Maximum Ice (10 page)

The storm blew unabated. In their shelter Wolf cleaned his harpoon gun. He had a small vial of grease, and used an old cloth to rub down the weapon’s components.

Zoya’s own gun lay on the floor before her. Black and lethal, the weapon could do some damage. But against a horde…

Wolf narrowed his eyes at her. “The pack won’t find us. I know them too well.”

She realized she must look worried. Trying to sound calm, she said, “Good.”

He began cleaning one of his harpoons—a thin but sturdy-looking projectile as long as his forearm, sharpened to a nasty point. “You aren’t used to hunting. Or being hunted.” He rubbed the metal shaft. “In your great ship you had no enemies.”

No packs. No witches. But perils enough. “Not like this,” she admitted.

He looked at the gun lying on the ground between them. She thought he would ask to hold it, but he didn’t.

“Some threats are invisible,” he said. “In the stars.”

That startled her. What could he know of such things?

He nodded toward the roof of the tent. “There is a great darkness above us. So it is said.”

“Darkness?”

“It can kill. That’s why people hide under Ice. But I am protected.” His hand went to the amulet around his neck. A religious talisman, perhaps.

“Tell me how it kills,” she said. “This darkness.”

Outside, the winds were subsiding to intermittent gusts.

“I will tell you a story of the darkness,” he said.

She brightened. “My people love a story.”

He nodded, approving. “This is the story of Queen Ria and her child.” Setting the harpoon aside, he gazed at the tarp of their enclosure, summoning his thoughts.

“In a golden time of a day,” he began, and then waited to hear the lex. Faithfully, the translator did its work. He went on, “a time that will never be seen again and yet will be, there lived in a certain country in the stars a prince. He was boastful, but powerful.”

The lex spoke to her, and Zoya smiled. Who would have thought the sled-driver had such a beginning in him?

He went on. “He was the Prince of the Darkness. He ruled over the stars, but he wasn’t content. He wanted the earth under his power as well.

“Knowing the danger, earth sent the Queen of Light to do battle with the Dark Prince. The queen—her name was Ria— left the earth to fight the prince in the star fields. Before she left, Ria had to hide her child, little Shinua, because she knew the easiest way for the Prince to defeat her would be to threaten her child. She loved this child above all else. Therefore, she must hide him well. She hunted the world for a safe place,
searching the deepest caves, the world seas, the roots of the biggest mountains. Still, she wasn’t satisfied.

“Finally, she went to find Old North, a magic being of fearsome reputation. Ria begged her to hide her child until she came back. Old North agreed, in return for control over earth in the queen’s absence.

“That’s how it came to be that Old North cast a spell of winter over the land, and cloaked the child in Ice. And that’s how it came to be that the child Shinua waits for his mother to come back, when she will be victorious over the Prince of the Darkness.

“When that day happens—and not before—the child will wake up from his sleep. He will bring a new spring, and then all people and all animals will emerge from Ice and walk the earth once more, under the blessing of the Queen of Light.”

He nodded in some satisfaction. “And this is a true story.”

She hoped that it was. It was a more cheering story than she expected from this sled-driver. And it was a good story to believe in. “Where did you learn that story, Wolf?”

“My ancestors,” he replied. “If you listen, you can hear the stories.”

Zoya smiled. That was how she told stories too, listening in memory to her aunts and grandfathers telling the old tales.

Wolf straightened, suddenly at attention. His eyes went cloudy, and together the two of them were utterly still.

Driven by wind, grit pattered at their tarp.

“Stay here,” he whispered. He scrambled outside, taking his harpoon, but Zoya was right behind him, gun in hand.

Outside, the wind blew chill, and her boots sank into the sand up to her ankles. Through scudding clouds, she could glimpse an achingly blue vault of sky. Wolf crouched at the edge of the promontory, looking down into the valley. When she joined him, he pulled her flat, next to him.

In the valley was a shadowy mass where none had been before. After a moment she could see that it was a moving swarm of creatures, flowing swiftly like a river bearing leaves. Their feet sounded just like wind-shot sand. She could see neither a beginning nor an end to them.

“What are they?” she whispered, but they both knew she didn’t understand the term he’d been using.

