Winter Song (4 page)

    Not much, Bera thought. Ragnar didn't hesitate when he felt it necessary.

    "Of course we can, my lord." Thorbjorg sensed as always which way the wind was blowing, and said what she guessed he wanted to hear.

    Ragnar's face split with a grin. "Then that's settled." He rubbed his hands together.

    "How do you know that he's not a vagrant?" Asgerd said.

    "We thought that initially," Ragnar said. "We were ready to leave him to die, until Bjarney pointed out that a trespassing vagrant can be indentured, if he recovers." He shrugged. "If he doesn't recover, he won't eat, anyway."

    "Hmmph," Hilda said, but didn't argue.

    "Funny," Ragnar said, "the snow was stained blue." Whether it was the colour or simply the fact that the snow was dyed, it seemed to Bera that Ragnar sounded uneasy. It was so rare that Bera couldn't help staring.

    He caught her looking and straightened, returning to his normal forceful manner. "Here's someone who can help. Bera, I need someone to safeguard our new investment. You can nurse our new worker."

    Bera looked down, bobbing her head in assent.

    Ragnar must have mistaken her shyness for reluctance, or his next words would surely never have been so cruel (at least, she thought, not before you got pregnant): "Well, come on girl! Look to it! You should be grateful – it'll give you something to think about, take your mind off that dead bastard of yours."

    She felt tears sting her eyes, and lunged toward the travois.

    But Ragnar must have seen her well up, for she heard him half-groan, and mutter, "Well, you shouldn't have brought shame on my house by opening your legs to the first man who ignored your plainness. My darling Gunnhild would spin in her grave if she could see what you've turned into."

    Bera wanted to shout that, but for the eruption on Surtsey, she would have gone home as soon as she was pregnant, but that was pointless. Her family was dead, and now she just had to get on with living.

    So she didn't answer, but instead wrestled the stranger off the travois. But in so doing, Bera scraped the stranger's back on the stones, and he roused screaming from his near-coma. Ragnar shouted, "Yngi! Thorir! Give her a hand with that!"

    The two men helped ease the stranger back into the travois and unhitch it. Thorir called, "Where do you want it?" He stood far too close to Bera for her liking.

    "Put it in with the animals," Ragnar said.

    Grunting with effort the men picked him up, and staggered toward the stables. Bera shadowed them into the warm, odorous darkness. She gazed at the horses, three of which were hers. But the web of debts incurred had bound her too tight to indulge any fantasies of flight while she was pregnant.

    Ragnar appeared in the doorway. "Mind you take good care of him."

Bera didn't answer.

    When she was sure that Ragnar had gone, she took Brynja from under her furs. Weeping quietly, she let the puppy nuzzle the other nipple from the one she had suckled the night before. "Like Romulus and Remus," she said, "but in reverse."

    "Let's hope it doesn't end in tears," Ragnar said, making her jump at his unexpected return. Luckily, he was so busy staring at the stranger lying on the hay that he didn't notice the puppy, instead assuming her reference was to the man. He kept staring at the man, barely able to conceal his repugnance. "It's an Icelandic tradition, to fear the stranger, but even so, this hairless stranger bothers me. His presence means trouble… we'll call him Loki. It seems fitting."

    "I'll do my best for you," Bera said, shielding Brynja by turning away slightly.

    Ragnar roused himself. "You will," he said. "We've a critical time coming. Once the crops ripen fully, it's a race to get them in. We'll need every able-bodied hand we can get. He can repay us our hospitality – if he recovers."

    "If he doesn't? Or he recovers, but stays an invalid?"

    "That won't happen," Ragnar said. The feral look on his face chilled Bera. "He'll have an accident before that happens. Clear?"

    Bera nodded, swallowing.

THREE

The world through your eyes is full of pain and wonder, made even stranger by the whirlwind of voices shrieking for your attention:

    
"The Mizar Quartet are Sol-type hydrogen-fusing dwarf
stars–"

    
"Isheimuri lingua confirmed as mix of Standard and Ice
landic–"

    Some voices verge on making sense, but most babble gibberish. Each is accompanied by a dizzying sense of vertigo, and little shocks deep inside your body. Occasionally you smell burning. Sometimes you taste colours, can hear, flickering jeering shadows behind your eyelids.

