Stephen Baxter - Icebones

Autumn asked mildly, "Shall we fly over?"

The Ragged One snorted. "We will walk." And she turned to the west.

When Icebones looked that way she saw a band of pinkish white, picked out by the clear light of the rising sun. It rose from the northern side of the Gouge, on which she stood, and arced smoothly through the air — and it came to rest on the Gouge’s far side.

It was a bridge.

Like everything about this immense canyon, the bridge was huge, and it was far away. It took them half a day just to walk to its foot.

The bridge turned out to be a broad shining sheet that emerged from the pink dust as if it had grown there. It sloped sharply upward, steeply at first, before leveling off. It was wide enough to accommodate four or five mammoths walking abreast.

Icebones probed at its surface with her trunk tip. It was smooth and cold and hard and smelled of nothing. "The Lost made this," she said.

"Of course they did," snapped the Ragged One. "Impatient with the Gouge’s depth and length, they hurled this mighty bridge right across it. What ambition! What vision!"

"They didn’t put anything to eat or drink on it," Autumn said reasonably.

Thunder stepped forward onto the bridge itself, and stamped heavily at its surface. Where he trod, his dirty foot pads left huge round prints on the gleaming floor. "It is fragile, like thin ice. What if it is cracked by frost? This bridge was meant for the Lost. They were small creatures, much smaller than us. If we walk on it, perhaps it will fall."

Icebones rumbled her approval, for the Bull was using the listening skills she had shown him.

But the Ragged One said, "We will rest the night and feed. We will reach the far side in a day’s walk, no more."

Autumn growled doubtfully.

"No," Icebones said decisively. "We should keep away from the things of the Lost. We will climb down the landslide, and—"

"You are a coward and a fool." The Ragged One’s language and posture were clear and determined.

Icebones felt her heart sink. Was this festering sore in their community to be broken open again?

Thunder stepped forward angrily. "Listen to her. The bridge is not safe."

"Safe? What is safe? Did your precious hero Longtusk ask himself if that famous bridge of land was safe?"

"This is not the bridge of Longtusk," Icebones said steadily. "And you are not Longtusk."

The Ragged One stepped back. "I have endured your posturing, Icebones, when it did us no harm. But by your own admission you are no Matriarch. And now your foolish arrogance threatens to lead us into disaster. You others should follow me, not her," she said bluntly.

Autumn, rumbling threateningly, stood by the shoulder of Icebones. "This one is strange to us," she said, "Perhaps she is not yet a Matriarch. But she has displayed wisdom and leadership. And now she is right. There is no need to take the risk of crossing your bridge."

"Icebones gave me my name," Thunder said. "I follow her. You are the arrogant one if you cannot tell this bridge is unsafe." He stood alongside Icebones, and she touched his trunk.

Breeze lumbered toward her mother, her calf tucked safely between her legs. "You are wrong to divide us. This fighting wastes our energy and time."

Icebones rumbled, relieved, gratified by their unexpected support. "Breeze is right. Let us put this behind us—"

"No." The older sister, Spiral, had spoken. "We must finish this terrible journey before we all die of hunger, and before another monster leaps out of the sea or sky or ground to consume us. And the quickest way is to take the bridge."

"It is not safe," Icebones growled.

"So you say," Spiral said angrily. "But it was made by the Lost. What do you know of the Lost, Icebones? They looked after our every need for a long time — for generations — long before you ever came here." And, for a moment, behind the gaunt face and the dirty, matted hair, Icebones saw once again the vain, spoiled creature she had first met. "Shoot? Will you come with me?"

Shoot looked from her mother to her sister and back, dismayed. Then, hesitantly, she stepped up to Spiral.

The Ragged One raised her stubby tusks in triumph. "We will cross the bridge, we three."

"No," Icebones said, gravely anxious. She had not anticipated this turn of events. "We must not break up the Family."

"This is no Family here," said the Ragged One, contemptuous.

"If we stay together we can watch over each other. By splitting us, you endanger us all."

"If that is so, you must drop your foolish pride and let me lead you, like these two."

Icebones rumbled, "I can’t. Because you are leading them to their deaths."

"Then there is nothing more to be said." The Ragged One turned to face the arcing bridge and stalked away. Spiral followed.

Shoot glanced back at her mother, obviously distressed. But she followed her sister’s lead — as, perhaps, she had all her life.

It was another long and difficult night, and it granted Icebones little sleep.

As pink light began to wash over the eastern lands, she walked alone to the edge of the canyon. It was a river of darkness. She listened to the soft chthonic breathing of the rocks beneath her feet, and the gentle ticking of frost, and she strained to hear the rhythm of distant mammoth footsteps.

She called out with deep vibrations of her head and belly and feet: "Boaster. Can you hear me? It is me, Icebones. Boaster, Boaster…"

Icebones. I hear you.

She felt a profound relief, as if she was no longer alone.

We are walking. Every day we walk. The sun is hidden. It rains. We have come to a huge walled plain covered by something that glitters in the light, even the light of this gray sky. There is nothing to eat on it.

"It is ice."

No. It is not cold and there is no moisture under my trunk tip.

She shuddered. "It is a thing of the Lost."

Yes. There is a great beast, like a beetle, which tends it. The beast wipes away the dust on the floor. My brother challenged the beetle. It turned away.

"Your brother defeated it?"

My brother is brave and strong. But not so brave as me. And he is smaller than me in many ways. Much smaller. For example, his —

"I can guess," Icebones said dryly. She told him she had decided to head for the basin she had called the Footfall of Kilukpuk. "But we face many obstacles." And she told him about the Gouge, and tried to tell him of the mammoths’ confusion and dissent.

You think you have problems, he called back. Imagine how it is for me. All the time I slip up in my own musth dribble, and I trip over my long, erect —

"You cannot still be in musth."

Wait until we meet at the Footfall. You will see my musth flow, and you will be awed at its mighty gush. Are you in oestrus yet?

"No," Icebones said, with a shiver of sadness.

Good, came Boaster’s voice, deep-whispering through the rock. It would be a waste. Wait until we meet at the Footfall. I must go. We have found a dwarf willow and the others are stripping it like wolf cubs, leaving none for me. Be brave, little Icebones. We will meet at the Footfall. Goodbye, goodbye…

Icebones stood alone in the chill, bloody light of dawn, listening to the last of his words wash through the rock.

The Ragged One stepped onto the smooth slope of the bridge. She stamped hard on the cold surface, as if testing it under her weight.

The bridge rang hollowly.

More tentatively Shoot followed, and then, at last, Spiral.

Autumn growled, her voice filled with sadness as she watched her daughters walk out into emptiness.

"This is wrong," Icebones said. "Wrong, wrong. Mammoths are creatures of the steppe, and the open sky. They are not meant to hover like birds high above the ground."