A shadow flitted between the tree trunks, a round, uncertain form dimly glimpsed among the shadowy verticals.
Emma stopped dead, heart hammering.
Manekato was a massive, reassuring form at her side. “It is a Nutcracker. A vegetarian hominid which—”
“I know about Nutcrackers.”
Manekato peered curiously into her face. “I sense fear.”
Emma found her breath was shallow; she tried to control it. “Does that surprise you?”
“You are already far from home. Without prior preparation, without aid, you have survived in this place for many weeks. What more is there for you to fear now?”
“Humans aren’t creatures of the forest, like the Elves or the Nutcrackers. We are creatures of the open. Like the Runners.”
“Ah.” Apologetically Manekato reached for her and, with thick, gentle, leather skinned fingers, she probed at Emma’s shoulders, elbows, hips. “It is true. You are designed for steady walking, for running, over long distances. You sweat unlike me — so that you can control your heat loss efficiently in the open sunlight. Yes, your link with the forest is lost deep in the past. And so you see it, not as a place of bounty and safety, but of threat.”
“We have tales. Fictions. Many of them are scary. They involve dense forests, being lost in the woods.”
Manekato showed ferocious teeth. “And if an Elf were able, it would frighten its companions with tales of being trapped in the open, with no forest cover in sight, at sunset, as the predators begin to feed… But that hominid appeared to be fleeing. Little threatens the Nutcrackers, here in their forest domain; they are strong and smart. Curious.” Mane loped forward, more slowly than before, her massive form moving with barely a rustle through the crowded foliage. Emma followed in her tracks.
Then Mane slowed, peering down at something on the ground.
Emma heard the buzzing of flies. Then came the stench, the rotting-meat stench: sanitized out of the world she had come from, a smell she would not get used to no matter how long she lasted on this strange, mixed-up Moon.
The smell of death.
It looked like a chimp that had been hit by a truck. Its hairy skin was broken by wounds and lesions, and a watery fluid leaked from gaping mouth and empty eye sockets. Maggots squirmed in the lesions, giving the corpse a semblance of life. The body seemed to be deliquescing, in fact, its flesh and bones dissolving right out from within its skin and pouring into the ground.
There was an infant sitting on the ground beside the adult, presumably its mother, a round bundle of misery.
“Now we know why that Nutcracker was fleeing,” Emma said.
Nemoto, panting hard, joined Emma. “I have seen this before. Do not touch anything.”
“What is it?”
“Something like the Ebola virus, I think. It starts with a headache, a fever. As your cells fill with the replicating virus your immune system collapses. Your skin turns to pulp; you haemorrhage; your gut fills with blood; blood leaks from your eyes, mouth, nose, ears, anus. When you die your body turns to slime. If somebody picks up the corpse, they contract it too, and die in turn. There is no vaccine or cure. I guess that is why the others of this one’s troupe have abandoned it, and its child.”
“I have made this one safe,” Mane murmured. “There is no infection here.” Emma hadn’t seen her do anything.
The baby raised its head and studied Emma. The little Nutcracker, surely no more than a year old, was surrounded by scrapings of thin white infant scut.
Emma said to Mane, “It’s safe to pick it up?”
“Yes.”
Emma pulled a piece of cloth over her mouth and nose and stepped forward, towards the infant. The infant cowered back, but it was weak and hungry and scared, and let Emma tuck her hands under its armpits.
She lifted it easily, though it was heavier than she had thought, a boulder of hair and bone. “Well, it’s a girl; I can tell that much.” The infant had brown black eyes, creamy white at the edges. Her skin beneath the hair was black, and wrinkles ran across her brow, between her eyes and over her stubby ape nose, giving her a troubled expression. Her mouth was open, and was a startlingly bright pink inside. The hair on her body was thick and coarse, but on her head, over that improbable crest of bone, the hair was sparser.
Emma held the baby against her chest. The little body was very warm. The sad, small black face tucked into a fold of Emma’s coverall, and Emma bent to kiss the bony crest on the top of her head. She smelled leaves.
Then the infant hugged her tight with legs and arms, tensed, and defecated in a stream that spilled down Emma’s trouser-legs.
Julia made claw hands. “Leopards. Hyenas. Chomp baby Nu’cracker.”
“Right,” Emma said. “Smart baby. You only take a dump when your mother is holding you.”
Nemoto was watching her. “Emma Stoney, I hope you’re not considering bringing that infant with you.”
Emma hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Why not?”
“Because you do not know how to look after it.”
“Her. I don’t know how to look after her.”
“You know nothing of the ecology of these creatures. You are sentimental.”
“She is right,” Mane said mournfully. The big Daemon loomed over the little tableau, like an adult standing over a child with her doll. “This infant has been abandoned by its kind. It will shortly die, of starvation, predation, disease. Death is commonplace for all hominid species, Em-ma. Among the Nutcrackers, in fact, the men compete for access to groups of women and children. And sometimes if one man displaces another, he will destroy the children of his defeated opponent.”
“All very evolutionarily sound,” Emma said coldly. “But I’m keeping her.”
She felt a massive hand on her back: Julia’s. “Lonely,” said the Ham.
“Yes. Yes, I’m lonely, Julia. I lost my husband, my world, my life. For all your kindness, of course I’m lonely.”
“All,” Julia said softly. “Lonely.”
Nemoto prowled about the little clearing, agitated, avoiding the corpse. “We are the lonely hominids. On Earth it is thirty-five thousand years since we last encountered another hominid species. Maybe it was our relentless expansion that drove the last of the Neandertals to extinction; maybe it was our fault — but whatever the cause it was surely the last contact. And when we look out into the sky, we see nothing but emptiness. An empty world in an empty universe. No wonder we have been at war with our planet since before records began. Earth had betrayed us, orphaned us: what else was there to do? Yes, we are lonely, all of us. Lonely and frightened. But do you really think making a pet of an orphaned Australopithecine is going to make any difference?…”
Emma felt Mane’s heavy, gentle hand touch the top of her head, distant, comforting.
They approached the centre.
People moved over the rocky ground. They were Daemons, little clusters of them walking to and fro, bearing incomprehensible pieces of equipment, occasionally flickering into and out of existence in that baffling, utterly disturbing way of theirs.
Beyond the Daemons, Emma thought she could see light shining up from the ground, caught by swirling dust motes. She shivered.
Nemoto was silent, tense.
They reached the centre of the clearing. Emma stepped forward gingerly.
There was a hole in the ground, a few yards wide, like a well. Light shone from it, up into the dusty air, like an inverted sunbeam.