Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson Page B

me rusted into the mud of a world they have never seen, and when they crumble me between their fingers, it will be you they find.'
    The Landpod began to move slowly across the muddied, trampled undergrowth. Spike was standing quite still in the dust-filled air. We would all need masks to breathe once we left the range of the ship's air filters. Rufus had his head on Handsome's knee, and Handsome was telling him some story or other about a dog called Laika who was once blasted into space.
    'Look after Rufus,' I said suddenly, and before Handsome could answer, before anyone could debate it, I had slipped out of the back of the pod, and I was running through the thick air to the clear place where she stood.
    Here is a moment in time, and my choices have been no stranger than millions before me, displaced by wars or conscience, leaving the known for the unknown, hesitating, fearing, then finding themselves already on the journey, footprint and memory each imprinting the trail: what you had, what you lost, what you found, no matter how difficult or impossible, the moment when time became a bridge and you crossed it.
    We planned to stay on the Ship, where Spike had abundant energy, and where we were safe. I was optimistic, in that morning-of-the execution way when, quietly reading a book, you look up to find the hangman waiting, and go with him, feeling every final step with the intensity of new life. The mind will not believe in death, perhaps because, as far as the mind is concerned, death never happens.
    Outside the Ship, the noises grew more desperate and more terrified. In the darkening filthy air, the creatures whose world we had interrupted sought the sun, rearing their heads towards the sky, bellowing and crying through this fading light.
    It was getting colder and darker every day.
    Creatures thrashed against the Ship, battering it with swinging necks and iron jaws, using it as a landing-place. Only the ground lights kept them away, but the ground lights used power, which we had to conserve.
    One night, I think it was night, though we had assassinated any difference between day and night, I heard scratching in the hold.
    I thought something might be making its way into the damaged hull, so I took a weapon and a glare-torch, and went down there to our abandoned gear and supplies.
    Yes, there was something. Something had punctured the already damaged hull-side. I could hear a chewing noise. Whatever I was going to find, I wouldn't recognize it, and it might be very big.
    Forcing myself, I turned the glare-torch to the area where the noise was coming from. The chewing stopped, and bolting across the floor, away from the arc of light, ran a creature about the size of an Alsatian dog, but stockier, and with very short legs and three horns. It was so comical, and I was so relieved not to be confronted by a pair of jaws the size of a truck and just as fast, that I laughed.
    The creature stopped and looked at me. This was not a sound or a shape it had ever met before: a thing on two legs making bird-like noises.
    I dimmed the glare-torch and stepped forward. The Three Horn immediately hid behind a box.
    All right, I thought. Let's feed you and see what happens.
    What happened was that we found a playful and unexpected companion. Spike took a DNA swab and analysed the creature as a kind of hog-hippo hybrid, probably less than a year old.
    'He doesn't know what he is,' she said, patting him, 'and neither does Nature. Everything on Planet Blue is at the experimental stage. All these life-forms will evolve and alter. Almost all will disappear to make way for something better adapted.'
    'Our new ice age is going to change things, that's for sure. I can't believe that we've come here and done this.'
    'Nature will work with what we have done,' said Spike. 'This planet is viable, and even a few humans can't stop that.'
    She seemed quiet, subdued. I forget all the time that she's a robot, but what's a robot? A moving lump of metal. In this