Read Singularity's Ring Online
Authors: Paul Melko
Singularity's Ring (3 page)
“Where?” I ask.
“Nearby. Help me up.”
I pull him to his feet and he leans against me, groaning. We take a step; he points.
I see the cloth buried in the snow I had noticed before.
He had survived several minutes in the snow. Perhaps his pod is trapped below. Perhaps they are in an air pocket, or in their hollowed-out snow cave.
I kneel and begin to scoop away the snow around the cloth flap. He rolls next to me and tries to help clear. But he slumps against a mound of snow, too weak, and watches me instead.
The cloth is a corner of a blanket and it seems to go straight down.
For a while the going is all ice and I claw at it with my numb fingers, unable to move more than a handful at a time. Then I am through that and the digging is easier.
Clods of snow bounce off my hood, and I am leery of
more snow falling on top of us. I take a moment to push away all the snow from around us.
more snow falling on top of us. I take a moment to push away all the snow from around us.
Two more scoops and suddenly the snow gives way, and I see a cavern of ice and snow and canvas, and within the cave two bodies, two more of Julian. They are alive, breathing, and one is conscious. I pull them each out of the cave and next to their podmate.
The two that are conscious cling to each other and lie there, gasping for breath, and I am so tired I want to collapse into the hole.
I check each one for hypothermia, for breaks and contusions. The unconscious one, a female, has a broken arm, and she winces as I move her. I have a loop of rope on my belt, not spider-silk, and I bind her arm across her chest.
“Wake up,” I say. “Come on.” The third, with the broken arm, is still unconscious. I gently slap her face. She comes awake and lunges, then gasps as the pain hits her. Her pod, what is left of it, surrounds her, and I step back, fall back on the snow, looking up into the sky. I realize that the snow is coming down harder.
“We have to get down the mountain,” I say. If another aircar comes, it will start another avalanche. If another avalanche comes, we are doomed.
They don’t seem to hear me. They cling together, their teeth chattering.
“We have to get down the mountain!” I yell.
Despair floods the air, then a stench of incoherent emotions. The three are in shock.
“Come on!” I say and pull one of them up.
“We can’t … our … podmates,” he says, words interspersed with chemical thoughts that I don’t understand. The pod is degenerating.
“If we don’t go now, we will die on this mountain. We have no shelter, and we are freezing.”
They don’t reply, and I realize they would rather die than break their pod.
“There’s three of you,” I say. “You are nearly whole.” Three of five is better than one of five, don’t they see?
They look among themselves, and I smell the consensus odor. Then one of them turns away angrily. They can’t do it. No consensus.
I collapse onto the snow, head down, and watch the snow swirl between my legs. I am one who was five. The fatigue and despair catch me, and my eyes burn.
I do not cry. But still my face is washed with tears for my pod, buried in the snow. My face is fire where the tears crawl. A splash falls into the snow and disappears.
We will sleep here in despair and die before the morning.
I look at them. I must get them down the mountain, but I don’t know how to do it. I wonder what thoughts Moira would pass me if she were here. She would know what to do with these three.
They are three. Mother Redd is a three. Our teachers are threes. The Premier of the Overgovernment is a three. Why do they cry when they are no worse off than our greatest? I am allowed to cry, but not them.
I stand up.
“I’ve lost my pod too, and I am only one!” I shout. “I can cry, but you can’t! You are three. Get up! Get up, all of you!”
They look at me like I am mad, so I kick one, and she grunts.
“Get up!”
Slowly they rise, and I grin at them like a maniac.
“We will reach the bottom. Follow me.”
