Longtusk tm-2 Read online

  Longtusk

  ( The Mammoth - 2 )

  Stephen Baxter

  Meticulously researched, simply told and appropriate for readers of all ages, this second volume (after 1999’s Silverhair) in Baxter’s Mammoth trilogy brings to compelling life the complex culture of these giant creatures. It’s sixteen thousand years B.C., and woolly mammoths roam the earth, inhabiting the steppes of Beringia, the land bridge linking Asia and North America. Climactic changes have caused the steppes to recede, but humans, whom the mammoths call Fireheads, pose the greatest threat to their survival. Longtusk, whose coming-of-age story this is, must save the mammoths by spearheading an epic journey. Separated from his family, Longtusk is enslaved by the Fireheads, who make him a beast of burden. But a Dreamer (Neanderthal) woman foretells his future: Longtusk will die, along with the Dreamer who once saved his life and that of the Firehead matriarch, Crocus. Although Longtusk escapes his captors and finds a steppe that will support a small mammoth herd, years later Crocus and her people return, seeking to drive the mammoths away from their habitat. Longtusk embarks on a final heroic mission to save the mammoths and meet his fate. The book’s themes of ecological disaster, warfare and change resonate deeply with today’s concerns. When a mastodont tells Longtusk, "You and I must take the world as it is. [The Fireheads] imagined how it might be different. Whether it’s better is beside the point; to the Fireheads, change is all that matters," it’s clear that humans have not changed at all.

  Longtusk

  by Stephen Baxter

  To my niece, Jessica Bourg

  Prologue

  A vast sheet of ice sits on the North Pole: immense, brooding, jealously drawing the moisture from the air. Glaciers, jutting from the icecap like claws, pulverize rock layers and carve out fjords and lakes. South of the ice, immense plains sweep around the planet, darkened by herds of mighty herbivores.

  The ice has drawn so much water from the oceans that the very shapes of the continents are changed. Australia is no island, but is joined to southeast Asia. And in the north, America is linked to Asia by a neck of land called Beringia, so that a single mighty continent all but circles the North Pole.

  The ice is in retreat, driven back by Earth’s slow thaw to its millennial fastness at the poles. But it retreats with ill grace, gouging at the land, and all around the planet there are catastrophic climatic events of a power and fury unknown to later ages. And, retreat or not, the sites of the cities of the future — Chicago, Boston, Edinburgh, Stockholm, Moscow — still lie dreaming under kilometers of ice.

  The time is sixteen thousand years before the birth of Christ. And every human alive wakes to the calls of mammoths.

  Part 1: Nomad

  The Story of Longtusk and the She-Cat

  Who was Longtusk?

  I’ll tell you who Longtusk was (Silverhair said to her daughter, Icebones). He was the greatest hero of the Cycle — and the only Bull hero in all the Cycle’s long history.

  My Matriarch used to say I had a little of Longtusk’s spirit in me too. And I don’t know why you think that’s so funny, Icebones. I wasn’t always so old and frail as this…

  Tell you a story? Another?

  Very well. I’ll tell you how Longtusk defeated Teeth-of-Death, the she-cat.

  This is a story of long ago, when the world was new and rich and cold, and there were no Lost, anywhere. The mammoths were the strongest and wisest of all the animals, so much so that the others grew to rely on their strength, and the way they remade the landscape, everywhere they went.

  The mammoths were the Matriarchs of the world. Everybody agreed.

  Well, almost everybody.

  Teeth-of-Death was a she-cat. In fact she was the ruler of the saber-tooth cats, for she was the strongest and most agile, her teeth and claws the longest and sharpest, her mind the most inventive, her cruelty the most relentless.

  Every animal feared the saber-tooth cats. Every animal feared Teeth-of-Death. Every animal save the mammoths.

  The mammoths were too big, too powerful. Oh, the cats could bring down a mammoth from time to time, but only the very young or the very old or the very sick. It was not an honorable business. In fact, as they glided back and forth on their great migrations, the mammoths barely noticed the cats even existed.

  This, of course, drove Teeth-of-Death insane with jealousy and hurt pride.

