Stephen Baxter - Icebones

Icebones

v 3.0

Icebones

Stephen Baxter

To David and Sarah Oliver and Colin Pillinger and the Beagle 2 team

Prologue

There is a flat, sharp, close horizon, a plain of dust and rocks. The

rocks are carved by the wind. Everything is stained rust brown, like dried

blood, the shadows long and sharp.

This is not Earth.

Though the sun is rising, the sky above is still speckled with stars. And

in the east there is a morning star: steady, brilliant, its delicate

blue-white distinct against the violet wash of the dawn. Sharp-eyed creatures

might see that this is a double star; a faint silver-gray companion circles

close to its blue master.

The sun continues to strengthen. Now it is an elliptical patch of yellow

light, suspended in a brown sky. But the sun looks small, feeble; this seems a

cold, remote place. As the dawn progresses the dust suspended in the air

scatters the light and suffuses everything with a pale, salmon hue.

At last the gathering light masks the moons. Two of them.

On this world, a single large ocean spans much of the northern

hemisphere. There are smaller lakes and seas: many of them circular, confined

within craters, linked by rivers and canals. Much of the land is covered by

dark green forest and by broad, sweeping grasslands and steppe.

But ice is gathering at the poles. The oceans and lakes are crawling back

into ancient underground aquifers.

The grip of ice persisted for billions of years. Now it comes again.

Soon the air itself will start to snow out.

This is the Sky Steppe.

This is Mars.

The time is three thousand years after the birth of Christ.

The rocky land rings to the calls of the mammoths. But there is no human

to hear them.

Part 1: Mountain

The Story of the Language of Kilukpuk

This is a story Kilukpuk told Silverhair, at the end of her life. All

this happened a long time ago, long before mammoths came to this place, which

we call the Sky Steppe. It is a story of Kilukpuk herself, the Matriarch of

Matriarchs, who was born in a burrow in the time of the Reptiles. But at the

time of this story the Reptiles were long gone, and the world was young and

warm and empty.

Kilukpuk had been alive for a very long time. She had become so huge that

her body had sunk into the ground, turning it into a Swamp within which she

dwelled.

But she had a womb as fertile as the sea. And every year she bore Calves.

Kilukpuk was concerned that her Calves were foolish.

Now, in those days, no Calves could talk. Oh, they made noises: chirps

and barks and rumbles and snores and trumpets, just as Calves will make today.

But what the Calves chattered to each other didn't mean anything. They made

the noises in play, or without thinking, or from pain or joy.

Kilukpuk decided to change this.

One year Kilukpuk bore three Calves.

As they suckled at her mighty dugs, she took each of them aside. She

said, "If you want to suckle, you must make this sound." And she made the

suckling cry. And then, when the Calves were no longer hungry, she pushed them

away.

The next day all the Calves were hungry again, and Kilukpuk waited in her

Swamp.

The first Calf was silent, for she had forgotten the cry Kilukpuk taught

her. And so she received no milk.

And she died.

The second Calf made the suckling cry, but made many other noises

besides, for she thought that the cry was as meaningless as any other chatter.

And so she received no milk.

And she died.

The third Calf, observing the fate of her sisters, made the suckling cry

correctly. And Kilukpuk gathered her to her teat, and suckled her, and that

Calf lived to grow strong.

When she grew up, that Calf had three Calves of her own. And all of them

were born knowing the suckling cry.

Now Kilukpuk gathered the three Calves of her Calf. She said, "If you

ever lose your mother, you must make this sound." And she made the lost cry.

And then she pushed the Calves away.

A few days later, the playful Calves lost their mother-as Calves will-and

Kilukpuk waited in her Swamp.

The first Calf was silent, for she had forgotten the cry Kilukpuk taught

her. And so she stayed lost, and the wolves got her.

And she died.

The second Calf made the lost cry, but made many other noises besides,

for she thought that the cry was as meaningless as any other chatter. And so

she stayed lost, and the wolves got her.

And she died.

The third Calf, observing the fate of her sisters, made the lost cry

correctly. And Kilukpuk gathered her up in her trunk and delivered her to her

mother, who suckled her, and that Calf lived to grow strong.

And when she grew up, that Calf had three Calves of her own. And all of

them were born knowing the suckling cry, and the lost cry.

And the next generation of Calves was born knowing the suckling cry, and

the lost cry, and the "Let's go" rumble.

And the next generation after that was born knowing the suckling cry, and

the lost cry, and the "Let's go" rumble, and the contact rumble.

