Origin m-3

by Stephen Baxter

  She sighed. “Could I see the vegetarian menu?”

  Scarhead just stared at her.

  No smart-ass H sap jokes, Emma; today you’re a Neandertal, remember?

  She kept trying. She worked the knife into the meat until she had exposed the tendons beneath the shoulder. The meat, cold and slippery against her legs, was purple-red and marbled with fat; it was coldly dead, and yet so obviously, recently attached to something alive.

  Turning the stone tool in her hand, she sought to find the sharpest edge. She managed to insert her blade into the joint and sawed at — the tough ligaments, scraping them until they gave, like tough bits of rope.

  Scarhead grunted.

  Surprised, she raised her hand. The tool’s edge had cut into her flesh, causing long straight-line gashes that neatly paralleled the lifeline on her palm. She hadn’t even felt the cuts happen — but then the blade on a stone knife could be sharper than a metal scalpel; it could slide right into you and you’d never know it. She saw belatedly that Scarhead’s working hand was wrapped in a hunk of thick, toughened animal skin, and a kind of apron was draped over his lap.

  …And now the pain hit, sharp and deep like a series of paper cuts, and she yowled. She went to a stream to drench her cut palm in cold water until the slow bleeding had stopped.

  Scarhead waited patiently for her, no expression she could read on his broad, battered face.

  You aren’t doing too well here, Emma.

  She tried again. She spread a skin apron over her lap, and improvised a protective binding for her hand from a bit of tough leather. Then she resumed her work at the ligaments and tendons.

  Think about the work, Emma. Think about the feel of the stone,. listen to the rasp of the tendons, smell the coagulated blood; feel the sun on your head, listen to the steady breathing of Scarhead…

  She reached bone. Her axe scraped against the hard surface, almost jarring from her hand. She pulled the axe back and turned it over, exposing fresh edge, and began to dig deeper into the joint, seeking more tendon to cut.

  A last tough bit of gristle gave way, and the leg disarticulated.

  She stared, oddly fascinated, at the bone joints. Even Malenfant, who had never shown the slightest interest in biology, might have been interested at this bit of natural engineering, if he had gotten to take it apart in his own hands.

  And she was still analysing. Wrong.

  She glanced up at Scarhead. Not watching her, apparently immersed in the work, he had begun to fillet the meat from the shoulder joint he was holding. Emulating his actions, she did the same. She dug her blade into the gap between meat and bone, cutting the muscle that was attached to the bone surface. She soon found the easiest way was to prop the scapula on the ground between her legs, and pull at the muscle with one hand to expose the joint, which she cut with the other hand. She got into a rhythm of turning the axe in her hand, to keep exposing fresh edge.

  She tried not to think about anything — not Earth, Malenfant, the wind wall, the destiny of mankind, her own fate — nothing but the feel of the sun, the meat in her hand, the scrape of stone on bone.

  For brief moments, as the hypnotic rhythms of the butchery tugged at her mind, she got it.

  It was as if she was no longer the little viewpoint camera stuck behind her eyes; it was as if her consciousness had dispersed, so that she was her working hands, or spread even further to her tool, the flesh and bone she worked, and the trails and bits of forest and scrub and the crater walls and the migrating herds and all the other details of this scrap of the world, a scrap inhabited by the Hams, unchanging, for generation upon generation upon generation.

  …Her hands had finished the butchery. On one side of her, a flensed shoulder bone; on the other, a neat stack of filleted meat.

  She looked into cavernous eyes, feeling the sun’s heat, feeling the pleasurable ache of her arms and hands. She forgot the name she had given him, forgot her own name, forgot herself in his deep stare.

  Shadows beside her. It was Joshua, and Julia… No, no names; these people simply were who they were, everybody in their world knew them, without the need for labels. She took their hands and let herself be raised to her feet.

  The Hams led her up the hillside, away from the caves, towards the place where the unnatural wind moaned.

