Maximum Ice (40 page)

A small frown appeared between the nun’s eyes. “Longevity… but that wasn’t Ice’s purpose.”

“No, not in the beginning. He subverted it. And now he’s awakened from a sleep in Ice, and finds that Ice has failed.”

A very long pause ensued. Finally, Mother Superior asked, “Is it known what this individual looks like?”

“It’s known. I’ve seen him.”

“And?”

“Tall, white hair, rather long. Bad skin.”

Solange nodded. “Well, we shall certainly watch for such a person.”

Whatever the nun knew, she wasn’t saying. But Zoya would.

“Lucian has threatened to invoke an ancient program. A sudden and catastrophic destruction of the Ice mantle. I believe he may be capable of this.”

Mother Superior blinked, looking slow-witted for the first time. To Zoya, there seemed many ways to be smart, and this nun lacked a few of the more useful ones.

“Why? Why would he do this?”

“Despair, perhaps.”

“And what has this—Lucian—to do with you?”

“He hunts me. You might be in danger too.”

“I believe he is your enemy, Ship Mother. Not mine.”

That statement, the nun’s most open expression of hostility, seemed to signal the end of their discussion. Truly, there was no common ground.

Solange seemed to share that thought. “Ship Mother, I had rather hoped for a better rapport. We might have worked together, you and I.”

“Two cooks will spoil the broth,” Zoya said in the old tongue, for the axiom did not translate well.

Mother Superior looked at her with her first true smile, small though it was. “As you say,” she responded in the ancient English.

The Hall of Horrors was quiescent now. The tour was over.

As Solange led her out of the hall, Zoya said, “One small matter, Mother Superior. This Kellian Bourassa. She is an acquaintance of mine.”

“How unfortunate.” It was not a sympathetic tone.

“Perhaps you might reconsider her sentence. I would take her with me, if you wish.” Zoya was in fact determined to take Kellian with her. But she must proceed carefully. She didn’t trust what the nuns might do if they thought Kellian possessed secrets.

Solange shook her head. “You would regret such a recruit. Trouble does follow the girl.”

“My sort of girl,” Zoya murmured. “But perhaps as a gesture of goodwill?”

“My
gesture
was opening our door when you knocked. There was rather a large group of rats just behind you.”

And a large black one beside me now, Zoya thought, but held off saying.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Solange walked through the hall of Ice looking for Swan. She called his name. The cry fell flat against the brittle surfaces.

No reason to think he would go there, but Solange felt herself drawn back to the place where they had first met.

She went alone this time, without bodyguards. Things had gone beyond the usual measures. They were in extremities now, both she and Swan. Perhaps this would provide a new bond if she could just find the man.

In her searching, she came upon evidence of a place in which Swan had lived for a time. Scattered around were empty cans, ragged bedding. She picked up items of clothing, looking for insight into this Swan, this Lucian Orr, searching for some remnant that might explain why he would want to live forever… and why that would be beyond Ice to deliver.

She dropped the torn shirt he had once worn. There was nothing but garbage.

Solange looked around her, at the walls of Ice. To her surprise, she found herself addressing the walls, speaking to Ice. “Is she lying?” Her words sounded hollow. She might as well be speaking to stone. But she continued, “Is Zoya trying to sow confusion? Did Swan lie to me?” She turned in another direction. The same bland, blind crystal stared back. “Do you care what’s said on your behalf? Will you sit dumb and mute until the end of time?”

Words boiled up out of her, against this damn machine. “Nothing to say for yourself? No justifications for all the grief you cost us?” For all the grief it cost
her.
A life wasted. The damn machine.

She stalked to the plane of Ice that formed the nearest wall. Placing her hand on Ice, she whispered, “I am Solange Arnaud. The one who could have turned your miserable data into meaning.” Her hand was just a pale chunk of skin on a cold wall. She pressed harder.

“It’s proper to say,
Yes, Reverend Mother.”

Silence.

She took her hand away. “God damn you, Ice.”

In his briefing room Anatolly stared out the porthole at the stars. They looked like pieces of shattered crystal, remnants of something that once had been whole.

Like him. Once he’d had a mission, and a clear one. Come home to earth. Now everyone and their cousin had their own mission—Janos, Donicetti, Tereza…

“Captain, coming up on the storm, sir,” the ensign said, over the comm.

“Acknowledged.” As Anatolly punched up visual on his terminal, the screen filled with the white fields of earth. Every time he looked at it, he felt a clutch in his chest for the old earth. The real one. Every man and woman on
Star Road
carried that blue visage in their hearts. This wasn’t how home was supposed to look.

The crystal-free lands and oceans of earth formed nearly a full ring around the globe, except for the former Central America, where the mantle formed an isthmus. The last remnant of land, that ocher swath across northern Africa was visibly
smaller than the previous week, falling to the relentless creep of Ice.

Just coming into view was what they were calling the Pacific Ocean Shelf, where the light storm brewed.

Within the hour, Lieutenant Mirran would set out from base camp to pick up the children. The nuns would meet him near the Ancou preserve, their last stop in combing the settlements for needy youngsters. According to Mother Solange, there would be forty-eight children. The interested crew drew lots, but since this was only the first batch, even the losers were content. Anatolly wished he could share their mood. Mother Superior had negotiated with Janos to assure that several nuns could board Ship with the children to settle them in. Anatolly agreed that three nuns could board… but the thought of them in their black habits and godless attitudes rankled. He sat back in his chair, resting his chin on steepled hands, staring at the screen.

