Manifold: Origin

by Stephen Baxter

  McCann looked from one to the other. Impulsively he said, "I have been sedentary too long. Let me accompany you, Malenfant. I dare say I have a few tricks, born of long experience, which might yet save your hide."

  Malenfant glanced at Julia, who had no reaction. "What about Crawford and the others?"

  McCann clapped Thomas on his broad shoulder. "I see no reason why our friends should fail to look after three as well as they have looked after four."

  Thomas nodded curtly.

  Malenfant faced Nemoto. "I hope you find what you are looking for."

  "I will see you again," she said.

  "No," he said, flooded by a sudden certainty. "No, you won't. We'll never meet again."

  She stared at him. Then she turned away.

  Manekatopokanemahedo

  She was standing on a shining, smooth surface of Adjusted Space, bright yellow, softly warm under her bare feet. Babo and Without-Name still clung to her hands; she released them.

  On the Red Moon, there was no Wind. She relished the luxury of not having to fight against the air's power, enjoying the ease with which she took each breath.

  Around them were a dozen more people – more exiles from one ruined Farm or another, their symmorphs adorned with a startling variety of colors and stylings of skin and hair – and perhaps a hundred times as many Workers: Workers tall and slim, short and squat, Workers that flew and crawled and rolled and walked. As was customary, the people's new symmorphs were as close as possible in appearance to the shells they had abandoned on Earth.

  The Mapping had taken account of the different physical conditions. Thus Manekato felt no discomfort as her lungs drank in the thin, oxygen-depleted air of this small world, and her new body would suffer no ill-effects from the relative lack of carbon dioxide. But she had taken care not to engineer out all of the Red Moon's experiential differences; for if she had there would scarcely be a purpose in coming here at all. Thus the air was cold and damp and laden with a thousand powerful, unfamiliar scents – and thus the lower gravity, just two-thirds of Earth's, tugged only feebly at her limbs.

  Manekato loped through the crowd of gazing people and scuttling Workers. Her gait felt oddly clumsy in the low gravity, as if her muscles were suddenly over powered. The yellow floor was perhaps a hundred paces across. It was a neatly circular disc of Adjusted Space, its smoothness comforting. She reached the rim of the disc. Tiny Workers streamed past her into the green world beyond, recording, interpreting, transmitting.

  Beyond the platform was a wall of forest, concealing a dense green gloom. The trees were tall here: great spindly structures of wood, very different from the ground-hugging species of Wind-blasted Earth. Shadows flitted through that green dark. She thought she saw eyes peering out at her, eyes like a mirror of her own.

  Babo ran past her with a gurgled cry. He ran straight into the forest and clambered into the lowest branches of a tree, clumsily, but with enthusiasm and strength.

  Manekato peered down. In the Moon's red dust grass grew, sprinkled with small flowers, white and yellow. She leaned forward, supporting her weight on one fist, and touched the grass. The blades were coarse, and other plants and moss crowded around, fighting over each scrap of soil. She saw leaves protruding from beneath the disc, crushed, bent back; some of the living things of this world had already died because of her presence.

  The land here had never been Farmed: not once, not in all the billions of years this world had existed. Even this patch of grass-covered land, where billions of living things fought for life in every scrap, was disturbing, enthralling proof of that.

  In front of the forest fringe she made out a small, brown-furred Worker – no, not a Worker, an animal, its species probably unmodified by conscious design. It had a short, slim body, and four spindly legs; it bent a graceful neck, and a small mouth nibbled at the grass. It moved gracefully, but with a startling slowness, an unhurried languor that contrasted with the frantic scuttling of the people and the Workers. By the look of the genitalia between its back legs its kind must reproduce in a mammalian fashion, rather than be nurtured directly from the ground...

  Nobody had nurtured this creature, she reminded herself; there had been no conscious process. It had been born in blood and pain and mucus, without the supervision of any human, and it found food to sustain its growth in this wild, unmanaged, undisciplined place.