  It was not like a dream; it was too detailed for that. She felt the sharpness of every grain of red dust under her feet, the lick of the air on her cheeks, the salty prickle of sweat on her brow and neck, the sharp, almost pleasant ache of her cut palm. It was as if a veil had been removed from her eyes, stops from her ears and nose, so that the colours were vivid and alive — red earth, green vegetation, blue sky — and the sounds were clear, grainy, loud, their footsteps crunching into the earth, the hiss of wind over the scrubby grass that clung to these upper slopes. It was like being a child again, she thought, a child on a crisp summer’s Saturday morning, when the day was too long for its end to be imagined, the world too absorbing to be analysed.

  Was this how it was to be a Neandertal? If so, how — enviable.

  They had reached the crest of the crater-rim hill. They began to walk forward, in a line, hand in hand.

  That wall of air spread across the land before her, a cylinder so wide it looked flat. She felt a lick of wind, touching her cheek, disturbing her hair, the first prickle of dust on her skin. She dropped her head, concealing her Homo sap protruding chin, and walked steadily on. She concentrated on the sun, the texture of the ground, the bloody iron scent of the dusty air.

  Anything but the wind.

  They went into the dust. She walked steadily, between her Ham friends, immersed in crimson light. She was ten paces inside the dust. Then fifteen, past her previous record. Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two…

  Maybe it was the counting. Hams did not count.

  The wind hit her like a train.

  Her hands were wrenched from the Hams” grip. She was lifted up off the ground, flipped on her back, and slammed down again.

  The light dimmed to a dull Venusian red. Suddenly she couldn’t see Julia or Joshua, nothing but a horizontal hail of dust particles and bits of rock, looming out of infinity as if she were looking into a tunnel. If she turned her head into the wind she could barely breathe.

  Another gust — she was rolled over — she scrabbled at the ground. And then she was lifted up, up into the air, limbs flailing, like a cow caught by a Midwest tornado. She was immersed in a shell of whirling dust; she couldn’t see ground or sky, couldn’t tell how far away the ground was, couldn’t even tell which way up she was. But she could tell she was falling.

  She screamed, but her cry was snatched away. “Malenfant!—”

  She was on her back. She could feel that much. But there was no wind: no hot buffeting gusts at her face, no sting of grit on her exposed skin. Nothing but a remote howl.

  She opened her eyes.

  She was looking up into a dark tunnel, like gazing up from the depths of a well, towards a circle of cloud-scattered blue sky. The light was odd, greyish-red, as if shadowed. Was she back in the caves? She tried to sit up. Pain lanced through her back and stomach.

  A face loomed above her, silhouetted by the patch of bright sky, backlit by diffuse grey light. “Take it easy. We don’t think any bones are broken. But you are cut and bruised and badly winded. You may be concussed.” The face was thin, capped by a splash of untidy black hair. Emma stared at an oddly jutting chin, weak cheekbones, an absurd bubble skull with loose scraps of hair. It was a woman’s face.

  It came into focus. A human woman.

  The woman frowned. “Do you understand me?”

  When she tried to speak Emma found her mouth full of dust. She coughed, spat, and tried again. “Yes.”

  “You must be Emma Malenfant.”

  “Stoney,” Emma corrected automatically. “As if it makes a difference now.” She saw the woman was wearing a faded blue coverall, scuffed and much-repaired, with a NASA meatball logo on her c
hest. “You’re Nemoto. Malenfant’s companion.”

  Nemoto regarded her gravely, and with a start Emma recognized for the first time the Oriental cast of her features. A lesson, she thought wryly. Compared to the distance between humans and other hominids, the gap between our races really is so small as to be unnoticeable.

  “…Malenfant is dead,” she said hesitantly. “I’m sorry.”

  She thought she saw hope die, just a little, in Nemoto’s blank, narrowing eyes.

  “I don’t know how well you knew him. I—”

  “We have much to discuss, Emma Stoney.”

  “Yes. Yes, we do.”

  Nemoto slid an arm under Emma’s back and helped Emma sit up. Everything worked, more or less. But her belly and back felt like one immense bruise, and she was having trouble breathing.

  She was sitting on crimson dirt. A few paces away from her, waiting patiently, she saw Joshua and Julia. She grinned at them, and Julia gave her an oddly human wave back.

  Beyond them was strangeness.

