Maximum Ice (33 page)

“Say again?”
“Transition. To the surface… a colony.”

“Why does that take a promotion?”

“Captain Razo… working too hard… not young.”

“An old captain can be a great blessing, Jozsef. To keep a crew from foolishness.”

“I’m sure Lieutenant Bertak will take… care of him.”

Her worst fear. She turned her back on Error’s Rock to collect her thoughts away from its unsettled lights. But they gilded the snow, stretching her shadow out long before her. Wolf was walking back toward the sled. Zoya watched him, biting her lip. There was more going on than Jozsef said. But was he withholding or just ignorant? Zoya had known Jozsef Mirran’s father well. She knew Jozsef himself less well. She was well aware that integrity did not often transmit down the generations as easily as hair color or the family jewels. She knew that Mirran chin, those Mirran cheekbones. But who was the man?

She went on intuition. “Jozsef, why do you suppose I can’t get through to Ship but you can?”

Wolf came up to her where she knelt over the radio pack. She looked up at him, finding reassurance in his face.

“That Ice plateau… surges…
” He went on through crackles that seemed to drive home his argument.

On impulse, she said, “Jozsef?”

“Yes?”
At that moment his voice came through so clearly, it was as though he stood next to her.

“Who is your captain?”

A silence followed. Finally:
“Anatolly Razo.”

“Remember that.” She replaced the microphone in its cradle.

Wolf watched her as she rose from her crouch near the transmitter. “Ready?” he asked.

“Did you see her?”

“No.” He handed the scope back to her. Then he hefted the harpoon gun from the sled, slinging it over his shoulder.

She followed him into the crevasse, the tall slit in Error’s Rock, and they soon left ordinary daylight behind, for the interior pathways of Ice.

It was preternaturally bright. Their boots crunched on the opaque floor, where numerous feet before them had trampled the facets of crystal.

Wolf had given her his large knife, and insisted she carry it. So if she was to murder anyone, it would be up close and not some easy, indirect thing. That would test more surely whether she should strike or not, and oddly, it settled her nerves.

Wolf led. The path ascended, as the crevasse changed from tunnel to open canyon and back again. Everywhere the architecture was alight. In a silent storm, explosions of light carved themselves on a paler, background luminescence.

Wolf paused to examine a section of wall. With his finger he traced a crabbed line, the sign of an arrow.

“Ice can change these,” he said. “They come and go. Lead people to traps.”

Zoya doubted that. Scratches could disappear as the surface of Ice grew. Wolf moved with ease from fact to supposition and back again. Somehow, amidst all that, his survival instincts kept him attuned, kept him alive.

She followed him onward, just behind the harpoon gun, where it rested against Wolf’s back.

“How do you know that Snow Angel is willing to die?” She thought that in Angel’s madness there might be other reasons to lure Wolf here.

“She tells me.”

“But she can’t talk.” Not much, anyway.

They made a switchback turn. Something lay in their path. Inspecting, they found a pile of cloth and a rusted cup, evidence of previous travelers. Leaving their gear behind, perhaps
these pilgrims felt no need of provisions so close to their holy grail.

Wolf answered: “Her skin. You saw?”

Her skin… she opened her mouth to say, what about it. But she
did
remember the pockmarks. The ones that moved. Because of the flicker of firelight, though.

“She let me catch her a year ago,” Wolf said. He was calling Snow Angel
she. Zoya liked that better than it
, though she knew why the pronouns were hard.

“She was beginning, then, to write things on her skin. She wasn’t very good at it.” As he peered at another wall marking, a spurt of indigo light shunted close by, draining his face to a bloodless pallor. “She does better now.”

“But how does one write on skin?”

“With practice.”

For the last few seconds they had been hearing a muted tinkling sound. Like tiny bells, or someone walking on broken glass.

They were approaching another turn, a switchback. Wolf unslung his weapon, but never missed his stride.

When they rounded the bend, they saw the corridor was congealed shut with a thick tongue of Ice.

Wolf ran his hands over the surface of the wall. “Smooth,” he murmured. “This is new.” He turned to her, his voice dropping. “Better wait for me, below.”

