by William F.
The maelstrom of cold had shaped a ledge into a stubby pedestal, and topping the pedestal was a hand-hewn ice block. Within the transparent mass a dark shape swam in frozen silence.
There were no guards. Nor were they needed.
No man ever walked out of Hell.
When Logan and Jess arrived, an alarm sounded. The platform itself dealt with them. They were needle-stunned, packaged and conveyed through a force field labyrinth and dumped on the ice.
The platform had disappeared. There was no way back.
Warden came to meet them. A man hunched against driving wind, a fur-shrouded scarecrow. His feet were rag-wrapped, his face old leather and iodine; his eyes burned under a filth-stiffened parka.
He bent over their cocooned figures and his mittened hands clumsily stripped away the con-webbing. Wadding the precious material, he thrust it into his parka.
Cold clubbed them.
Logan stumbled up, pulling Jess with him. In the severe cold the effects of the needle drug were rapidly dissipated.
"Wh—where's the key?" he asked Warden. This man must be their contact.
"When you come to Hell they throw away the keys."
Logan felt the brass taste of fear in his mouth. They were in the escape-proof prison city at the North Pole.
"Come learn the rules" said Warden. He turned his back and paced off across the glare sheet.
They struggled after him. The wind died to a low snarl as they reached the partial shelter of the great iceberg which loomed over the burrows.
"Your neighbors," said Warden.
Fur-swaddled figures surrounded them, emerging in clots of twos and threes from the ink-mouthed holes. Logan scanned the emaciated, skull-haunted faces that hedged him in a wolf circle.
"Rule one," said Warden. "A new convict can pick his antagonist. Two: the antagonist can use any weapon he has to defend himself and his goods. Three: the new man fights barehanded. That's all the rules we got—except winner gets first cut."
"And if I don't fight?" asked Logan.
"Then ya die on the ice," said Warden. "Course, that don't go for the girl." He grinned. "And ya better get to it. Couple minutes more out here, dressed like you are, and you won't need to choose."
Under the wind's hammer, Logan's clothing was gauze. He measured the corded figures, looking for weakness and found none. These were survivors. No soft ones here.
He pointed a random finger. "Him," said Logan.
The circle tightened to take up the slack left by the man who stepped forward. Tall. Long-armed. Thick-shouldered. From the matted fur at his chest he drew forth a needle-pointed stiletto of handburnished ice. Eight inches of lethal blade, shaped with an artist's care.
Instantly he lunged. The stiletto flashed. He had led with the knife. Logan took advantage of this mistake to chop the weapon from his hand. It shattered on the ice, but Logan's foot slid on one of the shards and he was down, the man atop him, hands at his throat.
Logan felt the sinewed fingers close on his windpipe.
He broke the chokehold and the man's neck with one blow.
Warden looked stunned and disappointed. The circle of eyes shifted hungrily to the dead body, already frost-dusted. Now they moved in to strip the clothing, which they piled at Logan's feet. The corpse was hustled away.
"That was Harry 7 you just took care of," said Warden. "Pick up his clothes and claim his goods." Warden walked to the mouth of a burrow. "This hide-hole's yours. Harry didn't have no woman. You share everything with the girl."
Logan followed Jess into the narrow, fetid mouth of the ice cave. Inside, they hurriedly donned the evil-smelling hides of Harry 7. The temperature was twenty degrees warmer, but it was still chillingly cold.
They sat down together on a thin layer of shredded con-webbing which had been spread against the ice. Logan pressed close to Jess. She withdrew, her face set.
Well, here we go again, he thought angrily. She knew he'd had no choice out there. She was alive in the clothes of a dead man, but she couldn't accept the fact that he had to kill to get them.
"I listened to you as we were coming into the platform," he said. "I hid the Gun so the contact wouldn't connect me with DS. With the Gun we'd have some kind of a chance here. But we don't. And right now you need me a lot more than I need you."
After a moment he felt her settle against him. "What are we going to do?" she asked.
"Nothing. Until we know more."
A scuffing sound at the entrance. Warden appeared.
