Origin m-3

by Stephen Baxter

She attempted to say goodbye 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 goodbye 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 favour 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 m 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.

  She was soon hot, panting, dreadfully thirsty. Her thick fur trapped the heat of the sun. Her feet ached as they pounded the ground. Her arms dangled uselessly at her side; she longed to grasp, to climb. But there was nothing here to climb. She ran on, clumsy, determined, over ground that shone red through sparse yellow 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.

  She heard a distant growl.

  Startled, she tucked her feet underneath her, resting her knuckles on the ground. She peered around at the open plain.

  The shadows, of rocks and isolated trees, had grown long. She had forgotten where she was: while she had played in the water, the day had worn away. She mewled and wrapped her long arms around her torso. She did not want to return to the running. But every instinct in her screamed that she must get off the ground before night fell.

  She climbed out of the stream and began running towards the crater rim hills.

  The light faded, terribly rapidly. Her shadow stretched out before her, and then dissolved into greyness.

  Her face began to itch, as if some insect was working its way into her skin. She scratched her cheeks and brow. She looked for someone to groom her. But there was nobody here, and the itch wouldn’t go away.

  Still she ran, thirsty, dusty, exhausted.

  And still those growls came, echoing across the savannah: the voices of predators calling to each other, marking out the territory they claimed.

  It grew darker. The earth climbed in the sky. The land became drenched in a silvery blueness.

  There was a growl, right in front other. She glimpsed yellow eyes, like two miniature suns.

  She screamed. She picked up handfuls of dirt and threw them at the yellow eyes. There was a howl.

  She turned and ran, not caring where she went. But her gait was waddling and stiff, her feet broken and sore.

  She could hear steady, purposeful footsteps behind her.

  Memories clattered through her mind: of a bite that had crushed the skull of a child in a moment, of the remains of a predator’s feast, bloody limbs and carcass, of the screams of a victim taken live to a nest, where cubs had fed long into the night. She screamed and ran and ran.

  There was light ahead of her.

  She ran towards the light, panting and hooting. She thought of daybreak in a safe tree top, her nest warm under her, her mother’s massive body close by.

  The light was yellow, and it flickered, and shadows moved before it. A fire.

  She heard those scampering footsteps. There was a hot, panting breath on her neck.

  A stone zinged through the air, past her head. It clattered against a rock, harmlessly. Now another stone flew. It caught her in the chest, knocking her flat on her back.

  Behind her, the chasing cat yelped and yowled. When she sat up and turned, she saw its lithe silhouette sliding across the blue, glittering grass.

  “Elf Elf away.”

  She yelled and scrabbled in the dirt.

  She found herself looking up at a tall figure — a woman, perhaps twice as tall as she was, taller even than Big Boss had been, her torso long and ugly. She had small flat breasts. She was hairless, save for knots of hair on her head and between her legs. She had a small face and wide nose, and she carried a stick that she was pointing at Shadow.

  She was a Runner.

  Cautiously Shadow got to her feet. She jabbered at the woman, a series of intense pants, hoots, screeches and cries. She expected the woman to respond. They would chatter together, sounds without words, their cries slowly matching in pitch and intensity as they greeted each other.

  But the woman jabbed with the stick, coming close to piercing Shadow’s skin. “Elf Elf away!”

  Shadow feared the stick. But before her was the yellow fire. She could hear the fire pop and crackle, and she could smell food, the sharpness of leaves and burned meat. Many people were there — all tall and skinny and hairless like this stretched-out woman, but people nevertheless. Behind her there was only the darkness of the savannah, like a vast black mouth waiting to swallow her.

  She took a pace towards the woman, hands outstretched. She tried to groom her, reaching for the hair on the woman’s head.

  The sharp stick jabbed in her shoulder. Again Shadow was thrown back into the dirt. She poked a finger in her latest wound; blood seeped
slowly from it, soaking her fur. She whimpered in misery. The sharp noses of the cats would soon detect the blood.

  Still the woman stood over her, arms akimbo, stick poised for another thrust.

  Shadow tried to stand. A searing pain clamped around her stomach, making her stumble to the crimson dirt. She cried out, and beat her fists on her betraying belly. She looked up at the threatening, curious woman. She whimpered. She held out her feet, and flexed her toes. Helpless, she was reduced to the gestures of an infant.

