Whiteout

by Sage Walker

  * * *

  Janine heard scattered applause. She looked down into the Palacio’s dusky ranks of seats. More stray people had gathered. Some of them munched at sandwiches.

  Above them:

  Cordova’s white teeth gleamed in a monstrous grin, and the noise of the helo, at a painfully loud volume, rose even higher as the stage became the interior of the helo, rocking up and away from the ice.

  * * *

  Signy leaned forward against the harness straps. Trent aimed for a tiny rift in the clouds and the helo broke through into an area of lighter gray. Anna watched the sea, watched for something out there in the brash and bergs. Anna pursed her lips and turned to look forward, intent on the shore.

  Signy stretched, grabbed the back of Alan’s seat, and looked over his shoulder, to better see—

  The shore making a shallow curve, a flat sheet of ice that had sagged down and wedged tight on its way into the sea. The raft, a tiny oval pulled up on the tilted slab, a black punctuation mark on an expanse of white, and Cordova’s helo lifting.

  * * *

  Inside the helo’s bubble, Jared reveled in the secure pressure of the belt harness against his chest, the sight of the ranks of instruments gleaming and blinking across the cockpit, the feel of increased weight as the helo rose and Cordova pushed them forward and low, over a tossing sea. Far to his left, another helo approached. Signy was in there. She had come so far. And found him, although in some ways, Jared had never expected that she wouldn’t; he had never doubted that someone would come for him.

  Some people lived all their lives without ever trusting that they were loved. Jared felt immense sorrow for people like that. Poor bastards. How did they live through any day?

  Jared had always been loved. He had never questioned it; he would not question it now.

  He sank into the seat, pressing his back against its padding; he stretched his legs and pulled back the cuff of his parka. Signy, Paul, Pilar, Janine—all the indicator lights glowed; everyone here. His own familiar slot in the ranks was lighted as well. There was a guy named Jimmy, he’d heard Signy talking to him. Jared didn’t know him, but what the hell—the more the merrier. He felt a sweet euphoria, a sense of well-being that flooded over him and made even the throbbing in his hands an indicator of continued life; the pain of healing. Hunger chewed at his empty belly; his face hurt. How wonderful that his face hurt! Jared laughed aloud with the giddy joy of escape.

  Cordova would land somewhere, and Signy would be there. Maybe she had a sandwich or something with her.

  “Signy?” Jared asked. “Do you…”

  The helo’s engine coughed. Cordova cursed and his hands flew over his controls. The engine caught, coughed, coughed again and died. The helo flew just above the water. The cabin tilted and Jared felt his weight sag against the shoulder harness as the helo began to heel over toward the waves that reached up for them, too close, too close. Spinning, the horizon came up to cross the cockpit, dividing it vertically into water and sky. Metal screamed. The rotor blades cut into the sea. Jared saw, distantly, Cordova’s face, distorted into a rictus of terror. Cordova fought the controls, struggled with—

  The water struck the side of the helo with a flat, jarring slap. Water rose up the cabin’s sides. The fuselage might float. Or maybe parts of it would. Jared felt the water slew the craft to starboard, felt the fuselage begin a slow spin, seeking a balance of buoyancy between the weight of the blades and the motor. His hands, his damaged hands, found the release button on his harness. It snapped away. Jared reached for the woman in the seat behind him. Psyche sat frozen, staring straight ahead. Jared punched at the buckles on her harness and grabbed for her. The helo rolled up on its side, its door coming completely free of the water. Jared twisted so that his back rested on Cordova’s shoulder, braced his feet against the door and kicked hard.

  Fresh clean wind broke into the cabin. Hampered, for Cordova and the woman struggled beneath him, Jared found a grip on the edge of the cabin door and hoisted himself up. The helo settled into a smooth place in the water, a smooth glossy place. The smell of fuel reached up, rich in the air, slick on the water. On the horizon, Jared saw a whale breaking the surface of the waves.

  An alarm beeped in the interior of the helo. Its stupidity amused Jared somewhat. The emergency locator would be sending out pulses now, would do so for hours unless the salt water shorted it out, and those transmitters were well shielded.

  Where now? Into the water? Unless the cabin sank, even with the risk of the spilled fuel, they had to stay with the helo, stay on something that floated.

