Time of the Great Freeze (17 page)

"Maybe they don't have the same taboo about the surface that New York has," Jim suggested. "It's a good sign, anyway, I'd say."

"But they don't sound very friendly," Dr. Barnes said, half to himself. "They're always so suspicious, so bristly."

"They're coming to meet us, aren't they?" Roy Veeder said. "That indicates they have friendly intentions."

"Does it?" Dr. Barnes demanded.

The question seemed to hang like a wraith in the frosty air.
Does it
? Jim wondered about that. Did sending a party mean a desire for friendship-or simply a wish to intercept the New Yorkers before they penetrated very far into Europe?

They would know, soon enough.

Continuing onward, they encountered their first Europeans late on the third day-a band of primitive-looking people engaged in skinning a gigantic moose. Skin-clad, squat and hairy, they reminded Jim of the moose hunters they had met thousands of miles to the west, the simple folk who had so easily been awed by Carl's medical skills. These, though, were even more readily cowed. The moose-hunting nomads of the earlier incident had been ready to fight the strangers, at least at first. But these people took one look at the two weird sleds advancing toward them over the ice and fled, screaming and stampeding.

"Come back!" the New Yorkers yelled. "We aren't going to hurt you!"

The shouts only redoubled the panic of the fleeing nomads. They ran desperately, as though the devil were on their tail, and in moments they had vanished from sight.

"They left their kill behind," Dave Ellis said.

Ted Callison laughed heartily. "We eat fresh meat tonight, then!"

"It doesn't belong to us," Roy argued.

Ted shrugged. "It's ours by right of discovery. They aren't coming back for it. They're probably still running, as a matter of fact. I say we eat it and let them kill another moose when they stop running."

Dr. Barnes said, "Ted's right. If we leave a half-dressed carcass here, it'll attract wolves. We'll take what we want, and bury the rest under the ice."

That evening they feasted. Squatting around their fire, they devoured roast moose as gaily as though it were an everyday meal for them. Jim wondered what the good folks of New York City would say if they could look upon the scene. Six men, weather-beaten and shabby, tanned by sun and wind, unshaven cheeks covered with the coarse stubble of sprouting beards, sitting around a campfire in twenty-degree weather, munching like savages on chewy chunks of half-cooked meat! They had traveled a long distance-and not merely in miles-from the antiseptic, orderly, underground city, with its never-changing mild temperature and its efficient cafeterias dishing out scientifically calculated portions of synthetic protein!

But there was a price for their return to the older ways of mankind. Jim lay sound asleep that night, dreaming that he was still aboard the rolling, pitching ship, teaching judo to long-bearded vikings, when a hand shook him into wakefulness.

He stirred reluctantly. "Who… what…?" He looked up at the stocky figure of Ted Callison. "Hey, what is this?" Jim demanded sleepily. "I stood watch already tonight! You've got the wrong guy!"

"I'm waking everybody up," Ted said. "There's an emergency!"

"Huh?"

"It's Roy," Ted said. "He's sick. He's burning up with fever. We've got to do something for him!"

Roy lay groaning in a far corner of the tent. His face was white as the snow outside, and gleamed with perspiration. Eyes closed, lips drawn back in agony, he writhed and clutched at his body. Carl and Dr. Barnes knelt over him. Carl stared into his medic kit as though hoping to find a magic wand in it. His slender medical skills did not encompass such things as this.

"High fever," Dr. Barnes muttered. "He's delirious. Carl, does that kit of yours have anything to help?"

Carl shrugged. "There's some medicine, but it's not much. Headache tablets, mostly."

Roy stirred. His eyes opened, but they were glassy, and saw nothing. "Snow," he whispered, croaking harshly. "Lie down in the snow. Cool off. Cool…"

"Easy, there," Dr. Barnes said. "You'll be all right soon, Roy. We've got medicine for you."

"Burning," Roy said. "
Burning
!"

"Try this," Carl said. He took a spray tube from the medic kit. "It's marked for infection and swelling. At least it can't hurt him. Should I?"

"Go ahead," Dr. Barnes said.

Carl held the spray tube to Roy's arm, and pressed the stud. There was a tiny buzzing sound as the ultrasonic needle drove the medicine through Roy's skin, into the vein. Roy took no notice. He continued to twist, to mutter.