  The woman lowered the stick. She crouched down. Clear eyes looked into Shadow’s. She reached out with her hand and stroked Shadow’s fur. She touched the wounded shoulder, and the hand came away bloody; the woman wiped it in the dirt at her feet. Then she ran a curious hand over the bump in Shadow’s belly.

  Again Shadow reached for the woman’s scalp and crotch to groom her. But the woman flinched back.

  Shadow dropped her head, her energy exhausted. She lay in the dirt, on her back, her arms and legs splayed; Shadow was beaten.

  The woman stared at her a while longer. Then she walked away, towards the fire.

  Shadow curled over on her side.

  Something hit her chest. She flinched back.

  It was a piece of meat. It lay on the ground before her. She saw it had been cut from an animal — perhaps an antelope — by a sharp-edged stone. And people had bitten into it already; she saw where it had been ripped and torn by teeth. But still it was meat, a piece as big as her hand. She crammed it into her mouth, tearing at it with hands and teeth.

  When she was done she lay down once more. The ground was hard and dusty, and she longed for the springy platform of a nest. But her arm made a pillow for her head.

  Suspended between black night and the flickering fire light, she sank into redness.

  Reid Malenfant:

  On the walk through the forest with McCann, this oddball English guy, Malenfant got fixated on McCann’s crossbow.

  The crossbow, made purely of wood, was heavy. There was a long underslung trigger that neatly lifted a bowstring out of the notch. The trigger mechanism worked smoothly. The string itself was made of twisted vine, very fine, very strong. But there was no groove to direct the bolt. And the bolts themselves seemed crude to Malenfant: about as long as a pencil, but a lot thinner, and with a flight made from a single leaf, tucked into a slice in the wooden bolt, just one plane. It was hard to see how you could make an accurate shot with such a thing. But as they walked McCann did just that, over and over, apparently pleased to have an audience.

  Nemoto’s silent contempt for all this was obvious. Malenfant didn’t care. His mind was tired of all the strangeness; to play with a gadget for a while was therapy.

  It was getting dark by the time the Englishman led them to a fortress in the jungle. The two of them, bruised and bewildered, were led into the compound, taking in little. Surrounded by a tough-looking stockade, it turned out to be a place of straight lines and right angles, the huts lined up like ranks of soldiers, the line of the stockade walls as perfect as a geometrical demonstration.

  “Shit,” murmured Malenfant. “I can feel my anus clench just standing here.”

  Nemoto said, “They are very frightened, Malenfant. That much is clear.”

  Malenfant glimpsed people moving to and fro in the gathering dark. No, not quite people. He shuddered.

  McCann showed them hospitality, including food and generous draughts of some home-brew beer, thick and strong.

  The hours passed in a blur.

  He found himself in a sod hut, with Nemoto. His bed was a boxy frame containing a mattress of some vegetable fabric. It didn’t look too clean.

  They were both fried. They hadn’t slept in around thirty-six hours. They had been through the landing, the assault by the Erectus types, the march through the jungle. And, frankly, the beer hadn’t helped. At least here, against all expectations, they had found what seemed like a haven. But still Malenfant inspected his lumpy bed suspiciously.

  “I know what to do,” Malenfant said. “Always turn your mattress. Then the body lice have to work their way back up to get to you.” He lifted the corner of his mattress out of its wooden box.

  “I would not do that,” Nemoto said; but it was too late.

  There was the sound of fingernails on wood, a smell like a poultry shed. Cockroaches poured out of the box, a steady stream of them, each the size of a mouse.

  “Shit,” Malenfant said. “There are thousands in there.” He stamped on one, briskly killing it.

  “It’s best to leave them,” Nemoto said evenly. “They have glands on their backs. They only stink when disturbed.”

  Malenfant cautiously picked up a cockroach. Its antenna and palps hung limp, and it had a pale pink band over its head and thorax.

  “Very ancient creatures, Malenfant,” Nemoto said. “You find traces of them in Carboniferous strata, three hundred million years deep.”

  “Doesn’t mean I want to share my bed with one,” Malenfant said. Carefully, as if handling a piece of jewellery, he set the cockroach on the floor. It scuttled out of sight under his bed frame.

  Malenfant finally lowered his head to the pillow.

  “Just think,” Nemoto said from the darkness. “When you sleep with that pillow, you sleep with all the people who used it before.”

  Malenfant thought about that for a while. Then he dumped the pillow on the floor, rolled up his coverall, and stuck that under his head.