"Come see Black Tom."
They followed him out. Warden led them for a short distance across the blowing ice.
"Here he is." Warden gestured theatrically.
They looked up at the dark shape in the transparent block above them. Inside the ice was part of a man.
He had no legs. One of his arms was a flat, paddle-shaped stump. The remaining arm arched forward, terminating in taloned fingers. All the fat was gone, and the bone structure was exposed in raw relief. The arm strained in a bowed curve, clawing for life. Nestled against the shoulder was the head. Staring out of a twisted visage were, eyes of milk. Wind and sun and wilderness had carved him.
He was black.
"He was a white man, once," said Warden.
Jessica looked away.
"Black Tom's up there for a reason," Warden went on. "He ain't what you'd call decoration. You can learn from Tom. He cracked the two-year mark in Hell. He watched 'em come and he watched 'em go—until he went snow-blind the end of the first year. A month later frostbite got his legs, but that didn't slow him. He dug two burrows by hisself to keep his place, and tanned the skins you're wearin' on your backs. They say he bit his arm off when an ice slide trapped him. Anyhow, he come in without it. Tom lived longest 'cause he learned fastest." Warden spat on the ice. "Me, I've lasted more'n a year already—and there's none here can say the same. Do like you're told, and you may last the week."
"Savage!" flamed Jess. "Why do you live like this?"
Warden's reply was edged. "Living's better than dying."
"You could cooperate," she said. "You could work together instead of slaughtering each other."
"Work for what?"
"Food, clothing, tools . . ."
"There's damn little food, less clothing and no tools. It takes wood and stone and metal to build something, and the only metal around here is in Box."
A man loped up to drop a soggy bundle at their feet. "Here's your cut," the man said to Logan.
He picked up the bundle—and unwrapped the liver and heart of Harry 7! Jess stepped back with a look of horror. Logan dropped the bundle; it stained the snow.
"We don't waste food here," snapped Warden. "This ain't a threemile complex in Nebraska. Now pick up your share. When you get hungry enough you'll eat."
"There must be other food," said Logan.
"Out there." Warden swept the lifeless horizon with his hand. "Maybe a mile, maybe a hundred. If you're lucky you'll stumble across a seal whelp, which ain't very likely. Black Tom killed a polar bear once with an ice spear. We lost three men last month, tryin' to pull down a bull seal—and Redding lost all his fingers. Ice too thick to reach the fish if there is any. And if you don't have luck in the first hour there ain't a second. Shackleford made himself a slingshot outa hide strips, but he froze solid before he could use it. Sure, there's food. There's polar bear and ptarmigan, seal and otter, and you're welcome to hunt 'em down, if you can find 'em. And when you do they can hide better, run faster and jump quicker than you can. I tell you this—go join Box out there if you don't care for the table we set"
"Box? Who's he?"
"Box ain't a he. He's a what."
Logan looked curiously at Warden.
"Maybe he's got a name, but I don't know it," said Warden. "He got chewed up in a belt jump after a torture jig with a ten-year-old. The gears scattered him some. He was half dead then, but the system don't let go that easy. They sewed him back together, and what they couldn't find
they made. After they was done they put him on a Hellcar. He lit out soon as he got here, and he's a hard one to find.
"One thing I'll say for him. He must know where the food is and how to get it. If you can catch him maybe you can make him show you. You might try up north, about two miles, near the cliffs." He grinned wolfishly. "But you can bet he won't be waitin' there for you."
"We'll risk it," said Logan.
"Then go," said Warden. "You won't be comin' back."
When they stepped from the shelter of the berg, the wind took them.
Box lived in a white world. He moved in storms of dusted ice and loneliness. He did not tire; he was never cold; a part of him never slept. His world was porcelain and pale marble, alabaster and bone ivory. He made castles of bergs and palaces of glacier cliffs. He cloud-wandered the frozen immensities.
And was content.
Box saw them coming: two staggering figures, bent against the wind. He vanished.