  Jared grabbed Cordova and pulled him up through the door. Cordova’s flailing hands found a hold on the helo’s side. Jared hauled himself out and clung flat-bellied, his fingers seeking for holds on the slick surface. Psyche struggled to the opening and raised her arms. Jared reached for her. Someone was screaming, but it wasn’t Psyche; someone screamed and Jared thought it might be Signy, or Paul. The noise was a nuisance Jared didn’t need, over the beep of the alarm, the sucking sound of water. Psyche’s shoulders came free of the door, fast, almost knocking him away from his perch. The helo seemed to be staying afloat. This was good. Jared grabbed Psyche’s arm and held her tight while she scrambled up and grabbed him, and Cordova, wedging herself between them. The helo listed, settling toward a new balance.

  Jared heard a soft whump, like the rush of air around a closing door. Flames rose from the sea, as high as city walls. The helo rolled bottom up as the sea ignited. Jared clung to it until the water closed over his head, clung to Psyche until she broke free of his grip. The buoyancy of his clothing lifted him up into a pocket of blazing fuel. He let go of the helo and ducked, proud that he hadn’t tried to inhale the burning gases. The undersurface of the water was lighted neon orange. Below him, the sea reflected the colors, fractured them into reds and greens, a wondrous fan of colors, and he searched for Psyche, for Cordova, for human shapes in the depths. He struck out into the sea, fighting to clear the edge of the flames, hanging on to his breath until he had to clench his jaws tight with the effort. Ahead of him, and above, he saw the woman’s legs, kicking in panic. He reached her and let himself rise, hoping there would be breathable air around her.

  His hand broke the surface of the water. Heat enveloped it, a heat that was cold and yellow and roared in his ears. Helpless in the grip of a breathing reflex, he lifted his head. His lungs pulled in the nothingness of great pain, of roaring flame. He heard the sound of a helo’s rotors, so close above him, but Cordova’s helo had crashed, hadn’t it?

  Shove the woman, push her free of the fire. Jared could feel his arms move, and his legs, trying to swim, as if they were on autopilot. The light around him existed in all the names of colors Pilar had tried to teach him, and he remembered how Signy had chanted them once, laughing with Pilar and setting a virtual for him, a virtual filled with washes of pure light—emerald, celadon, citrine, cobalt yellow, but this yellow was filled with transcendent white, the white of metal glowing under an oxyacetylene torch—topaz, aquamarine, sapphire, moonstone seen in moonlight, all the colors of Signy’s eyes.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Trent circled the perimeter of the flames, darting in too close for any safety limits Signy could imagine. The helo tossed in updrafts. Nothing appeared on the surface of the water, no wreckage, no tattered scrap of clothing, nothing.

  Sobs came to Signy’s ears, and a high-pitched keening. None of the shouted curses or the terrible howls were identifiable to her except that one voice did not cry out, did not speak, and that voice was Jared’s.

  Jared’s cameras functioned, his sensors. His arm remained extended toward Psyche, to lift her head? To clutch at her? Psyche’s face gaped blind at a holocaust she could no longer see; she sank away. Jared’s hand, stretched forward, opened in the flames, relaxed into the burning sea, floated on the water, his hand’s shape as innocent as a fallen leaf. Signy drifted, down, as Jared drifted, down, in colors of greens and grays that de
epened, deepened.

  The cacophony of sounds, the textures of what she twisted in her hands, the awareness that she breathed; Signy’s consciousness stalled at the complexity of inputs and sent: Does not compute. She heard Alan’s voice, remembered the concept “Alan,” the concept—words—

  “Nothing! Trent, there’s nothing here! Get us the hell away!”

  Signy heard Alan yelling in the noise of motors and flames and wind. She realized she held Anna’s sleeve, its puffy fabric crushed and compacted in her hands.

  —the soft, relaxed motions of Jared’s body drifted her down; smooth, slow. She should tell them not to die here. No one else needed to die here.

  “He’s dead,” Signy said. “Psyche is dead. Cordova—”

  —turned in the water, his limp body spread in a starfish shape as he spiraled past her—

  “—is dead.”

