Rings of Ice

by Piers Anthony

  However, the rowing was now ineffective. Gus set the brakes and they relaxed, dead-armed. They had made it, after a fashion.

  Now the rain seemed extra loud, though it had never abated. Zena wondered why. Perhaps this was because she had been out in it so long, and then had had to struggle with the oar. For the first time since daybreak, she had nothing to do but listen.

  “Is there any sugar?” Karen asked. No one answered.

  What a deluge this was! If only they had listened to her, those paramilitary experts of the space station. All this could so readily have been avoided…

  “Let’s go with the pulleys!” Gus said, sloshing back down the aisle. “The water’ll drain once we get out.”

  Zena sighed. At least he had gotten his feet wet. That was progress of a kind. “Gus, we’re worn out!”

  “You’ll be drowned if we don’t get on out of here before the deep flooding starts,” he responded. “This thing won’t float so well next time, now that it’s waterlogged. It was sinking the whole time we were paddling.”

  “We were paddling,” Zena muttered ironically.

  “You can rest once we’re driving again.”

  Wearily they got up and clambered out the front window. Gordon got the pulley apparatus down from the roof-rack while Thatch and Zena surveyed for anchorages. They were in luck: There were several illegal billboards with firm grounding posts. Many things, Zena thought bitterly, were not made the way they used to be, not made to last. Billboards were.

  The hauling took an interminable time, even though Karen was there to help. But long before it was done, she weakened and had to go back to the bus. “That’s the trouble with drug dependency,” Zena muttered. “The high gives out, and you’re worse off than before.”

  “Drug addiction!” Gordon exclaimed.

  “Yes, I saw her take a shot last night. I don’t know what kind.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily make her an addict.”

  “Why would she hide it, then?”

  Gordon didn’t answer. The three of them continued hauling.

  At last they made it out of the water. They blocked the wheels and trekked around to the door and inside.

  Gus and Karen were just rising from what had obviously been an intimate liaison. While the three dead-tired people had labored outside, the two rested ones had indulged in the most basic of entertainments.

  “All right, get the motor started!” Gus said, covering up in more ways than one. “Long drive ahead!”

  Wearily, Gordon worked on the motor, while Thatch saw to the draining and cleaning of the refrigerator, range and other conveniences. A layer of thin mud was over everything that the water had touched. Zena checked the lashings on the oars, which were now mounted on the roof, and made sure the ropes and pulleys were secure. She was not only worn out, she was sick.

  She stood against the back of the bus, face shielded from the rain, and sorted it out. What, specifically, was bothering her? Was it the inequity of allowing three hard workers to carry the load for two shirkers? No, not exactly; Karen had manned an oar and helped for a while with the hauling. She really had been about to drop. Gus had performed a necessary service by calling the cadence for rowing; otherwise they’d be floating yet—perhaps right out to sea. Or worse, they’d be sunk because of that burst engine cover—in twenty feet of dirty water, with one of their number unable to swim. How many of the rest could have bucked the current and made it the long distance to shore?

  Was it that Gus had taken advantage, forcing his attentions on a woman too tired to resist? No, Gus was lazy, and self-interested, but hardly that forceful about sex; Karen could have rebuffed him with a word, or failing that, a scream, had she chosen to. Certainly she had made a miraculous recovery of energy! Another shot of her drug?

  Was it, then, that Karen was married? That was disturbing—yet really it was her own business. Certainly a married woman knew what it was all about, and could make her own decisions.

  What, then? Why should Zena herself be so upset about a matter that was hardly her affair? She had problems enough of her own to worry about!

  Her stomach heaved, but she managed to hold her gorge down. The last thing she wanted to do was waste precious food! Probably she was merely reacting to the strain of overwork and the mind-deadening smash of rain, on and on.

  The motor coughed, making her jump, for she was almost astride the tail pipe. Gordon had worked his magic once more and they were about to be on their way— again.

