Stephen Baxter - Icebones

They managed only a few more steps before the calf collapsed once more.

Icebones had the mammoths form up into a wedge shape facing the storm, with one of the adults at the apex, and the calf and his mother sheltered at the rear.

"His strength is gone, Icebones," Breeze cried through the storm’s noise. "He is hungry and thirsty and I have no milk to give him. We must stay here with him until the storm is over."

"But," Thunder growled, "we cannot stay here. This foul dust sucks the last moisture out of my body."

"We can’t stay and we can’t go on," Spiral said. "What must we do, Matriarch?"

Battered by the storm’s violence, blinded, deafened, her own strength wearing down, Icebones knew how she must answer. And she knew that she must test her new Family’s resolve as it had not been tested before.

…But I am just Icebones, she thought desperately. I am little more than a calf myself. Who am I to inflict such pain on these patient, loyal, suffering mammoths? How do I know this is right? Oh, Silverhair, if only you were here!

But her mother was not here. And her course was clear. She was Matriarch. And, like generations of Matriarchs before her, she reached into the Cycle, the ancient wisdom of mammoths who had learned to survive.

"Autumn, Thunder — do you think we could reach the crater rim, if not for the calf?"

Thunder seemed baffled. "But we have the calf—"

"Just tell me."

"Yes. We are strong enough for that, Matriarch."

Icebones said gravely, "The mammoth dies, but mammoths live on."

Spiral understood first. She wailed, "Do you see what this monster is saying? She wants us to abandon the calf. We must go to the crater rim, and save ourselves, while he dies alone in the storm. Alone."

"No!" Breeze wrapped her trunk around her fallen calf.

Autumn spoke, and there was a huge, impressive sadness in her voice. "Daughter, you can bear other calves. Others who will grow strong, and continue the Family… You are more important than Woodsmoke, because of those other calves."

"Kilukpuk will care for him," said Icebones. "If a mammoth dies young, it is easy for him to throw off his coat of earth, and to play in the light of the aurora…"

"There is no aurora here," Spiral said bleakly.

"Would you sacrifice him, Icebones?" Breeze trumpeted. "Would you, mother, if this was your calf?"

The moment stretched, the tension between the mammoths palpable.

This was the crux, Icebones knew. And Autumn was the key. If Autumn maintained her resolve, then they would abandon the calf, and go on. And if she did not, they would all die, here in this screaming storm.

Autumn sighed, a deep rumble that carried through the storm. "No," she said at last. "No, I could not abandon my calf."

And Icebones, with a deep, failing regret, knew they were lost.

Breeze clutched her calf, and her sister came close, both of them stroking and reassuring the calf as best they could.

"I am sorry," Autumn said, huddling close to Icebones. "I did not have the strength. It is hard to be mammoth."

"Yes. Yes, it is hard."

"We have been toys of the Lost too long…"

"Let us huddle. Perhaps we will defeat this storm yet."

But she knew that wasn’t possible. And, from the tense, subdued postures of Autumn and Thunder beside her, she sensed they knew it too.

The continent-sized dust storm continued, relentless, cruel, oblivious to the mammoths’ despair.

The dust clogged her trunk and mouth, until she was as dry as a corpse. And still the storm went on, so dense she no longer knew if it was day or night. Perhaps she even slept a while, exhausted, her body battling the storm without her conscious control. I tried, Silverhair. But they just weren’t ready to be a Family — a true Family, able to face the hard truths as well as they easy ones…

No. I was not ready. I have failed.

But it hardly mattered now. After a few days, when they were reduced to scoured-clean bones, nobody would ever know what happened here.

She felt a new, hard form beside her. She turned sluggishly, trying to lift her trunk.

She sensed a stocky body, hair that was dense and slick, crimson against the storm’s dark light.

"You are Cold-As-Sky," she said, her voice thick with dust.

The other did not reply.

"There is no water here."

"No," said the Ice Mammoth, her voice somehow clear through the storm. "This land is very old. Even the deep-buried ice has sublimated away."

"But you live."

"But I live. I carry water in my throat, and in a hump on my back, enough to let me survive the longest dust storm."

"My trunk is clogged," Icebones said softly. "All I can taste is dust. Cousin, give me water."

Cold-As-Sky ignored her. "This is the truth of this world. This is how it was before the Lost came here. The planet itself is trying to kill you now. You are meant to die. Jut as we were meant to die. Did you know that?"

Icebones did not reply, wishing only that Cold-As-Sky would leave her alone with her blackness and despair.

But Cold-As-Sky went on, "It is true. The first of us who awoke found that all the world was like this high, broken plain. There were no soft green things, no pockets of thick wet air to clog the lungs… Only the clean rock and the red sky. And the only water was buried deep in the dust, where it should lie, where it is safe.

"And we were the only living things. We Ice Mammoths, and the blood weed, and the air trees, and the spider-flowers.

"Many calves died, gasping for air as they were born. But we endured. Slowly the trees made the air thicker, and slowly the spider-flowers captured the water. And we Ice Mammoths dug ancient water out of the ground, and broke up the rock with our tusks, and made the red dust rich with our dung.

"You call yourself a Matriarch. I was born knowing that word. And I was born knowing that we had no Matriarch to teach us, to show us how to dig the roots of the breathing trees, or to drink the blood of the weed. We had to learn it all, learn for ourselves. And every scrap of wisdom was earned at the cost of a life. What do you think of that? Where is your Kilukpuk now?"

Icebones, enduring, said nothing; the Ice Mammoth’s voice, low and harsh, was like the voice of the engulfing storm itself.

"The Lost were already here, huddling in caves. They had shining beetles that dug and crawled and crushed rock, and a great tusk in the sky that burned channels into the ground. But we were more important than any of that. We knew it. That is why the Lost made us, and put us here. We broke the land for them. And we had many calves, and we spread—"

"And you changed the world," said Icebones.

"Yes," Cold-As-Sky said bitterly. "Our tusks and our dung made the land ready for creatures like you, with your green plants we could not eat, and your thick wet air we could not even breathe… And with every scrap of land that was changed there was a little less room left for us. Many died — the old and the very young first — and each year there are fewer calves than the last…"

"I am sorry."

"You do not understand," Cold-As-Sky said bleakly. "It was our destiny to die. To make the land, and then die away, leaving it for you.

"But then the Lost flew off into the sky in their shining seeds.

"The green things started to blacken and die. The ponds of murky water sank back into the ground and froze over. The ancient cold returned. The dust was freed, and the world-spanning storms began again. And we touched each other’s mouths, and tasted hope for the first time in memory."

"And that is why we are dying," Icebones said.

"This is not your land. If you live, I die."