Orion stared glumly at the pile of water-slicked wood. ‘How are we going to get it going?’ he asked miserably. ‘It’s all too wet for your lighter.’ Nothing was dry. The mist had thickened to an almost-drizzle; water dripped continually off leaves and branches.
Ozzie was busy splitting one of the logs lengthways, turning it into slim segments of kindling. ‘So, like, I guess you were never in the Boy Scouts, then?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Group of young camping enthusiasts. They all get taught how to rub lengths of wood together so they spark. That lets you start a fire no matter where you are.’
‘That’s stupid! I’m not rubbing logs together.’
‘Quite right.’ Ozzie concealed his grin as he opened a pot of flame gel, and carefully applied a small layer of the blue jelly to each of the kindling sticks. He pushed them into the middle of the logs, then took out his petrol lighter – it was actually older than his watch. ‘Ready?’ He flicked the lighter once, and keeping it at arm’s length, pushed it towards the kindling. The gel ignited with a loud whoomp. Flames jetted out around the logs, engulfing the whole pile. Ozzie only just managed to pull his arm back in time. ‘I thought they banned napalm,’ he muttered.
Orion laughed in relief, and clapped his gloved hands together. The flames burned intently, spilling out across the remaining logs. In a couple of minutes, the whole pile was spitting and blazing keenly.
‘Keep it well fed,’ Ozzie said. ‘The new logs will have to dry out before they burn.’
While the boy enthusiastically dropped another log on every few minutes, Ozzie set the tent up a few yards away. The struts were simple poles supporting a double air-insulated lining which expanded automatically, inflating as soon as he twisted the valve open. Over that went the wind shell, a tough waterproof fabric with long pins along its hem which he hammered deep into the ground. Not that any wind could ever penetrate the forest floor, but he was starting to get a bad feeling about this weather.
For once, Ozzie had allowed Orion to choose whatever food he wanted from the pack. The boy was becoming seriously depressed by their environment and needed cheering up. So they settled down in the lee of the tent’s front flaps which had been hoisted up to form a little porch, with the warmth of the fire washing over them and drying their clothes, eating sausages, burgers, beans, with hot cheese poured on thick chunks of bread. To follow that up Orion heated a can of orange sponge with treacle.
After they’d taken care of the animals, they banked up the fire and went into the tent. Ozzie had his six seasons sleeping bag to curl up in. Orion’s bag wasn’t as good, but he had a couple of blankets to wrap round it. He went to sleep complaining it was too warm.
Ozzie woke to a bad headache and distinct lack of breath. It was light outside, though not the kind of brightness daylight usually brought. Orion was asleep beside him, his breathing short and shallow. Ozzie looked at the boy for a moment, his mind all sluggish. Then it all made sense. ‘Shit!’ He got out of the sleeping bag fast, fingers fumbling with its zipper. Then he was crawling forward. The tent’s inner lining seal parted easily. Beyond that, the wind shell was bulging inwards. He tugged at the zip. A torrent of fine powdery snow fell in silently, washing up against his knees. Even when it finished moving, leaving him half-immersed in a broad mound, there was no sign of the sky. He pushed his way up against it and started to dig frantically. After a couple of seconds his hands were scrabbling in air. Bright white sunlight streamed in. He gulped down the freezing air, trying to slow his panicky heart.
Orion was sitting up behind him, eyes blinking. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing, we’re okay.’
‘I’ve got a headache. Is that snow?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Oh wow.’ He crawled forward and scooped some of it up, grinning delightedly. ‘I’ve never seen any before. Is it covering everything like it does in the Christmas pictures of Earth?’
Ozzie, who was just about to start telling him to dress in his waterproofs, did a double take. ‘You’re shitting me, man. You’ve never seen snow before?’
‘No. It doesn’t snow in Lyddington. Ever.’
‘Right. Okay. Well, put your waterproofs on, we’ll go out and take a look.’
The snow was a foot deep on the ground, with several inches coating the top of every branch and twig. Right around the base of the trees it was thinner, and of course it had drifted high against the tent’s wind shell, completely covering the apex. Ozzie looked back at it rather sheepishly; if it had truly buried the tent then the wind shell wouldn’t have been able to take the weight. Nonetheless, it was a sharp lesson not to take anything for granted in the alien forest.
