Maximum Ice (50 page)
Authors: Kay Kenyon
“Fresh air is bad for you.” So the preserves always said.
Nit shrugged. “Mother Superior can do what she likes.” Nit was still following the rules. The new ones.
Kellian’s friend was wearing a fine white robe, and Kellian herself wore the black. “I don’t deserve a promotion,” Nit had told her. Kellian had placed a firm hand on Nit’s shoulder. “It’s politics. Our side won.” Nit absorbed that without flinching. It was a new order of things under Mother Superior Patricia Margaret.
Kellian directed the north wing. She was its sole occupant. Ice didn’t need distractions. At her suggestion, Ice wasn’t talking to others. Captain Razo lodged a protest, though Ice had never talked to them in the first place. Despite that, Mother Superior supported her, allowing her to proceed cautiously in interactions with Ice.
As they climbed, Kellian saw Nit glancing at her from time to time. They turned on the landing, and climbed on, Nit stealing looks at Kellian.
“Well?” Kellian asked finally
Nit ventured, “Has Ice said?”
Kellian flattened her mouth. Mother Superior should hear first. She nodded, though.
They paused at the next landing, resting. Nit’s big brown eyes flashed up at Kellian.
“All right,” Kellian said, “158,133, 250 minutes. That’s what Ice said.”
Nit looked worried. “That’s a long time.” She frowned. “How long, though?”
“Three hundred years. Give or take.”
Kellian pushed on, the heat of the climb building up under her robes. The robes of the sisters had to go… a lot of things had to go.
From just behind her on the stairs, she heard Nit ask, “Is that good or bad?”
“Let’s ask Mother Superior, shall we?”
For the truth was, Kellian didn’t know what to make of three hundred years, whether it was good or bad. The only ones among them who would be alive then were Ice and Zoya. Kellian wouldn’t know what became of Ice. She felt a pang of yearning over that.
Ship’s captain didn’t like it that Zoya was in Ice. It would take some convincing for him to understand that Zoya chose to stay with Ice, to be there when it had grown small. This was what Ice told Kellian, and she believed it. Ice might not yet know how to lie. Perhaps Zoya would wake from time to time, to commune with Ice, to help it change, to help it remember what it was, to imagine what it might be. For now, Ice had Kellian to guide it, with Mother Superior advising. Ice seemed content, even eager, to talk to her. She worried, though, that it might become too dependent. She had explained that someday she would no longer be there.
Is death bad? Ice wanted to know.
Kellian had paused, fingers hovering over the keypad. Her relation to Ice was temporary. Fleeting, like life. For a moment she fiercely regretted that. But she answered,
No
.
Sometimes a simple answer was best.
Now Kellian pushed open the roof access door, emerging onto the high ramparts.
Without a shred of cloud, a neon blue sky claimed the day The sun had bested the Ice ramparts behind, warming the Zoft’s dark roof. The high plateau behind the Keep was the place where the shuttle had landed, the one that had brought Lucian Orr among them, penetrating their defenses in a way the nuns never imagined. Now,
Star Road
had retrieved their shuttle, along with their cold and shaken pilot. They had demanded to take Zoya home as well. That was when they learned she was already home.
A long walk away, Mother Superior Patricia Margaret stood at the wall, looking out. She’d gone here to meditate. Not mourning Sister Verna—her sister was recovering nicely—but musing on her new responsibilities. In the center of the roof were a flock of nuns assigned to attend her. Ordered back, they sat on ventilator housings, sharing a snack. A few frowned at Kellian. To some, she was still excommunicated.
“Nit,” Kellian began…
Her friend sighed. “I know, go make nice to the sisters.” But she went cheerfully enough, allowing Kellian her private audience. Nit headed into the group of nuns with more confidence than Kellian could have imagined a few weeks ago.
The high Ice wall glinted in the sun. Kellian tried to imagine what that wall would look like as it began to dissolve. Pits and etchings would appear. She imagined rivulets, cutting paths in Ice grown weak and foamy. Rain would help to erode Ice, once rain was more common, once the oceans were set free. At the
discontinuity between Ice and earth, quasi-crystal would shed its molecular building blocks, ungrowing in a process that Ice must devise, dumping its constituent elements in great layers. The result would be dust deposits subject to erosional forces of wind and rain, with predictably devastating effects. Ice was working on the problem. It was building a computational model of all the ecological, atmospheric, and geological implications of what they were beginning to call the Recessional. Patricia Margaret had liked the word. It helped give majesty to the process she and Kellian had in mind, and lent legitimacy to their further plans for Ice.
