Mammoth - 03 Icebones by Stephen Baxter

Author:Stephen Baxter [Baxter, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Juvenile Fiction, Fiction, General, Mars (Planet), Series - Mammoth, Prehistory, Historical
ISBN: 9780061020216
Publisher: Eos
Published: 2003-01-16T05:00:00+00:00

3

The Walled World

The Gouge's floor was carved by lesser valleys and twisting ridges. Lakes pooled, linked by the

cruel gash of that central canal. The lakes were crowded with reeds and littered with ducks and

geese. Around their shores forests grew, mighty oaks that stretched up so high their upper branches

were lost in mist.

The mammoths would come down to the lakes' gravelly beaches to sip water that was mostly

free of salt, even if it fizzed uncomfortably in Icebones's trunk. But the lower ground was softer and

frequently boggy, and nothing grew there but bland uninterrupted grasses, or tall coniferous trees,

neither of which provided food that sustained mammoths well. They generally kept to higher ground,

where grew a rich mosaic vegetation of grass, herbs, shrubs and trees, providing a healthy diet.

They often glimpsed other animals: Icebones recognized reindeer, horses, bison and musk oxen,

lemmings and rabbits, and she saw the spoor of creatures who fed off the grazing herds, like wolves

and foxes. The smaller animals seemed about the size she recalled from the Island. But the reindeer

and horses were very tall, with spindly legs that scarcely seemed capable of supporting their weight.

The long-legged rabbits could bound spectacularly high into the air. But they fell back with eerie

slowness, making them tempting targets for diving raptor birds.

For a while an arctic fox followed the mammoths, sniffing their dung. The fox was in his winter

coat, a gleaming white so intense it was almost blue. The fox moved with anxious, purposeful

movements over a network of trails, undetectable to Icebones. He was no threat to the mammoths,

but the fox was an efficient scavenger of food, a hunter of lemmings and eggs and helpless chicks who

might fall from a cliff-side nest. Somehow she found it reassuring to see this familiar rogue prospering

in this peculiar landscape.

But still, though the Gouge was crowded with life compared to the upper plains from which they

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