Maximum Ice (14 page)

As planned, Mirran had landed on the eastern coast, near
the hundred-meter-thick shelf of the advancing stratam, where they could watch its rapid growth as well as study the soils. It felt like progress. It
was
progress.

A noise behind him.

“Captain.” Janos Bertak stood at the door. “I thought you might be here.”

His solitude was at an end.

Janos glanced at the stasis wells. “Time for them to wake up.”

Anatolly nodded. “Good thing we saved them.” Once they knew they were returning to the green earth, the crew had argued for abandoning the stasis units to save energy. Of course the human embryos would have been the exception….

Anatolly asked, “Any word on Zoya’s notion of dark matter?” Dark matter, the Zeros said, had killed life on the surface.

“Vlad has set up a special team on it.”

Dark matter, Anatolly mused, was the impetus for Ice, now a scourge in itself. But it began with dark matter, so the Zeros said. Or rather it ended with dark matter, the end of civilization. During their long journey on Ship, everyone wondered, when they had no word from earth, if those they’d left behind had succumbed to the Rampage after all.
Rampage
was a strong word. Perhaps they should have saved it for the real thing.

The captain pressed another data well, the one with the gold plaque:
Homo sapiens. “I don’t care for the term—dark
matter.”

“Sometimes it’s called strange matter.”

Anatolly snorted. Even worse.

“I’ll walk up with you,” Janos said. “So we can talk.”

They exited the stasis room and turned into the abandoned main corridor. Anatolly saw that Janos had something on his mind. People usually did, when seeking out the captain. “Well, Janos, what is it?”

“It’s the crew, sir.” The overhead lights shone off the sweat
on the lieutenant’s high forehead. “They need something more proactive than Mirran’s research operation.”

“What’s more proactive than discovering what we face?” He hadn’t meant to sound so defensive. “Come, Janos, out with it.”

The first mate nodded. “Sir, we need a colony, not a science post. A place for the crew to make a home. Some of the crew don’t like being parked up here. Passive.”

That galled. Just when Anatolly had taken action, he was judged passive. Well, he’d asked for advice and he was damn well getting it.

Janos continued: “The women, sir.” A small gesture toward the deck above, meant to take in the entire ship and its crew with whom Janos had close interactions, to keep the pulse of the ship. When Janos talked about
the women
, the captain listened.

“What about them?”

The first mate pressed his lips together, drawing down his mustache into a hard line. “Some of them think they need to be groundside.”

At the captain’s questioning look, Janos went on: “Some of the younger ones think that the sooner they leave the ship, the sooner they reduce their radiation exposure.” He coughed. “For the sake of bearing children.”

Anatolly sighed. Ah, for bearing children. Of course they were eager to begin a colony, but radiation damage wasn’t worsened by just a few more days. It was a question of years, of decades of exposure.

“The crew has need of a success,” Janos continued. He noted his captain’s expression, but pressed on. “Something to gladden their hearts. Without a strong role, they mutter and complain. You know how the crew is.”

Was that irony in his first mate’s tone? Damn impertinent if
it was… but he cut Janos Bertak some slack. A valuable officer, and friend enough to give him a true opinion.

“Let me take a shuttle,” Janos persisted, “and begin building a home base. Some of the women would be sure to volunteer. Tereza, for one.”

Anatolly knew how Tereza suffered, and how Janos must wish to gladden her. But it wasn’t the time. “We can’t just barge in with a settlement—before we have good relations with the preserves. Zoya’s mission first, Janos. Then the home base.”

A tongue punched into Janos’s cheek. “Zoya wasn’t the one to be sent on that mission. She’s already made a bad impression on the nuns.”

Ah, that business with Sister… what was her name… A sharp exchange, as Zoya reported it, but surely not damaging…

They passed the former lounge, with its view screens dead, seats empty. Quarters like that were a sobering reminder of former days. Anatolly’s hopeful mood had deserted him.

“Think about it, Captain,” Janos said—as though Anatolly hadn’t thought about any of this before—“the colony under way, the women recovering, families started…”

“Christ’s blood, Janos, we don’t know the dangers! Something killed off things down there, and it wasn’t Ice. And we don’t know what the preserves mean by dark matter, what it is, why it’s dangerous.”

