Silverhair tm-1

by Stephen Baxter

  Mammoths wander. Few wander as far as Silverhair did, however.

  It took her ten days to cross the Island and return to the northern tundra where her Family was gathered. She was not aware of the way the ground itself shuddered as her feet passed, and the way lemmings were rattled in their winter burrows in the snow. But the rodents were unconcerned, and went about their tiny businesses without interruption. For they knew that the mammoths, the greatest creatures in the land, would do them no harm.

  Silverhair knew that the worst of the winter was over: that time of perpetual night broken only by the occasional flare of the aurora borealis, and of the hard winds from the north that drove snow and ice crystals before them. The return of the sun had been heralded by days in which the darkness was relieved by twilight, when the black star pool above had turned to a dome of glowing purple — purple enriched by swathes of blue, pink, even some flashes of green — before sinking back to darkness again, all without a sliver of sunlight.

  But every day the noon twilights had grown longer and stronger, until at last the sun itself had come peeking over the horizon. At first it was just a splinter of blinding light that quickly disappeared, as if shy. But at last the sun had climbed fully above the horizon for the first time in more than a hundred days.

  In the new light, to the north, she could see the sweep of the Island itself. The tundra was still largely buried in pale snow and ice, with none of the rich marsh green or splashes of flowering color that the growth of summer would bring. And beyond, to the farthest north, she could see the bony faces of the Mountains at the End of the World, looming out of the bluish mist that lingered there, brown cones striped by the great white glaciers that spilled from rocky valleys. The Mountains were a wall of ice and rock beyond which no mammoth had ever ventured.

  Along the south coast of the Island, more sheltered, the oily green-black of a spruce forest clung to the rock. The trees were intruders, encroaching on the ancient tundra that provided Silverhair’s Family with the grassy food they needed.

  Despite her sense of urgency, Silverhair paused frequently to feed. Her trunk was busy and active, like an independent creature, as it worked at the ground. She would wrap her trunk-fingers around the sparse tufts of grass she found under the snow, cramming the dark green goodies into her small mouth, and grind them between her great molar teeth with a back-and-forth movement of her jaw. The grass, the last of the winter, was coarse, dry, and unsatisfying, as was the rest of her diet of twigs and bark of birches, willows, and larches; with a corner of her mind she looked forward to her richer summer feast to come.

  And she would lift her anus flap and pass dung, briskly and efficiently, as mammoths must ten or twelve times a day. The soft brown mass settled to the ice behind her, steaming; it would enrich the soil it touched, and the seeds that had passed through Silverhair’s stomach would germinate and turn the land green.

  The Family had no permanent home. They would gather to migrate to new pastures, or when one of their members was in some difficulty. But they would scatter in pairs or small groups to forage for food during the day, or to sleep at night. There was never any formal arrangement about where to meet again — nor was one necessary, for the mammoths were by far the most massive beasts in the landscape, and the authoritative stomping of Owlheart, and the rumbling and calls of the Family gathered together, traveled — to a mammoth’s ears — from one end of the Island to another.

  On the eighth day a line of white vapor cut across the deep blue sky, utterly straight, feathering slightly. Silverhair peered upward; the vapor trail was at the limit of her poor vision. There was a tiny, glittering form at the head of the vapor line, like a high-flying bird, but its path was unnaturally straight and unwavering, its wings frozen still. A sound like remote thunder drifted down, even though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

  Silverhair had seen such things before. Nobody could tell her what it was, what it meant. After a time, the glittering mote passed out of sight, and the vapor trail slowly dispersed.

  On the ninth day Silverhair was able to hear not just the Matriarch’s stomping, but also the rumbles, trumpets, and growls of her people. The deep voices of mammoths — too deep for human ears — will carry far across the land, unimpeded by grassland, snowbanks, even forest.

  And in the evening of that day, when the wind was right, she could smell home: the rich, hot odor of fresh dung, the musk stink of wet fur.

  On the tenth day she was able to see the others at last. The mammoths, gathered together, were blocky shapes looming out of the blue-tinged fog. Silverhair was something of a loner, but even so, she felt her heart pump, her blood flow warm in her veins, at the thought of greeting the Family.

  Warm at the thought — she admitted it — of seeing Lop-ear once more.

