Anti-Ice

by Stephen Baxter

  Anti-Ice

  Stephen Baxter

  The novel can be classified as an alternate history for its portrayal of 19th century Europe and the changes resulting, particularly in Britain, from an explosive scientific discovery made in the 1850s. A new element has been discovered in a hidden vein near the South Pole. Anti-ice is harmless until warmed, when it releases vast energies that promise new wonders and threaten new horrors beyond humankind’s wildest dreams.

  Stephen Baxter

  Anti-Ice

  To my mother

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to express my thanks to Eric Brown and Alan Cousins who read drafts of the manuscript; to David S. Garnett for his enthusiasm for the concept; and to my agent Maggie Noach, my editor Malcolm Edwards, and the staff at HarperCollins for their hard work on this project.

  Prologue

  A LETTER TO A FATHER

  July 7th, 1855

  Before Sebastopol

  My Dear Father,

  I scarcely know how to address myself to you after the disgraceful conduct which caused me to leave home. I am well aware that a full year has elapsed without a word from me, and can only offer my great shame as excuse for my silence. I can assure you of my guilt at the thought that you, Mother and Ned might have imagined me lying in some dismal corner of England, alone, penniless and dying.

  Well, Sir, Love and Duty have combined themselves with the extraordinary events of the past few days to prompt me to break my silence. Father, I am alive and hale and serving in the 90 Light Infantry in the cause of the Empire in the Crimean campaign! I begin this account seated in the remains of a Russian fortification we call the Redan—named for its shape after the French “tooth,” you see, an unimposing but effective affair of sandbags and earthworks—before the ruins of Sebastopol. I have no doubt that my news so far will astonish you enough—and I dare to hope that your heart will be touched by the tidings of my survival to date—and yet you must be prepared for still greater astonishment, dear Father, at the tale I have to tell. You have no doubt read in Russell’s dispatches to The Times of the final disembowelling of the fortress of Sebastopol by this fellow Traveller and his infernal anti-ice shell. Sir, I have witnessed it all. And, in view of my eternal disgrace, I regard my survival as an unmerited gift from the Lord, as so many good fellows—French and Turks too, as well as English—have fallen all around me.

  I owe you some explanation of my conduct since leaving Sylvan, that dark day last year, and how I arrived on this remote shore.

  As you know I took with me only a few shillings. My mood was one of self-contempt, Sir, and shame; determined to atone, I made my way by Light Rail to Liverpool and there enlisted into the 90 Regiment. I joined as an ordinary soldier; I had of course no means of purchasing a commission, and in any event I had determined to descend, to mix with the lowest of men, in order to cleanse myself of my sin.

  A week after my arrival in Liverpool I was sent to Chatham, and spent some months there being shaped as a soldier of the Empire. Then, determined to submit my life to the will of the Lord, in February of this year I volunteered to join the 90 Light Infantry, in order to be brought out here, to the Turkish war.

  As I waited for my transport, convinced that only death waited for me in the distant fields of the Crimea, I wanted most desperately to write to you; but my courage—which has sustained me through the most terrible carnage here—failed before such a trivial task, and so I left England without a word.

  We were fifteen days coming to Balaclava; and then we faced some days’ march along the road north to the Allied encampments around Sebastopol.

  I beg your indulgence to describe the situation I found here; while the campaign has evidently been reasonably well reported at home by such correspondents as Russell, perhaps the views of an ordinary infantryman of the Army—for such am I, and proud to be—will be of some interest.

  Sir, you know why we are here.

  Our Empire girdles the World. And our dominion is held together by the threads that are our lines of communication: roads, railways, Light Rail routes and sea lanes.

  Czar Nicholas, seeking a Mediterranean port, had cast his envious eyes on the failing Ottoman Empire. So he threatened Constantinople herself—and our lines to India. Soon the Czar was worsting Johnny Turk on land and on sea; and so we, with the French at our side, went to war with him.

