Origin m-3

by Stephen Baxter

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

  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 colour remarkably bright, marked by the pale green of vegetation clumps. The horizon of this small world curved noticeably, a smeared band of muddy grey. 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 remember 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 grey, 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.

  “It is a new Earth,” Babo said thinly. “So we have completed a transition, riding this rogue Red Moon. How interesting.”

  “Yes.” She clutched her brother’s hands. Despite his cool words, he was trembling. “And now we are truly of this world, Babo.”

  It was true. For Banded Earth, Manekato’s Earth, had gone.

  Emma Stoney:

  With Joshua, Mary and Julia, Emma walked south, towards the place where — as the Hams put it — the wind touched the ground.

  Emma was pretty much toughened up by now. So long as she avoided leg ulcers, or getting tangled up in lianas or bramble, and the snakes and the multitude of insects that seemed to target any bare flesh like heat-seeking missiles, she was able to maintain a steady plod, covering miles and miles each day, across desert or semi-scrub or savannah or even through denser forest.

  The Hams had more trouble. Their sheer strength vastly exceeded her own, but long-distance walking was alien to their physiques. They looked awkward as they barrelled along, and after a couple of days she could see how they suffered aches in the hips and knees of their bow legs, and the low arches of their great flat feet. Also, she suspected, such sedentary creatures as these must suffer a deeper disturbance as they dragged themselves across the landscape, far from any settled community. But, though they moaned wordlessly and rubbed at the offending parts of their anatomies, they never complained, not to her or each other.

  The days were long and hot, and the nights, spent under the crudest of lean-tos, cold and cruelly uncomfortable. The Hams seemed capable of sleeping wherever they lay down, their great muscled bodies tensed and hard even in their sleep, like marble sculptures. But Emma had to work hard to get settled, with bits of parachute silk wrapped around her, and socks and vests bundled into a ball under her head.

  Much of this stuff was Malenfant’s.

  She had forced herself to take everything from him that might prove useful, even the little lens that had found its way from her hands to his. It wasn’t sentiment — sentiment would have driven her to bury the stuff with him — but a question of seeking advantages that might prolong her own survival. Not that there was much left, even though Malenfant had come to this Red Moon as part of a purposeful expedition, unlike her own helpless tumble through the Wheel. Idiot, Malenfant.

  Anyhow, each night she immersed her face in the ragged bits of Malenfant’s clothing, seeking the last traces of his scent.

  Day after day, they walked. The Hams never wavered in their course, each clumsy step directed by a wordless navigation.

  It occurred to Emma to wonder how people who moved house less often than empires rose and fell on Earth were able to find their way across such challenging distances. She tried to discuss this with Julia. But Julia was unforthcoming. She shrugged her mighty shoulders. “Lon” time. People come, people go. This way, tha’. See?”

  No, Emma didn’t see. But maybe it was something to do with their long Neandertal timescales — far longer than any human.

  The Hams, squatting in their caves and huts, made nothing like the seasonal or annual congregations associated with human communities. But there had to be occasional contacts even so, for example when outlying hunting parties crossed each other’s paths, or maybe when a group was forced to move by some natural disaster, a cave flood or a land slip.

  And such was the static nature of the Ham world that even very occasional contacts — not even once a generation — would suffice to keep you up to date. Once you knew that Uncle Fred and Aunt Wilma lived in those limestone caves two days” hike west of here, you could be absolutely sure that they would always be there. And so, over generations, bit by bit, from one small clue after another, the Hams and their forefathers built up a kind of map of the world around them. The Ham world was a place of geological solidity, the locations of their communities as anchored as the positions of mountains and rocks and streams, shifting only with the slow adjustments of climate.

  It was an oddly comforting world-view, filled with a certain calm and order: where nothing ever changed much, but where each person had her own place in the sun, along with every rock and stream. But it wasn’t a human world-view. People rooted like trees… Though she struggled to understand, it was beyond her imagination.

  And of course she might be quite wrong. Maybe the Hams worked on infra-sound like the elephants, or on telepathy, or astral projection. She didn’t know, and as Julia was unable to answer questions Emma was barely able to frame, she guessed she never was going to know.

