Longtusk

by Stephen Baxter

  "But they need mammoths. For they need fat."

  "The animals they hunt regularly, the deer and the horses, are lean, with blood-red meat. But you, little grazer, are replete with fat, which clings to your heart and organs and swims within your bones. The Fireheads must consume it, and they need it besides for their lamps and paints and salves, and—"

  "All the years I watched them trek to the north, returning with their cargoes of great bones. All those years, and I never suspected they were mammoth... Thunder, why didn't you tell me?"

  "It was thought best," said Walks With Thunder carefully, "that you should not know. I made the decision; blame me. What good would it have done you to have known? But now—"

  "But now, the Shaman wants me to see this. He is forcing me to confront the truth."

  "This is your test," said Walks With Thunder. "Will you fail, Longtusk?"

  Longtusk turned away. "No Firehead will defeat me."

  "I hope not," Thunder said softly.

  But, as it turned out, the greatest test was yet to come.

  THE NEXT DAY THE HUNTERS WALKED to and fro across the frozen desert, studying tracks and traces of dung. At last they seemed to come to a decision.

  The Shaman pointed north. The mastodonts were loaded up once more.

  "Why?" Longtusk rumbled. "They have their bones and their marrow. What else can they want?"

  "More," called Thunder grimly. "Fireheads always want more. And they think they know where to find it."

  It took another day's traveling.

  The hunters grew increasingly excited, pointing out heaps of dry dung, trails that criss-crossed this dry land — and even, in one place, the skeleton of a mammoth, cleansed of its meat by the carrion eaters, its bones scattered over the dust.

  ...And Longtusk heard them, smelled their dung and thin urine, long before he saw them.

  He rounded a low, ice-eroded hill. The land here was a muddy flat.

  And around this mud seep stood mammoths.

  With their high bulging heads, shoulder humps and thick straggling hair, the mammoths looked strange in Longtusk's eyes, accustomed after so long to the sight of short, squat mastodonts; suddenly he felt acutely conscious of his own sloping back and thick hair, his difference.

  But these mammoths were bedraggled, clearly in distress.

  The mammoths gathered closely around holes in the ground. They reached with their trunks deep into the holes and sucked up the muddy, brackish water that oozed there.

  They were jostling for the seeping water. But there wasn't enough for everybody.

  So the mammoths fought each other, wordlessly, dully, endlessly. The plain was filled with the crack of tusk on tusk, the slap of skull on flank. Calves, thin and bony, clustered around the legs of the adults, but they were pushed away harshly. The infants wailed in protest, too weak to fight for the water they needed.

  Longtusk watched all this, trembling, scarcely daring to breathe. The familiarity of them — their hair, their curling tusks — was overwhelming. And yet, what was he? He was not some wretched creature grubbing in the dirt for a drop of water. But if not mammoth, what had he become? He felt himself dissolve, leaving only a blackness within.

  There were perhaps forty individuals — but this was not a Family or a Clan, for there were Bulls here, closer to the Cows and calves than they would be in normal times. But these were clearly not normal times. One gaunt Cow walked across the muddy flat to a place away from the others. With nervous, hasty scrapes with her feet, she began to dig out a fresh hole. Just behind her, white flensed bones rose out from the muddy ground. She stepped carelessly on a protruding skull, cracking it.

  Walks With Thunder grunted softly, "See the bones? Many have perished here already."

  Longtusk quoted the Cycle: "Where water vanishes, sanity soon follows."

  "Yes. But, beyond sanity, there is necessity. In times as harsh as this, mature Bulls survive, for they can travel far in search of water and food. The Cows are encumbered with their calves, perhaps unborn, and cannot flee. But they are right to push away their calves — so that those who do get water, those who survive, are those who can have more young in better times. And so the old and the young perish. Necessity... We did not come here by accident, Longtusk. The Fireheads knew they would find mammoths in this place of seeping water."

  "But the mammoths would not be here in this cold desert," growled Longtusk, "if they had not been pushed so far north by the Fireheads."

