Maximum Ice (34 page)

Must not.

Must.

An infinite logic loop.

The thought came to Swan that, after all, the price of life was death. Death was hardwired into the nature of things. Tears and saliva dampened his shirt. The fabric clung to his chest like some sucking presence.

This, this stinking and barbaric state was as good as it got? He wasn’t a swan at all. He was just Lucian Orr—ugly, growing uglier.

He stared at the plane of Ice, almost discerning his reflection in it. But he was only a shadow there.

It was over.

In his head, he cycled back through the arguments, the programming, the logic. No escape. It was over.

He found himself weeping. The sound was terrible, but fitting. It wasn’t supposed to end this way. It could all have been… perfect. Long-lasting. Eyes dripping, nose running, he experienced crying as a kind of internal rainstorm. He tried to stop, and then did. If once he let go, there would be no end to the tears.

His flesh sagged. He felt as if his bones had softened, all energy fled. But he was thinking more clearly now. He wasn’t going to stick around for a lingering demise, in some heat war between earth and Ice. His existence, from the moment he had awakened, had been a trauma. He had lived in his head until now, with plans and programs, but all the while his body was disintegrating. The end would come slowly, miserably

Death was his future. It wasn’t fair, after all that he had been through. He had died before, and once you die… you don’t have to… you shouldn’t have to… It was wrong, horribly wrong, yes wrong, and he had been so close to breaking free, and now it was ruined. How many times was he to die? Twice? Three times? Four? Over and over and over.

A flood of heat rushed through his body, giving his bones tumescence, putting iron in his body, his heart. He stood, squeezing his right hand, feeling the vitality surging to get out. It was a relief to make up his mind, a relief to be done with it all.

He would choose the method of death—his twice, thrice death. It would be a big death. Why not? A grand death. Ice too. That ghastly, mistaken thing.

It was his to choose, and he chose a fire within and throughout Ice. The last resort program, one program he hadn’t been in charge of. The fail-safe routine in case Ice should get out of hand.

And oh, it was out of hand.

He looked around him, thinking how hungry he was. It was
an unworthy urge at a moment like this. The grandest scheme the human mind could imagine, and suddenly one was craving a hamburger. Oh, he wouldn’t miss life, with its taunting indignities.

Still, he
was
hungry. It wasn’t just a concept. And, it seemed appropriate. Even a condemned man is entitled to a last meal. He thought this Zoya might do well in that regard.

OK, they’d draw straws.

Zoya was transfixed by the sound. The singing.

A pure note of grace pierced the canyons. It erupted on a high, fine note, and then fell like a bird of prey. Swooping up at the last moment, it began a harrowing melody in a minor key. It was like a violin, a shattering soprano lifted aloft by an unseen hand. Zoya stopped, turning her head to sense the direction.

It was a wordless song. Just pure tone, such as a snow witch might command, if Ice gave monsters such instruments of glory. And indeed, who else could it be, but Snow Angel? Who else had reason to sing with such pain?

The voice subsided, still present, but farther away. Wolf would be following that voice. Zoya began walking toward the sound.

It had been a long while since she had seen anyone else, projection or real, but she looked down every finger of the changing Ice cave, into every fissure and canyon. By the light of the high sky, she could tell that day was fading. She didn’t want to be there when night fell. She wouldn’t be, if she had to climb up the canyon wall to the plateau and repel down the outer wall. All without climbing equipment…

A movement to one side.

Down that corridor, a fleeting movement. Stopping, she gazed into the shadowy fissure. There was something moving there. But whatever it was, it wasn’t running at her. That much at least.

She walked toward it, coming up to a dead end.

It was the tall witch.

He was standing behind a window of Ice. He was pushing against it. But the thickness of the pane was too great. He saw her, too. Pushed.

Too surprised to move, Zoya stared at him. She began backing up, but checked herself.

He was well dressed. Good clothes, even new. The rest of him looked like it had indeed been around a long time. His face was a wreck, like a man who has lost a hundred pounds too fast. Skin hung from his neck in folds, tinted gray-green by the underwater light from behind the glass door.

His movements were slow, as though he was doing an isometric exercise with the Ice wall, testing here, probing there. Pushing.

