Manifold: Origin

by Stephen Baxter

  Fire shouted his disappointment. He did a kind of dance, kicking viciously at the branches. Then, with a kind of forgetful doggedness, he began to pick up the scattered branches once more.

  Emma said, "I've a better idea." Raising her hands to make him wait, she jogged over to the muddy remnant of her parachute. She cut free a length of cord taking care not to show her Swiss Army knife to any of the hominids – and hurried back.

  Fire had, predictably, wandered away.

  Emma squatted down on the ground to wait, as Fire dug more tubers from the ground, and spent some time throwing bits of stone, with startling accuracy, at a tree trunk, and went running after a girl – "Dig! Dig, Fire, Dig!" Then he happened to glance Emma's way, appeared to remember her and their project, and came running across as fast as a 100-meter record holder. Straightaway he began to pick up the branches again.

  She motioned him to wait. "No. Look." She took one of the branches, and pulled another alongside, and then another. Soon he got the idea, and he helped her pile the branches close together. Now she wrapped her cord around them, maybe three feet below their upper extent, and tied a knot.

  ...Emma Stoney, frontier woman. What the hell are you doing? What if the knot slips or the cord breaks or your sad tepee just falls apart?

  Well, then, she thought, I'll just think of something else, and try again. And again and again.

  All the time the bigger issues were there in her mind, sliding under the surface like a shark: the questions of where she was, how she had got here, how long it was going to be before she got home again. How she felt about Malenfant, who had stranded her here. How come these ape-folk existed at all, and how come they spoke English... But this was real, the red dust under her feet, the odd musk stink of the ape-boy before her, the hunger already gnawing at her belly. Right now there was nobody to take care of her, nobody but herself, and her first priority was survival. She sensed she had to find a way of working with these people. So far, in all this strange place, the only creature who had showed her any helpfulness or kindness at all was this lanky boy, and she was determined to build on that.

  Find strength, Emma. You can fall apart later, when you're safely back in your apartment, and all this seems like a bad dream.

  She labored to tie her knot tight and secure. When she was done, she backed away. "Up, up! Lift it up, Fire!"

  With terrifying effortlessness he hoisted the three branches vertical. When he let go, they immediately crashed to the ground, of course, but she encouraged him to try again. This time she closed her hands around his, making him hold the branches in place, while she ran around pulling out the bases of the branches, making a pyramidal frame.

  At last they finished up with a firmly secured frame, tied off at the top – and it was a frame that held as Fire, with exhilaration and unnerving vigor, hurled more branches over it.

  Now all I have to do, Emma thought, is make sure he remembers this favor.

  "...Emma! Emma!"

  Emma turned. Sally came running out of the forest, with Maxie bundled in her arms.

  Creatures pursued her.

  They looked like humans – no, not human, like chimps, with long, powerful arms, short legs, covered in fine black-brown hair – but they walked upright, running, almost emulating a human gait. There were four, five, six of them.

  Emma thought, dismayed, What now? What new horror is this?

  One of the creatures, despite the relative clumsiness of his gait, was fast closing on Sally and the child.

  Stone stepped forward. The old male stood stock still, reached back, and whipped his arm forward. His axe, spinning, flew like a Frisbee.

  The axe sliced into the ape-thing's face. He, it, was knocked flat, dead immediately. The hominids hooted their triumph and ran to the fallen creature.

  The other ape-things ran back to the forest's edge. They screeched their protest, but they weren't about to come out of the forest to launch a counter attack.

  Sally kept running until she had reached Emma. They clutched each other.

  "Now we know why our friends keep out of the forest," Emma said.

  Fire was standing beside them. "Elf-folk," Fire said, pointing at the ape things. "Elf-folk."

  "That's what I saw yesterday," Sally murmured. "My God, Emma, they could have come on us while we slept. We're lucky to be alive – "

  "They took the ice cream," Maxie said solemnly.

  Sally patted his head. "It's true. They took all your food, Emma. I'm sorry. And the damn canopy."