He called Orion over to help soothe the animals as they stamped their hoofs and shivered in the cold. The unkempt pony didn’t seem to mind the snow too much, nuzzling up to Orion as soon as the boy found some oats for her. The lontrus simply shook its shaggy gull-grey coat as Ozzie checked it over. The creatures had a strange biochemistry which allowed them to withstand temperatures far more severe than this. It was Polly who had suffered the worst as she didn’t have a winter coat. Mr Stafford of Top Street stables had kept the mare nicely clipped for Silvergalde’s moderate climate. Ozzie thought about that as he stroked her trembling neck. He knew damn well he wasn’t in Silvergalde’s mild temperate zone any more. Yet the temperature didn’t drop to anything like this for thousands of miles north of Lyddington. They’d made good progress in the last nine days, but not that much. The only rational explanation was that they’d gained a lot of altitude, though he wasn’t sure where, it wasn’t a single mountain, yet his virtual vision map showed no true highlands within nine days’ hard riding of Lyddington – nor within twenty days come to that.
He turned a full circle, then glanced up at the blank featureless sky, a slow satisfied smile lifting his face. ‘Definitely not Kansas anymore,’ he said quietly.
They had a cold breakfast, dug out and packed the tent, then went on their way. Snow drifted about aimlessly all day, the powder fine enough for the slightest gust of air to send little flurries whirling round them. It turned the forest into an exquisite crisp winter land, but once they’d started there was no clue as to where the path actually was. Horse, pony, and lontrus plodded onward as if they knew where they should be going, bearing the new climate stoically.
Every now and then, great cascades of snow would tumble down from the overhead canopy of the giant trees, making a gentle prolonged roaring noise, which was alarmingly loud in the silent forest. A softer fall of snow began around midafternoon, big flakes trickling down from the lost sky. It turned the ambient light a miserable grey and the air even colder. Polly was making hard going of breaking ground as the snow’s thickness built up. Ozzie took a break to put his big waterproofs on over his clothes. Without semiorganics, he was layering; it was a strategy which kept him warm and dry, but at the cost of mobility. Bundled up as he was, he could barely remount Polly. Orion was given a couple of sweaters and another pair of trousers to wear under his oilskins. Once they were moving again, Ozzie began to worry about when night would fall. With the snow showing no signs of relenting, they would need time and light to make a proper camp.
About an hour later they came across a clump of bushes, all covered in snow so they looked like big dunes with just a few twigs poking through the top.
‘We’ll shelter here for the night,’ he said.
Orion just looked round and shrugged. The boy had barely spoken all day.
Ozzie took off a layer of sweaters and climbed up into the tree above the bushes. He set about the big lower branches with his diamond saw, slicing through at the junction. It didn’t take too much effort before they broke off, falling on top of the bushes. He got four largish ones down, letting them land on top of each other to form a semi-stable barrier. As a makeshift corral, it would have to do. By the time he gingerly climbed back down again, the snow was already settling on top of them.
Orio
n set about tying blankets around the horse and pony, while Ozzie pitched their tent in the scant shelter of a big trunk. It was almost dark when he finished. He checked his watch: quarter past five. Which made the day about ten hours long. Silvergalde’s rotation was twenty five and a half hours.
‘Are you going to light a fire?’ Orion asked; his teeth were chattering.
Ozzie helped the boy into the tent. ‘Not tonight. Get into your sleeping bag, that’ll keep you warm.’
Orion did as he was told without complaint. There were dark circles under his eyes and by the light of the kerosene lamp it looked as if the freckles were fading from his white skin. Ozzie wormed his way into his own sleeping bag, and immediately felt the benefit. He took a heatbrick out of his bag and ripped the tag. The unit was powered by a simple chemical reaction, and the top surface was soon glowing vermilion, throwing out a considerable heat. They took it in turns to cook their cans, then Ozzie boiled up two large thermosfulls of tea so they’d have a hot drink waiting for them when they woke. ‘Get some sleep,’ he said. ‘It’ll be dawn quite quickly.’
