Maximum Ice (48 page)

“What?”

Zoya fixed her with what she hoped was a commanding gaze. “Fast as it can go.
Now.
”

The tunnel whipped by them as
East Is East
rushed on at
maximum speed. Kellian looked down at the knapsack on the floor of the engineer’s booth.

“Daniel said you have the interface.” At Zoya’s nod, she went on, “So what are you going to do with it?”

“Talk to Ice.”

“Right. But to say what?” She was scanning the console in front of her, learning more and more about its ancillary systems. She glanced up at Zoya. “And who’s going to talk to it? You or me? Ice knows me better.” No disrespect to this woman of the star ship, but it was
her
diary that Ice read, after all.

Zoya nodded. “It knows you, yes. But it needs to know
me.”
Kellian waited for her to go on. The kilometers flew under the train. Five to go. “Kellian, Ice is processing information with some show of consciousness. But it still has programs that it’s subject to. What we don’t know is, how subject is it to program commands?”

“Ice doesn’t want to be subject,” Kellian said. She thought that was true.

“It may not matter what it wants. But if it has even a narrow range of choices, we need to convince it to make the right choices.”

“Then I should be the one talking to Ice,” Kellian said.

Zoya turned to her. “No. It must be me.” She went on before Kellian could interrupt. “Because I am immortal.”

Kellian shook her head. “Stasis isn’t immortality.”

“My gamble is that it’s close enough. It’s enough to release it from its logic loop. Since Ice is still a mixture of commands and consciousness, we need to meet its basic needs, to fulfill program goals. If I can help Ice out of its dilemma, maybe it will listen to me about the rest.”

“How can its dilemma matter, if it’s going to self-destruct anyway?”

“Maybe the dilemma doesn’t matter, logically.” Zoya smiled.

“But until very recently, that longevity program goal mattered. It’s still programmed in. It’s an annoyance to Ice. Maybe like having a ferocious headache when you’re standing in front of a firing squad. The headache still matters.”

“But…”

“Kellian.” Zoya was gazing at her with steady, dark eyes. “Here’s how we’re going to handle it: we’ll have a few minutes’ head start on Lucian. I’ll do the interface. You’ll stand guard.”

A bank of lights on the control panel lit up. Kellian had identified this as the communication system.

A voice came on over the speaker: “Zoyyya.”

Zoya put her hand on Kellian’s. “Don’t answer.”

Kellian pointed to a new panel, which was showing a moving light. “The other train.”

“I must see you, Zoyyya.”

The man’s voice filled the cab. Involuntarily, Kellian turned around to make sure they were alone. But he was in radio contact.

“Stop now. We have life to discuss. Long life. And the last-resort program. You know the one.”

The light was just leaving the Keep end of the tunnel.

They were well ahead of
West Is West, except for what was happening with East Is East.

They were slowing down.

Zoya looked at her companion in alarm.

Kellian swore. “It’s a scheduled stop. I didn’t think to check if there were mandatory stopping points.” And indeed, the train was braking hard as it came into a station platform labeled,
Wilburton Hill.

With the train now at a halt, Kellian’s hands flew over the console, trying to override.

Then the doors of the train swooshed open, one at a time, all down the length of the train.

Swan hadn’t really expected her to stop. But the screen showed the train was halted at Wilburton Hill Station.

The gypsy waited for him, at last. He felt he’d been chasing her his whole life. She was always just over there, beyond reach. Up through Error’s Rock, wending into the tunnel maze, across the butte itself, then descending. All the long way down from the north by sled. Now speeding west, underground. To this consummation.

Of course she wasn’t waiting for him on purpose. He knew this train system from long ago, having ridden it many times. Her train had paused at Wilburton Hill, a station long since fossilized to Ice. By the time his own train got there she’d likely be on her way again. Calmer, Swan spent a few minutes accessing the train’s simple guidance program.

Overriding the Wilburton Hill stop, he sped on to the next station, Hunts Point. With a little luck, he’d get there to in time to welcome her.

Then he’d continue on to coretext, since she had so conveniently led him to his own command center. But first he did want to put an end to this gypsy’s wandering. He wanted her to know she hadn’t won.

