Icebones tm-3 Read online

  Icebones

  ( The Mammoth - 3 )

  Stephen Baxter

  Transported to the Sky Steppe of Mars in the final, satisfying book in British author Baxter’s highly original Mammoth trilogy (Longtusk; Silverhair), his engaging wooly characters face an abandoned and potentially lethal terraforming experiment left there by humans (aka “the Lost”). Matriarch mammoth Silverhair’s daughter, Icebones, awakens from an unnatural slumber to find herself in a land and time far from her native Pleistocene earth. The mammoths here have no knowledge of their ancient culture, such as the teachings of their mighty progenitor, Kilukpuk. Mammoth tradition says the Sky Steppe is “the Island in the sky where... mammoths would one day find a world of their own, free from the predations and cruelty of the Lost, a world of calm and plenty” yet whatever promise Mars once held is fading now as the changes made by human engineers are reversed under the assault of the red planet’s uncompromising weather and geology. Icebones’s companions, used to depending on the Lost for everything, can’t possibly survive alone. Their only hope is to cross half the world to reach the Footfall of Kilukpuk, a rich valley full of all the sweet grass and water the mammoths need. The journey is long and treacherous, but as the beasts’ great Cycle says, “The mammoth dies, but mammoths live on.” Baxter fills the tale with taut adventure and splendid settings, making it easy to suspend disbelief.

  Icebones

  by Stephen Baxter

  To David and Sarah Oliver and Colin Pillinger and the Beagle 2 team

  Prologue

  There is a flat, sharp, close horizon, a plain of dust and rocks. The rocks are carved by the wind. Everything is stained rust brown, like dried blood, the shadows long and sharp.

  This is not Earth.

  Though the sun is rising, the sky above is still speckled with stars. And in the east there is a morning star: steady, brilliant, its delicate blue-white distinct against the violet wash of the dawn. Sharp-eyed creatures might see that this is a double star; a faint silver-gray companion circles close to its blue master.

  The sun continues to strengthen. Now it is an elliptical patch of yellow light, suspended in a brown sky. But the sun looks small, feeble; this seems a cold, remote place. As the dawn progresses the dust suspended in the air scatters the light and suffuses everything with a pale, salmon hue.

  At last the gathering light masks the moons. Two of them.

  On this world, a single large ocean spans much of the northern hemisphere. There are smaller lakes and seas: many of them circular, confined within craters, linked by rivers and canals. Much of the land is covered by dark green forest and by broad, sweeping grasslands and steppe.

  But ice is gathering at the poles. The oceans and lakes are crawling back into ancient underground aquifers.

  The grip of ice persisted for billions of years. Now it comes again.

  Soon the air itself will start to snow out.

  This is the Sky Steppe.

  This is Mars.

  The time is three thousand years after the birth of Christ.

  The rocky land rings to the calls of the mammoths. But there is no human to hear them.

  Part 1: Mountain

  The Story of the Language of Kilukpuk

  This is a story Kilukpuk told Silverhair, at the end of her life. All this happened a long time ago, long before mammoths came to this place, which we call the Sky Steppe. It is a story of Kilukpuk herself, the Matriarch of Matriarchs, who was born in a burrow in the time of the Reptiles. But at the time of this story the Reptiles were long gone, and the world was young and warm and empty.

  Kilukpuk had been alive for a very long time. She had become so huge that her body had sunk into the ground, turning it into a Swamp within which she dwelled.

  But she had a womb as fertile as the sea. And every year she bore Calves.

  Kilukpuk was concerned that her Calves were foolish.

  Now, in those days, no Calves could talk. Oh, they made noises: chirps and barks and rumbles and snores and trumpets, just as Calves will make today. But what the Calves chattered to each other didn’t mean anything. They made the noises in play, or without thinking, or from pain or joy.

  Kilukpuk decided to change this.

  One year Kilukpuk bore three Calves.

