Maximum Ice (24 page)

“Of course I’m wary of him. He’s the captain. How many, by the way?”

“How many what?”

“Children. How many will you have?”

“Thirty, let’s say”

“Make sure it is, then,” he said. “Any sign of Zoya?”

“No.” She was on a
sled;
with any luck she’d still be plowing through the Taga. All for the sake of the nuns’ anxieties about military transport in their airspace. Truly, Anatolly was a joy to work with. Zoya, on the other hand, might not be so amenable. “Janos, I have some concern about this Ship Mother of yours.”

“Don’t be concerned. She’s irrelevant now.”

“Nevertheless, I don’t like to walk into a situation blind. Send me information about her. About Zoya personally. I would like to know who I will be facing—beforehand.”

“Nervous about dealing with her?”

Solange let him think so. “I want to be sure I have the upper hand. I will require some background. Her role as Ship Mother. So unusual.”

“So unnecessary.”

“But I do insist.”

He signed off, after agreeing. He could hardly refuse. Solange had warned him she would be making demands on him. For technology, for example. So far she’d asked little, but he should get used to acquiescing.

The radio hissed with interference, but Anatolly’s attitude came through clearly enough.
No
, was his attitude.

“I am
way
off course, Anatolly.” They had left behind the endless formations of the Taga and were headed into flat, featureless plain. They were still in the former Puget Sound, but in the west the Paz awaited: a wind-blasted steppe of unimaginable extent.

His response came:
“The man may come around. Give him some rein.”

Zoya looked over at her bearded companion single-mindedly building a makeshift bridge over a crack in Ice.
Single-minded was the right description. Coming around
was not.

“He won’t come around, Tolly. He’s obsessed with this snow witch, this Snow Angel. It’s a wild-goose chase.”

“A wild goose?”
The static wasn’t helping. Constant electromagnetic surges from Ice churned words into squawks and hisses.

“Goose chase. But never mind.” Anatolly had never seen a live goose. Never imagined scampering into the woods after a creature that could outrun you and peck you to death if you caught it.

At the mention of Snow Angel, Wolf looked up, as though he had learned to recognize the name when spoken in Zoya’s tongue.

She continued to press her point: “Have a shuttle deposit me out of sight of the Keep. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

“
We’ve been over that already. Please, Zoya.”

She took a calming breath. Pushing head-on was not working. Beset by many troubles, Anatolly was closing up, pushing people away. She softened her tone. “It’s cold out here,” she said. “Sometimes the winds blow hard down the Val Paz.”

“Val Paz?”

“Their term for between the mountains. I miss the old names.”

“You sound lonely,”
Anatolly said.

That was a fine opening to presume on their friendship. She well knew it had been more than friendship to him. And for her—well, no point in love between the sleeps. But that wasn’t true. She had been very fond of Anatolly. It might have been
more, eventually. But when you are Ship Mother, eventually never comes.

The radio crackled like memory misfiring.

There were things she could say to him that might win her a favor or two. Crossly, she rose above them. “Nonsense, Tolly I’m not lonely, just in a hurry. You gave me a job, now help me do it.”

His tone was captainish again.
“I’ve made my decision, Zoya.”

She stared at the transmitter, hating the little box. Their affair was long over for Anatolly The fact that it was only two weeks ago for Zoya was beside the point. She must learn to keep track of time differently, it would make her life so much simpler.

“What does Janos counsel you?”

“Why does everyone worry about Janos!” Anatolly blurted out. “ I make my own decisions.”

“It’s a bad one, then. He’s against me, Anatolly.”

“Janos is not against you, nor against me. He’s smoothing things out with crew. They mutter against me, Zoya. They want to be off Ship.”

“To go where? We may have nothing left to live off, at the rate Ice is growing.”

His exasperation cut through the static.
“Don’t lecture me. I know how fast it’s growing. Ice is accelerating, Zoya. We thought we had three months. We don’t. It’s down to half that.”