I lead them across the snow to the spill of the other avalanche. With the nanoblade on my utility knife, I cut a length of the rope that disappears into the snow. At the other end of the rope is my dead pod. I take a step onto the
grey avalanche; perhaps I can dig them out as I have dug out Hagar Julian. I hear a rumble as the snow shifts beneath me. More snow tumbles down the mountain. It has not settled yet; more snow could fall at any moment. And I know it has been too long now. If they are trapped under the snow, their air is gone. If I had turned at once, if I had followed the rope when the avalanche had stopped, perhaps I could have saved them, but I did not think of that. Quant wasn’t there to remind me of the logical choice. Bitterness seeps through me, but I ignore it. There are the three who are left to take care of.
grey avalanche; perhaps I can dig them out as I have dug out Hagar Julian. I hear a rumble as the snow shifts beneath me. More snow tumbles down the mountain. It has not settled yet; more snow could fall at any moment. And I know it has been too long now. If they are trapped under the snow, their air is gone. If I had turned at once, if I had followed the rope when the avalanche had stopped, perhaps I could have saved them, but I did not think of that. Quant wasn’t there to remind me of the logical choice. Bitterness seeps through me, but I ignore it. There are the three who are left to take care of.
I hand each of them a section of the rope, looping us together. Then I lead them down the mountain. It is nearly black, save the light reflected by the muted moon that splashes upon the snow in between dark snow clouds. The ledge and gaping holes are obvious. It is the hidden crevasses that I fear. But every step we take is better than lying asleep in the snow.
Our path leads to a drop, and I back us up quickly, not wanting the three to gaze into the abyss. I begin to wonder if there is no way down. We were dropped off in aircars that morning. Perhaps the location was so remote that aircars alone could reach it. Perhaps there is no path down the mountain. Or worse, we will pass through the path of an avalanche and die under the piles of snow.
The snowfall is steady now, and in places we are up to our hips. But the effort is warmth. To move is to live, to stop is sleep and death.
The trees all look alike, and I fear we are stumbling in circles, but I know that if we continue downward we will reach the bottom. I see no signs of animal or human. The snow is pristine until we tramp through.
The line jerks and I turn to see the last of Hagar Julian, the one with the broken arm, has fallen.
I go to her and lift her onto my shoulder. The weight is
nothing compared to the ache I already feel. What is another sixty kilograms? But our pace is slower now.
nothing compared to the ache I already feel. What is another sixty kilograms? But our pace is slower now.
Still the others lag, and I allow rests, but never enough to let them sleep, until the fatigue is too much and I let my eyes droop.
Oblivion for just a moment, then I start awake. To sleep is to die. I rouse the three.
The three. I am thinking of them no longer as a pod, but as a number. Will they refer to me as the singleton? The one? There may be a place for a trio in society. But there is no place for a singleton.
After the Exodus of the Community—their sudden and complete abandonment of the Ring and the Earth—it was the pods who had remained in control. The pods are now the caretakers of the Earth, while the normal humans who are left—the singletons—are backward and Luddite. The pods, just a biological experiment, a minority before, are the ones who survived cataclysm. Only now I am no longer a pod; I am a singleton, and the only place for me is in the singleton enclaves. Alone I cannot function in pod society. What could I contribute? Nothing. I look at the three. There is one thing I can contribute. These three are still a pod, still an entity. I can bring them to safety.
I stand up. “Let’s go,” I say, but gently. They are too empty to protest. I show them how to put the snow to their lips and drink it as it melts.
“We need to go.” The one with the broken arm tries to walk. I walk beside her with a hand on her good arm.
The pine forest gives way to denser deciduous trees, and I feel warmer, though the temperature cannot have risen much. But the trees think it’s warmer, so I think so too. The snow is less heavy here. Perhaps the storm is letting up.
“This mountain,” I say, “is less than seven kilometers high. We can walk seven kilometers easily, even in the cold. And this is all downhill.”
No one laughs. No one replies.
The wind is gone, I notice, and with it the snow. The sky is grey still, but the storm is over. I begin to think that we might not die.
Then the last in our line steps too close to a ravine, and he’s down the side, sliding from sight. The next in line, unable or unwilling to let go, slides after him, and I watch the slithering rope.
Again, I think. Again with this damn rope pulling me away. I let go of it, and the rope disappears into the grey below. The woman at my side doesn’t even know what is happening.
The ravine is three meters down, lined by a steep, but not vertical, slope. I see the two who have fallen at the base. I have no way to get them out, so I must follow.
