Icebones

by Stephen Baxter

  All around her there were hills, great clumps of them, grouped into chains like the wrinkles of an ancient mammoth. But the mountains were eroded to a weary smoothness, and they were extensively punctured and smashed by younger, smaller craters.

  Thunder, his listening skills developing all the time, said he thought that around the central basin there were — not the single chain of rim mountains that surrounded most craters — five concentric rings of mountains, vast ripples in the rock thrown up by the giant primordial splash. Lacing through these rim-mountain chains were vast, shallow channels, apparently cut by water in the deep past. The channels themselves were covered in crater punctures, or pierced by sharper, litter-filled channels.

  Around Icebones, the Family was rooting desultorily at the unpromising, hummocky ground. Icebones felt an unreasonable stab of impatience with this little group of gaunt, helpless mammoths.

  She thought of the Clan gatherings Silverhair had told her of, when Families and bachelor herds would congregate on great green-waving steppes, so many mammoths they turned the air golden with their shining hair, and for days on end they would talk and fight and mate...

  But such gatherings had been even before Silverhair's time. This starving group was perhaps the only true mammoths in half a world, and Icebones knew she had no choice but to accept her lot.

  Boaster rumbled softly, still waiting for her reply.

  "It is a very old land, Boaster," she said at last. "And, like an old mammoth, it is ill-tempered when disturbed."

  It is an old world, I think, much disturbed by the Lost.

  But now Thunder was calling, his voice a deep uncomfortable growl.

  "I must go. Graze well, Boaster."

  And you, little Icebones...

  Thunder was standing on a slight rise, staring to the south, trunk raised. She saw that wind, blowing from that direction, was ruffling the hair around his face. "Can you taste it?"

  Peering south, she made out a hard black line that spread right along the horizon, separating the crimson land from the purple sky. The wind touched her face. It was harsh and gritty. She raised her trunk, exposing its sensitive tip. When she put the tip in her mouth she could taste iron.

  "Dust," she said. "Like the storm in the Gouge."

  "Yes. It is a storm, and it carries a vast cloud of dust. And it is coming toward us."

  Icebones felt her strength dissipate, like water running into the dust. No more, she thought: we have endured enough.

  "You are alert, Thunder. We rely on your senses."

  But this time her praise made little impact, for his worry was profound.

  THE LIGHT GREW MUDDLED, as if the day itself was confused. Gradually the wind picked up, blustering in their faces and whipping dust devils before it.

  The storm front grew into a towering hall, a curtain that was deep crimson-black at its base and a wispy pink-gray at the top, hanging from the sky like the guard hairs of some vast mammoth. Icebones could hear the crack and grumble of thunder, and the ragged wisps at the top of the sheet of air whipped and churned angrily. It was an awesome display of raw power.

  Icebones had decided that the mammoths should not try to move. They were already badly weakened by hunger and thirst and cold. She tried to ensure they rested, gathering their energy, just as the storm did.

  The mammoths had nothing to say to each other. They merely stood, bruised, dismayed, waiting for the storm to break on them.

  There was a moment of stillness. Even the wind died briefly. Icebones could see her own shadow at her feet.

  When she looked up she could see the sun. It shone fitfully through veils of black cloud and dust that raced across the sky, churning and thrashing.

  And then the sun vanished, and the air exploded.

  Gusts as hard as rock battered at Icebones's face and legs and neck, and the dust they carried scoured mercilessly at her hair and exposed flesh. It was as if she was in a bubble inside the dust, a bubble that was flying sideways through the air. The sun showed only in glimpses between tall, scudding clouds, and lightning crackled far above her, casting deep purple glows through layers of cloud and dust.

  She was immersed in vast layers of noise: the crack of thunder, the howl of the air over the rock, the relentless scraping of the dust. Her sound impressions broke up into chaotic shards. She lost her deep mammoth's sense of the land, and she felt lost, bewildered.

  And — unlike the storm they had endured in the Gouge — this wind was dry, as dry as the dust it carried, and it seemed to suck the moisture from her blood.