The mantle no longer grew. Not a centimeter of land had been lost since Zoya communed with Ice and set it free from the tall witch. The last lands were more like the first lands now. Though the soils were impoverished by dark matter, a suite of organics remained. Microscopic life still teemed in the ground, and in
Star Road’s
holds, advanced life.
Mother Superior heard her approach, and turned. “Kellian, my dear.” She smiled.
One of the nuns hurried to join them. “A scribe, Mother Superior?” They were always eager to record her meetings, her musings. Kellian saw her mentor fight back the irritated response.
Instead, Mother Patricia Margaret said, “Not just now, Sister. My thanks, but Sister Kellian will speak to me in private.”
The nun, no more than twenty years old by the look of her, fluttered back to her group. Patricia Margaret had surrounded herself with young nuns, those who hadn’t been cultivated by Solange, and stunted by her.
“How is Hilde today?” Mother Patricia Margaret was solicitous for Hilde and her loss, but eager to have her leadership back among the postulants. And Hilde was their best link to the brothers whom Daniel had brought to her side during the coup.
“She has some appetite, Mother. Nit made her a pudding she likes very well.”
But Mother Superior was thinking beyond pudding. “Who does Hilde think should fill the fourth wing slots on the new privy council?”
“Brother Weslon and Brother Karl, so she says.”
Mother Patricia Margaret nodded. “Have her broach it to them.”
“She doesn’t leave her room, Reverend Mother.”
“Exactly.”
Kellian smiled. Hilde could hardly fail to emerge for a task that would have so pleased Daniel. She glanced over at the dark huddle of nuns. They were scandalized by Hilde and her sexual trysts. Sex would be among the first topics of the privy council. Kellian was glad she wouldn’t be there. Her job was creative, not political.
Mother Patricia Margaret gazed out over the barrens, her eyes narrow against the milky glare.
The ruins of the sled were gone, displayed now in the Hall of Honors, along with Zoya’s interface, jacket, and radio. The amulet lay in a glass box on a seat of velvet, and at a touch to the chamber the old woman’s voice would tell her story of Advent.
Just two days ago, the nuns’ great sled had carried Kellian out onto the barrens, on her mission. She arrived at the fissure where Zoya and Wolf had stopped, according to the ship’s calculations. A smattering of splinters remained from the bridge Wolf created to cross over the rift. There, Kellian let his shroud fall into the blue-green depths. She wasn’t sure why Wolf might have desired such a burial, but she knew that he loved the old stories, and resting in the arms of Old North might have pleased him. As to Queen Ria’s return, well, he’d have that wish as well, if the Recessional came to pass.
As Kellian returned from her burial duties, she had left caches of food. Chained to each box of food was a key. Restocking would be a dangerous task, as snow witches discovered these ready food sources. A new generation of trackers—this time from the Zoft—would hunt the creatures, bringing them back to lie in Ice, to regenerate what had been human in them. Some repair of neural pathways was possible, if plasticity lingered. The results might never be completely normal, especially for individuals who’d been altered a long time. But if the sisters fancied themselves philosophers, here was a worthy problem of medical ethics.
There was so much to do. But Kellian would leave these matters for the politicians among them.
Ice was and always would be, her matter. Ice might establish contact with Anatolly Razo and his people; she wouldn’t be its sole confessor forever. But for as long as Ice spoke to her, she would be there. They would converse, evolving toward a relationship between human and other.
Word was leaking out that Ice demonstrated consciousness. Not everyone believed it. And others thought that as Ice dissolved, so would its self-awareness. But Kellian’s theory was that consciousness did not require a global size. Immortality did.
Mother Patricia Margaret had been gazing at Kellian for some time, as Kellian’s thoughts were ranging out over the barrens to the curve of the world.
“How long, then?” Mother Superior asked.
