Origin m-3

by Stephen Baxter

  McCann went to a window — just a hole in the wall, unglazed. He called, “We need water and food. And tell him, Sprigge! Tell your Praisegod Michael we are Englishmen! It will go worse for you if you fail!”

  McCann shook him awake. “We have an invitation to dinner, Malenfant! How jolly exciting.”

  A sullen Zealot had brought them a wooden pail of water. They both inspected this suspiciously; they were ferociously thirsty, but in the dim light diffusing from the window, the water looked cloudy.

  McCann shrugged. “Needs must.” He plunged his hands into the water and scooped up mouthfuls, which he gulped down.

  Malenfant followed suit. The water tasted sour, but it had no odour.

  When they were done they used the rest of the water to wash themselves. Malenfant cleaned dried blood and grit out of wounds on his bare feet, wrists and neck.

  McCann used the water to slick down his hair. He even produced a tie from one jacket pocket and knotted it around his neck. “Impression is everything,” he said to Malenfant. “Outer form. Get that right and the rest follows. Eh?”

  The door was pushed open, its leather hinges creaking. Sprigge walked in, looking as dusty as when they had all walked in from the plains. “You have your wish, gentlemen.” He raised his fist. “But any defiance or dissimulation and you’ll know my wrath.”

  McCann and Malenfant nodded silently.

  They were led out of the hut, into a broad compound. It was raining, and the evening was drawing in. The ground was just red dirt, hard-packed by the passage of human feet. But it was heavily rain-soaked, and Malenfant felt the mud seep between his naked toes.

  People moved between the huts, carrying food and tools or leading children by the hand. They seemed to be humans, but they were small, skinny, stunted folk, dressed in filthy skin rags. There were no lanterns, and the only light inside the huts came from fire hearths.

  McCann murmured to him like a tour guide. “They do not approach us; the authority of this Praisegod Michael of theirs is binding. Look there. I think that hut yonder is a house of ill-fame.”

  “A what?… Oh. A brothel.”

  “Yes, but a brothel stocked with Runners — women and boys, so far as I can tell. There are contradictions here, Malenfant. We have a community run by this Praisegod fellow, seemingly on rigid religious lines. And yet here is a bordello operating openly.”

  The rain grew heavier. The Zealot compound was turning to a muddy swamp. The buildings seemed to slump in defeat, as if sliding back down into the earth from which they had been dragged. And the people, humans. Runners and Hams alike were wan figures, all the same dun colour, images of misery.

  McCann stamped through puddles contemptuously. “These people don’t know what they are doing,” he barked. “We coped rather better. Culverts! Storm drains!” And with broad sweeps of his arms he sketched an ambitious drainage system.

  They were brought to the compound’s central structure, the solid-looking chapel. Well, maybe it really was a chapel; now Malenfant saw it had a narrow spire.

  Sprigge led the two of them along a short, dark hallway. Grilles of tightly interwoven wooden laths were set in the floor. Malenfant glanced down. He thought he saw movement, eyes peering up at him. But the light was uncertain.

  They arrived at a large, bright room. It had neat rectangular windows unglazed, but covered with sheets of what looked like woven and scraped palm leaves, so that they admitted a cool yellow light. Lanterns burned on the walls, each just a stone bowl cupping oil within which a wick floated, burning smokily. At the head of the room was a stone fireplace, impressively constructed from heavy red blocks — perhaps ejecta from the crater field they had crossed. No fire burned beneath the blackened chimney stack, but there was a large, impressive crucifix set over the fireplace. At the other end of the room was a plain altar, set with goblets and plates, all of it carved from wood.

  At the centre of the room was a small, unevenly made, polished wooden table. A man sat behind the table, eating steadily. There were no plates; the man ate bits of fish and meat off what looked like slabs of thick bread.

  The man wore a black robe that swept to the ground, with a napkin thrown over his shoulder. A band of silver-grey hair surrounding a crown that looked shaved, like a tonsure. His narrow face was disfigured by warts.