I take the woman over my shoulder, and say, “Hold on.” I slide down the hill, one arm to balance me, one arm to hold her, and my legs folded beneath me, lowering myself down the slope.
No hidden tree branches, I hope. There are none, and sooner than I think, we are at the bottom of the ravine.
The two others are there, sprawled at the edge of a small, unfrozen stream. Sometime in the past, water has carved a cavelike trough into the ravine wall. The woman on my shoulder has passed out, her face grey, her breathing shallow. How bad is her fracture? I wonder. How much worse have I made it? Manuel would have known an elegant way to get her down.
The air is warm here, in this grotto that is nearly below the ground. It is like a cave; the ground is a constant temperature a few meters below the surface, regardless of the blazing heat or the blowing snow. I squat. It may be five degrees.
“We can rest here.” We can even sleep, I think. No chance of frostbite. We can’t get wet; the stream is too shallow.
A few meters down the streambed, I find an indentation. It is dry rock with roots overhanging. I carry the woman there and lead the others to the cave.
“Sleep,” I tell them.
My body is exhausted, and I watch the three fall asleep at once. I cannot. The female is in shock. I have made her arm worse by slinging her over my shoulder. She is probably bleeding internally.
I look at her grey face, and console myself that she would be dead if we were still a thousand meters up the mountain.
Unless they had sent another aircar.
I sit there, my heart cold, not sleeping.
I have always been strong, even when we were children, before we first consensed. I was always taller, stronger, heavier. And that has always been my weapon. It is obvious. I am not about deception. I am not about memory, or insight, or agility. I am quick when threats are near, yes, but never agile.
I never thought I would outlive my pod. I never thought I’d be the one left.
I don’t want to think these things, so I stand up, and use my utility knife to cut two saplings that are trying to grow in the gully. Using the rope, I fashion a travois. It will be easier on the female.
“You should have left us on the mountain.” It is the one who I had first found in the snow. “You’re wasting too much energy on a broken pod.”
I say nothing, though I could acknowledge the truth of it.
“But then you wouldn’t know that. All your thinking parts are missing.”
He’s angry, and he is striking out at me because of it. I nod.
“You probably don’t even understand what I’m saying.”
“Yes, I am strength and nothing more.”
Maybe he wants to fight, I think, so I add, “I saved your life today.”
“So? Should I thank you?”
“No. But you owe me your life. So we will walk down this mountain in the morning, and then we are even. You can die then, and I won’t care.”
“Pigheaded.”
“Yes.” I can’t argue with that either.
He is asleep in moments, and I am too.
I am stiff and cold in the morning, but we are all alive. I squat on the stones and listen for a few moments. The trickle of the water muffles all sound. I can’t hear the whine of a rescue aircar. I can’t hear the shouts of searchers. We have traveled so far that they will not look for us in the right spot. We have no choice but to continue on.
A wave of doubt catches me unaware. The tenet of pod sentience is that a consensus of one is always false. My choice has doomed us. But more than likely staying on the mountain would have done the same, only sooner. These three want that, I know. Perhaps I should too.
I touch my pockets one by one. I am hungry, but I already know there is no food. I was just stepping out of the tent for a moment. I had not prepared myself for a long journey in the cold. I check the pockets of the injured one, but she too is without food.
“Do you have food?” I ask the male, the one who argued with me. “What’s your name anyway?”
“Hagar Jul—” he starts to say, then stops. He glares at me. “No food.”
I squat next to him. “Perhaps I can lead you back up the mountain, and then you’ll forgive me for saving you.”
“‘Saving’ is a debatable term.”
Other books
When Dogs Cry by Markus Zusak
1912 by Chris Turney
The World Behind the Door by Mike Resnick
Alpha Threat by Ron Smoak
Tested by the Night by Maxine Mansfield
A Stolen Tongue by Sheri Holman
Gringos by Charles Portis
The Mislaid Magician by Patricia C. Wrede, Caroline Stevermer
Mr. X by Peter Straub
Keeping the Beat on the Street by Mick Burns