Orion gave him a worried look. ‘Is the snow going to cover the tent again?’
‘No. We’ll be fine. It was definitely thinning out when we came in. But I’ll check every couple of hours. Don’t worry.’
‘I’ve never been so cold.’
‘You’re warmer now, though, aren’t you?’
‘Uh huh.’ The boy pulled the sleeping bag up to his chin. ‘Suppose so.’
‘Okay then.’ Ozzie pulled the blankets up round him. ‘It’s just when we stop moving you feel it worst.’
Ozzie’s watch read five minutes to four when dawn arrived. His e-butler had woken him up at regular intervals through the night so he could check the tent. He felt as if he’d had about ten minutes’ sleep all night. Orion was equally reluctant to get out of his sleeping bag.
‘We have to move on,’ Ozzie told him. ‘We can’t stay here.’
‘I know.’
The snowfall had stopped some time during the night, producing a uniform brilliant white landscape. Snow covered everything, even sticking to the vertical tree trunks so that any dark twig or leaf that protruded looked strangely out of place. It was nearly two feet deep on the ground now. Ozzie put on the darkest sunglasses he’d got, trying not to show how much that perturbed him. It was going to be slow progress for the animals today.
‘Mr Stafford should sell sledges,’ Orion said. ‘He’ll like that when I tell him.’
Ozzie laughed too loud at the boy’s humour, and gave him a quick hug. They were both sipping their tea from the thermos as they walked over to the animals. The precarious corral had worked to a degree; covered with snow and frozen solid it had provided a reasonable protection against drifts. Behind it, the horse and pony had trampled the snow about their feet, and were shivering heavily. The lontrus simply stood there, snorting out clouds of faint steam. If such a thing were possible, it was giving them a sullen look from beneath the shaggy strands of fur which curtained its eyes.
Orion gave their surroundings a baleful stare. ‘Which way?’
Ozzie frowned as the answer stalled in his throat. He tried to work out which direction they’d arrived from last night. It simply wasn’t possible, the clumps of trees all looked identical. ‘Try your gift,’ he suggested.
The boy fumbled with his sweaters, pulling the pendant out. There was a tiny glimmer of blue starlight within the little gem. He slowly turned full circle, holding it like a compass. When he was pointing just to the right of the tent, its intensity increased noticeably.
Ozzie thought the trees formed a kind of avenue that way. Sort of. ‘Guess that’s it then,’ he said.
‘Glad I came now?’
‘Very.’ Ozzie put his arm round the boy’s shoulder. ‘Looks like I owe you big-time, huh? How do you figure you’ll cash it in?’
‘I just want Mom and Dad back.’
‘Yeah yeah, but like apart from that? I mean, guiding me to safety’s got to be worth a couple of mega-Ks. That’s serious money.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh, come on, man. I knew when I was your age.’
‘Okay then,’ Orion said, suddenly animated again. ‘This is huge money, right?’
‘Absolutely. Buy your own planet style.’
‘Right, first off, I’d buy loads of rejuvenations, so I live as long as you do.’
‘Good one, I can dig that.’
‘And then I’d buy lots of smart memories, so I’d have an education and know all the complicated stuff like physics and art and banking, but I don’t have to go to school for years.’
‘Even better.’
‘And I want a car, a real cool one – the coolest there’s ever been.’
‘Ah, that’s the Jaguar-Chevrolet 2251 T-bird, the con-vertible.’
‘Really? There really is a coolest car ever?’
‘Oh yeah. I got a couple in my garage. Sad thing is I never drive them these days. That’s the thing with serious money, you can do so much that you never have time to do anything.’
‘I’d give some away, too, to charities and hospitals and things, people that really need it.’
‘Nice; that’ll prove you’re an okay kind of a guy, not just another rich bastard who doesn’t give a shit.’
‘Ozzie, do you give money away then? Everyone knows you’re cool.’
‘Yeah. I give some of it away.’ He gave the boy a dutiful shrug. ‘When I remember.’