And so it went, as Kilukpuk instructed each new generation. Calves who

learned the new calls were bound tightly together, and Kilukpuk's Family grew

stronger.

Calves who did not learn the new calls died. And still Kilukpuk's Family

grew stronger.

That is how the language of mammoths and their Cousins came about. And

that is why every new Calf is born with the language of Kilukpuk in her head.

Yes, it was cruel, and Kilukpuk mourned every one of those Calves who

died. But it is the truth.

The Cycle is the wisdom of uncounted generations of mammoths. Nothing in

there is false. For if it had been false, it would have been removed.

Just as the foolish Calves who would not learn were removed, by death.

1

The Awakening

Icebones was cold.

She was trapped in chill darkness. She couldn't feel her legs, her tail,

even her trunk. She could hear nothing, see nothing.

She tried to call out to her mother, Silverhair, by rumbling, trumpeting,

stamping. She couldn't even do that. It was like being immersed in thick cold

mud.

And the cold was deep, deeper than she had ever known, soaking into the

core of her body, reaching the warm center under her layers of hair and fat

and flesh and bone, the core heat every mammoth had to protect, all her life.

Perhaps this was the aurora, where mammoths believed their souls rose

when they died.

...But, she thought resentfully, she was only fifteen years old. She had

never mated, never borne a calf. How could she have died?

Besides, much was wrong. The aurora was full of light, but there was no

light here. The aurora was full of the scent of growing grass, but there was

no scent here.

And things were changing.

She had been-asleep-and now she was awake. That had changed.

She recalled a time before this darkness, when she had been with

Silverhair. They had walked across the cold steppe of the Island, surrounded

by the Lost and their incomprehensible gadgetry, perturbed and yet not harmed

by them. She recalled what her mother had been saying: "You will be a

Matriarch some day, little Icebones. You will be the greatest of them all. But

responsibility will lie heavily on you..." Icebones hadn't understood.

With her mother, then on the Island. Now here. Change. A time asleep.

Now, awake in the dark. Change, change, change.

Everyone knew that in the aurora nothing changed. In the aurora mammoths

gathered in the calm warm presence of Kilukpuk, immersed in Family, and there

was no day or night, no hunger or thirst, no I: merely a continual, endless

moment of belonging.

This was not the aurora. I am not dead, she realized. My long walk

continues.

But with life came hope and fear, and dread settled on her.

She made the lost cry, like a calf. But she couldn't even hear that.

Thunder cracked. Light flashed in sharp lines above and below her. She

felt a shuddering, deep in her belly, as if the ground itself was stirring.

She tried to retreat, to rumble her alarm, but still she could not move.

The close darkness receded. Great hard sheets of blackness, like dark

ice, fell away. She was suddenly immersed in pink-red light.

And now the feeling returned to her legs and trunk, belly and back, all

in a rush. It was like being drenched suddenly in ice water. She staggered,

her legs stiff and remote. She tried to trumpet, but her trunk was heavy, and

a thick, briny liquid gushed out of it, like sea water.

When her nostrils were clear she took a deep, shuddering breath. The air

was cold and sharp-and thin. It made her gasp, hurting her raw lungs. Her weak

eyes prickled, suddenly streaming with salty water. But she rejoiced, for she

was whole again, immersed in her body, and the world.

But it was not the world she had known.

The sky was pink, like a dawn, or a sunset.

She was standing on a shallow slope. She ran her soft trunk tip over the

ground. It was hard smooth rock, blue-red. Its surface was rippled and lobed,

as if it had melted and refrozen.

This broad plain of rock descended as far as she could see, all the way

to the horizon. She must be standing on the flank of a giant mountain, she

thought. She turned to look up toward the summit, and she saw a great pillar

of black smoke thrusting up to the sky, billows caught in their motion as if

frozen.

Her patch of rock, soiled by her watery vomit, was surrounded by sheets

of dense blackness that lay on the ground. When she touched this black stuff,

she found it was hard and cold and lacking in scent and taste, quite unlike

the rock in its chilling smoothness. And the sheets had sharp, straight edges.

It was the crust of darkness that had contained her when she had woken from

her strange Sleep, and it filled her with renewed dread.

She stepped reluctantly over the smooth black sheets, until she had

reached the comparative comfort of the solid rock. But the rock's lobes and

ridges were hard under her feet, and every time she took a step she had a

strange, dream-like sensation of floating.

Nothing grew here: no herbs, no trees. There was nothing to eat, not so

much as a blade of grass.

