Silverhair

by Stephen Baxter

  Silverhair was scandalized. "Lop-ear, it's in the Cycle."

  The Cycle contains tales of a mysterious Steppe that floats in the sky, where — the story goes — mammoths will one day roam free.

  But Lop-ear was growling. "Look — we can know the past because we remember it, and we can tell it to our calves, who remember it in turn... Through the Cycle, and the memories of our mothers, we can 'remember' all the way back to Kilukpuk's Swamp. That's all sensible. But as to the future—" He tossed his twig in the air. "We can no more know the future than we can say how that twig will fall."

  The stick rattled to the bone-hard ground, out of her sight.

  "And besides," he said, "there might soon be nobody to go to the Sky Steppe anyhow."

  "What do you mean?"

  He looked at her mournfully. "Think about it. When was the last time you heard a contact rumble from my Family — or any other Family, come to that? How many mammoths have we seen on this trek? We haven't even found footprints or fresh dung—"

  The thought was chilling; she turned away from it. "You think too much."

  "I wish I could stop," he said quietly.

  They moved on, through cloudy day and Moonlit night.

  They came to a place they knew was good for salty soil. It was frozen over, but they set to scraping at the ice with their tusks until they had exposed some of the bone-hard soil. Then they dug out a little of the soil and tucked it into their mouths; the soil was dry and dusty, but it contained salt and other minerals otherwise missing from the mammoths' diet.

  And nearby, under a thin layer of hoarfrost, they found a heap of mammoth dung. It was reasonably fresh, and hope briefly lifted; perhaps other Families were, after all, close.

  But then Silverhair recognized the dung's sharp scent. "Why, it's mine," she said. "I must have come this way before."

  Lop-ear broke open the pat of dung —it wasn't quite frozen in the center — and began to lift chunks of it to his mouth. Mammoths will eat a little dung to sustain the colonies of bacteria that live in their guts, which help them digest grasses.

  "Maybe our luck is changing, even so," he said around a mouthful of soil and dung.

  "How?"

  "Look up."

  She did so, and she saw a curtain of light streaks spread across the sky — mostly yellow and crimson, fading to black, but here and there tinged with green. It extended from the horizon, all the way up the sky, almost to the zenith over their heads. The curtain rippled gently, like the guard hairs that dangle from the belly of a mammoth.

  It was an aurora.

  Mammoths believe the aurora is made up of the spirits of every mammoth who has ever lived, brought to life again by a wind from the sun, so joyous they dance at the very top of the air.

  Lop-ear said, "What do you think? Is Longtusk up there somewhere, looking down on us? Do you think he's come to guide our way?"

  Indeed, the ghostly light of the aurora had made the Moonlit landscape glow green and blue, almost as brightly as day.

  With uplifted hearts, they set off once more.

  AFTER DAYS OF WALKING they climbed a shallow ridge that gave them a view of the Island's south coast, and Silverhair could see the pale blue-white gleam of pack ice on the sea. But between the two mammoths and the coast, lying over the land like a layer of guard hair, there lay the spruce forest. The first isolated, straggling trees were already close.

  The two mammoths skirted the darker depths of the forest, staying at the northern fringe where only a few scattered, stunted trees encroached on the rocky tundra, ancient plants that grew no higher than their own bellies. It was well known that wolves inhabited the deeper forest. It was unlikely that even a pack would take on two full-grown mammoths, but inside the denser parts of the forest, movement would be difficult, and they would be foolish to offer the wily predators any opportunity.

  The only sounds were the crunch of ice beneath their feet, the hiss of breath in their trunks, and the low moan of the wind in the trees. In the branches of a dwarf spruce a solitary capercaillie sat, unperturbed, eyeing them as they passed.

  Night was falling by the time they reached the headland.

  The sea opened up before them, flat and calm. A fringe of fast ice pushed out from the land, hard and glistening. Farther out, the sea ice was littered with trapped icebergs, sculptured mountains that glowed green and blue. Silverhair could see the rope of water that cut off the Island from the Mainland — which was, she saw, still shrouded by storm clouds that hid the glittering and mysterious array of lights that clustered there.

