Stephen Baxter: Icebones

"Yes, Matriarch," the calf said respectfully. But he was growing impatient. "Matriarch, it has changed. In the sky."

She grumbled, "What has changed?"

"The blue star that flies near the sun."

She squinted, compressing failing eyes.

The calf was right, she saw. The familiar blue spark had been replaced by a sliver of silver light.

…And now, quite suddenly, the silver grain winked out — vanished completely, as if it had never been. It small brown companion, abandoned, sailed alone in the sky.

She raised her trunk but could smell nothing, hear nothing. How strange, she thought.

Tang-Of-Dust asked, "What does it mean?"

"I don’t know, child."

"They say that the Lost went there. To the blue light."

"It might be true," she said. And she wondered where they had gone now.

"Some say the Lost were insane. Or evil."

She lowered her heavy head. "No, not evil, not insane… But not like us. In many ways they were arrogant and foolish. But the Lost brought life here. Think of that. We existed a long time before the Lost came, and we will exist for a long time now that they are gone. Theirs was just a brief moment of pain and change and death — but in that moment they gave us a new world. Even if this world is nothing but a dream of Kilukpuk…" She slumped forward, to her knees, and her trunk pooled in the dust. "And, I suppose, by redeeming us, the Lost redeemed themselves. Isn’t that wonderful?"

The calf reached out uncertainly,. "Matriarch. Are you ill?"

Her belly settled onto the dust, and she closed her eyes. "Just tired, Woodsmoke. In a moment we will talk—"

But now there was an explosion of pain in her chest. She gasped and fell forward.

She saw legs all around her, a forest of them, as if she was a newborn calf surrounded by her mother and aunts. That was absurd, for she could hardly be more different from a calf.

She closed her eyes again.

A memory of old age, or a dream of youth? But she tasted blood — or perhaps it was the dry dust of this red world — not a dream, then…

Or perhaps the dream was over.

"Icebones… Icebones…"

Icebones.

She tried to lift her head, to open her eyes, but could not. And yet she thought she saw a mammoth before her: a vast mammoth with dugs the size of mountains, and feet that could stamp great pits in the rock, and tusks like glaciers, and a voice like the song of a world. A mammoth who shone, even though Icebones’s eyes were closed.

Do you know who you are?

"I am Icebones, daughter of Silverhair." That much remained. "I am very tired."

You know who I am?

"Yes. Yes, I know who you are, Kilukpuk."

It’s time to go, little one.

"But my Family needs me."

Now I need you. And Icebones felt a trunk wrap around her head and probe into her dry mouth.

She was lifted up, shedding her body as every spring she had shed her winter coat.

"I am not fit, Matriarch…"

No one is more fit than you. And no one paid a greater price than you. The Lost brought you here, in your Sleep, across a vast gulf. And in that gulf a hard light shines. And you were — damaged.

And Icebones knew Kilukpuk meant her dry womb. "That is why I have no calves."

But every mammoth who lives is your calf. You saved your kind in every way it is possible to be saved: you gave them life, and you gave them back their selves.

"Will there be soft browse? My molars aren’t what they were."

I will show you the softest, sweetest browse that ever was.

"There is no aurora here. Where are we going?"

To where Silverhair is waiting for you. No more questions, now.

The great shining mammoth drew away.

Effortlessly, Icebones followed. And the small red world receded beneath her, folding over on itself until it became a crimson ball splashed with green and blue, before it disappeared into the dark.

Ice still swathes much of the northern ocean, and the southern pole. But the ice is receding. In the ancient highlands of the south the flooded craters and rivers and canals glow blue-green once more. Much of the land is covered by dark forest and broad, sweeping grasslands and steppe — but the primordial crimson of the dust still shines through the green.

This will always be a cold, dry place. This world is too small, too far from the sun. But life is spreading here, year by year: life first brought here by vanished, clever creatures with silver ships and toiling machines, but life now finding its own way on the hard, ancient plains, led by the stately beasts whose calls echo around the planet.

But those calls will never be heard on the summit of the Fire Mountain. That obstinate shoulder of rock still pushes out of the thickening air, just as it always has. From its barren summit the stars can be seen, even at midday.

Here, in the thin air, not even the hardy Ice Mammoths venture. Here, nothing grows.

Nothing, that is, save a solitary dwarf willow, a single splash of green-brown against the ancient crimson rock. Against all odds, the willow's windblown seed has found a trace of water here, high on the Fire Mountain: enough to germinate, and survive.

Just a trace of water, trapped in the buried skull of a mammoth.