  The mammoths were scraping away thin layers of snow with their feet and tusks to get at the saxifrage buds below. Molting winter fur hung around them in untidy clouds, and she could see how gaunt they were, after a winter spent burning the fat of the long-gone summer. It had been a hard winter, even for this frozen desert, and standing water had been unusually hard to find. Silverhair knew that when the weather lifted — and if the thaw did not come soon — the Matriarch would have to lead them to seek open water. It would be an arduous trek, and there was no guarantee of success, but there might be no choice.

  The Family’s two adult Bulls came to meet her.

  Here was powerful old Eggtusk, his ears ragged from the many battles he had fought, and with the strange egg-shaped ivory growth in his tusk that had given him his name. And here, too, was Lop-ear, the younger Bull, with his dangling, parasite-damaged ear. The Bulls launched into their greeting ceremony, and Silverhair joined in, rumbling and trumpeting, excited despite the shortness of her separation.

  The three mammoths raised their trunks and tails and ran and spun around. They urinated and defecated in a tight ring, their dung merging in a circle of brown warmth on the ground. Old Eggtusk was the clumsiest of the three, of course, but what he lacked in elegance he made up for in his massive enthusiasm.

  Now they touched one another. Silverhair clicked tusks with Eggtusk, and — with more enthusiasm — touched Lop-ear’s face and mouth, wrapping her trunk over his head and rubbing at his scalp hair. She found the musth glands in his cheeks and slowly snaked her trunk across them, reading his subtle chemical language, while he rubbed her forehead; then they pulled back their trunks and entangled them in a tight knot.

  A human observer would have seen only three mammoths dancing in their baffling circles, trumpeting and growling and stomping, even emitting high-pitched, bird-like squeaks with their trunks.

  Perhaps, with patience, she might have deduced some simple patterns: the humming sound that indicated a warning, a roar that was a signal to attack, the whistling that means that one of the Family is injured or in distress.

  But mammoth speech is based not just on the sounds they make — from the ground-shaking stomps and low-pitched rumbles, bellows, trumpets, and growls, to the highest chirrups of their trunks — but also on the complex dances of their bodies, and changes in how they smell or breathe or scratch, even the deep throb of their pulses. All of this makes mammoth speech richer than any human language.

  "…Hello!" Silverhair was calling. "Hello! I’m so glad to see you! Hello!"

  "Silverhair," Eggtusk growled, failing to mask his pleasure at seeing her again. "Last back as usual. By Kilukpuk’s mite-ridden left ear, I swear you’re more Bull than Cow."

  "Oh, Eggtusk, you can’t keep that up." And she laid her trunk over Eggtusk’s head and began to tickle him behind his ear with her delicate trunk-fingers. "Plenty of mites in this ear too."

  He growled in pleasure and shook his head; his hair, matted with mud, moved in great lanks over his eyes. "You won’t be able to run away when you have your own calf. You just bear that in mind. You should be watching and learning from your sister."

  "I know, I know," she said. But she kept
up her tickling, for she knew his scolding wasn’t serious. A new birth was too rare and infrequent an event for anyone to maintain ill-humor for long.

  Rare and infrequent — but not so rare as what she’d seen on the sea, she thought, remembering. "Lop-ear. You’ve got to come with me." She wrapped her trunk around his, and tugged.

  He laughed and flicked back his lifeless ear. "What is it, Silver-hair?"

  "I saw the strangest thing in the sea. To the south, from the headland. It was like an ice floe — but it wasn’t; it was too dark for that. And there were animals on it — or rather inside it — like seals—"

  Lop-ear was watching her fondly. He was a year older than Silverhair. Although he wouldn’t reach his full height until he was forty years old, he was already tall, and his shoulders were broad and strong, his brown eyes like pools of autumn sunlight.

  But Eggtusk snorted. "By Kilukpuk’s snot-crusted nostril, what are you talking about, Silverhair? Why can’t you wander off and find something useful — like nice warm water for us to drink?"

  "The animals were cupped inside the floating thing, for it was hollow, like—" She had no language to describe what she’d seen. So she released Lop-ear’s trunk and ripped a fingerful of trampled grass from the ground. Carefully, sheltering the blades from the wind, she cupped the grass. "Like this!"

  Lop-ear looked puzzled.

