Maximum Ice (27 page)

Even as she tucked her gloved hands under her armpits for extra warmth, Zoya’s mood plummeted, along with the temperature. She had no time for Wolf and his obsession. Her people had no time for this. So much was lost every day, every hour, as Ice devoured their future. And now, the ominous silence of Ship. She had spoken with Lieutenant Mirran. He said it was a fluke of atmospherics; an electromagnetic disruption. It felt like her lifeline had been cut.

She and Mirran exchanged information. He quickly disabused her of the notion that the subroutine described in the old woman’s story offered any solutions.
A holocaust
, he’d said. Assuming the program even exists. Assuming the recording is real, not a hoax. The story of Lucian Orr and the longevity question—it might be true, or not. Verification was lacking. Mirran was more taken with his own work on encryption, and the extraordinary complexity of it, encrypting whole words instead of letters… he went on in this vein.

She mentioned the shuttle. He mentioned captain’s orders.

I knew your father, she wanted to say. He would have given me a damn ride.
She signed off. She held her tongue, but it had a dent.

She looked at Wolf as he wiped down the solar collectors on the sled.

He was a man fond of diamonds. He now had two of hers. She’d gotten him started collecting, and it gave her a certain power over him, unless it was the other way around.

She plunged ahead, trying not to think. Too much thinking was never good when you must do a hard thing. Reaching up to her left ear, she found herself saying, “How many?” When she had his attention, she went on, “How many in exchange for turning back on course?”

“Keep them,” Wolf said, climbing up onto the driver’s platform.

He had just turned down a fortune to hunt his prey. “Oh, Wolf,” she said, “such a powerful hate.” Snowflakes hit her face like small pellets of anesthetic. It was going to be a cold ride.

Foot on the pedal, he started the sled. His voice came very soft: “I think you know something of hate.”

Zoya hesitated. Everyone has some reason to hate. But you don’t let it drive you. Her heart didn’t burn on that cold fuel. Not like Wolf.

“I’m close now,” he said. “I can smell the witch.” He turned to look at her squarely. “This one waits for me, you understand?”

Hate on both sides, she thought. “The creature may kill you, then.”

He shrugged.

“So little to live for, Wolf?”

“It’s enough,” he said, starting the motor.

They turned due north. Zoya resisted the urge to turn around and look back. They weren’t in sight distance of the Keep, of course. Now, less than ever.

As the sled gathered speed, she put on her goggles to keep the snow from hitting her eyes. “Wolf,” she said, standing next to him, refusing to sit, “you said that witches speak to Ice. Was that an inner story, or—an outer story?”

“I don’t know.”

“But what do you
believe
?”

He gave her a quick glance. “That they can.” Under the runners, small hillocks of Ice caused the sled to bounce and pound.

Zoya flexed her knees to cushion the lurches of the sled. The act of riding the humps and crashes felt like some ancient ice sport. Judge the timing of the next hillock, bend, flex, rise…

She heard herself say, “Ice makes them live a very long time.”

“I’ve told you that,” he said through a snow-crusted beard.

With what intention, she asked herself, knowing the answer already, like her body knew how to time the hillocks, like knowledge comes when you stop thinking. Longevity. Orr, the man who ruined Ice. Lucian Orr set Ice to practicing. On humans.

To judge by what she’d seen and heard of snow witches, practice didn’t make perfect.

“That’s their problem,” Wolf said. The sled hit the ground,
over and over. “They don’t die.” From the expression on his face, he was ready to change all that.

The headland rose up before them in the middle distance. He looked down at her satchel, where her gun was stowed. “Arm yourself.”

It was approaching dusk when they reached the preserve.

The ice paddies on top of the preserve had been scraped clean of their harvest, and the gun emplacements stripped. All that remained of the entrance to the preserve was one tower, standing like a lighthouse on the headland, obscured by a bluish curtain of snow.

She didn’t ask, How do you know Snow Angel is here? By Wolf’s expression, he had his quarry.

Wolf parked the sled next to the tower and gathered his hunting gear.

He pulled out a flashlight that was part of his trade with the ship.

“Here,” Zoya said, moving in to show him the on switch.

He nodded, flashing the powerful beam to and fro. “Good.”