Kellian remembered why she had come up to the roof. “Three hundred years, Ice says. And that’s at the fastest rate of recession. Fastest may not be best.”
Mother Patricia Margaret spun her cane, and the gilded bird perched there seemed to take flight. “Sooner than I thought, though.”
“In three hundred years all that will be left is coretext.”
“And then?”
“Ship may want it… gone. They’re nervous about Ice.”
Patricia Margaret sniffed. “They’re more superstitious than the preserves.”
“Star Road’s
crew are newcomers. They think they have all the answers.”
The older nun suppressed a smile. “Then you old-timers must set them straight.”
Kellian glanced to see how hard Mother Superior meant to jab. By her expression, it was just a nudge. Looking up, she found the glint of the ship, there over the western mountains. She said, “Some on
Star Road
are afraid of Ice. Maybe they always will be.”
Mother nodded. “With some reason.”
Kellian didn’t like the sound of that. “Ice has a right to live.” It was far in the future, but Ice would one day be as small as the great hall of coretext, or smaller. No longer geographic, but still brilliant, sentient. It would be vulnerable….
“As to rights,” Mother Superior said, “we could argue forever—an occupation this order seems to love well.”
“Star Roads
crew wants to banish Ice entirely.”
“Then we must win them over.”
Kellian locked her attention on the older woman.
Mother Superior went on, “Ice has been—thinking—for a long time. Quite a lot of information is stored in the molecular lattice, knowledge beyond what
Star Road
has—far beyond. Some of it may prove useful for agriculture, let’s say.”
Kellian paused, thinking. Yes, agriculture… “Or fertility,” Kellian said. “Their radiation sickness.”
“Or engineering that could be applied to starship design, if the People of the Road get wanderlust again sometime.”
Mother Patricia Margaret had something here. There were a hundred things that Ice knew. A thousand, a hundred thousand things…
Mother Superior nodded. “It’s my notion that this can be the new mission of our society, Kellian. To access and organize Ice’s knowledge. Both what it has preserved from the First World, and what it has achieved since then.” She looked back at the flock of nuns chatting on the roof. “It wouldn’t be—
grand, perhaps. But in my years I’ve found grand
gets you into a world of trouble. A little humility might suit.” She put a firm hand on Kellian’s shoulder. “As for
Star Road
, I suggest we let a few useful things leak out, my girl. Give the ship some intriguing tidbits.”
Yes, Kellian thought, that might work. Let the starfarers get to know Ice a little at a time. Let Ice deliver information as peace offerings.
Sister Patricia Margaret nodded. “Politics, my dear.”
Kellian’s mind raced ahead. Eventually, Ice would speak to others freely, would converse with the ship. She wondered how good Ice would be at politics.
She thought that in order to teach Ice, perhaps she had best be good at it herself.
They watched the tiny gleam of the ship as it disappeared over the horizon, behind the mountains, sheathed in Ice.
“Mother,” Kellian said, “might you have another place left to fill on the privy council?”
A YEAR LATER
“Zoya,” Anatolly said, “Rebeka Havislov had her baby yesterday A healthy baby girl.”
From the fathoms of Ice, a skittering light filled the hall— enough to see by, to dispense with a lamp.
“She named her Zoe. For you. I thought you would want to know.”
No one else had come to coretext with Anatolly, so no one would see him talking to a woman who couldn’t hear. Now that he had retired as captain, he had shed the gaggle of advisors and hangers-on that had vexed him so. No one seemed to care very much where he went these days, and that suited him just fine.
He was happy to report on Rebeka’s baby for several reasons. First, the baby was healthy. In a year on the surface, only one other child had been born. Two wasn’t a lot, to be sure. But the crew took it as omen of things to come. So did he.
The other thing was the name. The first baby, Margit’s, had been named Adam. That was all well and good, but you could take that concept too far. And secretly, Anatolly rejoiced in Rebeka’s choice of names, for Zoya’s sake. And too, they now had names beginning with A and Z, and the race was on to fill the alphabet. Doubtless there would be more babies as the crew began to mingle with the preserves. Able-bodied workers were flooding in from the preserves, people eager to see the last
lands, and the starfarers. There were cultural differences, to be sure, but love set no impediments….