  Jared/she rolled over, in a languorous twisting turn, while from the depths, the whale rose, and nudged, nudged her/his body toward the surface.

  “Whale, this will do no good,” Signy whispered.

  She felt thick strong arms around her, a warm persistent presence. Anna held her. Anna, who reached out and held tight.

  The fleshtime touch meant so little; Signy drifted down again, down, away from the whale, who turned and vanished.

  Anna shook her. Signy tried to get away from Anna; Anna’s earthbound, fleshbound persistence; why did she interrupt?

  * * *

  Reflected, redoubled, a seascape filled the hall in Lisbon, an intimate world of watered, shimmering details placed in scale by a drifting hand, by a tangle of Jared’s hair crossing a lens like a frond of seaweed.

  The watchers below looked up, idly, at the bulk of a whale’s flank, at scars and disease laid out before them on an immense gray hide, at the blunted snout of a leviathan that nosed at a limp human arm and then turned away. Silence and gentle motions rocked away into gray, faded.…

  Janine heard someone shouting at Signy. Jimmy’s voice, harsh, cut through the babble from Trent’s helo.

  “Paul’s off-line,” Jimmy said. “I can’t access him.”

  “He’s cut himself out of the system. Let him be. It’s grief,” Pilar said.

  Beside her, Janine heard the tech sigh. He took the lighting down to black, then brought it back up, lighting an empty stage, bringing workplace illumination to the returning delegates as they began to file in and sit down with their cups of coffee and their notebooks. The room filled with the buzz of quiet conversations.

  Janine closed her eyes.

  —In black, she felt the sway of currents, a sensual, utterly relaxed drifting—

  This had to stop. Now. This was beyond reason; this was sick.

  “Jimmy, run Jared’s inputs to save, would you?” Janine asked.

  “Working,” Jimmy said.

  The motion from Jared’s drifting body stopped. Janine lifted her headset off and stared at its complex lenses, blind eyes that saw too much. She let her head sink forward, onto the cool surface of the console in front of her.

  * * *

  Pilar felt the absence of sensation envelop her like cotton. It was good of Jimmy to shut down the inputs from Jared’s suit. Jared wasn’t there, anymore. He just wasn’t there. Pilar wondered if her parents had felt the sense of calm she had sensed in Jared’s dying, or if they had suffered agonies in those moments when the car crushed itself around them. Pilar knew they had died hearing shrieks of tortured metal. Hearing was the last sense to go, so it was said. Had the sounds become unearthly music in those last instants? She would never know.

  Outside the Seattle window, a dull January rain fell. Slow cold droplets streaked down the glass. Fog, and rain. So dull, such an ordinary rain. Pilar turned away and watched, over and over, the dazzle of colors, the secret, silent heart of a firestorm. She wanted to set it in stone. There were jeweler’s tools somewhere in the house, there were lumps of coral and amber, agate the color of caramels.… Cool and smooth, Pilar wanted the feel of polished stone under her hands. A segmented form … somewhere something wonderful lurked in this maelstrom.

  “Pilar? Pilar?” Jimmy’s voice was as irritating as the whine of a fly in a winter kitchen.

  “Leave me alone.” Pilar wondered why her voice sounded so flat, so bored. “I’m working.” Magic words. I’m working, she always told them, when something lurked at the edge of vision, when she listened to sounds that might fit together into melodies and rhythms. All of them left her alone when she said that, as if her musings were sacred things that wouldn’t bear disturbance. When sometimes, her silence was simply a way to withdraw, to be elsewhere for a little time. Someone would have to explain the code to Jimmy someday. Janine would take care of it; Janine watched out for her like a mother hen.

  “Janine needs you,” Jimmy said. “So does Signy. Pilar, you have to help them.”

  Pilar sighed. “Okay. Okay.”

  * * *

  Fleeing a storm. Signy watched the terrible Antarctic skies, the quiet figures of the humans around her. She made no plans. This flight, this warm bubble of life suspended above the sea would continue in its own time, its own way. Or the helo would tumble and spin and crash. That could happen. “Life is generally fatal, Signy.” Jared used to say that. It came to her that Jared was the one who had spooked her virtuals, had sent the image of the waxy hand adrift in the flames, that night in Taos when Signy had felt so alone, so lost. Had he known he’d done it?