The air stank of smoke and sulfur. The sun was small and dim and

shrunken. The ground shuddered, as if some immense beast buried there were

snoring softly in its sleep.

I am in a strange place indeed, she thought. Her brief euphoria

evaporated, and disorientation and fear returned.

A contact rumble reached her, resonating deep in her belly. She was not

alone: relief flooded her.

She turned sharply. Pain prickled in her knees and back and neck, and in

the pads of her feet.

A mammoth was approaching-a Bull, taller than she was.

As he walked his powerful shoulders rose and fell, and his head nodded

and swayed, his trunk a tangible weight that pulled at his neck. His underfur

was light brown, but yellow-white around his rump and belly. His tough

overlying guard hairs were much darker, nearly black on his rump and flanks,

but shading to a deep brown flecked with crimson on his forequarters. The

hairs that dangled from his trunk and chin and feet were paler, in places

almost white. His tusks curled before him, heavy and proud. He walked slowly,

languidly, as if dazed or ill.

She could see him only dimly, through air laden with mist and smoke. But

she could smell the deep warmth of his layered hair, feel the steady press of

his footsteps against the hard ground.

He was mammuthus primigenius: a woolly mammoth, as she was.

She didn't know him.

The two of them began to growl and stomp, facing each other and turning

away, touching tusks and trunks, even emitting high, bird-like chirrups from

their trunks. The moist pink tip of his trunk reached out and explored her

mouth, scalp and eyes. She ran her own trunk fingers through his long guard

hairs, finding the woolly underfur beneath.

In this way, touching and singing and listening and smelling, the two

mammoths shared a complex, rich exchange of information.

"...Who are you? Where are you from?"

"My name is Icebones-"

"Do you know where the food is? We're all hungry here."

She stumbled back, confused. He was hard to understand, his sounds and

postures and gestures a distortion of the language she was used to, as if he

had come from a different Clan, not related to her own. And his manner was

strange-eager, clumsy, more befitting a callow calf than a grown Bull.

She realized immediately, He is frightened.

Discreetly she probed the area of his temple between his eyes and his

small ears where he would secrete musth fluid, if it was his time. But she

found nothing.

"I don't know anything about food."

He growled. "But you came out of that." He probed at the black sheets

around her.

She didn't know what to say to him.

Baffled, disturbed, she stepped forward, ignoring the continuing

stiffness in her legs, and walked down the featureless slope. The Bull

followed her, demanding food noisily, like a calf pursuing his mother.

She reached a shallow ridge. She paused there, raised her trunk and

sniffed, studying the world.

She saw how this Mountain's tremendous shadow spilled across the rocky

plains below. Looking beyond the shadow to where the land was still sunlit,

she saw splashes of gray-green-the steppe, perhaps, or forest. And beyond that

she saw the broad shoulders of two more vast, shallow mountains, pushing above

the horizon, mighty twins of the Mountain under her feet, made gray and

colorless by distance and mist. Close to the horizon thin clouds glowed,

bright blue, stark against the pink sky.

There was a moon in the sky. But it was not the Moon, which had floated

above the night lands of the Island. This moon was a small white disc, and it

was climbing into the smoky sky as she watched-visibly moving, moment by

moment, with a strange, disturbing speed. As it climbed, approaching the sun,

it turned into a crescent, a cup of darkness, that finally disappeared.

And then the moon's shadow passed over the sun itself, a dark spot like a

passing cloud.

Icebones cringed.

With her deep mammoth's senses she could hear the songs of the planet:

the growl of earthquakes and volcanoes, the howl of wind and thunder, the

angry surge of ocean storms, all the noises of earth, air, fire and water. And

she could tell that this world was small, round, hard-and strange.

She raised her trunk higher, trying to smell mammoths, her Family,

Silverhair. She could smell nothing but the stink of sulfur and ash.

Wherever she was, however she had got here, she was far from her Family.

Without her Family she was incomplete-for a mammoth Cow could no more live

apart from her Family than a trunk or leg or tusk could survive if cut off the

body.

The Bull continued to pursue her.

She turned on him. "Why are you following me? I am not in oestrus. Can't

you tell that? And you are not in musth."

His eyes gleamed, amber pebbles in pits of wrinkled skin. "What is

oestrus? What is musth?"

She growled. "My name is Icebones. What is your name? Where is your

bachelor herd?"

"Do you know where the food is? Please, I am very hungry."

She came closer to him, curiosity warring with her anger and confusion.