  The mammoths were around her, and she felt the tension of their muscles as they fought the storm. But she knew she was burning her last reserves of strength just to stay standing against the pressure of the wind.

  Autumn was beside her, trumpeting: "It will take half a day for this storm to wash over us, for it stretches deep into the southern lands."

  "I did not imagine it could be so bad. If we stay here our bones will be worn to dust..."

  "We must find shelter." That was Thunder, his Bull's growl almost lost in the howl of the air. "There is a crater rim, some way to the south."

  "We must try," Icebones said. "But how will we find it?"

  "The storm comes from the south. If we head into it, we will find our ridge."

  Autumn rumbled, "It is hard enough just to stand. To walk into that horror—"

  "Nevertheless we must," Icebones said. "Thunder, you go first. The next in line grab his tail. If anyone loses hold we stop immediately. Thunder, you will not have to lead for long. We will take turns."

  Thunder said, "I will endure—"

  "We will do it the way I say. And be wary of the blood weed." Trying to project confidence, she trumpeted, "Let us begin. Let's go, let's go..."

  To break their huddled formation, to expose themselves to the wind, was hard. No matter how she tucked her trunk under her face, no matter how tightly she squeezed shut her eyes, still the dust lashed at her as if it was a living thing, malevolent, determined to injure. The calf was deeply unhappy, trumpeting his discomfort into the wind, continually trying to push his way back under his mother's guard hairs.

  As if from a vast distance she heard Thunder's thin, readying trumpet cry.

  A few heartbeats later, Spiral began to move, her steady footsteps determined, her buttocks swaying. At the end of the line, Icebones, keeping a careful hold on Spiral's tail, followed behind.

  They walked into howling darkness. Icebones could tell nothing of the land around her, smell nothing but the harsh iron tang of the dust that clogged her nostrils and mouth. It was a shameful, selfish relief to shelter behind Spiral's huge bulk.

  Spiral stopped abruptly. Icebones's head rammed into her thighs.

  Icebones felt her way along the line to sniff out the problem.

  It was the calf. Wailing, terrified, Woodsmoke had slumped to the ground.

  With much cajoling and lifting by the strong trunks of Autumn and Icebones, Woodsmoke finally got to his feet. But Icebones could feel how uncertain his legs were, as weak as if he was a newborn again.

  They managed only a few more steps before the calf collapsed once more.

  Icebones had the mammoths form up into a wedge shape facing the storm, with one of the adults at the apex, and the calf and his mother sheltered at the rear.

  "His strength is gone, Icebones," Breeze cried through the storm's noise. "He is hungry and thirsty and I have no milk to give him. We must stay here with him until the storm is over."

  "But," Thunder growled, "we cannot stay here. This foul dust sucks the last moisture out of my body."

  "We can't stay and we can't go on," Spiral said. "What must we do, Matriarch?"

  Battered by the storm's violence, blinded, deafened, her own strength wearing down, Icebones knew how she must answer. And she knew that she must test her new Family's resolve as it had not been tested before.

  ...But I am just Icebones, she thought desperately. I am little more than a c
alf myself. Who am I to inflict such pain on these patient, loyal, suffering mammoths? How do I know this is right? Oh, Silverhair, if only you were here!

  But her mother was not here. And her course was clear. She was Matriarch. And, like generations of Matriarchs before her, she reached into the Cycle, the ancient wisdom of mammoths who had learned to survive.

  "Autumn, Thunder — do you think we could reach the crater rim, if not for the calf?"

  Thunder seemed baffled. "But we have the calf—"

  "Just tell me."

  "Yes. We are strong enough for that, Matriarch."

  Icebones said gravely, "The mammoth dies, but mammoths live on."

  Spiral understood first. She wailed, "Do you see what this monster is saying? She wants us to abandon the calf. We must go to the crater rim, and save ourselves, while he dies alone in the storm. Alone."

  "No!" Breeze wrapped her trunk around her fallen calf.