  Yes. Yes, he must have known. Jared had seen, somehow, a part of his dying; he had sent her a warning.

  Bullshit. That was spook stuff, that was crystals and mystic nonsense. And yet—did he know I was sending him to die?

  “I’m so tired,” Signy said.

  “We’re close,” Trent told her. Alan twisted in his harness and reached back for her hand. Signy let him take it, her wrist with its band of lights—Pilar, Janine, Jimmy. In Jared’s place; Jimmy. Ah, shit.

  Signy heard Janine talking to someone.

  “I’d better look at Lisbon,” Signy told the quiet people in the helo. Her headset was wearing a bruise into her cheekbone. She rubbed at the sore spot while she watched.

  * * *

  Janine heard the speaker’s gavel. The afternoon session was opening ten minutes late. Janine stared daggers at the tech sitting beside her. He looked worried.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry it went like that.”

  Janine hated him. A man Janine didn’t know, an uninvited intruder who had just shared Jared’s personal, private death with anyone who wanted to look up and see it. What did he think he had done? Did it matter?

  He seemed so mundane, so unremarkable. He seemed like someone who would dream of a better flat, many children, perhaps a little boat to take out in the harbor on Sundays. The flesh of his neck bulged out over the collar of his pink shirt. Janine wondered why he didn’t unbutton it.

  The door opened. Janine heard the rustle of expensive silk; Kazi. She saw a glint of tears in his eyes.

  “Janine, poor child.” Kazi’s arms reached around her.

  “You saw?” Janine let him hold her. She didn’t plan to cry.

  “Yes. The crash at sea, yes. A courageous death; bravely met.”

  Courage? Jared had just kept working, doing the next thing. That wasn’t courage; that was just Jared.

  “You need tea. Or brandy. I’ll take you to your room. You will want privacy,” Kazi said. “Come, Janine, come; let’s go.”

  Privacy was not what Janine wanted. She stood, Kazi’s arms helping lift her, as if she were very old.

  “I’ll get some brandy,” the tech said. He scrambled to his feet and opened the door, wafting a trace of cologne to mark his path, a cologne with one of those macho names. Matador, or Dork, or something like that.

  “Thank you. I’m Kazuyuki Itano. We haven’t met…”

  “Gianni.”

  Gianni was anything but macho, and Janine smiled, watching his plump little behind
disappear down the stairwell. Gianni. John. John Dork. Now she had a name for him.

  Janine laughed, a short painful sound that hurt her throat. She held on to the door. Her eyes blurred. Damn tears anyway. A sob broke through her control. Kazi’s arms reached around her in a clumsy, gentle hug. Janine pushed him aside, reached for the chair, and sank into it.

  “It’s not worth it,” Janine said. “Jared’s dead. I’m leaving. I’ve got to get home.”

  Kazi knelt beside her and held both her hands in his.

  “Don’t go. Don’t go, Janine. This is a tragedy, yes. But please, you can’t leave now.”

  Janine’s nose was dripping. She twisted a hand free and reached for the carefully folded handkerchief peeping out of Kazi’s breast pocket. The hanky was silky cotton, full sized, luxurious. Janine shook it out and honked into it.

  “The hell I can’t. They need me.” Signy wouldn’t be home for days. Pilar had Jimmy. Paul? Had disappeared off-line. Janine didn’t want to try to fit into Seattle right now, and the Taos house would be empty. So empty. “Yoshiro’s daughter decides to play politics and kills off my man, along with a lot of other people. You ask us to do a job for you, and then you change the goddamned rules and don’t tell us. You’re crazy. Old Man Tanaka is crazy. His daughter is crazy.”

  “His daughter? If she hired those people, she was ill advised in her choice of mercenaries. You seem convinced that she ordered Cordova to kill himself.”

  “She sabotaged him,” Janine said.

  “I cannot accept your accusation.”

  “I’m not accusing you. I plan to accuse her.”

  “San-Li, if she truly hired the people who sank the Oburu, acted foolishly but honorably in seeking to—balance—the hostilities in the Southern Ocean. Tanaka did not sink the Noche Blanca.”