She explored his face with her trunk. How could he know so little? How could

he not have a name?

And-where was she? This strange place of pink mountains was like nowhere

she had ever heard of, nowhere spoken of even in the Cycle, the mammoths'

great and ancient body of lore...

Nowhere, except one place.

"The Sky Steppe. That's where we are, isn't it?" The Sky Steppe, the

Island in the sky where-according to the Cycle-mammoths would one day find a

world of their own, far from the predations and cruelty of the Lost, a world

of calm and plenty.

But this place of barren rock and smoky air didn't seem so plentiful to

her, nor was it calm.

The Bull ignored her questions. "I'm hungry," he repeated.

She turned her back on him deliberately.

She heard him grunt and snort, the soft uncertain pads of his footsteps

recede. She felt relief-then renewed anxiety.

I'm hungry too, she realized. And I'm thirsty. And, after all, the

strange, infuriating Bull was the only mammoth she had seen here.

She turned. His broad back, long guard hairs shining, was still visible

over a blue-black ridge that poked like a bone out of the hard ground.

She hurried after him.

Walking was difficult. The hard ground crumpled into folds, as if it had

once flowed like congealing ice, and great gullies had been raked out of the

side of the Mountain.

Her strength seemed sapped. She struggled to climb the ridges, and

slithered on her splayed feet down slopes where she could not get a purchase.

The air was smoky and thin, and her chest heaved at it.

She found a gully that was roofed over by a layer of rock. She probed

with brief curiosity into a kind of cave, much taller than she was, that

receded into the darkness like a vast nostril. Perhaps all the gullies here

had once been long tubular caves like this, but their rocky roofs had

collapsed.

In one place the ground had cracked open, like burned skin, and steam

billowed. Mud, gray and liquid, boiled inside the crack, and it built up tall,

skinny vents, like trunks sticking out of the ground. The air around the mud

pool was hot and dense with smoke and ash, making it even harder to draw a

breath.

Grit settled on her eyes, making them weep. She longed for the soft earth

of the Island in summer, for grass and herbs and bushes.

But the Bull was striding on, his gait still languidly slow to her eyes.

He was confident, used to the vagaries of the ground where she was uncertain,

healthy and strong where she still felt stiff and disoriented. She hurried

after him.

And now, as she came over a last ridge, she saw that he had joined a

group of mammoths.

They were all Cows, she saw instantly. She felt a surge of relief to see

a Family here-even if it was not her Family. She hurried forward, trumpeting a

greeting.

They turned, sniffing the air. The mammoths stood close together, and the

wind made their long guard hairs swirl around them in a single wave, like a

curtain of falling water.

There were three young-looking Cows, so similar they must have been

sisters. One appeared to be carrying a calf: her belly was heavy and low, and

her dugs were swollen. An older Cow might have been their mother-her posture

was tense and uncertain-and a still older Cow, moving stiffly as if her bones

ached, might be her mother, grandmother to the sisters-and so, surely, the

Matriarch of the Family. Icebones thought they all seemed agitated, uncertain.

Icebones watched as the Cow she had tagged as the mother lumbered over to

the Bull and cuffed his scalp affectionately with her trunk... And the mother

towered over the Bull.

That didn't make sense, Icebones thought, bewildered. Adult Bulls were

taller than Cows. This Bull had been much taller than Icebones, and Icebones,

at fifteen years old, was nearly her full adult height. So how could this

older Cow tower over him as if he was a calf?

There was one more Cow here, Icebones saw now, standing a little way away

from the clustered Family. This Cow was different. Her hair was very fine-so

fine that in places Icebones could see her skin, which was pale gray, mottled

pink. Her tusks were short and straight, lacking the usual curling sweep of

mammoth tusks, and her ears were large and floppy.

This Cow was staring straight at Icebones as she approached, her trunk

held high as she sniffed the air. Her posture was hard and still, as if she

were a musth Bull challenging a younger rival.

"I am Icebones," she said.

The others did not reply. She walked forward.

The mammoths seemed to grow taller and taller, their legs extending like

shadows cast by a setting sun, until they loomed over her, as if she too was

reduced to the dimensions of a calf.

Icebones felt reluctant, increasingly nervous. Must everything be strange

here?

She approached the grandmother. Though she too was much taller than

Icebones, this old one's hair was discolored black and gray and her head was

lean, the skin and hair sunken around her eyes and temples, so that the shape

of the skull was clearly visible. Icebones reached out and slipped her trunk

into the grandmother's mouth, and tasted staleness and blood. She is very old,

Icebones realized with dismay.