  We entered the war under the command of Lord Raglan, who had once served with Wellington himself at Waterloo. Father, I once saw that great gentleman himself, riding through our encampment on his way to a conference with his French counterpart Canrobert. Sir, to see Raglan as I did that day, his back ramrod-stiff on his gray, his empty sleeve tucked into his coat (for the French had shot his arm off for him) and his grand, careworn, hawk’s gaze raking over us all, the same gaze that had once faced down Bonaparte himself—I can tell you I was not the only chap to cheer to the heavens and throw his cap high!

  But, from the clay I arrived, there were whispers against Raglan.

  His head full of days of glory against the Corsican, Raglan apparently was wont to refer to the Russians here as the “French”! And, of course, there were mutterings about Raglan’s conduct of the campaign. After all our first engagement with the Russians was at Alma, a good ten months ago, at which we administered a sound licking to the Czar’s men. What a spectacle that was, by all accounts; the Allied lines were a forest of color highlighted by the glinting of bayonets, while the ear was assailed by a tumult of noise, drums and bugles of all descriptions, all immersed in the unending hum of an armed force on the march. A fellow here describes a charge by a unit of the Grays, their great bearskin caps high above the enemy as they fought back to back, hacking and slicing everywhere…

  My only regret is that I missed all the fun!

  But, after victory at Alma, Raglan failed to follow up.

  Perhaps we could have chased the Russkies there and then out of the Peninsula and been home by Christmas! But it wasn’t to be, and you know the rest of the story: the great battles of Balaclava and Inkerman, with, at Balaclava, the slaughter of the noble Light Brigade under the Earl of Cardigan. (Father, I might interject that early in May I had the opportunity to ride up that famous North valley, almost as far as the site of the Russian guns which had been the Brigade’s objective. The ground was gaudy with flowers, and warm and golden in the rays of the setting sun; six-point shot and pieces of shell lay strewn thickly enough on the ground, with flowers growing through the rusty fragments. I found a horse’s skull, quite clean of meat, pierced by a single bullet hole from left to right. We saw no traces of human bodies. But I heard tell of one fellow who found a jawbone—complete and blanched, with the most perfect, regular set of teeth.)

  In any event the Russians survived, and—by Christmas—had holed up in their fortress of Sebastopol.

  Now Sebastopol, Father, is the Russians’ key naval base here. If we could take that city the threat to Constantinople would evaporate, and the Czar’s Mediterranean ambitions would be as naught. And so we were drawn up here in great numbers with our trenches, earthworks and mines; and—since Christmas—besieged the town.

  It was—or seemed to me—a farcical siege; the Russians were well enough supplied with ammo, and we had no way of imposing a sea blockade—and so the Czar’s ships supplied victuals to the besieged almost daily!

  But Raglan would entertain no way of dislodging the Russians other than patient attrition. And, of course, he adamantly refused to have anything to do with suggestions of anti-ice weaponry; a man of his honor would have naught to do with such modern monstrosities.

  And meanwhile we waited and waited…

  I can only thank a too-benevolent Savior that I, unworthy as I am, arrived after the worst ravages of the
winter here. The lads who survived all that have some tales to tell. The summer months had been benevolent, you see, with good foraging to be had, and even sufficient time for games of cricket, improvised but played strictly to the rules! But winter turned the roads and trenches to mud. There was only canvas cover—if that—and the men had to snatch what sleep was possible in knee-deep, freezing mud. Even the Officers suffered disgracefully; by all accounts they were forced to wear their swords in the trenches as the only means by which they might be distinguished from the common footsoldier! Father, this truly was soldiering without the gilding.

  And, of course, there was Dame Cholera, brought to all quarters of the Peninsula from the landing station at Varna. A Cholera epidemic is no fun, Sir, for a man can turn from a healthy soldier into a gaunt and careworn shadow in a few hours, and next day he is dead. To maintain discipline and composure in such circumstances says much for the mettle of these fellows; and, dare I say it, the common English have acquitted themselves far better than the French, despite the rumors of our allies’ superior provisioning.

