Time of the Great Freeze (18 page)

"Want to see how it works?" Colin asked.

"I'd like to."

"Come on with me, then, while this boring talk is going on. We'll find something and I'll shoot it for you. Come on!"

Jim was the uneasy one now. His father and Ted were in that tent with the Londoner officers, and no telling what the parley was all about. That left just three of them to keep an eye on all these Londoners-and now one of them was trying to lure him away from the group.

But the way to conquer distrust, Jim decided, was not by meeting it with distrust of one's own. By showing good faith he might win over at least one of these strangely unfriendly men.

"All right," he said. "Let's go."

He told Carl and Dave where he was going, and walked off across the ice with Colin. They struck out in a northerly direction, and soon they had gone a fair distance from the camping ground. The snow was uneven here, humped into low hillocks eight or ten feet high, and Jim realized unhappily that he was no longer in sight of the others.

Colin, though, did not seem particularly menacing. The Londoner still spouted questions in an endless stream, hardly pausing to digest one fact before he demanded another.

"How many people do you have in New York?"

"Eight hundred thousand."

"We have nine hundred thousand. What's the name of your Mayor?"

"Hawkes," Jim said. "He's a very old man."

"Aren't they all? Our Lord Mayor is a hundred years old. Is yours as old as that?"

"Not quite," Jim said. He grinned. "But he's getting there, though."

"Is there still a President of the United States?" Colin asked next.

"Not that I know of," Jim said. "We haven't heard in a long while. The Presidents used to live in Washington. We haven't had contact with Washington."

"We have a king," Colin said. "He lives with us in London. But he doesn't do anything. The Lord Mayor rules. And Parliament. Do you have a Parliament? I mean, a Congress. Isn't that what it's called?"

"We just have a City Council," Jim said.

"What kind of city is New York? I thought it was supposed to be important. Why isn't there a President? Why no Congress?"

"We weren't the capital of the United States," Jim pointed out. "We were just the biggest city. But London was England's capital. So you've still got a king and a Parliament."

"We have a new king," Colin said. "Henry the Twelfth. His father died last year. That was King Charles the Fourth. Do you know anything about English history?"

"Some," Jim said. "My father's a historian. He's mostly interested in American history, but…"

"Do you know about Queen Elizabeth I?" Colin demanded. "Henry the Eighth? Richard the Third? Do you know how America was founded? We founded New York, you know."

"That's not true. The Dutch did."

"No, we did," Colin insisted. "We once owned all the United States. And then we set them free, in 1776. That was before the ice came, you understand. King George the Third didn't like you Americans, and he said he wouldn't rule you any more, that you have to take care of yourselves from now on. So…"

"You've got it upside down," Jim said. "We were the ones who got rid of King George. The Revolutionary War…"

"Don't tell me," Colin broke in. "Just because I'm a soldier, I'm not ignorant! I can read, do you know that? I can read, and I've read the history books! We owned you, your whole country, and then we said, 'Poof, be free,' and you were free! That's how mighty we were then! And also…"

Jim had to fight off laughter. Colin chattered on, words pouring from him, misinformation piled on misinformation. Jim wanted to grab hold of him and shake him and say, "No, that's not how it happened at all. My father's a historian, and he can tell you the truth about these things." But what was the use? Colin was firmly in possession of his own view of history, and no quick argument was going to sway him.

"And then your George Washington came to London," Colin was saying, "and thanked our King George for letting the Americans go free, and…"

He cut his history lesson short and pointed. "Look!" he cried. "There's a moose! Come with me! I'll show you how this gun works, now!"

The huge creature had wandered unsuspectingly toward them. Now, pausing, it looked up, its dull eyes blinking, its drooping snout twitching suspiciously. It was a spectacular beast, towering nine or ten feet, its forest of antlers gnarled and contorted. For a moment, it did not react at all as Colin ran toward it. Danger signals were filtering through its slow brain, but it had not yet come to a decision to flee.

Colin was within twenty yards of it now, Jim following close behind. Jim watched the Londoner extend his arm, take aim, nudge the trigger.