  Eggtusk was frowning. "Seals, you say?"

  "But they weren’t seals," she said. "They had four flippers each — or rather, legs — that were stuck out at angles, like broken twigs. And heads, big round heads… You do believe me, don’t you?"

  Eggtusk was serious now. He said, "I don’t like the sound of that. Not one bit."

  Silverhair didn’t understand. "Why not?"

  But now, from the circle of Cows, Foxeye, her sister, cried out.

  Lop-ear pushed Silverhair’s backside gently with his trunk. "Go on, Silverhair. You can’t stay with us Bulls. Your place is with your sister."

  And so Silverhair, with a mix of fascination and reluctance, walked to the center of the Family, where the Cows were gathered around her sister.

  At the heart of the group was massive Owlheart — Silverhair’s grandmother, the Matriarch of them all — and like a shadow behind her was Wolfnose. Wolfnose, Owlheart’s mother, had once been Matriarch, but now she was so old that her name, given her for the sharpness of her sense of smell as a calf, seemed no more than a sad joke.

  Before Owlheart’s tree-trunk legs, a Cow lay on her side on the ground. It was Foxeye, Silverhair’s sister, who was close to birthing.

  Owlheart lifted her great head and fixed Silverhair with a steady, intense glare; for a few heartbeats, Silverhair saw in her the ghost of the patient predator bird after whom the Matriarch had been named. "Silverhair! Where have you been?" She added such a deep rumble to her voice that Silverhair felt her chest quiver.

  "To the headland. I was just—"

  "I don’t care," said Owlheart.

  Given the question, it wasn’t a logical answer. But then, Silverhair reflected, if you’re the Matriarch, you don’t have to be logical.

  Now Snagtooth — Silverhair’s aunt, Owlheart’s daughter — was standing before her. "About time, Silverhair," she snapped, and she spat out a bit of enamel that had broken off the misshapen molar that grew out of the left side of her mouth. Snagtooth was tall for a Cow: big, intimidating, unpredictably angry.

  "Leave me alone, Snagtooth."

  Croptail pushed his way between Snagtooth’s legs to Silverhair. "Silverhair! Silverhair!" Croptail was Foxeye’s first calf. He was a third-molar — on his third set of teeth — born ten years earlier. He was a skinny, uncertain ball of orange hair with a peculiar stub of a tail. Kept away from his mother during this birth, he looked lost and frightened. "I’m hungry, Silverhair." He pushed his mouth into her fur, looking for her nipples.

  Gently she tried to nudge him away. "I can’t feed you, child."

  The little Bull’s voice was plaintive. "But Momma is sick."

  "No, she isn’t. But when she has the new baby, you’ll have to feed yourself. You’ll have to find grass and—"

  Snagtooth was still growling at Silverhair. "…You always were unreliable. My sister would be ashamed."

  Silverhair squared up to her sour-eyed aunt. "Don’t you talk about my mother."

  "I’ll say what I like."

  "It’s only because you can’t have calves of your own, no matter how many Bulls you take. That’s why you’re as bitter as last summer’s bark. Everybody knows it—"

  "Why, you little—"

  Owlheart stepped between them, her great trunk working back and forth. "Are you two Bulls in musth? Snagtooth, take the calf."

  "But she—"

  Owlheart reared up to her full height, and towered over Snagtooth. "Do not question me, daughter. Take him."

  Snagtooth subsided. She dug an impatient trunk into the mat of fur under Silverhair’s belly and pulled out a squealing Croptail.

  At last, Silverhair was able to reach Foxeye. Her sister was lying on her side, her back legs flexing uncomfortably, the swell in her belly obvious. Her fur was muddy and matted with dew and sweat.

  Silverhair entwined her trunk with her sister’s. "I’m sorry I’m so late."

  "Don’t be," said Foxeye weakly. Her small, sharp eyes were, today, brown pools of tears, and the dugs that protruded from the damp, flattened fur over her chest were swollen with milk. "I wish mother were here."

  Silverhair’s grip tightened. "So do I."

  The pregnancy had taken almost two full years. Foxeye’s mate had been a Bull from Lop-ear’s Family — and that, Silverhair thought uneasily, was the last time any of them had seen a mammoth from outside the Family. Foxeye had striven to time her pregnancy so that her calf would be born in the early spring, with a full season of plant growth and feeding ahead of it before the winter closed around them once more. It had been a long, difficult gestation, with Foxeye often falling ill; but at last, it seemed, her day had come.