Methodically, Carl searched through the scant medical equipment the expedition possessed. Nothing seemed to be of any use. He had equipment to guard against infection, to close a wound, to stop bleeding.

But there was nothing that could break a fever. Roy sweltered on. Carl took his temperature and looked up solemnly. "It's a hundred and five," he said. "He's really on fire!"

The groans grew more intense. Stifling in the closeness of the tent, Jim stepped outside into the chill. Ted Callison followed him, and, a moment later, Dave Ellis.

Ted shook his head pessimistically. "We're going to lose him," he said.

"No!" Jim snapped. "He's just got a fever, that's all!"

"That's all? He's got a bacterial infection. He must have picked something up from that meat we ate tonight. We aren't protected against the germs they have up here. It's a miracle we haven't all come down with something by this time."

Jim shook his head doggedly. "All right, so he's got a high fever. Haven't you ever had a fever? It hasn't killed you, has it?"

"This is different. The bug that's in Roy is something we have no immunity against. It'll sweep right through him and burn him out."

The groans from within the tent grew louder. There was no sleep for any of them, the rest of that night.

And then-shortly before dawn-came silence.

They moved on after burying Roy, hardly bothering about a breakfast meal. His death had shaken everyone, and that day no one spoke a word that was not strictly necessary.

Death came swiftly in this harsh upper world, Jim thought, and it came without warning. In the snug retreat below the ice, there were no accidents, no dangers, almost no diseases. An eighty-year lifespan was only commonplace in New York; people lived on past the century mark, on for a hundred ten, a hundred twenty years sometimes, dying only when the worn-out body could at last no longer sustain life.

Not here. Here death engulfed you when you least expected it. A lucky spear thrust by an outraged barbarian chief; a sudden opening and closing of the ice; an insidious germ that took you in the aftermath of a robust meal. Jim shivered. For all he knew, the seeds of what had killed Roy with such swiftness were ripening within them all, and before another dawn they would all he dead or dying in the snow.

But no one else developed the fever. The victim had been claimed, and the rest were spared for another day. By nightfall, a hundred miles lay between Roy's grave and their camp. The ice field was beginning a gentle upgrade that told them they were passing from the frozen sea onto the glacier-locked land, and that was a comfort.

After dark, Ted picked up London on the radio, and heard that the expeditionary party London had sent out was nearing them steadily.

Just before noon the next day, the Londoners came into view.

It was possible to see them far off, a dark line in the distance. On the flat waste of the ice plateau, nothing barred the view for miles in any direction, and the Londoners were plain to see.

"They have sleds, too," Jim said. "Look how fast they're moving!"

"And there seem to be plenty of them," Ted muttered. "They didn't send an expedition, they sent an army!"

Half an hour more, and the two groups had come together.

The Londoners had already halted. Their sleds-five of them-were drawn up in a curving line across the ice, and men waited, arms folded, for the New Yorkers to approach. It was a moment that made history, Jim thought-the first face-to-face contact between a city of Europe and one of North America in hundreds of years.

"They're a grim bunch," Dave Ellis said. "Not a smile among them!"

"We've faced worse than this and come out alive," Ted told him. "At least these people are civilized!"

"They're the worst kind, don't you know?" Carl said with a jaunty grin.

The waiting Londoners seemed somehow menacing. They were clad well, in thick protective wraps, and their hair, worn oddly long, gave them something of a barbaric look. But their pale faces and soft skin told of their city heritage. They were armed, too-not with power torches, apparently, but with small arms holstered at their hips.

The five New Yorkers advanced until they were a few yards from the Londoners. Dr. Barnes left the sled and went forward, one hand upraised in welcome.

"Greetings from New York!" he boomed.

A Londoner detached himself from the group and approached. He was a slab-jawed, gray-eyed man, who bore himself with obvious self-satisfaction. Nodding to Dr. Barnes, he said, "Who are you, New Yorker?"

"Raymond Barnes. And you?"

"John Moncrieff. Captain, London Constabulary Patrol."

"A policeman?"

"A soldier," Moncrieff said frostily. He signaled to one of his men. "Pitch a tent," he ordered. To Dr. Barnes he said, "I want to talk to you and your second-in-command. The others can wait outside."

