Maximum Ice (25 page)

Swan had left the city behind him. Halfway up their crumpled sides, the city’s great towers were clasped in Ice’s grasp. It had been a dangerous journey, fleeing the surface city with its remnant hulks of urban greatness. He had glimpsed a swarm of rats; there were surely more lurking in the ruined city. The preserve that had once been there was abandoned. All that was left of the megalopolis of Seattle was his own domain of coretext.

Until he found weapons and a sled, he would not feel quite safe. He was acutely aware that he was vulnerable in this surface world: a stark figure exposed on the albino landscape.

And what a thing this Ice was. He had known it was geographical in extent; he’d imagined it was deep and wide. But, when he emerged from the crevasse and stood up, blinking in the sun, his mind reeled. He turned and turned.

Ice had become the world. It was nothing that could be called a layer, an overlay, a growth. It had seized the land, wrapping mountains in a dominant embrace. It commanded the geography, except for gashes left by mountain chains both east and west, and Mount Rainier in the south. Far away, he knew, the equatorial ocean also remained. Climate control. Ice did maintain things nicely. It was a program goal.

Still, his mind took an hour to come to terms with what he was seeing. He had huddled next to the crevasse and stared around, breathing carefully, evenly. He saw a deep-hued laser
light shoot through the land like a crack erupting on a frozen pond. It was a larger pulse than in coretext, altogether more grand.

It was information carried in light, amplified by the orientation of quasi-crystal lattices, which were not true lattices at all… but aperiodic sequences of immense complexity. No one, not even Swan himself, could grasp that pattern. He and his research team had worked with Ice, programming it while still not privy to its quantum mysteries, much as gardeners trained and manipulated plants without comprehending the profound chemical mysteries of photosynthesis.

But now, acclimated to the new world, Swan’s reverie had subsided. His legs ached from hours of hiking, the skin on his shoulders was bleeding from the weight of his pack. He must continue on. He owed it to the new world flowering around him, to protect it and keep it clean. He didn’t hate these gypsies, he told himself. They believed themselves innocent, they always justified themselves. What good were words, though, against the testimony of the dead? The flesh spoke, as it fell from bones.
But for you, I would have lived.

They should have stayed on their road, these vagrants, these wanderers, these killers. Everywhere they went they spread corruption. The worst of it was, they were immune, so the virus never killed its host. A perfect, symbiotic relationship.

It made him slightly ill to think of all they could ruin. At first he’d thought the ship merely threatened Ice. And that was bad enough. Now though, they threatened all life. He wanted some company, after all. One needed some companionship. Solange, for instance. She was interesting, an educated woman. And the Keep was worth… keeping. Even the preserves had their place. He didn’t want to be the sole survivor.

He trudged on, following the gypsy woman’s path traced in Ice’s memory. Zoya Kundara was moving out of the Vancouver
area, outward on the tundra that had once been the Strait of Georgia. That was an odd direction. That way lay nothing but the vast Pacific Ice Shelf.

Why had she diverted to that course, just when she’d been heading south, right into his arms?

Gypsies
would
wander.

I am dying. I don’t mind, I’m an old woman, and weary to the bone of all of you.

So began the old words, the words from Wolf’s pendant, until now merely a carved stone on a leather thong.