  As they suckled at her mighty dugs, she took each of them aside. She said, "If you want to suckle, you must make this sound." And she made the suckling cry. And then, when the Calves were no longer hungry, she pushed them away.

  The next day all the Calves were hungry again, and Kilukpuk waited in her Swamp.

  The first Calf was silent, for she had forgotten the cry Kilukpuk taught her. And so she received no milk.

  And she died.

  The second Calf made the suckling cry, but made many other noises besides, for she thought that the cry was as meaningless as any other chatter. And so she received no milk.

  And she died.

  The third Calf, observing the fate of her sisters, made the suckling cry correctly. And Kilukpuk gathered her to her teat, and suckled her, and that Calf lived to grow strong.

  When she grew up, that Calf had three Calves of her own. And all of them were born knowing the suckling cry.

  Now Kilukpuk gathered the three Calves of her Calf. She said, "If you ever lose your mother, you must make this sound." And she made the lost cry. And then she pushed the Calves away.

  A few days later, the playful Calves lost their mother — as Calves will — and Kilukpuk waited in her Swamp.

  The first Calf was silent, for she had forgotten the cry Kilukpuk taught her. And so she stayed lost, and the wolves got her.

  And she died.

  The second Calf made the lost cry, but made many other noises besides, for she thought that the cry was as meaningless as any other chatter. And so she stayed lost, and the wolves got her.

  And she died.

  The third Calf, observing the fate of her sisters, made the lost cry correctly. And Kilukpuk gathered her up in her trunk and delivered her to her mother, who suckled her, and that Calf lived to grow strong.

  And when she grew up, that Calf had three Calves of her own. And all of them were born knowing the suckling cry, and the lost cry.

  And the next generation of Calves was born knowing the suckling cry, and the lost cry, and the "Let’s go" rumble.

  And the next generation after that was born knowing the suckling cry, and the lost cry, and the "Let’s go" rumble, and the contact rumble.

  And so it went, as Kilukpuk instructed each new generation. Calves who learned the new calls were bound tightly together, and Kilukpuk’s Family grew stronger.

  Calves who did not learn the new calls died. And still Kilukpuk’s Family grew stronger.

  That is how the language of mammoths and their Cousins came about. And that is why every new Calf is born with the language of Kilukpuk in her head.

  Yes, it was cruel, and Kilukpuk mourned every one of those Calves who died. But it is the truth.

  The Cycle is the wisdom of uncounted generations of mammoths. Nothing in there is false. For if it had been false, it would have been removed.

  Just as the foolish Calves who would not learn were removed, by death.

  1

  The Awakening

  Icebones was cold.

  She was trapped in chill darkness. She couldn’t feel her legs, her tail, even her trunk. She could hear nothing, see nothing.

  She tried to call out to her mother, Silverhair, by rumbling, trumpeting, stamping. She couldn’t even do that. It was like being immersed in thick cold mud.

  And the cold was deep, deeper than she had ever known, soaking into the core of her body, reaching the warm center under her layers of hair and fat and flesh and bone, the core heat every mammot
h had to protect, all her life.

  Perhaps this was the aurora, where mammoths believed their souls rose when they died.

  …But, she thought resentfully, she was only fifteen years old. She had never mated, never borne a calf. How could she have died?

  Besides, much was wrong. The aurora was full of light, but there was no light here. The aurora was full of the scent of growing grass, but there was no scent here.

  And things were changing.

  She had been — asleep — and now she was awake. That had changed.

  She recalled a time before this darkness, when she had been with Silverhair. They had walked across the cold steppe of the Island, surrounded by the Lost and their incomprehensible gadgetry, perturbed and yet not harmed by them. She recalled what her mother had been saying: "You will be a Matriarch some day, little Icebones. You will be the greatest of them all. But responsibility will lie heavily on you…" Icebones hadn’t understood.

  With her mother, then on the Island. Now here. Change. A time asleep. Now, awake in the dark. Change, change, change.

