Over Freezing Altitudes

by Kate MacLeod

  “We could be getting a garbled version. Or an incomplete one. We’re not sure. But to be on the safe side, we’re sending you down the mountain,” John Carlo said.

  “What if they follow me there?” Scout asked.

  “It’s too small of a town,” Mary Grace said. “There is no way they could hide there. Even one person who doesn’t belong there would be noticed. You’ll see when you get there.”

  Scout nodded, then hunched over in the seat again as they drew into another station. When the doors had once more shut and they had plunged back out into the white light, she slid sideways in her seat to look out the back window.

  The rail the train ran on was so narrow it was hard to make out its path further back than the building they were just emerging from, but then Scout’s eyes caught a glimmer of light reflecting on metal and followed it around.

  The train ran at a slow spiral, plunging through each tower at a slightly lower level than the last. She wished she could see up ahead. Would they stop at ground level?

  John Carlo turned away to have another whispered conversation, and Mary Grace opened a bag she wore close to her side to offer Scout a sandwich. Scout took it with a nod of thanks, aware of both of the dogs’ eyes on her as she took a bite. Soft bread spread generously with a dark-colored nut paste, slathered with such a thick layer of honey it was spilling around the sides of the sandwich. Scout had to twist her hand repeatedly to lick at the backs of her fingers and catch the sticky trails before they reached the cuff of her coat.

  She didn’t mind. The honey was like sweet golden sunshine, so exactly what she needed after days of the tribunal enforcers’ strange food. And the places where the honey had soaked into the bread crust while still wrapped in Mary Grace’s bag had crystallized like candy.

  Scout was sticky when she was done, but the dogs were eager to help her clean up the last few sticky spots on her hands. And when the dogs were done, Mary Grace handed her a napkin to wipe off the dog spit.

  “Nearly there,” John Carlo said, moving to stand by the door. Scout hunched over, listening to the sounds of people on the other side of John Carlo. She wished she had been able to walk through the city; everyone in the stations sounded so merry, like it was a holiday and they were all celebrating together.

  Then they were back in the silence of their car and then back out into the sky.

  Only it wasn’t so bright here, and Scout saw that they had spiraled so low she could see the streets below, the cars and bikes and people. There was a marketplace full of light and color as hundreds of shop signs all competed for her attention.

  The streetlights were decorated with banners, each a silver snowflake on a bright blue background. Some of the bags the shoppers carried had similar patterns. Maybe it really was a holiday here.

  “This last station connects to the tramway as well,” John Carlo said. “Just stick close with Mary Grace, and we’ll move through as quickly as we can. We’re catching the last tram of the night. Once we’re on board, everything will be fine.”

  For the night, anyway. But Scout didn’t say that out loud.

  The doors opened on an even greater roar of sound, lots of people moving about through an even larger space, echoes filling the vaulted ceiling above them. John Carlo went first, finding breaks in the crowd for Scout and the dogs to follow. Mary Grace stayed close behind Scout, head constantly swiveling as she looked all around them for any signs of trouble.

  Scout wanted to look too, but it was all she could do to keep the dogs calm and close at her sides through the crowd. She kept them both close to her left side, Shadow between her and Gert, as he was the one more likely to be trampled on. She had a vague sense of the room around her: large, the only windows high above offering nothing more than a glimpse of white sky, the walls all cold gray stone.

  Those walls felt old, like someone had found the remains of an ancient city and put a layer of modern city over the top of it. But she didn’t think that could be true. With the low gravity and low oxygen levels of the atmosphere, no one could have lived here before they had the technology to enclose everything under a dome, could they?

  John Carlo reached back to catch hold of her elbow to guide her through one last thick throng of people to a separate room off the main hall. The ceiling still vaulted high above her, the windows offering only cold, remote light, and the old stone still surrounded her, but there were considerably fewer people here.

  And in the middle of the room was an immense machine that held a system of cables aloft. The cables disappeared through a hole in the stone floor at a steep angle. Even as Scout was trying to peer down into the large rectangular opening in the floor, something rose up through it, dangling from the wires and rocking softly as it came to a rest at the top of the wires.

  The machine stopped turning, and the voices around her settled to a quieter level, no longer shouting to be heard over the racket of the machine.

  “This way,” John Carlo said, leading her to the doors in the side of the tram car. The doors opened but only four people trickled out. One appeared to recognize John Carlo and greeted him with a smile and a nod. John Carlo nodded back, his smile more of a thin-lipped grimace.

  Then they were on the tram car. Scout brought the dogs to the back corner and got them both to sit beside her.

  Mary Grace paused in the doorway, one hand resting lightly on the door frame as she looked over the crowd, occasionally rising up on tiptoe. Scout suspected a pantomime; she wanted to look like a woman looking for a lost companion and not someone trying to suss out a shadow.

  But if it were really Shi Jian and her girl assassins gunning for Scout, the subterfuge wouldn’t matter.

  Scout felt that prickling being-watched feeling again and looked around, scanning as quickly as she could, desperate for a real glimpse of whoever was watching her. Had she really seen blue-gray eyes, or had she only imagined it?

  But she could see no one looking their way, and when the doors closed, they were the only ones in the tram car.

