Origin m-3

by Stephen Baxter

  “Why can’t I see it?”

  Nemoto kept her head down. “It’s too far beyond your experience, Malenfant. Or above it. You think of your eyes as little cameras, your ears as microphones, giving you some objective impression of the true world. They are not. Everything you think you see is a kind of virtual-reality projection, based on sensory input, framed by prejudice about what the brain imagines ought to be out there. Remember, we evolved as plain-dwelling hunter-gatherers, and our sensoriums are conditioned to the hundred-mile scale of Earth landscapes. Malenfant, you just aren’t programmed to see—”

  “The scaffolding in the sky.”

  “Whatever it is.”

  “Like the Hams. When we went to the wreck of the Redoubtable. It was as if they couldn’t see it at all.”

  “Do you find the thought disturbing, Malenfant? To find you have the same limitations as Neandertals?”

  “What’s happening, Nemoto? What is coming down on us?”

  “I could not begin even to guess.”

  McCann was standing alone, still weeping.

  As Malenfant approached, McCann used his sleeve to wipe away the dampness on his cheeks, the dribble of mucus that had dangled from his nose. “Malenfant. You bear yourself well. The first Change I witnessed threw me into a cold grue of terror. But you have a stiff back; I could see that about you from the start.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Can’t you see?” And he stabbed a finger at the sky, at the Earth.

  The new Earth.

  The planet was a ball of yellow-white cloud, very bright. It was banded by water-colour streaks of varying colours. There were dark knots in the bands, perhaps giant storms. It reminded Malenfant of nothing so much as spaceprobe images of Jupiter or Saturn. It was a Banded Earth.

  Deep unease settled into his gut. “What happened to the Earth?”

  “Nothing, Malenfant,” Nemoto said, her voice expressionless. “It’s gone. Or rather, we have. The Red Moon has moved on a fresh universe, another of the vast ensemble of possibilities—”

  “And it has taken us with it,” McCann said bitterly. “We have suffered another knight’s move between possibilities. Now do you see why I weep? It is unmanly, perhaps — but now that the Red Moon has moved on from your world, any chance of rescue by your people is gone with it.” He laughed, an ugly sound. “I have seen a whole succession of worlds skip through that dismal sky, Malenfant, each of them as bleak as the last — save only for yours, where I could see the glint of cities on the night side. And then your squat glider came floating down from the sky, and I allowed myself to hope, you see — a fool’s mistake. But now hope is gone, and you are as stranded as I am — both of you — all of us in this Purgatory…”

  Malenfant saw it in that instant; it was as if the world swivelled around him, taking on new, and unwelcome, configurations. The Red Moon had moved on. He was indeed stranded, beyond the reach of any help from those who knew him — stranded in another universe, to which he had somehow been transported.

  In a corner of his mind he wondered if poor impoverished Luna had been restored to the skies of Earth.

  As the light show faded the Hams — the “new shift” — were moving slowly around the stockade, picking up brooms and tools, heading for the huts. Beginning their work.

  Malenfant said, “Why do they come here?”

  McCann held up his hands, plucked at his threadbare jacket. “Look at me. I am old and fat and tired — and at that I am perhaps the best functioning of those who survived the crash of the Redoubtable. And now look at the bar-bars.” He faced Malenfant. “You think I am some slave-keeper. How could I keep these people, if they did not wish to stay? Or — if I keep slaves, where are the children? Where are the old, the lame?” He pointed beyond the gate. “There is a troupe of them out there. We keep up a certain trade, I suppose you’d call it. They sustain this little township with their labour, as you have seen. And in return, there are things we have which they covet: certain foodstuffs — and beer, Malenfant, your bar-bar gentleman likes his beer!”

  Nemoto said levelly to Julia, “Why do you keep these English alive?”

  Julia grinned, showing a row of tombstone teeth. “Tired ol” men,” she said.

  McCann eyed Malenfant ruefully. “Pity, you see; the pity of animals. They saw we had no women or children, that we were slowly dying. They regard us as pets, these Hams. That is what we are reduced to.”

