Chill Factor

by James Axler

  Ryan was aware of the way the river water had begun to freeze in his long black hair, tangling into tiny balls of ice. He'd cleared his nostrils, but there was a patina of ice around his cheeks and down over his prominent chin.

  "What do we do now?" she asked.

  "Food serving's going on. Lot nearest us hasn't eaten yet. Everyone's looking the other way."

  "Just walk up and join in?" she asked disbelieving. "What if the sec men see us?"

  "They won't."

  "Sure?"

  "Yeah, sure."

  Kate glanced around, then reached up and quickly kissed him on the lips. "I believe you, Ryan. Don't know why, but I do."

  "That's good. Then let's do it."

  His hand was gripping the bolstered blaster, now hidden under the long coat.

  "Now?"

  "Why not?"

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  KRYSTY WROTH FINISHED off the last of the smoked-ham-and-potato pie, wiping her mouth with the linen napkin. She placed knife and fork neatly together on the plate, pushing it to the middle of the table.

  "Your turn to wash up this morning, Jak."

  He grinned at her. "Want coffee? Put on stove ready. Doc?"

  "Please. A steaming brew of finest Java would bring tears to the eyes of a plaster saint and make an old man very happy."

  "Where's Christina?" Krysty asked.

  Jak was clearing the table, the morning sun lancing through the thin blue curtains on the eastern wall of the cabin, turning his white hair to the star flare of magnesium brightness.

  "Stayed bed. Sick."

  "Nothing serious? I'll go take a look if you like."

  He shook his head, glancing away from her, betraying an unusual nervousness. "Thanks. No. Christina's all right. Been sick some mornings."

  "Does this nausea only set its teeth to her intestines in the morning?" Doc reached out for another spoonful of the homemade peach preserve.

  "Yeah. Morning."

  "Really." Doc looked across, catching Krysty's green eyes, dropping a slow wink to her. "Really?"

  Jak paused in the doorway, carrying a loaded tray of dirty crockery and cutlery.

  "Got something to say, grinning old fart?"

  Doc cackled. "Damned fine peach preserve, this." He held it under his hooked nose, inhaling, eyes closed. "Wonderful. Nectar. Did I ever tell you I met a man who rode with Kit Carson when the red-eyed son of a bitch burned out the Navaho peach orchards in Canyon de Chelly?"

  Jak nodded. "Yeah. Told me. Get coffee."

  He walked through into the cool, airy kitchen, pushing the door behind him with his heel.

  Krysty stood and walked to the window, the heels of her dark blue boots clicking on the floor. "Sick in the mornings. You're a doctor. What do you think, huh?"

  "My dear Miss Wroth…" He placed his hand over his heart and bowed, nearly spilling preserve on the cloth. "I am a Doctor of Science from the great and sadly missed University of Oxford in England. Oh, my dear… The sun on the quadrangle at Balliol. The bells at midsummer from the golden towers. The warm, green-muffled Cumnor Hills."

  "Doc!"

  "Sorry, Krysty. Yes, I'm sure that the lady in question is with child. I'm delighted for both of them, of course."

  "Little Jak, going to be a father. Gaia, how I wish…" She shook her head. "Wonder how J.B. and Mildred are doing on their morning jackrabbit hunt?"

  "I heard them leave around dawn. Good that they've found each other, isn't it?"

  Krysty turned, and her face was carved from marble. "Sure is. Seems like everyone's finding someone. Me, I just keep on losing someone, Doc."

  "How about sitting a spell on the porch and enjoying this fine morning?"

  She nodded slowly. "It's not like me, is it, Doc? Getting all antsy about Ryan?"

  He joined her by the window, looking out across the rolling New Mexico countryside. "The saddest news I have ever learned, my dear, is that time can heal some of the pain. But it can never heal it all. Let's go outside."

  JAK HAD GONE IN to join Christina, taking her a cup of fresh coffee. Doc and Krysty sat together on the swing seat, rocking very gently, back and forth.

  In the corral, a couple of foals were running together, kicking up their heels, butting each other on the flanks.