Lieutenant Mirran must hurry. The storm was moving east, in an odd mirroring of the old earth’s atmospheric storms. If it didn’t subside, it would be sweeping over the rendezvous point within hours. The swelling magnetic fields probably wouldn’t endanger those on the ground, but flying the shuttle during such an electromagnetic burst could swamp the onboard electronics.

This optic snarl had begun welling in the mid-Pacific Shelf the previous day. Now, a rich explosion of lights lurched across the expanse in stabs of crimson, violet, and blue. Beams of light crisscrossed, surged, and retired. Green and orange lanced across geographic Ice, fracturing its alabaster calm. And those lights were only the ones close enough to the surface—and sustained enough—to be seen from orbit. The science team called it an optical storm. Perhaps, on the new earth, such silent storms often disturbed the barrens.

But the storm worried Anatolly. It was headed relentlessly east, and Zoya was in its path. Light isn’t dangerous, he reminded himself. As he gazed at the storm he found himself thinking, but information is. The whole global shell was information. And some of it was deadly, if the story of the amulet was true.

Zoya’s driver had the amulet as a personal keepsake. Think of that, the most precious record of the early calamity, hung around an illiterate’s neck for decoration. All this, according to Lieutenant Mirran. But it had been four days since he’d heard from Zoya herself.

He watched as the terminator line advanced over the storm, plunging it into planetary night.

The optical storm brightened, snapping off gigantic spurts of light, sometimes laterally, sometimes vertically from deeper Ice. It lumbered eastward, leaving behind smaller flutters in its wake.

Blooming over the storm was a massive aurora—like an outrider, at this distance, merely a wash of greenish gold.

Anatolly jumped when someone put a hand on his shoulder. It was Janos. The man’s face looked mildewed in the mossy light from the screen.

“Excuse me, Captain. You didn’t answer my knock.”

He might not have anyway if he’d known it was Janos. Anatolly stood to face him.

“Lieutenant Mirran has left base camp,” Janos reported. “It won’t take him more than a couple of hours to reach the rendezvous.” He turned to look at the view on-screen, where the storm had taken on the look of a pea green stain, seeping off eastward.

“Damn strange,” Janos said. “We’re monitoring the electromagnetic effects.” He glanced back at Anatolly. “By the way, Zoya is at the Keep. Mother Superior radioed us.”

“Thank God.” Anatolly let himself enjoy a welcome surge of relief.

“Well, thank Solange, anyway. Someone has to keep track of the woman.”

“I’m sure you worried about her.”

“I’ve always worried about her. She was never the one for the job. And now she won’t be needed anymore.”

“Not needed?”

“We’re in touch with the Sisters of Clarity ourselves. We don’t need Zoya. And she could ruin our relationship with the nuns.”

“But Ship Mother…”

“Is disruptive. Solange reports that she’s hard to work with. Zoya lost her driver on the barrens and is fairly emotional about it, I’m afraid.”

“Lost her driver?”

Janos shrugged. “Too emotional all the way around. There’s the mess she made with the nuns and the children last week. The lapse in her radio links. She’s in over her head.”

On-screen, Anatolly watched a streak of violet light head off in three directions, like his own emotions. “She worked hard to get to the Keep, Janos.”

“She did manage to get there, eventually.”

Anatolly swung around to fix the man with a glare. “It was a damn sight more than that, Janos. Don’t try to deny it. And she gathered major intelligence along the way.”

Janos changed his tone. “No doubt she’s made a contribution. But her role’s finished now.”

“I hadn’t seen it that way.”

By Janos Bertak’s expression
he
had. “Recall her, Captain. It’s time.”

Anatolly swallowed. They were in contact with the Keep themselves, regularly. In some respects Zoya was redundant.

But he knew what she would say: that Janos mustn’t be the one to deal with the nuns. To deal with anybody. The thought of having that conversation with Ship Mother made him feel as if the bilious green light show below -time view of his stomach.

Janos said, “Mirran can easily pick her up, bring her in with the children.”

Anatolly slumped back into his chair. He growled, “I’ll think about it.”

“Don’t wait too long,” Janos murmured. “There’s a storm coming.”

Sister Patricia Margaret led Zoya deeper into the west wing of the Keep.

Unexpectedly, Solange had summoned her. There was nothing more to say, was there?

Nuns passed them, nodding to Sister Patricia Margaret and sliding glances at Zoya.

“These halls aren’t used to strangers,” Zoya observed.

The nun kept her gaze straight ahead. “You are the first guest in a hundred years.”

“If I’d known, I would have dressed better.” The sister glanced at her underneath imposing eyebrows, but said nothing.

“What is your post here, Sister Patricia Margaret? I must be taking you from more pressing duties.”

The nun’s mouth flattened. “Retired.”

“Ah. A well-deserved rest.”

“Yes. But Reverend Mother felt that I might be a proper guide for you. You must tell me if there’s anything you lack.”

They continued down the corridor, with its display of craftsmanship and wealth. Doors of real wood, each one carved.

Floors of polished wood, glass chandeliers suspended from the ceiling by long golden chains. Such a walk might intimidate. If one hadn’t seen such things before, the grandeur of institutions that took themselves too seriously

“Sister, that young woman yesterday… the one who approached me. She implied that you know my friend Kellian.”