She could hear him pushing, the slide of his hands along the plane of Ice, the shuffle of his feet.

As he mouthed something, she made out the word, “Zoyyya.”

She managed to move closer to the pane.

He repeated her name, faintly. She put her ear against the Ice.

“Say good-bye, Zoyyya,” came the muffled words, from underwater, from behind a veil.

She heard her own voice, breathing against Ice. “Are you Lucian Orr?”

“I used to be.” He was pushing against the pane. She should flee, but in his gaze, she felt immobilized. “As you used to be Zoyyya.”

The way he said her name was disturbing. The man was altogether disturbing.

“Say good-bye now, gypsy.” His voice so muffled. But he was centimeters away. “It’s over.”

“What’s over, Lucian?”

“The world. Didn’t you know?”

She drew back, looking into his bleary eyes. She hoped she wasn’t understanding him. But in the next moment he said, “The program of last resort. I invoke it. A clean end in fire. OK?”

“Don’t,” was all she could think of to say

“Then come here.”

He was pushing. She could see the bulge of his arm muscles. He was trying very hard.

Suddenly she noticed that the wall was sloughing a little, at the top.

Then Zoya was running back through the fissure, away from the wall, away from the tall witch and his submerged voice.

The path slanted upward.

Cold. Dusk. Wind. Zoya registered the basic things first. Then came the analysis: She was on the top of the dome.

It was a plateau with upthrust jumbles, like icebergs frozen in a bay. The sky grew dark, tinting the formations a blue slate color, an implacable hue of bergs frozen since the dawn of time. Some towered over her, some were undercut and precarious. They were misshapen, asymmetrical. No information stalagmites grew there, where the dome itself was the stack. Perhaps the bergs were the nightmares of Ice, illogical, relentless…

Crouching in the lee of a berg, she pushed away exhaustion and strained to stay alert. She would not call out for Wolf, lest she draw her pursuer. She feared this tall witch, as she did not fear Angel. Angel had come to contend with Wolf.

The tall one had come for her. The thought settled around her like a mass of frigid air.

By his eyes, he hated her. And, if there was any doubt, he
threatened her. By his demeanor, she thought he wanted her to be afraid—of the fail-safe routine, what he called the program of last resort. Were they the same things? In the cold, her mind seemed to work more slowly, neurons firing in slow motion. Backlog of data. She put on her gloves and cinched her parka hood around her face.

In one direction the landscape stopped short and zoomed to the horizon. That would be the edge. She felt uneasy. Something was wrong. Oh, yes, there was plenty wrong. But something new…

Then it clicked into place. So obvious.

The dome was dark. The monolith that she had seen glow unabated for days had turned the lights out.

Only the buttery rays from the setting sun struck Error’s Rock.

She stood up. Soon it would be pitch-dark, an awful prospect on a butte like this, with such inhabitants… She clutched her knife and set out.

In a few meters she came upon a ragged gown. Nearby, torn shoes, and what might be leggings. She had seen the gown before. The flimsy cloth could not protect against the cold, and perhaps never had.

The skin on her back fluttered with anxiety. She turned. No one there.

But in the distance she saw Wolf standing, his harpoon gun on his back. He was standing very still. As she began making her way toward him, relief flooded down her arms, warming her. On his feet, yes. Alive.

As she approached him, he slowly turned toward her, then away. Taking his gesture for an all clear, she began to run the last distance.

He disappeared behind an outcropping.

When she reached the berg and walked around its edge, she
found Wolf standing over a woman. She was lying on the ground, naked and spread-eagled. He draped a piece of discarded clothing over her loins. Over Snow Angel.

His knife was drawn as he knelt next to her.

Zoya rushed forward, afraid to see that Wolf had drawn blood.

There was no blood. Angel opened her eyes.

Sheathing his knife, Wolf cradled Angel’s head in his arms. The gold of the setting sun fired her hair. But her face was dark and mottled. Her body was blackened with lizard-skin markings that might be frostbite.

But then Zoya leaned closer and saw that the woman’s whole body was writ upon, beginning at her forehead, and down the front of her body, down her neck, across her breasts and so on to the arches of her feet. The script was wobbly, irregular. Red.