  A quarter mile away, on the edge of a draw, some wild turkeys wandered up and down, pecking idly at the dust.

  "I miss Emily still," Doc said suddenly.

  "I know that."

  "If Ryan was never to return—though I am certain sure he will—then you have had the chance to bid him a fond farewell and tell him how you care for him and what he means to you. I never had that chance."

  Krysty nodded, glancing across, not surprised to see a single crystal tear coursing down the old man's wrinkled cheek. "I know, Doc."

  "I wish… By the three Kennedys, how I wish it! That I could have that last morning over again. Just to tell her how I loved her. But I was torn away from her and from my age, untimely plucked. I would have told her to live her life well without me, had I known all."

  "What happened to your wife and the children, Doc? You never said. Did you find out?"

  The silence stretched on. The wind blew straight and true from the northwest, making the vanes of the wind pump spin. Krysty didn't look to her side, staring straight ahead to the farthest edge of the distant horizon, where she detected a tiny pillar of dust. It gave her a passing moment of unease, but her mind was locked onto Doc and she brushed the fragmentary worry away.

  "I was able to find out." His voice was as grim as ice upon a blurred tombstone.

  "And?"

  "They died, Krysty. All died."

  "When?"

  Doc slurped at his coffee, noisily blowing his nose on the familiar swallow's-eye kerchief. "I do believe that I would greatly appreciate a change of subject, my dear."

  "Sure."

  "Perhaps we might consider this place."

  Krysty was surprised. "How's that, Doc?"

  "Good land. Clean water. Plenty of space to grow and spread."

  "I don't get it. You saying you're thinking of staying here?"

  "Not just me."

  "J.B. and Mildred?" Krysty finished her coffee and placed the mug on the white scrubbed planks of the porch.

  "All of us, my dear."

  "Oh."

  "I know that you and Ryan have been seeking a promised land, a Shangri-la, a place without fear or darkness where a man and woman could wed and bring up their children. A place—" he waved his gnarled hand at the horizon "—that is not unlike this place here."

  Krysty sighed. "Sure we want to settle. One day. But this… Oh, Gaia!" She looked away from the old man. "I'd greatly appreciate a change of subject, if you don't mind, Doc."

  "Of course."

  But neither of them could come up with anything particular to talk about.

  In the far distance a rising wind blew away the column of dust that had briefly attracted the attention of Krysty Wroth.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  SOME OF THE MOST dangerous adventures that Ryan had ever been involved in had turned out to be surprisingly easy and safe.

  The moments between leaving the cover of the snow-roofed buildings and actually joining one of the working parties were among the most hazardous of his entire life.

  Feet crunching on the muddy ice, faces down, shoulders hunched, they stepped out as if they had the right to be there. Ryan had the deep concern that he might suddenly bump into Major-Commissar Gregori Zimyanin, who would immediately recognize him from the eye patch.

  He'd taken off his long white scarf and knotted the soft silk three times over the top of his head, covering as much of his upper face as possible. His turned-up collar concealed his mouth.

  Ryan knew that it was ridiculous to expect every one of the throng of sec men to keep staring stonily away from them.

  Several glanced around, peripheral vision caught by the movement. But all they saw was a couple of the sl
ave workers joining their shift. None of them was close enough to give them a kick or a curse.

  There were about eighteen huddled figures in the group they'd tailed onto. At a first hasty look, Ryan noted that about four of them appeared to be female, a slightly higher proportion than in some of the other work gangs he'd watched.

  Only one of them took any notice.

  An older man, so stooped he was almost a hunchback, turned his head toward the strangers, eyes glowing malevolently in the parchment face.

  "You're not with us," he hissed.

  "Guards beat anyone talking," Kate warned angrily.

  "I'll tell them you aren't in our unit. Then they'll shoot you."

  "No, they won't." The conversation was in a suppressed, angry whisper.

  "Will."

  "Won't. We got sent to work with your gang."

  "Who sent you?"

  Ryan pushed his face close to the man. "We got sent by the Russkie. You want to argue, then go argue with Zimyanin."

