Origin. Stephen Baxter

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СКАЧАТЬ has crawled to Dig. His hands paw at her. His tongue is out, his member hard. Her hands are pushing him away. She is laughing.

      Fire’s hands grab Loud’s shoulders. Loud falls off Dig and lands on his back. He pulls Fire to the ground and they roll. Fire feels hot gritty dirt cling to his back.

      Stone roars. His scar shines in the fire light. His filth-grimed foot separates them with a shove. His axe clouts Loud on the head. Loud howls and scuttles away.

      Stone’s axe swings for Fire. Fire ducks and scrambles back.

      Stone grunts. He moves to Dig. Stone’s big hand reaches down to her, and flips her onto her belly.

      Dig gasps. She pulls her legs beneath her. Fire hears the scrape of her skin on red dust.

      Stone kneels. His hands push her legs apart. She cries out. He reaches forward. His hands cup her breasts. His member enters her. His hands clutch her shoulders, and his flabby hips thrust and thrust.

      He gives a strangled cry. His back straightens. He shudders.

      He pulls back and stands up. His member is bruised purple and moist. He turns. He kicks Fire in the thigh. Fire yells and doubles over.

      Dig is on the ground, her hands tucked between her legs. She is curled up.

      Loud is gone.

      Fire’s legs walk.

      Fire stops.

      Dig is far. The fire is far. He is in a mouth of darkness. Eyes watch him.

      He makes his legs walk him back to the fire.

      Sing is lying on a bower. He has forgotten he made the bower. Her eyes watch him. Her arm lifts.

      He kneels. His face rests on her chest. The bower rustles. Sing gasps.

      Her hand runs over his belly. Her hand finds his member. It is painfully swollen. Her hand closes around it. He shudders.

      She sings.

      He sleeps.

      Emma Stoney:

      If this really was the close of Malenfant’s career at NASA, Emma thought, it could be a good thing.

      She wasn’t the type of foolish ground-bound spouse who palpitated every moment Malenfant was on orbit (although she hadn’t been able to calm her stomach during those searing moments of launch, as the Shuttle passed through one of NASA’s ‘non-survivable windows’ after another …). No, the sacrifices she had made went broader and deeper than that.

      It had started as far back as the moment when, as a new arrival at the Naval Academy, he had broken his hometown girl’s seventeen-year-old heart with a letter saying that he thought they should break off their relationship. Now he was at Annapolis, he had written, he wanted to devote himself ‘like a monk’ to his studies. Well, that had lasted all of six months before he had started to pursue her again, with letters and calls, trying to win her back.

      That letter had, in retrospect, set the course of their lives for three decades. But maybe that course was now coming to an end.

      ‘You know,’ she said dreamily, ‘maybe if it is ending, it’s fitting it should be like this. In the air, I mean. Do you remember that flight to San Francisco? You had just got accepted by the Astronaut Office …’

      It had been Malenfant’s third time of trying to join the astronaut corps, after he had applied to the recruitment rounds of 1988 – when he wasn’t even granted an interview – and 1990. Finally in 1992, aged thirty-two, he had gotten an interview at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and had gone back to his base in San Diego.

      At last the Astronaut Office had called him. But he was sworn to secrecy until the official announcement, to be made the next day. Naturally he had kept the secret strictly, even from Emma.

      So the next day they had boarded a plane for San Francisco, where they were going to spend a long weekend with friends of Emma’s (Malenfant tended not to have the type of friends you could spend weekends with, not if you wanted to come home with your liver). Malenfant had given the pilot the NASA press release. Just after they got to cruise altitude, the pilot called Emma’s name: Would Emma Malenfant please identify herself? Would you please stand up?

      It had taken Emma a moment to realize she was being called, for she used her maiden name, Stoney, in business and her personal life, everywhere except the closed world of the Navy. Baffled – and wary of Malenfant’s expressionless stillness – she had unbuckled her seat belt and stood up.

      I hope you like barbecue, Ms Malenfant, said the pilot, because I have a press release here that says you are going to Houston, Texas. Commander Reid Malenfant, US Navy, has been selected to be a part of the 1992 NASA astronaut class.

      ‘… And everybody on the plane started whooping, just as if you were John Glenn himself, and the stewards brought us those dumb little plastic bottles of champagne. Do you remember, Malenfant?’ She laughed. ‘But you couldn’t drink because you were doubled over with air sickness.’

      Malenfant grunted sourly. ‘It starts in the air, so it finishes in the air. Is that what you think?’

      ‘It does have a certain symmetry … Maybe this isn’t the end, but the beginning of something new. Right? We could be at the start of a great new adventure together. Who knows?’

      She could see how the set of his shoulders was unchanged.

      She sighed. Give it time, Emma. ‘All right, Malenfant. What UFOs?’

      ‘Tanzania. Some kind of sighting over the Olduvai Gorge, according to Bill.’

      ‘Olduvai? Where the human fossils come from?’

      ‘I don’t know. What does that matter? It sounds more authentic than most. The local air forces are scrambling spotter planes: Tanzania, Zambia, Kenya, Mozambique.’

      None of those names was too reassuring to Emma. ‘Malenfant, are you sure we should get caught up in that? We don’t want some trigger-happy Tanzanian flyboy to mistake us for Eetie.’

      He barked laughter. ‘Come on, Emma. You’re showing your prejudice. We trained half those guys and sold the planes to the other half. And they’re only spotters. Bill is informing them we’re coming. There’s no threat. And, who knows? Maybe we’ll get to be involved in first contact.’

      Under his veneer of cynicism she sensed an edge of genuine excitement. From out of the blue, here was another adventure for Reid Malenfant, hero astronaut. Another adventure that had nothing to do with her.

      I was wrong, she thought. I’m never going to get him back, no matter what happens at NASA. But then I never had him anyhow.

      Losing sympathy for him, she snapped, ‘You really told Joe Bridges to shove his job?’

      ‘Sweetest moment of my life.’

      ‘Oh, Malenfant. Don’t you know how it works yet? If you СКАЧАТЬ