A Dream of Ice

by Gillian Anderson

  Mikel touched a small quartz panel on the bubble of rock. The arched entrance immediately opened like the door of a cabinet. Inside, he found a row of hooks holding four sagging, beige bits of what appeared to be remarkably well-preserved cloth masks. He set his teeth against the cold and pulled off a glove to touch one. It didn’t feel like fabric. The swatch had an unrecognizable smoothness, definitely not plastic. He would have compared it to skin but it didn’t move like skin when he lifted it. Somehow it felt flexible and then oddly structured, but the structure disappeared as soon as he moved it again.

  Technologist gear? he wondered.

  As Mikel pulled down his balaclava and cautiously placed the mask to his face, its edges cinched themselves to his skin. With some effort he could pry it loose again, but it was designed to be airtight, and suddenly Mikel felt why. His lungs felt full and remained that way, holding a flex like a bodybuilder ballooning a muscle. The mask hadn’t appeared to do anything—yet what else could have caused this?

  He tried to stay calm, rational, as he contemplated the truly foreign technology . . . something so alien it was beyond his ability to analyze or understand. He reminded himself that he was here to catalog and move on. Perhaps the larger picture would help to explain these magnificent parts.

  The olivine mosaic provided no other clues. Their pulse seemed slightly faster than before, but he had no way of quantifying that. Mikel carefully turned to face the tunnel again. He could see that several feet ahead there was a larger, closet-size panel with the same olivine design, yet this mosaic was dark and could not be read. Inching himself along the wall, he reached out to open it and discovered within upright stacks of what looked like bobsleds made of Persian rugs, ribbed with some kind of wicker.

  Flying carpets, he thought jokingly, reaching for one of them. But who could say whether or not this was where the legend began—carried away by surviving Galderkhaani?

  He tugged on it several times, putting real muscle into it, but the contraptions were stuck fast. He shined his light all around them and fumbled between them and around to the back. Although his fingertips sensed protrusions from the wall, there were no vises or hooks. Apparently these could not be obtained as easily as the masks. Perhaps they’d been considered more valuable or, considering that the mosaic wasn’t lit, less crucial.

  Mikel spent a good ten minutes trying to figure out the attachment mechanism, wiggling the contraptions in every direction but coming up with nothing. Finally, with a grunt of frustration, he gave up. The ancient locks, whatever they were, had worked. He was starting to feel like a bit of an idiot, like an alien discovering New York City, and spending all its time fooling with a broom closet. He closed the panel and turned back to the tunnel.

  So, he thought as he shone his head lamp down the corridor in one direction, then the other. Which way?

  He looked up at the place where he’d entered and calculated that to head toward the continent he wanted to turn to his left.

  He took two steps forward and was blown off his feet.

  Snapped into survival mode, Mikel hunched into a fetal form as a rush of air rocketed him down the tunnel. The airstream was steady only in velocity, not in dynamics. With no warning it would suddenly twist viciously, then again and again. Several times it slammed him into the wall. He’d fall and then with no respite the wind would pick him up again and hurtle him onward. He wished he hadn’t taken off his helmet but so far his arms were enough protection. Then he was slammed especially hard. His head lamp smashed and broke and the tunnel went instantly utterly dark.

  A second later the airstream flipped him over and blasted him toward the ceiling, face-first. He kicked out to let his feet take the brunt of the impact and felt the jolt all the way up his spine.

  Jesus Christ—

  He needed a way out of this. He looked around for anything he could cling to.

  Another flip, and then he noticed that he was primarily slamming into the wall on the left. To get back to center, he tried pulling his arms tightly to his sides, straightening his legs. The airstream responded with a push. He must have overshot slightly because he was whipped right out of the airstream directly into another one that slammed him into the opposite wall. Quickly he ducked his head back in the original direction, crossed what he sensed was the centerline, and slammed into the left wall again at an angle that would leave a bruise on his arm from elbow to shoulder.