Nobody wins.

Kellian cursed herself for failing to override the rail stop.

At the boarding plaza, the train was placidly waiting for its influx of passengers. One of them would be tall and ugly

Amid her frenzy of work at the console, she kept an eye on the progress of Lucian’s train. To her relief, the screen showed that
West Is West
had skipped this station. “He just passed us,” she told Zoya.

But Zoya didn’t look pleased. “He’s figured out where our next stop will be, and he’ll be waiting there for us.”

The screen verified Zoya’s guess. It showed that
West Is West
had stopped one station forward.

“Let’s not stop there,” Zoya suggested.

Kellian concentrated. Then she smiled. “Got it.”

In a few moments they were under way, sailing past Hunts Point Station, where the screen showed their sister train at a dead standstill.

That gave them three minutes’ head start, the time it would take for
West Is West
to resume speed.

“Good girl,” Zoya said, her voice full of confidence. Her hands were on the diamonds at her ear, as though counting them.

Come to coretext, Ice had bid her, down the long tube between here and there.

Despite the fuzzy directions, despite having only Daniel’s guess to go on, Zoya thought this was the place.

She and Kellian gazed on the great hall. Walls of Ice formed a canyon around them, a geologic version of a room, bounded by planar growths of Ice, blue-green, and clear. And it was pulsing with silent explosions of light. Zoya didn’t need Vlad to tell her that Ice was testing each facet and node, but couldn’t test them all at once. The
all at once
would come soon enough.

She shielded her eyes, getting her bearings, scanning the hall to find a place to hide, to conduct the interface.

Selecting a side corridor at random, Zoya rushed toward it. She thought that if Lucian’s train were arriving, she could hear it, but perhaps not.

“If something happens to me,” she told Kellian, “take the interface. It will be up to you, then.”

Once into the corridor, she pulled the interface from the satchel. Fumbling in her haste, she pressed the optical probe against the plane of Ice. Kellian held it for her as she keyed,
I’m here. Zoya is here.

Ice’s response was immediate. No

Zoya tried a steadying breath. Wrong place?

Heart of I
CE
, came the words on her small screen.

Where is Heart of Ice? Had they guessed wrong? If Ice gave a latitude and longitude, it would be all over. She wrote furiously: No time. We have only minutes left. Please listen to me.

It’s time, Ice said. Hurry.

What shall I do?

The transmission pathway must be in the nerve fibers of your body.

Yes, Ice would take her body. She’d known that. But the words on the screen cooled her heart.

Completion time: five months. Faster implantation will damage you. Very fast implantation will kill you

Kellian whispered: “It wants to talk to you witch-style. Through the skin.”

Yes, witch-style. It was the price for communing with Ice. She keyed:
Zoya is willing.

Kellian grabbed her arm. “No.”

Zoya continued,
So hurry up with it.

The screen flashed a diagram. A pulsing dot showed where she was, and the path she should take. She let go the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Ice was learning how to get through to humans.

Zoya dashed back into the great cavern, turning to the right, as the diagram had shown.

Then she and Kellian saw what they had missed the first time, in the rain of lights, the reflections from plane to plane. At the juncture of the wall and the floor some sixty meters into the great hall, was a small, elongated shape, like a bed. A small shelf jutted over it, forming a roof. It was growing.

Ice had been preparing a place for her to lie down.

But it was in plain sight of the great stairway leading to the
train tunnel. Worse, it was pulsing with a highly visible, violet light.

“First thing I’m going to teach it is camouflage,” Zoya said. She rushed toward the pallet, Kellian trailing behind, saying, “Don’t do it, Zoya…”

Zoya muttered, “Won’t matter what becomes of anyone if Lucian has his way.” Under the soles of her feet, Zoya felt a thrumming vibration. Below them, a train was coming into the station.

“Kellian,” Zoya said, as they reached the cocoon, “you know what you have to do.”

Kellian looked toward the stair. They had discussed what came next, but her voice shook. “Yes.”

Zoya was stripping off her jacket. “Take this, hide it.”