  Now, as you know, when he was a young Bull Longtusk left his Clan and traveled far and wide: from north to south, even across the seas and the lakes and the ice. Everywhere he went he gained in wisdom and stature; everybody he met was impressed by his bearing and grace; and he had adventures which have never been forgotten.

  And it was this Longtusk, Longtusk the nomad, who happened upon Teeth-of-Death.

  The great cat confronted Longtusk. She said, "This cannot go on."

  Longtusk had been feeding on a rich stand of willow. He looked down his trunk to see what was making so much noise, and there was the spitting, agitated cat. He asked reasonably, "What can’t go on?"

  "Either you rule the Earth, or I do. Not both."

  "Don’t you think there are more important things to worry about than that?"

  "No," Teeth-of-Death snapped. "Ruling is the most important thing. More important than life."

  "Nonsense," said Longtusk. "If it makes you happy, I hereby pronounce you the world’s most fearsome animal. There. Now we don’t have to argue, do we?" And he turned to walk away. For, you see, he was wise as well as brave, and he knew that an unnecessary fight should not be fought.

  But that would not do for the she-cat.

  With an agile bound she ran before Longtusk and confronted him. "No," she said. "I cannot live while I know in my heart that you do not respect me."

  She was surely an intimidating sight: an immense cat with jaws spread wide, sharp teeth gaping, claws that with a single swipe could disembowel even an adult Bull mammoth — if she ever got the chance.

  "You are very foolish," said Longtusk. But he faced her warily, for he knew he must meet her challenge.

  And so it began. When news of the contest spread, all the animals of the world gathered around, pushing and staring.

  Teeth-of-Death attacked Longtusk three times.

  The first time she leaped at his face, reaching for his eyes and trunk. But Longtusk simply raised his tusks and pushed her away.

  For her second attack Teeth-of-Death clambered up a spruce tree. She leaped down onto Longtusk’s back and tried to use her great saber teeth to gouge into his flesh. He could not reach her with his trunk to dislodge her. But she could not bite through his fur and skin. After a time he simply walked beneath a low tree and let its branches scrape the cat from his back, and that was that.

  For her third attack Teeth-of-Death hid in a bank of snow. She had decided that when Longtusk came close enough she would leap at him again, trying to reach the soft flesh of his belly or trunk. It was a clever strategy and might have succeeded, even against a hero so strong as Longtusk, for cats are adept at such deception. But, obsessed with her ambition, Teeth-of-Death forced herself to lie still in her snowdrift for several days, waiting for her opportunity.

  And when Longtusk at last came by Teeth-of-Death was cold, half-starved, exhausted.

  She sprang too early, made too much noise. To fend her off, Longtusk simply swept his great tusks and let their tips gouge furrows in Teeth-of-Death’s beautiful golden coat.

  They faced each other, Longtusk barely scratched, Teeth-of-Death bleeding and exhausted.

  Longtusk said, "Let us reach an agreement."

  Teeth-of-Death said warily, licking her wounds, "No agreement is possible."

  For answer, he went to the snowdrift where she had been hiding. He scraped away the snow an
d the hard ice that lay beneath, revealing bare earth. Then he dug deeper, and he exposed another layer of ice, hidden beneath the dirt.

  "The ice comes and goes in great waves," he said. "This old ice was covered with dirt before it had time to melt. Now the ice has come again and covered over the land. So here we have two layers of ice in the same place, one on top of each other."

  The cat hissed, "What relevance has this?"

  "Here is my suggestion," he said. "We will share the world, just as these ice layers share the same patch of ground. But, just like these ice layers, we will not touch each other.

  "You cats eat the meat of animals. We mammoths do not hunt; we do not covet your prey—"

  "Ah," said the cat. "And you eat the plants and grass and trees, which we do not desire. Very well. We will share the world, as you suggest." But her eyes narrowed.

  And so it was concluded.

  But when Longtusk was turning to go, the cat mocked him. "I have tricked you," she said. "I will eat the finest meat. You, however, must eat dirt and scrub. What kind of bargain is that? You are a fool, Longtusk."

