Anti-Ice

by Stephen Baxter

  The Phaeton set down as gentle as an eggshell. Without waiting for the nozzles to cool I undogged the hatches, lowered a rope ladder and scrambled to the deck.

  I was dazzled by the strengthening sunlight. (By now it was past eight-thirty.) As the noise of the engines echoed away the inhabitants of the Promenade Deck, soldiers and citizens alike, began to approach us. Every one bore a rifle—even, I was shocked to see, a woman! This extraordinary person wore the remnants of a silk gown reminiscent of that worn by Françoise on the launch day; but the gown was bloodied and torn, revealing expanses of undergarments that, in less grisly circumstances, might have seemed indiscreet. Her face obscured by shadow and dirt, she held a chassepot before her, the muzzle pointed in my direction, with as much evidence of competence and command as any of her male companions.

  From this suspicious crowd emerged the officer who had earlier cleared the deck. He was a tall man of about thirty who bore well the brown tunic and white sash of his regiment, and his fierce brown eyes and pencil moustache, all framed by a brass chinstrap, spoke of strength, intelligence and competence. But his eyes were deeply shadowed, and his face was covered with the stubble of several nights. He introduced himself as a Captain of the Second Hussars, and inquired as to our business; but before I could reply a sound like a suppressed cough came from the eastern horizon.

  The Hussar dropped to his face, as if felled; Traveller and I followed his lead more slowly. Traveller whispered, “Prussian artillery.”

  “What? Are we close enough?”

  “Undoubtedly. Let them find their range and—”

  A whistling shriek tore the air, somewhere to my left; a shell fell to earth some distance from the sea of French troops and exploded harmlessly, evoking a ragged cheer from the Albert’s passengers.

  But they were less keen to applaud when a second shell plowed into the ground perhaps a quarter- mile behind us, scattering troops like skittles. The deck shook beneath me, and before my horrified eyes a great gout of rust-colored soil spewed into the air. The mingling of earth and human flesh was such that it was as if the Earth herself had been wounded.

  “Traveller, is this war?”

  “I’m afraid so, lad.”

  The Hussar officer turned to us and said, in rapid French, “Gentlemen, you can see how we are fixed; if you do not wish your fancy toy blown to pieces I suggest you fly to some quieter spot.”

  I grabbed his arm. “Wait! We are seeking a passenger on this ship; she was trapped here when—”

  But the Captain shook away my hand with angry impatience and hurried to his troops.

  I turned to Traveller. “I must find her.”

  “Ned, we have but minutes. One good shot by those Prussians—”

  I grabbed his shoulders desperately. “We’ve come so far. Will you wait for me?”

  He pushed me away. “Don’t waste time, boy.”

  * * *

  I wandered as if in a nightmare over the Deck. Within, I could not accept any image of Françoise save that of trapped passenger, of victim. And so I searched for her in places where she might be cowering, or might be locked away. I peered down stairwells which led into the interior of the ship; but where once champagne and glittering conversation had filled the air, now I was reminded of nothing so much as the interior of one of Lord Nelson’s battleships. Artillery pieces protruded like the muzzles of dogs through pushed-out hull panels, and everywhere there was the stink of cordite, the fumes of formaldehyde, the heaped bandages of an improvised field hospital. I found the Grand Saloon—or what was left of it; where the funnel had once passed through the room concealed by decoration there was only an obscene, gaping chimney, and the interior of the Saloon was uniformly blackened and destroyed. But men and women moved purposefully about, tending weaponry. The elegantly painted panels, battered and charred, looked down with exquisite incongruity over scenes their painters had surely never anticipated.

  But there was no sign of Françoise. My tension and anxiety wound to snapping point.

  I climbed back to the Promenade Deck. All around me there was shouting. Peering beyond the rim of the Deck to the field below I could see that the ragged French formations were already exchanging rifle shots with their Prussian opponents. Shells continued to whistle over us, splashing into the bloodied ground throughout the body of Frenchmen. The Albert’s guns had also begun to speak now; and with every shell they blasted away, the whole fragile edifice of the liner bucked and shuddered.

