Maximum Ice (37 page)

The fissure.

They found it shortly after sunrise.

Its depths gleamed turquoise in the deep slant of light. One of the plunging sides revealed a crystalline face that was evenly striated, vertically On the other side, the crevasse was clear and hard, a brighter shade of blue-green. Different crystal planes had different properties, Lieutenant Mirran had said once. Some varied continuously with the direction of the atomic structure of the crystal. Ice displayed its complexity in this mammoth crack. It could be hard, soft, conduct light differently. Could be lovely or awful, welcoming or deadly. It was now to be a burial chamber, as Wolf carried his wife’s body to the crevasse.

Zoya wondered if a prayer was in order. She could offer one, and it would be heartfelt. But Wolf stood silently, holding his wife in her furs, perhaps offering his own prayers.

She hated herself for the next thought she had: Were the diamonds still in the jacket pocket? She knew that fur jacket was going with Snow Angel. But at that moment she could not, could not even begin to, open her mouth and mention such a thing.

Then, in a slow and steady display of strength, Wolf knelt and bent forward, holding Snow Angel over the crevasse with just his forearms. She was not to hit the sides as she went down.

Nor did she. Straight down she went, and the only sound was a quiet flutter of air; nor thankfully, did they even hear her hit bottom.

Zoya felt the cold tracks of tears on her face. Angel wasn’t hers to mourn. But she always cried at funerals; it was so good to cry. Wolf was at her side. He handed her a kerchief. Gratefully, she wiped her face, returning the rag.

Then, walking down a few meters to a narrowing of the fissure, Wolf built a small bridge with struts and planks from his pile of trade goods. They coaxed the sled over it, then dismantled
the bridge and restowed the materials on the cargo sled. Lucian Orr would have to build his own.

With her radio stowed near her feet, Zoya kept glancing at it, deciding to call, and then deciding not to call. She had an ugly feeling that Anatolly was losing control of Ship. With Janos in charge of
transition, was the first mate, the new commander, in charge of her
? Well, she couldn’t be accused of insubordination if she didn’t hear any orders.

Wolf had not made a move to restart the sled. He was looking at Zoya.

“She didn’t take them,” he said.

Zoya blinked. Wolf’s hand was resting on the steering wheel, but he wasn’t starting out yet. He opened his other hand. Something sparkled there.

It was a shock to see her stones lying there. Instinctively, she put her hand to her left ear.

The two diamonds rolled into one of the deep creases in his palm. “Take them,” he said. “They’re yours.”

“Wolf…” she said, overcome. She had traded them for value, fair and square. And she thought they’d gone with Snow Angel.

He watched her hesitate. Then he shrugged. “You traded them too easily.” She shot him a look, but his tone was gentle. “I would have given you a ride anyway.”

His words pricked at her, and she knew why. Her mother’s diamonds. Her grandmother’s diamonds. Nothing was worth that trade. Why had she ever thought so?

She took hold of them. With hands numbed by a sharp wind, she pierced her ears with the studs and carefully screwed the backings into place. She patted her ear, the comforting protrusions. The right number, four. Her eyes clouded over. He gave her the kerchief again, and she blew her nose. “Thank
you,” she said, her voice hoarse. It covered a lot of things, that thank you. But she didn’t need to say it. He seemed to know a lot of things without words, and besides, she didn’t trust her voice.

“The holes didn’t look too good,” he said, giving her an appraising gaze.

He started the sled, and they slowly moved off, away from the great fissure.

The cold air immediately cleared her eyes and sinuses. Her mood lifted, despite all their troubles.

Wolf glanced at her. “I’m glad you didn’t take my sled.” He cocked his head toward the north. “Back there.” Back at the preserve.

She kept a neutral face. She certainly wasn’t going to admit anything. Apparently she didn’t need to.

“I would have had to come after you,” he said.

Zoya looked at him with narrow eyes and saw the smile buried in his beard.

They headed out, down the Val Paz, slowly increasing speed. The ambient temperature was warmer than it had been for the last few days, but at a fast clip, the cold bit into someone without a jacket. To the west, the great pale forest rumpled the horizon. They would stay to the east of the Taga, for speed.

“How long?” she asked Wolf as they cruised on.

“Five hours.”