She was on her knees in front of the pallet. If she crawled into it, she would still be visible out the exposed side. But the lid was growing before their eyes. She pressed the interface into Kellian’s hands. “Tell Ice to create a light diversion, tone down this pallet. This thing’s nothing but a homing beacon.”

She looked into the narrow enclosure. No room to turn around, only enough room to scoot in, lie flat. “Get out of here,” she hissed at Kellian. Then she took a firm grip on her arm. “And go with God. Now run.”

Kellian ran.

This was why Ice wanted her at coretext. Ice had been working on her tomb. Zoya held on to the overhead ledge, swinging her body through the side opening. Settling into the form on the bottom, the depressions fit her body exactly, in a mold the size of one Hungarian gypsy She crossed her arms in front of her and ripped the cuffs of her shirt, yanking to tear her shirt, to expose her arms.

She closed her eyes against the light, but it streamed through her lids, creating a blizzard of colors inside her head. She lay utterly still. To listen. To strain out the pounding blood
in her ears, to listen for the footfalls of the tall witch. A crash from some distance away.

The lights blinked out.

No, there were lights out there in the great hall, but her crèche had darkened. Ice was a quick learner. Zoya smiled. That might be the understatement of the millennia.

Another crash. Zoya turned her face slowly, peering out the diminishing hole. The crystals of her enclosure were forming up rapidly, closing her in. She didn’t want to watch the hole close. It was becoming her sarcophagus. She turned her head, resting it back in its quasi-crystal pillow.

Her arms lay against Ice. They grew cold and painful. She didn’t want to think about what was happening to her arms. What was happening to her.

Oh Wolf, she thought. If I’m not human when I come out, kill me.

It was a dark thought that came next, that there was no one left alive who loved her enough to kill her.

Well then, Ice, let’s get acquainted.

There came a rushing sound, like a breeze through aspens.

Kellian had been running hard. She stopped, listening.

A changing forest of stabbing light formations rendered her nearly blind. Her ears were a better guide. She had dumped Zoya’s jacket down a side corridor, hoping Lucian would follow that direction. Maybe he had. She could hear only her own breathing.

Or perhaps he was even now crossing the great hall to the crystal box….

She looked down at the interface. She’d just used it, but had no idea whether Ice responded to her plea, or whether Zoya’s cave still shone violet.

So quiet out there. Where was the witch? Slinking across the
great hall toward Zoya? Her job was to make sure Zoya had time. The more she thought about it, the more she feared Lucian didn’t follow her at all, that he’d seen Zoya. She had to do something, fast.

Kellian gave a shout. “Help me,” she wailed as loud as she could. The sound echoed again and again off the Ice walls.
Help me, help me, me, me, me.
It was a call to the witch, to Ice, to God. She needed help. And needed to run. She sped down the corridor away from the great room, legs pumping hard, making as much noise as she could. She was surprised to find that she had no fear. All he could do was kill her.

She fled into the depths of coretext, and she screamed to draw the witch on.

Swan came up the steps from the train platform, into Heart of Ice.

The great hall crackled with light. He hadn’t quite realized what the systems test would look like. It did make it hard to see anyone who might be lurking.

A sound off to the left, down a corridor. That would be Zoya. He turned toward this noise, listening. Then a scream. He stopped, considering. That wasn’t Zoya’s voice. It was higher in pitch, too youthful. It was then that he considered for the first time that Zoya might not be alone.

He knew that her tracker companion was dead. He’d seen him die. And she had no friends among the nuns, Solange had assured him.

Still, he narrowed his eyes, watching the room. Then he crouched, putting his hand on the floor, on Ice.

Where is Zoya?

Ice responded:
Latitude 47.36 n, longitude 122.20 w.

Irritation flooded him. Sometimes these answers seemed designed to mislead.
Direct me to Zoya.
That ought to be clear enough.

A violet pulse came from across the room.

Something was embedded in the Ice wall over there.

He walked toward the violet glow

A rime of Ice was pressed between two slabs of Ice, a rime where an opening was just closing up. He bent down, peering through the rime. It was the gypsy. He saw black hair, and olive skin, and bare arms….