Rather than talk, Wolf extended a finger and drew a picture in the snow.

It was a quite remarkable likeness of a rat.

Racing to beat the sunset, Wolf stood in the driver’s spot, steering the sled with single-minded fury.

Zoya ached in every known joint, thanks to the grinding bump of the ride and her cramped position beside him.

With the storm passed, she had her first clean view of the pervasive crystal. For a long time it had been a vista of white land and acutely blue sky. Now, however, they were in a region of closely packed stalagmites, like a petrified forest of formations four or five meters high. The stacks were nearly translucent, clearer at the edges, more occluded in the centers. Here and there, they were shot through with brownish stains that might be iron oxides. From the sides of the formations protruded a mix of crystal shapes—skewed cubes, diamond shapes, rhombohedrons—often on the same stalagmite, lending a sense of wrongness to the structures, as though the shapes were random—or part of some excruciating pattern. And though each stack was different, they were at the same time impossible to tell apart, their shapes being too complex to remember and compare.

And add to that, some were lit from within.

From time to time, light burst into a formation, only fleetingly but enough to confuse. At first Zoya thought it might be
the setting sun refracting in the crystal. But soon she became convinced the source was internal.

“Wolf, what are those?” she asked, pointing.

“Shinua’s dreams,” came his answer.

More legend. “Yes, but what
are
they?”

He steered around one, not lit up. “Shinua’s dreams,” he repeated.

And from their passenger came the gargling sound that easily pierced the drone of the motor, “Shinuuuua, Shinuuuua…”

The man’s wailing had accompanied them for many kilometers, thanks to Zoya’s winning the argument with Wolf over the gag, which she feared would asphyxiate him.

She wondered if the light effects were piezoelectric, as before. Pulses of light—red, purple, green, blue, gold—momentarily sparked in the upright stacks, sometimes vivid, sometimes muted, depending on depth. It was not so often as to dazzle, but enough to keep her watching, wondering when it would occur again.

It had its own kind of beauty, this new face of earth. An exquisite mineral beauty—cold and assured. How strange that this white land could hold at once such loveliness and such death. If there was life in crystal, it must be a realm above or below human, alien to flesh. Zoya had seen such cold finery before, in the star fields and cloudy wonders of nebulae. The eye was stunned, and the mind humbled, but the heart… the heart wished for moist, black soil, red rocks, and the splendor of trees. It was what they all wanted, it was why they came back.

And it was almost too late.
Three months
, Anatolly said.

That was a cruel offer. It seemed willfully cruel. How could they have arrived—as it seemed they had—at the very last chance? It was too great a coincidence.

Zoya was not accustomed to invoking fate or magic to solve
problems. But fate or magic wasn’t the only possibility, nor even the best one. She saw
intention in this. Intention of human origin. As Ship Mother, she knew about people and desire. So she did wonder, whose intention?

She couldn’t help her suspicious nature. Nor her hopeful one. They would stop Ice, force it to retreat. So her heart said.

They were deep in the crystal forest, cut off from the horizon, surrounded by stacks glowing intermittently, catching Zoya’s eye. As evening came on, the lights became annoying, causing her eyes to see spots even when she closed them.

But if Zoya was disoriented by the bewildering forest, Wolf seemed to know exactly where he was going. They raced on, leaving the stalagmites behind, and entered a broad, flat plain that seemed to be the prevailing landscape of Ice. The ground, blown clear of sand in places, had a glassy look, taking on a slight blue tint from the sky. One hundred meters below was the old earth. She imagined crushed forests and hidden rivers, all imprisoned and forgotten, supplanted by this crystal season. She was the only one who remembered the old seasons. Irrationally, she felt that if she died—or forgot—it would all disappear. That above all else she must remember.

Wolf steered around the occasional obstacle, crystal facets that jutted from the planar surface like an afterthought. The sled bumped furiously over smaller obstacles, causing her stomach to churn from a lunch she now regretted.

“The food you gave me—it was rat meat, wasn’t it?” She wasn’t surprised to hear the dying man take up a counterpoint:

“Raaat,” came the wail. And then higher in pitch, “Raaaaaaat.”

“You ate plenty of it,” Wolf replied, eyes straight ahead.