It was the last thing he said for a very long while. As they bumped along, she managed to break out her tube food, but Wolf shook his head. She rummaged for his jerky, and he took a piece, but tucked it into a hip pocket. He was in danger of the cold more than hunger, she knew, though she had gotten him to agree to tuck her heated socks into his shirt, so his core temperature might not suffer.

He was slowing down. Then he stopped and killed the motor.

Zoya lost the zone she’d been in, the traveler’s suspension. But she snapped back quickly. “Wolf?”

He turned around slowly, his eyes unfocused. He was listening. Zoya hardly breathed.

Jumping down from his perch, he began rattling on something behind the main sled.

“What is it?” Zoya asked. She heard a thunk.

Wolf had uncoupled the pack sled from the main sled.

He looked up at her. “The one who chases you.”

She nodded. So they
were
being followed.

“Getting closer, now.”

She looked at the cargo sled. “But Wolf, your trade goods, everything you’ve worked for!”

He jumped back up onto the sled. “Sit down and hold on.”

Under his gaze, she obeyed. Then he pressed down the accelerator pedal and they lurched forward. Kilos lighter, the sled lifted its nose and crashed into the wind.

It had been an hour since either Zoya or Wolf had spoken a word. They were heading south, cutting a path between the mountain remnants—still proud ranges despite all that Ice could do. Zoya held a blanket around Wolf’s shoulders. Leaving the jacket behind was a terrible mistake. She should have prevented it.

But Wolf had withdrawn himself from the cold. She believed him when he told her he couldn’t feel it. He drove like a man possessed, while behind them, not visible, but apparently audible to Wolf, the tall witch drew closer.

By midmorning, they were forced to stop. A motor traction spike had broken. Wolf lay down on the ground, working furiously to replace it.

As he worked, Wolf said, “We could take a stand against this pursuer. It’s two guns to one. Maybe we should fight.” His eyes flashed up at her, gauging her.

“How do you know he’s alone?” Zoya asked.

Wolf stood, slapping snow from his legs. “Witches don’t hunt together.”

She scanned the north horizon with her field scope. Nothing.

“To outrun him, we have to head straight for the Zoft,” Wolf said, climbing onboard. “I usually cut to the east here. To avoid that.” He nodded in the direction of Seetol, as he called it.

“Anything can hide there,” Wolf said. He watched her, waiting.

Zoya realized that Wolf was worried.

“You could call your friends,” he said.

But calling Lieutenant Mirran wasn’t an option. He couldn’t get there in time to help. And she didn’t trust him. “Let’s push on,” she said. “Fight if we have to.”

“You’ll have to,” he murmured. “If you want to destroy Ice, you’ll have to.”

He seldom alluded to her mission. She didn’t even know if he approved of it. “You think I can destroy it?”

He looked at her, rather longer than she was used to. His eyes were crusted by rime. “Isn’t that what you came home for?”

It was a tacit approval. She was grateful for it. These Ice fields were his lands, his world. But the talk of destroying Ice raised a more disturbing thought: The cure could kill.

As he started the sled, she said, “First I’ll talk to the nuns.”

“They’re good at talking,” he said. They were off, moving to cruising speed.

“So am I.”

She saw him smile. “I know.”

Before long, the skewed towers of the megalopolis could be seen in the south. Like fingers pointing in all directions. The
incursion of Ice had slowly twisted the great office towers until they were tilted and aslant. Ten thousand years and Ice still hadn’t brought it all down. The city wouldn’t have looked so terrible if it had.

The Keep, Wolf said, was due east of the ruins. In the time before Ice, there had been satellite cities east of Seattle. She couldn’t remember their names. But one had been the site of a center of technology.

Wolf had slowed, turning his head, listening. “Sounds odd,” he said. He cocked his head back toward their pursuer. “The sled sounds odd.”

In the distance, Zoya saw a palisade like a valley wall. “Is it there?” she asked, thinking of how Wolf had described the vicinity of the Keep. “Is that the Zoftian Rise?”

But Wolf ignored her question. “Give me your scope,” he said. When she did, he took her hand and put it on the steering wheel. “Steer,” he said.

She gripped the wheel, and Wolf managed to turn around enough—with his foot still on the accelerator—to peer through the scope. Then he took over the steering wheel and handed the scope back to her.

