Rings of Ice

by Piers Anthony

  “Girls, of course.”

  “Now wait a minute!” Zena said.

  “Yes,” Gordon agreed. “Nude or near-nude. Dancing, maybe. Striptease. That’d be good for five or ten minutes.”

  “I have no intention of—” Zena began, outraged.

  Gus waved her aside. “Not you, of course. You’ll guard the bus.”

  “What do you mean, ‘of course’?” Zena demanded.

  “I get the hint,” Karen said. “He sees me as more the striptease type. Okay, if that’s what it takes to put sugar on the table—”

  “Not you either,” Gus said. “You’re needed at the other end.”

  “Surely you don’t mean the child,” Zena cried, proceeding from one sense of outrage to another.

  “That child isn’t badly built,” Gus said. “Stand up, Floy.”

  Floy stood, putting her hand against the wall to prevent herself from lurching off balance. Gus put his hands about her waist, cinching it. “See, she’s slim but female, and she’s got a bust, too.”

  “Preposterous!” Zena cried.

  “Can I dance?” Floy asked wistfully.

  “That’s the general idea, honey,” Gus said.

  “You know that won’t work!” Zena said. “Gus, this is sickening!”

  “She can dance,” Gus said evenly. “She just needs the right music.”

  “Sure, that’s right!” Floy said eagerly. “The music’s always wrong! But good music—”

  “This is pointlessly cruel!” Zena said.

  “Will you shut up a minute?” Gus demanded. “Anything sexy is sickening or cruel to you! We’ve got a job to do.”

  Furious, Zena shut up. Better to find out exactly what Gus was up to, so that she could scotch it before someone got hurt.

  “We don’t have much in the way of musical instruments,” Gus continued. “But we have some pans and tools. You’ll have to play them yourselves, of course.”

  “Of course,” Gordon agreed, taking up pan and screwdriver. He struck the one with the other, producing an unmusical clash. “You try it too, Floy.”

  Floy tried it too. Then they banged together, and the noise was earsplitting in the confines of the bus.

  “Now dance,” Gus said, holding his hands over his ears.

  Floy flung out her arms. They smashed into the furniture. “Ow!” she yelled.

  “Well, you need more room to do it right,” Gus said. “That’s been your problem all along. You have the idea, though.”

  “Do you really think it’ll work?” Floy asked, so excited it was painful for Zena to watch.

  “Sure!” Gus said. “So long as you give yourself room and beat the music right.”

  Gordon put on his blonde wig. “I hate to get this wet,” he said.

  “It’s a good cause,” Gus said. “Get back to the bathroom and convert. I’ll talk to the others.” Gordon went back, and Gus continued: “Now Thatch and Karen—you know what you have to do?”

  They nodded. “But no killing,” Karen said.

  It was belatedly evident to Zena that much discussion and planning had been done while she was asleep. This whole thing had been blocked out in advance as a contingency, and now the pieces were meshing nicely.

  Why had she been excluded? She was ready to help, to do her part; they all knew that. Every person in the group had to pull his weight for the survival of the whole.

  Gloria came forward. “Now it has to be coordinated,” Gus cautioned the rest. “We don’t dare bring the bus too close at first, and when we do it’ll be sans lights. If they don’t go for the diversion, call it off immediately. We don’t want to take losses.”

  “They’ll go for the diversion,” Gloria said. “You watch.”

  Zena felt numb. This was like a commando raid—and she was being excluded and ignored.

  “Zena, sit up here,” Gus said. “I think I have this driving straight, but you’ll have to tell me if anything goes wrong.

  Gus—driving? “I can drive it,” she said.

  “No, I know where it has to go,” he said.

  Zena shook her head with resignation and took the passenger’s seat.

  “Raiding party get out first,” Gus said, fastening his hands tightly on the wheel. “We’ll give you time to get close. Listen for the music.”

  “Check,” Thatch said. “That’s one thing about the rain—it’ll cover our noise and our tracks.”

