Origin - Stephen Baxter

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hoisting more branches before the others fell. Of course he failed. It was as if he knew what he wanted to build, but couldn’t figure out how to achieve it.

      Cautiously, Emma stepped forward.

      Fire was startled. He stumbled backwards. His branches fell with a crash.

      She held her hands open and smiled. ‘Fire,’ she said. She pointed to herself. ‘Emma. Remember?’

      At length he jabbered, ‘Fire Fire. Fire Emma.’

      ‘Emma, yes. Remember? You gave me the caterpillar.’ She pointed to her mouth.

      His eyes widened. He ran away at startling speed, and came back with a scrap of what looked like potato. With impatient speed, he shoved it into her mouth. His fingers were strong, almost forcing her jaws open.

      She chewed, feeling bruised, tasting the dirt on his fingers. The root was heavy and starchy. ‘Thank you.’

      He grinned and capered, like a huge child. She noticed that in his excitement he had sprouted an erection. She took care not to look at it; some complications could wait for another day.

      ‘I’ll help you,’ she said. She walked around his pile of branches. She picked up a light-looking sapling and hoisted it over her shoulder until it was upright. Though her strength still seemed boosted, she struggled to hold the sapling in place.

      Mercifully Fire quickly got the idea. ‘Fire, Emma, Fire!’ He ran around picking up more branches some of them thick trunks, which he lifted as if they were made of polystyrene and rammed them into place against hers.

      The three or four branches propped each other up, a bit precariously, and the beginning of their makeshift tepee was in place. But, hooting with enthusiasm, Fire hurled more branches onto the tall conical frame. Soon the whole thing collapsed.

      Fire shouted his disappointment. He did a kind of dance, kicking viciously at the branches. Then, with a kind of forgetful doggedness, he began to pick up the scattered branches once more.

      Emma said, ‘I’ve a better idea.’ Raising her hands to make him wait, she jogged over to the muddy remnant of her parachute. She cut free a length of cord taking care not to show her Swiss Army knife to any of the hominids and hurried back.

      Fire had, predictably, wandered away.

      Emma squatted down on the ground to wait, as Fire dug more tubers from the ground, and spent some time throwing bits of stone, with startling accuracy, at a tree trunk, and went running after a girl ‘Dig! Dig, Fire, Dig!’ Then he happened to glance Emma’s way, appeared to remember her and their project, and came running across as fast as a ioo-metre record holder. Straightaway he began to pick up the branches again.

      She motioned him to wait. ‘No. Look.’ She took one of the branches, and pulled another alongside, and then another. Soon he got the idea, and he helped her pile the branches close together. Now she wrapped her cord around them, maybe three feet below their upper extent, and tied a knot.

      … Emma Stoney, frontier woman. What the hell are you doing? What if the knot slips or the cord breaks or your sad tepee just falls apart?

      Well, then, she thought, I’ll just think of something else, and try again. And again and again.

      All the time the bigger issues were there in her mind, sliding under the surface like a shark: the questions of where she was, how she had got here, how long it was going to be before she got home again. How she felt about Malenfant, who had stranded her here. How come these ape-folk existed at all, and how come they spoke English … But this was real, the red dust under her feet, the odd musk stink of the ape-boy before her, the hunger already gnawing at her belly. Right now there was nobody to take care of her, nobody but herself, and her first priority was survival. She sensed she had to find a way of working with these people. So far, in all this strange place, the only creature who had showed her any helpfulness or kindness at all was this lanky boy, and she was determined to build on that.

      Find strength, Emma. You can fall apart later, when you’re safely back in your apartment, and all this seems like a bad dream.

      She laboured to tie her knot tight and secure. When she was done, she backed away. ‘Up, up! Lift it up, Fire!’

      With terrifying effortlessness he hoisted the three branches vertical. When he let go, they immediately crashed to the ground, of course, but she encouraged him to try again. This time she closed her hands around his, making him hold the branches in place, while she ran around pulling out the bases of the branches, making a pyramidal frame.

      At last they finished up with a firmly secured frame, tied off at the top and it was a frame that held as Fire, with exhilaration and unnerving vigour, hurled more branches over it.

      Now all I have to do, Emma thought, is make sure he remembers this favour.

      ‘… Emma! Emma!’

      Emma turned. Sally came running out of the forest, with Maxie bundled in her arms.

      Creatures pursued her.

      They looked like humans – no, not human, like chimps, with long, powerful arms, short legs, covered in fine black-brown hair – but they walked upright, running, almost emulating a human gait. There were four, five, six of them.

      Emma thought, dismayed, What now? What new horror is this?

      One of the creatures, despite the relative clumsiness of his gait, was fast closing on Sally and the child.

      Stone stepped forward. The old male stood stock still, reached back, and whipped his arm forward. His axe, spinning, flew like a Frisbee.

      The axe sliced into the ape-thing’s face. He, it, was knocked flat, dead immediately. The hominids hooted their triumph and ran to the fallen creature.

      The other ape-things ran back to the forest’s edge. They screeched their protest, but they weren’t about to come out of the forest to launch a counter-attack.

      Sally kept running until she had reached Emma. They clutched each other.

      ‘Now we know why our friends keep out of the forest,’ Emma said.

      Fire was standing beside them. ‘Elf-folk,’ Fire said, pointing at the ape-things. ‘Elf-folk.’

      ‘That’s what I saw yesterday,’ Sally murmured. ‘My God, Emma, they could have come on us while we slept. We’re lucky to be alive –’

      ‘They took the ice cream,’ Maxie said solemnly.

      Sally patted his head. ‘It’s true. They took all your food, Emma. I’m sorry. And the damn canopy.’

      Maxie said, ‘What are we going to eat now?’

      It appeared the hominids had their own answer to this. From the spot where the ape-like ‘Elf’ had fallen came the unmistakable sounds of butchering.

      Shadow:

      For long moments Nutcracker-woman and Shadow gazed at each other, fearful, curious.

      Then the Nutcracker-woman took a red fruit, stripped off the flesh, and popped the kernel into her mouth. She pressed up on her lower jaw with her free hand. Caught between her powerful molars, the shell neatly cracked in two. She extracted the nut’s flesh and pushed it into her infant’s greedy mouth.

      Shadow’s fear evaporated. She took a fruit herself and stripped it of flesh. But when she tried to copy the Nutcracker-woman’s smooth destruction of the nut, she only hurt her jaw.

      She spat out the shell and, cautiously, passed it to the Nutcracker-woman.

      Just as hesitantly, the Nutcracker-woman took it. Her hand was just like Shadow’s, the back coated with fine black hairs, the palm pink.

      Shadow had grown used to meeting Nutcracker-folk.

      The

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