Maximum Ice (3 page)

A spray of sand obscured the viewing lens for an instant. When it cleared, the figure was gone.

Keeping close to the wall so as to be out of the way of hurrying crew, Zoya made her way to the cockpit. She no more than put her head inside the door when Janos snapped, “Stay out of the way.”

“I saw someone out there, a stranger…”

Janos was bent over the controls, punching in the feed from additional external cameras. “We
all
saw him. What do you think the alarm was about?” At the control panel, four views of the tent from ship’s cameras showed a silent scene: tent swollen with light, gray snow turning pink in the sunrise—but all silent, unmoving. No sign of the man in rags. Behind her, several crew had formed up, all guns and boots and wild eyes.

Janos barked at the pilot, “Tomos, hail the captain, and keep a wide surveillance, this could be just the first wave.” He
turned to the armed unit. “You, you, and you, take the main hatchway, the rest go out the emergency hatch.” The surveillance systems showed nothing, but Janos was taking no chances.

The forward hatch opened just long enough for five crew to dart out, then clanged shut, leaving behind a patch of cold air. The second unit rushed aft. Amid the flurry of deployment, Zoya retreated to the galley, where she opened the comm node to hear what was transpiring in the cockpit. The view screen showed crew moving up on the tent—no sign of the man in rags.

Then, as the sun crested the hills, Zoya could just make out a figure approaching, but still some one hundred meters away Someone was gliding over the ground toward the ship—moving fast enough that he might be flying or skating. Meanwhile, the crew were spreading out, surrounding the tent.

On comm, she heard Margit say,
“Someone approaching from the west, sir.”

“Lay down perimeter fire,” Janos said.
“Yes, sir.”

“No,” Zoya hissed into the comm node.

Ship’s guns clattered, barely muffled by the hull.

Leaning into the node, she said, “Janos, it’s just one person.” But no one was listening. She tore into the corridor and ran to the outside hatch, guarded by a wan youngster who looked to be all of twenty years old.

“Open it,” she barked. He started to protest, but in the end he was no match for her. Then she was on the access ramp, running into a stew of dust and screams. Piquant air rushed to her nostrils, and the sky loomed above her in monstrous blessing. The fray had kicked up a flurry of dust that the morning sun infused with blind light.

As the dust settled over the scene, Zoya saw that the new
arrival was standing on a sled, and was raising a huge weapon that looked like a harpoon gun, aiming it at the tent.

Crew members were turning in every direction, watching for attack. Several fired at the man in the sled, but they had to face into the blinding dawn, and missed.

In the next instant, the tent collapsed, leaving one person standing inside, a swaying human tent post. The newcomer fired his gun and sent a spear full into the body of the tentdraped figure. Then he lowered his weapon and stared at what he had done.

“No one shoot,” Zoya shouted as she ran up to the sled. The crew hesitated for a moment, with Ship Mother in the line of fire. But the stranger had lowered his weapon; he was giving up—or he had accomplished what he set out to do.

Nevertheless, several crew moved in and dragged the sled man from his perch, wrestling him to the ground and seizing his harpoon. Other crew were still keeping watch, squinting at the territory, watching for movement. But far into the distance, there was nothing but flat, white desert.

Now Janos was approaching from the shuttle, all outrage.

She thought he might grab her forcibly. She used her most calming voice: “Let us talk first. You can always shoot him later.”

From the look on Janos’s face, it was Zoya he’d like to shoot. “Get inside, Ship Mother.
Now
.” He turned his attention to the collapsed tent, striding over to the wreckage.

Two crew members were trying to pull the tent away from the impaled man, but the spear effectively pinned it in place. They managed the task far enough to see that the victim was none of theirs. It was the rag man, lying immobile. As they pushed back the loose tent fabric, they uncovered a dreadful scene. Three other bodies lay in blood-drenched sand. Crew members were crouched down, taking their vital signs.

Oh my children, Zoya thought. Oh, Fyodor.

The sled man, held firmly between two of the biggest crewmen, said something to her that she couldn’t catch. She looked at him closely for the first time, seeing a burly, bearded man, dressed in furs. He jutted his chin at the tent.