  This was, presumably, Praisegod Michael. He ignored Malenfant and McCann.

  Behind Praisegod two Ham women stood, backed up against the wall. They were both dressed in modest, all-covering dresses of soft leather, and they kept their eyes on the floor.

  Sprigge nudged McCann, and indicated they should sit on the floor before the table. McCann complied readily enough. Malenfant followed his lead. Sprigge stepped back, and took a station at the corner of the room.

  As Praisegod Michael ate, everybody in the room waited in silence.

  Malenfant couldn’t take his eyes off the food.

  There was a puree of what looked like chicken mixed in with rice and some kind of nuts. An animal like a young piglet, roasted, had been carved and set before Michael, and he picked at its white flesh. Other side dishes included some kind of beans cooked in what smelled like meat stock, and mushrooms in a kind of cream, and a green salad. There was even wine — or anyhow it looked like wine, served in a delicately carved wooden goblet.

  At length Praisegod Michael slowed down. More than half the piglet was left on its serving plate. Michael belched, and mopped his lip with a scrap of cloth.

  Then he looked up, directly into Malenfant’s eyes. Malenfant was jolted by the intensity of his gaze.

  One of the Ham women behind him stepped forward. Malenfant was startled to recognize Julia. With heavy grace she took the unfinished dishes from Michael, and set them on the floor before McCann and Malenfant.

  Malenfant reached straight for the pork, but McCann touched his arm.

  McCann closed his eyes. “For this blessing. Lord, we thank you.”

  Michael watched coldly. Now McCann began to eat, using his fingers to tear at the pork.

  Malenfant followed suit.

  Michael spoke. “Your Ham girl is well-tempered,” he said to Malenfant. His voice was deep, commanding, but his accent was powerfully strange.

  Malenfant said, “She isn’t my anything.”

  McCann said quickly, “She has an even nature, and is wise for a Ham.”

  Michael’s gaze swivelled to McCann. “I know of you, or at least men who speak like you. Once one was brought here.”

  McCann blanched. “Russell. Is he—”

  “He died for his sins.”

  There was a long silence. McCann’s eyes were closed, even as he chewed steadily on the meat. Then he said carefully, “There are only a handful of us — a handful, and Hams and Runners. We have no women, no children. We are weak old men,” he said, looking directly at Michael. “We are no threat to your — umm, your expansion.”

  Michael got out of his chair. Tall, cadaverously thin, his arms clasped before his belly, he walked around the table and studied McCann and Malenfant. “My soldiers will spare them.”

  “They live in God,” McCann said fervently.

  Michael nodded. “Then let them die in God. But you talk of an expansion.”

  McCann said hastily, “I am sorry if—”

  “Whenever anything in this world is exalted, or exalts itself, God will pull it down, for He alone will be exalted,” said Praisegod Michael. His speech was rapid, his delivery flat. He laid his hand on Julia’s flat brow; she did not react. “My language is not of kingdoms and kings, empires and emperors. No king I, but a Protector,” he said.

  McCann was nodding vigorously. “I see that. Yes, I see that. As men we are different — we come from different worlds — but differences between men are as nothing compared to the gulf between men and animals. There are few enough strong men scattered over this world, Praisegod Michael, to shoulder the responsibility.”

  Michael regarded him. “God hath poured this confused
nation from vessel to vessel, until He poured it into my lap. Perhaps it is divine providence that brings you here.”

  McCann smiled. “Providence, by God’s dispensation. Indeed.”

  Praisegod Michael turned to Malenfant. “And what of this one? His eye is defiant, his accent strange. What is your religion, man? Popish? Atheistical?”

  McCann said quickly, “His faith is as strong as mine.”

  Michael smiled thinly. “Then perhaps he will have the courage to say it for himself.” He seemed to come to a decision. “You are right. There are few enough decent men here. But can I trust you?… Tomorrow we hunt. Accompany me, and we will talk further.” He knelt before his altar, his eyes closed.

  Sprigge motioned Malenfant and McCann to follow him out of the room.