"I have no second-in-command," Dr. Barnes replied evenly. "In our group we are all equals."

"Pick one," Moncrieff said. "I'll talk only to two of you, no more. I can't abide a rabble!"

"Five is no rabble," Dr. Barnes retorted. "Whatever you have to say to us, you can say to all of us."

Moncrieff scowled and shook his head. "Don't be obstinate, New Yorker! You're on Londoner territory now. Be wary and make no quarrels. I'll talk to two of you."

Dr. Barnes flung his shoulders high, as though to say this was too trivial a point to feud over. Almost at random, he pointed to Ted Callison and said, "All right, Ted. You come with me. Jim, Dave, Carl-I'm sorry. One of us has to give in."

The tent was up. Ted, Dr. Barnes, Moncrieff, and a couple of other Londoners went within, and the flap was closed. The rest of the Londoners remained in guarded, tense postures, eyeing the three New Yorkers with mingled fear and hostility.

"What are they so jumpy about?" Carl asked. "It wouldn't cost them anything to be friendlier."

"They're like most of the people in New York," Jim said. "Suspicious of anything new. We're strangers. We come from another city. They don't know what to make of us, and they're not going to relax one bit."

Some of the Londoners, though, seemed unabashedly curious about the New Yorkers. One in particular, after studying Jim with unconcealed fascination for a long moment, finally made so bold as to come over and speak to him.

"Hello, there. What's your name?"

"Jim Barnes."

"I'm Colin Thornton." The Londoner looked young, certainly still in his teens. He stood stiffly upright, but he was short and could not hide the fact. He was sturdy, though, with a wide-shouldered frame. Long soft brown hair tumbled across his forehead and nearly into his dark eyes. He stared at Jim and said, "How old are you?"

"Seventeen."

"So am I. You look older than that."

"I need a shave," Jim said with a laugh. "I've been too busy to bother with such things lately."

Colin seemed full of questions. "How long have you been in the army?" he shot at Jim.

"I'm not in the army."

"You're not? Then what do you do in New York?"

"I go to school," Jim said. "At least, I
went
to school. I was studying to be a hydroponics engineer."

"We have those, too," Colin said. "But I wouldn't want to be one. I joined the army when I was thirteen. How big an army does New York have?"

"We don't have an army."

"You're joking me, New Yorker!"

"It's the truth. What does a city need an army for, under the glacier? We've got police, though. Carl, over there, was a policeman."

"Aren't you afraid of invaders?" Colin asked.

"There's a mile of ice between New York and the surface. We don't worry about invasions. Does London get raided often?"

Colin scuffed at the snow. "The barbarians came down the tunnel about thirty years ago," he said. "We killed them all, but they gave us a time. Since then we've had an army." The dark, glittering eyes scanned Jim suddenly. "You don't carry a gun either, do you?"

"No. I don't."

"No weapons at all?"

"We have weapons," Jim said, not wanting to tell the Londoner too much. "But not guns. Not like yours."

"Want to see my gun?"

"If you don't mind showing it."

"Why should I mind?" Colin asked.

"I don't know. You Londoners all seem so suspicious. Perhaps you wouldn't care to let me see your gun."

"I'll let you see. Here."

Colin drew his gun. But before he surrendered it to Jim, he squeezed its handle, and a small slim gleaming box dropped out.

"What was that?" Jim asked.

"Power unit. Gun's useless without it You don't think I'd let you kill me, do you?"

Jim had to laugh. "I didn't have any plans for shooting you, Colin."

"Man has to be careful!"

"I suppose he does," Jim agreed. He studied the gun. It was a neatly made thing, hardly bigger than the palm of his hand, sleek and tapering. A trigger stud jutted from the butt. It looked like a useful weapon, Jim thought, something that the New Yorkers had missed all along. They were armed with knives and hatchets, and with power torches, but with nothing in between. And a power torch was an inconveniently imprecise weapon, good for blasting holes in a thick icecap, or for wiping out a horde of attacking wolves, but not so useful if you merely wanted to wound an enemy, or if you were killing for food. A good square-on jolt from a power torch didn't leave much over to be eaten.