In a fury, Janos advanced on him and struck him a blow across the face.

Zoya inserted herself between Janos and the sled man. “He’s alone, for God’s sakes,” she spat at him.

Janos turned to her, taking hold of her arm. “Stay out of this.” His words came out like bullets. Janos pointed at crewman Loski. “Take Ship Mother inside.”

Loski took her gently by the elbow. But when Janos walked over to the fallen tent, Zoya followed him, staring down her escort, who was clearly uncertain about manhandling Ship Mother.

Zoya saw one of the crew turn away from the scene, gagging.

Fyodor lay on the ground, his throat torn out, with strips of skin pulled back from his chest. It looked as though he had been flailed. She had seen worse in her crisis-strewn life, but not by much.

Kneeling beside the fallen crew members, one of the men reported to Janos: “All dead, sir.” He looked up at the first mate as though Janos could change this, could order it to be different. Zoya knew that look, and was thankful it wasn’t, this time, aimed at
her.

She crouched down next to Fyodor, closing his eyes with her hand. Next to Fyodor lay the man in bloody rags. He had long black hair, no beard. And he was thin; bones of a oncelarge frame almost poked through his skin. Dripping from his mouth, shreds of bloody tissue.

“Mother of God,” someone whispered. Around her, the crew were just realizing that the man had been eating Fyodor’s flesh.

“Cover him,” Zoya said, nodding at Fyodor’s body. She placed her hand on the arm of the young crewman to steady him.

She turned back to the crew holding the sled man by the arms. “You really should let him go. He killed our attacker.”

As though he knew he was being discussed, he made eye contact with her. “Widgen,” he said. He nodded at the impaled body. “Malid widgen.”

Bad… something, Zoya guessed. Yes, very bad.

Amid the carnage, one of the crew said, “The man was starving to death.”

Someone answered, “What starving man has the strength to do
this?”

Janos put an abrupt end to the macabre speculations, ordering them to bring the bodies on board, all but the murderer.

Zoya turned to Janos. “I think the man with the harpoon did us a favor. It came too late, but he wasn’t threatening us.”

Janos murmured at her, “We’ll get his story—if you’d be so kind as to translate, instead of playing soldier.”

“Yes, Lieutenant.” She had no will to snipe back at him, here, with three of her people lying dead.

Janos nodded at the crew, and they released the man. The sled man’s face was impassive, but turned dark when he glanced at the man holding his harpoon. Then he looked over at Zoya as though he blamed her for his loss.

She allowed a crewman to lead her up the ramp. Turning back at the hatchway, she met Janos Bertak’s cold gaze. There was no mistaking it, she had just made an enemy.

But it was for a good cause. Janos couldn’t be trusted in command. In the crisis, his impulse was to fire before aiming— before thinking. Anatolly had wished to present a peaceable face to the world, and it was a good inclination. One that Janos Bertak didn’t share.

As she turned to enter the shuttle, a glint of light caught her eye.

A few hundred feet away, Zoya saw, through the windblown shards of crystal, a violet pulse of light rise to the surface and disappear again like a drowned shooting star.

Captain Anatolly Razo walked down Ship corridor at the head of a gaggle of officers and techs, all talking at once. Cluck, cluck, cluck like geese.

Did he wish to call a general meeting? Did he wish to meet with the families of the murdered crew? Would he answer a radio call from Janos Bertak? Should the shuttle crew go into quarantine upon their return? And what about Tereza Bertak? The first mate’s wife was in hospital. Suicide or accident, Ship’s priest wanted to know.

That last was one he could answer. He turned in mid-stride to Sandor, his assistant. “Tereza is not dead; therefore, she is not a suicide.”

“No, sir,” Sandor replied, “but…”

Lieutenant Andropolous elbowed Sandor a bit to one side. “Janos Bertak is on the comm sir, waiting.” As a group they turned down a connecting corridor, where knots of crew members were gathered in fretful clusters.

“He doesn’t know about Tereza?” Anatolly asked.

“No, sir.”