“Half?”

“Yes, six weeks, we’re projecting, seven at the most. That’s for a thin layer of Ice. We don’t know what the effects will be on the soils. People are scared up here, Zoya, and so everyone has a strategy. I’m tired of factions arguing for this and that solution. Someone has to lead, and that will be me.”

Humbled, she responded, “Yes, Anatolly.”

Perhaps her obedience softened him, because he said,
“Zoya, you’re close to the Keep, it may still work out. But if your man doesn’t turn around tomorrow, I’ll send the shuttle, no matter what Janos says.”

So it
was
Janos. “That man is poison.”

“He’s my first mate.”

“I don’t think so, Tolly. Watch your back.”

The radio sputtered:
“Please don’t call me Tolly.”

“Yes, Captain,” she said. Now he had given ground about the shuttle, she mustn’t ruin things. She signed off before he changed his mind.

Wolf was waiting for her with that stolid, what’s-taking-you-so-long look. He needed her to help push the sled over the bridge, over a lip of Ice, where the heaving of the underlying earth had extruded a shattered ridge of crystal. In the tundra around them, it was a singular feature, and one that required a bridge or hours of detour. Wolf said the spikes on the traction drum couldn’t grip on the smooth polymer sheets of the bridge.

She considered refusing to push the sled. West was the wrong direction. But she surmised Wolf would win the face-off. She wouldn’t get far on foot.

He had uncoupled the two sections. They began with the forward sled, with Wolf hauling from the front, Zoya pushing from behind. The sled runners grated laboriously over the platform.

“Push harder,” Wolf called out.

“I… already… am.”

The sled lurched another centimeter or two.

Eventually they managed to push it across the gap. Wolf turned to look at the rear section, still on the other side. He tramped across the bridge, and, sensing she had remained behind, turned to regard her.

They stared at each other across the crevasse.

“Why should I?” she said, standing her ground.

“Sooner push, sooner back on track.”

“But whose track? Yours or mine? We traded you plenty for this trip, and now you’re going back on the deal. Wolf, you know I’m in a hurry. You’ve had years to track your witches, and I’m running out of time. You don’t care; all you want is for me to push the damn sled and shut up.”

He was silent, looking at her. Damn his silence anyway. “I’m tired, and I’m hungry,” she proclaimed, letting out all of her grievances in no particular order.

He walked closer to the edge of the fracture. “Anything else?”

“Yes, I’m cold.”

He nodded. “Your talk with the ship didn’t go well.”

“No, it didn’t. It didn’t go well at all.” She stepped closer to the crevasse to face off with him. “Nobody listens to me. I have a man on that ship who wants me to fail, who works against me at every turn. The crew expected to come home and plant corn and have babies.” She waved her hand around her. “We got this instead. We’re tired and scared. The nuns are at least a chance to learn how to survive.” She knew she was giving him an earful he didn’t want. “I hope you’re not too attached to your big Winter here, because if we have anything to say about it, we’re going to melt it down and plant some damn corn.”

By way of answer, Wolf turned back to the sled, and for one evil moment she considered dashing across the bridge and pushing him into the chasm. But he returned holding a pack. Crossing the bridge, he crouched down and began setting out some food.

He looked up at her. “You said you were hungry.”

She watched his lunch preparations, feeling deflated and less listened to than ever. But she
was
hungry.

As she settled herself opposite Wolf, a deep strumming sound came from far away, like a struck drum.

Wolf looked at the fractured ridge of Ice stretching like a surgical scar north and south out of line of sight. “A restless sleep,” he said, referring to Shinua, the boy who slept under the snows.

They set into the rat jerky, a meal she was beginning to prefer to tube paste. He let her sit on the supply pack, no doubt his way of mollifying her. She didn’t plan on being mollified.

At last he broke the silence. “I’m in a hurry too.”

She chewed, staring south.

“Scat,” he said.

