Cold as Ice (31 page)

She walked cautiously forward. Already she could see something in the ice ahead, a rectangular block of darkness that reflected no light at all. The tracks of the ground car became deeper. She went more slowly, and in the final twenty meters to the hole she dropped to hands and knees to spread her weight. The terrible cold seemed to instantly suck away warmth through her suit. Half an hour of this and she would freeze.

She crept forward to the edge of the hole and found herself peering down into a gloomy cavern. She waited impatiently, until her eyes had partially adjusted. At the bottom of the cavern, five or six meters below her, she could at last make out the outline of a ground car. Nothing moved.

"I've found it." Wilsa began to wriggle her way back from the edge.

"I'll pass the word," said Jon. And then, "They ask, is she inside?"

They don't mean that. They mean, is she alive?
"I can't tell." Wilsa paced cautiously back to the car. She could see her outgoing footprints in the grainy surface, but they were only a couple of centimeters deep.

"I'm going to take a look." Jon was climbing down to the surface to meet her, a towing cable over one shoulder and a portable communication unit in his hand. "If you'll come with me, and lower me down . . ."

"No." Wilsa turned and led the way. "You're twice my weight, and you've got Earth muscles. I go down. You stay on top and pull me out when I tell you."

He nodded, and they walked forward in silence to a point half a dozen paces from the hole. There he stopped and handed Wilsa the looped cable. "I'd love to see what's down there, but two of us might be more load than the rim can take. I'll step back a few meters for safety, then you go ahead. Keep me informed through your suit phone. I'll pass the word to the others."

Both of them knew what Wilsa was likely to find down there. But she did not think at all that Jon was shirking an unpleasant duty. He could have one of his own, just as distasteful. If they were right and Camille was dead, it would be Jon's task to inform the waiting searchers, in orbit and at Mount Ararat.

Wilsa noosed the cable around her waist and under her armpits, nodded to Jon, and walked steadily to the hole. She sat down, made sure that he had a firm hold on his end of the cable, then slid in one movement over the edge. The rough cable fibers scraped and cut into the ice, lowering her in a series of jerks until she landed a couple of feet from the car.

The light within the ice cavern was that of a pearly, blue-tinged twilight, quite enough to see by once she was used to it. Wilsa took a deep breath. She didn't like the thought of what came next, but there was no point in delay. She stepped over to the car, reached up for the roof hatch—the main door was blocked by the ice wall—and slid it back. As she had feared, the driver's seat was occupied. Slumped back in it was a still, human form wearing a surface suit.

Wilsa climbed inside, leaned close, and swore. The inside of the suit helmet carried a coating of ice crystals. She reached out and squeezed a forearm. It was as solid and unyielding as stone.

"She's here, Jon." Wilsa was amazed at the steadiness of her voice. "And I'm afraid that she is dead. Frozen. Tell them the bad news while I put the cable around her. When I give the word, lift her out."

"Put it around both of you. I can manage the load."

"I'm not sure you can." Wilsa had been making a closer inspection of the body. It was that of a hugely fat person,swollen and grotesquely misshapen as though it had been inflated like a balloon. The corpse did not appear to be that of a normal woman who had simply frozen to death. "Lift her up first, then we'll worry about me. The car can stay here until a party comes out for it from Mount Ararat."

She placed the looped cable gently around the body, making sure that nothing caught when Jon began to lift. He grunted with surprise at the weight, but pulled steadily. Wilsa watched the body rise, catch for a tricky moment on the underside of the hole, then roll like a ridiculous balloon clown up over the lip.

After it disappeared there was a long, long wait, which Wilsa passed by examining the status indicators of the car. It was ironic; there was enough power to take it back to Mount Ararat ten times over. But the energy for the heaters was totally exhausted. All of the car's food was gone, and most surprising, so was all of the water.

"Just a few moments more." Jon's voice sounded puzzled in her suit radio. "Is there anything in the car that might positively identify the body as Camille Hamilton?"

Wilsa found that question baffling. One person had been lost out on Europa, one person had been found—who the devil else could it be? "I don't see anything." She stared at the control panel. "The computer is still turned on, and there are data modules in place. But I can't see any form of individual identification. Why do you ask?"