  Everyone knew that in the aurora nothing changed. In the aurora mammoths gathered in the calm warm presence of Kilukpuk, immersed in Family, and there was no day or night, no hunger or thirst, no I: merely a continual, endless moment of belonging.

  This was not the aurora. I am not dead, she realized. My long walk continues.

  But with life came hope and fear, and dread settled on her.

  She made the lost cry, like a calf. But she couldn’t even hear that.

  Thunder cracked. Light flashed in sharp lines above and below her. She felt a shuddering, deep in her belly, as if the ground itself was stirring.

  She tried to retreat, to rumble her alarm, but still she could not move.

  The close darkness receded. Great hard sheets of blackness, like dark ice, fell away. She was suddenly immersed in pink-red light.

  And now the feeling returned to her legs and trunk, belly and back, all in a rush. It was like being drenched suddenly in ice water. She staggered, her legs stiff and remote. She tried to trumpet, but her trunk was heavy, and a thick, briny liquid gushed out of it, like sea water.

  When her nostrils were clear she took a deep, shuddering breath. The air was cold and sharp — and thin. It made her gasp, hurting her raw lungs. Her weak eyes prickled, suddenly streaming with salty water. But she rejoiced, for she was whole again, immersed in her body, and the world.

  But it was not the world she had known.

  The sky was pink, like a dawn, or a sunset.

  She was standing on a shallow slope. She ran her soft trunk tip over the ground. It was hard smooth rock, blue-red. Its surface was rippled and lobed, as if it had melted and refrozen.

  This broad plain of rock descended as far as she could see, all the way to the horizon. She must be standing on the flank of a giant mountain, she thought. She turned to look up toward the summit, and she saw a great pillar of black smoke thrusting up to the sky, billows caught in their motion as if frozen.

  Her patch of rock, soiled by her watery vomit, was surrounded by sheets of dense blackness that lay on the ground. When she touched this black stuff, she found it was hard and cold and lacking in scent and taste, quite unlike the rock in its chilling smoothness. And the sheets had sharp, straight edges. It was the crust of darkness that had contained her when she had woken from her strange Sleep, and it filled her with renewed dread.

  She stepped reluctantly over the smooth black sheets, until she had reached the comparative comfort of the solid rock. But the rock’s lobes and ridges were hard under her feet, and every time she took a step she had a strange, dream-like sensation of floating.

  Nothing grew here: no herbs, no trees. There was nothing to eat, not so much as a blade of grass.

  The air stank of smoke and sulfur. The sun was small and dim and shrunken. The ground shuddered, as if some immense beast buried there were snoring softly in its sleep.

  I am in a strange place indeed, she thought. Her brief euphoria evaporated, and disorientation and fear returned.

  A contact rumble reached her, resonating deep in her belly. She was not alone: relief flooded her.

  She turned sharply. Pain prickled in her knees and back and neck, and in the pads of her feet.

  A mammoth was approaching — a Bull, taller than she was.

  As he walked his powerful shoulders rose and fell, and his head nodded and swayed, his trunk a tangible weight that pulled at his neck. His underfur was light brown, but yellow-white around his rump and belly. His tough overlying guard hairs were much darker, nearly black on his rump and flanks, but shading to a deep brown flecked with crimson on his forequarters. The hairs that dangled from his trunk and chin and feet were paler, in places almost white. His tusks curled before him, heavy and proud. He walked slowly, languidly, as if dazed or ill.

  She could see him only dimly, through air laden with mist and smoke. But she could smell the deep warmth of his layered hair, feel the steady press of his footsteps against the hard ground.

  He was mammuthus primigenius: a woolly mammoth, as she was.

  She didn’t know him.

  The two of them began to growl and stomp, facing each other and turning away, touching tusks and trunks, even emitting high, bird-like chirrups from their trunks. The moist pink tip of his trunk reached out and explored her mouth, scalp and eyes. She ran her own trunk fingers through his long guard hairs, finding the woolly underfur beneath.