She checked her ear lex for a translation; it was
animal spoor.

“Snow Angel has been leaving a trail of scat for me. Lately.”

“How do you know it belongs to Snow Angel?”

“She leaves lengths of her hair hidden in the scat, so I’ll know her.”

“Her?”

He nodded.

“Why would she do that?”

He shrugged. “I want to catch Snow Angel before she changes her mind.”

Zoya declined his offer of more rat jerky. She didn’t want to listen to his arguments, but his small revelation loomed large and generous from a man who gave so little.

“Why does she want you to catch her?”

He bit off another chunk of jerky, paying close attention to the food, not to her.

“When do we turn around? Tomorrow? Next week?”

He chewed, avoiding her eyes.
As long as it takes
, was the implication.

“Wolf, what’s between you and Snow Angel involves two people
. Between the nuns and me, is a whole shipful of people, desperate to continue their line, desperate for some good news. I’m supposed to guide them. But I’m ignorant. I don’t know what Ice is. I don’t know anything much that will help my people.”

“The Ice Nuns.” He spat out a brown wad onto the snow in an unmistakable gesture. “They don’t know much either.”

“Maybe not. But I’m gathering information as fast as I can. Your stories help, Wolf. I’m piecing everything together of the old stories, the beliefs, the facts. The preserves helped me, and the nuns are also part of the picture. I need everything. And soon.”

He bit off another piece of jerky, scanning the barrens, seeing what an experienced hunter saw, or perhaps the phantoms of his revenge.

“I have more stories,” he said through the mouthful.

She stood up, feeling weary. “Good. It looks like I’ll have lots of time to hear them.”

“My ancestors have stories.”

“Fine,” she said. “let’s get started, and you can tell me on the way.”

He remained seated. “There are stories in the old tongue.” He glanced at her. “Sacred stories.”

“The old tongue? You speak it?”

“No.”

Her feet were chilling, and she turned up her socks. Still the man seemed content to sit, though he claimed he was in a hurry

He tapped the amulet on its leather thong. “I don’t know the words. Maybe a few of them. Like I know a few of yours.”

The amulet looked like it was made of obsidian. It was carved upon, but hard to see, in the black surface. She sat down on the pack again, waiting for him to continue.

“It talks,” he said, resting his hand on the stone.

His pronouncement floated between them for a moment before she could integrate it. She squinted at the amulet. If it was a piece of technology, it was surely well disguised.

“They are old words. My father told me that they would protect me from the darkness. So I keep them close.”

He was serious—not that Wolf ever joked—but he was telling her there was information in the carved rock he clutched in his hand. She waited for him to activate the stone, to turn on the story.

They sat, and she had an ugly intuition. He wasn’t going to offer the story, not for free. She strove to keep her voice neutral. “You owe me a story, Wolf.”

“You’ve had stories.”

She could hardly believe what he was doing. He led her on, he shut her down. The crevasse was a compelling option.

Wolf was staring at her left ear. At her diamonds.

A prolonged silence reigned.

He was a beast. A mercenary beast of a man, with no capacity for friendship. He lived by bounty hunting, and would die by bounty hunting. The frost in his eyes revealed the pack ice of his heart.

This amulet contained the old language. More stories of Shinua and Ria? And if so, how had such an electronic record survived when all else was lost?

“You want a diamond,” she said, her voice like cubes of ice.

“Up to you,” he said.

He had the bad grace to look her directly in the eyes as she reached up to her ear and unscrewed the second stone.

She didn’t know whether she was glad or disappointed when he took it.

After depositing the stone in the same jacket pocket as the first diamond, he removed his amulet and rested it on his knee.

In all the wide, white plain, there was only the two of them. And between them, only the black, carved pendant. As Zoya watched, he pressed his finger into the back of the amulet, and then the recording that had lain dormant inside began to play

It was in the old language, as Wolf called it.

It was her language.

CHAPTER ELEVEN