  But I have my own ideas about the provision situation, Father. It is my judgment that the French starve better than the English! Deprive an Englishman of his roast beef and ale and he will growl, and lie down and die. But your Frenchman… One Captain Maude, a convivial fellow (who was later shipped home when a shell exploded inside his horse and lacerated his leg) told us of an occasion on which he was invited to supper with a lieutenant of the French army. Approaching the chap’s tent our Maude was greeted by the scents of fine cooking and snatches of opera, and inside the tent boards had been laid out and a clean cloth spread upon them, and a three course meal was served! And on complimenting his host, Maude was astonished to learn that the sole ingredients of all three courses had been beans, and a few local herbs!

  So there you have it!

  But I would not complain of the conditions endured by the ordinary Englishman here by the time of my arrival. I found a billet in a hut which had been constructed by a platoon of the Turks. We receive salt Beef and Biscuit daily now, poor rations indeed compared to the comfort of home, but more than sufficient to sustain life. And the degradation of alcohol is not unknown to us, Father. Beer is difficult to come by and quite expensive—but not so spirits. There is a species of poison called “raki,” for instance, which may be wheedled from the peasantry here. More than once I have seen men, Officers too, staggering drunk from the stuff; although such behavior, of course, is not condoned. I might relate the downfall of a splendidly made fellow in our company, a chap over six feet in height, a fine soldier but a devil with the drink inside him. Punishment parade is always held early in the morning, before the whole regiment; on this occasion the air was frost and a keen wind was blowing. Our soldier’s wrists and ankles were tied to a triangle of stretcher poles and his bare back exposed; and a drummer plied the cat o’ nine tails while the drum major counted the strokes. Father, the fellow took sixty lashes without a murmur, although the blood was flowing after a dozen strokes. When it was done he straightened up and saluted his Colonel. “That’s a warm breakfast you gave me, your honor, this morning,” he said; and he was walked away to hospital.

  For what it is worth, Father, I can report that not a drop has passed my lips since the day I left your house in such unfortunate circumstances.

  Now—at last, I almost hear you cry!—I shall describe to you the momentous events of the last few days; and, if you will indulge me so far, I will conclude with a report of my own disposition.

  Sebastopol is a naval port on the Black Sea. Imagine if you will a wide bay running west, from the sea, to east; the town squats on the south side of this bay. And the town is riven in two by an inlet which extends south from the bay by some two miles.

  The practical import of this, Father, is that two separate armies are required to invest the town; for a force attacking one side could not hope to offer support to a force attacking the other, because of the existence of the inlet. And therefore we and the French were drawn up on either side of the inlet—the French to the left, the British to the right.

  The Russian defenses are—or were—slight in appearance, but occupied very commanding positions and were fortified strongly by nature herself. For example, I have already mentioned the earthen battery called the Redan, which was armed with seventeen heavy guns.

  I remember one day walking up to within about a mile from the town, intending to inspect its environs. From a hillock I could see the fine Russian ships of war lying like gray ghosts in the bay, and the inhabitants of Sebastopol walking through the streets all unconcerned, as if the one hundred and forty thousand men investing their port were but a dream. But less dreamlike were the fortresses which looked down over our positions. Great black guns peered down at me through their embrasures, and when I showed myself too clearly there was a puff of smoke and I heard a hiss as the shot flew over my head; for they had their ranges very well and could drop them very close.

  I have said that the siege lasted many months, and not a few men, growing distracted by the lack of progress, murmured that Lord Raglan, with his long memories and traditional ways, did not have the flexibility of mind to resolve this problem of Sebastopol.