  Inside, all was not well. They were low on food, water, and gasoline.

  “We’ve got to get more,” Gus said.

  “There isn’t any more,” Thatch replied, sounding querulous. That was another thing: how had this Gus/Karen thing affected Thatch? “No stores or stations will be open in this rain—and we don’t have enough money.”

  “Don’t give me that!” Gus snapped. “I tell you we need supplies, not excuses—and within the hour!”

  Just like that, Zena thought. Gus was true to form.

  “It wouldn’t be right to—” Thatch was saying.

  “You think anybody’s going to care what we take—after it’s all underwater?” Gus demanded. “We’d better salvage what we can!”

  “He has a point,” Gordon said. “I don’t approve of theft, but this is hardly a typical circumstance.”

  Thatch nodded regretfully. “I suppose not.”

  “Aren’t you making a big assumption?” Karen asked. “Pretty soon this rain will stop, and—”

  “No. It’ll never stop,” Gus said. “Not till all this is way underneath. That’s why we’re driving so hard for the mountains.”

  The motor was running smoothly now, and Gordon came inside. “Thatch and Zena and I have to collapse,” he said. “Gus’d better drive.”

  Thatch began to shake his head, but Karen cut him off. “I know how to drive.”

  “Women don’t—” Gus began.

  “Oh, it will be quite safe,” Karen said, “with you to help me.”

  Gus tried to protest, but she led him to the front. He seemed to be unable to resist her suggestion.

  Zena looked at Thatch, but he was already lying on the dinette bed. Then her eye caught Gordon’s—and he winked.

  Karen could make Gus go along because she had taken the trouble to show him what she could do for him. Smart, smart! Maybe Gordon had suggested the notion to her.

  Zena quelled another surge of nausea and flopped wetly on the back couch.

  Chapter 3: Floy

  When she woke, it was because the bus was stopping. Gloria was on the parallel couch, still asleep. Once more Zena considered that classic feminine face, that long blonde hair, that artificially full bosom. No matter how tired he was, Gordon always took time to convert to Gloria for repose!

  Why didn’t this inversion upset her the way Karen’s antics had? Zena didn’t know. “Sleep on, sleeping beauty,” she murmured, and strode forward.

  Thatch, too, remained asleep. Gus and Karen were stretching. “Filling station,” Gus said. “Should be gas here—and we’re down to under five gallons. Which is not much for a bus this size. Maybe food here too.”

  “I hope so!” Karen said fervently. She did not look well, but Zena could not tell what was wrong with her. She wished she knew more about drugs.

  “We can siphon gas,” Gus said, “if we can find a tube.”

  “Or just pump it out of the pump,” Karen said.

  “Hey, yes!” he agreed, startled. “I’m thinking too much like a criminal.”

  At least he felt some twinge of guilt, Zena thought. But so it had to be. No one would have any use for it after this group passed. The sea was rising.

  “You look,” Gus said. “It’s still raining.”

  “Sorry, I forgot,” Zena said sharply. But as usual, the irony was wasted on him.

  She went out, hunching momentarily as the water soaked her once more. The rain was colder now! If she didn’t catch pneumonia…

 
Karen followed her, hunching similarly. “Zena, listen,” she called over the noise. “I want to explain—”

  “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

  “You told me at the outset how the men expected—”

  “And you told me you were married.”

  “My husband’s in California! Do you think I’ll ever see him again?”

  That stopped her. California was as good as Mars, as far as accessibility went. If he were not dead already, he might as well be. Karen, therefore, was being practical. Still, that drug addiction—“We have gas and food to find,” Zena said, moving on.

  “Yes, of course! But it is important to encourage everyone to participate—”

  Zena opened the glass door and stepped inside. It was true that Karen had gotten Gus to contribute a little more to group survival than he might have otherwise, but that hardly seemed to justify the method.

  The place had been ransacked. The floor was covered with debris, and the shelves were empty.

