Stephen Baxter - Icebones

Icebones grabbed her trunk. "You must lead us."

Autumn probed at Icebones’s face. "Don’t you understand? I was the Matriarch, for a few brief days, and I have killed us all." And she stumbled away.

The Ragged One, standing alone by the shore, was remote, withdrawn as ever, still mourning her failure to find the Lost on the mountain summit. Thunder and Autumn were both immersed in their private worlds of self-loathing and anger. Breeze was standing at the water’s edge, lost in herself, her swollen belly brushing the languid waves. Shoot was pursuing her sister, regaling her with lurid tales of her encounter with the monster from the sea, while Spiral trotted haughtily away.

None of them will lead, Icebones realized, dismayed. They will stay here on this desolate beach, sulking or fretting or boasting, as the sun rises and falls, and we grow still more thirsty and hungry.

No, Icebones thought. I am not prepared to die. Not yet.

She drew herself up to her full height, and emitted a commanding rumble, as loudly as she could.

The other mammoths turned toward her.

Silverhair, be with me now, she prayed.

"You will pay attention to me," she said.

A flock of ivory gulls, startled by her call, lifted into the air on vast translucent wings.

She kept her voice as deep and loud as she could — although, before these towering mammoths, she felt small and inferior, a squat, noisy calf.

"You were right in your first guesses, when I emerged from my cave of Sleep. I am indeed a Matriarch. On the Old Steppe, where I lived, I was Matriarch of a Family of many mammoths, despite my youth. I led them well, and I was loved and respected."

The Ragged One said slyly, "If this is so, why didn’t you say so before?"

"I wanted to see if you were fit to join my new Family." She raised her trunk, as if sniffing them all. "And I have decided that you are strong mammoths with good hearts. I am your Matriarch. I will listen to you, but you will do as I say."

Autumn had turned away, and Thunder looked merely confused.

Breeze asked, "What should we do?"

"We cannot stay here. There is no food, and the water is foul. The world is growing cold, day by day. But the air, like the water, flows to the deep places. There is a place, far from here, which is deeper than anywhere in the world."

The Ragged One rumbled suspiciously, "Where is this place?"

And Icebones described the great pit on the other side of the world — a hole gouged by a giant impact, a blow so powerful it had made the rocks rise up here, on the planet’s opposite side. "It is called the Footfall of Kilukpuk," she said, thinking fast. "And that is where we will go. There will be pasture for you and your calves. There will even be Bulls for you to run with, Thunder, and for you others to mate with."

The Ragged One brayed. "And this wonderful place is on the other side of the world? So you have never seen or smelled it?"

It was as if she was articulating Icebones’s own doubts.

But Icebones said firmly, "I will lead you there." She raised her trunk, sniffing the air. "We must walk away from the setting sun. We will keep walking east, and in the end we will reach the Footfall. Let’s go," she said, as she had heard her mother say many times to her own Family. "Let’s go, let’s go."

But the mammoths simply watched her, baffled.

So she raised her trunk and trumpeted, and began to walk east, following the line of the old coast, toward a sky that was already turning a deepening purple.

After a few paces she paused and turned. The three sisters, huddled together, were walking after her slowly, tracking her moist footsteps in the dusty sand. A little behind them came Autumn and Thunder, each still distracted, but submissively following the lead Icebones had given.

But now the Ragged One lumbered up to her. "You cannot make this rabble into a Family just by saying it. And you cannot make yourself a Matriarch."

"If you wish to stay here," Icebones said, her voice a deep, coarse rumble, "I will not oppose you."

The Ragged One growled, "If you fail — when you fail — I will be there to remind you of this day."

I know you will, Icebones thought.

The wind was rising now. She saw that it was swirling over the pack ice, lifting spray and bits of loose ice and snow into a great gray spiral, angry and intimidating. The scavenging petrels left their bloody meals and rose into the sky, cawing angrily, their feathers stained red.

Heading toward the light of the rising sun, they skirted the shore of the giant ocean. There was better forage to be had a little way to the south, away from the barren coast itself, where soil and water had gathered in hollows.

But the landscape, distorted by the volcanic uplift that lay beneath the Fire Mountain, was flawed and difficult. Deep, sharp-walled valleys cut across their path. Conversely, sometimes the mammoths found themselves laboring over networks of ridges that rose one after the other, like wrinkles in aged flesh.

As leader, Icebones was able to impose a rhythm appropriate for a Family on the move. She had the mammoths walk slowly but steadily, all day and most of each night, probing at the ground with their trunks, foraging for grass and herbs and water. At first the others complained, for this was an alien way of life for creatures used to being fed as they needed it. But Icebones knew that this steady progress was better suited to a mammoth’s internal constitution. And when after a few days the others got used to the steady, satisfying rhythm, and food passed pleasingly through their systems, the level of complaints dwindled.

But they were not yet a Family.

A Family was supposed to walk in coordination, led by its Matriarch and the senior Cows, all of them watching out for each other, in case of predators or natural traps like mud holes. This untidy rabble rambled over the broken ground as if they were rogue Bulls, as if the others did not exist, or matter.

Icebones knew it would take a long time to teach them habits that should have been ingrained since birth, and it seemed presumptuous even to imagine that she, young and inexperienced, was the one to do it. But, she reminded herself, there was nobody else.

So she persisted.

Sometimes Spiral would walk alongside Icebones, with Shoot prancing in her wake. The tall, elegant Cow would regale Icebones with unwelcome tales of her time with the Lost, when they had tied shining ribbons to her hair, or rode on her back, or had encouraged her to do tricks, picking up fruit and walking backward and bowing at their behest.

This irritated Icebones immensely. "You are mammoth," she said sternly. "You are not a creature of the Lost. You should not boast of your foolish dancing. And you should not ignore your sister. You should watch out for her, as she watches out for you. That is what it is to be Family."

"Ah, the Family," Spiral said. "But what is there for me in your Family, Icebones? I am beautiful and clever and I smell fine, while you are small and squat. Will a Family stop you being ugly?"

Icebones reached up and tugged at Spiral’s pretty tusks. "It does not matter what I look like — or what you look or smell like. You will not always be healthy and pretty, Spiral. And someday you will have a calf of your own — perhaps many calves — just as your sister is carrying now. And then you too will have to rely on others."

For a brief moment Spiral seemed to be listening hard, and her trunk tip shyly probed at Icebones’s mouth. But then she pulled away, trumpeting brightly, and lumbered off, Shoot as ever trailing her eagerly.

They came to a place where enormous valleys cut across their path. The mammoths climbed down shallow banks and worked their way across rubble-strewn floors.