  The great, stolid legs of Owlheart and Wolfnose stood over Foxeye, and Silverhair felt a huge reassurance that the older Cows were here to help her sister, as they had helped so many mothers before — including her own.

  Foxeye’s legs kicked back, and she cried out.

  Silverhair stepped back, alarmed. "Is it time?"

  Owlheart laid a strong, soothing trunk on Foxeye’s back. "Don’t be afraid, Silverhair. Watch now."

  The muscles of Foxeye’s stomach flexed in great waves. Then, with startling suddenness, it began.

  A pink-purple fetal sac thrust out of Foxeye’s body. The sac was small, streamlined like a seal, and glistening with fluid. As it pushed in great surges from Foxeye’s pink warmth, it looked more like something from the sea, thought Silverhair, than mammoth blood and bone.

  One last heave, and Foxeye expelled the sac. It dropped with a liquid noise to the ground.

  Owlheart stepped forward. With clean, confident swipes of her tusks she began to cut open the fetal sac and strip it away.

  Foxeye shuddered once more. The afterbirth was expelled, a steaming, bloody mass of flesh. Then Foxeye fell back against the hard, cold ground, closing her eyes, her empty belly heaving with deep, exhausted breaths.

  Silverhair watched, fascinated, as the new calf emerged from its sac. The trunk came first, a thin, dark rope. Then came the head, for a moment protruding almost comically from the sac. It was plastered with pale orange hair, soaked with blood and amniotic fluid, and it turned this way and that. Two eyes opened, bright pink disks; then the tiny mouth popped moistly open under the waving trunk.

  "Her eyes," Silverhair said softly.

  Wolfnose, her great-grandmother, was stroking and soothing Foxeye. "What about her eyes?"

  "They’re red."

  "So they should be. Everything is as it should be, as it has been since Kilukpuk birthed her last Calves in the Swamp."

  The baby was a small bundle of blo
ody, matted fur, sprawled on the grass. She breathed with wet sucking noises, and her breath steamed; she let out a thin wail of protest and began to scrabble at the ground with her stumpy legs.

  Owlheart’s trunk tapped Silverhair’s flank. "Help her, child."

  Silverhair stepped forward nervously. She lowered her trunk and wrapped it around the calf’s belly. Her skin was hot, and slick with birthing fluid that was already gathering frost.

  With gentle pulling, Silverhair helped the infant stagger to her feet. The calf looked about blindly, mewling.

  An infant mammoth, at birth, is already three feet tall. A human baby weighs less than the mammoth’s brain.

  "She wants her first suck," Owlheart said softly.

  With gentle tugs Silverhair guided the stumbling infant forward.

  Foxeye knelt, then stood uncertainly, so that her pendulous dugs hung down before the calf. Silverhair slid her trunk under the calf’s chin, and helped the calf roll her tiny trunk onto her forehead. Soon the baby’s pink mouth had found her mother’s nipple.

  "Red eyes," said Foxeye. "Like the rising sun. That’s her name. Sunfire."

  Then Silverhair, with Owlheart and Wolfnose, stood by the calf and mother. They kept the infant warm with their bodies, and used their trunks to clean the baby’s hair as she stood amid the rich hair of her mother’s belly, protected by the palisade of the huge legs around her. After a time Foxeye moved away from the reaching calf, encouraging her to walk after her.

  And as she watched the infant suckle, Silverhair felt an odd pressure in her own empty dugs.

  At the end of the long night, with the deep purple of dawn seeping into the eastern sky, Silverhair broke away from the Cows so she could feed and pass dung.

  Wolfnose came wandering over the uneven tundra.

  Silverhair, moved by an obscure concern, followed her great-grandmother.

  The old Cow, her hair clumpy and matted, tugged fitfully at the trampled grass. But the coordination of her trunk fingers was poor, and the wiry grass blades evaded her. Silverhair could see that even when Wolfnose managed to drag a fingerful from the hard, frozen ground and cram it in her mouth, much of the crushed grass spilled from her mouth, and a greenish juice trickled over her lower lip.