Logan fought the clogging exhaustion in his body. The wind leaped in to snatch his breath, battered his face and hands, ripsawed through his furred clothing. The dreaming cliffs on the ice-dazzled plain were no closer. They would never be closer. They were ten thousand miles away. They were an illusion which stung him forward, one leaden foot after the other leaden foot after the other leaden foot after the other leaden foot after the other leaden foot . . .
Jessica toppled and fell.
He pulled at her, tugging at an arm. No going forward. No going back. No more steps. The cliffs were dream and dream; they had never existed. Logan slipped down beside Jess. Her eyes were closed. She should open her eyes, he thought lazily. She'll die. If she does not open her eyes she'll die and that would be too bad. Too bad.
If I close my eyes, he thought, I can open them again immediately. There will be no problem in this. Close. Open. No problem. I would tell her to open her eyes, but I will save this for later and show her how easy it is to open and close your eyes.
Logan closed his eyes.
He would open them in a moment, in just another moment after a moment and then he would tell Jess and would open them and in a moment he would and it was so, easy to keep them closed for a moment and the wind had gone and that was strange and there was no cold and he could open them in a moment and there was no problem and he would. He would.
Logan slept.
He opened his eyes to a frieze of crystal beasts dancing in a blue fire. He blinked. The frieze wavered, became solid. Extending to the limit of his vision was a capering host of otters conjured from diamond ice. And more.
Logan sat up to an incredible tableau.
There, a fish of sequined rainbow scales caught in a zircon wave.
There, a tusked walrus with mirror-ice eyes, his body veined with blacks and purples.
There, a flight of crystal birds in a crystal sky.
Planes and projections. An intricate scrimshaw of glassed fretwork, rising in prismed tiers, shot through with light jewels: dandelion yellows, crimson lakes, cerulean blues, flashing and reflecting, illuminated by a barrel-sized lamp of carved bone which sizzled and flickered. And supporting this fragile lacework was an immense column, angling up into the vaulted roof of the ice cavern.
Logan felt bottled in the heart of a teardrop chandelier.
The room reeked of burning seal oil.
Jess lay on the floor beside him. Her eyes stirred She awakened, gasped.
"Overwhelming, isn't it?" said a fluting voice.
A creature stood before them on chromed legs. From the midpoint of his sternum to his hips he was coils and cables. One hand was a cutting tool. His head was half flesh, half metal.
"A machine!" said Jess.
"No! not machine, nor man, but a perfect fusion of the two and better than either. You see before you the consummate artist whose magnificent creativity flows from manmetal. The man conceives in hunger and the greatness here displayed."
So this was Box: an insane half-man living in a self-created world of fantasy. Logan wondered just how much humanity remained in him. "We were told you could help us find food."
"Dolts!" shrilled Box. "Barbarians! Are you no more than walking bellies?"
"We're human and we're hungry," snapped Logan. "Don't you eat?"
"I feed the soul, not the body. Art before hunger!"
Jessica's eyes ranged about the glittering chamber. "All of this—it is beautiful," she said softly.
Half of Box smiled. "Ah—but wait for the winds." His voice hushed. "Then my birds sing. My great walrus breathes. My palace chimes and bells. And the deep grottoes whisper my name: Box . . . Box . . . Bahhhhhxxxsss." His voice sobbed into silence.
"Birds, fish, animals . . ." said Jess, with a note of wonder. "They're all here."
"Yes, all the creatures. Except Man." Box scowled. "They chase me. They want my metal. How they'd love to pry me apart and build a stove from my heart! My legs would make fine knives, fishhooks, spears. But they are blind moles who trip and stumble. I've seen their stiffening bodies on the ice. Worthless. Ugly. Wind-warped. But now—I have found you. New ones. Fresh ones. Lovely ones. Suitable models for my masterwork. You will pose for me!"
"If we pose, do we get food?" asked Logan.
"I have no food."
"Then why should we do it?"
"Why? Do you know how long this temple will last? Not twenty-one years, or twenty-one thousand years—but twenty-one thousand thousand years! And you'll be a part of it, the crown jewel in my collection. Ages will roll. Milleniums. And you'll be here—the two of you—eternally frozen in a lovers' embrace."