  “Is this weird, being alone?” Scout asked.

  “Not at all,” John Carlo said, and indeed he looked far more relaxed now than at any moment since she’d met him.

  “So everyone pretty much lives in the city?” Scout asked.

  “Oh no,” Mary Grace said, still with that gentle tone of voice that said that none of Scout’s assumptions were silly in any way. “There are many villages, but most are on the southern slope of the mountain. It’s less rocky there, more suitable for the winter sports and other visitor highlights. The village we’re going to is on the north side, colder and darker and too steep and rocky for anything but goat herding.”

  “They make fantastic cheese,” John Carlo told her, his dry tone at odds with his word choice. Scout was getting the sense that John Carlo was a very serious sort of man. Probably a good thing in a lawyer fighting a seemingly unwinnable battle.

  “I know you’re from a warm world, and this isolation might be hard for you,” Mary Grace said. “We’ll bring you back to us just as soon as we safely can. Hopefully before Schneetagen. That’s the winter festival here. It lasts for three days of feasting and dancing and games. The city is actually quite nice. It has all of the modern amenities of Galactic Central but feels more like the sort of world we’re used to. I’m sure you’ll have the time to explore all of it while we build our case.”

  “I don’t mind being alone,” Scout assured her. “But seeing the city does sound nice.”

  Scout looked out of the window. The world around her was already dark, the sun still shining down on the city blocked here by the mountain itself. Everything below was all jagged rock and silvery snow and long, impenetrable shadows.

  She hoped she would be back in the city soon. But if there was one thing that seldom worked out for her, it was hoping for a thing.

  She was just going to have to get used to this new, dark world.

  7

  Scout rested her head against the window and wat
ched the mountain slope pass below her. The glass of the window was pleasantly cool, and the rocking of the tram car was like a cradle trying to lull her to sleep.

  Then she saw light below and snapped out of her doze. The sun had completely gone, the ground below her had lost all definition, but directly in front of the tram car, where the cables were descending to, was a cluster of bright lights.

  “The hamlet,” John Carlo said. “Most of the homes are close to the station, and there is a market there on good-weather days. The lights are around that. The McGillicuddys actually live a little further up the slope, but they are meeting us at the station with lights, so you won’t be walking alone in the dark.”

  “Alone?” Scout asked. “Aren’t you staying?”

  “We can’t,” Mary Grace said, putting a hand on Scout’s shoulder. “We have too much to do, and the communication systems down here are spotty at best.”

  “But you said this was the last tram of the day,” Scout said.

  “Yes. We’ll say good-bye from here. But there will be enough time to introduce you to Emma and the kids,” Mary Grace said.

  Scout nodded, then turned back to watch the lights drawing ever closer.

  As they reached the end of the line, Scout saw John Carlo and Mary Grace both adjusting their clothing, tugging on knit caps and turning up their collars. Scout dug her own cap out of her jacket pocket and put it on, smoothing the ear flaps down over her ears.

  The tram car lurched to a halt and swung for a moment before the doors slid open. For a moment, nothing seemed different. Then a gust of wind danced inside the car, carrying flakes of snow with it, and Scout gasped out loud.

  She had slept out at night in the prairies of Amatheon on many occasions. More than once she’d woken to find a fine layer of frost clinging to her blanket. Those had been cold nights.

  Or so she had thought at the time. As Scout struggled to zip her own collar up over the bottom half of her face, she realized her idea of what cold was had been off by several orders of magnitude.

  “Scout,” John Carlo said, holding out a hand for her to step up beside him. Scout clutched the dogs’ leashes and led them to the edge of the doorway.

  The tram platform on this end wasn’t in an enclosed room. She could see a flat surface beneath a fine dusting of snow, although if it was stone or concrete, she couldn’t tell in the yellow-toned light.

  The platform was one side of a large open square, probably where they set up the market. The other three sides were all houses, squat structures that also appeared to be made mainly of stone, with low doors and no windows.

  Waiting on the platform was a woman and three children, too bundled up in warm clothing for her to make out any details.

  “Scout Shannon, this is Emma McGillicuddy and her children Willem, Trevor, and Neil,” John Carlo told her. “They’re going to take good care of you.”

  Scout bit her lip, not sure what to say. To her dismay, the garbled loudspeaker voice was already announcing the tram’s departure, and the chime was sounding.

  “We have to get back,” John Carlo said, “but we’ll be in touch. And the moment we’re sure it’s safe, we’ll send for you.”

  “Thank you,” Scout said.

  Mary Grace pulled her into a tight hug that ended with a gentle push to encourage her to step off the tram. She did, the dogs jumping down after her.

  Then the doors hissed shut, and the tram rose back up the mountainside. The Torreses inside were still waving back to her when the tram reached a point too distant for Scout to make out any more details.

  She turned to face the family that was missing a member thanks to her. She held the dogs close to her side. Shadow was fine with this, shivering and picking up his paws one after another, not liking the cold radiating from the platform. Gert, on the other hand, was straining at her leash, desperate to run and explore, pushing her nose through little drifts of snow with happy snuffles.