  “And all your talk of educating them in a Christian, umm, Johannen life—”

  “A man does not welcome too much reality…”

  That gate was still open. You’re wasting time, Malenfant.

  He found Julia. She was dressed in her native skins; no trace of her guise as a maid for the English remained. He pointed towards the open gate. He said, “Emma.”

  She nodded.

  He went back to the others. “I’m out of here, McCann. Will you try to stop me?”

  McCann laughed. “What difference does it make now? But what will you do?”

  “What I came to do,” Malenfant said bluntly.

  “Ah — Emma. I wish I had the comfort of such a goal.” McCann looked at Nemoto. “And you, Madam Nemoto? Will you stay with a beaten old man?”

  Nemoto raised her face to the sky; flickering light reflected from her skin. “I will seek answers.”

  “Answers?” McCann snorted. “Of what use are answers? Can you eat answers, sleep under them, use them to ward off the Runners, the Elves?”

  She shrugged. “I am not content to subsist, like you, like these Hams.”

  Malenfant felt reluctant to lose her, even though she had betrayed him. And besides, she was scarcely street-wise: he imagined her dreaming of sheaves of parallel universes as a shaped cobble stove in her skull… “Come with me.”

  She appraised him coolly. “We have always had different agendas, Malenfant.”

  McCann looked from one to the other. Impulsively he said, “I have been sedentary too long. Let me accompany you, Malenfant. I dare say I have a few tricks, born of long experience, which might yet save your hide.”

  Malenfant glanced at Julia, who had no reaction. “What about Crawford and the others?”

  McCann clapped Thomas on his broad shoulder. “I see no reason why our friends should fail to look after three as well as they have looked after four.”

  Thomas nodded curtly.

  Malenfant faced Nemoto. “I hope you find what you are looking for.”

  “I will see you again,” she said.

  “No,” he said, flooded by a sudden certainty. “No, you won’t. We’ll never meet again.”

  She stared at him. Then she turned away.

  Manekatopokanemahedo:

  She was standing on a shining, smooth surface of Adjusted Space, bright yellow, softly warm under her bare feet. Babo and Without-Name still clung to her hands; she released them.

  On the Red Moon, there was no Wind. She relished the luxury of not having to fight against the air’s power, enjoying the ease with which she took each breath.

  Around them were a dozen more people — more exiles from one ruined Farm or another, their symmorphs adorned with a startling variety of colours and stylings of skin and hair — and perhaps a hundred times as many Workers: Workers tall and slim, short and squat, Workers that flew and crawled and rolled and walked. As was customary, the people’s new symmorphs were as close as possible in appearance to the shells they had abandoned on Earth.

  The Mapping had taken account of the different physical conditions. Thus Manekato felt no discomfort as her lungs drank in the thin, oxygen-depleted air of this small world, and her new body would suffer no ill-effects from the relative lack of carbon dioxide. But she had taken care not to engineer out all of the Red Moon’s experiential differences; for if she had there would scarcely be a purpose in coming here at all. Thus the air was cold and damp and laden with a thousand powerful, unfamiliar scents — and thus the lower gravity, just two-thirds o
f Earth’s, tugged only feebly at her limbs.

  Manekato loped through the crowd of gazing people and scuttling Workers. Her gait felt oddly clumsy in the low gravity, as if her muscles were suddenly over powered. The yellow floor was perhaps a hundred paces across. It was a neatly circular disc of Adjusted Space, its smoothness comforting. She reached the rim of the disc. Tiny Workers streamed past her into the green world beyond, recording, interpreting, transmitting.

  Beyond the platform was a wall of forest, concealing a dense green gloom. The trees were tall here: great spindly structures of wood, very different from the ground-hugging species of Wind-blasted Earth. Shadows flitted through that green dark. She thought she saw eyes peering out at her, eyes like a mirror of her own.

  Babo ran past her with a gurgled cry. He ran straight into the forest and clambered into the lowest branches of a tree, clumsily, but with enthusiasm and strength.