  Gus drove. It was clumsy, and the vehicle tended to wander, but he guided it down a side road toward the lighted building. Karen must have been instructing him, Zena realized. She could easily have told him about the basic rules of driving, and demonstrated, during those long shifts when the others were asleep or inattentive.

  As the building loomed higher, Gus stopped, stalling the motor on the brake. “Now!”

  Thatch and Karen got out and disappeared into the night. The rain closed in behind them like a wet shield. Gloria came up and helped Gus re-start the motor. “I’ll walk ahead now,” Gloria said. “You move along slowly without lights, and I’ll whistle if I meet a hole or an obstruction.”

  “Right,” Gus said. Zena saw that his hands were sweaty on the wheel. How had they prevailed on him to actually do useful work?

  Slowly they proceeded. The darkness was not total; it was possible to make out the general channel of the road between the buildings. Then the glowing torches of the building came into full view.

  Gus turned off the motor and coasted. “Got to stop here. They might have a floodlight. Diversion squad—you circle around about halfway before you start. We don’t want to lead them to the bus!”

  “Right, dearie,” Gloria said. “Floy, don’t forget your music.”

  Floy picked up her pan and screwdriver and went out.

  Zena abruptly realized that she was alone with Gus. Was that why she had been spared exterior duties? If so, she would toss him on his ear!

  But he made no move toward her. His eyes were ahead, as he peered through the rain. “God, I hope this works!” he said.

  “Why wasn’t I included in?” Zena demanded, realizing that she was being perverse. She had been protesting when she thought she was going to be part of the “diversion.”

  “You are included in,” he said. “It’s important that you not risk yourself unnecessarily.”

  “While you send that child out to bang a pot and do a strip?”

  “She enjoys it. It’s what she can do.”

  “And what is it I can do?”

  “Pipe down,” he said. “It’s about ready to start.”

  Zena clenched her teeth in a fury. This oaf was treating her like a child—and, worse, she was playing the role!

  There was a faint banging, as of tools striking pans. And a kind of unmelodious singing.

  Floodlights came on at the building. “They’ve got a generator!” Gus whispered. A spotlight played across the empty parking lot, searching for the sound. In a moment it picked out the two figures dancing in the rain.

  Zena stared. From this distance, which was not as far as it seemed in the rain, Gloria looked just like a chorus girl and Floy looked like a woman. They were both gyrating in a manner that made Zena queasy inside, flinging their hips and chests about, and they were banging dissonantly on their instruments. First one flung aside a piece of apparel, then the other did. They really were doing a striptease!

  The spotlight followed them as they wound closer to the building. Zena found their motions obscene. Gloria could not peel off much more without turning male, and little Floy—

  Floy was dancing, really dancing! Her arms and legs were waving about matching the dubious music, and the jangle of the pans seemed to fit her style. She was dancing to the dissonance.

  Zena could not take her eyes off that spectacle. She was appalled yet fascinated. There had never been free-form expression like this. Floy really did have a talent for it. The motions of her body were no longer uncoordinated; they reflected the beat of an unearthly music. The girl did hav
e a woman’s body, as Gus had noted—a body suddenly effective, in its inimitable fashion.

  “I knew she could do it!” Gus murmured with satisfaction. It was as though he were a coach, watching his player perform on the field.

  But he was right. He had told Floy she could do it— and now she could.

  “Give me a piece like that any time!” Gus breathed.

  “What?” Zena asked him sharply.

  For the first time she saw him embarrassed. He had forgotten she was there. Yet she hardly felt she had scored any victory.

  The spotlight moved away from the dancers. Then it clicked off entirely.

  “Now!” Gus cried, exultant. “How the hell do I start this thing?”

  Zena showed him how. They moved up to the front of the building.

  Karen was just completing the tying and gagging of the second man. “The other’s inside,” she called. “No booby traps, they claim. They know what’ll happen if any of us get hurt. Keep an eye out to see reinforcements don’t come.”