There was a loud splat of sound. The moose snorted and reared high, its hoofs clawing at the sky in pain. A blossom of bright red sprouted high along its withers.

Colin muttered something in irritation. He fired a second time, and drew a crease along the huge creature's back, again not wounding it seriously. The moose whirled, sounded its trumpeting cry of anguish and fury, and rumbled into action. It began to run.

But not to flee.

Unexpectedly, astonishingly, the moose wheeled and charged, running with all its speed straight at its tormentor!

Colin had no chance to move. He stood as though frozen to the ice while the giant moose bore down on him.

"
Colin
!" Jim yelled.

The Londoner finally reacted, in time to save himself though not in time to avoid injury entirely. He leaped to one side just as the enraged animal thundered through the place where he had been standing. The flank of the beast caught Colin and he fell heavily to the ice. His gun went skittering twenty feet away.

He lay there, stunned. The moose had reversed itself and was coming back, now, determined to trample him. Jim scrambled across the ice toward the gun. In order to reach it, he had to get between Colin and the moose, and that was no pleasure.

Moving fast, he threw himself headlong, slid across the ice, clapped his hand down on the gun. The moose came roaring past him, the sharp hoofs pounding down only inches from where he lay. He raised the gun and fired in almost the same motion. Luck guided his aim. The shot smashed into the moose's left foreleg, halting the creature in full career. It stumbled as the useless leg crumpled beneath it, and crashed heavily to the ice no more than five feet from Colin.

Getting to his feet, Jim fired again. This shot ripped through the moose's brain. There was a thrashing of legs for a moment, and then no motion. Panting, Jim lowered the gun, looked over at Colin.

The Londoner boy was getting shakily to his feet. He walked around the moose, looking at it in awe.

"Close one," he said.

"Are you all right?"

Colin rubbed his side. "I'll look a little purple tonight. But I'm all right, I guess. In better shape then
he
is, at any rate!"

"Here," Jim said, handing Colin back his gun. "Next time bring him down on the first shot. It's safer that way."

Colin holstered the weapon and stared strangely at Jim. "You saved me," he said. "You ran right in front of the big fellow to pick up the gun! You could have been killed, but you saved me. Why did you do that?"

Of all Colin's many questions, this was the most baffling. "Why?" Jim repeated. "
Why
? Well-don't you see-I couldn't have just let you be trampled, could I?"

"Why not? What am I to you? Am I worth losing your life for?"

"Stop talking foolishness," Jim snapped. "I didn't stop to consider the possibilities. The moose was charging you and I had a chance to get the gun and kill him, that's all. You make it sound as though I were a fool to have saved you."

"Maybe you were," Colin said in an odd, strained voice.

"Forget it, will you? We'd better go back and get some help to drag this animal. He's too big for the two of us. We can have a feast tonight-to celebrate the meeting between Londoners and New Yorkers."

They started to walk back toward the camp. Colin was silent, lost in some private meditation. Lines of tension stood out on his face, and Jim saw him chewing his lip with painful intensity. After a moment Colin said, "I guess I ought to tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"You saved my life. I've got to tell you."

"Will you say it then, man? What's the mystery all about?"

Colin looked down at his boots. "There isn't going to be any feast tonight. At least, if there is, you five aren't going to be at it. We're supposed to kill you."

"
What
?"

Colin blurted the words in panicky urgency. "You people are supposed to be invaders. We don't trust you. London doesn't, that is. The Lord Mayor thinks you're just an advance unit of a full-scale invasion. You want our atomic power plant, they say. Your own must be running down, and so you're coming to get ours, for why else would people cross thousands of miles? So we were sent out to meet you. We were instructed to learn all we could from you-and then wipe you out!"

"No!"

"It's the truth!" Colin moaned. "We have to capture your equipment and bring it back."

"This is insanity! We came out of friendship. There's no invasion. London is invasion-crazy."

Shrugging, Colin said, "I'm sorry. Those were our orders."

Jim stared in disbelief. Then, from far off, came the sound of shouting-and a series of reports that might very well have been shots from Londoner guns. Jim gasped. His father, Ted, Carl, Dave-only four of them, against dozens of the Londoners! It would be a massacre! And what help could he be, more than a mile away, armed only with a knife?