  Manekato peered down. In the Moon’s red dust grass grew, sprinkled with small flowers, white and yellow. She leaned forward, supporting her weight on one fist, and touched the grass. The blades were coarse, and other plants and moss crowded around, fighting over each scrap of soil. She saw leaves protruding from beneath the disc, crushed, bent back; some of the living things of this world had already died because of her presence.

  The land here had never been Farmed: not once, not in all the billions of years this world had existed. Even this patch of grass-covered land, where billions of living things fought for life in every scrap, was disturbing, enthralling proof of that.

  In front of the forest fringe she made out a small, brown-furred Worker — no, not a Worker, an animal, its species probably unmodified by conscious design. It had a short, slim body, and four spindly legs; it bent a graceful neck, and a small mouth nibbled at the grass. It moved gracefully, but with a startling slowness, an unhurried languor that contrasted with the frantic scuttling of the people and the Workers. By the look of the genitalia between its back legs its kind must reproduce in a mammalian fashion, rather than be nurtured directly from the ground…

  Nobody had nurtured this creature, she reminded herself; there had been no conscious process. It had been born in blood and pain and mucus, without the supervision of any human, and it found food to sustain its growth in this wild, unmanaged, undisciplined place.

  On her world, there had been no parks or zoos for nine hundred millennia. Though the richness of the ecology was well understood and managed minutely — including the place of people within that ecology — there were no creatures save those that served a conscious purpose, no aspect of nature that was not thought through and controlled. Not so much as a stomach bacterium.

  Manekato had known that this new Moon would be wild, but that its ecology would function none the less. But it was one thing to have a theoretical anticipation and another to be confronted with the fact. She felt as if she had entered the workings of some vast intricate machine, all the more remarkable for lacking a conscious designer or a controlling intelligence.

  Now Babo came hurrying back from the forest. He clutched something in his arms that wriggled sluggishly.

  Babo’s legs were covered in scrapings of green moss, and his hair was dishevelled and dirty. But his eyes were bright, and he was breathing hard. “My arms are strong,” he told his sister. “I can climb. It is as if this body of mine remembers its deepest past, many millions of years lost, even though the trees on Earth are mere wind-blown stubs compared to these mighty pillars…”

  Without-Name asked, “What is it you carry?”

  He held it out carefully. It had a slim body and a small head. Its legs were short and somewhat bowed, but Manekato could see immediately that this creature was designed — no, had evolved — to walk bipedally. It was perhaps half of Babo’s height, and much slimmer.

  “It is a hominid,” she said wonderingly.

  “I found it in the tree,” Babo said. “It is quite strong, but moves slowly. It was easy to catch.”

  Manekato reached to touch the creature’s face.

  The hominid whipped its head sideways and sank its teeth into Manekato’s finger.

  Manekato fell back with a small cry. Miniature Workers in her bloodstream caused the ripped flesh to close immediately.

  “Ha!” the creature yelled. “Elf strong Elf good hurt stupid Ham hah!”

  This jabber meant nothing to Manekato.

  Without-Name took the creature from an unresisting Babo. She held it up by its head. Dangling, the hominid hooted and thrashed, scratching at Manekato’s arm with its legs and fists, but its motions; were slow and feeble.

  With a single, harsh motion Without-Name crushed the hominid’s skull. The body shuddered once, and was limp. Without-Name let the body fall to the ground, its head a bloody pulp. A Worker scuttled close and swept up the tiny corpse.

  Babo looked at Without-Name, his face empty of expression.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “There was no mind,” said Without-Name. “There was no utility. Therefore there was no right to life. I have been dispossessed by this Moon. I will not rest until I have made the Moon my possession in turn.”

  Manekato suppressed her anger. “We did not come here to kill. We came to learn to learn and negotiate.”

  Without-Name spat a gobbet of thick phlegm out onto the grass. “We all have our reasons to be here, Manekatopokanemahedo. You follow the foolish dreams of the Astrologers. I am a Farmer.”

  “And,” Manekato said slowly, “is that your ambition here? To subdue a new world, to turn it all into your dominion?”