At the tower entrance he bent down to pull away a shred of cloth caught in the doorjamb. He cautiously opened the door, but his flashlight revealed that the anteroom was empty. Once inside, he turned to her. “You stay up here. You’ll be safe if you keep the door closed.”

That might be for the best. She didn’t want to witness an execution, or be a part of one. Let the man go chasing through this dark warren if he had to. The thought occurred that she could just take the sled and be on her way. Send the shuttle for him later. But no, it was Wolf’s sled.

“How long will you search?” she asked.

“Not long.” But he would say anything to fend her off and do as he pleased.

In a carrier on his back were the extra harpoons. The points glinted in the light from his flashlight.

“You don’t have to kill her,” Zoya said. “Her life is penalty enough.”

He gave her an odd look. Then he stooped down to open the trapdoor. “Close this after me,” he said. He climbed down, using one hand on the ladder, clutching his harpoon gun in the other.

Zoya turned on her own flashlight. Then she slammed the trapdoor shut after him.

He was pigheaded, rude, and insufferable.

He had no conceivable notion of the burden she carried, or why it mattered. She had told him what her mission was. Yes, he thought the nuns would chew her up and spit out the pits. Yes, he thought that if the nuns knew how to banish Ice, they would have done so by now. And he did tell her flat out it didn’t matter if the ship couldn’t talk to her, because they didn’t listen to her anyway. He had all the easy answers, the ones that suited him.

She flung open the tower door and stalked outside, filling her lungs with freezing air. It felt good, cooling her temper.

The sled was parked over there.

It didn’t need a key.

She could just borrow it. Unhook the cargo sled, leave him all the food. Mother of God, hadn’t she already paid him a fortune in diamonds for the miserable thing? They would send the shuttle for him in a day or two.

Well, why not?

It was about time she had done with detouring. Wolf could come back up and announce that Snow Angel was heading for Alaska. Then she’d be a prisoner on a sled to oblivion.

She looked at the sled. All right, it would make her a thief.

But in service to Ship—her children—what wouldn’t she be willing to do?

Snow pelted her face. Overhead, in the north, the cloud cover was tinged with a sickly gold-green light. The aurora, its display muted by the heavy overcast, looked like an old bruise healing. By its light she could find true south, even at night. If she left, Wolf would still have his trade goods, her diamonds, and his amulet. He’d be fine for a little while.

She stomped her feet off at the tower entrance, and stepped inside.

He’d come back up. She’d be gone.

It was ugly. She sat down on the cold floor, watching the trapdoor.

An hour passed. Two. She wasn’t sure just when she stopped planning to defect and started worrying about Wolf.

But at some point she found herself drawing her gun and lifting the trapdoor.

Abandoned, the preserve didn’t smell as bad as the lived-in one. A trace of mildew, rot, and chemical fumes. Not so bad, as preserves went.

She called out for him. Never mind that her shouts could attract Snow Angel as well. She was armed.

“Wolf,” she called again.

There was still no answer, but now and then she thought she heard noises. Pings and thuds.

Zoya unbuttoned her jacket in the warmer environs. A drip of water came from somewhere nearby, and then a hiss of a ventilation grill. A draft blew over Zoya’s head.

She had retrieved a flashlight from the sled. Shining it before her, she stepped over the clutter from the preserve’s hurried departure: cast-off items of clothing, trinkets, and there,
a cloth doll, staring up from the floor with a single button eye.

The corridor led onto a large gallery. Light exploded at her. Zoya jumped, but it was just the flashlight’s beam reflected off glass.

She was jumpy, yes. Snow Angel made her nervous. They’re not
people
, Worley had said. Maybe, in some sense, they weren’t. They were experiments, driven half-mad by loneliness and starvation. To be pitied—and yes, feared. Fear made sense when you were facing something that could kill you for supper.

A putrid smell slapped her in the face, and intensified as she continued. Along with the heat of the place, it made her queasy. It was so warm. Zoya unbuttoned her jacket all the way, wiping a strand of hair off her face.

The gun was heavy in her hand, unaccustomed as she was to going armed.

A rustle off to one side. She stopped, listening. In a moment, a rat appeared at an open doorway. In the pool of light Zoya threw on the animal, it stared at her, whiskers trembling.