  On her world, there had been no parks or zoos for nine hundred millennia. Though the richness of the ecology was well understood and managed minutely – including the place of people within that ecology – there were no creatures save those that served a conscious purpose, no aspect of nature that was not thought through and controlled. Not so much as a stomach bacterium.

  Manekato had known that this new Moon would be wild, but that its ecology would function none the less. But it was one thing to have a theoretical anticipation and another to be confronted with the fact. She felt as if she had entered the workings of some vast intricate machine, all the more remarkable for lacking a conscious designer or a controlling intelligence.

  Now Babo came hurrying back from the forest. He clutched something in his arms that wriggled sluggishly.

  Babo's legs were covered in scrapings of green moss, and his hair was disheveled and dirty. But his eyes were bright, and he was breathing hard. "My arms are strong," he told his sister. "I can climb. It is as if this body of mine remembers its deepest past, many millions of years lost, even though the trees on Earth are mere wind-blown stubs compared to these mighty pillars..."

  Without-Name asked, "What is it you carry?"

  He held it out carefully. It had a slim body and a small head. Its legs were short and somewhat bowed, but Manekato could see immediately that this creature was designed – no, had evolved – to walk bipedally. It was perhaps half of Babo's height, and much slimmer.

  "It is a hominid," she said wonderingly.

  "I found it in the tree," Babo said. "It is quite strong, but moves slowly. It was easy to catch."

  Manekato reached to touch the creature's face.

  The hominid whipped its head sideways and sank its teeth into Manekato's finger.

  Manekato fell back with a small cry. Miniature Workers in her bloodstream caused the ripped flesh to close immediately.

  "Ha!" the creature yelled. "Elf strong Elf good hurt stupid Ham hah!"

  This jabber meant nothing to Manekato.

  Without-Name took the creature from an unresisting Babo. She held it up by its head. Dangling, the hominid hooted and thrashed, scratching at Manekato's arm with its legs and fists, but its motions; were slow and feeble.

  With a single, harsh motion Without-Name crushed the hominid's skull. The body shuddered once, and was limp. Without-Name let the body fall to the ground, its head a bloody pulp. A Worker scuttled close and swept up the tiny corpse.

  Babo looked at Without-Name, his face empty of expression.

  "Why did you do that?"

  "There was no mind," said Without-Name. "There was no utility. Therefore there was no right to life. I have been dispossessed by this Moon. I will not rest until I have made the Moon my possession in turn."

  Manekato suppressed her anger. "We did not come here to kill. We came to learn to learn and negotiate."

  Without-Name spat a gobbet of thick phlegm out onto the grass. "We all have our reasons to be here, Manekatopokanemahedo. You follow the foolish dreams of the Astrologers. I am a Farmer."

  "And," Manekato said slowly, "is that your ambition here? To subdue a new world, to turn it all into your dominion?"

  "What higher ambition could there be?"

  "But we have yet to find those who moved this world. They were more powerful than these blades of grass, that wretched hominid. Remember that, Renemenagota, when you boast of what you will conquer."

  Now Manekato saw that two burly Workers had brought another hominid for their inspection. It was taller, heavier than the last, but it was scrawny, filthy, hollow-eyed.

  A
gain Without-Name picked up the specimen by its skull and lifted it easily off the ground. The creature cried and struggled, clearly in distress, but its movements were still more sluggish than the first's, and it made no attempt to injure Without-Name.

  "Let it go," Manekato said evenly.

  Without-Name studied her. "You are not of my Lineage. You do not have authority over me."

  "Look at it, Renemenagota. It is wearing clothes."

  Babo breathed deeply. "Do it," he said. "Or I will have the Workers stop you. I have the authority for that, nameless one, thanks to the Astrologers you despise."

  Without-Name growled her protest. But she released the hominid, which fell into a heap on the floor, and stalked away.

  Manekato and Babo huddled over the hominid. It had curled into a fetal position; as gently as they could they turned it on its back and prised open its limbs.

  "I think it is female," Babo said. "Its head is badly bruised, as is its neck, and it struggles to breathe. Without-Name has damaged it."

  "Perhaps the Workers can repair it."

  The hominid coughed and struggled to sit up. Babo helped it with a lift from a powerful hand.

