Origin m-3

by Stephen Baxter

  Babo said tightly, “And is this your Praisegod Michael, Renemenagota of Rano?”

  Without-Name raised one hand.

  Crossbow bolts thudded into Babo’s belly and chest and upper arms. He cried out softly, dull surprise on his face. He crumpled forward and fell on the bolts, making them twist, and his cries deepened. A Worker rushed to tend Babo’s wounds, but Without-Name kicked it away.

  Manekato, stunned, saw that the circular platform was surrounded by hominids Zealots, in their sewn skins. Some of them, bizarrely, were riding on the shoulders of Running-folk. They seemed afraid, but they held up their crossbows and spears with defiance.

  Praisegod Michael passed his hands over Babo’s shuddering form, making a cross in the air. “Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man…”

  Manekato found words. “Renemenagota — what are you doing?”

  “Providing you with a purpose.”

  “Your army of hominids would be no match for the power we could deploy,” Manekato whispered.

  “Of course not — if you choose to deploy it,” Without-Name said mockingly. “But you won’t, will you? Meanwhile these hominids believe they are soldiers of God. They have only their simple handmade weapons, but their heads are on fire. And so their crossbow bolts will best all your learning and technology. And under my guidance, they will sweep the world.”

  Now Nemoto stepped out from behind Manekato. Without-Name eyed the little hominid with undisguised loathing.

  But Praisegod Michael faced her, apparently unsurprised to find her here. “You are the one called Nemoto. Malenfant told me I would find you here.”

  “I know your kind,” Nemoto said. She turned to Manekato. “You must stop this, here and now. You have not seen such things before, Manekato. With Renemenagota’s organizational skill, Michael and his fellows will march on, overwhelming others with their savagery and determination, armed with an unwavering faith that will lead them to their deaths if necessary. Those they do not destroy will be forcibly converted to the creed. By the second generation the conquered will regard themselves as soldiers of the conquering army. We are limited creatures, Manekato, and we do not have the strength of mind to fight off a contagion of seductive but lethal ideas. You must stop this for the slaughter that will follow if you don’t.”

  Babo twisted on the ground, his hands clamped to his stomach, his face a rictus of pain. “Yes,” he hissed. “Exponential growth, Mane. They will conquer, acquire resources to fuel further expansion, thus acquiring still more, and all driven by a dazzling-virus of the mind.”

  Manekato said, “It is — unbelievable.” Nemoto faced her. “Manekato, you must save us from ourselves — and save this machine-world from the deadly manipulation of Renemenagota.”

  Without-Name stood before her, her immense biceps bunched, gazing into her eyes, so close Manekato could smell blood on her breath. “Perhaps this ape-thing is right, Manekato. Will you take its advice? — Ah, but then you would have to become like me, wouldn’t you, and how you dread that! You must destroy me — but you cannot, can you, Mane?”

  Babo, on the floor, groaned and raised one bloody arm. “But I can, Renemenagota of Rano.”

  A sudden wind, hot and dense, billowed before Manekato’s face.

  People staggered back, crying out. Nemoto took hold of Babo’s arm, anchoring herself against the gusts.

  A tube of whirling air formed over the platform. It was the end of a winding column that stretched down from the sky, silvery-grey, suddenly tightly defined. It was a controlled whirlwind, like that which had stormed around the Market for two hundred thousand years.

  And in the heart of the column of tortured air was Renemenagota. She raised her fists, briefly bipedal like those whom she had sought to lead. But she could land no blows on the twisting air, and it paid no heed to her screamed defiance.

  In a brief blur of brown and black, she was gone.

  The whirlwind shrivelled, shrinking back up into the lid of cloud that had covered the sky. A cloud of crimson dust came drifting down on the platform.

  Mane, stunned, bewildered, looked around. Nemoto still clung to the fallen Babo. Of the ring of armed Zealots there was no sign.

  Praisegod had been bowled over. He lay on his back on the platform, his black clothing scattered around him. His eyes flickered, cunning, calculating, the eyes of a trapped animal seeking a way out.