  And Longtusk reflected.

  The she-cat thought she had won: and in a way she had. She would become the steppe’s ruling animal, its top predator. But Longtusk knew that though its food may be richer, a predator needs many prey to survive. Even a mighty herd of deer could support only a few cats, and the numbers of the she-cat’s cubs would always be limited.

  But the steppe was full of dirt and scrub, as she had called it. And Longtusk knew that thanks to his bargain it was his calves, the mammoths, who would grow in number until they filled the steppe, even to the point where they shaped it for their needs.

  "Yes," he said gently. "I am a fool." And he turned and walked away.

  …I know what you are thinking, Icebones. Is the story true? Are any of the stories of Longtusk true? It seems impossible that one mammoth could cram so many acts of impossible heroism and matchless wisdom into one brief lifetime.

  Well, perhaps some of the stories have become a little embellished with time. They are after all stories.

  But I know this. Longtusk was real. Longtusk encountered great danger — and in the end, Longtusk sacrificed his life to save his Clan.

  He was the greatest hero of them all.

  1

  The Gathering

  The greatest hero of them all was twelve years old, and he was in trouble with his mother. Again.

  Yellow plain, blue sky; it was a fine autumn afternoon, here on the great steppe of Beringia. The landscape was huge, flat, elemental, an ocean of pale grass mirrored by an empty sky, crossed by immense herds of herbivores and the carnivores that preyed on them. Longtusk heard the hiss of the endless winds through the grass and sedge, the murmur of a river some way to the west — and, under it all, the unending grind and crack of the great ice sheets that spanned the continent to the north.

  And mammoths swept over the land like clouds.

  Loose wool hung around them, catching the low sunlight. He heard the trumpeting and clash of tusks of bristling, arguing bachelors, and the rumbles of the great Matriarchs — complex songs with deep harmonic structure, much of it inaudible to human ears — as they solemnly debated the state of the world.

  This was the season’s last gathering of the Clan, this great assemblage of Families, before the mammoths dispersed to the winter pastures of the north.

  And Longtusk was angry, aggrieved, ignored. He worked the ground as he walked, tearing up grass, herbs and sedge with his trunk and pushing them into his mouth between the flat grinding surfaces of his teeth.

  He’d gotten into a fight with his sister, Splayfoot, over a particularly juicy dwarf willow he’d found. Just as he had prized the branches from the ground and had begun to strip them of their succulent leaves, the calf had come bustling over to him and had tried to push him away so she could get at the willow herself. His willow.

  In response to Splayfoot’s pitiful trumpeting, his mother had come across: Milkbreath, her belly already swollen with next year’s calf. And of course she’d taken Splayfoot’s side.

  "Don’t be so greedy, Longtusk! She’s a growing calf. Go find your own willow. You ought to help her, not bully her…"

  And so on. It had done Longtusk no good at all to point out, perfectly reasonably, that as he had found the little tree it was in fact his willow and the one in the wrong here was Splayfoot, not him. His mother had just pushed him away with a brush of her mighty flank.

  The rest of the Family had been there, watching: even Skyhump the Matriarch, his own great-grandmother, head of the Family, surrounded by her daughters and granddaughters with their calves squirming for milk and warmth and comfort. Skyhump had looked stately and magnificent, great curtains of black-brown hair sweeping down from the pronounced hump on her back that had given the Matriarch her name. She had rumbled something to the Cows around her, and they had raised their trunks in amusement.

  They had been mocking him. Him, Longtusk!

  At twelve years old, though he still had much growing to do, Longtusk was already as tall as all but the oldest of the Cows in his Family. And his tusks were the envy of many an adult Bull — well, they would be if he ever got to meet any — great sweeping spirals of ivory that curved around before him until they almost met, a massive, tangible weight that pulled at his head.

  He was Longtusk. He would live forever, and he was destined to become a hero as great as any in the Cycle, the greatest hero of them all. He was sure of it. Look at his mighty tusks, the tusks of a warrior! And he raised them now in mock challenge, even though there was no one here to see.