He shifted his position on the hard floor. His leg muscles protested about not having a chair. But his muscles protested about everything these days, so he’d learned to ignore them. Still, perhaps next time he’d bring a chair.
Anatolly took a deep, cooling breath. So peaceful here. The silence. The soft glow around Zoya’s chamber. He went there often, to collect his thoughts. Perhaps reminisce was more accurate. He’d had a long life, and it pleased him to go over it, putting the pieces in place, and savoring the leftovers. He thought he might write his memoirs.
The Razo Road
might suit.
It wasn’t that he had no useful work to do. Seventy-nine years old was not an age to retire completely from the demands of the colony. He was in charge of the building program in the settlements, no small responsibility. But after managing
Star Road
, it was a task that left him plenty of spare time. Captaining Ship had been like lining up frogs at a starting line. By the time you got the last one facing forward, the others had jumped to hell and gone. Captain Andropolous was welcome to his new command.
Anatolly’s mind was on frogs because they had a thriving batch of them at First Settlement. It was a conservative restoration project with Ship’s store of embryos. They had begun with bacteria and worms. But when the tadpoles hatched, a celebration broke out. The crew rushed to the conservatory. Someone opened a bottle of wine. Much of it got poured on people’s heads, a waste, even if the chemical ferment had never seen a grape.
“The frogs started mating this week,” Anatolly said.
His voice sounded thin and brittle in the cavern. Sometimes he fancied that Ice listened to his reports as he sat on the floor next to Zoya’s chamber. But Ice spoke in light. Ice had no ears
to hear his scratchy old voice, and probably no interest anyway Yet sometimes, as now, a coincidental beam of light would plume up from the deep floor or reach out to him from a thousand fathoms west. And he fancied an answer came. A comment, say, on frogs mating.
But it was Zoya’s words he hungered for.
She looked comfortable on her bed of crystal. If he pressed his face close to the chamber, he could see her within. Not clearly, but enough. The crystal only made her more beautiful. The four diamonds in her ear shuttled light through their facets, scattering Ice’s thoughts, refracting them until they were only the glitter of diamonds.
Anatolly changed positions, supporting his back against the wall of Ice, gazing out at coretext.
Twenty-six years, Kellian had said. Zoyechka wouldn’t be ready to emerge from sleep for twenty-six years. She had suffered grave damage in that final rush to interface. It was a rewiring, so to speak, that should have taken five months, and took five minutes instead. Healing from that invasive and coarse procedure would take a long time. But twenty-six years was eternity, for all that Anatolly Razo would ever see her again. And even if he should set the People of the Road’s record for longevity, she would only awake to collect the news—good and bad—drink a few glasses of wine, make people happy and furious, suggest solutions, and go to sleep again, breaking some other old fool’s heart.
So he didn’t think about her returning. This was what was left to them, this one-way conversation, unless she answered him through Ice.
He wouldn’t have told another soul—especially not Father Donicetti—but sometimes he fancied that she
did answer him. Those bursts of light… well, she had
spoken to Ice subcutaneously once, and perhaps she still could. And she did have
ears to hear him. So it was her ears, and her interface with Ice, and the lights of the great hall, and an old man’s eyes taking in the photons, sending optical signals to his brain, where there resided who knew what powers of translation…
No, he certainly would never mention that to anyone else. It was no one’s business if an old man allowed a little fantasy into his life.
Inside the chamber, Zoya seemed to have just the faintest smile on her lips, as though her last thought had been of something delicious, either funny or harmlessly wicked. Knowing her, it was likely both.
It was getting late. The shuttle would soon be heading back, when the latest meeting between Ship and Society had concluded for the day. He rose, his bones twanging in the effort to stand.
A violet shaft of light broke to the surface, like a deep-sea creature come up for air. Then it subsided.
Anatolly nodded. “Oh, people are getting used to it,” he said. “The big sky, and a flat landscape… the younger you are, the easier it is to adjust. As for me, I like it here, under Ice.” He rubbed his thigh where his leg had fallen asleep. It would be a bit of a walk down to the train platform. Best to get started. He patted the crystal chamber. It was his habit never to say good-bye in so many words.
As he turned to leave, the room shimmered gold for an instant.
“I will,” he said, shuffling across the great hall. “You know I can’t stay away for long.”