  Emma McGillicuddy pulled down the scarf that had been wrapped around her face. Her cheeks went from pink to red at the first touch of the cold air, and Scout thought she had a clue why no one seemed to want to be the first to speak. “We should get up to the cabin. It’s warmer there, and we can talk.”

  “Okay,” Scout agreed, then tucked her chin deeper into her collar. She found gloves in the pockets of her coat and moved the leashes from hand to hand as she pulled them over her fingers, which were already turning a ghoulish sort of white in the cold.

  Then she followed the row of figures that stepped off the platform into a trench dug in the snow. The snow on either side was nearly a meter deep, and Scout was glad they didn’t have to walk through that. Plus, the walls of the trenches protected them from the worst of the wind.

  Then they reached the last house at the edge of the little hamlet and the end of the neatly dug trench.

  Emma helped her children clamber up onto the snow. Scout tried to climb up after, but Shadow made a little whine, and she went back to pick him up. Gert was more willing to plow through on her own, eager even. Scout let go of her leash, trusting she’d stay nearby. Gert plunged into the snow like a dolphin in water, throwing great masses of it up into the air to slowly drift back down in the low gravity, or more often to be carried away on the wind.

  The wind was cold, but it was nowhere near as strong as the wind Scout was used to back home. She guessed that was because of the thinner atmosphere.

  Plowing through the snow was hard work, but she was only a little winded, so the nanites must be doing their job keeping her blood oxygenated.

  The hamlet had been built on a plateau, but Emma led them to the edge of that plateau and then up the slope of the mountain. The wind was more prevalent here, if not exactly strong, and had swept the rock nearly clean of snow, making the walk easier.

  Scout realized they were following a path of sorts when they passed through a deep fissure in the rock where someone had fashioned stairs to help at the steeper bits. Beyond the fissure was another open slope, this one so steep that Scout had to put her head down and focus on taking step after step as the muscles of her legs started to burn.

  She hoped she wouldn’t have to make this walk again, except to get back down, and surely that would be easier. Even pedaling her bike over the hills back home hadn’t been this much work.

  Then the slope ended on another plateau with deep piles of snow. Scout lifted her head and saw a light shining from over the door of a little stone cabin on the far side of the plateau, Emma and her line of children spread between her and it. Gert came galloping past Scout to plunge once more into the deeper snow. Shadow watched her go by, then shivered as if he felt the cold Gert didn’t seem to notice at all.

  The others were waiting at the front of the cabin for Scout when she arrived, the littlest child stomping their feet, perhaps from the cold or perhaps from impatience. Emma opened the door and led the way into a small room not unlike an airlock, closing the door once they were all inside.

  Then the family began shedding outer clothing, and Scout finally saw them all. Each of the boys had red hair like Liam, although where his had been thinning and cut close to his head, theirs was thick and wavy like their mother’s dark blonde hair. Scout guessed they were all between ten and six.

  Scout unzipped her jacket but left it on. Even with the shirt, vest, and second shirt, the air still felt cold. So far the indoors didn’t feel all that much warmer than outside.

  “We have food,” Emma said as she opened the far door and warm light from the home beyond filled the coat room. “Soup and fresh-baked bread. And lots of hot tea. The best thing for warming back up.” She tried to smile at Scout but was repeatedly distracted by her three children barreling past her into the kitchen. When the last of them had gone, she bent to pick up the hats, scarves, and gloves that had fallen helter-skelter to the floor and put them in the cubbies over the coat hooks.

  “I’m sorry,” Scout said.

  “Oh, it’s all right, dear,” Emma said. “
I don’t mind the cold, and it’s good for the boys to get out now and again.”

  Scout had to puzzle over this for a moment before she realized Emma thought she was apologizing for making them meet her at the station. “I meant for Liam.”

  “Oh,” Emma said, and her cheeks colored. “Oh, there’s nothing to apologize for there. We talked about it before he left and we both agreed that he had to go get you. We owe Gertrude Bauer so much, both of us. And we knew he would almost certainly be arrested and might be unable to continue working as a marshal even if he was cleared. We made the choice together, and I don’t regret it, not a bit. I know he doesn’t either.”

  “But now you have to hide out here, so far from home,” Scout said.

  “It’s not so bad,” Emma said and tried to muster up a convincing smile. The smile faltered, and Scout was afraid she was about to break down into tears, but to her surprise, Emma burst into laughter. “Okay, I hate it here. There, I said it. So cold, so dark, so remote. But it’s the safest place for the boys, who think it’s just grand they get a bonus break from school. And it’s not forever, is it?”

  “I hope not,” Scout said.

  “Come inside,” Emma said. “Let’s get some warmth inside of us.”

  The food was just as warming as Emma had promised, and tasty besides. The soup contained potatoes and corn, two things Scout knew well, but it was mainly cream, something she had never had before. The bread was light and crusty, and there was a huge crock of butter to smear over it, the golden pats melting the moment they touched the steaming bread.

  Once the food was all gone, the boys scampered away, Emma calling instructions after them. “Neil, pick up your toys before bed. Willem, double-check your homework before you transmit it to your teacher. Trevor, I’ll be along in a moment to help you with math, but at least take a stab at it without me.”