Cold as Ice

by Charles Sheffield

  "Sorry." She stepped away from the console. "Read it here if you want to, or take a private screen. I'll wait outside until you're finished."

  And that was the next surprise. The offer to leave was made as a formality, but almost always it was waived. Even private messages to DOS Center were never that private, because when you lived in each other's pockets for a few years, the number of secrets dwindled away to nothing. And David's messages in particular were never shielded from Camille.

  But now he was nodding.

  "If you would. Leave, I mean. For a few minutes. I'd like to read it here."

  That left her with no choice. Camille was desperate to learn how the images from the full DOS—the result of five years of effort out here in the middle of nowhere—were being received around the system. But she would have to wait. Personal messages always took priority.

  She went outside the chamber and hovered at the door. All of her plans for observations, not to mention the future of SuperDOS, depended on the reactions she received in the next day or two. And David was just as involved, just as dependent. How could his personal message be more important than the future of their work? Hell, he didn't even know what the message was about when he said he wanted to take it; all he knew was its point of origin. That information meant something to him, but it told Camille nothing. The last time she had seen a census, over two million people were living in Husvik, and the population of South Georgia Island was still growing as Earth's climate warmed.

  She itched to sneak back in and take a look, but she couldn't quite bring herself to do it. David had been too upset, too obviously worried. Instead, she waited impatiently at the door.

  He was occupied for maybe ten minutes, which felt like hours to Camille. When he emerged, any annoyance with him evaporated. All of his cheerful assertiveness was gone, replaced by a painful hesitancy. He stared at Camille as though he had never seen her before.

  "Er . . . mmm. You said you'd like to have my observing time. Didn't you? Well, I guess—now I suppose—" Even his speech was affected. The know-it-all, super-confident David had been transformed to a tongue-tied, awkward klutz. "I guess that it's all yours then. For now."

  "David, what's wrong? Can I help?"

  "Uh-uh." He shook his blond mop and did not look at her. "I have to . . . to go to Earth. Soon as possible. Got to get on the first ship. Soon as I can."

  "But why? You shouldn't leave. The next few days here at DOS are going to be critical."

  She didn't want to say that. She wanted to say, "David, sweetheart, tell me. I have a right to know, whatever it is." But before she could speak again, he nodded, turned, and headed back for the hub. Camille started to follow, then changed her mind. She went into the communications chamber and across to the outgoing-message screen.

  Reading someone else's personal message without permission was even worse than standing around while that person read it. But surely this was a real emergency. David had been asked—ordered—to do something that he certainly didn't want to do. And maybe he had sent a message back that was not marked "Personal."

  She scanned the outgoing messages. There was nothing from David, personal or otherwise. So he was not even putting up an argument.

  And what about the cost? A minimum-time trip to Earth was expensive. David had never seemed to have much money. So who would be paying for his transportation?

  Yielding to temptation, Camille went across to the incoming screen. It showed the recent arrival of dozens of messages, but no personal ones. She sat down at the console and queried the data bank for information on all personal messages received at DOS Center within the past twelve hours.

  There was just one. It had been of the Read-and-Erase type, which scrolled once across the screen and was obliterated from the computer record as soon as the recipient signed off.

  Camille gave up. She began to review the incoming, congratulatory messages about the DOS results, and the eager requests for scheduling by guest observers. It took every scrap of concentration for her to register even their general content. At what should have been the most exciting time at DOS Center since the end of the Great War a quarter of a century ago, a far-off hand had been able to reach in and disrupt everything.

  Her mind repeated the same thing over and over again. Someone wanted David Lammerman back on Earth; someone was in a position to make it happen, whether David wanted to go or not. And for whatever strange reason, someone was no more willing than David to divulge his or her identity.

  * * *

  Twelve hours later, Camille was at the computer again. Part of her mind was locked into detailed fusion calculations. The process felt automatic, a hindbrain function. The rest of her, the deepest inner core, was elsewhere.

  David was going to Earth. More than that, he was going for reasons that he had not discussed, would not discuss—could not discuss?—with Camille.

  What now of her complacent belief that she knew David better than anyone else in the system? She knew his family background, his education, his likes and dislikes, his fantasies and phobias. And she didn't know him at all. Didn't understand why he was upset, why he was going to Earth, why he wouldn't talk about it. Was it—could it be—another woman? Even if it were, what right had she to be jealous, she who had held on so firmly to her own independence?

  Amid her emotional turmoil, the calculations went on and on in a complex dance between woman and machine. No one was there to observe the odd partnership and the way that the roles of the two shifted, minute by minute, into an unfathomable kind of oneness.

  3

  The Sun King

  By the time that he was twenty years old, Jon Perry had become convinced of two great truths: Life in the water world of the deep oceans made sense; it was logical and predictable and calm. And life in the world of air, on the surface or above it, was none of those things; it was random, baffling, and bizarre.

  Now he had new proofs of that. One of them walked half a dozen paces in front of him. He stared at the back of Nell Cotter's red-dyed head, gleaming in the benign December sun, and puzzled over the mystery of her presence. She had no right to be there. Not after what had happened in the deeps of the Pacific Antarctic Ridge.