  As the sun waned, the colors faded to an ice-blue twilight. The air grew colder, and the seawater steamed.

  It was a bleak, frozen scene. But there was life here. More seabirds were arriving from the south, fulmars and black guillemots, and they had begun their elaborate courtship in the pink, watery sunshine. Seals slid through the open water, snorting when they broke the surface.

  Beneath the headland was a valley that descended to the rocky southern coast. Silverhair and Lop-ear clambered down this valley.

  Between the walls of the valley, nothing moved save an occasional swirl of dry snow crystals lifted by the wind. The mountainside here had been blown almost clear of snow, and in the shade the rock was covered by a treacherous glaze of ice. Their broad feet gripped the ground well; the round soles of Silverhair's feet were thickened into ridges for that purpose. But even so her feet slid out from under her, and she barely managed to keep from stumbling. Once, she found herself teetering on the edge of a sheer drop into a snow-filled chasm.

  Surrounded by these huge walls of ice and rock, Silverhair gained an unwelcome perspective on the smallness and frailty of even a mammoth's life.

  At last they reached the beach. It was growing dark, and they decided to wait out the long night there.

  The beach was a strange place where neither of them felt comfortable.

  For one thing, it was noisy compared to the thick stillness of the Arctic nights they were used to: they heard the continual lapping of the sea at the shingle, the crunching of stones beneath their shifting feet, the snapping and groaning of the sea ice as it rose and fell in response to the oily surges of the water beneath. There was no food to be had, for this eroded, shifting place was neither land nor sea. It was even considered a waste to pass dung here, for it would merely wash away to sea rather than enrich the land.

  They endured a long, uncomfortable night of broken sleep.

  The dawn, when at last it came, was clear. The sky turned an intense blue, and the sea ice was so white that the horizon was a firm line. As the sunrise itself approached, a shaft of deep red light shot suddenly straight up, piercing the blue. Silverhair looked out over the sea ice and saw that, thanks to a mirage effect, the distant pack ice seemed to be lifting into the sky, illusory towers rising and falling in the heat from the sun. And when the sun rose a little higher she saw a ghostly companion rise with it, a halo scattered by ice crystals in the air.

  Lop-ear impulsively ran to the water's edge. Breaking the thin ice, he waded in until his legs were immersed up to his hips and his belly hair was soaked and floating loosely on the surface.

  He looked back at Silverhair. "Come on. What are you waiting for?"

  Silverhair took a hesitant step forward. She dipped one foot in the water, and steeled herself to go farther.

  Silverhair had an abiding dread of deep water. As a small calf, she had fallen into a fast-flowing glacier runoff stream. She had been washed down the stream, bobbing like a piece of rotten wood, her squeals all but drowned out by the rush of water. Only the fast brain and strong trunk of Wolfnose had saved her from being dashed against the rocks, or drowned.

  Lop-ear waded clumsily back toward her; he splashed her, and the water droplets were icy. "I'm sorry," he said. "I forgot. That was stupid of me."

  "It's all right. I'm just being foolish."

  Lop-ear grunted. "There's nothing foolish about learning to avoid danger." He quoted
the Cycle: "The wolf's first bite is its responsibility. Its second is yours. I'm being selfish—"

  "No." And Silverhair waded forward deliberately, leading the way into the ocean.

  The water immediately soaked through the hair over her legs. Close to freezing, its cold penetrated to her skin. Her hair, waving like seaweed around her belly, impeded her progress. The sheets of land-fast ice crackled around her legs and chest.

  Lop-ear stopped her. "That's far enough," he said. "Now..."

  Awkwardly he kneeled down so his chest was immersed. Then he dipped his head; soon the water was lapping over his eyes and forehead.

  He lifted his head in a great spray, and she could see frost forming on his hair and eyelashes. He said, "Did you hear me?"