  "My name," the hominid said, "is Nemoto."

  Shadow

  The antelope had got separated from its herd. It was running awkwardly, perhaps hampered by age or injury.

  With fluid grace, the lion leapt onto the antelope's back, forcing it to the ground in a cloud of crimson dust. The antelope kicked and struggled, its back and haunches already horribly ripped. Then the lion inflicted a final, almost graceful bite to its throat. As its blood poured onto the dust of the savannah, Shadow saw surprise in the antelope's eyes.

  More lions came loping up to feed.

  Shadow remained huddled behind her rock – exposed on the open savannah, but downwind of the kill. She kept her baby quiet by cradling its big, deformed head tightly against her stomach.

  The lions pushed their faces into the fallen antelope's carcass, digging into the entrails and the easily accessible meat of the fleshy areas. Soon their muzzles were crimson with blood, and their growls of contentment were loud. Shadow was overwhelmed by the iron stink of blood, and the sharp burning scent of the lion's fur – and by hunger; her mouth pooled with saliva.

  Her face itched, and she scratched it.

  At last the lions' purring growls receded.

  Already more scavengers were approaching the carcass. Hyenas loped hungrily towards it in a jostling pack, and overhead the first bats were wheeling, huge carrion-eating bats, their wings black stripes against the sky.

  And, from the crater's wooded rim, people emerged: Elf-folk like Shadow, men, women and infants, melting out of the green shelter of the woods, their black pelts stark against the green and crimson of the plain. They eyed the carcass hungrily, and they carried sticks and cobbles.

  But the hyenas were hungry too, and in a moment they were on the antelope, burying their muzzles inside the great rips made by the lions' jaws, already fighting amongst-themselves. Their lithe bodies clustered over the carcass, tails high in the air, from a distance like maggots working a wound.

  The people moved in, yelling and waving their sticks and throwing their stones. Some of the dogs were hit by hurled cobbles. One man, a squat, manic creature with one eye closed by a huge scar, got close enough to pound one animal with a fat branch, causing the dog to yelp and stumble. But the dogs did not back away. A few of them tore themselves away from the meat long enough to rush at the hominids, barking and snapping, before hurling themselves back into the feast. Most simply ignored the people, gouging out as much meat as they could before being forced away by a dog bigger and stronger.

  So it went, a web of complex but unconscious calculations: each hyena's dilemma over whether to attack the hominids, or whether to gamble that another dog would, leaving it free to take more meat; the hominids' estimation of the strength and determination of the hyenas versus their own hunger and the value of the meat.

  This time, at least, the hyenas were too strong.

  The Elf-folk troupe backed away sullenly. They found a place in the shade of the trees at the forest edge, staring with undisguised envy at the rich meat being devoured by the dogs.

  At last the hyenas started to disperse. They had taken most of the meat, and the antelope was reduced to scattered bones and bits of flesh on a blood-stained patch of ground, as if it had exploded. Again the people came forward, and their stones and sticks drove away the last of the dogs.

  There was little meat to be had. But there was still a rich resource here, which hominid tools could reach. The adults took the antelope's bones and, with brisk, skilful strikes of their shaped stones, they cracked them open. Soon many of the people were sucking marrow greedily. Children fought over scraps of flesh and cartilage.

  Huge bats flapped down, their leathery wings black, vulture-like. They pecked at outlying bits of the carcass, bloodying their fur. The people tolerated them. But if the bats came too close they would be greeted by a stick wielded by a hooting hominid.

  Shadow came out from behind her rock.

  A child came up to her, curious, a bit of gristle dangling from her chin. But as Shadow neared, the child wrinkled her nose and stared hard at Shadow's face. Then she turned and ran for the security of her mother.

  As Shadow approached the group, the people moved their children away from her, or growled, or even threw stones. But they did not try to drive her away.

  Shadow saw a big older woman, the hair of her back oddly streaked with silver. This woman – Silverneck – was working assiduously at the remnant of a thigh bone. Shadow sat close to Silverneck, not asking for food, content not to be rejected.

