It seemed, however, highly improbable that the rocket port would simply be parked somewhere along this road. In a moment the confidence he had felt in the computer map drained from him. That little rocket shape was probably left over from the time of construction and in reality the transport to the other world could be anywhere. At the very least it would be a good way off-road and how on earth would he find it? Moreover the highway would quickly be as dangerous for him as the tunnels. News of his latest crimes would soon reach the local Iceman and they would be gunning for him in addition to Nute and his gang. At the most he had half an hour start on pursuers. He felt like a hunted animal with the hounds closing in, like one of the holo-programs he had seen back in the Sector; and that prompted a thought about how the fox always looked for ways to conceal its trail. He realized the snow was falling more thickly and would quickly hide the marks of the caterpillar tracks. With an impulse born of desperation he abruptly swung the tractor off the road, heading west away from the refrigeration zone. This would be his one chance to dodge the Icemen and not leave a trail. He could perhaps lay low out in the borderlands and then double back to the Sector. They would not be expecting that.
He had managed somehow to get the vehicle up to fourth gear. Once on the icefield it kept moving at more or less the same pace, lumbering across the monotonous landscape. The glow of the day hung on the snow even though the sun had gone down. In the gathering twilight everywhere looked the same, low bare rises followed by a corresponding dip and then another rise. The tops were scraped by the constant wind but the troughs were filled with drifts and ice walls. The tractor’s arrow plow in front seemed to carve through the drifts as if nothing could stand in its way. But peering through the gathering gloom Poll realized he could soon be lost and for the first time he checked the console for its navigation equipment. He saw the beacon display and toggled its switch finding the camps and then the tractor’s home base. That put his mind at rest: he could always make his way back to the road. There was also a radio, but that was the last thing he was thinking of using. He saw some other dials and for the first time the thought came to him of the tractor’s power supply and how much was left. He found a dial that read “Power Unit” and to his sudden horror he saw that it was down beyond its last fifth, a little over four hours left. It had been nowhere near fully charged when he’d stolen it and now there was not enough power to return to his Sector. His options suddenly narrowed considerably, and then, almost at once, they vanished all together.
He was moving along a valley floor, aiming at a point to climb the hill, when a strange hollow sound came from underneath and almost immediately a succession of terrifying cracks and a sensation of falling. The tractor bellied down with a jarring thump and an avalanche of snow came in on top, suddenly making it completely dark. Meanwhile the caterpillar tracks continued to drive angrily forward, skidding and slicing, burrowing the vehicle deeper into a wall of ice and snow. He had hit a crevasse, a place where the ice had formed across the top of a deeper hole. And now he was in it.
Picking himself up from the side of the driver’s seat Poll struggled desperately to find the clutch. Finally he reached it and slipped the gear. He put the tractor in reverse and managed to pull away from the wall in front of him. In the light of the console he looked for the wiper switch. When he found it the big blades shuddered and moaned but finally unburdened the windshield of its mountain of snow. He looked for other switches and found the driving lights. He could see that the wall in front of him was above the height of the tractor. He found another switch for a wiper on the rear window and went back to look but he could make out very little. He put the tractor in reverse again and it rumbled backward but he had no practice and it headed straight into a wall. He tried the maneuver again but kept wedging into the walls. He was knocking more snow and ice into his path and there was no plow on the back.
Poll felt panic take hold of him and he tried hard to control himself. He decided he must push his way out to the front, so once more he charged the ice-tractor forward. He cleared the windshield to look but the snow in front appeared just as mountainous as before. Still he repeated the movement, crawling backward and then plowing forward and keeping the engine turning at maximum power, trying to force his way out. He could not see a thing but still kept the power at full throttle, hoping desperately he would break through.
The tracks churned, gripping and slipping, the engine gave a harsh screaming sound and there was a smell of burning. A heat gauge showed the engine nearing the red warning mark, dangerously hot, but still he pushed forward, believing it might need just a few moments more. Then he glanced at the Power dial and he felt sick to his stomach. The needle was almost visibly falling. It read under three hours. He had to stop if he was to have any hope of getting back, at least to the camp. He took the engine out of gear. There was no other way, he had to dig himself out.
Yet how was he to do that? He flipped the wiper switch. The patch at the top of the windshield was now entirely night and covered quickly with falling snow. He was totally exhausted and gazed helplessly at the bank of dials on the console. After a moment, his eyes lit upon one that read “Auxiliary Heat”. He cut the power to the engine and hit the switch under the dial. He heard a slight hum, the meter flickered and held steady at twelve hours. In that instant Poll let go. Something inside him refused to worry anymore, about anything. He had twelve hours of warmth and rest left. Nobody was ever going to find him down here in this underworld. He was completely safe. Tomorrow he would face his world’s problems again, but not now, not tonight.