She said, "You are the Matriarch. My Matriarch is Silverhair. But my

Family is far from here..."

"Matriarch," said the grandmother. "Family." She gazed at Icebones.

"Silverhair. These are old words, words buried deep in our heads, our bellies.

I am no Matriarch, child."

Icebones was confused. "Every Family has a Matriarch."

The grandmother growled. "This is my daughter. These are her children,

these three Cows. And this one carries a calf of her own-another generation,

if I live to see it... But we are not a Family." She sneezed, her limp trunk

flexing, and bloodstained mucus splashed over the rock at her feet.

Icebones shrank back. "I never heard of mammoths without names, a Family

that wasn't a Family, Cows without a Matriarch."

One of the three tall sisters approached Icebones curiously. Her tusks

were handsome symmetrical spirals before her face. Her legs were skinny and

extended. Even her head was large, Icebones saw, the delicate skull expansive

above the fringe of hair that draped down from her chin.

She reached out with her trunk and probed at Icebones's hair and mouth

and ears, just as if Icebones was a calf. "I know who you are."

Icebones recoiled.

But now the others were all around her-the other sisters, the mother, the

Bull.

"We were told you would come."

"I am thirsty. I want water."

"My baby is stirring. I am hungry."

The strange, tall mammoths clamored at her, like calves seeking dugs to

suckle, plucking at the hair on her back and legs, even the clumps on her

stubby tail.

She trumpeted, backing off. "Get away from me!"

The other-the Ragged One, stub-tusked, pink-spotted-came lumbering over

the rocky slope to stand close to Icebones. "You mustn't mind them. They think

you might be the Matriarch, you see. That's what they've been promised."

Now the Bull-calf came loping toward her, oddly slow, ungainly. He said

to Icebones, "Show us how to find food. That's what Matriarchs are supposed to

do."

I'm no Matriarch, she thought. I've never even had a calf. I've never

mated. I'm little older than you are, for all your size... "You must find food

for yourself," she said.

"But he can't," the Ragged One said slyly. "Let me show you."

And she turned and began to follow a trail, lightly worn into the hard

rock, that led over a further ridge.

Confused, apprehensive, Icebones followed.

The Ragged One brought her to a shallow pit that had been sliced into the

flank of the Mountain. At the back of the pit was a vertical wall, like a

cliff face, into which sockets had been cut, showing dark and empty spaces

beyond.

And, strangest of all, on a raised outcrop at the center of the leveled

floor stood a mammoth-but it was not a mammoth. It, he or she, was merely a

heap of bones, painstakingly reassembled to mimic life, with not a scrap of

flesh or fat or hair. The naked skeleton raised great yellow tusks

challengingly to the pink sky.

Icebones recognized the nature of this place immediately: the harsh

straight lines and level planes of its construction, the casual horror of the

bony monument at the center. "This is a place of the Lost," she said. "We

should get away from here."

The Ragged One gazed at her with eyes that were too orange, too bright.

"You really don't understand, do you? The Lost aren't the problem. The problem

is, the Lost have gone." She circled her trunk around Icebones's, and began to

tug her, gently but relentlessly, toward the shallow, open pit.

Icebones walked forward, one heavy step after another, straining to

detect the presence of the Lost. But her sense of smell was scrambled by the

stink of the smoky air.

"Where were you born?"

"On the Island," Icebones said. "A steppe. A land of grass and bushes and

water."

The Raged One growled. "Your Island, if it ever existed, is long ago and

far away. Here-this is where I was born. And my mother before me-and her

mother-and hers. Here, in this place of the Lost. What do you think of that?"

Icebones looked up at the cavernous rooms cut into the wall. "And was a

Lost your Matriarch? Did the Lost give you your names?"

"We had no Matriarch," the Ragged One said simply. "We had no need of

Families. We had no need of names. For we only had to do what the Lost showed

us, and we would be kept well and happy. Look." The Ragged One stalked over to

a low trough set in the sheer wall. A flap of shining stone dangled before it,

like the curtain of guard hairs beneath the belly of a mammoth. The Ragged One

pushed the tip of her trunk under the flap, which lifted up. When she withdrew

her trunk, she held it up before Icebones. Save for a little dust, her pink

trunk tip was empty.

Icebones was baffled by this mysterious behavior. And she saw that the

trunk had just a single nostril.

The Ragged One said, "Every day since I was born I came to this place and

Stephen Baxter - Icebones

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: