Winter Song (45 page)

    Karl ignored him. "We need to find materials to plug the holes with."

    They bumped down the littered corridor under the dim emergency lighting, and checked the rooms, finding enough suitable pieces of plastic and metal for their purposes. With a few almost empty sealant tubes from which they squeezed the last drops, a thirty-centimetre-square metal plate was converted into a makeshift tray. Repeating the operation over a dozen times gradually reduced and then finally ended the hiss of air rushing through the cracks and holes. "Karl," Bera called from the bridge doorway. "We're getting close now, you'd better finish up."

    Returning to the bridge, the white globe of Isheimur completely filled the lee-side front window, and individual mountain ranges and lakes were clearly visible. "How far away are we?" Karl said.

    "Less than eighteen thousand kilometres," Loki said. "Just over ten minutes to planetfall." Karl noticed that Loki had turned off the counter, and realised he should have done that days ago. Damned thing's become an obsession.

    Bera passed strips of rock-eater meat to Karl. "You must be hungry."

    Even now Karl wasn't sure that he was quite hungry enough to eat rock-eater, but he ate it, trying not to think of condemned men eating their last meal. "Tastes as good as always," he said, and Bera giggled.

    "Give the worker some smoked lamb," Arnbjorn said, offering some to Orn, who took a handful into his vast paw. Karl also took some with a grateful nod. "Pappi?" Arnbjorn said, offering his father the lamb. Ragnar shook his head slowly. At some point they had helped him into a seat, but he looked worse than ever with his head lolling to one side.

    Karl thought, He seems to have aged a decade or more since the stroke. I wonder how much he held age at bay before by sheer willpower alone.

    "I must admit, utlander," Ragnar said slowly, fighting to shape the words clearly, "I misjudged you. But for all that, I regret nothing. If I hadn't had you nursed back to health, and then chased you, we wouldn't be sitting here now, having this marvellous adventure. I'd never have seen the stars." He sighed, seeming exhausted by his speech, but then continued, "If you can buy us time, we'll make peace, even if I have to bang heads together." A thin line of drool had escaped the stricken side of his mouth, and as he slapped away Arnbjorn's attempt to wipe it for him, Karl pitied those stuck at Skorradalur with an infirm Gothi. Ragnar continued, "And our new friend Coeo has offered to share coldweather survival techniques."

    Karl stared, lost for words.

    "We've been trying to work out what the effects will be on the adapted men of Fenris slamming into the South Pole," Bera said. "Luckily, there will be no more than a handful that far south, but there's bound to be some fallout."

    Karl thought that the understatement of the century, remembering the antique video of Thorshammer slamming into Earth seven centuries before. A three kilometre-wide rock weighing forty billion tonnes smashed into the Mediterranean twenty times faster than a bullet, creating an inferno of vaporised rock and super-heated wind that incinerated most of Italy, Tunisia and Libya.

    Karl nodded. "How does he think that they can ride it out?" He and Coeo had already discussed it while he was conjoined with Loki, but it wouldn't hurt to go over it again.

    Loki translated the question for Coeo, who picked rock-eater from between his vast canine and the next tooth, and stared at it for inspiration, before answering. "Heading for higher ground will offset the higher temperatures and air pressure. It should be OK."

    Karl nodded. Should be OK? he thought. Coeo, you're gambling with your people's future; I'm not sure that it's something that I could do. But then Coeo was adapted – who knew what changing the body did to the mind?

    Karl thought of what was likely to really happen and wished he could tell them that when the comet landed it would throw up enough water vapour and debris to occlude the suns' light for weeks, perhaps months. That the ensuing winter would stretch into spring, maybe even into the Isheimuri summer, a full standard year away. This might be Isheimur's year without a summer. Crops would fail, even the grass might die back, and millions of animals, settler stock and native fauna alike would die. Famine would follow.

    Karl hoped that he was being pessimistic, but he wasn't sure.

    "Look." Beside him, Bera pointed to the windscreen where Isheimur's atmosphere lit up with dozens, scores, even hundreds of tiny flashes popping off all across the hemisphere. Her arm hooked through the strap on the other side, she wrapped her nearest arm around him. "It's beautiful," Bera said as a smudge that was a bigger piece of debris streaked across Isheimur's sky.

    "Like you," Karl said.

    "Flatterer." Bera snuggled closer. "I want to be near

you… in case, well you know." She looked down. In case we're killed, she meant.

    "Fenris is still gaining on us," Coeo said, looking up from the monitor. "Will it hit us?"

    "Negative," Loki said. "It will be close, but it will hit the atmosphere ninety seconds behind us."

    "Tell us again, Gothi," Arnbjorn said, "What will happen if someone answers all these messages that you've been sending about?"

    "Hard to tell," Karl said. "If they're Formers, we'll be reliant on you to argue the case for Coeo's people. If they're Tropists, we'll need to make them aware of the adapted men, and convince them that you've worked out how to co-exist." He didn't add that in all likelihood, one side would probably need to be re-settled, voluntarily or not. It seemed to him that long-term coexistence was unlikely at best, but Karl was used to thinking in decades or even centuries. He said, "The worst alternative is that we might draw the group who originally ambushed me.

    "Although," he added, "two sets of colonists may distract them from any thoughts of finishing me off. And of course, no one may come at all." It seemed the least likely outcome to Karl, but it had to be faced.

    The ship groaned and shook. Loki crackled, "We've just hit the edge of Isheimur's exosphere. The ride is about to get very, very rough."

    "Buckle up, everyone," Karl said, and Arnbjorn helped Ragnar.