  Maxie said, "What are we going to eat now?"

  It appeared the hominids had their own answer to this. From the spot where the ape-like "Elf" had fallen came the unmistakable sounds of butchering.

  Shadow

  For long moments Nutcracker-woman and Shadow gazed at each other, fearful, curious.

  Then the Nutcracker-woman took a red fruit, stripped off the flesh, and popped the kernel into her mouth. She pressed up on her lower jaw with her free hand. Caught between her powerful molars, the shell neatly cracked in two. She extracted the nut's flesh and pushed it into her infant's greedy mouth.

  Shadow's fear evaporated. She took a fruit herself and stripped it of flesh. But when she tried to copy the Nutcracker-woman's smooth destruction of the nut, she only hurt her jaw.

  She spat out the shell and, cautiously, passed it to the Nutcracker-woman.

  Just as hesitantly, the Nutcracker-woman took it. Her hand was just like Shadow's, the back coated with fine black hairs, the palm pink.

  Shadow had grown used to meeting Nutcracker-folk.

  The Elf-folk favored the fringes of the forest, for they could exploit the open land beyond, where meat could often be scavenged. The Nutcracker-folk preferred the dense green heart of the forest, where the vegetation grew richer. But as the forest shrank, the Elf-folk were forced to push deeper into the remaining pockets of green.

  Sometimes there was conflict. The Nutcracker-folk were powerful and limber, more powerful than most Elf-folk, and they made formidable opponents.

  All things considered, it was better to try to get along.

  But now, as Shadow and the Nutcracker-woman amiably swapped fruit back and forth, there was a screech and crash at the base of the tree. The Nutcracker woman peered down nervously, her child clinging to her shoulders.

  It was the hunting party – or rather, what was left of them. She saw the two powerful brothers. Big Boss and Little Boss, and there was her own brother, Claw, trailing behind. They were empty-handed, and there was no blood around their mouths, or on their pelts. Big Boss seemed enraged. His hair bristled, making him a pillar of spiky blackness. As he stalked along he lashed out at the trees, at his brother – and especially at Claw, who was forced to flee, whimpering. But he needed to stay with the men, for he was in more danger from the predators of the forest than from their fists.

  And there was no sign of Hurler, her uncle.

  It was Hurler who had been killed by Stone's obsidian axe.

  Images of him rattled through Shadow's memory. By tomorrow, though she would be aware of a loss, she would barely remember Hurler had existed.

  The men abruptly stopped below Shadow's tree. They peered upwards, silent, watchful.

  The Nutcracker-woman had clamped her big hand over her baby's mouth, and it struggled helplessly. But now a nut-shell slipped from the baby's paw, falling with a gentle clatter to the ground.

  Big Boss grinned, his hair bristling. Little Boss and Claw spread out around the base of the tree.

  Shadow slithered down the tree trunk. The men ignored her.

  The three of them clambered into nearby trees. Soon there was an Elf-man in each of the trees to which the Nutcracker-woman could flee.

  She began to call out, a piercing cry of fear. "Oo-hah!" Nutcracker-people were fierce and strong, and would come rushing to the aid of their own.

  But if any Nutcrackers were near, they did not respond.

  Suddenly Big Boss made a leap, from his tre
e to the Nutcracker-woman's. The Nutcracker-woman screeched. She leapt to Claw's tree, her big belly wobbling.

  But Claw, small as he was, was ready for her. As the Nutcracker-woman scrambled to get hold of a branch, Claw grabbed her infant from her.

  He bit into its skull, and it died immediately.

  The Nutcracker-woman screamed, and hurled herself towards Claw. But already, with his kill over his shoulder, Claw was scurrying down the tree trunk to the ground. Blood smeared around his mouth, he held up his limp prize, crying out with triumph.

  But Big Boss and Little Boss converged on him. With a casual punch, Little Boss knocked Claw to the dirt, and Big Boss grabbed the infant. The two of them huddled over the carcass. With firm strong motions, they began to dismember it, twisting off the infant's limbs one by one as easily as plucking leaves from a branch. When Claw came close, trying to get a share of the meat, he was met by a punch or a kick. He retreated, screeching his anger.