"It's starting," Colin whispered.

"Come on, then. I've got to get back."

"You'll be killed, too!"

"At least I'll die fighting," Jim said. He drew his knife, hefted it a moment, then suddenly lunged at Colin. He locked one arm around Colin's shoulders and held the point of the knife at the Londoner's throat.

"Easy, man!" Colin said hoarsely. "First you save me, now you threaten me?"

"I want your gun. I can't go back there unarmed."

"Take it, then. It was yours for the asking! Do you think I'm still an enemy, Jim?"

"From now on," Jim said darkly, "everyone's an enemy until I know otherwise." He snatched the gun from Colin's holster and gripped it tight, welcoming its reassuring sleekness against his palm. For a moment, Jim debated killing Colin on the spot. He was, after all, a member of the Londoner army. But he realized he could not do it, not this way, in cold blood. Colin had given him warning, hadn't he? Which side was Colin now on?

Even Colin didn't seem sure of that. Jim let go of him, and the Londoner stood like a sleepwalker, brow furrowed, head shaking slowly from side to side.

"Here," Jim said. "Take this!"

He tossed his knife down at Colin's feet. Then, without waiting for the Londoner to follow, Jim turned and raced off, back toward the place where the two parties had met.

He could see the fighting long before he reached the camp. It was hard to tell exactly what was happening, but flames were rising, and the tent where his father and Ted had been conferring with Moncrieff was a blazing ruin. Tiny sticklike figures were huddled in the snow, and now and then a burst of light from a power torch would flare out from the westward sleds.

Coming closer, Jim could make out something of the battle. His own people were dug in behind the sleds. The Londoners had scattered in a wide arc, and were sniping with their guns. Jim looked down at the gun in his hand, and wondered how long it would fire without running down. If he could slip around unnoticed behind the Londoner sleds, and pick them off from the rear without getting ashed by a New Yorker power torch in error…

No, he thought dismally. Fighting, killing, that wasn't the answer. It never was.

"We've got to stop them," Colin whispered, coming up alongside Jim. "It's insanity!"

"You think so, too?"

"Of course I do! They'll never get anywhere this way. Look, they've got some of your people prisoner already."

Jim stared. Yes, Colin was right! There, far behind the line of battle, a Londoner held Dr. Barnes and Ted Callison at gunpoint. So only Carl and Dave were still at liberty, holding their own behind the barricade of the sleds. Two men against a whole squad!

"Listen to me," Colin said urgently. "We've got to go out there and stop them. I don't know how, but we've got to do it!"

"Agreed." Jim pointed toward the scene of the fighting. "You talk to Moncrieff. I'll try to slip around behind those sleds to my own side. If we can only get them to stop shooting at each other, we can come to an understanding."

Colin nodded. He and Jim split up, and began to circle warily toward their respective lines. Jim moved in a half crouch, trying to look in every direction at once, hoping that Carl or Dave would recognize him and not just blaze away.

He had not gone more than a few steps when a Londoner rose out of nowhere, taking Jim off guard. He was young, and his hair was so blond it seemed almost white. One side of his face was singed; evidently he had come perilously close to a power-torch blast. His uniform was burned away on that side, too. But he held a gun in his other hand, and he was taking dead aim.

A figure suddenly cut between Jim and the Londoner.

Colin.

"Wait!" Colin cried. "Don't shoot him!"

The Londoner gestured with his gun. "Get out of the way, Colin! Have you lost your mind?"

"Don't shoot him!" Colin repeated. And suddenly Jim's knife flashed bright in Colin's hand.

Jim stared. The Londoner, apparently unable to believe that one of his own comrades would attack him, brushed Colin angrily out of the way and took aim at Jim. But Colin swiped with the knife. The blond Londoner howled. His gun went off, a wild shot, as Colin's blade sliced into the man's arm. The Londoner fell to the ground, clasping a hand to his wound. Colin stooped, picked up the gun, and stood staring at it strangely, as though he had never seen such a thing before.