by D L Frizzell
“Pack the gear,” Hathan-Fen said. “We leave immediately.”
“I know a place where we can go,” Norio said. “We can part ways there.”
“You think you can handle Jarnum if he finds us?” Hathan-Fen asked me.
“Absolutely,” I said.
“I’ll do my part,” Redland told Kate. “You have my word on that.”
“I can’t hear you, Marshal Redland,” Kate said, “but I can cut the rest of your fingers off. Do you hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” Redland said.
I holstered my pistol, and then unlaced the falcata from my side. “In case you need something bigger than a razor,” I said, handing the sheathed blade to Kate.
Chapter Twenty-Five
There was one industry besides agriculture in Sunlo; mining. In the Colderlands, past the terminator line into the southern hemisphere, there were underground coal, aluminum, and titanium mines. There were also iron mines once, but they had long ago been abandoned due to unbridled magnetic activity.
Sunlo mining crews commuted to their mines in the southern hemisphere, living there for weeks at a time while using non-ferrous pickaxes to dig further into Arion’s crust. The mines were near enough to underground volcanic activity that they worked in a shirtsleeve environment, but when traveling between the mines and Sunlo, they dressed in multiple layers of bulky clothing to survive the frigid temperatures. To travel back and forth from the mines, which was necessarily done on foot, they needed to wear at least ten layers. We were told that since we’d be off-trail, traveling for an undetermined period of time, we’d each have to wear a full fifteen layers of protection.
Donald Biedrik, as a foreman with some influence in Sunlo, secured a full complement of extreme-weather outfits and had them delivered to the house on hand-drawn sleds. He insisted we get dressed outside, not just because we would have trouble fitting through his door with the suits on, but also because we would start sweating immediately if we dressed in the house. Perspiration was to be avoided at all costs in the Colderlands. After giving us basic pointers on ‘trail etiquette’, he took us outside to where the sleds were waiting and helped us load our gear onto them.
“Your guns won’t fire in the Colderlands,” he added finally. “Thermal contraction will make the barrels too small for your bullets. Don’t use them.” He loaded them into a wooden crate on one of the sleds.
“We couldn’t if we wanted to,” Traore said dourly, holding up the outer layer of the suit he was about to put on. The sleeves were nothing more than fur tubes with the ends sewn shut. Hooked wooden claws with small metal tips protruded between the seams. They looked laughably cartoonish.
I sifted through the pile of layers that Donald had assigned to me and frowned. With all this clothing wrapped around us, we’d be marching into night-time looking like overstuffed teddy bears.
Kate didn’t want to put the extreme-weather gear on, having never been south of the equator before. Norio explained that anyone dressed in less than maximum protection would find their extremities snapping off like twigs before realizing they were cold. Kate seemed doubtful, but finally agreed to wear a suit.
We began the arduous task of getting dressed. Body suits, thin garments which would prevent chafing and absorb sweat, were the first items to go on. Donald had us take them inside to put on first, and then put our regular clothes over the top instead of the standard second layer. He told us that departed from the normal procedure, but since we may not come back by the same route, we would need our regular clothes at some point, and the outer layers would protect our clothes the same way they protected us. Fleece coveralls then covered everything from our boots to our heads. Water-proof jumpsuits came next, although jumping would have been a pretty neat trick once we had them on. Next, we slid on alternating layers of waterproof and warming garments up to layer fourteen. At this point, only our eyes were visible inside deep sockets. Before we put on the last layer, which were essentially quilts made from animal fur, each of us put on insulated goggles so thick they resembled binoculars. Through the whole process, we required more and more assistance from Donald and one of his assistants as each layer went on. He then had each of us team up and assist each other in taking the suits off with our hooks. He emphasized the importance of keeping the suits intact, and so preserving their ability to seal out the cold. After that, we put the final layers back on.
Once fully encased in my suit, I felt ridiculous. A clefang could have bitten me and I wouldn’t feel it. On the plus side, I could still walk without falling over. It was more like a waddle, really.