As Ozzie expected, it was slow going at first, with Polly breaking ground again. He would have preferred to send the lontrus on first, but its legs were too short. So Polly pushed her way laboriously forwards, her longer legs churning up the thick layer of snow. He spent most of the morning considering options. Make some kind of snow shoes and sledge, haul their food along and let the animals go? Simply turn around and return with the right kind of equipment to tackle this terrain? Except . . . who knew what kind of terrain he’d face next time? Assuming he could find a way back to Lyddington from here.
He just kept telling himself this was Silfen country. The aliens wouldn’t let any real harm befall anyone. Would they?
As the morning progressed, so the depth of snow gradually began to reduce. It didn’t get any softer, though, and it remained stuck to every surface. Four hours after they started he was shivering inside his multiple layers. A layer of hoar frost caked every square inch of his clothing. There was nothing else for it, he got down and plodded along beside the horse, shoving his boots through the snow. The action warmed him slightly, but now he was worried about the rate he was burning off calories. The horse and pony were visibly in distress, despite the blankets tied round them.
Sometime after midday, Ozzie noticed what looked like tracks in the snow ahead of them. He took his sunglasses off, and found the light had become a pale pink. It turned the world into a strange grotto land, as if the forest had been carved out of brittle coral.
‘Is it evening already?’ Orion asked with a muffled voice. His face was completely swathed in a wool scarf, with only a narrow slit left to see through.
Ozzie checked his watch. ‘Don’t think so.’ He bent down to examine the tracks. They were definitely footprints; elongated triangles without any tread. ‘These may be Silfen boots,’ he said excitedly. There were perhaps fifteen different sets, all emerging from the forest, a couple had even appeared directly beneath trees, which he suspected the aliens had been climbing. They merged together and headed off along the vague avenue of snow-encrusted trees.
‘Are you sure?’ Orion asked. He was treading ground where he stood, slapping his hands against his side in an effort to stay warm.
‘I think so. I don’t know who else is going to be running round these woods. Besides, we haven’t got a lot of choice.’
‘Okay.’
They started off again. Orion was walking beside his pony, one arm draped over the saddle so his hand could grip the reins. Ozzie suspected he was d
oing that so the pony could partly pull him along. The air was so cold now, it burned the inside of his mouth if he took a clear breath. The scarf he’d wrapped over his own nose and lips dangled long ice crystals where his breath had frozen against the woolly fabric. Before he put the sunglasses back on, he tried to see where the sun was. The branches overhead were thinner now, showing patches of a hazed ruby sky. He thought one section was slightly brighter, about halfway between the zenith and horizon, but that would put nightfall several hours away. If he’d worked the new short days out they only had about an hour left.
Half an hour later, Orion stumbled. Ozzie only knew because he heard a small grunt. When he looked round, the boy was face down in the snow with the pony standing above him. Much as he would have liked to hurry back, Ozzie’s limbs responded slowly. It was like trying to move through liquid.
When he sat Orion up, the boy wasn’t even shivering. Ozzie pulled the scarf off his mouth to check for breathing. His lips were dark and cracked, with tiny flecks of blood frozen into place.
‘Can you hear me?’ Ozzie shouted.
Orion’s eyes fluttered weakly. He moaned softly.
‘Shit,’ Ozzie grunted. ‘Hang on, I’ll put the tent up. We’ll wait here until the weather picks up.’
There was no reply, although Orion raised one arm a few inches. Ozzie left him propped up against the pony and tried to get the tent pack off the lontrus. His outer gauntlets were too thick to unfasten the strap catches, so he took them off, trying not to wince as the arctic air bit straight through the woollen inner gloves. He started fumbling with the straps, then gave up and pulled the diamond-blade machete from its sheath, and cut the straps.
Three times he had to put his gauntlets back on and flap his arms to try and heat his hands back up before his fingers actually moved. What seemed like hours later the air-insulated section of the tent had reluctantly self-inflated and he’d got the support poles secured to the edges. He dropped a couple of heatbricks inside, then dragged the semi-conscious boy in after them. With the flap sealed, the interior of the tent warmed rapidly from the radiance of the heatbricks. Ozzie had to strip several layers of clothing off himself and the boy before they began to feel the benefit. The chilblains in his fingers and toes were strong enough to make him wince as circulation returned. Orion started coughing; he looked as though he wanted to burst into tears.
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