  Autumn spoke, and there was a huge, impressive sadness in her voice. "Daughter, you can bear other calves. Others who will grow strong, and continue the Family... You are more important than Woodsmoke, because of those other calves."

  "Kilukpuk will care for him," said Icebones. "If a mammoth dies young, it is easy for him to throw off his coat of earth, and to play in the light of the aurora..."

  "There is no aurora here," Spiral said bleakly.

  "Would you sacrifice him, Icebones?" Breeze trumpeted. "Would you, mother, if this was your calf?"

  The moment stretched, the tension between the mammoths palpable.

  This was the crux, Icebones knew. And Autumn was the key. If Autumn maintained her resolve, then they would abandon the calf, and go on. And if she did not, they would all die, here in this screaming storm.

  Autumn sighed, a deep rumble that carried through the storm. "No," she said at last. "No, I could not abandon my calf."

  And Icebones, with a deep, failing regret, knew they were lost.

  Breeze clutched her calf, and her sister came close, both of them stroking and reassuring the calf as best they could.

  "I am sorry," Autumn said, huddling close to Icebones. "I did not have the strength. It is hard to be mammoth."

  "Yes. Yes, it is hard."

  "We have been toys of the Lost too long..."

  "Let us huddle. Perhaps we will defeat this storm yet."

  But she knew that wasn't possible. And, from the tense, subdued postures of Autumn and Thunder beside her, she sensed they knew it too.

  The continent-sized dust storm continued, relentless, cruel, oblivious to the mammoths' despair.

  THE DUST CLOGGED HER TRUNK and mouth, until she was as dry as a corpse. And still the storm went on, so dense she no longer knew if it was day or night. Perhaps she even slept a while, exhausted, her body battling the storm without her conscious control. I tried, Silverhair. But they just weren't ready to be a Family — a true Family, able to face the hard truths as well as they easy ones...

  No. I was not ready. I have failed.

  But it hardly mattered now. After a few days, when they were reduced to scoured-clean bones, nobody would ever know what happened here.

  She felt a new, hard form beside her. She turned sluggishly, trying to lift her trunk.

  She sensed a stocky body, hair that was dense and slick, crimson against the storm's dark light.

  "You are Cold-As-Sky," she said, her voice thick with dust.

  The other did not reply.

  "There is no water here."

  "No," said the Ice Mammoth, her voice somehow clear through the storm. "This land is very old. Even the deep-buried ice has sublimated away."

  "But you live."

  "But I live. I carry water in my throat, and in a hump on my back, enough to let me survive the longest dust storm."

  "My trunk is clogged," Icebones said softly. "All I can taste is dust. Cousin, give me water."

  Cold-As-Sky ignored her. "This is the truth of this world. This is how it was before the Lost came here. The planet itself is trying to kill you now. You are meant to die. Jut as we were meant to die. Did you know that?"

  Icebones did not reply, wishing only that Cold-As-Sky would leave her alone with her blackness and despair.

  But Cold-As-Sky went on, "It is true. The first of us who awoke found that all the world was like this high, broken plain. There were no soft green things, no pockets of thick wet air to clog the lungs... Only the clean rock and the red sky. And the only water was buried deep in the dust, where it should lie, where it is safe.

  "And we were the only living things. We Ice Mammoths, and the blood weed, and the air trees, and the spider-flowers.

  "Many calves died, gasping for air as they were born. But we endured. Slowly the trees made the air thicker, and slowly the spider-flowers captured the water. And we Ice Mammoths dug ancient water out of the ground, and broke up the rock with our tusks, and made the red dust rich with our dung.

  "You call yourself a Matriarch. I was born knowing that word. And I was born knowing that we had no Matriarch to teach us, to show us how to dig the roots of the breathing trees, or to drink the blood of the weed. We had to learn it all, learn for ourselves. And every scrap of wisdom was earned at the cost of a life. What do you think of that? Where is your Kilukpuk now?"

  Icebones, enduring, said nothing; the Ice Mammoth's voice, low and harsh, was like the voice of the engulfing storm itself.