“Was
dangerous. The inhabitants of the preserves are healthy enough.”

“They live under a slab of Ice that could offer shielding from whatever killed things off.”

“This sled-driver, Wolf, seems healthy enough.”

“Leave it
be
, Lieutenant.” He locked gazes with Janos. “I’ve heard enough.”

They stood before the elevator, and Janos punched in the
flight deck. Anatolly sucked in a deep breath, cold and dulling. Janos was under pressure from Tereza, he could figure out that much. The lift sped to the occupied decks.

But Janos was right about one thing: Hearts were broken, despair floated in Ship’s corridors like a bad wind. And it wasn’t true that they had unlimited amounts of time. Even setting aside the childbearing issue, there was the spread of Ice to contend with. Mirran’s crew said the soils still teemed with microbial life. But at the rate Ice was growing, they lost precious meters of land every day.

“Janos, you have some good ideas. But there’s no rush for our colony. We have Zoya, we have Lieutenant Mirran at the research base. We’ll proceed in increments. There’s this whole matter of Ice’s—
-function—for one thing. We can’t settle on it or near it until we know what it is.
What it might
do.”

The door to the flight deck whisked open. “While we
do
nothing,” Janos grumbled. At his captain’s sharp glance he amended that to, “Aye, Captain.”

Anatolly led the way onto the flight deck, not liking the tone of that
Aye, Captain.

For the first time it occurred to him that Janos might challenge him for office. The man was competent, ambitious. The right age. But no, in two or three years, and once the crisis was past, Anatolly would step down of his own accord. Surely Janos could wait for his chance.

Ship’s captain was elective. Any officer could call an election. Of course to do so and lose was a career-killer, if the captain held grudges. Anatolly’s own election to office was an orderly transition. Vitrovic was disabled with a stroke, and Anatolly won the election—not by much, it was true, with three others vying and splitting the vote, damn them. It hadn’t been a mandate, by any means, and it left Anatolly scrambling ever after, wooing the losers—wooing everybody, it sometimes seemed.

He glanced at Janos, who was just settling into his station. It looked as though the seat no longer fit.

Anatolly turned to the officer of the watch. “I have the bridge, Lieutenant Andropolous.”

And he sincerely hoped he did.

Kellian Bourassa hurried down the corridor. Behind her, obo3 strove to keep up, its high-pitched whine announcing its pathway. Those who’d run into obo3 before stood quickly out of the way

The sisters were packing—suddenly they were in a great hurry to leave—and she hadn’t yet said good-bye to her friend Jamila, nor even told her she was going. Where
was
Jamila? She had posted a tronic message, but received no response. The shrine was the last place she hadn’t looked.

As Kellian slammed around the corner into the hall of the shrine, she stopped short, seeing the crowd massed there. Though it was the middle of the work shift, she saw a hundred people at least. From the pile of offerings, many more had been there recently. The heap of salvage—offerings—came nearly to the windows of the shrine. Something had ignited a bit of superstitious fervor. Out of long practice, Kellian scanned the pile of hardware, looking for useful items.

Then she spied Jamila, and threaded through the crowd to her side.

Jamila hugged her, whispering, “She’s just down the way in the records vaults.”

Someone jostled Kellian, and she called obo3 closer to guard it. “What are you talking about? Who?”

A voice behind them boomed, “Back, all of you!”

“Oh, he would come meddling!” Jamila snorted. It was a
foreteller, dressed in his best robes, tastelessly colorful. “This is not the time!” he bellowed. “If she knew anything, the Five would have told us so!”

“The Five,” Jamila said under her breath, “don’t
believe.”
Her face softened. “Kellian, what if it’s true?”

Kellian grasped Jamila’s wrists to make her pay attention. “If what is true? Just tell me.”

“The star woman,” Jamila said. “What if she’s an Eco? They’ve come from a star journey, and they left during the First World. Worley says she’s not an Eco, that she knows nothing, but what if he’s lying?”

“Star woman?”

“If you would just pay attention to something besides
that.”
She inclined her head toward the obo. “Yesterday a trader brought in a woman. She’s come on a ship—from a star voyage.” She searched Kellian’s eyes for some sign of understanding. “You see what that means?”