She didn’t need to think about it. “I’m staying with you.”

He narrowed his eyes, regarding her.

A tinkling sound, back around the corner, the way they had come.

Wolf rushed around the switchback, with Zoya close behind. The corridor was now closing there, as well, fencing them in. He began slashing at it with his harpoon. At the same
time, Zoya heard a crinkling sound from around the bend, where they had just been. She drew out her knife and rounded the corner, only to see a narrow fissure to one side, where none had been before.

As crashings erupted from down path, she heard Wolf bellow, “Go, Zoya; go!”

She dashed into the opening.

She was in a dark tube of greenish brown, like quartz stained by kelp and dirt. Her ears seemed stuffed with tinsel. Tiny cracklings.

Coming in was a mistake. Turning to leave, she found the door gone.

She pushed on the wall, and to her surprise it gave slightly It was rubbery. There was a small crack that might be the remnant of the old opening. Inserting the blade of her knife a centimeter or two, she thought of digging her way out. But it was hardening, and she yanked her knife free.

The air was still and warm. Sweat streamed from her face. She hurried down the tube. Light up ahead summoned her, and she soon broke into an open cavern with sky far above, and a rush of oxygenated air.

“Wolf!” she called. And again. Echoes took up the word, skewed.

Around her radiated alternate narrow canyons. Five of them. She turned slowly, trying to gauge direction by the sun. That was hopeless, she was no tracker.

A movement.

Spinning to face it, she saw far down one tunnel, the flapping of shredded cloth.

She saw nothing more, but she knew. It was Angel. Stepping backward, she found herself hiding for a moment in the shelter of one of the tunnel openings. Maybe Angel hadn’t seen her.

Perhaps the poor woman was fleeing Ice’s maze just as Zoya was. She would sit and wait, she would listen for Wolf…

She closed her eyes to hear better.

The crinklings had subsided. So quiet as she leaned against the wall, her hand was sweating, and the heel of her hand slipped off its resting place. In its place was a rosy bruise. Jerking away, she resolved not to touch Ice, not to reveal her position. Ice had no visual processing, but it might detect her in other ways.

That was a jump. To think that Ice tracked her whereabouts.

She took a calming breath. The tunneling and doors were natural phenomena. It was like being lost in a cave, like a spelunker.

Back in the open crossroads again. Now there were only four pathways where before there’d been five. One corridor was the way she had come. One was Snow Angel’s place.

One had an enormous presence in it.

He was easily two meters tall. His skin sagged heavily on a rail-thin frame. His white hair glowed with a silvery fire. He was in profile to her, then turned. When he saw her, he huffed, “Zo.” And then “Ya.”

She fled down the fourth way. Behind her, the tunnel echoed with heavy footfalls, well-made boots on huge feet.

Her corridor was narrowing.
Oh, Ice, don’t close up.

It closed.

No, not entirely. At the bottom, she saw a crawl space. Scooting into it, she scrambled like a mole, using all fours, dragging herself forward using her knife. A tap on her foot. She jerked her foot close to her body and nearly leaped into a cold, open gallery. Zoya yanked herself around to face her pursuer.

But no one plummeted out of the hole. In fact, the hole was too small for her pursuer. It had barely been large enough for Zoya.

She allowed herself a cold, ragged breath. Then another. The sun was bright in the sky. Her eyes felt like spearpoints driving into her skull.

Then, remembering how quickly Ice could add or subtract from its substance, Zoya fled.

Swan watched her skitter away. She knew he was there. She looked afraid.

He no longer had the advantage of surprise. But he had other advantages. Ice was at his fingertips, as always. Or not exactly as always… The hole had closed up, clogged with Ice, in a matter of seconds. He sat back on his heels, startled that Ice would present itself in this way, these shifting corridors, these ambiguous formations.

He put his hand to the wall, and spoke to Ice.

OK, good. Ice was problem-solving, and the maze—perhaps the whole monolith—was the result.
Goal-fulfillment searches.
Highly desirable. But a small doubt gnawed at him. Why this mountain of light?