"I just described her appearance to Mount Ararat. They say it sounds all wrong. Camille Hamilton was
thin
, thin and blond and fragile. I can't see her hair color, because of the ice inside the helmet. But you saw the body, and nobody could say it was thin. It's huge."

"I'm ready to come up." Wilsa did not want to talk anymore. She did not know Camille Hamilton, but the
identity
of the body was not the important thing. The touch of marble limbs, which only one day ago had been part of a living, breathing woman . . . that was too much, whoever she had been.

The drive back to Mount Ararat was dreadful. All of the pleasure and contentment that Wilsa had experienced while cruising the deep ocean had vanished. She sat close to Jon, aware at every moment of the journey that a bloated, icy tragedy lay only a few feet behind them. Jon had wanted to open the suit helmet, to look at the face within and try to confirm the corpse's identity. Wilsa would not allow it. The idea that the woman's face, even in death, should be exposed to the sleeting downpour of ions was too much. Wilsa kept thinking of Mozart's funeral, Mozart dead at thirty-five, of the dreary ride to the pauper's grave, the lid-slipped coffin, the endless December rain driving into the open, mute mouth.

Wilsa kept the cabin temperature sweltering hot, as though further cold could do more harm to those rigid limbs. And still she shivered.

If the journey was bad, the arrival at Mount Ararat was worse. Wilsa wanted solitude; but when Jon halted the ground car, it seemed that the whole population of Europa had come to mourn.

There was Tristan, returned from orbit and staring at Wilsa with an awful kick-me expression that was totally out of place on his cheerful face. There was Nell Cotter, regarding Wilsa and Jon with a cold, speculative eye. And worst of all, there was a towering stranger, David Lammerman, whose face lit up with joy when he saw the size of the bulky figure being carried from the car. But when Camille Hamilton's helmet was opened and her frozen, lifeless face was revealed, he gasped and stood motionless while tears ran down his cheeks.

"Can you identify her?" asked Hilda Brandt.

Lammerman nodded numbly.

"Very well." The older woman took charge. She had seemed on their arrival as upset as anyone, but after her first close inspection of Camille's face she became calm and businesslike. "We can't let her stay here. Let's go to my rooms, where it's warmer. We all need warmth. Four of you, give a hand with the stretcher."

"It's all right. I'll take her." Lammerman lifted the body alone, cradling it tenderly in his arms, and moved off after Hilda Brandt. The others followed, heading for Brandt's private quarters. Jon Perry fell into step with Nell Cotter and began talking to her, while Tristan lagged behind with Wilsa, last in the group.

"I didn't expect to see you here." Wilsa knew how stilted and awkward her words sounded. "I thought it was really difficult to get permission to visit Europa. So when I got the chance to come—a chance I thought I'd never have again . . ."

It wasn't an apology. Not quite. But Tristan seized it gratefully. "It's almost impossible to get here usually, because Hilda Brandt likes to keep the wrong people out. But when she learned that Camille Hamilton was lost out on the surface, she threw all the rules overboard. She let Lammerman in. And Cyrus Mobarak provided the ships for the high-resolution search. Otherwise . . ."

He stopped abruptly and closed his eyes.

Otherwise?
Otherwise, Tristan had been about to say, we would have been too late. (And I thought at first that it was
you
.)

But we
were
too late.
Wilsa reached out and squeezed Tristan's hand. He clung to it desperately, like a lifeline, and did not let go even when they entered Hilda Brandt's suite.

Everyone was present except David Lammerman. He must have taken Camille's body somewhere else. To a morgue? wondered Wilsa. She took a seat near the door.
A morgue, on Europa. But the whole world was a morgue. Its frigid, kilometers-deep crust was a natural tomb, a sarcophagus big enough to hold everyone in the solar system, past or present.

At that thought, Wilsa's traitorous mind created a roll of muffled drums, followed by a mournful
sordino
phrase deep in the cellos and basses.

A requiem mass for Camille Hamilton, whom she had never met in life? There were stranger things. Wilsa allowed Tristan to hold her hand while she retreated into the one place that she knew sorrows could not reach. She realized that the others in the room were talking, gesturing, arguing, but she could not hear them. Normal speech did not get through when composition seized her.