Angel struggled to speak. Her mouth twisted, but nothing came but a soft growl.

Seeing Snow Angel struggle so, Zoya urged Wolf, “Read. She wants you to read.”

Zoya could pick out much of the writing herself, but some words were strangely spelled, and in any case, it was Wolf’s missive, not hers.

He leaned close, perhaps to see more clearly, and perhaps to be sure his wife could hear him, could hear him understand.

Then he began to say the words out loud, his voice only a whisper.
My Wolf. My sweet Wolf. Can you do it quickly? I’m afraid.

Snow Angel’s hand pulled him, forcing him closer, to read the words scripted into her neck. The writing, it seemed, was only on the front of her body, and it proceeded methodically, left to right.

He went on, as her hand clutched him, locking him in place:
It will be hard to kill me. Make sure to do the whole thing.

Across her breasts he read:
The woman of the dark hair with diamonds. Do you love her? I hope you do. Be free. Life is so short, Wolf, unless it’s too long.

Snow Angel’s eyes closed, and her eyelids fluttered. Zoya didn’t know how Wolf could read so steadily, but he went on.

Still holding her hand, his eyes tracked the words over the landscape of her rib cage.

Snow Angel’s eyes looked to Zoya. She knew what part came next. She’d written it.
Help me, the dark woman said. I will tell her: Ice exists to preserve the life of Lucian Orr. But it is failing because of a logic loop. It tries to grow large to succeed. But it can’t grow larger without breaking down. So even Ice can die.

Wolf had to let go of her hand to continue reading. The line of script was continuous across both her thighs. He looked up at Angel, and she pushed him off with her hand, willing him to go on. His eyes found Zoya’s, looking helpless for the first time since she’d met him. Zoya slipped her own hand under Angel’s head, cradling it.

Seeing that, Wolf began moving down the length of Angel’s body, continuing to read. Zoya could barely hear his voice.

But there is a girl, Kellian. Who could help her. She is somewhere. I’ve heard her voice. Now hear mine. I’m ready to die. Please.

Angel groaned as Zoya adjusted her hand behind the woman’s head. It was then that Zoya noticed that Angel’s upper back was stuck onto Ice by threads of snow. The threads were crimson. Blood was flowing into Ice. It was killing Angel. The price of her tale was now clear.

Wolf’s voice came like a thin trickle of melt:

That’s all. I love you.

Angel was staring up into the sky, and her blue eyes were darkening to slate. There was no more script.

Wolf moved to brush the hair away from Angel’s eyes, tucking the long wisps of hair under her head. He saw the tubes plunging into Ice.

Snow Angel slowly, laboriously, turned the palm of her right hand to face outward. A fragile line began to carve its way from thumb to little finger.

Zoya could read it:
Now is a good time, Wolf.

He picked up his knife, the slowest movement Zoya ever saw.

“Wolf,” Zoya whispered.

He looked up at her with eyes grown white.

“Tell her something for me,” she dared to say.

His voice came out like a rock breaking in half. “Speak to her,” he whispered.

Zoya crept close to Snow Angel’s face. She spoke: “Marja, I beg you, tell Ice that I am immortal. Tell Ice that Zoya lives very long.” It was true in a way; but she might have said so anyway. She would dangle that before Ice. A decoy, a gamble.

Angel looked at her, comprehending, Zoya thought. But then her eyes closed. Her hand fell to her side.

She didn’t know if Angel conveyed her message or not. Zoya pressed her hand to the artery at Angel’s throat.

Wolf pulled off his jacket, covering Angel’s torso. He bent over her, kissing her lips. The knife was firmly in hand.

Zoya stretched out her own hand to restrain him. She shook her head as he looked at her, looked through her.

“Ice has done the thing, Wolf.”

He gazed back down at Snow Angel. She was dead.

In the deepening night, it was hard to see, but the writing on her skin was moving from red to purple, then to blue, freezing into scars.

A noise came from Wolf’s throat, a groan. He touched Angel’s hair, her face.

Zoya turned away. She rose to her feet.

Wolf laid his forehead on his wife’s body. He became as immobile as Snow Angel herself.

Zoya stepped closer to him, taking hold of his harpoon gun.