“Ditch the supplies,” he said.

They were pounding along at a reckless speed already. But Wolf was determined to lighten the load.

She began tossing out the few things they had left, the last few things stowed in her seating area, all except her pack with the radio. As she pitched their supplies, she glanced up to see, at last, a small black form in the distance. The tall witch and his sled.

Then Wolf kicked the last of the reserves out of the motor, and they were flying over the Ice. The open sled wasn’t made for safety or speed. Zoya hung on, praying not to hit a stray facet of crystal or a hidden fissure.

When she checked behind them once more, she saw that the tall witch had stopped at the crest of the last hill. In front of them, she could see a dark shape against the Ice escarpment. The nunnery. Behind the fortress, the uplifted wall of Ice presented a daunting cross section of quasi-crystal: at this distance, a robin’s-egg blue, filled with the glancing light of a westering sun.

Maybe the witch didn’t dare approach it. Or maybe they had outrun him. “He’s stopped,” she called to Wolf. She was holding on for all she was worth. “Slow down.”

Wolf’s gaze was turned to the side, toward the ruined city

For the first time since she’d known him, Wolf’s face showed alarm.

His arm came around her, and he held her tightly, in a strangely out-of-place embrace. “I’m a fool,” he murmured next to her cheek.

Then he released her. “Sit down,” he said.

She did. The sled was pounding so hard she had to.

He pointed off toward the city. At first she could see nothing, but after focusing, she discerned a dark crest along the western horizon. She could only hold on to the back of the sled and stare. The line grew to a thick stripe. Then she saw that it was undulating.

“I’m a fool.” He set his mouth. “The sound. It wasn’t the sled. It was the pack.”

That couldn’t be right. The line stretched for kilometers north and south in front of the city. How could this be a pack? It was a sea.

She turned in the other direction and began to gauge the distance to the Zoftian Rise, and the Keep.

Wolf was pointing toward the escarpment. “See? There it is.”

She did see, a block of slate gray against the shelf of Ice. It was so small, the size of her thumb held in front of her face.

He made a graceful swerve of the sled, and they began cruising directly toward the Keep, the runners skating over hillocks, the two of them riding the sled like a jetted toboggan.

“Zoya,” Wolf said. “Now listen.” He kept his eyes straight ahead. Behind them for the first time, Zoya could hear the scrambling patter of rats, a storm of squeals. The sound was more chilling than the sight of their growing mass.

He reached down and carefully pulled her to her feet. “Are you listening?”

“Yes, Wolf.”

“You’ll do exactly as I say?” She nodded, and he nodded too.

“I’m going to let you off. When I do, you start running.”

Her insides clenched together. Off?

“No hesitation, just run.” When she didn’t answer, he spared her a look. “Zoya, I am going to draw them off. Now.”

“No.”

He turned on her fiercely. “Yes.” He nodded at her, slowly His eyes said everything. There would be no argument. She reached for her pack, pulling it over her shoulders.

“Leave the pack,” he said. But she paid no attention.

The Keep was growing in her sight. Blacker, taller. It was too far to run, surely

“I will stop now,” Wolf said. “Will you run?” He watched her until she answered.

“Yes.” She whispered it, nodding.

“Run for the Zoft, Ship Mother. Run very hard.”

By the sound of the motor, he was slowing. Her mind had turned to white terror. “Wolf,” she said. “Don’t go.” Tears froze as soon as they slipped free of her eyes.

“I’ll outrun them. It’s a fast sled.” He stopped the sled. “Now run.”

He gave her a shove, just enough to propel her off her
perch. She was immobile for a moment, long enough to see him start the sled again, silhouetted against a brown backdrop of moving rats.

Then she was running, looking behind her. And Wolf wasn’t outrunning the pack. He was driving toward them.

No, Wolf, she thought. And then: I have lived too long.

But she promised him she would run, and so she raced toward the fortress, toward the looming mass of black. There were great pillars in the center. She headed toward them.

On the battlements of the great Keep, she saw figures moving.

Sister Helene stood next to Solange on the roof, viewing the drama below. “A large mass, Mother Superior,” she said.

Solange nodded. It was the full pack this time, an impressive herd.