  Willow, the Dreamer, jumped into an abandoned hole. He picked up a pawful of mud and began to suck at it, slobbering greedily, smearing his face with the sticky black stuff. Unlike the mastodonts, the wretched Dreamer had no keeper to care for him, and was probably in as bad a condition as these starving mammoths.

  Now the wind shifted. As the mastodonts' scent reached him one of the Bull mammoths stirred, raising his muddy trunk to sniff the air. He turned, slowly, and spotted the Fireheads and their mastodonts. He rumbled a warning.

  The Bulls scattered, lumbering, trumpeting their alarm. The Cows clustered, drawing their calves in close.

  But the Fireheads did not approach or threaten the mammoths. They began to unload the mastodonts and to prepare a hearth.

  Gradually, thirst began to overcome the mammoths' caution. The Cows turned their attention back to the seep holes, and quickly made use of the places vacated by the Bulls. After a time, some of the Bulls came back, raising their tusks and braying a thin defiance at the mastodonts.

  Longtusk stepped to the edge of an abandoned hole. There was a little seeping water, so thick with clay it was black, but the hole was all but dry.

  He was aware that a Bull mammoth was approaching him. He did not turn that way; he held himself still. But he could not ignore the great creature's stink, the weight of his footsteps, his massive, encroaching presence, the deep rumble that came to him through the ground.

  "...You smell of fat."

  Longtusk turned.

  He faced a Bull: taller, older than Longtusk, but gaunt, almost skeletal. His guard hair dangled, coarse and lifeless. One of his tusks had been broken, perhaps in a fight; it terminated in a crude, dripping stump. The Bull stood listlessly; white mucus dripped from his eyes. He must barely be able to see, Longtusk realized.

  Longtusk's heart was suddenly hammering. Once the Bull's accent would have been familiar to him — for it had been the language of Longtusk's Clan. Was it possible...?

  "I am not fat," said Longtusk. "But you are starving."

  The mammoth stepped back, growled and slapped his trunk on the ground. "You are fat and ugly and complacent, and you stink of fire, you and these squat hairless dwarfs. You have forgotten what you are. Haven't you — Longtusk?"

  "...Rockheart?"

  "I'm still twice the Bull you are." And Rockheart roared and lunged at Longtusk.

  Longtusk ducked aside, and the Bull's tusks flashed uselessly through the air. Rockheart growled, stumbling, the momentum of his lunge catching him off balance. Almost effortlessly Longtusk slid his own tusks around the Bull's, and he twisted Rockheart's head. The huge Bull, roaring, slid sideways to the ground.

  Longtusk placed his foot on Rockheart's temple.

  He recalled how this Bull had once bested him, humiliating him in front of the bachelor herd. But Longtusk had been a mere calf then, and Rockheart a mature adult Bull. Now it was different: now it was Longtusk who was in his prime, Longtusk who had been trained to keep his courage and to fight — not just other Bulls in half-playful dominance contests, but animals as savage as charging rhinos, even hordes of scheming, clever Fireheads.

  "I could crush your skull like a bird's egg," he said softly.

  "Then do it," rumbled Rockheart. "Do it, you Firehead monster."

  Firehead monster.

  Is it true? Is that what I have become?

  Longtusk lifted his foot and stepped back.

  As Rockheart, gaunt and weak, scrambled to his feet and roared out his impotent rage, Lo
ngtusk walked away, saddened and horrified.

  THE FIREHEADS LINGERED CLOSE to the seep holes for a night and a day.

  Longtusk found it increasingly difficult to bear the noise of this nightmarish place: the clash of tusks, the bleating of calves.

  He said to Walks With Thunder, "Why do the Fireheads keep us here? What do they want?"

  "You know what they want," Thunder said wearily. "They want hearts and kidneys and livers and bones, for fat to feed to their cubs. They prefer to take their meat fresh, from the newly dead. And here, in this desolate place, they need only wait."

  "So we are waiting for a mammoth to die?"

  "Why did you think, Longtusk?"

  "These Fireheads believe themselves to be mighty hunters," Longtusk said bitterly. "But it isn't true. They are scavengers, like the hyenas, or the condors."

  Thunder did not reply.