  In the tree above, the Nutcracker-woman could only watch, howling: "Hah! Oo hah!"

  Claw came up to the men time and again, pulling at their shoulders and beating their backs.

  A powerful blow from Big Boss now sent Claw sprawling. Clutching his chest, he groaned and lay flat.

  Shadow approached her brother. She held out a hand, fingers splayed, to groom him, calm him.

  He turned on her.

  There was blood on his mouth, and his hair bristled around him, and his eyes were crusted with tears. He punched her temple.

  She found herself on the ground. The colors of the world swam, yellow leaching into the green.

  Now Claw stood over her, breathing hard. He had an erection.

  She reached for him.

  He grabbed her hand and squeezed it, hard, so that her fingers were bent back. She cried out as bones bent and snapped.

  Then he walked around her, legs splayed, erection sticking out of his fur. He grabbed at the trees and waved branches at her.

  She understood the signs he was making. She knew what he wanted, in his frustration, in his rage. But he was her brother. The thought of him lying on her filled her head with blackness, her throat with bile.

  She turned over and tried to stand. But when she put her injured hand on the ground, pain flared, and she fell forward.

  He stamped hard on her back. She was driven flat into the undergrowth. She felt his hands on her ankles. He dragged her back towards him and pulled her legs apart. He was stronger than she was; sprawled face-down on the ground, she could not fight him.

  His shadow fell over her, looming.

  In another bloody heartbeat he was inside her. He screamed, in pain or pleasure. Shadow called for her mother, but she was far away.

  Emma Stoney

  The days here lasted about thirty hours. Emma timed them with her wristwatch and a stick stuck in the ground to track shadows.

  Thirty hours. No possibility of a mistake.

  Not Earth, she thought reluctantly. But that thought was unreal. Absurd.

  She knocked over her stick and took her watch off her wrist and stowed it in a pocket, so she wouldn't have to look at it.

  After the Elf attack, the three of them stayed on the open plain.

  But every morning it was strange, disorienting, to wake among the hominids. Whichever of them woke first would take one look at the strangers and hoot and holler in alarm. Soon they would all be awake, all of them yelling and brandishing their fists, and Emma and the others would have to cower away, waiting for the storm to pass. At last, somebody would recognize them – Fire, or Stone, or one of the younger women. "Em-ma. Sal-ly." After that the others would gradually calm down.

  But Emma would have sworn that some of them never regained their memories of the day before, that every day they woke up not recognizing Emma and the others. It seemed they came awake with the barest memory of the detail of their lives before, as if every day was like a new birth.

  Emma wasn't sure if she pitied them for that, or envied them.

  The days developed a certain routine. Emma and Sally worked to keep themselves clean, and Maxie; they would rinse out their underwear – they had only one set each, the clothes they had arrived in – and scrub the worst of the dirt off the rest of their clothes and gear.

  The women had precisely two tampons between them. When they were gone, they labored to improvise towels from bits of cloth.

  As evening drew in Emma and little Maxie would help build the hominids' haphazard fire by throwing twigs and branches onto it. Paying dues, Emma thought; making sure we earn our place in the warmth.

  In the dark the hominids gathered close to the fire, she supposed for safety and warmth. But they didn't form into anything resembling a circle, as humans would. There were little knots of them, men testing their strength against each other, women with their children, pairs coupling with noisy (and embarrassing) enthusiasm. But there was no story-telling, no singing, no dancing. They even ate separately, each hunched over her morsel, as if fearful of having it stolen.

  The group did not have the physical grammar of a group bound by language, Emma thought. This was not a true hearth. Their bits of words, their proto-language, were surely a lot closer to the screeches of chimps, or even the songs of birds, than the vocalizations of humans. Though the Runners huddled together for security, they lived their lives as individuals, pursuing solitary projects, each locked forever inside her own head.