  He tried again directing himself toward the middle with a hell of a lot more caution. He was right, in the exact center of the tunnel the airstream smoothed out and lost some of its turbulence. He caught the sweet spot and stayed there, keeping his head bowed to shield his face. He was moving in the direction he wanted to go and there were no more collisions. For the first time he was able to draw a real breath, as opposed to panicked gasps.

  The pneumatic airstream was propelling him at what felt like the speed of a car. Obviously this tunnel had been designed for humans inside contraptions of some kind. The magic carpets? But just in case there was some kind of accident, just in case air pressure became a threat, the designers had provided protection for the body. The mask! he thought suddenly, and almost laughed with the marvel of it. Mikel had felt his lungs firm up but now he realized that his eardrums must have been protected against increased air pressure too; an eardrum would rupture long before a lung collapsed. Perhaps even his bones and muscles had received a boost, which might explain why he hadn’t fractured anything yet. The effects of the mask could have been giving his whole body extra resilience.

  Magnificent technology, he thought, humbled, and it would fit in his pocket if he ever headed home. He suddenly felt overwhelmed with the realization that he was plugged into both history and legend. This airstream was Aeolus, the Greek keeper of the wind. Here it was—real, not myth. Undetected by the outside world, perhaps only just revived, and Mikel was in it.

  Suddenly, he was weeping.

  The tears came fast and puddled inside his goggles, steaming the insides—not that he could see anything anyway. It had finally hit him, after so many close calls. He probably would not make it home. He was underground, in the dark, in one of the most remote spots on Earth. Worse, he was the only person to know one of the secret wonders of the world and he was going to die in it.

  Eventually his tears stopped and the profound sense of loneliness froze within him. He was plunging through a pneumatic system that was not designed for human bodies and he didn’t see how he was going to come to a stop except catastrophically. Whatever resilience the mask had given him, it would not help him survive a full stop at a dead end.

  Mikel had always thought that if he saw his life flashing before his eyes, it would be the result of an involuntary spasm, but now he felt that he was choosing to do it, seeing his crazy Basque grandmother, then school, university, grad school, Flora and the Group, the scientists—more than one—whom Mikel had stolen artifacts from. With most of his family either deceased or self-absorbed, he didn’t think there was one person on Earth who would mourn him—except maybe Siem, but that would be more a function of feeling overwhelmed by tragedies. Even Flora. She had seemed distraught over the way Arni died and also by his absence—but mourning? No. Mikel couldn’t imagine her grieving for him.

  Suddenly, Mikel realized that there might be a way through this. The quartz-and-olivine panels he’d left behind: perhaps they were set in terminals. There might be a way to pinpoint the next one, if there was one.

  He listened carefully to see if there was any change in the sound of the wind. His senses on high alert, he wondered how long he’d been suffering the now-painful howling. But then he heard it: a slightly hollow sound, deeper than the shrieking in the rest of the tunnel, nearly a full octave lower.

  It came and went and then a minute later it came again, passing him faster than he could make a move. But now he knew what to listen for and when the next one came, he was ready.

  Damn it, he missed. But he had the rhythm. Timing it out from m
emory, he anticipated when he would feel the next sound beside him and jackknifed toward it.

  Whipping across the airstream into an opening on the side of the tunnel, his body dropped heavily to the ground as the air support disappeared, but it was not nearly as bad as a crash.

  Collecting his wits and his breath, Mikel could not believe he was still alive and in one piece. He waited for the tingling and fear to stop shaking him, then he finally got to his knees and then to his feet. The new space welcomed him like Prospero’s beach in a tempest, sheltering him from the hell of sound and wind.

  Still in total darkness, he felt all around the space and realized it was quite small, with no entrance for lava to have spewed through, but it did have what he recognized as another quartz panel. Once again it popped open under his fingertips and just as he’d predicted, it was one of the “bobsleds.” Almost praying, he fumbled around the back of the contraption, trying to free it. Nothing. It was as mysteriously secure as the others.