  With great reluctance, she dropped her head so that her trunk and right ear were immersed in the icy water. Lop-ear extended his trunk underwater and emitted a series of strange calls: deep-toned whistles and bleats mixed with higher-pitched squeaks and squeals.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Calling our Cousins. The Calves of Siros. Don't you know your Cycle? The sea cows, Silverhair."

  She snorted. "But the sea cows all died lifetimes ago. The Lost hunted them even harder than they hunted us. That's what the Cycle says—"

  "The Cycle isn't always right."

  "Have you ever seen a sea cow?"

  "No," he said. "But I've never seen the back of my own head either. Doesn't mean to say it doesn't exist." He thrust his trunk back into the sea and continued his plaintive call.

  Reluctantly she ducked her ear back under the water.

  The sea had its own huge, hollow noises, like an immense, empty cavern. She heard the voices of seals: birdlike chirrups, long swooping whistles, and short popping cries that the seals bounced off the ice sheets above them, using the echoes to seek out their airholes. Then, deeper and more remote, were the groans of whales, and still deeper, calls that might come from half the world away...

  And — briefly — they heard a series of low whistles, interspersed with high-pitched squeaks and squeals.

  But the sound died away.

  They lifted their heads out of the water. They looked at each other.

  "It was probably only an echo," she said. "Some undersea cliff."

  "I know. There's nothing there. But wouldn't it have been wonderful if—"

  "Come on. Let's go and get warm."

  They turned and splashed their way out of the water. Silverhair shook her head to rid it of the frost that was forming. To get their blood flowing through their chilled skin once more, they played: they chased each other across the shingle, mock-wrestled with their trunks, and gamboled like calves.

  Silverhair looked back once, at the place where they had called to the sea cows.

  Far out in the Channel she thought she could see something surface: huge, black, sleek. Then it was gone.

  It was probably just a trick of the light.

  4

  The Monster of the Ice Floe

  WHEN THEY WERE WARM they continued along the beach, in search of the peculiar creatures Silverhair had spotted.

  Hundreds of guillemots were arriving on the cliffs above them. This first sign of the summer's burst of fecundity seemed incongruous on such a bitterly cold morning; in fact, the nesting ledges were still covered in snow and ice. But the seabirds had to start early if they were to complete their breeding cycle before, all too soon, the snow of winter returned. And so the birds clung to the cliffs and fought over the prime nesting sites. So intense were these battles, Silverhair saw, that two birds, locked together beak to bloody beak, fell from the high cliffs and dashed themselves against the sea ice below.

  Fast as a spray of blown snow, an Arctic fox darted forward and grabbed both birds, killing them immediately. The fox buried his catch in the ice, and returned to the foot of the nesting cliff in search of more pickings.

  From a snowbank high on the cliff a female polar bear, her fur yellow-white, pushed her way out of her den. She yawned and stretched, and Silverhair wondered if it was the bear she had seen before.

  The bear clambered back up to her den and sat by the entrance. After a time a cub appeared — small, dumpy, and dazzling-white — and it greeted the world with terrified squeaks. A second cub emerged, then a third. The mother walked confidently down the steep cliff toward the sea while the cubs looked on with trepidation. At last two of the cubs followed her, gingerly, sliding backwards, their claws clutching the snow. The other stayed in the den entrance and cried so loudly its mother returned with the others, and she suckled all three in the sun. Then the bear walked steadily down to the sea ice — in search of her first meal since the autumn — and her cubs clumsily followed.

  The mammoths walked around a rocky spur, and they came to the Nest of Straight Lines.

  Lop-ear slowed, his eyes wide, his trunk held up in the air, his good ear cocked, alert for danger.

  Silverhair was trembling, for this was an unnatural place. Still, she said, "We have to go on. The strange ice floe, whatever it was, must have come to rest farther on than this. Come on."

  And without allowing herself to hesitate, she set off along the beach. After a few heartbeats she heard Lop-ear's heavy steps crackling on the shingle as he followed.

  In this mysterious place, set back from the beach, a series of blocky shapes huddled against the cliff. They were dark and angular, each of them much larger even than a mammoth. The great blocks were hollowed out. Holes gaped in their sides and tops, allowing in the low sunlight; but there was no movement within.