  "The Lost were already here, huddling in caves. They had shining beetles that dug and crawled and crushed rock, and a great tusk in the sky that burned channels into the ground. But we were more important than any of that. We knew it. That is why the Lost made us, and put us here. We broke the land for them. And we had many calves, and we spread—"

  "And you changed the world," said Icebones.

  "Yes," Cold-As-Sky said bitterly. "Our tusks and our dung made the land ready for creatures like you, with your green plants we could not eat, and your thick wet air we could not even breathe... And with every scrap of land that was changed there was a little less room left for us. Many died — the old and the very young first — and each year there are fewer calves than the last..."

  "I am sorry."

  "You do not understand," Cold-As-Sky said bleakly. "It was our destiny to die. To make the land, and then die away, leaving it for you.

  "But then the Lost flew off into the sky in their shining seeds.

  "The green things started to blacken and die. The ponds of murky water sank back into the ground and froze over. The ancient cold returned. The dust was freed, and the world-spanning storms began again. And we touched each other's mouths, and tasted hope for the first time in memory."

  "And that is why we are dying," Icebones said.

  "This is not your land. If you live, I die."

  "We are Cousins, Calves of Kilukpuk," Icebones growled. "You know the Oath. Every mammoth is born with the Oath, just as she is born knowing the name of Kilukpuk, and the tongue she taught us. And so you know that if the Oath is broken, the dream of Kilukpuk will die at last... But enough. I am weary. I have come far, Cousin, and I am ready to die, if I must. Leave me."

  And, as the dust swirled around her, it seemed she drifted into blankness once more, as if letting go of her hold on the world's tail.

  But then something probed at her mouth: a trunk, strong, leathery, cold. And water trickled into her throat.

  She sucked at the trunk, like a calf at her mother's breast. The water, ice cold, washed away the dust that had caked over her tongue.

  But then, though her thirst still raged, she pushed the trunk away. "The calf," she gasped.

  She sensed the vast bulk of the Ice Mammoth move off into the howling storm, seeking Woodsmoke.

  5

  The Footfall

  ICEBONES BREASTED A RIDGE, exhausted, her shoulder a clear icicle of pain. She paused at the crest.

  She saw that they had reached a place where the land descended sharply. A new vista opened up before her: a landscape sunk de
ep beneath the level of this high, broken plain. Within huge concentric systems of rock, she saw a puddle of green and water-blue.

  It was a tremendous crater. It was the Footfall of Kilukpuk.

  And, even from this high vantage, still suspended in the thin air, Icebones could hear the call of mammoths.

  Eagerly, her breath a rattle in her throat, she walked on, step by painful step.

  THE FAMILY CLIMBED DOWN through crumpled, eroded rim mountains.

  On the horizon Icebones made out complex purple shadows that must be the rim walls on the far side of this great crater. They seemed impossibly far away. And the wall systems were extensively damaged. In one place a fire mountain towered from beyond the horizon, a vast, flat cone. The rim mountains before it were broken, as if rivers of rock had long ago washed them away and flooded stretches of the central plain. Further to the east the rim mountains were pierced by giant notches. They were valleys, perhaps, cut by immense floods. Everything here was ancient, Icebones realized: ancient and remade, over and over.

  Plodding steadily, the mammoths left the terrain of the rim mountains. They reached a belt of land around the central basin itself, a hard red-black rock, folded and wrinkled into ridges and gullies and stubby isolated mesas.

  Icebones could hear the broken song of the ground beneath her, feel the deep shattering it had endured, deep beyond the limits of her perception. But since it had formed, this ancient scar tissue had been crumpled and folded and eroded. Every rocky protrusion was carved and shaped by wind and rain, and dust was everywhere, heaped up against the larger rocks and ridges.

  But even here they found stands of grass and struggling herbs and trees, and shallow ponds which were not frozen all the way to their base. Already the bony rockscape over which they had struggled for so long, with its killer weed and breathing trees and distorted, resentful Ice Mammoths, seemed a foul dream, and the habitual ache in Icebones's chest began to fade.