  And anyhow, after the first few days” walk, the direction they were all travelling became obvious even to her. Far to the south a column of darkness reached up to the sky: not quite straight, with a sinuous, almost graceful curve. It was a permanent storm, tamed, presumably, by some advanced technology she couldn’t even guess at.

  It was, of course, the fortress of Homo superior, whoever and whatever they were.

  The Hams plodded on, apparently unaffected by this vision. But when the twister’s howling began to be audible, banishing the deep silences of the night, Emma found it hard to keep up her courage.

  The weeping came to her in the night.

  Or in the morning when she woke, sometimes from dreams in which she fled to an alternate universe where she still had him with her.

  Or, unexpectedly, during the day as they walked or rested, as something — the slither of a reptile, the chirp of an insect, the way the sunlight fell on a leaf — reminded her unaccountably of him.

  She knew was grieving. She had seen it in others; she knew the symptoms. It wasn’t so much that she was managing to function despite her grief; rather, she thought, this unlikely project to go challenge Homo superior was something to occupy the surface of her mind, while the darker currents mixed and merged beneath. Therapy, self-prescribed.

  The Hams seemed to understand grief. So they should, she thought bleakly; their lives were harder than any human’s she had known, brief lives immersed in loss and pain. But they did not try to soothe her or, God forbid, cheer her up.

  There is no consolation, they seemed to be telling her. The Hams had no illusion of afterlife or redemption or hope. It was as if they were vastly mature, ancient, calm, compared to self-deluding mayfly humans, and they seemed to give her something of their great stolid strength.

  And so she endured, day by day, step by step, approaching the base of that snake of twisting air.

  It didn’t surprise Emma at all when the Hams, with the accuracy of expert map readers, walked out of the desert and straight into an inhabited community.

  It was a system of caves, carved in what looked like limestone, in the eroded rim wall of what appeared to be a broad crater. The upper slopes were coated thinly by tough grass or heather, but the sheltered lower valleys were wooded. And the crater was at the very bottom of that huge captive twister, which howled continually, as if seeking to be free.

  As she approached she made out the bulky forms of Hams, wrapped in their typical skin sheets, coming an
d going from scattered cave mouths that spread high up the hillsides.

  Emma could see the advantages of the site. The cave mouths were mostly north facing, which would maximize the sunlight they captured and shelter them from the prevailing winds. She suspected the elevated position of the caves was a plus too. Maybe the migration paths of herd animals came this way. Hams preferred not to have to go too far to find their food; sitting in their caves, gazing out over the broken landscape around the crater, all they would have to do was wait for their food supply to come their way.

  …But that wind snake curled into the air above their heads, strange, inexplicable, filling the air with its noise — even if it didn’t disturb so much as a dust grain. You’d think it would bother the Hams. She saw no sign that it did.

  Emma and her companions walked to the foot of the crater wall, and began to clamber up. The adults glanced down at their approach, but turned away, incurious.

  The first person who showed any interest in them was a child: stark naked, a greasy bundle of muscle and fat no more than three years old, with one finger lodged in his cavernous nostril. This little boy stared relentlessly at Emma and followed her, but at a safe distance of a yard or so; if she tried to get closer he backed away rapidly until his buffer of safety was restored. Ham children were much more like human children than their adult counterparts. But Ham kids grew fast; soon they lost the open wonder of youth, and settled into the comfortable, stultifying conservatism of adulthood.

  She stepped into the mouth of the largest cave. The noise of the whirlwind was diminished. The sun was bright behind them, and Emma, dazzled, peered into the gloom.

  The walls were softened and eroded, as if streaked with butter. There was a powerful stink of meat, coming from haunches and skins stacked at the back of the cave. The place was not designed for the convenience of people, she saw; the roof was so low in places that the Hams had to duck to pass, and crude lumps of rock stuck out awkwardly from the walls and floor. She recognized the usual pattern of Ham occupation: a floor strewn thick with trampled-down debris, an irregular patchwork of hearths. The roof was coated with soot from innumerable fires, and the walls at head height and below were worn away and blackened by the touch of bodies, generation on generation of them. This place had been lived in a long time.