  Back in their crude hut, McCann seemed excited. “He is English — that is clear enough — but I would say that his history must have split off from our own no later than our seventeenth century… Perhaps you number your dates differently. Well, it looks as if the Zealots have been here since then. But they seem to have made no significant progress, socially or mechanically, since those days…”

  Malenfant said sourly, “What difference does it make?”

  “We understood each other, Malenfant. Don’t you see? Myself and this Praisegod. His is a faith which has much in common with my own. He spoke of providences. Through providences, you see, God intervenes in the world, to make His will visible. And I have no doubt that Praisegod will count himself among the Elect that is, those who are already destined to be saved — but he has surely been cast in a world of Reprobates, the already damned.” He smiled, and his eyes glinted in the dark. “I understand him. I can do business with this man.”

  Malenfant frowned. “But his ‘business’ seems to be to enslave those he regards as lesser than him.”

  “Ah, but that’s the delicious irony of it all, Malenfant — oh, but I forget, you slept and did not see — I spied a man coming out of the Runner bawdy-house, his trousers dangling around his knees. A more unspeakable wretch you never saw. But I could make out clearly that he had a tail. Malenfant, our grandiloquent Praisegod Michael, the saviour of the world, has a monkey’s tail!”

  After a minute, Malenfant began to laugh. McCann joined in. Once they started, they couldn’t stop.

  Joshua:

  Joshua and Mary, breathing hard, stepped gingerly over crushed branches and uprooted shrubs. They reached the edge of the cliff and peered down. The sky seed still lay where it had fallen, when they had pushed it over the cliff: trapped well below the lip of the cliff, pinned by a ledge and a thick knot of shrubbery.

  Joshua grinned. Every few days he had come clambering up the trail to this battered clearing, to see again what they had done to the sky seed.

  The seed was safe here. The feeble muscles of the Zealots would never succeed in hauling this prize up from such a place — and the Nutcracker-folk, though good climbers, were surely too stupid even to envisage such a thing. Only the People of the Grey Earth, with their brains and powerful bodies, could retrieve the sky seed from where it rested, pinned against the cliff’s grey breast -

  Voices screamed, all around them.

  They whirled, shocked.

  There were only trees and bushes and leaves, some of them shaking violently, as if in a wind, though there was no wind.

  From nowhere a spear flew. It lanced into Joshua’s shoulder, neatly puncturing it through.

  He was knocked back. He fell on the spear. It twisted, and there was savage pain.

  And now something new descended over him, a thing of ropes and threads knotted together, that tangled up his legs and arms and head.

  Leaves and twigs fell away, and suddenly there were people: men, all around them. They were Skinnies. They carried spears and knives that glinted. Still screaming, they threw themselves forward. It had all happened in a heartbeat, overwhelming, bewildering. The Zealots had just melted out of the trees: one instant they were not there, the next they were there, an overwhelming magic beyond Joshua’s experience.

  Their blows and kicks were feeble, but there were many of them, and they clung to Joshua’s limbs while punching his stomach and chest and head. He heard Mary cry out, an angry, fearful roar.

  “…Looks like Tobias was right. A fine old pair we trapped here!”

  “Wrap up yon buck and give us a hand with the maid, will you? She’s struggling like a bear…”

  Joshua lay passively, defeated by shock as much as the spear, peering up at the indifferent sun. He saw that the men had got Mary on the ground, and had ripped open her skins.

  “By the tears of the Lord—”

  “Get her legs. Get her legs.”

  “The buck is for the minister. This one’s for us, eh, lads?”

  “Face like a bear but the tits of an angel. She’s going to take a bit of stilling, though…”

  Joshua came to himself. With a bellow he wrenched himself over, rolling onto his belly. Zealots, yelling, went flying. For a moment he was free of their weight and their blows. But the spear ground into the dirt, opening his wound wider, and he cried out.

  But Joshua’s struggle had distracted Mary’s attackers, and she had got one arm loose. With a fist more massive than any Skinny’s, she pounded at the temple of one of her assailants. Joshua heard the crunch of bone; a Zealot went down.