“You could have told me it was rat.”

“You didn’t ask.”

She took a deep breath. They were both tired. Her bones
ached, her muscles spasmed, and her mind was pulpy from the lex tutorials and the snow witch’s incantations.

The glare of the westering sun turned a bright geography into a blinding one. Closing her eyes, she rested them. On her eyelids played the afterimages of iridescent towers, luminous plains.

The sound of the electric motor changed. They were slowing.

Zoya shook herself alert and stood up to look over the windshield.

They were approaching what looked like a black lake. Five towers punctuated the perimeter of the lake. As they drew closer, she could see that a wire fence connected the towers.

“The preserve,” Wolf announced.

He steered the sled closer to one of the towers. She saw that the lake was not water at all, but a dark expanse of green scum.

“The food mass,” Wolf said, noting her interest. “They grow some food. The rest comes from the food benders.” He cut the engine, and they dismounted. Wolf strode back to the cargo sled and, throwing back the tarp, exposed the snow witch to view from the tower.

While they waited, Zoya noted that the towers bristled with forms that were surely gun barrels. Several of them had swiveled and pointed directly at them and their sled.

The sun disappeared behind distant peaks, plunging the ivory world into a blue-tinged gray.

At last a door in the near tower opened, and out stepped two robed figures. One was a gray-haired woman who preceded a younger one. Approaching the sled, the older woman took in Wolf, Zoya, and the wounded passenger in turn with a calculating gaze.

By their robes—and even more by their bearing—Zoya took them to be the
Ice Nuns
that Wolf had spoken of.

“Wolf, it is well to see you again,” the older woman said.

“Sister Patricia Margaret,” Wolf said in greeting.

From the rear sled came an incoherent wail.

“He’s alive,” Wolf grunted.

Zoya stepped forward. “I am Zoya Kundara.”

The sister showed no surprise. “You are a stranger here, by your accent.”

“I hope to find a welcome, with your help.”

“Many come to the order for help.” Her eyes went back to the snow witch. At a gesture from Sister Patricia Margaret, the assistant approached the babbling man and, opening his ragged coat, fumbled at the bandage over his wound. He writhed, but his restraints held him firmly. After peering closely at the wound, the younger woman made a gesture to the older one.

“Half-alive,” came the pronouncement from Sister Patricia Margaret.

“Noooo,” the creature moaned.

The sister drew a bag from the folds of her robe and dug in it, bringing forth a handful of coins. She placed them on the engine compartment of the sled.

“Half payment,” Wolf said, and spat into the snow.

Sister Patricia Margaret drew two more coins from her purse and lay them beside the others. “Next time bring me a healthy one.”

Wolf swept the coins off the housing into his hand.

“What will happen to this man?” Zoya demanded.

Ignoring the question, the nun turned back to the tower, signaling several others to come forward.

Zoya placed herself in front of the nun, making eye contact. “I want assurances of my patient’s safety.”

From the tower came a group of four nuns, carrying a pallet. The sister leaned on her cane. “You are forward, for a guest.”

Zoya thought the nun knew about Ship. And was not impressed. But
guest
did not sit well with Zoya. “We hope to stay.”

The nun smiled. “May your plans be wise as well as true.”

“And what are your plans for the man you just bought?”

Having gathered up the wounded man, the nuns were bundling him back into the tower.

The older nun held Zoya’s gaze. “To free the world from pain.” She turned and walked away, having the last word. For now.

As the evening darkened, the air turned chill. Zoya looked up into the sky. Lights flickered. She stared. But there it was again.

Tall and steep, light fell down in a streaming cascade. Pulsing an incandescent green, lights painted the northern sky There at last was a light show she understood. The aurora borealis.

Wolf nodded at the display. “The Queen of Light,” he said. “Her promise to return.”

He ignored the event, and Zoya guessed the aurora was a common event amid the augmented electromagnetic forces of the new earth. But for her, the display brought on a moment of hushed awe. She would have stayed to watch, but Wolf urged her back into the sled. He drove them a few hundred meters to the nearest tower. The moving cataract of light glowed deeper against the night. Zoya fancied the Queen of Light was shaking out a blanket, its folds shimmering like a flaming curtain.
Sleep now, all will be well.