  Couldn’t those foolish Cows understand? It was just unendurable.

  But now he heard his mother calling for him. Grumbling, growling, he made his way back to her.

  The Cows had clustered around Skyhump, their Matriarch, and were walking northward in a loose, slow cluster. They grazed steppe grass as they walked, for mammoths must feed for most of the day, and they left behind compact trails of dung.

  The Clan stretched around him as far as the eye could see, right across the landscape to east and west, a wave of muscle and fat and deep brown hair patiently washing northward. Skyhump’s small Family of little more than twenty individuals — Cows with their calves and a few young males — was linked to the greater Clan by the kinship of sisters and daughters and female cousins. Where they passed, the mammoths cut swathes through the tall green-gold grass, and the ground shuddered with their footsteps.

  Longtusk felt a brief surge of pride and affection. This was his Clan, and it was, after all, a magnificent thing to be part of it — to be a mammoth.

  But now here was his mother, shadowed by that pest Splayfoot, and his sense of belonging dissipated.

  Milkbreath slapped his rump with her trunk, as if he were still a calf himself. "Where have you been?… Never mind. Can’t you see we’re getting separated from the Family? We have to hear what she has to say."

  "Who? Skyhump?"

  Milkbreath snorted. "No. Pinkface. The Matriarch of Matriarchs. Don’t you know anything?… Never mind. Come on!"

  So Longtusk hurried after his mother.

  They joined a cluster of Cows, tall and old: Matriarchs all, slow and stately in their years and wisdom. He was much too short to see past them.

  But his mother was entranced. "Look," she said softly. "There she is. They say she is a direct descendant of the great Kilukpuk. They say she was burned in a great blaze made by the Fireheads, and she was the only one of her Family to survive…"

  He could still see nothing. But when he shut out the noise — the squeal of calves, the constant background thunder of mammoths walking, eating, defecating — he could hear the Matriarchs rumbling and stamping at the ground, debating, sharing information that might sustain a few more lives through the coming winter.

  Longtusk spoke quietly, with soft pipings of his trunk. "What are they saying?"

  "They’re talking about the
changes." His mother’s small ears stuck out of her hair as she strained to listen.

  "What changes?"

  "You’re too young to understand," she snapped irritably.

  "Tell me."

  She growled, "To the north the ice is shrinking back. And to the south the forests are spreading, more trees every year."

  He had heard this before. "We can’t live in the forests—"

  "Not only that, there’s talk that the Fireheads aren’t too far to the south. And where the Fireheads go the Lost can’t be far behind…"

  Fireheads and Lost. Monsters of legend. Longtusk felt cold, as if he had drunk too much ice water.

  …But now, without warning, the Matriarchs shifted their positions, like clouds exposing the sun. And he saw the Matriarch of Matriarchs.

  She was short, her tusks long and smooth. And her face was a grotesque mask: pink and naked like a baby bird’s wing, free of all but a few wisps of hair.

  Longtusk burst out, "She’s too young!"

  The Matriarchs stirred, like icebergs touched by wind.

  Milkbreath grabbed his trunk, angry and embarrassed. "Wisdom comes to all of us with age. But some are born wise. Wouldn’t you expect that the Matriarch of Matriarchs, the wisest of all, would be special? Wouldn’t you?"

  "I don’t know…"

  "You’re so much trouble to me, Longtusk! Always wandering off or getting under my feet or fighting with your sister or embarrassing me — sometimes I wish you were still in my belly, like this little one." She stroked the heavy bulge under her belly fur.

  Longtusk fumed silently.

  Splayfoot came galloping up to him. His sister was a knot of fat and orange fur, with a trunk like a worm and tusks like lemming bones, and her face was rounded and smoothed-out, as if unfinished. This was her first summer, and her new-born coat of coarse underfur and light brown overfur was being replaced by thicker and longer fur — though it would be her second year before her coarse guard hairs began to appear. "You’re so much trouble, Longtusk," she squeaked up at him gleefully. She started butting his legs with her little domed forehead. "I’ll be Matriarch and you won’t. Then I’ll tell you what to do!"