  A yellow floor sprawled over the ground — seamless and smooth, obviously artificial. There were buildings on this floor, rounded structures the same colour and apparently made of the same material, as if they had grown seamlessly from out of the floor, as if the whole thing was a sculpture of half-melted Cheddar cheese.

  Hominids were moving among the structures. They walked on feet and knuckles, big and bulky, too remote for her to make out details. Like gorillas, she thought, like the creature she had seen leaving the Zealot stockade with the ragtag army. Could they be Daemons?

  She looked over her shoulder. She saw that wall of wind, streaked with dirt and ripped-up vegetation. But now she could see how it curved inwards, around her confining her here, not excluding her. And when she looked up it stretched into the sky, making a twisting, slowly writhing tunnel.

  She was inside the twister.

  “Ha!” she said, and she punched the air. “Fooled “em, by God.”

  Nemoto was frowning. There was an edge about her, a tension that seemed wound tight. “It was not like that. You did not ‘fool’ anybody. The Daemons watched your approach. They watched as you plastered clay on your face and butchered your meat—”

  “How did they watch me?”

  Nemoto waved at the air. “They can see what they like, go wherever they want to, at a gesture. They call it Mapping.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Nemoto leaned down, thrusting her face at Emma, anger sparking. “Your efforts to deceive them were comical. Embarrassing. They could not have succeeded. It was me, Emma Stoney. I was the one who practised deceit in the end; I convinced them to admit you. I tried to spin your absurd stunt into an act of true cognition. I told them that deceit is a sign of a certain level of intelligence. But I said you were aware of the shallowness of your deceit. You intended to demonstrate an ability to bluff and counter-bluff, thus showing multiple levels of cognition which—”

  Emma raised a hand. “I think I get it.” Holding Nemoto’s hand, she pulled herself to her feet. “I wish I could say I was so smart. Intentionally, anyhow. Umm, I guess it’s appropriate to thank you.”

  She heard heavy footsteps. She turned.

  One of the gorilla-things was coming towards her. It — no, she, she had breasts — she walked using her knuckles. But she moved fast, more than a walk: it was a knuckle-sprint, a knuckle-gallop, startlingly fast for such a huge animal.

  The creature must have been eight feet tall. The ground seemed to shake.

  Emma felt Nemoto’s hand slide into hers. “Show no fear. Her name is Manekato, or Mane. She will not harm you.”

  The Daemon stood before Emma. She straightened up, her massive black-haired bulk towering, and her hands descended on Emma’s shoulders, powerful, heavy, human like. Emma felt overwhelmed by weight, solidity, the powerful rank stench of chest-hair. She raised her hands and pressed against that black chest, pushing with all her strength against the surging muscle. Effortlessly, it seemed, the Daemon pressed closer, bringing her shining black face close to Emma’s. The mouth opened, and Emma glimpsed a pink cavern and tongue, two huge spike-like upper canines, and smelled a breath sweet as milk.

  Two ears swivelled towards Emma, like little radar dishes.

  Then the Daemon backed off, dropping to rest her weight on her knuckles once more. She growled and hooted.

  Nemoto was smiling thinly. “That was English. You will get used to her pronunciation. Mane asks, What is it you want?”

  “Tell her I want—”

  “Tell her yourself, Emma Stoney.”

  Emma faced Manekato, gazed into deep brown gorilla eyes. “I’ve come here looking for answers.” She waved a hand. “Don’t you see the damage you cause?”

  Mane frowned, a distinctly puzzled expression, and she peered at Nemoto, as if seeking clarification there. Just as with the Hams, Emma had the distinct and uncomfortable feeling that she wasn’t even asking the right questions.

  Again Nemoto had to translate for Emma. “You think we made this. The engine that moved the world. Child, the Old Ones are far above us — so far they are as distant from me as from you. Do you not understand that?”

  Emma shuddered. But she said belligerently, “I just want to know what is going on.”

  This time, Emma made out Mane’s guttural words for herself. “We hoped you could tell us.”