  "No."

  "I'll come with you."

  "No, no."

  Ryan smiled, talking without moving his lips. "Then keep your mouth shut. If the Russkie doesn't chill you, then I will."

  There was a flurry of movement near the front and their shift started to shuffle forward. Ryan looked queryingly at Kate, who lifted her fingers to her mouth, miming eating. He nodded. Ryan was ravenous hungry, regardless of what was on offer.

  They were only allowed one helping of food each. Risking drawing attention to himself, Ryan snatched a second piece of bread. The man who was ladling out the gruel caught the movement and opened his mouth to complain. He closed it again when Ryan bared his teeth in a threatening smile and offered him a clenched fist.

  The old man with the stooped back also saw what happened. "Get us all flogged," he snarled at Ryan.

  A whistle blew, interrupting the argument. Ryan had already decided that he might have to draw his flensing knife and stab the man through the heart to silence him.

  A guard had a clipboard, and he was shouting out where each group had to go. That was how Ryan and Kate found that they were in Work Unit Twenty-five.

  "Shaft Four. Level Six!"

  There was a groan, quickly stifled. Kate had joined in and Ryan looked across at her.

  "Bad news?" he whispered.

  "Shaft Four's one where they get a lot of slides and falls. Level Six is down the bottom, deep as you can go."

  RYAN WAS RELIEVED to find that there didn't seem to be any sec men specifically attached to any of the units, so nobody would recognize them as illegal newcomers.

  And once they were under cover, in one of the shafts, the guards had fixed posts, keeping an eye on activity in their own narrow area.

  All they had to do was follow their leader, which, for Work Unit Twenty-five wasn't too difficult as their leader was six and a half feet tall, with a mane of white hair and a flowing beard like fresh-fallen snow. Ryan wondered how the man, who was referred to by the others as Elder Bluffield, managed to keep himself so clean when everyone else was filthy dirty.

  Part of the answer was that he took special care of himself and his clothes, while the others helped him at every climb and turn, showing him such unusual respect that Ryan was even more puzzled.

  As they reached the main opening down to the next level, Ryan noticed a second working party trudging toward them from a side passage. The light was far from good, but he thought he'd caught a glimpse of a small figure that looked familiar.

  A blow in the kidneys from the butt of an M-16 sent him to his knees, gasping for breath, a fiery pain ripping through his body.

  "Be pissing blood for a week if you stop and stare again, shithead," the unnoticed sec man said.

  By the time Ryan had gotten up and was able to breathe again, the other group had vanished deeper into the mine.

  "YOU ALL RIGHT?"

  Ryan nodded, waiting at the top of the slippery wooden ladder to climb down into the yellow depths toward Level Six.

  "Might piss blood, like he said."

  "You okay to work?"

  From behind and above them one of the guards shouted at her. "Shut your fucking mouth, slag! Or come here and I'll give you something to shut it."

  Kate ignored him.

  By now everyone on the working gang knew that they had two new members. Ryan had seen the beckoning fingers of the elder, calling the venomous hunchback to his side, watched the whispered conversation and heard the name of Zimyanin mentioned twice.

  But nothing more had been said or done by anyone in Unit Twenty-five.

  THEY WERE ALLOWED only minimal breaks during the long working shift. During one of them Ryan sat slumped against a wall of black rock, streaming with icy water. He was soaked through, covered in stinking yellow mud, so tired he felt ready to drop.

  "This is the nearest I ever want to get to hell," he said quietly to Kate.

  The only good thing about laboring on Level Six was that there weren't many guards around. Why should there be? When you were right at the bottom of the world, there was nowhere else for anyone to go.

  The rest of the group sat together in a tight, huddled circle, centered on the imposing figure of Elder Bluffield. Ryan was relieved to see that his pristine perfection was marred by patches of wet and smears of sulfur.

  Nobody had spoken to them, and they'd only learned what work was expected by watching the others. There were eighteen, including the elder, and six were women, four of them relatively young.