  Then I heard, like the note of an oboe amid the din of a great orchestra, the voice of Traveller, calling my name. I looked back toward the Phaeton. When the engineer saw he had my eye he pointed skywards. Squinting against the climbing sunlight I made out a line of white, like a very thin cloud, sketched across the heavens and arcing past the Little Moon. The line was growing, as if being writ by the hand of God… and it was passing over our battleground in the direction of Orléans. This apparition made no noise, and went unnoticed by the eager and terrified troops on the ground.

  The meaning was clear. It was an anti-ice rocket. My heart sank, not only out of personal fear, but out of shame to be British at that hour.

  I shook my head and returned the focus of my attention to the growing chaos around me, wondering how I could complete my search in the few moments the anti-ice shell had left me.

  I espied the woman “soldier” I had noticed earlier. This ferocious damsel had now lodged herself at the rail at the bow of the ship and had raised her rifle to her shoulder, aiming at the Prussians. I resolved to speak to her. Surely the few remaining women on board the craft, no matter what their attitudes to this conflict, would help and support each other in this arena; and so perhaps this modern Joan would be able to direct me to Françoise, whose rescue had become my only fixed point in all this turmoil!

  I made my way forward. It was slow going. Excitable Frenchmen rushed from side to side of the craft, the scent of Prussian blood in their nostrils, more than once bowling me over. Prussian shells continued to burst in the air all around, and every few seconds I was forced to duck, or flatten myself to the plates of the Deck.

  But at last I reached the warrior lady; by now she was squeezing off shots with clinical efficiency, and when I laid a hand on her shoulder she turned to me and snapped, in rapid Marseilles-accented French: “Damn you! What do you want?…” Then her voice tailed away and her eyes narrowed—sky- blue eyes which were still, behind their mask of dirt, quite lovely.

  I stepped back, oblivious to the falling shells. “Françoise? Is it you?”

  “Obviously! And who the Hell—Ah, I remember. Vicars. Ned Vicars.” Her face seemed to recede from me, as if my eyes had been transmuted to telescopes; my face felt numb, and the crash of battle seemed far away.

  So it was true. As Holden had suspected, as Traveller’s quick insight had discerned, as I in my foolish naпvety had refused to accept.

  She shook her head, wonder briefly breaking through her tension and anger. “Ned Vicars. I thought you were dead in the explosion.”

  “I was aboard the Phaeton, and she was not destroyed. Frédéric Bourne stole her. We flew off—Françoise, we flew to the Moon!”

  She looked at me as if I were mad. “What did you say?… But what of Frédéric?”

  “He survived; and is safely locked away. But you—” I laid my hands on her shoulders, and felt only knots of muscles. “Françoise, what has happened to you?”

  She punched away my arms and clutched her rifle against the oily remains of her dress. “Nothing has happened to me.”

  “But your manner… this gun—”

  She laughed. “What is so strange about a gun in the hands of a woman? I am French, and my country is in mortal peril! Of course I will use a gun.”

  “But…” The stink of dust and cordite, the shriek of the shells, the shuddering of the Deck—all of it rattled loudly in my head. “I thought you might have been killed when the funnel exploded; or, if you survived, perhaps you had become a priso
ner.”

  She leaned closer to me and peered into my eyes; her face, which once had seemed so beautiful to me, was a mask of contempt. She said, “Once I thought you and your like… sweet. Harmless, at worst. Now you seem criminally stupid. Ned, listen to me. I was not injured in that funnel explosion because—after I set the funnel stopcock, during our tour with that dour engineer—I made sure I was in a far, far corner of the ship.”

  I knew, now, why I had determined to come to this terrible place. I had come to confront the truth at last: and here it was, in all its bare horror. I could scarcely speak. An approaching shell shrieked, more loudly than ever; over its noise I shouted, “Françoise… come back with me.”

  Now she opened her mouth and laughed out loud; I saw how spittle looped across her perfect teeth. “Ned, you Englishmen will never understand war. Go home.” She turned away from me—

  —then the Deck lurched beneath me, and I was thrown to my back; a great shout filled my ears.