  That first night, Emma stayed in the shelter the Daemons had given Nemoto despite Nemoto’s obvious reluctance to share. A second bed was “grown” inside the little shelter’s main room for Emma, fully equipped with mattress, pillow and sheets; the gorilla-thing called Mane apologized to Emma for the crowding, but promised a place of her own by the next night.

  Unlike the rounded, quasi-organic feel of the other structures on the disc floor, Nemoto’s residence was a boxy design with rectangular doors and windows, giving it a very human feel. But, like the other structures, it seemed to have grown from the smooth, oddly warm, bright yellow substrate. It was as if the whole place was a seamless chunk of pepper-yellow plastic that had popped out of some vast mould.

  But the Daemons had provided for Nemoto well. She had a bed with a soft mattress and sheets of some smooth fabric. She was given fruit and meat to eat; she even had a box the size of a microwave oven, with pretty much the same function. There were spigots for hot and cold water, a bathroom with a toilet that flushed.

  Holiday Inn it wasn’t, but it was close enough, Emma thought, in the circumstances. Nemoto said the flush toilet, for instance, had taken a couple of prototypes to get right.

  None of this had anything to do with the way the Daemons lived their lives. They seemed to have no desire for privacy.when defecating or urinating, for instance; they just let go wherever they happened to be, making sure they didn’t splash the food. The magic floor absorbed the waste, no doubt recycling it for some useful purpose, and would even dispel odours. The Daemons, though, were understanding, or at least tolerant, of Nemoto’s biological and cultural hang ups.

  Anyhow it suited Emma fine.

  There were sanitary towels. Emma fell on these and stole as many as she could carry away.

  There was coffee (or a facsimile).

  There was a shower.

  She luxuriated in her first hot wash for months, using soap and shampoo that didn’t smell as if it had come oozing straight out of the bark of a tree. At first the water just ran black-red at her feet, as if every pore on her body was laden with crimson dirt. By the time she had washed out her hair two, three times, it began to feel like her hair again. She cleaned out the black grime from beneath her fingernails. She looked around for a razor, but could find none; so she used one of her stone blades, purloined from a Neandertal community many miles away, to work at her armpits.

  Towelling herself dry, Emma stood by the window of Nemoto’s little chalet, peering out at the Daemons” encampment.

  Feeling oddly like a primatologist in a hide, she watched little knots of the
huge gorilla-like creatures knuckle-walking to and fro. H. superior or not, they all looked alike, for God’s sake. And little cartoon robots buzzed everywhere, rolling, hopping and flying. She had to remind herself that these really were creatures capable of flying between worlds, of putting on a light show in the sky to shame the aurora borealis, of growing a city in the jungle.

  But as she watched, one of the “gorillas” flickered out of existence, reappearing a few minutes later on the other side of the compound.

  At that moment Emma knew, deep in her gut, that there was indeed nothing primitive about these shambling, knuckle-walking, hairy slabs of muscle, despite her Homo sap prejudices.

  And it made it still more terrifying that it was not the Daemons who were responsible for moving the Moon, but another order of creatures beyond even them. She felt that she was at the bottom of a hierarchy of power and knowledge, unimaginably tall.

  She hit her first soft pillow in months. Emma spent twelve hours in deep, dreamless sleep.

  When she hauled herself out of bed the next day, Nemoto made her brunch (French toast, by God). But Nemoto was largely silent, volunteering little of her experiences here.

  Emma, in turn, resented this silence. After all Nemoto had spent a good deal of time with Malenfant — most of his last few months alive, in fact, when Emma had been about as far from him as she could be. But Emma wasn’t about to beg for scraps of information about her own damn husband.

  I am not, Emma thought, going to get along easily with this woman.

  Manekato came visiting. She crouched to get her eight-feet-tall bulk inside Nemoto’s shelter, then sat squat on the floor, a gorilla in a too-small cage. Her accent was thick, her voice a Barry White growl. But when she spoke slowly, Emma found she understood her.

  Manekato said, “You have talked. Nemoto has shared with you what she has learned.”

  Nemoto and Emma shared a glance.

  Emma said, “Actually, no.”

  Mane slapped her huge thigh, apparently in frustration. “You are the same species! You are alone here, far from home! Why can you not cooperate?”