Logan turned away.
Box became apprehensive; his voice took on a wheedling tone. "What can I give you?"
"Nothing," said Logan. "We need two things, food and a way out. You have no food, and there's no way out."
"Ah, but there is," tempted Box.
"Then why are you still here? Why don't you escape?"
"And leave my white wonderland, leave the singing winds and the silence, the purity, the flowing skies . . . For what? For your squabble and smoke, your jamming and rushing? No. But I could. I could leave if I wished to do so."
"How?" asked Logan.
"How indeed," silked Box. "First you pose, then I tell you."
"First you tell us, then we pose."
Box hesitated. Gears seemed to click in him. He moved his metal hand in a gesture of surrender. "I suppose I must trust you," he said.
Will he do it? Logan wondered. Can he do it? Can he really provide an escape route?
Box put his hand to the metal of his head and closed his human eye. He spoke of visions: "I am a humming in blackness. Far away. I am ten billion, billion neurons in a mighty brain. A brain of steel . . . I am the force that rules the maze."
The Thinker! It tied in; being half machine, Box was, in a very real sense, part of the great machine brain.
"Above me—a great warrior astride the world. A sweep of black mountain below, great birds on my granite shoulders, a vastness beneath me. I am part of Tashunca-uitco."
Crazy Horse!
"I am brother to the Thinker," went on Box. "I know its circuits and its ways. I share its great wisdom. I can thread the force field labyrinth. I can leave Hell . . ."
And he told them the way.
Box opened his eye, advanced. "Now, you shall keep your bargain."
"How do you want us?" asked Logan.
"Nude," said the Box.
"Take off your clothes," Logan told Jess, beginning to strip off his own.
The girl looked at him.
"It'll be all right," he assured her.
Jess pushed back the cowl of her parka and began to unknot the leather ties. She dropped the rank fur at her feet. Averting her eyes from Logan, she touched the magnetic closure on her blouse. It opened under her fingers and she removed the blouse, then quickly peeled away the clear cosmetic supports from her full breasts. Her skirt was added to the clothing on the fur-rich floor. She unzipped her sh
oes and stepped out of them.
"Enchanting," said Box.
He waved them to a dais covered with deep white polar furs. "Up there," he said.
"Shall we—just stand?" asked Jess. "Or should we . . ."
"Take her in your arms," Box said.
Logan looked at Jessica. Lamplight played along the creamed curves and valleys of her body. Her skin was glowing ivory in the light of the flame.
"Stop wasting my time," Box said. He stood poised at a tall monolith of sparkling ice.
Logan took the girl clumsily into his arms.
"No, no, no," complained Box. "With emotion. With feeling. She is your love, your life." To the girl, he said, "Mold yourself to his strong body. Look into his eyes."
Jess looked into Logan's eyes.
He felt the sweet warmth of her, the nearness of her. Breasts pressing him, legs touching him, arms holding him. He felt a slow surge of passion, but more than passion: a rapture, a tenderness, and a wild, sweet sadness he'd never known.
"Superb!" said Box.
His metal hand began to buzz. He brought it forward to shiver the ice into blue patterns. He worked furiously, with incredible speed. In a shower of tinkling shards and ice splinters, the two figures began to emerge from the block. Magically, forming, shaping . . .
Logan held Jess. This, too, was a house of glass—but how different from the frantic, empty pursuit of sensation in the houses of the city. There was a reality here, a meaning. Forget everything else; forget the twisted man-thing carving the ice; forget the Hell-huddle of convicts; forget Francis and Ballard and the maze and Sanctuary. But let this moment last. Jess . . . Jess . . .
"Done!" piped Box. "Behold!" He stepped back.
Logan reluctantly released the girl.
They faced themselves.
In stunningly wrought ice figures, shimmering with life, the artist had captured the form, the mood, the emotion of his models. The endless moment was there. Love. Passion. Beauty. All there.
Logan forced the image from his mind. They had to move, to dress, to make their escape. No time for love. Or passion. Or beauty. No time.