  The sun wheeled across the sky, and the people worked at the carcass.

  At length Silverneck hurled away the last fragments of bone. She lay on her back, legs crossed, and crooked an arm behind her head. She belched, picked bits of marrow and bone from her teeth, and thrust a finger into one nostril with every sign of contentment.

  Cautiously, her baby clinging to her back, Shadow crept closer. She started to groom Silverneck, picking gently through the hairs of Silverneck's shoulders. The older woman, reclining stiffly, submitted to this in silence, eyes closed as if asleep.

  Shadow knew what she must do to win a place here. In her home forest she had watched women seeking favor with their seniors. Still cautious, Shadow moved towards Silverneck's waist and reached out to stroke the older woman's genitals, just as she had seen others do before.

  A hand grasped her wrist, gentle but strong. Silverneck's face, worn almost bald by grooming, was a mass of wrinkles. And it showed disgust. She pulled her legs under her, and pushed Shadow away.

  Shadow sat still, baffled, disturbed.

  After a time Shadow again reached out to groom Silverneck. Again Silverneck submitted. This time Shadow did not try to cross the boundary to sexual contact, and Silverneck did not push her away.

  As the shadows lengthened across the plain, the carrion-eating bats clustered closer around the remnants of the carcass. One by one the people started to drift back to the forest. The first roosting calls began to sound from the tree tops.

  At last the old woman stretched and yawned loudly, bones popping. Then she got to her feet and ambled back towards the forest's edge.

  Shadow sat where she was, waiting.

  Silverneck looked back once, thoughtfully. Then she turned and moved on.

  Shadow got to her feet, her baby clinging to her back. Hastily she rummaged through the carcass, but the marrow and meat had been chewed or sucked off every bone. Cramming bits of greasy skin into her mouth, she hurried after Silverneck into the forest.

  Manekatopokanemahedo

  With a wave of his hand Babo conjured an image of the Red Moon – but it was not an image, rather a limited injective-recursive Mapping of the Moon into itself. The Moon turned for their benefit, a great hovering globe twice Babo's height. Manekato gazed at searing red deser
t-continent and steel ocean.

  The little hominid who called herself Nemoto stood close to Manekato, her eyes wide, her smooth face bearing some unreadable expression.

  "Your work is proceeding well," Manekato said to her brother.

  "It is a routine application of familiar techniques; merely a question of gathering sufficient data... But already the key to this world's mysteries is clear."

  "Ah." Manekato said somberly. She reached up and pointed at the huge volcano that dominated the western side of the rust-red continent. "You mean that."

  "Yes, the volcanic anomaly," Babo said. "Which in turn must derive from some magmatic feature, a plume arising deep within the belly of this world."

  "You talk of the Bullseye?" Nemoto was watching them, straining to hear, turning her little head this way and that in order to position her small immobile ears.

  Babo watched Nemoto uneasily. "Do you think she can follow us?"

  "I have taught her a few words," said Manekato. "But our speech is too rapid for her to grasp; like all the creatures here on this oxygen-starved world, she is sluggish and slow-witted. I have had more success in decoding her own language. It is a little like the nonsense argots you used to make up for my amusement as a child, Babo."

  Babo was still watching Nemoto. "She imitates your behavior well. Look how she gazes at the volcano! It's almost as if she can understand what she is seeing."

  Manekato grunted. "Do not underestimate her, brother. I believe she is intelligent, to a degree. Consider the clothes she wears, her speech with its limited grammar, the tools she deploys – even her writing of symbols into her blocks of bound paper. Why, she claims to have come here, not through the blue portals, but in a spacecraft designed by others of her kind. And that she came to this Moon from curiosity. I found this as hard to believe as you, but she drew sketches which convinced me she is telling the truth."

  "But even the making of clothes may be no more than the outcome of instinct, Mane," Babo said gently. "There is a kind of aquatic spider that makes diving bells from its webbing, and nobody would argue that it is intelligent. Perhaps some day we will discover a species, utterly without mind, which makes starships. Why not? And nor is symbol-making sufficient to demonstrate intelligence; there are social ants which –"