  Most wore gloves, but a couple dug without. Ryan nudged Kate. "Seen the hands of the women?"

  "No."

  "Look at them when you get a chance."

  "Why?"

  "They've all lost three fingers from the left hand."

  "What?"

  "Kept the first finger and thumb. Every single woman here."

  "Why?"

  Ryan shrugged. "Go ask Bluffield."

  "Maybe I will."

  He held her arm. "Not now. Now we work, wait and watch. I don't want anything to happen that'll bring guards down on us."

  "Sure. How's your back from the bastard with the blaster?"

  "I've pissed and I didn't see no blood." Ryan hesitated, automatically correcting himself as though Krysty had been standing at his shoulder. "I mean I didn't see any blood."

  THE REST OF THE DAY crept by. Gradually Ryan slipped into the repetitive pattern of grinding labor, trying to get by doing as little as possible, without bringing trouble down on himself or Kate.

  He'd lost track of just how deep under the mountain they were working. To reach Level Six had meant a number of steep ladders, each of them at least twenty feet long, some nearer fifty feet. And there were steep, twisting tunnels between each level. Ryan's guess was that they were at least five hundred feet deep.

  They'd been issued shovels, picks and buckets. There was a manual hoist, with ropes and pulleys, bearing a large iron caldron. It took eighteen heaped buckets of earth and ore to fill it.

  From the moment they climbed down the first ladder, Ryan and Kate were never dry. The sides of the shafts ran with yellow-brown water, as cold as charity. And at the bottom, on Level Six, it lay in a sullen pool, nearly two feet deep in places.

  The shift was nearly ended before any of the others spoke to them. One of the younger women stumbled and splashed toward them. She had on black rubber boots, but the mud slopped ceaselessly over their tops.

  "You two strangers."

  "What?" Ryan held his shovel defensively across his chest.

  "Elder Bluffield wants to talk with you."

  "We don't want to talk to him."

  "How's that?" A note of surprise was evident in her voice. She looked back over her mud-caked shoulder, toward the rest of the group.

  "Tell him we'll think about it. Mebbe we'll talk to him. Mebbe not."

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  AT THE END OF THE day there was still no sort of security check on them. As long as a reasonable amo
unt of sulfur was produced and not too many people died, then everyone seemed to be happy.

  "We get a chance to wash?" Ryan asked as they walked slowly toward the huts that provided them with their sleeping accommodation.

  "Sure. You get a couple of minutes with a kind of trough of cold water. That's it."

  He wiped his hand over his forehead, looking at the golden scum that came away.

  "Better than nothing."

  The huts contained bunks, one above the other, partitioned off to accommodate a number of disparate groups. For Work Unit Twenty-five there was an area of about one hundred and fifty square feet, with a small anteroom for washing and for other bodily functions. The latter was a round hole in the floor that opened onto a narrow stream.

  Ryan and Kate took a pair of empty bunks nearest the door.

  The rest of the group was huddled together at the opposite end of the room, gathered around Elder Bluffield. As soon as they'd been locked into the rusting hut, two of the women had helped the older man to undress, taking his soiled clothing to wash, dressing him in clean trousers and shirt.

  Ryan and the young woman sat together on the top bunk, legs swinging, watching their breath as it steamed out into the freezing air.

  "Russkie doesn't look after his workers, does he?" Kate said.

  "Why should he? Plenty more out there where this lot came from. What's the longest you heard of anyone surviving in the mines?"

  She considered for a few moments. "One skinny kid on—think it was seventeen—reckoned he'd been here a full year. Could've been lying, though."

  Ryan looked up. "Here we go," he muttered.

  The same young woman who'd spoken briefly to them earlier was approaching.

  "Elder'll see you now." Her voice was a cracked, thin little whine.

  "I can see him from here," Ryan replied.

  "Come talk to him."

  He leaned down, making her take a stumbling step backward. "If that old prick wants to speak to us, then he can come all the way over here. Go tell him that, will you?"

  "Sure. Sure, mister, but he won't." She turned on her heel and walked the few short feet to where the rest of the group was waiting.