  As the Spindrift had returned to the surface, neither of them had found more than a few words for the other. He was worried and perplexed by the sudden order to return to surface base without explanation, while she had been badly shaken by the shock of the seaquake, two kilometers down. She did not have Jon's confidence in the Spindrift, or in his powers as pilot and navigator. To him, the episode of the seafloor eruption was clear in memory but already remote in feeling, an experience seen through a glass that screened emotion. To Nell Cotter, the episode had been direct, new, and terrifying. Her euphoria when she realized that she was not going to die in the depths only emphasized that point.

  At the surface she had insisted that she had recorded everything that she needed. The taping of the video show was complete. When they parted at the jetty of the floating base, there had been no expectation on Jon's part that he would see her again. He had gone forward to make his report. And there he had encountered a typical piece of Admin irrationality. He was told that he was to head at once for Arenas, and the office of the undersecretary.

  Why? No one in the administrative offices of the base would or could say. That was baffling and disturbing enough.

  And the undersecretary? What did a high-level politician have to do with Jon Perry, with hydrothermal vents and the study of benthic life forms? Absolutely nothing, according to the pinhead lieutenant who had given him his flight papers. But the man could provide no more information.

  Jon had slowly walked the length of the thousand-meter floating deck to the short, sloping runway and the waiting aircraft. And there, mystifyingly, Nell Cotter had appeared ten yards ahead of him. She was strolling along in the middle of a group of four mid-level staff members, laughing an easy, swinging laugh as relaxed as her walk. There was no sign that she had been
through anything traumatic. Her ability to bounce back—or to fake it—was amazing. But she certainly had no right to be heading for the aircraft. It belonged to the Global Ocean Monitor System, and only GOMS staff members were permitted aboard. He knew for certain that she had no connection with the group.

  But five minutes later they were flying east at Mach six, and Nell Cotter was walking along the aisle to sit next to him.

  She laughed at his question. "I didn't exactly invite myself. I just talked a little about the show. Then I showed them this"—she tapped the midget videocamera—"and explained that the work's not finished while the cameras are still rolling."

  "You told people you had to travel to Arenas with me to do your show? But that's a lie. The taping is over. You can't use me as an excuse to board."

  She reached across and placed a hand on his arm. "Hey, don't get excited." Whatever happened to the Ice Man? "I'm due in Stanley tomorrow to meet the show's producer. If I'd gone commercial, it would have taken eighteen hours by surface skimmer and I'd have been a wreck when I got there. Who needs that? And it's not as though I'm squeezing somebody out of a place." She waved at the aircraft's interior, where half of the forty seats were unoccupied, then leaned forward so she could turn and look into his eyes. "Come on, Dr. Perry—or may I call you Jon? All I've done is hitch a ride. Lighten up and let me buy you a drink."

  "Alcohol is forbidden on GOMS installations. As are all other drugs."

  "Then I'll buy you one in Arenas."

  "I'm sorry." Jon turned his head from her direct gaze and stared out of the window, to where the afternoon sun was transforming the krill farms to a golden lacework on the southern horizon. "I won't have time for anything like that. Upon arrival I have an immediate appointment with Undersecretary Posada." He felt ashamed the moment he said it. It was true enough, but he was hiding from her behind a meeting that he had not expected, did not understand, and did not want to attend.

  If he had hoped to rebuff her, the effort was a failure. She was leaning closer and he could smell a faint, flowery perfume.

  "After you've seen him, then, I'll buy you a drink. From what I've heard of Manuel Posada, you'll need one if you spend more than two minutes with him." Her face was inches from his, her right hand still resting on his forearm. "Actually, I've got a much better idea. Before I was given this assignment, I had expected to cover another event today—in Arenas. We're going to be there in time, so we could go to it together. It's a posh Inner Circle dinner to honor Cyrus Mobarak, ten thousand pesos a head."

  "I don't have ten thousand pesos . . . I don't have one thousand. And I'm to report at once to the undersecretary as soon as we land."

  "He'll never know the difference if you show up tomorrow instead of today. And don't worry about paying. I'll get press tickets. Two of them."

  "They wouldn't let me in. I'm not the press."

  Sweetheart, where have you been all your life? Two kilometers down? (And that's probably not far from the truth.) "Jon, they'll never know who you are unless you tell 'em. You'll be with me, I'll do the talking. And I owe you an evening out, don't I, for your putting up with me all day, and saving my life like that?"

  Jon stared into her innocent brown eyes and wondered how she did it. She proposed implausible sequences of events but made them seem perfectly natural. He was summoned to the capital for a meeting, one that sounded ominous at best. So Nell Cotter blithely suggested that he ignore an order from his boss's boss's boss and trot off for a fun evening on the town. He shuddered, and at the same time, he was fascinated. He had never in his life encountered anyone remotely like Nell. He wanted to go to dinner with her, desperately, and for reasons that went far beyond the idea of hearing Cyrus Mobarak: the Sun King, the legend. Jon took a deep breath.

  "I can't do that, Miss Cotter." I'm crazy. I'm throwing away the chance of a lifetime.