  “What will happen?” Zena asked, not expecting an answer. Obviously a threat had been made: an eye for an eye. She hoped it was a bluff—and she hoped the bluff worked.

  It was a phenomenal haul. Food, clothing, medical supplies, books—they loaded the floor of the bus with as much as seemed safe to carry, then climbed aboard.

  The last thing they did was to cut the bindings on their prisoners. “We haven’t hurt you or your property,” Gordon told the men. “All we’ve done is take what we need for survival. We won’t be back. If you’re smart, you won’t go chasing after us—and next time you won’t be taken in by any free shows! There’s plenty of stuff left for you, and maybe this lesson will enable you to keep it longer.”

  Seeming dazed, the men showed no fight. There was no pursuit.

  They found a suitable place with good elevation and good drainage, and camped there. The bus became a stationary home in the mountains. Gus and Karen moved into the back room permanently, while Gordon and Floy took the dropdown bed above the driving compartment. Zena slept in the dinette, while Thatch used the mattress from the rear ceiling bunk, now placed on the floor. The rugs of course were ruined, and constantly wet.

  It had been two weeks since the rain started, and it had eased at times but never abated. For every hour it slacked off to half-an-inch an hour, there was another hour at two inches an hour.

  Thatch and Gordon went out each day to forage, for they knew their raided supplies would not last indefinitely. Floy and her cat went out frequently to explore the immediate neighborhood, guarding against ugly surprises. Sometimes Zena saw Floy dancing, alone in the rain, flinging about that body with sensual abandon. Karen set about making things out of the material now at hand: blankets and ponchos for inside and outside work.

  Gus turned on the radio and plowed slowly through the static, searching for news. There wasn’t any.

  “It’s all anybody can do to survive,” Zena said. “Let alone broadcast. No facilities, no power.”

  “Try shortwave,” Karen suggested.

  Thatch spread an aerial wire outside and Gus tried band after band. There was some talking, but it was in a foreign language. Then an English broadcast, faint but distinguishable: “…severe erosion. Estimated losses: fifty percent.”

  They clustered around the set, listening to the clipped British accent. “Liverpool: completely flooded. Estimated height of water at sea: thirty-five feet. Effective height inland: sixty feet. Estimated losses: sixty percent. Edinburgh: completely flooded. Estimated height of water—”

  “Those losses are people!” Zena exclaimed, appalled. “The British isles are drowning!”

  “So are we,” Gus said. “Shut up.”

  One day, Zena thought, she was going to push him out into the rain!

  They listened to the grim chronicle of losses: one coastal city after another wiped out by the terrible tide.

  “No further word from the Continent,” the voice continued. “Estimates based on prior statistics extrapolated for the past day’s fall: Amsterdam losses ninety percent, Brussels seventy-five percent, Paris eighty percent, Berlin —”

  “Paris has nine million people!” Gordon cried. “Seven and a half million dead?”

  “I believe it,” Karen said. “We saw what happens.”

  “It’s not just the water level,” Zena said. “The food shipments break down, the ocean brine intrudes—”

  “Hush!” Gus cried. “America’s on!”

  “…ninety percent.”

  “What city?” Zena cried. “I didn’t hear the—”

  “New York,” Gordon said. “The Hudson River runoff—”

  “Can’t be much better inland,” Karen said.

  “If you don’t want to listen, go outside!” Gus yelled.

  But they already had the story. The rain was worldwide, and things were worse overseas than here. At least there were mountain ranges in America!

  Something had gone out of their existence, however. Until now it had been possible to imagine a dry refuge somewhere else in the world. Now they alt knew there was none.

  Gus dug out his raided books and commenced reading mysteries. Zena, afraid that the confinement and boredom would drive her crazy, read Heaven and Earth.

  “This makes no sense at all!” she expostulated to Gus. “This Annular Theory takes no note of, and makes no allowance for, the theory of drifting continents. Most of the things Isaac Vail seeks to account for can also be explained by continental drift. The pattern of ice ages—”

  “You’re forgetting two things,” Gus said.