    
"Absolute magnitude uses the same convention as visual–"

    You are dimly aware that the nanophytes within you that keep your muscle tone even as you waste away are locked in a desperate fight against the cannibal predations of the remaining lifegel in a near sub-atomic battle of the idiots. Either through accident or a design flaw, the inhibitors appear to have failed, and if left to themselves will eat you alive.

    
"The Long Night was the longest conflict since the Hundred
Years War–"

    A strangely familiar voice cries out, "I won't lie down and die!"

    
"The Isheimur populace is likely to suffer genetic drift and
disease–"

    The man Ragnar's voice is a rumble from a mouth full of misshapen teeth, his words unintelligible.

    
"Pappi: estimated height one-metre-eighty, mass eighty
kilos–"

    The woman beside him answers, her voice lower. Her hair is lighter, but her features equally mismatched, one shoulder slightly higher than the other.

    
"Oedipus: son of King Laius and Jocasta of Thebes–"

    You realise that the voice refusing to die was your own, but it sounds strange. It should be alto but is tenor instead. Perhaps your voice-box was damaged in the accident?

    
"Pantropy lost favour as Terraforming grew easier–"

    The accident. The pain increases as a shard of memory brings with its suddenly perfect recall the accompanying agony: the smell of burning dust, the isolation, the heat. After a while your throat hurts with the scream – which tails off into a whimper.

    
"A quasar at absolute magnitude −25.5 is 100 times
brighter than our galaxy–"

    The girl – barely a woman – Bera strokes your head. "Hush, Pappi, he kannske skilja you," she says. Her breasts ooze milk, and a part of you realises that while she has given birth in the last three weeks for there to be lactation, there is no sound of a baby. The rational corner of your mind tucks this away for later, but the animal part that has control has you lunging forward on all fours, scrabbling at her clothes.

    
"Humanity only found other sentient life after four centuries
of spaceflight–"

    "Neh!" The sting of her palms raining down on your face and head are microscopic compared to the waves of agony that ripple across you, but still they are enough to make you pause. You stare up at her dark hair, wide-set eyes and full mouth and wonder what her lips would taste like if you ripped them from her face.

    
"Oedipus left for dead with a shepherd but adopted–"

    "He eats like an hungradur dyr," Bera says, becoming more understandable with each sentence, as the linguaweave begins to take effect. "He almost choked on that meat we fed him before. But he can eat elda food now. No more breastfeeding–"

    
"An Icelandic chieftain was politician, lawyer, and police
man combined–"

    Some residual decorum makes you lurch away from her into a corner.

    
"Grain was only grown in limited quantities in Iceland–"

    "Agh, he's vomiting! He splashed my best boots!" Pappi kicks you. You growl, but you are too busy gazing at the pool of vomit to attack.

    
"The Mizar B pair mass approximately 1.6 times that of
Sol–"

    "No, Pappi! He doesn't know what he's doing. The horsemeat was too much for him to digest at this stage of his bati."

    
"In Iceland, the chieftain's position could be bought or
sold–"

    "Well, keep him away. Oh, what's he doing now? He's eating his own puke!"

    
"Nanotechnology requires vast consumption of energy–"

    The undigested horsemeat still tastes much as it did before, though now with a rancid flavour that may be the bile that you've brought up with it, but there are also others: salt and a metallic taste. By squinting you can zoom right in and see shapes invisible to an unenhanced human eye crawling among the chunks of meat. You have vomited up nanophytes with the food. From somewhere comes the knowledge that vomit is as corrosive as battery acid – their tiny carapaces must be almost indestructible to withstand it.

    
"Sheep farming was the most common type in Iceland–"

    You know you must eat it to get the nanophytes back into your system, but Bera clings onto you, trying to pull you away as you gobble the vomited meat.