  “God’s wounds. Peter — Peter!”

  “Get her, lads!—”

  Mary struggled to her feet, her ripped skins swinging, her small breasts glistening with blood. She had her back to the forest. The men, all save the fallen one, made a half-circle to face her, wielding their weapons. Their lust had been replaced by caution, Joshua saw, for even a half-mature Ham girl, if free, was more than a match for any one of the Skinnies.

  But she could not defeat them all.

  With a last, regretful glance at Joshua, she turned and crashed into the trees. Though she made an immense racket, she had soon disappeared, and Joshua knew that the Zealots could not follow her.

  He let his head slump to the blood-soaked ground beneath his face.

  A shadow crossed him. “This is for Peter.”

  A boot hurtled at his face.

  Reid Malenfant:

  The morning after their capture, Malenfant and McCann found their door was not barred, no guard posted.

  They crept out into light still tinged grey with dawn.

  Already the business of the day was starting. Runners and Hams were working silently to sweep the ground clear of yesterday’s debris, and to fill the water casks that sat outside each hut. It was strange to see specimens of Homo neandertalensis and Erectus dressed in crudely sewn parodies of clothing, their heads and bodies strikingly misshapen in the uncertain dawn light, coming and going as they pursued their chores. It was like a mockery of a human township.

  Away from the Zealots, neither Hams nor Runners made any attempt to use human language; they simply got through their work with steady dullness, united in blank misery.

  There was a specialized group of Runners who were used solely to carry passengers. Some of them wore primitive harnesses. But these unfortunates were stooped, with over-developed shoulders and necks, and what looked like permanent curves to their backs. Their shoulders and thighs bore bright red weals.

  Malenfant said, “Look at those scars. These Zealot jockeys don’t spare the whip.”

  McCann grunted, impatient. “Have you much experience in the husbandry of animals, Malenfant? None of them look terribly old, do they? — I would wager that under excessive loading their bodies break down rather rapidly once the flush of youth is over.

  “But the whip is surely necessary. In Africa I knew a man who tried to train elephants. You may know that while your Indian elephant has been tamed by the locals for centuries, your African runs wild. My acquaintance struggled to master his elephants, even though he imported experienced mahouts from India; freedom runs in the blood of those African tuskers, and they are fa
r more intelligent than, say, a horse.”

  “Hence the whip.”

  “Yes. For it is only by severe and strict punishment that such intelligent beasts can be controlled. Even then, of course, you can never be sure; even in India the tamest-looking elephant with a grudge against his mahout may wait years, decades — but he will take his one chance and gore or trample his tormentor, careless of his fate.

  “Now your Runner, who is after all a man, if a different stripe of man, is surely more intelligent than an elephant. Hence, as you say, the whip. And perhaps other practices have been developed. See there — that grizzled, rather bent old chap is tied up to the boy.” The old man and the boy, sitting in the dirt, listless and naked, were attached by tight bonds around their ankles. “If you want to break an animal you will sometimes put him in with an older beast. The tamed creature may prove an example in the work to be done, and so forth. But in addition the young perceives there is no hope, you see, and quits his rebelliousness sooner.”

  Malenfant said, “I don’t understand why these Runners don’t just up and get out of here.”

  McCann pulled his walrus moustache. “These boys have probably been in captivity since they were very young — either born here, or wrest from their dead mothers” arms in the wild. They know nothing else; they cannot imagine freedom. And these wretches could not run off if you turned them free tomorrow. See how they limp the scars on the backs of their ankles? Hamstrung. Perhaps that explains their demeanour of defeat. They are creatures evolved, surely, for one thing above all else — running — and if they cannot run any more, they have no aspiration. Perhaps it is humane to excise the very possibility of escape; believe me, hope harms a creature far more than despair ever did…”

  Praisegod Michael emerged from his chapel-like residence. His black robe flapped about his ankles, heavy, as he walked. He threw his arms wide, loudly sniffing the air. Then he fell to his knees, bowed his head, and began to pray.