  “What two things?”

  “First, Mr. Vail died in 1912—long before the continents started drifting. So you can’t hold that against—”

  “The continents have been drifting for billions of years!”

  “You know what I mean. Second, look at that.” He gestured at the rain outside. “The canopy is here again. Does your continental drift explain that?”

  “No, it doesn’t have to. The rain is here for another reason.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said smugly.

  “Oh, go listen to your radio!” she said.

  He did. Or tried to. The rain continued—but not the shortwave broadcasts. Zena estimated that between eighty and ninety feet of rain had fallen—and the British news was off the air.

  Zena fell out of bed. “What happened?” she cried. Thatch sat up on his floor mattress, rubbing his eyes. Floy stuck her head in the door and yelled: “It stopped!”

  Zena stared at the window. A few drops of water dribbled down it—but the steady beat of rain was gone. No wonder her sleep had been disturbed!

  Gloria rolled out of the upper bunk. “It’s the fortieth night after the fortieth day,” she said. “The flood is over!”

  Zena checked the calendar. “Ridiculous!” she said. But forty days had been marked off.

  They dressed and went outside, even Gus. The surface of the road was still slick, where it wasn’t pitted or washed out, but no water was being added from the sky. The effect was eerie.

  They returned to the bus and had a sober breakfast. “Is it really over?” Floy asked. “Are you all going home now?”

  Home. Zena turned away.

  “This is our home now,” Gus said. “And there may be more rain. We’ll have to be careful, very careful.”

  Yes, there would be more rain. Zena knew that what had just passed was only a minor squall compared to what was to come. But how could she tell them that?

  Now the dawn was coming. They stood in a row outside and watched the first sunrise in over a month. It was spectacular, for the massive moisture in the atmosphere made the rays of the sun splay grandiosely.

  “Other survivors will be abroad soon,” Gus said. “And they’ll be hungry and not too civilized. We’ll have to survey the entire area and double our guard.”

  Zena groaned inwardly, but knew he was right—again. This could be the most dangerous period for them, because they
had good shelter and good food.

  By full daylight, unconscionably bright, they saw that erosion was horrendous. Zena estimated that approximately a hundred feet of rain had fallen. It had scoured the landscape, ripping out trees and houses, undercutting the road itself. What remained was a steaming wasteland seemingly bare of life.

  Thatch and Gordon cut walking staffs and set out on an area hike. Gus and Karen returned to the bus to sleep. That left Zena and Floy for the nearby explorations and guard duty.

  “At least they let me out!” Zena said. “I haven’t been allowed to do anything useful for weeks!”

  “You’re lucky,” Floy said, leaning heavily on her pole so as not to fall.

  “What’s lucky about it? Everybody has to pull his weight, and I’m eager to pull mine.”

  Floy shrugged awkwardly.

  “Now don’t you do it too!” Zena cried. “I haven’t raised an issue about it because there’s been no privacy—but something’s going on. What’s the big secret?”

  “You really don’t know?”

  “Of course I don’t know.”

  “Well, Gus says there’s going to be a lot more rain. Enough to drown the whole world, maybe.”

  “Gus is right, for all the wrong reasons. But—”

  “So we’ll have to make more people. Babies.”

  Zena sighed. “Gus has had the making of babies on his mind from the outset. The mechanics of it, anyway. He and Karen—”

  Floy shook her head. “Karen wouldn’t live through it. That’s why she uses an IUD. And I’m too young, Gordon says. But you—”

  “That’s enough!”

  “Sorry. You said you wanted to know.”

  Zena paused beside a plain of bare bedrock, scoured clean by the water. “I’m not having any baby!”

  “You’re the only one who can. So Gus said to take care of you, because if anything happened to make you sterile—”

  “I said enough!”

  Floy fell silent and stepped over some rubble, using her stick as judiciously as she could. Out in the open she handled herself better, because she had more room to correct for error. Dust Devil leaped atop a boulder and peered about, tail switching. He smelled something.