Kellian finally did, all too clearly. That was the reason people were gathered at the shrine—hoping for favor from Ice, now that its godlike creators had returned. She tried to absorb the implications of what she was hearing. A ship… Wherever the star ship had come from, it must have undreamed-of knowledge and tech. If there
was
a ship.

“How do we know she isn’t telling a tale?”

Jamila rolled her eyes. “Because of the ear thingy! It translates our speech and whispers to her. Nobody’s seen anything like it. And up there”—she pointed upward—“is a ship. That much even the Five admit.” Jamila turned toward the shrine with its ancient controls—controls she believed once communicated with Ice. “If it’s true,” Jamila said, “then the time of the next world is here, Kellian.”

Kellian looked over the heads of the worshipers. She stood taller than most people, and many were kneeling and muttering
their prayers. So this, she thought, is what greets the starfarer: pathetic superstition. The will of Ice revealed. Instead of divination, Ice would speak directly to its worshipers. She wouldn’t miss much about this place.

Jamila went on, “The nuns are giving out a disbursement of algabeans as a general commendation that a snow witch has been delivered to them. So we will eat well for a week!”

“Who found a snow witch?”

“The trader, Wolf, the one who scavenges. He captured a live one.”

Snow witches. Poor, desperate mutations. Mad, all of them. Jamila believed they were punished by Ice for impiety. The longer she stood there, the more Kellian saw her preserve through the eyes of a stranger. She was embarrassed to be one of them.

“Jamila, I’m leaving.”

Jamila cocked her head, and Kellian added, “I’m leaving with the sisters.” She nodded. “They accepted me.”

Her friend’s smile of surprise bloomed, then faded. “When?”

“Right away. I came to say good-bye.”

The foreteller was exhorting the crowd to break up. He looked worried, as well he might be. Who would turn to him for guidance once the Ecos were here? He was a charlatan and deserved what was coming. Whatever God was, he was not a climate-controlled room housing ancient machines. Her family had kept their old faith. God was a mystery, greater than human knowledge. Greater than Ice knowledge.

She said her good-byes to Jamila and, snatching up obo3, began a dash to the records vault, both confused and excited. She was like every other pitiful dweller there, eager to see the star woman, but with nothing to offer this visitor, nothing to distinguish herself. She wanted to say,
we aren’t all ignorant. I’m not like them.
Not that such a personage would pay attention.

Reaching the records vault, she saw a crowd trying to catch a glimpse of the star woman. And there she was, standing with Worley, who was waving for the crowd to disperse. Worley had worked himself up into a bright pink fit. It would almost be worth sticking around to see what power shifts would ensue from the arrival of the star ship.

Kellian pushed through the mass of people, using her obo to cut a path. The woman from the stars was olive-complected, with a black mass of hair clasped at the back of her neck. White gems glittered in one ear. Perhaps that was the language translator. She had made up her mind what she would do. She held obo3 out to the woman.

“Take this for a gift, I beg you,” Kellian said. “This obo is my best creation. I’m teaching it to think.”

“Off you go,” Worley bellowed, his face purpling. “Go!”

But Kellian sidled past him. “I am Kellian Bourassa. We aren’t all ignorant.”

The star woman reached out her hands to accept obo3, but Worley stepped forward, swiping his hand against the obo, jarring it from Kellian’s hands. Even as Kellian lunged to catch it, the obo slammed into the floor with a sickening crunch.

“No…” Kellian moaned.

Then Worley gave the obo a savage kick, sending several mechanical arms skittering across the corridor. As Kellian tried to fend him off, he pushed her in the shoulder, thrusting her away. The star woman had grabbed hold of his arm. Shaking her off, he brought his great thigh up in the air and smashed his foot down on obo3, denting the middle of the unit’s central housing.

Worley turned back to marshal the crowd, barking at people to leave. Some retreated, but Kellian held her ground, stunned. Obo3 lay shattered at her feet. Eighteen months of labor and care, shattered under the heels of a moron.

“My creation,” Kellian murmured. “My best.”

The star woman fixed Worley with a calm but damning stare. “My ship will accept gifts,” she told him. “If they diminish your holdings, we’ll pay you.” He had the grace to look uncomfortable, if not apologetic. “I’m not pleased, Worley.”