  Somehow, in his heart, he had always imagined that his Family were still out there somewhere: just over the horizon, a little beyond the reach of a contact rumble, living on the steppe as they always had. But he had denied the changes in the land he had seen all around him, never thought through their impact on his Family. Now he faced the truth.

  He recalled how so recently he had prided himself on his self-control, the fact that he was above mundane concerns, beyond pain and love and hope. He tried to cling to that control, to draw strength from it.

  But the comfort was as dry and cold as the mammoths' seep holes. And he couldn't get out of his head the disgust and rage of Rockheart.

  ...The sun wheeled around the sky twice more before it happened.

  There was a flurry of motion among the mammoths. The Fireheads, eating and dozing, stirred.

  A mammoth Cow, barged away from a water hole, had fallen to her knees. Her breath gurgled in her chest. Other mammoths gathered around her briefly, touching her scalp and tongue with their trunks. But they were weak themselves, ground down by hunger and thirst, and had no help to offer her. Soon she was left alone, slumping deeper into the mud, as if melting.

  "At last," rumbled Walks With Thunder brutally.

  With fast, efficient cries, a party of Fireheads formed up, gathering their knives and axes and spears, and set off toward the Cow.

  Drawn by a hideous curiosity, Longtusk followed.

  The Fireheads reached the mammoth. They started to lay their ropes on the ground, ready to pull her onto her back for gutting.

  The mammoth raised her head, feebly and slowly, and her eyes opened, gummy with the milky mucus.

  The Fireheads stepped back, shouting their annoyance that she was not yet dead.

  While the Fireheads argued, the Cow stared at Longtusk. She spoke in a subterranean rumble so soft he could barely hear it. "Don't you recognize me, Longtusk? Has it been so long?"

  Memories swam toward him, long-buried: a calf, a ball of fluffy brown fur, not even her guard hairs grown, scampering, endlessly annoying...

  A name.

  "Splayfoot." Splayfoot, his sister.

  "You're back in time to Remember me," she said. "You and your Firehead friends. You were going to be the greatest hero of all, Longtusk. Wasn't that your dream? But now I can smell the stink of fire and meat on you. What happened to you?"

  One of the hunters — Bareface — stepped forward. He had a spear in his paw, tipped by shining quartz. He hefted it, preparing for a thrust into her mouth, a single stroke that would surely kill her. Evidently the Fireheads, impatient, had decided to finish her off so they could get on with mining her body for its fat and marrow.

  But this was Longtusk's own sister. His sister!

  Longtusk trumpeted his rage.

  With a single tusk sweep he knocked Bareface off his feet. The Firehead fell, howling, clutching his leg; bone protruded white from a bloody wound. Longtusk grabbed the spear with his trunk and drove the quartz point deep into the mud.

  He went to his sister and wrapped his trunk around hers. "Get up."

  "I can't. I'm so tired..."

  "No! Only death is the end of possibility. By Kilukpuk's dugs, up..." And he hauled her to her feet by main force. She scrabbled at the mud, seeking a footing. Her legs were trembling, the muscles so depleted they could barely support her weight.

  But now another mammoth was here — Rockheart, almost as gaunt and weakened. Nevertheless he lumbered up to Splayfoot's other side, lending his support as Longtusk tried to steady her.

  And, startlingly, here was Willow, the squat little Dreamer. He jammed his shoulder under Splayfoot's heavy rump and shoved as hard as he could. He seemed to be laughing as he, too, defied the Fireheads.

  The Fireheads were recovering from their shock at Longtusk's attack on Bareface. They were reaching for weapons, more of the big spears and axes that could slice through a mammoth's hide.

  But now Walks With Thunder charged at them, his gait stiff and arthritic. He trumpeted, waving his huge old tusks this way and that, scattering the Fireheads. "Go, little grazer!"

  And as the water hole receded, and the motley party headed into an empty, unknown land, Longtusk could hear Thunder's call. "Go, go, go!"

  Part 3: Patriarch

  Longtusk and the Truth

  THERE ARE MANY STORIES about Longtusk (said Silverhair).

  There is a story that Longtusk flew over the ice, carrying his Clan to safety in a place called a nunatak.