  In this way, touching and singing and listening and smelling, the two mammoths shared a complex, rich exchange of information.

  "…Who are you? Where are you from?"

  "My name is Icebones—"

  "Do you know where the food is? We’re all hungry here."

  She stumbled back, confused. He was hard to understand, his sounds and postures and gestures a distortion of the language she was used to, as if he had come from a different Clan, not related to her own. And his manner was strange — eager, clumsy, more befitting a callow calf than a grown Bull.

  She realized immediately, He is frightened.

  Discreetly she probed the area of his temple between his eyes and his small ears where he would secrete musth fluid, if it was his time. But she found nothing.

  "I don’t know anything about food."

  He growled. "But you came out of that." He probed at the black sheets around her.

  She didn’t know what to say to him.

  Baffled, disturbed, she stepped forward, ignoring the continuing stiffness in her legs, and walked down the featureless slope. The Bull followed her, demanding food noisily, like a calf pursuing his mother.

  She reached a shallow ridge. She paused there, raised her trunk and sniffed, studying the world.

  She saw how this Mountain’s tremendous shadow spilled across the rocky plains below. Looking beyond the shadow to where the land was still sunlit, she saw splashes of gray-green — the steppe, perhaps, or forest. And beyond that she saw the broad shoulders of two more vast, shallow mountains, pushing above the horizon, mighty twins of the Mountain under her feet, made gray and colorless by distance and mist. Close to the horizon thin clouds glowed, bright blue, stark against the pink sky.

  There was a moon in the sky. But it was not the Moon, which had floated above the night lands of the Island. This moon was a small white disc, and it was climbing into the smoky sky as she watched — visibly moving, moment by moment, with a strange, disturbing speed. As it climbed, approaching the sun, it turned into a crescent, a cup of darkness, that finally disappeared.

  And then the moon’s shadow passed over the sun itself, a dark spot like a passing cloud.

  Icebones cringed.

  With her deep mammoth’s senses she could hear the songs of the planet: the growl of earthquakes and volcanoes, the howl of wind and thunder, the angry surge of ocean storms, all the noises of earth, air, fire and water. And she could tell that this world was small, round, hard — and strange.

  She raise
d her trunk higher, trying to smell mammoths, her Family, Silverhair. She could smell nothing but the stink of sulfur and ash.

  Wherever she was, however she had got here, she was far from her Family. Without her Family she was incomplete — for a mammoth Cow could no more live apart from her Family than a trunk or leg or tusk could survive if cut off the body.

  The Bull continued to pursue her.

  She turned on him. "Why are you following me? I am not in oestrus. Can’t you tell that? And you are not in musth."

  His eyes gleamed, amber pebbles in pits of wrinkled skin. "What is oestrus? What is musth?"

  She growled. "My name is Icebones. What is your name? Where is your bachelor herd?"

  "Do you know where the food is? Please, I am very hungry."

  She came closer to him, curiosity warring with her anger and confusion. She explored his face with her trunk. How could he know so little? How could he not have a name?

  And — where was she? This strange place of pink mountains was like nowhere she had ever heard of, nowhere spoken of even in the Cycle, the mammoths’ great and ancient body of lore…

  Nowhere, except one place.

  "The Sky Steppe. That’s where we are, isn’t it?" The Sky Steppe, the Island in the sky where — according to the Cycle — mammoths would one day find a world of their own, far from the predations and cruelty of the Lost, a world of calm and plenty.

  But this place of barren rock and smoky air didn’t seem so plentiful to her, nor was it calm.

  The Bull ignored her questions. "I’m hungry," he repeated.

  She turned her back on him deliberately.

  She heard him grunt and snort, the soft uncertain pads of his footsteps recede. She felt relief — then renewed anxiety.

  I’m hungry too, she realized. And I’m thirsty. And, after all, the strange, infuriating Bull was the only mammoth she had seen here.