  Many attempts and long minutes later, Mikel cursed and drove his fist into the rock. Feeling claustrophobic and trapped, he began to pry the mask off his face so he could get one damned breath of fresh air. Then, as soon as the mask was in his hands, the area flashed with an extraordinarily bright light. A millisecond later the light was gone. Purple and green afterimages flooded across his eyes. Mikel reached out to feel the niche again to see if he could locate the source of the flash. He was interrupted by a sharp knock on his knee. With a crisp sound like wicker snapping, one of the contraptions had dropped out of the niche and hit his leg, then toppled onto the floor. Mikel had the sudden impression that he’d just been photographed—and approved.

  He picked up the sled, praying it hadn’t cracked when it was released.

  “Let’s hope you know what to do.”

  With one hand on the stone wall to guide him, he stepped back into the tunnel but stopped short of the airstream. He restored the mask to his face, then carefully climbed into the surprisingly firm contraption placing his head in what he saw as a cobra-like hood. He suspected it would fill with wind when he stepped back into the airstream, to carry him along like a sail.

  “God I hope I’ve got this right.”

  His heart slamming hard, he shuffled to where the sound told him the winds began. Then, like a sledder on a mountainside, he turned ninety degrees and dropped flat into the wind flow.

  Incredibly, the slightly concave shape of the struts caused the wind to raise the little vehicle from the floor. There was some initial wobbling, which he corrected by positioning his body in the center. As disconcerting as it was to be moving at this speed in the dark, it wasn’t half as bad as going without. The hood protected his ears, fed on the wind, and he was not uncomfortable. And because he was finally using the mechanism that must have been designed for the tunnel, he felt safe.

  There was nothing for him to do except stay still, and because his last dose of REM was incomprehensibly long ago and far away, Mikel actually drifted to sleep. He dreamed of a hand stretched toward his bowed head, the fingers pointing at the nape of his neck . . .

  He woke to a strange sensation. Still floating in the air, he was moving much more slowly. The sound of the air changed again as well, lower than before. It was as if he was being invited to stop.

  “Yes,” he answered. “Yes!”

  Mikel angled his body toward the wall and the nose of the sled went with him, effectively pinwheeling a quarter turn so it was facing into what he presumed was another niche. His weight, held forward, caused it to lurch in a little farther and stop.

  Smiling at the simple beauty of the system, Mikel gratefully stood and moved in the direction where he imagined the wall should be, but he doubled over something thigh-high and very hard. He landed on rippled and rocky stone. Crawling forward, his hands found an arched doorway in the wall that was, like the other, sealed shut by a long-solidified lava flow. Mikel pushed against the wall to stand and feeling his way along it, discovered another set of mosaic tiles under his hands, but these weren’t glowing either. Exhausted by the thought of having to make one more intense decision, he impulsively pressed hard against the tiles.

  With no warning, Mikel was suddenly looking into a pair of hazel eyes. White eyebrows sat close above them and a white beard displayed dozens of carefully made ringlets, swoops, and curls.

  Mikel Jasso was looking at Pao, the hesitant, recalcitrant man from the stone and fire chamber. Only now the man was very, very different.

  He was somewhat translucent, the images of the real world blurring slightly when he passed. The man was pale and gaunt and moved with strange, ethereal sweeps of his arms. He seemed to control objects around him without touching them.

  This man was dead.

  CHAPTER 13

  Questions flooded Mikel’s mind as he watched the spectral figure.

  Years before, he had attended a séance at the Group’s headquarters. It was an exercise to contact any surviving spirit of the ancients. Artifacts had been positioned around the table and Arni, the synesthete, had served as a very effective medium. Though the effort had failed in terms of opening a useful pathway, everyone felt a shift in the character of the room. There was a weight, a slight pressure of energy like shallow water. It was as if someone—or several someones—had been present who wasn’t present before. Flora, ever the one for empirical proof, declared it a form of group hypnosis and that was that.