Brady and Traore tested their range of motion. They shouted something, probably a complaint, but I couldn’t understand a word. Kate, being the smallest of the group, was so encased in her outfit that she couldn’t bend her elbows or her knees. It would have been funny under different circumstances.
Donald helped us wrap our hooks to the matched sled handles, and then dressed himself in a scaled-down outfit similar to ours. He would only guide us to the trailhead on the far side of the Upright Meadowlands, so he only needed a few extra layers.
Kate got everybody’s attention by flapping her arms as much as her outfit allowed. A pair of scavenger birds, very much like the ones that accompanied me from the Rekeire Plains, and very much like the ones I’d seen in my vision on the train, and very much like the ones Kate thought she saw while sleeping in my old bedroom, sat on a fencepost in a lonely ray of sunlight at the edge of the peach grove. Ofsalle, who stood nearest to them, shouted something at the birds. When they flew off he waggled his arms at us, which I interpreted as let’s go. He waddled toward the path faster than I thought he’d be able to, which I attributed to his fear of the T’Neth, Jarnum, and anything else more dangerous than a paper cut.
We shuffled beyond the Sunlo town limits at an excruciatingly slow pace, circumvented the cliffs, and finally left the Upright Meadowlands behind. Following a well-defined trail into perma-darkness, we kept our hooks on the path’s handrail toward the mines. Donald reached his suit’s effective limit, gave a final wave, and then headed back toward Sunlo.
From there, we dragged our sleds with our left hooks while tapping the handrail with our rights as he had instructed us. An hour into our march through the increasing snowpack, a dozen miners came from the other direction using a different handrail for guidance. Dragging their sleds full of ore past us, stooped in their teddy bear suits, none of them acknowledged our presence. Or maybe they did. I didn’t know how we’d be able to tell.
Donald had said the darkness would not become absolute. Though I didn’t believe him, he was right. After trudging south for another hour, the ice took on a blue tint. Protruding rocks looked either grey or black, and I could still see the others ahead of me. It’s when I looked up that I saw the source of our light. Stars were everywhere. Some bright, others faint, many of them different colors. It seemed like a river of starlight pointed us south toward the horizon, ceasing only where it framed the mountaintops in the distance.
That’s what the Founders called the Milky Way, I told myself. I never imagined it would look so imposing. I stared at it for a while, so enraptured that time eventually lost its meaning.
Then my hook missed the handrail.
According to those who live in the Titan Province, whose forefathers came from the Saturn colony, the Fortune Line was defined as the point on Arion’s equator where a person could make a fortune to the north, while finding nothing but misfortune to the south. It was also the place where there was no further justification for a handrail. If someone wanted to go further, it’s because they wished to utterly forfeit their personal safety. I pivoted to see the last section of the handrail behind me and the back of a sign that probably read, Turn around, stupid. You’ve gone too far.
I turned to look forward again. Norio led the way, his pace slow but steady. I brought up the rear, where Hathan-Fen had posted me to watch for anybody who fell out of line. Realizing that nobody watche
d my back, I admonished myself that it would be tragic for me to lose the group because I was sightseeing. Yet, as we marched onward, one shuffling step at a time I couldn’t keep from looking up.
After a long while, I noticed frost forming around the edges of my goggles and felt the cold stinging my eyes. Thinking this was normal, or as normal as possible under the circumstances, I still took in as much of the sights as I could. I’d read once that the whole equatorial area used to be a tropical paradise, with beaches as far as the eye could see along an ocean that covered what was now the Alliance territories. That was thousands of years before the Founders arrived, so I didn’t understand how anybody would know such a thing. Personally, I thought the notion that an equator could be the warmest place on a planet was a bit too much.