Oh Tolav, don’t look so confused. I’m making a recording. I know you don’t know what that is. That’s why I’m doing it, really. Because everything will be lost, you see. Everything is already lost. All but you, my son.
I’m ashamed of myself that you’re not an educated man. But I made my choices. You had to be strong. And respected. The barbarians here wouldn’t trust a man who could read. So you are tall and robust and fierce when you need to be.
This place stinks. That sums it up. I could be more eloquent, but what’s the point? I’m ninety-six years old, and I don’t have to pretty things up. I know what we’re becoming. In the early years we had a school. Now people burn books for fuel. Why not? They can’t read anymore. Who needs to read when there’s the control of the food benders to be won? And control of the women—oh yes, let’s not forget sex—and control of daily affairs. I leave such ambitions to the young thugs who covet them so much.
Well, I
said
I was weary.
Tolav, this is for you. Take this when I’ve finished and keep it close to you. Pass it on to your strongest son. Tell him to listen to his grandmother.
It’s Grandfather’s doing that I can record at all. My grandfather worked hard to resurrect the technology, but no one was interested, except for me. Thanks to him, I’m able to make this last recording. I’ll try to keep it short.
My parents never cared about learning. But while he lived, my grandfather taught me what he could. He passed on to me what he’d been taught by his father, and so the science and the history has been handed on in our family since the Collapse. To my shame, that tradition ends with me. It’s a bitter thing to squander knowledge, to keep it inside my worthless old head. So this record is your education. Keep it alive, Tolav.
The barrens were not always here. Everyone knows that. But not everyone remembers why. Now listen.
It began with dark matter. A kind of a cloud came into the neighborhood of our sun. In the old days, people had time to wonder what the universe was made of. They said part of the universe was made of dark matter. It bent light, and so they knew it was out there, but it wasn’t supposed to be harmful. Grandfather explained that dark matter wasn’t composed of the stuff everything else was made of. They didn’t know what it was made of. And this cloud was different in other ways, too. It was deeper and emptier.
Don’t frown, Tolav, I know this is hard. What Grandfather told me—and even he was guessing—was that this dark matter siphoned off information, like a cold room will attract the warmth from your skin. It’s the natural flow, Tolav Entropy.
The world is moving from order to disorder, and someday, they say, the universe will be in a sterile balance. Things fall apart. That was the title of a book I used to have. I hated to watch it burn.
Where was I? Oh, how it all leaked away…
Some information was more vulnerable than others. But biology—such a miracle of tender persistence! It couldn’t hold. Its chemistry is so temporarily stable. And so information-rich, God help us.
But the Collapse began with the deterioration of electronic
computing (the old machines with the funny little keys). Oh dear, I have to keep this simple, don’t I? Just how simple is truly sad. Anyway, information inside the old computing machines—the data— went bad. Electronic information decayed into noise.
With the plants it was slower. The spring crops that year sprouted thin and spindly. Wheat didn’t come in at all. The fields were black mud. People lived off the produce set by in the controlledatmosphere silos. We have the story in our family that one of our ancestors traded a jeweled watch for a box of fruit—what were called oranges. When they cut into them, there was nothing but white rind all the way through.
The trees—I’ve told you about trees, remember? Well, the leaves fell off in June, instead of in the fall as they were accustomed to doing. There was a famous poem, “The Autumn of June.” It was the autumn of our species, Tolav, because in a few short months, even before starvation set in, everyone was sickening. Did you ever think, Tolav, how much information it takes to run a human body?
Well, never mind.
Within six months, it was over. Except for a few outposts, the world had ended. I sometimes wonder what the dark cloud will become with all that new information? Will it re-create what it stole from us, somewhere else? If so, perhaps something good may come of all this.
Now listen carefully: the cloud, the cloud of dark matter, is gone.
We’re free of it, dear one, and have been for a long time. Grandfather said the effects waned in about two hundred years, just as scientists had said. The cloud moved on to more lush feeding grounds. Poor bastards, any neighbors we might have!
But we’re still afraid of leaving our caves. Personally, I think our king of the refuse heap wants to prevent people from leaving and depriving him of his slave labor. Don’t be fooled. And don’t be afraid, Tolav. There is more darkness in this dreadful warren than the scoured world topside.
I do have to finish. Here is what you must know about the barrens. You call it Ice. It’s not, you know, but the name will serve.
I’ve told you before what Ice is, and how it began. Right here at the Seattle preserve was a major research center. It once was a great city on a fine harbor with sailing ships and airships and two million people. They all died except for a few. Our ancestors survived because they were researching on Ice. They grew Ice as fast as they could to store the learning of the university (a big school). The physical presence of Ice also shielded the life taking refuge underneath it. But there was no refuge from human evil.
In times of trouble human nature is magnified, for good and bad. It was no different then. People helped each other, and killed each other. One man especially. So Grandfather told me—and I believe him—of a man who ruined Ice.
It happened toward the end, when everything was in turmoil and people were trying to break into our enclave. This one man took advantage of the confusion, exploiting the fast growth rate of Ice. The other scientists knew he was doing something wrong, and tried to stop him. The story is that he killed them. He was a foreigner to the group, and they never trusted him. They said he was too tall, taller than everyone. And selfish. He wanted to live—to live longer than people can live, longer than they
should.
He ruined it all, because he set Ice to grow and not stop, so it could work on the ultimate entropy question: human death.
His name was Lucian Orr. I hope he died a very bad death. But his programs live on. That’s what the stories say
There’s one more thing. Remember this part.
Those who created Ice worried about runaway growth. They built in a subroutine, a destruct function to protect earth from Ice. The function causes Ice to combust. On a small scale, that would be no worse than, say, a forest fire. People call such things fail-safes. To keep you safe in case of failure. It wouldn’t be a perfect solution
,
there would be some atmospheric effects from hundreds of small fires all over the world. But if necessary, they were prepared to destroy Ice once the dark field passed.
If your children or their children ever reclaim technology, Tolav, they must never use this subroutine. It’s far too late for this fail-safe. Ice is too vast now. We think most of America is covered. Maybe Europe, Asia, and South America as well. Nobody knows exactly. But even at a fraction of that size, a combustion of Ice would be a firestorm. A fire like that would feed on the atmosphere, driving off what it didn’t consume.
Earth must never end in fire, Tolav. It’s worse than Ice. By far.
Another poem, but never mind.
There’s more I could say, so much more. If this is to be a record, it should be more complete. It should be a real history, because the past matters, and mustn’t be forgotten. Perhaps others have written it down; I can’t bear to think otherwise.
But now, Tolav, you must leave this place. Escape to the surface. Take Jena with you. She’s strong and will bear fine children. Oh dear, listen to me! I sound like a barbarian myself. Well, perhaps I am, after all.
You have a good heart, Tolav, and will raise up good boys and girls to follow in your path. Take the medallion with you and play its message for your children. Educate them. Wear it around your neck, my darling. It is my blessing to you.
Now go.