He even felt happy. He hauled himself out of the driver’s seat, retrieving his coat which he had shrugged off when he first took control of the tractor. He climbed through the connecting hatch to the benches in the back and sat down, digging into the coat pocket for the last of the scones that he and Finn had saved that morning. A thought made him stop and get back up. He returned to the front and rummaged around in the storage compartments there. Sure enough there was an emergency supply of protein and energy bars and a large container of water. He went back to his bench and gorged himself on the cache of food. He even had a perverse feeling of gratitude. To whom or what should he be grateful? To the Homeland? It was far too much to think about. He lay down, wrapping the coat around him. He stared at the dark, now total except for the few monitor lights still on at the front. The darkness and the solitude did not bother him. Very shortly he was asleep.
He dreamed and in his dream he was in a great ocean and there was no land anywhere. Somehow his feet were on the bottom and his head was above the water. The sun was bright and all the waves glittered in its light. Out of his bones and his body—he did not know how—came a kind of coral which continued growing around him until it formed a large island. The white of the coral reflected the sunlight and it was beautiful and peaceful. He woke up and wanted to be on the island forever. He had a feeling there was someone else living there, on the island, but he didn’t know who it was. As he tried to imagine who it could be he fell back to sleep.
***
Cal had been traveling south for something like an hour and was desperately fighting the need to curl up and sleep. In the early day the clouds had thinned considerably and the sun now at a higher angle made the ice dazzle with its standard Homeland ferocity. She was shaking her head every few seconds to try and wake up, but the effort to hold her eyes open together with the constant glare made her vision swim. If she’d not found shaded glasses beneath the dashboard she would have been unable to see at all. Squinting into the road ahead it seemed as if the whiteness melted for a moment and then reformed into the shape of a big ice-tractor bearing down on her from the opposite direction. There should have been space to pass but the vehicle was deliberately occupying the whole of the road and either she had to swerve off the highway or slow down to a stop. When she did the latter the sixteen-seater cut her off at an angle and the driver lowered his window slightly and gestured that she lower hers. The ma
n had a hard unpleasant face. A sudden feeling of fear dispelled her tiredness as he spoke into the crack.
“Who are you and state your business.”
She did her best to tough it out. “I should ask the same about you.”
There was a movement from inside the vehicle and the window lowered further. A pointed gun came through the space and behind it the face of a man with one side of his head covered in bandages. The remaining eye looked at her murderously.
“Don’t fool with me lady. Tell us what you’re doing or I’ll shoot you on the spot, so help me.”
Cal lost her nerve. “I didn’t mean to anger you. The name is Cal and I’m from Sector Three, looking for Poll Sidak.”
The driver spoke. “That’s more like it. We heard about you. Our boss is doing a check right now. You are to follow us until we find out more. If you refuse, just like my friend says, we’ll hunt you down and shoot you.”
The window rolled up and the big tractor backed round and moved off, this time to the south, the direction Cal had been traveling. As it turned she could see there were at least four men inside and their look was as cold as the ice itself. The tractor pulled ahead and she put her own tractor in gear and followed. These men were plainly the killers who ran the camps. And they were out scouring the road looking for Poll, reckoning he could not have gone far from the highway. She did not give much for his chances if they found him. If Poll had any sense he would leave the road all together. She decided she had to lull them into thinking she was obeying them, but there was no way she was going to stay behind. If little by little she fell back she might be able to swerve out across the tundra and get out of range of the gun before they could turn and follow. The problem was whether they would catch up. Their tractor had a bigger engine, but more weight, and she remembered what Rip had said about the bigger tractors easily getting stuck. She would have to take her chances. It was a matter of when.
She began to fall further behind and had put about thirty yards between herself and her captors when suddenly her decision was made for her. Out on the icefield, somewhere in the wilderness distance, a plume of smoke rose to the sky. Something absolutely abnormal—there should be nothing out there to cause a fire. In the same moment she noticed it she saw the tractor in front swerve slightly. The driver had seen it too. In an instant she turned at right angles to the road to get away, and raced as fast as she could across the ice and snow. But then immediately she experienced the difficulty of traveling in the borders. Going along the higher levels was easy enough, but heading down into the dips the tractor had to labor against accumulated drifts and ice ridges. She dreaded the big tractor following her. If it kept in her tracks it could go faster and from the top of one of the hills she would present an easy target struggling through the troughs. But the pursuit never happened. The men evidently thought the fire could only be made by Poll and they were heading directly across the snow and ice toward it, figuring they would catch up with her later.
This meant they were between her and Poll. She swung round savagely to face the wisp of rising smoke. There was nothing for it but an all-in race. All she could do was hope she beat the other tractor to the finish line.