  But his pet Ham boy stood over him.

  Praisegod lifted his hand to the boy, asking for help, forcing a smile.

  The boy bunched his fist and rammed it into Praisegod’s chest, through clothing, skin, an arch of ribs.

  Praisegod shuddered and flopped like a landed fish. The Ham’s squat — face was expressionless as he rummaged in that bloody cavern. Then the Ham boy grimaced, and the muscles of his arms contracted.

  Praisegod’s head arched back, and his voice was a rasp. “Why have you forsaken me?…”

  Then, his heart crushed, he was still.

  Emma Stoney:

  There was a lot of shouting going on. Mary was running around the compound, busily engaging her foe. Though Abel had fallen, Mary was moving too quickly for the archers to get an accurate sight on her, and every time she got close enough she was slamming heads, breaking arms and generally kicking ass with a joyous vigour.

  The chapel, built of mud brick around a sturdy wooden frame, was as substantial as it looked. Emma ducked into the building and slammed the door, and ran a heavy wooden bolt into a notch.

  Within seconds fists were hammering on the door.

  “Quickly,” she said to Joshua. “Malenfant. Where?”

  But Joshua did not reply, and when she turned, she saw that he was facing a crucifix, gazing at the gentle, anguished face of a Messiah. Joshua cringed, but was unable to look away.

  The yelling at the door was growing intense, and the first hints of organized battering were detectable. Emma couldn’t wait any longer. She cast around the little chapel, shoving aside furniture and a small, ornately carved wooden altar.

  And she found a hatchway.

  The hatch opened on a small, dark shaft, fitted with stubby wooden rungs. Emma clambered down hastily, to find herself in a short corridor. A single wicker torch burned fitfully in a holder. She grabbed it and hurried along the corridor.

  The corridor led to two wooden doors. One door was swinging open, and Emma recoiled. The cell within was just a pit, with a filth-crusted floor and blackened, scratched walls; it stank of blood and vomit and urine.

  The other door was shut. Emma hammered on it. “Malenfant! Are you there?” The wood was so filthy her hands came away smeared with deep black.

  No reply.

  Struggling to hold up the torch, she made out a thick bolt, just wood, a smaller copy of the one on the compound gate. She hesitated for a heartbeat, her hand on the bolt.

  She reminded herself that she actually had no idea what lay on the other side of this door. But you’ve come this far, Emma.

  She pulled back the bolt, dragged open the door. She held the torch in front of her protectively.

  There were two people here. One was sitting on the floor, hands crossed over her chest for protection — her, for it was a woman, in a long dress that looked finely made. But despite the dress and the tied-back hair, that protruding face and the ridged eyes marked her out as a Ham.

  The other was a man. He was wearing a blue coverall, and he was curled up in the dirt, folded on himself.

  Emma hurried to him. Gently she lifted aside his arm, to reveal his face. “Do you know me? Do you know where you are? Oh, Malenfant…”

  He opened his eyes, and his face worked. “Welcome to hell,” he whispered.

  The Ham woman slipped her arms under Malenfant and cradled him, with remarkable tenderness. She said her name was Julia; her English, though slurred by the deficiencies of the Ham palate, was well-modulated and clear.

  With Malenfant limp but seemingly light as a baby in Julia’s arm
s, they clambered out of the pit and back into the chapel.

  Still the Zealots battered at the door. Joshua remained in his apelike crouch, his head buried in his big arms. He was whimpering, as if horrified by what he had done.

  Gently Emma pulled his arm away from his face. His cheeks were smeared with tears. “No time,” she said. “Mary. Skinnies hurt Mary. Joshua help.”

  It took an agonizing minute of repetition, with the hammering on the door turning into a splintering, before he responded.

  He got to his feet with a roar. He ran to the door, dragged it open, and with a sweep of his massive arm he knocked aside the scrambling crowd of Zealot men. He forced his way outside, calling for Mary.

  Julia followed, carrying Malenfant. Emma stayed close by her side, cradling Malenfant’s lolling head.