Disturbance, when it came, was physical.

And urgent.

A great hand gripped her arm. She looked up to find a big, wild-eyed face staring into hers. It was David Lammerman, dragging her to her feet. He seemed as unable to speak as she had been unable to listen. He hustled her outside, with Tristan following. Nell Cotter, obeying her natural instinct, quietly rose, turned on her camera, and went after them.

Lammerman had placed the body of Camille Hamilton on a long trestle table in the next room. Her suit helmet was off, and the double suit that she was wearing was peeled away from her arms and torso. Wilsa saw a bloated, neckless head and pale, swollen limbs, each as thick as her own thighs. The skin of the upper arms was translucent and tight-stretched, like milky latex film.

Lammerman drew Wilsa closer to the table. She stared down at Camille Hamilton and realized that the stony rigidity of the corpse was disappearing in the warm air. The bulging forearms were sagging, their stretched skin dimpling as body liquids pooled under Europa's gende gravity.

"Look!" David Lammerman's grip on Wilsa's arm was strong enough to bruise. She gazed down, saw nothing, and tried to pull away. Then the mouth of the corpse moved in a tiny, near-invisible spasm.

Escaping body gases? But the sodden eyelashes were quivering.

"Oh, my God. She's
alive
!" Wilsa touched the swollen cheek. The skin was clammy, but it had warmed to more than room temperature. She turned to Tristan. "She
is.
We need a doctor."

He hesitated for a second, fighting the urge to stay and watch. Then he nodded and was gone. Nell Cotter moved forward, bending low over the body.

"She's breathing now. Lift her head."

But the words were unnecessary. Blue eyes flickered open for a split second, while the puffed hands began to scrabble at the tabletop. There was a faint grunt of discomfort and effort.

"Help her," said Wilsa. "She's trying to sit up."

The two women raised the body carefully to a sitting position. David Lammerman leaned close. "Camille. Can you hear me?"

The eyes remained closed, but a whimper came from the parted lips.

"She's hurting," he said. "Camille, how can we help you?"

There was a silence. "She can't hear you," said Nell. But Camille's eyes were opening again, to wander vaguely around the room and to at last return to focus on Wilsa and Nell. The swollen cheeks puffed in and out. And the slack mouth spoke. "Bathroom. Need . . . go bathroom."

Wilsa and Nell stared at each other in confusion. But the gross body was trying to stand up.

"Take one arm." Nell gripped and lifted. Wilsa grabbed hold, and in a moment Camille Hamilton stood teetering between the two women. She was huge, twice as wide as either of them.

"Bathroom," she said again. "Donkey-headed and . . . impulsive. Gotta pee."

"She knows what she wants," said Nell. "Better do it."

"It's this way," said Wilsa. Between them they guided Camille slowly along the corridor, with David Lammerman drifting helplessly behind. Before they reached the bathroom, everyone else came hurrying out of Hilda Brandt's rooms.

"Stay clear," said Nell firmly. What she and Wilsa were doing was tricky enough without half a dozen others crowding around. "She's alive. We're going in here."

"Gotta pee," said Camille urgently.

They eased the rest of the double suit off her. The body revealed was lumpy and grotesque, hard islands of flesh sitting amid distended bulges of liquid flab, and all within that pale skin stretched to breaking. As soon as she was free of the suit, Camille staggered single-mindedly into a stall.

"What's happening?" David Lammerman poked his head in. "Gabriel Shumi is here—the Europan chief medical officer."

"She's going to the bathroom," said Nell. "Get the hell away, and tell the others to stay out, too. The doctor can look at her as soon as she's done." Then to Wilsa, when he had vanished, "If she's
ever
done. This is ridiculous. It's been
minutes.
How long can she keep it up?"

Wilsa surveyed the still-swollen body, and listened to the steady and apparently endless expulsion of liquid. "Quite a while. She probably masses fifty kilos normally. I'd guess that she's over a hundred and fifty at the moment. I think it's all just extra water. When she was out on the ice, she must have drunk twenty gallons of it."

"Why, for God's sake?"

But Camille was trying to stand up. "Think I'm done," she said in a slurred voice. "For the moment. Have to stay near here, though. More where that came from."