    "Karl Allman," Ragnar called, voice quavering.

    "Yes?"

    Ragnar cursed. "You and our friend Loki will have to learn to recite my words for me." He took a deep breath, and when he spoke, his voice had grown stronger, fighting the dull roaring outside.

"And when the Gods left Isheimur,

They cast a bolt from the sky…"

    "Oh, no," Karl whispered, trying to keep his face straight. "Not epic verse, please!"

    "Hush!" Bera poked him in the ribs. "Show some respect." She bit her lower lip, and let out a small snort of laughter, which she quickly stifled.

    Ragnar paused and Karl thought he had stopped, but the old man was merely drawing breath.

    Ragnar finally finished – or his voice gave up against the steadily increasing roars and rattles from inside and outside the ship – Karl couldn't be sure which. Ragnar said something and Coeo began speaking in a regular cadence that implied that it too was a poem.

    When he finished, Coeo unclipped his harness and staggering toward Ragnar, offered the settler his hands. Ragnar hesitated, but then held his out. The two men slowly clasped hands. The moment over, Coeo fell into his seat.

    The gradually thickening air outside glowed orange, then red, finally white, and Coeo and Ragnar covered their ears – even Karl's were hurting. The deceleration tugged at his cheeks, muscles and joints. Karl took deep breaths, trying to calm his racing heart, failing miserably. He noticed Bera doing the same and gave her a smile which she returned.

    The juddering grew worse, and to the accompanying roar of the onrushing atmosphere the thrusters added their whine. "That thruster is misfiring again," Loki said, static blurring his voice. "I'm attempting to compensate, but I fear that we are struggling to achieve a shallow enough angle. I've no desire to plunge into a steep dive into the ground."

    "What's the target?" Karl said.

    Loki flashed a map up onto the monitor. "This equatorial sea I have marked, which has not yet frozen."

    "Surtuvatn!" Bera cried. "Where I was born – we're going home!"

    Karl squeezed her hand.

    Loki said, "Fenris is hitting the exosphere." It changed the monitor to show the aft view, where a third sun lit up the sky with an angry orange glow, searing through the atmosphere like an incendiary snowplough.

    The whining of the thrusters increased to a shriek, and a piece of metal
spanged
out of a side console and flew across the room, fortunately missing everyone. Loki said, "I have increased power to the other thrusters, to compensate for one that has failed."

    "Void all decks except ours of air!" Karl called. "Loki, dump the water and anything and everything else that you can either drop or fire out to act as thrust."

    "Proceeding." The roaring outside increased until it hurt the ears. "We're flattening out," Loki said.

    Bera took Karl's hand. It felt like holding hands on the mile-high funfair on Avalon. Bera said, "If we live–"

    "We will live," Karl said.

    "If we live," Bera said, flashing him a tearful smile, "I want your children. I still miss him." Karl thought of a small cairn, back at Skorradalur. "I want him to have brothers and sisters," Bera said.

    "I want it, as well," Karl said. "But I can't live on two worlds at once." He thought of Maydays, and oncoming fleets.

    "Better still," Bera said. "If they come, if your people come for you, we'll bring them with us."

    "You want to come?" Karl felt the stupid grin all over his face. But the shaking's so bad that she probably can't see it anyway, he thought.

    "That is one stupid grin, Karl Allman," Bera said, nailing that idea. "Yes, I want to come. Would your family accept me?"

    "We'll work something out," Karl said. The juddering grew worse, even rattling his teeth.

    "That child we talked about," Bera said, her words juddering out of her.

    "Yes?"

    "It may be sooner than you think."

    "What?" Karl yelled. Heads swivelled around.

    "Of course, I may just be late because of stress or something, but if I'm not, you're going to be a father… Pappi."

    She burst out laughing. "If you could see your face…" she sobered. "Are you… is it OK?"

    "Yes!" Karl cried, feeling the smile across his face. "Yes, yes! Very OK!" He fought the shaking and rattling to throw his arms around her.

    "I want," Bera shouted, when he let her go.

    "Yes?"

    "I want to see the stars with you!" Bera shouted above the noise.

    And then, all at once the shuddering eased.

    They sat in silence stained by the ringing in Karl's ears.

    On the screen the falling sun slammed into the polar ice cap and an inferno of dust and fire formed a pillar rising high into the cloudy sky in an evil blossoming.

    "Brace for the shockwave," Loki said. Seconds later an invisible fist punched them in the back, turning them end over end, a tiny leaf in a gargantuan storm.

    When the ship finally stopped spinning, Loki opened the screen, and a great white carpeted land lay out below them, stretching as far as the eye could see to the North Pole. The only break was the blue of Saltuvatn, peppered with black rocky outcrops, rushing up toward them.

    Karl took Bera's hand as the W
inter Song
fell toward the sea.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people helped with this book, and my thanks go especially to Skorri and Haraldur Aikman, Mike Brotherton, Mike Carroll, Roy Grey, Michael Lucas, Josh Peterson, Sharon Reamer, Rob Rowntree, Bernard Scudder and Nik Whitehead. Praise is due to them, but any mistakes are mine.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Colin Harvey lives in Bristol in the south-west of England, with his wife Kate and spaniel Alice. His first fiction was published in 2001, since when he has written novels, short stories and reviews, edited anthologies. He has judged the Speculative Literature Foundation's annual Gulliver Travel Research Grant for five years. His next novel,
Damage Time
, is also due to be published by Angry Robot.

www.colin-harvey.com

    
    
    

    
DAMAGE TIME

    

    
by Colin Harvey