Zoya had been sitting so long she felt frozen in place. But during the recitation, she couldn’t move. If she understood correctly, she had just listened to a voice over nine thousand years old.

Whoever had made the recording, she hadn’t identified herself. Zoya would have liked to know her name. She reached out, and Wolf handed her the amulet. She inspected it, turning
it over in her hands, seeing now that its abstract patterns were really a beautiful calligraphy of
readmereadmereadme.
Inside this black mechanism was a story that was very old even when it was recorded: the story of Lucian Orr, Ice programmer.

So here was
intention
, indeed. The second program that supplanted the first.

Longevity was the intention.

She looked around her, at the forever snows. So, in all this world Ice, did Lucian Orr get his wish?

Wolf was watching Zoya carefully, waiting for her to tell him what his amulet said. She handed it back to him. Then she translated as best she could, the words of the old woman—perhaps his long-ago relation—a woman whose name was lost, but whose story still lived.

He listened with that same expression he reserved for attending to Ice and its world.

When she finished, he was left gazing at the amulet he held in his hand. “It never protected me,” he said, his voice gravelly “All the old stories. There was no truth in them.”

He was sitting so still, as though he were carved from Ice.

She said softly, “No, Wolf, they’re still true. But it’s a buried truth. The old stories are like that.”

He fingered the medallion absently, perhaps taking some comfort from it still, even though its blessings were different than he once thought.

She said as gently as she knew how, “It’s as though there are two ways of knowing. Science for the outer facts. Stories for the inner ones.”

“So,” he said at last, “there’s a difference, then?”

It silenced her. Wasn’t it true that the world was commingled—what we know, and what we believe? And wasn’t it true that in some sense the medallion
had
protected him and his
ancestors, freeing them from the preserves, giving them a different life, perhaps a better one? But, looking at Wolf, she thought he didn’t need her to say so. He would know, eventually.