  Mikel had not been convinced. For him, the sensation had remained in the room for days after. Now he knew the truth: she had been wrong. The previous “recording” offered up by the tiles had shown living people. This one showed a soul, a ghost, a poltergeist, whatever label one wanted to attach to it.

  This man and his colleagues believed in souls, Mikel told himself. They tried to bond them, to unify, to rise to some other plane. Had they succeeded? Had this one intentionally remained behind?

  Or is that the fate of a soul that did not bond? he wondered.

  Argh! To be so close yet unable to communicate with this man, he thought. To not have the chance to study the room personally—

  “Talk to me!” Mikel yelled.

  The figure went about his wraithlike business. With a frustrated cry, Mikel drove the side of his fist into the tile. The image jumped ahead. Now there were two specters in the chamber: Pao and another, an aged woman.

  “All right,” Mikel said to the tile. “Why did you stop here?”

  There didn’t seem to be anything exceptional about the moment. Had the projection jumped to this spot because there was some kind of bookmark? Then, suddenly, Mikel realized something that sent a jolt through his belly. Or—

  Is it real? Is this happening now?

  His chest felt heavy under the weight of the thought even as his heart and mind raced.

  He hit the tile again. The image did not change. That could only mean that this was no longer an image. Was he watching figures who were present now, behind the tiles. Were the stones relaying activity that was taking place behind them: the actions of spirits in the present day who had been here, he surmised, for untold millennia. He recognized one as Pao, the other was in shadows, barely visible.

  As his eyes adjusted to the scene he saw more that confirmed his assessment. There were skeletons on the floor, close to one another. The bones had crumbled almost completely away, but Mikel could still make out the supraorbital ridge of a skull defining the hollow of an eye, and the arch of a pelvis. He felt the cold shock of realization. The skeletal remains belonged to these two souls.

  Looking closer, he saw that the spirits were moving among scrolls and piles of stones with markings that appeared to shift and move, like animated drawings. Each time they did, Mikel noticed a barely perceptible flicker among the tiles before him: here and there a glow brightened slightly, as if they were acknowledging—or recording?—the change. That did, after all, appear to be their function.

  The two spirits were speaking. Though Mikel was still trying to understa
nd the mechanism by which living spirits were visible to him, the words they spoke were clear and comprehensible. Pao paused to look at a petroglyph.

  “We cannot afford to spend more time,” he said.

  “We cannot afford to leave,” said the other—a woman, bent and small, her voice low and grave. It took Mikel a moment to realize that this was Rensat, the woman who had seemed much closer to Vol in the last “vision.”

  This Pao, too, was much older than he’d been in the chamber. The beard was still lush but age had whitened it even more. His face was etched with deep lines and his voice cracked.

  Suddenly Rensat moved from the shadows.

  “I will not go without knowing what happened to Vol,” she said. “And we still have work to do, a traitor to locate.”

  “And . . . a mysterious savior, perhaps,” Pao said, more resigned than hopeful. He turned back to the stones moving again from one petroglyph to another.

  But something else was different, something more than just the jump forward in time. The air around Mikel himself felt hollow, like the low-pressure system created by an approaching storm. Someone, something, was also present in his time, in the chamber. He wanted to look around but he did not want to take his eyes from the living history. The only experience Mikel could compare it to was the séance, the way the atmosphere in the room had shifted: it felt empty of life, even their own, yet full of something else.

  Mikel pulled off his mask, took a deep breath, unzipped a pocket, and stowed the mask inside. He hesitated, preparing himself for the onrush of that feeling again before placing his hands on either side of the tiles. His fingers fidgeted, until he realized there was something for them to fidget with. The bank of tiles was loose. With a quick push and pull, the tiles came off as one whole section in his hands. It didn’t feel accidental. The panel was designed to be removed, and there were tiles around the back as well.