  “If it’s this bad in a filling station,” Zena asked rhetorically, “how bad is it going to be in a supermarket?”

  “They missed the candy machine!” Karen said. “Come on!”

  “I never broke into a machine in my life.”

  “You may not need candy, but believe me, I do!” Karen found a large screwdriver and began prying.

  Disgusted, Zena walked out. She checked the pumps in front, but they appeared to be out of gas. It was evident that many people had been alert to the spoils of anarchy— and much faster to act. But they had been hurried, no doubt eager to get home; a careful search should turn up more than candy bars.

  There was a noise, not the rain. Zena looked around before remembering that Karen was at work inside the station, probably hammering on the machine. No sense getting jumpy about sounds.

  There were elevated tanks behind. Did they hold reserves of gasoline? Or something else? But they sounded hollow under the beat of rains: indication enough.

  She came back around the side. A door said MEN. That reminded her: they needed water to flush the toilet—and water to drink, too. They could always collect rain, but if there were running water here for the bus’s tanks, that would be easier.

  She walked around to the WOMEN door and tried the handle. The door was locked.

  There was a banging from inside.

  Karen?

  Zena walked to the front and peered through the glass. Karen was still working on the machine.

  Back at the WOMEN door, Zena knocked. “Are you all right?” she called, feeling a bit foolish.

  “Locked in!” a childish treble replied. “Help!”

  “You can open it,” Zena said. “Pull out the dingus and turn the handle.”

  “I can’t!”

  “Just a minute.” Zena looked about. After a moment’s search she found a curved crowbar lying on the ground, apparently thrown there by the prior vandals. She picked it up and inserted the sharp end into the crack of the door. Then it became obvious why the lock would not release: the moisture had made it swell tight.

  Zena threw her body into it, not concerned about damage. There was a lot of leverage in a crowbar. Something cracked, and she was able to jam the point in deeper. Another heave, and the door pried out, its lock ruined.

  A young girl, thirteen or fourteen, was inside. She was dry and rather pretty.

  Then a yellow animal attacked. Zena fended it off, batting it away. Her leg stung from a scratch.

  “Dust Devil!” the girl exclaimed, stumbling.

  It was a little cat. It withdrew, snarling.

  The girl swept her hand toward it. She caught the hind end of the cat, and picked up the animal, hauling it into the air by its back legs. “This is Dust Devil,” she said. “He’s not a bad cat, really. He just doesn’t like people.”

  “If that’s how you treat him, no wonder!”

  “He understands about me. Who are you?”

  “Zena Emers. You?”

  “What?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Oh! Floy. Floy Sanford. And this is Dust Devil. He—”

  “Yes, I know,” Zena said. “What are you doing in here?”

  “Well, I came to—you know—and when I got out, they were gone. I didn’t know where to go, so I didn’t go anywhere. And then the door stuck.”

  “Who was gone? Your family?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did something happen to them?”

  “No, they just drove off. I wasn’t too surprised, really.”

  “Drove off and left you—deliberately?”

  “It was sort of crowded. They didn’t much like Dust Devil.”

  “That I can understand. But still—how long ago?”

  “I don’t know. It was around midnight, and the rain didn’t stop.”

  “Midnight! Twelve hours ago?”

  “I guess. I slept some. Got any food?”

  “I’m here looking for some! And gasoline.”

  “Is it still raining?”

  Zena, dripping wet before the door that opened out into the endless storm, didn’t bother to answer. So this girl was stranded, deserted by her own family. What was to become of her?

  “Floy, how old are you?” If she were older than she looked—

  “Fourteen. Dust Devil’s one year, next week. He doesn’t much like people, except me.”

  No genius, obviously! A fourteen year old girl with her vicious cat—how would that pair fit into Gus’s prospective harem?

  What choice was there? “Come on,” Zena said.

  “But it’s raining!”

  “Do you want to stay here until it floods? We have a motor-home—and if we can just find gas, we’ll be driving north to the highlands.”