  "Nell. People who've sweated and shivered together can't be formal." Except that you didn't sweat or shiver, when I was ready to scream. Don't say no to me, Jon Perry. I won't take that for an answer. "You have to call me Nell. And you have to come."

  "I can't do it. Nell. The dinner, I mean. Word will have been sent to the undersecretary's office that I'm on the way. They'll be expecting me. Otherwise . . . well, otherwise I'd like to go with you. Love to go. And I'd like to hear Cyrus Mobarak. Do you believe the stories about them?—the Inner Circle, I mean."

  "Not all. But what I do believe are quite sufficient. There'll still be time, you know, after you see Posada. The dinner isn't until eight. We'll be landing at four."

  "You're assuming that he'll see me as soon as I call. But it doesn't work that way. I have to be fitted into his schedule, not the other way around."

  "So I'll cross my fingers for you." She leaned contentedly back in the seat, crossing not her fingers, but her legs. "It always works. You'll see. You'll have your meeting with him and be a free man again before eight. And then we'll go to the Inner Circle dinner and have some fun."

  * * *

  Nell Cotter was wrong. But so was Jon Perry.

  Even before the war, GOMS had been run on quasi-military lines. That had never changed. The floating bases, scattered across the oceans of the world, still had the attitude and ambience of military field operations. There might be rigid lines of command, some inefficiency, and a good deal of unnecessary or wasted effort, but things got done. Equipment was serviced. Machinery worked. Schedules were met.

  By contrast, the Administrative Center of the Global Ocean Monitor System ran like the headquarters of a peacetime army. With no end product, bureaucracy was more important than results. Delay was irrelevant, efficiency had no meaning.

  Jon had spent his working life in the world of the floating bases. It was a shock to report to Admin Center by five o'clock and learn that no one knew who he was or had any information about his arrival. Undersecretary Posada was busy and could not be disturbed. There was no Jon Perry on the appointments calendar, today or in the future. Posada's assistants had already left and would not return until nine the next morning. No one was available to authorize a call back to the floating base.

  Jon was given—reluctantly—a chit that would allow him to stay overnight at an Admin Center facility. He was warned that any service other than dinner and breakfast would have to be paid for personally. By six-thirty he had arrived at the spartan GOMS dormitory, to find the building packed with people. The manager informed him that with the climate change, Arenas was booming as never before, that every building was full to overflowing for the Midsummer Festival, and that Jon's chit meant nothing. If he could find nowhere else, he might be given a bedroll and a place on the dining-room floor—after all the meals were served, of course, and after the clean-up staff had done its work. Say, about one A.M.

  Jon called Nell Cotter, who was staying down by the strait. Her number did not answer. He left a message that he was on the way over, went outside onto the hilly streets, and walked south toward the water.

  Some elements of Arenas had not changed with the new prosperity. Every square meter of soil was riotous with summer flowers, and the air was balmy with their evening perfume. At latitude fifty-three south, the December sky would cloud over but not darken for another three or four hours.

  After six years of solitude and open ocean, Jon found the flowers and crowded streets as alien as another planet. Even the skuas, petrels, and terns were gone. He searched the sky for them, but they had flown far south for the summer, to reap a rich harvest around the diminishing icecap.

  Strangest of all were the children. There were no children on the floating bases, but here they were everywhere, playing games on each street corner, scuttling across sidewalks under his feet, or rolling uncontrolled down the hill on homemade carts and scooters. He avoided them unconsciously, his thoughts far away. It was one thing to be ignored at your home base, where you were free to set your own schedule and work on your own scientific projects. It was another to be dragged fifteen hundred kilometers
without explanation and then be treated in a way that made it clear that you were a total nonentity. He became gloomier and more irritated with every step. Something bad was going to happen to him. He knew it. But he could not guess what it might be.

  By the time he reached the address that Nell had given him, he was in no mood for dinners of the rich and famous. Not at ten thousand pesos per head, not at any number of pesos.

  When he called from the lobby, he was ready to tell her that he had changed his mind, he was not going out for dinner. She offered him no opportunity.

  "Great. Sixth floor. Come on up." And she was gone.

  She had told him where she was staying, but it was like no hotel he had ever seen. The building was a graceful high-rise structure, far more inviting than the Admin dormitory. There was no guest registration, no sign of porters or staff. The elevators seemed designed only for freight. When he emerged onto the sixth floor, he found himself in a great windowless room divided into square cubicles by waist-high partitions. Some of the cubicles were bright-lit and glassed in from floor to ceiling. Others were dark and held nothing but rows of grey-painted cabinets. People seemed to be hurrying everywhere at random. He stared around in confusion until he caught sight of Nell four partitions away, leaning over a bank of television sets.

  She had already changed from the green jump suit she had worn in the Spindrift to an off-the-shoulder gown of the same color. She had also done something mysterious to her hair, sweeping it up to reveal the graceful curve of her neck. When he reached her side, she straightened and gave him a head-to-toe instant scrutiny.

  "Standard size should do it. Come on."

  She took his hand. He allowed himself to be towed along through a chessboard of partitions and on through a pair of double doors.

  "There you are." She waved an arm at a score of tall cupboards along one wall. "Just help yourself."