She aimed the light into the room behind. No seething mass of rats… The rodent scampered away, and she went on, stepping into another, larger cavern.

From the shadows, a figure came rushing at her. It swooped in, shoving Zoya in the chest, sending her staggering back. She lost her footing, fell.

In the next moment the gallery filled with a wild cawing like that of a prehistoric bird. As her flashlight rolled across the floor, setting up a strobelike pulse of light, Zoya saw a figure with flapping wings and festoons of yellow hair. It swooped close to Zoya while she was still lifting herself off the floor.

Something long and glinting sliced the air in front of Zoya’s face.

Crouching before her was a woman holding a knife. She and Zoya were frozen, staring at each other. The face was pale and pockmarked, a ruined beauty. The eyes were lit with what seemed both surprise and terror.

In another instant, the woman jumped away, twirling in a mad dance. She was wrapped in a diaphanous gown that draped from her arms like the remnant of wings. Awful, highpitched screams gushed forth, sustained by a breath like a bellows. The creature raised her arms and careened away as though trying to leap into flight, the knife in her hand like an outsized claw.

“Stay down,” came a voice. Wolf was there, somewhere.

She turned toward the sound of his voice. She thought she saw him raise his harpoon.

With a bass cough, the harpoon gun erupted, hurtling its projectile across the gallery.

It must have struck the creature. From the far wall came an awful caterwauling like a decayed stream of curses.

Recovering her wits, Zoya scrambled for the flashlight, snatching it from the floor. She aimed it in the direction of the howls.

Wolf was dashing across the room, reloading his weapon on the run.

She swept the light. But there was nothing. The creature was gone.

“Here!” Wolf shouted.

She ran toward him. Unarmed. Where was her gun?

Against the wall, the spear stuck out where it had trapped the witch for a moment. A great hank of hair was pinioned in the spearpoint. At one end of meter-long yellow hair was a small, bloody patch of scalp.

Letting out a moan of frustration, Wolf grabbed the flashlight
from Zoya and charged from the room. Zoya was right behind him.

Then, up ahead, he doused the light. She could hear his footfalls, pounding away.

Following in the dark, she tripped and fell over debris. Her elbow landed soundly and painfully against the floor. Zoya lay doubled over in pain.

By the time she stood again, she was alone.

The only sound was that of her panting breath. She crawled over to the wall and sat against it, gasping. She opened her mouth to call after Wolf, then thought better of it.

In the profound dark, her ears were exquisitely tuned. It was a world of sound only. She heard the sigh of heat vents, the slump of earth, the ticking of something. But nothing of Wolf, nor of the apparition. Could the creature hear her if she moved? She doubted the witch—and having seen it, how apt the name was—could get past Wolf. She would flee him in the other direction.

Zoya stood up, cradling her arm, gone numb from her fall. She was now missing both the flashlight and the gun. Of the two, she would much prefer the flashlight.

She began following the wall back to the gallery. When she entered the cavernous room she crept across it until she touched the opposite wall. Then, sinking down on her hands and knees, she began sweeping along the floor for her gun. She didn’t find it. In the dark, unarmed. She had to leave. Find the ladder.

Pausing in the blackness, she considered. Had she got turned around? The entrance was off to her right, wasn’t it? Yes, to the right. She entered the long hall, stepping carefully, sliding her hand along the wall.

She passed a doorway. Whimpers.

Oh, dear Mother of Christ, don’t let there be whimpers. It was only the rustlings of vermin, surely.

A child appeared at a doorway. A trick of the eye.

I don’t need this, Zoya whispered to herself. It was all blackness, no child. This isn’t that corridor of nightmares. But was that another child there, in that other doorway? In the total immersion of dark, she peopled the world herself. Peopled it with phantoms. The ones she’d been nurturing deep down in her heart, that place with the rich blood vessels.

She passed by the doorway, trudging on, not caring what noise she made. She was glad to make sounds, so she didn’t have to listen to the whimpers.

This was what she always hated about nighttime, the times she couldn’t sleep, the things her mind replayed against the screen of her lids or against the dark of the room. She had always thought she didn’t sleep like other people, that stasis had altered her permanently, had transfigured sleep to waking dreams…