  Then, early in May, we had our first indication of such rumblings in more senior circles. A group of Officers joined us, evidently fresh from England, for their epaulettes shone brightly. They were led by General Sir James Simpson, a portly, fierce-looking gentleman. With them came a civilian: an odd cove about fifty years of age, over six feet in height and blessed with a nose like a hawk’s beak, with muttonchop whiskers that were vast bushes as black as you please, and a stovepipe hat that made him look ten feet tall. (Legend has it that a stray Russkie shot—the like of which winged constantly through our midst like tiny, deadly birds—one day threaded a neat hole through this headpiece; and the gentleman, as cool as you like, doffed the piece, inspected the hole, and promised on his return to England to invoice the Czar’s Embassy for the repair!) This fellow picked his way through the mud, peering into our earthworks and studying our amputees and other sick, and his concern and grim humor were evident for all to see.

  You will, I hope, recognize from my description the famous Sir Josiah Traveller, author of all those engineering marvels which have made the Manchester industrialists so famous at home. But as far as I know anti-ice gadgetry had never before been employed in a theater of war.

  Well, here was Sir Josiah come to the Peninsula to advise us on that very issue.

  I was not, of course, privy to the debates which followed Traveller’s arrival, and my report is necessarily based on hearsay. General Simpson was strongly in favor of the deployment of Traveller’s new shells, the quicker to resolve the investment. But Raglan would have none of it. Would the old Duke have used such devilish devices, the same Duke who forbade even the use of the lash on drunkards? (So I imagine Raglan arguing.) No, gentlemen, he would not; and nor would Lord Fitzroy Raglan countenance such a deviance. The traditional methods of investment, as refined for centuries, could not fail; and they would not fail here.

  Well, Raglan carried the day; and an assault on the fortress was planned.

  Now, Father, only a slight study of the science of investment is required to understand that for us to assail such a fortress as Sebastopol, with little numerical superiority to the defenders, with nothing but field pieces at our command, and with our flanks and retreats insecure, was quite a desperate undertaking. Nevertheless, on 18th June, after nine months of a debilitating and fruitless siege, the Allied forces attempted just such a feat.

  Our bombardment had begun as early as a fortnight before. Father, the shells and shot flew over our heads by day and by night, and back came answering fire from the Russians. In my kit constantly, and clutching my Minie to my chest, I had scarcely slept for those two weeks. And as if the racket of the guns were not disturbance enough to our peace of mind, the Czar’s men were wont to send thirty- two-pound shot bouncing through
our positions like cricket balls, without regard for the clock, which hardly made for a peaceful night’s sleep!

  At last, early on the 18th, we heard the bugles and drums which told us that the assault had started. We gave a ragged cheer—remember that this was my first taste of real action, Sir—and I poked my silly head out of my trench, the better to follow the action.

  Through smoke and steam and across smashed-up ground I saw the French go in first. But the Russians were ready for them, and the fellows toppled as if scythed; those following tripped on the fallen, and soon all was confusion. I fear, Father, that some of those brave Gauls fell to misplaced Allied fire in all that turmoil.

  At last the orders came for us to advance. Over the top we skirmishers went and on over the broken mud, yells burning our throats, our bayonets glinting before us. We made for the most formidable Russian redoubt, the Redan; our mission was to cover an assault force who carried ladders and woollen bags, the idea being to scale the Redan’s stone walls. I blasted my Minie before me, and for a few seconds the fire of battle coursed through my veins!

  Unfortunately the Russians would not play the game.

  The Czar’s men stayed in their fortifications and sent a most murderous hail of grape and musketry showering down over us. Quite how I survived those minutes I shall never know, Father; for all around me better fellows than I fell sprawling. At last my boot caught in the soft mud of a shell crater; I pitched forward and found myself lying at the bottom of the hole. Russian grape filled the air like a sheet inches above me, and so I lay flat in the mud, knowing that to rise at that point was to face certain death.

  I hope you will believe that it was not cowardice that kept me down, Father; as I lay in that hole, the stink of blood and cordite in my nostrils, rage ate at my soul, and I promised myself that once I had the opportunity I would resume the assault and sell my life dear.