  There is a story that Longtusk dug his huge tusks into the ground, as we do when we search for water, only to find — not water — but warmth, coming out of bare rock, sufficient to drive back the ice and keep his Clan alive.

  There is a story that he stamped his mighty feet and made his refuge of rock and heat fly off into the sky, carrying the mammoths with it, and the rock became the Sky Steppe, the last refuge of all. But Longtusk had to stay behind, here on Earth, to face his death...

  Or perhaps Longtusk never died. Some say he returns, from out of the north, a hero come to save us when we face great danger. Perhaps it was he who brought our Family to the Island, before the sea rose and trapped us there. (But perhaps that was somebody else, another hero whose name we have lost, somebody inspired by Longtusk's legend...)

  How can all the stories be true?

  Can any of them be true?

  Oh, Icebones, I understand. You want to know. And, more than that, you want the stories to be true. I was just like you as a calf!

  Longtusk is a wonderful hero. But we'll never know for sure. You understand that, don't you?

  ...What do I think?

  Well, stories don't come out of thin air. Perhaps there's a grain of truth. Perhaps there really was a Longtusk, and something like the stories really did happen, long ago.

  Perhaps. We'll never know.

  If I could know one thing about Longtusk, though, it would be this.

  How he died.

  1

  The Family

  UNDER A GRAY SUNLESS SKY, without shadows, every direction looked the same. Even the land was contorted, confusing, the rock bare, littered here and there by gravel and loess, lifeless save for scattered tussocks of grass.

  Longtusk, trunk raised, studied the vast, empty landscape around them. There were no Fireheads, he realized: no storage pits, no hearths, no huts, not even a mastodont, none of it in his vision for the first time for half his lifetime.

  The Fireheads had filled and defined his world for so long. Their projects — predictable or baffling, rewarding or distressing — had provided a structure to every waking moment, even when he had defied them. Now the future seemed as blank and directionless as the land that stretched around him.

  He felt disoriented, like a calf who had been spun around until he was dizzy.

  "I don't think they are coming after us." He almost wished the Fireheads would follow him. At least that was a threat he could understand.

  But it seemed he would not be given that much help. And, for the first time since his capture as a calf, he had to learn to think for himself.

&nbs
p; "Of course not," Rockheart was saying. "They have no need to — save revenge, perhaps. And those dwarfish pals of yours were making trouble."

  "They aren't dwarfs," said Longtusk. "They are mastodonts."

  "It doesn't matter," growled Rockheart. "You won't be seeing them again."

  ...Could that be true?

  "You're the leader of this strange little herd of ours, Longtusk," Rockheart said sourly. "But I strongly suggest we head north and east."

  "Why?"

  "Because we might find something to eat and drink. Although we may have to fight for it." He eyed Longtusk. "You aren't in your Firehead camp now, being fed hay and water by your masters..."

  Perhaps. But Longtusk didn't want to think about a future in which he became like the mammoths he had seen at the mud seep, fighting over dribbles of brackish mud, pushing away the weak and old and young.

  "North and east," he said.

  "North and east."

  So they moved on.

  After a time they found a place where grass grew a little more thickly. Longtusk pulled tufts of the coarse grass into his own mouth, and helped Splayfoot to feed. Her eyes half closed, Splayfoot ground up the grass with slow, feeble movements of her jaw, but he could see her tongue was spotted with black, and she was sucking at the grass as much as eating it.

  He said, "She's very weak. She needs drink as much as food."

  Rockheart growled, "There's no drink to be had here."

  It struck Longtusk that Rockheart himself was barely in better condition than Splayfoot. But where Splayfoot was subsiding toward death, Rockheart was still functioning, working. At the mud seep he had even been prepared to challenge Longtusk — and now here he was playing his part in this unexpected journey, which looked as if it would prove long and difficult.

  His respect grew for this indomitable, arrogant Bull.

  Willow, too, was hungry and thirsty. There was no water here, and the little Dreamer couldn't eat grass, like the mammoths. He prowled around the area until he found a stunted dwarf willow, clinging to the ground. He prized up its twisted branches and studied them, eventually dropping them with scorn.