  “My folks were going south.”

  Was it poetic justice, that those who had deserted this child would die in the flood, while Floy herself survived? Zena led the way out Floy lurched into the doorway, banging against it.

  “Watch where you’re going! You’ll hurt yourself,” Zena said sharply.

  “I don’t hurt easy.” Floy shoved outside and took a full sprawl on the soaking pavement.

  “For God’s sake, girl!” Zena cried, hauling her up by an arm. “Are you sick?” Again that fear of some debilitating disease made her shudder.

  “No worse’n usual. Just never was much for moving around.”

  Now, holding on to Floy, Zena became aware that the girl was moving with extraordinary lack of grace. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Just clumsy—awful clumsy,” Floy said. “Butterfingers all over. Always been this way—but now it’s worse.”

  “Did you suffer nerve damage as a baby?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  It was becoming more apparent why Floy had been left. This child would have been a problem in survival in the best of health. She was a disaster in her present condition.

  Zena got Floy into the front office, where Karen had succeeded in breaking open the candy machine. “Sixty-one assorted candy bars!” Karen gloated. “Who is she?”

  “She was trapped in the john. Name’s Floy.”

  Floy snatched up a candy bar, scattering several others across the floor in the process. “Hey!” Karen yelped. “We need those!”

  “She hasn’t eaten for twelve hours or more,” Zena said. “Spare one from your hoard. It isn’t as if it’s such precious food.”

  “It’s the vital food,” Karen said.

  Zena sighed. What a mishmash of oddballs she traveled with! From what narcotic vision had that dietetic revelation emerged?

  There was a feline screech, followed by a human one. Karen shoved something furry away.

  “That’s Dust Devil,” Zena said.

  Karen wiped her scratched leg. “So nice to have a formal introduction!”

  “We’ve got to find gasoline,” Zena said. “Otherwise, we may never leave here.”

  “Are you going to take me with you?” Floy asked,
sounding indifferent.

  “I don’t see what choice we have,” Zena said, shaking her head. “But first you’ll have to understand about—”

  “She’s only a child!” Karen interrupted her.

  “That’s why she has to understand.”

  “Understand what?” Floy asked.

  “Never mind.” Karen said.

  “Oh, so we’re getting finicky about morality now,” Zena said nastily.

  “Age of consent,” Karen muttered, at a double disadvantage because of her position and the presence of the child.

  “What’s the age of consent for being deserted in a filling station?”

  “What is it you’re talking about?” Floy demanded.

  “There are five of us,” Zena explained, deciding she was being unfair to Karen. There were things that should not be discussed too frankly, here. “Six, counting you—and it’s going to be crowded and difficult.”

  “That’s all? Story of my life,” Floy said. “I thought maybe you had a sex maniac aboard.” She walked to the glass window and looked at the streaming water.

  Karen stared after her. “Palsy?” she whispered.

  Zena shrugged. “Human being.”

  “I don’t like being alone,” Floy said. “If I hadn’t had Dust Devil—”

  “We can’t take the cat!” Zena exclaimed.

  “That’s what I thought. So I guess I’ll stay here.”

  “You can’t stay here. In hours it’ll flood!”

  “Dust Devil’s all I have.”

  Zena sighed again. “Maybe we’ll all stay, with no gas.”

  “There must be cars we can siphon it from,” Karen said. “Or other stations nearby.”

  “Yes.” Zena shook herself. “There have to be.”

  Karen had gathered all the candy bars into an oily cloth and made a bundle of them. “We’d better go back.”

  “Wait—someone’s coming,” Zena said, seeing a tall shape.

  It was Gordon. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “Rhetorical question,” Zena said. “He always says that. Gordon, meet Floy and Dust Devil.”

  “Pleased to know you both,” Gordon said without hesitation. “You’ll be joining our party, of course. Let me carry Dust Devil.”

  “Careful,” Floy warned. “He doesn’t much like—”