  The Albert was hit. The land liner ground to a halt. Traveller had been right: one accurate shell had been enough to stop the ship. Four funnels still pumped out steam, but from the fifth there came only ominous black smoke; and from somewhere in the depths of the craft there was a low, agonized grinding, as if the ship’s metal limbs still strove to propel it over the earth.

  The Promenade Deck was bent into great metal waves. Plates had been torn apart from each other, their rivets snapped.

  Soldiers and guns had been scattered like toys. But all around me there was already purposeful movement, as men climbed over their companions to seize their fallen weapons.

  Of Françoise there was no sign. She may have recovered before me—or she might even now be lying sprawled and broken among her countrymen, a new Maid of Orléans.

  There was nothing I could do for her now—it seemed there never had been—and I must concentrate on saving myself. At the far end of the deck the Phaeton still stood, a little crazily; as I ran toward her the land liner was racked by a second explosion, and I was thrown again to the bloodied deck. It seemed the Prince Albert would tear itself to pieces without further aid from the Prussians.

  Steam belched from the Phaeton’s nozzles. I scrambled up the rope ladder, dragged it in after me, and slammed home the hatch; then, with what was left of my strength, I hauled myself into the Bridge.

  Traveller lay in his couch, his face a grotesque mask; for his platinum nose had been smashed away, and the gaping socket was a pit of dark, still-trickling blood. From above this hole his cold eyes flickered over me once—and then he wrenched at his control levers, and the Phaeton shot without ceremony into the air.

  But even as we rose the Bridge was flooded with light. I clung to the deck while the vessel bucked in the roiling air like a frightened horse!

  The Albert’s Dewars had failed. The anti-ice energy they contained was released in a flood, and the fragile frame of the liner burst like a paper bag. A gust of heat like a wind from hell rushed up and caught the Phaeton, hurling her upwards like an autumn leaf over a bonfire. For long seconds Traveller fought with his controls, and I could only wait, thinking that we should surely flip over and fall crashing at last into the earth.

  …But slowly, as one emerges from a storm, the boiling of the air subsided. The Phaeton’s bucking settled to a gentle roll, at last becoming still.

  I stood cautiously; every inch of my body felt as if it had been systematically pummeled, but I remained intact and unbroken, and once more I offered grateful prayers to God for my deliverance.

  Traveller turned his terrible mask of a face to me. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. I… Françoise is a franc-tireur.”

  “Ned, she is certainly dead now. But she chose her own path… As must I,” he added darkly.

  I looked out of the glass dome. The French and Prussian infantries had joined now. Below us was a bowl of dust, splashed blood, and a thousand small explosions: it was a field of battle from which we were mercifully so aloof that the cries of the wounded and the stink of blood were lost.

  Traveller pointed, off to his left. “Look. Can you see? The trail of Gladstone’s shell from London.”

  I looked up into the sky. By squinting hard I could make out the strange line of vapour which stretched across the sky, a little more ragged now. Was it only minutes since I had stood on the deck of the Albert, studying that trail?

  “Traveller, where is it going?”

  “Well, it’s surely intended for the battlefield. What better way to demonstrate His Majesty’s displeasure than to flatten the pride of Prussia and France with one blow?… But Gladstone’s bunglers have made a mess of it. They’ve overshot. I knew I should have stayed home to get it right for them. I knew…”

  His voice was steady and rational, but it had a strange undercurrent; and I sensed that his control was about to snap. “Traveller, perhaps the shell’s inaccuracy is a blessing. If it falls harmlessly into an uninhabited area—”

  “Ned, the shell will be tipped by a Dewar containing several pounds of anti-ice. It is unlikely to be ‘harmless’… and in any event, I have observed it long enough to be sure of where it will fall.”

  “Where?”

  “It will be any second now, Ned; you should shield your eyes.”

  “Where, damn you?”

  “…Orléans.”

  * * *

  First there came a flowering of light, quite beautiful, which fled along the ground in all directions from the center of the old city. When that had faded, and we were able to open our dazzled and streaming eyes, we saw how a great wind was scouring after the light across the plain; trees snapped like matchstalks and buildings exploded to rubble.

