Stephen Baxter - Silverhair

"What work?"

"How can I know that? You see, after the time of Longtusk, the Lost thought there were no more mammoths left anywhere in the world. They thought the Island was empty, and that’s why, for half a Great-Year, they didn’t even come looking for us.

"And then there’s another group — I know it’s confusing, Silverhair — the ones who have saved us. And these Lost care about us.

"Somehow they heard that we had been discovered by the criminals. They came here, found me, and saved my life — I tell you, Silverhair, after I got away from Skin-of-Ice I was ready for Remembering, I was eating my hair and speaking gibberish to the lemmings — and then they came to the Mainland to search for the rest of the Family."

"They were nearly too late," said Silverhair grimly.

"That’s true," he said. "With more time the workers from the City of the Lost would have flown the others away — or else killed them. If not for you. You saved them, Silverhair. You saved the future."

"Only to deliver us into the paws of more Lost."

He eyed her. "You still blame yourself, don’t you?"

"If I hadn’t gone seeking out the Lost in that blundering way — if I’d listened to Eggtusk and Owlheart — they might still be alive now."

"No," he said firmly. "The Lost would have found us anyway. They’d already discovered the body in the yedoma, remember. We could no more have evaded them than we could a swarm of mosquitoes, and the mammoths would have been destroyed anyway. What you did gave us enough warning to act, to save ourselves. And besides, these new Lost—"

"These new Lost are different," she said with heavy sarcasm.

"So they are," he said, exasperated. "Watch this." He trotted forward to the glass wall surrounding them, and touched it with his trunk.

The wall shimmered, and filled with light.

Silverhair gasped and stumbled backward.

There was light all around her. A fat sun — brilliant, brighter than any Arctic sun — beat down from a washed-out brown-white sky. The ground was a baked plain, where black-leafed trees and stunted bushes struggled to grow. The horizon was muddied by a rippling shimmer of heated air. There was a smell of burning, far off on the breeze.

This was a huge, old land, she suspected.

Lop-ear was at her side. "Don’t be alarmed. It isn’t real. We’re still on the Island, in the glass box on the tundra. And yet…"

"What?"

"And yet it is real. In a way. The Lost have made this thing, this strange powerful wall, so we could see this place, even smell its dust…"

"What place?"

"Silverhair, this is a land far away — far to the south, where ice never comes and it never grows cold."

A contact rumble came washing over the empty ground.

"Mammoths," she hissed.

"Not exactly."

And now she saw them: dark shapes moving easily on the horizon, like drifting boulders, huge ears flapping.

One of them turned, as if to face her. It was a Cow. She seemed to be hairless, and her bare skin was like weather-beaten wood. She had no tusks. There was a calf at her side.

Behind her a Family was walking. No, more than a Family — a Clan, perhaps, for there were hundreds of them, the young clustering around the Matriarchs, Bulls flanking the main group. Silverhair could hear liquid contact rumbles, trumpets, and high-pitched squeaks; the Earth seemed to shake with the passage of those giant feet.

"They can’t see us," Lop-ear said softly.

"They are beautiful. Perhaps Meridi looked like this."

"Yes. Perhaps."

"Are they real?"

"Oh, yes," said Lop-ear. "They are real. Real — but not free, despite the way it looks. Silverhair, these are elephants."

"Calves of Probos."

"Yes. Just as we are. They are many, we are few. But, despite their greater numbers, these Cousins too are under threat from the expansion of the Lost. But the Lost have protected them, and studied them.

"Look — one Family isn’t enough to continue the mammoths. Despite all we’ve achieved, we would die here on the Island, after another generation, two."

"I know. We need fresh blood."

"And it is our new Cousins who will provide it. I have seen what the Lost are trying to do, and I think I understand. These Cousins are sufficiently like us for the Lost to be able to mix our blood with theirs…"

"Mix our blood?"

"Something like that. The Lost are trying to assure our future, Silverhair."

The big Cow turned away from them. She reached down to wrap an affectionate trunk around her suckling calf, and walked on, the calf scurrying at her feet.

Lop-ear touched the wall again and the strange scene disappeared, revealing the windswept tundra once more.

None of the elephants had tusks, Silverhair noted sadly. They had survived, but they had been forced to make their bargain with the Lost.

"Perhaps these Lost really do mean us well," she said. "But…"

"Yes?"

"But they will never let us go. Will they?"

"They can’t, Silverhair. Earth is crowded with Lost. There is no room for us."

At sunset, the weather broke.

Rain began to beat down, and Silverhair knew it was likely to continue for days. A gray mist hung over the green meadows, and the moisture gave the air a texture of mystery and tragedy. It was beautiful, but Silverhair knew what it meant. "The end of another summer," she said. "It goes so quickly. And winter is long…"

Silverhair knew her story was nearly over.

Skin-of-Ice had done her a great deal of damage. She could feel the deep, unclosed wounds inside her — damage that couldn’t be put right, regardless of the clever ministrations of these new Lost. There was only one more summer left in her, perhaps two. But she had no complaint; that would be enough for her to bear and suckle her calf, and teach it the stories from the Cycle.

She even knew what she would call the calf, such was its great weight in her belly. Icebones.

She knew she could never forgive the Lost for the things they had done to her and her Family. Perhaps it was just as well she would soon take that antiquated hatred to her grave.

For the future belonged to the calves, as it always had.

Lop-ear seemed to know what she was thinking. He stood beside her and rubbed her back with his trunk. "We really are the last, you know. The last of the mammoths."

"All those who had to die — Eggtusk, Owlheart, Snagtooth…"

"They did not die in vain," he said gently. "Every one of them died bravely, fighting to preserve the Family. We will always Remember them.

"But now we have the future ahead of us. And you’re the Matriarch, Silverhair. Just as Owlheart predicted." He rubbed her belly, over the bump of the unborn calf there. "It’s up to you to keep the Cycle alive, and help us remember the old ways. Then we’ll be ready when our time comes again."

"I don’t think I have the strength anymore, Lop-ear."

"You do. You know you do. And you’ll be remembered. Silverhair, the Cycle — our history — stretches back in time across fifty million years. Its songs tell of the exploits of many heroes. But in all that immense chronicle, there is no hero to match you, Silverhair. One day our calves will run freely on the Sky Steppe, and their lives will be rich beyond our imagining. But they will envy you. For you were the most important mammoth of all. Cupped in the palm of history, caught between past and future, your actions shaped a world…"

She snuggled against him affectionately. "You always did talk too much, dear Lop-ear. Hush, now."

The rain lessened, and the scudding clouds broke up, briefly. The setting sun, swollen in the damp air, cast a pink-red glow that seemed to fill the air, and the first stars gleamed.