  They aren't human, Emma realized afresh, however much they might look like it. And this wasn't a community. It was more like a herd.

  As night fell, Emma and the others would creep into the shelter she had made with Fire. A few of the hominids followed them, mothers with nursing infants. Maxie cried and complained at the pungent stink of their never-washed flesh. But Emma and Sally calmed him, and themselves, assuring each other that they were surely safer here than in the open, or in the forest.

  One child, looking no more than five or six years old in human terms, fell ill. Her eyelids, cheeks, nose and lips were encrusted with sores. The child was skinny, and was evidently in distress; her gestures were faint, her movements listless.

  "I think it's yaws," Sally said. "I've seen it upriver, in Africa... It's related to syphilis. But it's transmitted by flies, who carry it from wound to wound. That's where the first signs show: little bumps in the corners of your eyes, or your nostrils, where the flies go to suck your moisture."

  "What's the cure?"

  "A shot of Extencilline. Safeguards you for life. But we don't have any."

  Emma rummaged through her medical pocket. "What about Floxapen?"

  "Maybe. But you're crazy to use it up on them. We're going to need it ourselves. We'll get ulcers. We need it."

  Emma struggled to read the directions on the little bottle. She found a scrap of meat, embedded a pill in it, and fed it to the child. It was hard to hold her hand near that swollen, grotesque face.

  The next morning, she did the same. She kept it up until the Floxapen was gone. It seemed to her the child was getting gradually better.

  Maybe it helped the Runners accept them. She wasn't sure if they understood what she was doing, if they saw the cause-and-effect relationship between her treatment and any change in the girl's condition.

  Sally didn't try to stop her. But Emma could see she was silently resentful at what she regarded as a waste of their scarce resources. It didn't help relations between them.

  Five or six days after their arrival, she woke to find shards of deep blue sky showing through the loosely stacked branches above her. She threw off her parachute-silk blanket and crawled out of the shelter's rough opening.

  It was the first time the sky had been clear since she had got here. The sun was low, but it was strong, its warmth welcome on her face. The sky was a rich beautiful blue, and it was scattered with clouds, and it was deep. She saw low cumulus clouds, fat and gray and slow, and higher cirrus-like clouds that scudded across the sky, and wispy traces even above that: layers of cloud t
hat gave her an impression of tallness that she had rarely, if ever, seen on Earth.

  She tried to orient herself. If the sun was that way, at this hour, she was looking east. And when she looked to the west – oh, my Lord – there was a Moon: more than half-full, a big fat beautiful bright Moon.

  ...Too big, too fat, too bright. It had to be at least twice the diameter of the pale gray Moon she was used to. And it was no mottled gray disc, like Luna. This was a vibrant dish of color. Much of it was covered with a shining steel blue surface that glimmered in the light of the sun. Elsewhere she saw patches of brown and green. At either extreme of the disc – at the poles, perhaps – she saw strips of blinding white. And over the whole thing clouds swirled, flat white streaks and stripes and patches, gathered in one place into a deep whirlwind knot.

  Ocean: that was what that shining steel surface must be, just as the brown-green was land. That wasn't poor dead Luna: it was a planet, with seas and ice caps and continents and air.

  And she quickly made out a characteristic continent shape on that brightly lit quadrant, almost bare of cloud, baked brown, familiar from schoolbook studies and CNN reports and Malenfant's schoolkid slideshows. It was Africa, quite unmistakably, the place she had come from.

  That was no "Moon". That was Earth.

  And if she was looking at Earth, up in the sky, her relentlessly logical mind told her, then she couldn't be on Earth any more. "Stands to reason," she murmured.

  It made sense, of course: the different air, the lightness of walking, these alien not-quite humans running around everywhere. She had known it the whole time, on some level, but she hadn't wanted to face it.

  But, if not on Earth, where was she? How had she got here? How was she ever going to get home again? All the time she had been here, she realized, she had got not one whit closer to answering these most basic questions.

  Now a shadow passed over them, and Emma felt immediately cold. A new cloud was driving overhead, flat, thick, dark.