  — IV —

  WORLD ENGINE

  Reid Malenfant:

  “You always were a heathen bastard, Malenfant. No wonder Praisegod had it in for you. I remember the trouble we had when we chose a church. Even though it was a time when overt religiosity was a career asset if you wanted to be part of the public face of NASA.”

  “I did like that chapel at Ellington. Kind of austere, for a Catholic chapel. Not too many bleeding guys on the wall. And I liked the priest. Monica Chaum, you could go bowling with.”

  “Well, I liked the chapel too, Malenfant. I found it comforting. A place to get away from the squawk boxes and the rest, when you were in orbit.”

  “On orbit. You never told me that.”

  “There are lots of things you don’t know about me, Malenfant. I remember one Christmas Eve when you were up there, doing whatever you did. Christmas Eve, and I was alone. I was sick of it all, Malenfant. I wanted to go to church, but I didn’t want people gawping. So I asked Monica if she would open up the church for me. Well, she dug out the organist, and she went through the church lighting all the candles, just as they would be lit for the Midnight Mass that night, and the organist played the programme planned for the service. When I walked in and saw it was all there just for me — well, it was one of the most beautiful sights I ever saw.”

  “I remember that Christmas. I asked Monica to get you a gift. It was a dress. I picked it out.”

  “Oh, Malenfant. It was at least five sizes too big. Monica had to apologize; she knew. No wonder you can’t figure out the Fermi Paradox, Malenfant, if you don’t know your own wife’s dress size… I never liked being alone, you know.”

  “Nobody does. I guess that’s why we’re here, why we swung down from the damn trees. Every one of us is looking for somebody…”

  “Stop it. Even now, you’d rather talk about issues, about human destiny and the rest of the garbage, anything but us. Anything but me. When you’re gone I’ll be alone here, Malenfant — truly alone, more alone than any person I can think of to all intents and purposes the only one of my kind, on the whole Moon, in this whole universe… It’s unimaginable. I’m an accountant, Malenfant. It’s not supposed to be like this. Not for me. And it’s all your fault. Do you want to know what I’m afraid of — really afraid of?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Chronic reactive depression. You ever heard of that? I looked it up once. You can die of loneliness, Malenfant. Four months, that’s all it takes. You don’t have to be a failure. Just — outcast.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Shadow:

  There was little food to be had on the plain. The Elf-folk had carried some food from their crater-wall forest, figs and bananas and apples. But now the sun was setting, the footsteps made by the people in the bare patches of dust were little pools of shadow, and most of the food was gone. Plaintively, as they trooped after Shadow across the dusty grass, many of them looked back to the forest they had left.

  They came to the site of an old kill. The bones were so scattered and worn by the teeth of successive predators and scavengers that it was impossible to tell what animal it might once have been.

  Nevertheless Shadow stopped here. She sat amid the bones and, with a grunt, passed water into the dirt. The fungal growth on her face was a thick mask over her brow and cheeks and nose, making her look alien, ferocious, and some of the more livid scars on her body seemed to glow as bright red as the dust at her feet.

  The others followed her lead: first Stripe, the strongest of the men, then Silverneck and the women who followed her. Infants clambered down to the dusty ground and plucked yellow grass blades, stuffing them into their mouths with rust-red fingers.

  The adults huddled together uneasily. On this vast table-top of a landscape the Elf-folk were a dark knot, easily visible, horribly vulnerable. Nevertheless Shadow seemed content to stay here, and so stay they must.

  None of the people sat close to Shadow.

  Some of them made small offerings to her: a fig, an apple they had carried in their hands. Soon a small pile of food built up. Without acknowledging the people. Shadow reached down and took pieces of the food.

  The sun sank further, its edge dipping below rounded hills. A nervy young man, Shiver, emitted a hesitant, hooting roosting call. But there were no trees here to make nests, and the gentle, eerie sound only made the people huddle still closer.

