into his shoulder, and the other had torn off part of his scalp and a section of his right ear. Stone was howling, and blood poured over him from the glistening crimson wound in his head. More Elves swarmed over him, scratching, biting and beating. Stone went down, and rolled over into the water.

  Emma heard an anguished scream. A woman burst out of the squabbling pack. It was Grass. Some of the Elves had closed in a pack around something that struggled, yelling, brown limbs flashing. It was a Runner child — perhaps Grass’s child. Grass threw herself at the Elves” backs. They drove her off easily, but she came back for more, twice, three times, until at last a chipped rock was slammed against the side of her head, and she fell to her knees, grunting.

  The Elf-folk slid into the forest with their prize, their screeching cries of triumph sounding like laughter.

  …And still Emma could find no pulse. She sat back, arms hurting, lungs aching. She was aware of Maxie watching her, a little pillar of desolation, ominously silent. “Oh, Maxie, I’m sorry.”

  Stone was still in the water, on all fours, head lolling, his hair soaked, the water swirling crimson-brown under him.

  Fire stood over him. He was holding a boulder, Emma saw, a slab of worn basaltic rock as big as his head.

  Stone looked up, blood congealing over one eye. He raised a hand to Fire, reaching up for help.

  Fire slammed the rock down on the crown of Stone’s skull. There was a sound like a crunching apple.

  Stone slumped. Thick red-black blood diffused in the water.

  Fire stood staring at the body. Then he turned to Emma. His gait and eyes held a glittering hardness she had not seen before. She shrank back, scrambling over the ground, away from Sally’s body.

  Fire squatted down before her. His powerful, bloody fingers brushed her neck. She shuddered at his touch, feeling the burn scars on his palms. He pushed his hand inside her flight suit, and his hand closed around the Swiss Army knife. The lens was open. He snapped off the lens attachment as if breaking a matchstick.

  Fire looked at the lens, and at Sally’s body, and at Emma. Then he backed away from her, stinking of blood.

  Maxie was a few feet away, backed up against a tree. His gaze was sliding over Runners, blood-stained sand, the river.

  Emma stood, cautiously. Keeping her eyes on Fire, she reached out for Maxie. “Come on, Maxie. This is no place for us, not any more. It never was…”

  “No!” Maxie pulled away from her, his face twisted.

  She thought, Now I’m the woman who killed his mother. Nevertheless, I’m all he’s got. She made a grab for him.

  He ran along the beach.

  “Maxie!”

  Before she had taken a couple of strides after him he had joined the Runners, who were clustered together, fingering their wounds. She caught one last glimpse of his small face, hard resentful eyes peering back at her. He seemed to be pulling off his clothes.

  Then he was lost.

  There was a cry, a grisly, high-pitched cry, a child’s cry, eloquent of unbearable pain. The woman. Grass, stood and peered mournfully into the forest. Emma slid into the gloom of the forest, for she had no other place to go.

  Reid Malenfant:

  Events unfolded quickly now, faster than they had for the Apollo astronauts. The Red Moon’s gravity, stronger than Luna’s, was pulling hard at their falling spaceship, dragging it into a curve that would all but skim the atmosphere.

  Nemoto murmured to herself, still working through her tasks as calmly as if they were in just another simulator in Houston… Malenfant tried to focus on his checklist. But he kept looking up at the strange, shifting diorama beyond the window.

  Suddenly he saw the dawn.

  Light seeped into the edge of the great disc of blackness. At first it was a deep red, spreading smoothly out around the curve of this small world. Then the band of light began to thicken, growing orange-yellow, and finally shading into blue. The light was coalescing at its brightest point, as if gathering to give birth to the disc of sun itself. And now Malenfant saw shadows of low clouds in the atmosphere; they drew clear dark lines hundreds of miles long over deeper air layers. The surface began to pick up the first of the light — it was an ocean, dark and smooth and sleek, glowing a deep bloody red. And still the light continued to leak into the sky, diffusing higher and higher.

  This was a sunrise, not on airless Luna, but on a world with an atmosphere actually deeper than Earth’s — and an atmosphere left laden with dust by a chain of great stratovolcanoes. It was a startling, full-blooded dawn, somehow unexpected so far from home.

  For the first time Malenfant’s thoughts swivelled from Earth, his departure point, and turned with a rush to the world he was approaching. Suddenly he was eager to be down on the ground, to be sinking his fingers into the soil of a new world, and drinking in its air.

  Emma Stoney:

  The light seeped aw
ay, and the shadows turned a deeper green.

  She moved as silently as she could. But still she was aware of every leaf she crushed, every twig that cracked. And each time she heard a rustle or snap, she expected an Elf to leap out at her.

  She didn’t know where she was going, what the hell she was doing. But she knew she had to get away from that beach.

  The screaming began again, startling her. It was very close, very loud. She crouched down in the bush, staring, listening, too frightened to move.

  And she glimpsed movement, through a screen of trees to her right. Smart, Emma. You walked right in on them.

  They were the Elf-folk, of course. They had the Runner child spreadeagled against a bare patch of ground. His eyes were wide and staring. Elf teeth closed on the boy’s upper thigh, and came away bloody, huge ape lips wrapped around a handful of meat.

  The boy thrashed. Emma saw how his eyes turned white. And he screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

  After that — as Emma watched, frozen in place by her fear of detection — the boy was steadily dismembered: the drinking of blood, the biting-off of genitals, the startlingly efficient twisting-off of an arm. And through all of this the boy was still alive, still screaming… There was a hand on her shoulder.

  She gasped, swivelled, fell back in the bush with a soft crash. Someone was standing over her, a shadowy figure.

  It was not an Elf, or a Runner. It was a woman. She was wearing a loose tunic of skin, bound around her waist with what looked like a rope plaited from greenery. There were tools stuck in the belt, tools of bone and wood. Her body looked shorter, stockier than a Runner’s. Her face protruded. She had no chin. Her skull was large, larger than a Runner’s, but she sported a thick ridge of bone over her eyes, and there were prominent crests of bones at her cheeks and over the crown of her head.

  Not a human, then. This was one of the powerful, shadowy creatures the Runners had called a “Ham’. Emma felt savage disappointment, renewed fear.