Was there a problem, one he hadn’t been aware of?

He knew there were problems, that his awakening was in itself a problem. They were dealing with the problems, he and Ice, weren’t they? So focused on Zoya, Swan had not been paying attention to Ice as he should. Things pulled on his
attention, but he must remember the goals. Perhaps he had become sidetracked.

Hanging his head, he found that a slipstream of saliva was falling on his chest. He yanked his wrist across his mouth, cleaning himself. It was brutish to drool.

Swan hunkered down and began a more systematic look at the programs. Just a quick look, to calm him. He would catch up with Zoya soon enough.

But first he would find out why Ice had created Error’s Rock. He hoped the name the Zeros gave the outcropping was entirely coincidental. He didn’t like to think there were errors.

Zoya was running. She ran from the giant and from Angel. And there were times when she ran from herself, seeing a frightening reflection in fabulously pure glass, a frowning woman armed with a knife.

Running might not help, but she couldn’t stand still and be boxed in.

At times she saw Wolf, far down a passage, or, at times, at a higher level, inching along a shelf of Ice, within earshot but deaf to her shouts. He still had all his spears. But that could be a projection, a saved picture from an hour ago… or had it been two or three hours now? In her growing dread, she suspected a pattern of intimidation in the transformations of Ice. Ice might be programmed to thwart her, in fact to kill her. Perhaps this was the fate of everyone who dared the privacy of Ice’s largest thoughts…
Stop this
, she told herself. Stop running.

She was lost. Beginning to panic.

Sit down, Zoya. She forced herself to stop and sit. Her legs ached. She rubbed them, trying to collect her thoughts, formulate a plan.

Her eyes darted to the sides, watching. Too jumpy, she couldn’t think.

If Angel found her… well, Angel had spared her life once. Why would she kill her now?

And the tall man stalking her…

Her mind slipped into neutral. The tall man stalking her.

Many men were tall. No doubt many snow witches were tall. It didn’t signify. And if it did, what difference did it make?

She stood up, shivering from the sudden inactivity. There were two snow witches in the canyons of Error’s Rock. It didn’t matter if one of them was the master of Ice. They would both be hungry

She began to hurry down the fractured pathway. A line of sky above her burned bright from the sun.

Swan stifled a sob. It sounded like the bellow of an animal with its mouth tied shut. He sat on the ground, head on his knees. He opened and closed his right hand, trying to bring circulation back to it, his fingers like frozen tubes, like dead twigs. He was a tree in which the sap had run out. The husk remained. Only.

Now he understood about this gleaming tumor of a place. The whole rock of errors. It was devoted to a single problem.

The problem was Swan.

He’d spent the past hour probing his Looking Glass child. What he found had sent him to his knees, leaning against the plane of Ice. Around him the mountain sputtered with light, like an engine that couldn’t start. Ice was spinning out of control. Its programs were looping, unable to solve a metaproblem. The problem of Swan.

The problem went like this: He was long-lived, but flawed. The flaws were not due to his early awakening, as he had thought. The truth was, Ice didn’t know how to perfect him.

This was as good as it got, as it ever would get.

Unless Ice moved to the next stage, a global stage. To do
that, it needed to grow. Avoiding biological decay was a problem resistant to solution. Ice was growing very fast to increase computational power. It was rapidly expanding across the equatorial land and oceans. Eventually, it would attain a global state of maximum Ice. The state of maximum Ice—according to its calculations—would be sufficient. Problems of human senescence would be successfully attacked.

But Ice’s logic functions would be destroyed. Without the free lands and particularly the open ocean, Ice could not shed heat efficiently. Ice’s entire operations and data storage were susceptible to heat generated both from earth’s interior and Ice’s data-processing activity. Therefore, enormous amounts of heat must be shed. But global coverage would overwhelm Ice’s capability to dump heat. It could no longer manage the earth’s heat budget. Ice would break down as a computational platform.

Therefore, it mustn’t grow to the point of maximum Ice.

But to overcome Swan’s defects—which Swan now had made a goal-attainment priority—Ice must become maximum.