  Silverneck sat on the fringe of the group. She picked up a bone from the litter around her. It was a section of a skull. The face was almost intact: she pushed her fingers into eye sockets, nostrils. This might have been a person, an Elf, a Ham, a Nutcracker, a Runner. She ran her finger along it, picking out scrapes and notches, made by teeth or, perhaps, tools. She was almost naked of fur now, so frantically had she been groomed by the other women in these days of turmoil and doubt. Her remaining hairs clung in patches to her blue-black skin and stuck out from her body; the low reddening sunlight made her hair glow, as if she was surrounded by a soft cloud.

  Shiver was sitting close to a woman. Palm, barely out of her adolescence. She in turn was resting against her mother’s stolid back. Shiver was eating an apple, slowly, his eyes fixed on Palm. His erection was obvious. Shiver started flicking bits of the apple at Palm; the half-chewed fragments landed at her feet, or on her lap.

  Without looking at Shiver, Palm picked up the morsels and popped them in her mouth. Gradually, in silence, all but imperceptibly, Shiver moved closer to the girl, his erection dangling before him.

  With a sigh, Palm folded back from her mother and lay on the ground, legs separated, her arms stretched above her head. Shiver slid over her and entered her, all in one liquid, silent movement. With a few thrusts he reached orgasm, and withdrew smoothly. Seconds later he and Palm were sitting side by side as if nothing had happened.

  Stripe, the boss man, absently grooming Silverneck, had noticed none of this challenge to his status.

  Shadow had watched it all. But she cared nothing for such reproductive play. Shadow’s dominance had nothing to do with the community’s traditional bonds, sex and children.

  After the death of One-eye she had soon become the strongest of the women. And the men — even mighty Stripe — had learned to submit to her power. Though many of them outsized her, her naked, unbridled aggression gave her an edge in most contests. Many of the men and boys cradled hands and feet missing fingers or toes, nipped away by Shadow as an indelible mark of their defeat.

  And now she had led them all far from home, far from the trees and shrubs and streams and clearings they knew, across this crimson plain — for a purpose only Shadow, in the deepest recesses of her mind, understood.

  A small boy approached Shadow. He had his eyes fixed on the pile of fruit before her. His mother, Hairless, growled warningly, but he feigned not to hear. The boy grabbed his infant sister, and, pulling a twisted, funny face, began to wrestle with her. She joined in, chortling. Soon he was on top of her, making playful pelvic thrusts, and then she rolled on top of him. But every roll took them closer to Shadow’s food pile.

  As soon as the boy was close enough, his hand whipped out to grab a fig. He
tucked it in his mouth, immediately abandoning his play, and walked back towards his mother.

  One of the women laughed at his clever deceit.

  A sharpened cobble hissed through the air. It caught the boy at the top of his spine, laying open the flesh. He howled and went down. Hairless hurried forward and grabbed him. He curled up in her lap, screaming with pain, as she tended the wound.

  Stripe picked up the bloody cobble, wiped it on the grass, and passed it back to Shadow.

  The group sat in silence, save for the screams of the boy, which took a long time to subside.

  The sun slid beneath the horizon. Light bled from the sky.

  The people huddled in a close circle. The adults had their backs to the dark, with the children and infants at the centre of the circle. Without fire, without weapons that could strike at a distance save a handful of stones, these hominids were defenceless against the creatures that prowled the savannah night.

  Nobody but the infants would sleep tonight. But they feared Shadow more than they feared the dark.

  When the dawn came, they found that the boy who had stolen Shadow’s fig had gone. As the group moved on. Hairless, his mother, was inconsolable. She had to be half-carried by her sisters and mother, until the memory had started to fade.

  At last they reached the cover of trees. This was a forest that lapped at the foot of a tall mountain range; bare rock shone high above. With relief, they slipped into the trees” shadows. Some submitted to ancient green impulses and clambered high into the trees to make nests, even though the day was not yet half over.

  But Shiver, clambering high, found a nest already made. He broke it apart, hooting loudly, his fur standing on end.

  Then others joined in the noise, for they began to find discarded fruit peel, and even an abandoned termite-fishing stick. They sniffed and licked these remnants; they were fresh. Others had been here, and recently.