That was well. Janos had his hands full, planetside. And Tereza would recover. No point burdening his first mate further just then, with his wife’s latest act of despair. Or, some would say, stupidity

With all the disasters, there was no time for sleep. He’d been awake since the middle of his sleep shift, when the shuttle crew
were murdered. Then Tereza, with spectacularly bad timing, tried to kill herself. Finally, over breakfast, came the report from the geophysical survey

The survey chief who gave him the briefing looked like he’d rather be someplace else. He stated the basic bad news first, and built up to the main calamity

Global temperatures were, on average, thirteen degrees cooler than baseline normal. This was considerably warmer than they would have predicted, given the cooling, high albedo, effect of the encroaching mantle, reflective as it was. The ocean could account for some moderating influence the survey chief added.

Great drifts of algae boosted the atmospheric oxygen supply As to crystal-free ground, there remained a vast swath of central Africa—the former Sahel—and a smattering of Micronesian islands. The Americas, North, Central, and South, were covered. The nonequatorial oceans, enveloped.

So far, the free land appeared barren of all plant life, although the Sahel was historically desert. But no matter how profound the climatological changes, there should be
some plant species exploiting the last lands. The science team was theorizing about calamitous solar flares, but even they admitted it was speculation. Because of the absence of higher plants, they did not expect to find many species of animals, if any. Of course, there was the matter of the sled-driver’s fur jacket… That people themselves survived at all could only be due to technology, perhaps technology similar to that which Star Road
itself used.

But alive or dead, the land that remained was precious. Somehow they should be able to coax it to life. Didn’t the ship have the frozen seeds and embryos of earth’s creatures for just such a landfall? Hadn’t they sacrificed much of Ship’s radiation shielding to keep those embryos viable? Now they might well
have to plant those seeds, in the least expected place: earth itself.

Anatolly had listened to the briefing, eating his toast, trying to fuel himself for the demands of the day. He knew there was worse news coming. Why else had the survey chief come personally?

The problem was the African Sahel. There, in the one remaining landmass large enough to support their projected future needs, the crystal stratum was growing, spreading. It was, in fact, spreading over the oceans, too, but it grew fastest on land. And in the Sahel, it was unfortunately growing very fast. Five to six meters a day, along an extensive front, both from the north and south. That settled one of their most pressing questions.

Settled it for the worst: The stratum was still growing.

At that rate the Sahel would be lost within a few years, the captain concluded.

The survey chief shook his head. No, it was profoundly worse than that. The rate of growth was accelerating. Inundation of the Sahel was months away, not years. How many, Anatolly asked, taking refuge in numbers. Trying to take refuge.

Three months, came the answer. After a long silence, Anatolly asked, “Why? Why is it accelerating?”

He received no answer.

After a very long time he pushed his poached eggs away, cold and congealed.

Now, as Anatolly and his advisors proceeded toward the hospital, crew turned from their conversations to shout questions.

How, they wished to know, could we be sure the shuttle was out of danger?

How had the crew died, exactly? Why wasn’t there more firepower to support them? Should they retaliate?

He raised his hands. “Soon, soon.”

Someone screamed. “My boy, Anatolly; my boy!”

Sandor leaned in: “Anna, Konrad’s mother.”

“God’s breath, I know that’s Konrad’s mother!” the captain whispered. “She’s my fourth cousin, isn’t she?”

“Yes, sir.”

Anatolly went over to Anna and held her as she cried in his arms.

“My boy,” she sobbed.

It was more than a personal tragedy. Konrad had been only nineteen years old. The last generation, and each of them so precious. Anatolly remembered Anna pregnant, her round belly going before her, the envy of every woman on
Star Road. So proud, so joyous. And then delivered of a healthy baby boy… Anatolly had been first mate then, second to Captain Vitrovic. Those had been happier times. Families got made, babies were born, at least some… The faces of the women were strong with the life power, the men content. He
had been content too, working behind the scenes, mustering crew loyalty, smoothing out Vitrovic’s orders, jollying everyone along. Leadership among the Rom was a high-wire act of cajoling, inspiring, and bluffing. Amidst all this, personal style and masculine elan bestowed subtle but powerful authority. Throw in a crisis or two, and a captain might find himself dancing in midair.

Friends led the bereaved woman away, and Anatolly was surrounded by the clucking geese again.