Another interminable amount of time into our journey, Norio stumbled. Since he was the oldest on our team and had infirmities besides, I figured the cold would affect him quicker. He fell against a boulder and remained upright, which was lucky because we wouldn’t have to figure out how to stand him up with nothing but our metal hooks. Kate hadn’t been pulling a sled up to that point, so she took his. I’m pretty sure it was Kate. She and Norio were about the same height, and that’s the only detail I could make out through my increasingly frosted goggles.
We marched onward. Eventually, I saw nothing more than vague outlines, and only knew I was still with the team because they were the only ones in the damn frozen wasteland that exhibited any hint of movement.
I got lost in my thoughts after that. I recalled a book I read once that said absolute zero is the temperature at which all motion stops. No kidding, I thought. If it gets cold enough, you stop because you’re dead. The cold had managed to seep through every layer of my suit, even though Donald said they should keep us fairly comfortable. They didn’t, but I found that I could pull my arms from the sleeve’s outer layers and tuck them under my armpits. That helped a bit. I also closed my eyes, peeking through them once in a while to confirm there was still somebody ahead of me. It wasn’t like there was much sightseeing to do at that point, and I didn’t want my eyeballs to freeze.
Sometime later – I had no idea at that point – I bumped into the person in front of me. That should have been Brady, except that somebody then bumped into me. Since I was supposed to be the last person in line, we must have gotten out of order along the way. That made me wonder if we lost anybody. If we did, they were dead…dead…dead.
The cold is getting to me, I thought. Hard to think straight. I flexed my numbed fingers and shuffled behind the person who bumped into me, shouting a stuttering apology as I did so. I did my best to re-align with the person I assumed was Sergeant Brady. He was the biggest guy on our team, so it should have been simple to tell. I couldn’t, because now I couldn’t see anything more than a few pinpricks of movement in my frosted goggles.
My feet were freezing. My arms were freezing. My whole body was freezing. I found myself questioning my sense of direction. I trudged onward, hopefully on the same course as the others. My goggles were useless now. I only opened my eyes occasionally, and that was just to confirm they hadn’t frozen shut.
Something tugged my suit. I fumbled my arm into the left sleeve and wagged my claw. The sled, my only contact with the outside world, was still there but pulling away from me.
Hello? I thought. Can somebody point me in the right direction?
I couldn’t even tell which way was up anymore. Maybe I was sliding toward a ledge and the sled was going to pull me off with it. Maybe I should’ve let go, but it was an agonizing thought. I pulled the other way, hoping this wasn’t my final, fatal mistake.
The sled jerked hard three times, paused, then jerked again.
Do sleds do that if they’re sliding downhill? I asked, not sure if I spoke the words out loud or merely thought them. No, I don’t think so.
I’d have to make it on my own. The sled, certainly dangling off a precipice, would take me over the edge. I’d fall, possibly hundreds of meters, into a canyon where my well-padded suit would protect me from the impact, but not the cold. Later, my team would sit around a fire with warm drinks and speculate about my demise, maybe unsure on the details but agreeing that I had it coming.
I couldn’t dislodge my claw from the sled. It had gotten twisted, or maybe the metal tips froze to the handle. I focused all my energy, tugged with the little strength I had left. No good. I’m going over the cliff. I’m sorry, Kate. Good luck.
I didn’t go over the cliff immediately. In fact, I didn’t go over at all. The sled pulled me along, the same way I’d pulled it for the beginning of the journey. That was funny on some level of consciousness, but the part of my brain that normally found anything funny had dulled somewhat. I did my best to keep up without falling over, since the sled wouldn’t take my lack of effort kindly. I’m trying, sled! Slow down!
The sled disappeared.
I stood there, wagging my hooks desperately. I didn’t dare walk further. I didn’t dare go backward. I was stuck. As I stood there, flailing in cumbersome slow motion, the cold feeling left me. In its place, a sense of calm seeped in.
A waning thought entered my mind. This is what death feels like. I should go back to the Biedriks and ask for some of that darkolate that Carolyn made. I never told her that was my favorite drink as a child.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I startled. The sound centered on my eyes. My goggles were tapping. No, somebody was tapping my goggles. What did that mean?