  Within seconds of the impact a great bubble of cloud formed over the city center. The cloud lifted to the sky, a monstrous thunderhead growing out of the ground; it blackened as it rose, and was lit from below by a hellish red glow—undoubtedly the burning of Orléans—and from above by the flickering of lightning between plumes of cloud.

  It was all quite soundless.

  I became aware that the clashing armies below had grown still, that their guns no longer spoke; I imagined hundreds of thousands of men straightening, facing their erstwhile opponents, and turning to this monstrous new apparition.

  Traveller said: “What have I done? It makes Sebastopol look like a candle.”

  I sought words. “You could not have stopped this—”

  He turned to me, a bizarre smile superimposed on his travesty of a face. “Ned, I have dedicated my life since the Crimea to the peaceful exploitation of anti-ice. For if I could get the damn stuff used up on peaceable, if spectacular, purposes, then men would never again use it on each other. Well, at least the stuff will be exhausted now by these follies of Gladstone’s… But I have failed. And more: by developing ever more ingenious technologies for the exploitation of the ice, I have brought this day upon the Earth.

  “Ned, I would like to show you another invention.” His face still disfigured by that ghastly smile he began to open his restraints.

  “…What?”

  “A conception of Leonardo’s—one of the few Latins with any sense of the practical. I think you’ll find it amusing…”

  And those were the last words he spoke to me before his fist came crashing into my temple.

  * * *

  Cold air slapped me awake. I opened my eyes, my head throbbing.

  The Little Moon filled my eyes.

  I was sitting in the hatchway near the base of the Smoking Cabin. My legs dangled out of the open hatchway; the battle-strewn ground was many hundreds of feet below. A strange khaki pack, like a soldier’s knapsack, was fixed to my chest.

  Startled to full wakefulness I made to grab at the lip of the hatchway. A hand rested on my shoulder; I turned and stared at long fingers dully, as if they comprised some odd spider.

  It was Traveller, of course. He said, shouting over the rushing air, “It is nearly done, Ned. The supply of Antarctic
anti-ice is all but exhausted. Now I must finish it.” He laughed, his voice distorted by the hole in his face.

  His tone was terrifying. “Traveller, let us land in safety and—”

  “No, Ned. Once, our young French saboteur told us that to waste a few ounces of anti-ice was worth the life of a patriot. Well, I’ve come to believe he was right. I mean to destroy the Phaeton, and in this act of atonement to hasten the removal of the anti-ice curse from Earth.”

  I searched for words. “Traveller, I understand. But—”

  But there was time for no more; for I was administered a kick to the small of my back, which propelled me feet first from the vessel and into mid-air!

  As the chill air whistled past my ears I screamed, convinced I was to die at last. I wondered at the depths of despair which had compelled Traveller to commit such an act—but then, after a fall of fifty feet, there was a sharp tug to my chest. Cables fixed to my pack had tautened, and now I dangled, slowly descending. I looked up—uncomfortably, for the straps of the pack had bunched under my armpits. The cables were fixed to a construct of canvas and cable, an inverted cone which was catching the air as I fell and so slowing my fall to a safe rate.

  Squirming in my straps I looked down, beyond my dangling feet. The anti-ice thunderhead, still growing, climbed high over the corpse of Orléans. The armies of France and Prussia lay spread out beneath me, but there was little sign of movement; and I found it inconceivable that men should resume killing each other after such an event. Perhaps, I reflected in the silence and calm of my mid- air suspension, now that the world’s anti-ice was virtually exhausted, this ghastly—accident—would serve as a warning for generations to come of the perils and horror of war.

  Perhaps Traveller had at last achieved his goal of a warless world—but at a cost he would find difficult to accept.

  From somewhere above my canopy there came a roar, a flash of steam and fire. I twisted my head back once more—there was the Little Moon staring down, bemused, at this tortured Earth—and there went the fabulous Phaeton, rising for the last time on her plumes of steam.