  Later than night Malenfant was disturbed by a howl, like a lost child. Peering out, he spotted a small creature high in a palm tree, about the size of a squirrel.

  “A hyrax,” Nemoto murmured. “Close to the common ancestor of elephants, hippos, rhinos, tapirs and horses.”

  “Another ancient critter, crying in the night. I feel like I’ve been lost in this jungle since God was a boy.”

  “I suspect we are very far from God. Try to get some sleep, Malenfant.”

  Shadow:

  Pain stabbed savagely in her lower belly. It awoke her from a crimson dream of teeth and claws. She sat up screaming.

  There was no cat. In the grey-pink light of dawn, she was sitting in the dirt. She was immediately startled to find herself on the ground, and not high in a tree.

  Before her she could see skinny people walking around, pissing, children tumbling sleepily. Some of them turned to stare at her with their oddly flat faces.

  But now more pain came, great waves of it that tore at her as if her whole body was clenched in some huge mouth.

  Something gushed from between her legs. She looked down, parting her fur. She saw bloody water, seeping into the ground. She screamed again.

  She scrabbled at the ground, seeking to find a tree, her mother, seeking to get away from this dreadful, wrenching agony. But the pain came with her. Her belly flexed and convulsed, like huge stones moving around inside her, and she fell back once more.

  Now there was a face over hers: smooth and flat, shadowed against the pinkish sky. Strong hands pressed at her shoulders, pushing her back against the dirt. She lashed out, trying to scratch this creature who was attacking her. But she was feeble, and her blows were easily brushed aside. She could feel more hands on her ankles, prising her legs apart, and she thought of Claw, and screamed again. But the pressure, though gentle, was insistent, and kick as she might she could not free herself of these grasping, controlling hands.

  Now the pain pulsed again, a red surge that overwhelmed her.

  No more than half-conscious, she barely glimpsed what followed: the strong, skilful hands of the Runner women as they levered the baby from its birth canal, fingers clearing a plug of mucus from its mouth, the brisk slicing of the umbilical with a stone axe. All that Shadow perceived was the pain, the way it washed over her over and over, receding at last as the baby was taken from her to be followed by a final agonizing pulse as the afterbirth emerged.

  When it was done, Shadow struggled to prop herself up on her elbows. Her hair was matted
with dust and blood. The ground between her legs was a mess of blood and mucus, drying in the gathering sunlight.

  There were women around her, tall like tree trunks, their shadows long.

  One of them — older, with silvery hair — was holding the afterbirth, which steamed gently. The old woman nibbled at it cautiously, and then, with a glance at Shadow, she ran away towards the smoking fire with her stolen treat.

  The other women stared at Shadow’s face. Their small, protruding noses wrinkled. Now that the greater pain was ebbing, Shadow became aware of an itching that had spread across her cheeks and forehead and nose; she scratched it absently.

  A woman stood before her. She held the baby, her long fingers clamped around its waist. It had large pink ears, small, pursed lips, and wrinkled, bluish-black skin. Its head was swollen, like a pepper. It — he — opened his mouth and wailed.

  He smelled strange.

  The skinny woman thrust the baby at Shadow, letting him drop on her belly. Feebly the baby grasped at her fur, mouth opening and closing with a pop.

  With hesitant hands, Shadow picked him up around the waist. He wriggled feebly. She turned him around so his face was towards her, and pressed his face against her chest. Soon his mouth had found her nipple, and she felt a warm white gush course through her body.

  But the baby smelled wrong. She could hardly bear even to hold him.

  The Running-folk let her stay the rest of the day, and through the night. But they gave her no more food. And when dawn came, they drove her away with stones and yells.

  Her baby clamped to her chest, its big awkward head dangling, Shadow walked unsteadily across the savannah, towards the wooded crater wall.

  Reid Malenfant:

  Malenfant woke to the scent of bacon.

  He surfaced slowly. The smell took him back to Emma and the home they had made in Clear Lake, Houston, and even deeper back than that, to his parents, the sunlit mornings of his childhood.

  But he wasn’t at home, in Clear Lake or anywhere else.

  When he opened his eyes he found walls of smoothed-over turf all around him, a roof of crudely cut planking, the whole covered in a patina of smoke and age. Light streamed in through unglazed windows, just holes cut in the sod covered by animal skin scraped thin. Under the smell of the bacon he could detect the cool green earthy scent of forest.