How the hell should I know? I asked myself. Donald didn’t teach me goggle signals.
I’d forgotten my eyes were closed, so I opened them. Oddly, the goggles weren’t frosted over anymore.
Norio stood before me, no longer in his teddy bear suit, dressed in his usual tunic and leather gloves. He motioned for me to hold still.
Why? I thought. Am I moving?
I tried to turn away from Norio, who was obviously a hallucination brought on by hypothermia, but couldn’t move. My suit was no longer a soft, protective cushion– it had become a rigid, icy shell. I couldn’t even pull my arms out of the sleeves anymore. Cracking noises surrounded me, muffled by the many layers of fleece. I felt a cold rush of air against my back. It stung only for a second, and then warmed. Perhaps the suit wasn’t designed to handle long drops into canyons after all. It had shattered like an egg on impact. As a final thought, I hoped to get a good look around before my body reached absolute zero.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Not on my goggles this time. On my back.
“Alex,” a voice said behind me.
“Huh?” I replied, the only word I could enunciate.
“Can you move?”
“Huh’uh,” I said.
“Okay, just relax. We got you.”
More cracking noises around me, only this time they sounded like splintering lumber. My suit folded away from me in stiff layers until I felt my body falling forward. Somebody caught me and held me while my suit crunched behind me. Fresh air warmed my lungs, and I laughed.
“What’s so funny?” the voice asked.
The warm air made my skin sting. As I looked up into Traore’s face, racked with concern, I found my voice again. “Your face is funny.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
My faculties returned, at least partially, as I lay there. We were in a cave with no entrances that I could see, warmed by a fire that did not flicker. Nobody was wearing their bulky suits anymore. I watched Brady and Traore move the remains of my suit out of the way. They had broken it into pieces getting it off me. Major Darcy Hathan-Fen, whom I normally despised, put my rolled-up duster under my head as a pillow, and then covered me with blankets. Kate sat on a rock nearby, mesmerized by the tangles of hair poking out of her desert hood. Ofsalle sat against the cave wall with a damp cloth over his eyes. Redland scowled at me from his seat by the fire. He was wearing his duster and wide-brimmed hat, just like the first time we met.
“I thought we lost you,” Hathan-Fen told me.
&
nbsp; “I almost fell off a cliff,” I said.
“There ain’t any cliffs,” Redland said. “You imagined it.”
“Yes, there were,” I said. “I could see them, all stretched to infinity.”
“There were cliffs,” Hathan-Fen said, sounding more comforting than I ever remembered her being. “We were at the bottom the whole way. It was a canyon, Alex.”
“Delirious,” Redland commented.
“Oh,” I said. I didn’t get angry at Redland’s insensitive remark. He’s probably right, I thought. I’m delirious. I decided I’d have to keep up appearances. “Screw you,” I mumbled lazily.
“You should thank him,” Hathan-Fen said. “He’s the one who saved you.”
“Don’t tell him that!” Redland snapped.
“Well, we’re glad you’re alive,” Hathan-Fen said. “Will you be okay for a few minutes?”
“Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”
She and Redland both went to the far side of the cave where Norio stood looking through a row of plate glass windows and a clear blue sky beyond.
I didn’t concern myself with their conversation, as serious as it seemed to be. Instead, I tried to figure out how a carpenter would mount windows in a cave. Were we really in a cave? I felt the ground around me. Gravel, dirt, bedrock. That’s as much a verification as I could make at the moment. I drifted back off to sleep.
Brady shook me awake.
“You okay, Buddy?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Are you?”
He chuckled. “Just making sure you didn’t get addled out there in the too-cold.”
“I’m comfortable,” I reassured him. “Do you have any darkolate?”
“Nope. Sorry. Got some coffee, though.”
“Yes, please,” I said.
“I think you actually might have brain damage,” Brady smiled. “You said please.”
“Yes…dammit,” I corrected myself.
“That’s better,” he said, and handed me a cup he’d already prepared.