    
"Isheimur has a lower water content than Terra–"

    "No, no, Loki! Don't eat that! Here!" She undoes her blouse but you ignore her, concentrating on re-ingesting the refugee nanophytes. You don't know whether they're still locked onto you as their source/target, but you can't risk them eating the planet in some long-term runaway disaster. You brush against her face; you feel wetness, and note that she is weeping, and another corner of your broken mind wonders why.

    Finally, when you've eaten all the meat and licked up the liquid, you allow her to guide you to her breast. "It'd give Palli's death meaning if his milk were to save another's life," she whispers.

    
"Isheimur's mass is 0.80 of Terra, but its gravity is only 0.67
– sub-optimal for atmospheric retention–"

    "Jao," Pappi growls assent.

    
"At 1.7 AUs, its year is 2.85 Terran years–"

    She sobs, even as she strokes your head. "This is the last time I'll do this," she says to the Ragnar-man as you nuzzle her nipple. "I wasn't going to let him feed today, but if it stops him eating his own puke, then I'll make an exception. But after this, no more breastfeeding: you can whip me or starve me, but I'll not do it again. I can't cope with this. It's like an eighty kilo baby with the habits of a wild animal."

    
"Isheimur's year comprises 1096 days of 22 hours 37 min
utes–"

    "Agreed," Ragnar says, and you see the surprise dart across her face. He turns to go. "I've no desire to see any more of this sick, feral creature, anyway, even if he has displayed almost superhuman powers of recovery. Odin's Beard – to think that he only came out of his stupor yesterday!"

    "Hunger is my friend." The words echo through your mind as you swallow the warm, rich milk. "When I'm trying to lose weight, I embrace my hunger–"

    You release her nipple, which she rubs.

    The fool that said that clearly never had hunger eating them from within like a black hole, sucking everything into it, consuming it yet still wanting more more more–

    
"Isheimur is so cold, its air so thin that the colony's long
term survival is marginal–"

    "Stop it!" you scream, clutching your head. Bera frantically hushes you, tries to pour sugared water into your mouth, but you gag.

    For a while, as if taking pity, the voices fade away almost to nothing…

    "We'll feed him from our stores for another few days," Ragnar says.

    "You still here?" Bera says. "I thought you'd seen enough of him?"

    His laugh is bitter and mocking, devoid of humour. "I can't help it. I get no pleasure from watching him, but there is a sort of horrible fascination." Ragnar sighs. "If he keeps this up, we won't be able to put him to work." He says, "Just my luck that I've probably saved someone with an advanced psychosis. If it's schizophrenia, that would explain why he was wandering."

    "Schizo–" Bera tries to wrap her lips around the word, which is clearly unfamiliar. Part of you would like to plunge your rigid member into her, but you have suckled at her breast, and another part of you analyses your memory of mores to determine why this is wrong.

    "Schizophrenics," Ragnar says, "were often considered possessed in the olden days, before people understood personality disorders. Most likely that his family tried to care for him, but finally gave up when he became too much trouble." When he continues, he seems to be talking to himself. "Food's always so scarce even at the end of a good summer that we can't afford to pour it down an invalid's throat if there's no chance of recovery."

    "What are you going to do?" Bera asks, moving between you and the Ragnar-man.

    But he doesn't seem to have heard her, instead saying, "The climate, even down here in the tropics, is so harsh that still the toughest Terran-descended crops grow poorly, and we live on the very edge of survival."

    "What are you saying?" Bera says. The fear in her voice hooks your attention away from the pain and the whirling madness of the world.

    Ragnar shrugs. "What if we had left him where he lay? No one would have blamed us, leaving an outlaw to die at the teeth of trolls or snolfurs."

    "But you didn't leave him, did you?" Bera says. "When you brought him here, you made him your responsibility."

    "Aye," Ragnar says. "No good deed goes unpunished."

    "So what are you going to do now?" Bera says. "Take him back up into the hills? Murder him and toss his body into a geysir? Eat him, if we get hungry enough?"