  Lop-ear said, "Those things look like skulls to me."

  Looking again, she saw that he was right: skulls, but with eye sockets and gaping mouths made out of straight lines, and big enough for a mammoth to climb inside.

  "They must be the skulls of giants, then," she said.

  The most horrific aspect of the place was that the whole of it was constructed of hard, straight lines. It was the lines that had earned the place its mammoth name, for aside from the horizon line and the trunks of trees, there are few long, straight lines in nature.

  In the center of the Nest there was a great stalk: like the trunk of a tree, but not solid, made of sticks and spars through which Silverhair could see the pale dawn sky. And at the top of the stalk there were a series of big round shells, like the petals of a flower — but much bigger, so big they looked as if a mammoth could clamber inside.

  The mammoths peered up at the assemblage of brooding forms, dwarfed.

  "Perhaps those things up there are the ears of the giants who lived here," said Lop-ear, awed.

  "But what happened to the giants?"

  "You know what Eggtusk says."

  "What?"

  "That this place has nothing to do with giants," he said.

  "Then what?"

  "Lost," said Lop-ear. "The Lost made this."

  And as he spoke the name of the mammoths' most dread enemy of the past, it was Silverhair's turn to shiver.

  By unspoken agreement they hurried on.

  A flat sheet lying on the shingle briefly caught Silverhair's eye. It looked at first like a broken sheet of ice — but as she came closer, she saw that it was made of wood — though she knew of no tree that produced such huge, straight-edged branches.

  There were markings on the sheet.

  She slowed, studying the markings. The patterns reminded her oddly of the scrapings Lop-ear had made in the frost. There was a splash of yellow, almost like a flower — or like a star, cupped in a crescent Moon. And beneath it, a collection of lines and curves that had no meaning for her:

  USSR

  AIR FORCE

  SECURE AREA

  ENTRANCE PROHIBITED

  SHE WANTED TO ASK Lop-ear about it; perhaps he would understand. But he had already hurried ahead, and she didn't want to linger alone in this unnatural place; she ran to catch him up.

  WITH THE NEST of Straight Lines behind them, they approached the half-frozen
sea.

  "What I saw must have been about here," said Silverhair, trying to think.

  Lop-ear looked around and raised his trunk. "I can't smell anything."

  The two mammoths walked a little way onto the ice, which squeaked and crackled under them. The ice that clung closest to the shore, where the sea was frozen all the way to the bottom, was called landfast ice. It formed in protected bays, or drifted in from the sea. Its width varied depending on how deep the water was. Later in the summer the landfast ice would break free and melt, or drift away with the pack ice.

  The pack ice was the frozen surface of the deeper ocean. It was a blue-white sheet crumpled into pressure ridges, like lines of sand dunes sculpted in white. Farther away from the land Silver-hair could see black lines carved in the ice: leads, cracks exposing open water between the loose mass of floes. As the spring wore on, the leads would extend in toward the coast, splitting off the ice floes. The floes would break up, or be washed out to open sea by the powerful current that ran between the Mainland and the Island.

  Dark clouds hung over the open Channel, that forbidding stretch of black, open water; the clouds formed from the steam rising from the water.

  And on a floe far from the land, she made out a black, unmoving shape.

  She trumpeted in triumph. Gulls, startled awake, cawed in response.

  "There!" she cried. "Do you see it?"

  Lop-ear patiently stared where she did. "I don't see a thing. Just pressure ridges, and shadows... Oh."

  "You do see it! You do! That's what I saw, floating in the sea — and now it's on the ice."

  It might have been the size of a mammoth, she supposed — but a mammoth lying inert on the floe. All Silverhair's fear had evaporated like hoarfrost, so great was her gladness at rediscovering the strange object. "Come on." And she set out across the landfast ice.

  Reluctantly Lop-ear followed.

  As they moved away from the shore, the quality of the sound changed. The soft lapping of the sea was gone, and the ice creaked and groaned as it shifted on the sea, a deep rumble like the call of a mammoth.