  “What higher ambition could there be?”

  “But we have yet to find those who moved this world. They were more powerful than these blades of grass, that wretched hominid. Remember that, Renemenagota, when you boast of what you will conquer.”

  Now Manekato saw that two burly Workers had brought another hominid for their inspection. It was taller, heavier than the last, but it was scrawny, filthy, hollow-eyed.

  Again Without-Name picked up the specimen by its skull and lifted it easily off the ground. The creature cried and struggled, clearly in distress, but its movements were still more sluggish than the first’s, and it made no attempt to injure Without-Name.

  “Let it go,” Manekato said evenly.

  Without-Name studied her. “You are not of my Lineage. You do not have authority over me.”

  “Look at it, Renemenagota. It is wearing clothes.”

  Babo breathed deeply. “Do it,” he said. “Or I will have the Workers stop you. I have the authority for that, nameless one, thanks to the Astrologers you despise.”

  Without-Name growled her protest. But she released the hominid, which fell into a heap on the floor, and stalked away.

  Manekato and Babo huddled over the hominid. It had curled into a foetal position; as gently as they could they turned it on its back and prised open its limbs.

  “I think it is female,” Babo said. “Its head is badly bruised, as is its neck, and it struggles to breathe. Without-Name has damaged it.”

  “Perhaps the Workers can repair it.”

  The hominid coughed and struggled to sit up. Babo helped it with a lift from a powerful hand.

  “My name,” the hominid said, “is Nemoto.”

  Shadow:

  The antelope had got separated from its herd. It was running awkwardly, perhaps hampered by age or injury.

  With fluid grace, the lion leapt onto the antelope’s back, forcing it to the ground in a cloud of crimson dust. The antelope kicked and struggled, its back and haunches already horribly ripped. Then the lion inflicted a final, almost graceful bite to its throat. As its blood poured onto the dust of the savannah, Shadow saw surprise in the antelope’s eyes.

  More lions came loping up to feed.

  Shadow remained huddled behind her rock — exposed on the open savannah, but downwind of the kill. She kept her baby quiet by cradling its big, deformed head tightly against her stomach.

  T
he lions pushed their faces into the fallen antelope’s carcass, digging into the entrails and the easily accessible meat of the fleshy areas. Soon their muzzles were crimson with blood, and their growls of contentment were loud. Shadow was overwhelmed by the iron stink of blood, and the sharp burning scent of the lion’s fur — and by hunger; her mouth pooled with saliva.

  Her face itched, and she scratched it.

  At last the lions” purring growls receded.

  Already more scavengers were approaching the carcass. Hyenas loped hungrily towards it in a jostling pack, and overhead the first bats were wheeling, huge carrion-eating bats, their wings black stripes against the sky.

  And, from the crater’s wooded rim, people emerged: Elf-folk like Shadow, men, women and infants, melting out of the green shelter of the woods, their black pelts stark against the green and crimson of the plain. They eyed the carcass hungrily, and they carried sticks and cobbles.

  But the hyenas were hungry too, and in a moment they were on the antelope, burying their muzzles inside the great rips made by the lions” jaws, already fighting amongst-themselves. Their lithe bodies clustered over the carcass, tails high in the air, from a distance like maggots working a wound.

  The people moved in, yelling and waving their sticks and throwing their stones. Some of the dogs were hit by hurled cobbles. One man, a squat, manic creature with one eye closed by a huge scar, got close enough to pound one animal with a fat branch, causing the dog to yelp and stumble. But the dogs did not back away. A few of them tore themselves away from the meat long enough to rush at the hominids, barking and snapping, before hurling themselves back into the feast. Most simply ignored the people, gouging out as much meat as they could before being forced away by a dog bigger and stronger.

  So it went, a web of complex but unconscious calculations: each hyena’s dilemma over whether to attack the hominids, or whether to gamble that another dog would, leaving it free to take more meat; the hominids” estimation of the strength and determination of the hyenas versus their own hunger and the value of the meat.