***
When Poll awoke the second time a dim light suffused the cabin. He got to his feet and made his way to the driver’s section. Sunlight was coming through the layer of snow at the top of the windshield. It was about seven o'clock and the Auxiliary Heat read at zero. Thankfully the body of the tractor seemed to have retained warmth and he saw that the top of the windshield was actually melting a little. He searched around in the storage box and found a pair of mittens. He put these in his coat pocket and shuffled it on, grabbing a shovel that was attached to the cabin ceiling. Going to the back, he pushed open the emergency door, released the retractable steps and stepped down into the gulley. It was cold but there was no wind. Putting on his mittens he started to shovel the snow behind the tractor. He soon saw that the level behind was getting deeper and there would be no way of getting the tractor out this way. He would simply descend further into the gulley.
He clambered up the back of the gulley, throwing the shovel ahead of him. On top there was still very little wind and he felt a warmth in the rays of the sun that the cold air did not completely kill. It was the first time he’d experienced anything like it. Stumbling his way to the front of the tractor he thought he could make out the general contours of the gulley. He guessed it extended twenty or thirty yards from where he stood. If he could clear the incline directly in front of the tractor then perhaps he could get it to climb up out of the ditch. He jumped down and started shoveling the impacted wall of snow and ice. It was very hard to dislodge and he used up a lot of energy simply breaking the first couple of feet. He was sweating and he had to remove his coat, something he’d thought impossible there on the borderlands. He kept hacking away and then he came to what he knew at once to be the reason the tractor was blocked. He was hitting a solid ridge of ice that stood more or less in the middle of the gulley, formed no doubt by the melting and freezing of snow. He must have landed toward the end of the ditch, with the rest of the ditch behind covered by wind-hardened ledge of snow. He’d smashed right through the top, landing in a perfect trap. Now he was facing a solid buttress of ice. The shovel barely made a dent on it. It would take him days to knock this down.
He put his coat back on and climbed out of the gulley. He sat on the bank overlooking his vehicle and let the sun warm his face. After a while he got back down, found the clips retaining the hood on the motor and sprung it open. He could see the big coils, the oiled engine parts and the huge batteries resting on the chassis. He went back into the cabin and found an emergency flare gun he’d noticed before, together with a handful of cartridges. One more time he clambered up on the bank and retreated a dozen yards from the front of the tractor. He fiddled with the gun until he got it loaded, then he lowered it in front of him, aimed it at the engine and opened fire.
The shot went high, cracked the windshield and bounced off into the bank where it flashed and sputtered for several minutes. Reloading he stepped closer, aiming and shooting deeper into the engine. The charge buried itself in the belly of the motor and spent itself vigorously. The oil caught fire and flames began to lick along the hood. He fired another flare and then simply lobbed the two remaining cartridges into the engine. The engine casing became a furnace. There were a couple of harsh popping sounds and multiple angry whooshes as the cartridges exploded and the battery gasses ignited. He felt the fierce heat on his face and he retired farther up the bank, sitting on a snow crest to observe the bonfire of the Homeland’s vehicle and all it stood for. The cabin caught light, the windows burst and soon the body of the tractor was a mass of flames. In the narrow space of the ditch and on its edges the ice and snow rapidly began to melt and for the first time Poll could see actual rock and lifeless peat. Black twists of smoke found each other and spiraled up to form a grim pillar against the blue sky. Gazing at the inferno he had created Poll lost every sense of time and he didn’t notice when two vehicles began to make their way up the length of his valley along its opposing ridges.
Cal was on the western ridge and she was trailing the big tractor by a hundred yards, but she seemed to be moving faster than the larger vehicle and was gaining. The Icemen had noticed her behind them but she was out of gunshot range so it had now become a clear race to get to Poll first. The men could see the blackened hulk of the vehicle and the area surrounding but they did not at first grasp the situation—it looked like someone had exploded a bomb. What they could clearly see, however, was Poll sitting up on the hillside on the far side, nearest to the western ridge.
“There he is, the lunatic! What’s the bastard done?”
“That bitch could reach him first. Get down there now and we'll scare her off.”
The driver slewed the tractor, aiming on a straight line to where Poll was. At full speed it was difficult to hold steady on the slope and the tracks churned
to the bottom more quickly than he intended. Once there the tractor slowed down considerably. Immediately the figure of a man with a bandaged head emerged from a window and began firing wildly first at Cal and then Poll.
“Hey, Poll, it’s Nute, back from the dead, your worst fucking nightmare. You'll not get away this time.”
Cal saw what was happening and felt helpless. She would probably reach Poll just before they did, but would present an easy target for the gun, as would Poll. He had stood up when he’d heard the gunshots but he wasn’t moving. He was just staring at the men’s tractor. Why wasn’t he moving, at least trying to hide? Suddenly she understood why. The big tractor lurched at a crazy angle, one set of tracks almost in the air. The driver was fighting to right the vehicle but he committed himself the wrong way, trying to steer away from the fissure, and the whole thing flipped over on its side. In a flash Cal saw there were crevasses in the valley, the one where Poll’s tractor used to be, and another under the men’s tractor. The pursuers had fallen straight into a trap. She raced at full speed on the ridge, confident now she could get to a point close to Poll.
Pascale's Wager: Homelands of Heaven Page 17
