Rings of Ice

by Piers Anthony

  “This is ridiculous!” Zena said.

  “You’re always saying that.”

  “That’s no refutation.”

  “I wish I could do it,” Floy said. “Maybe in another year—”

  “Whatever for?”

  “I’m not much for doing things, but I could take care of a baby,” Floy said. “I’d make a strap for it, or a basket or something, so I couldn’t drop it, and I’d nurse it—”

  “Nurse it!”

  “There isn’t any other way,” Floy said. “No store-bought formula—and what’s wrong with it, anyway?”

  “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Sure,” Floy said. “But why does it make you sick?”

  Zena moved ahead, not answering. There was, really, no answer: she had been raised conservatively, and somewhere along the way had developed a strong aversion to the sordid aspects of life. Her devotion to meteorology and science had kept such matters safely distant—until the rain came.

  That reminded her, deviously, of the stupidity of men. What had happened to those aboard the space station? Would there ever be a rescue mission for them, or would they suffocate when they ran out of air? They were above the rain—but the rain meant their doom, too. Poetic justice, but it was a vicious poem.

  “No forage anywhere near here,” Thatch announced. “This is all slope, washed out to bedrock. We have to move on.” And Gordon nodded soberly.

  “Where are we?” Gus asked, bringing out the map.

  “Somewhere in the approaches to the southern Appalachian range,” Gordon replied. “Northern Georgia, probably. Not that it makes much difference now.”

  “Sure it makes a difference! We must be somewhere near Atlanta.”

  “That’s right. We skirted a huge city a day or so before we parked. I figured that was Atlanta. That’s how I knew we were reaching safe high ground.”

  “Atlanta’s big enough, all right. Should be a lot of supplies there.”

  “We’ve been through that!” Zena objected. “Cities are dangerous!”

  “So is starving,” Gus retorted.

  “If we head on into the mountains,” Gordon said, “we should strike the major pine forests. Those are built to take rain; most of those trees probably survived. And where there are trees, there is soil—and life.”

  “How about gasoline?” Gus asked.

  Gordon spread his hands. “Do we want to travel much?”

  “I don’t mind your forest notion,” Gus said. “In fact, I like it. But we’ll camp there in a lot more style if we load up first on gas, and canned goods, and batteries and books and seed grains—”

  “Seed grains?” Karen asked.

  “Sure. We’re going to be farmers. We have to start raising our own food, if we expect to live any length of time. There won’t be any corner grocery store.”

  Gordon puffed out his cheeks in a soundless sigh. “You’ve thought it through!”

  But something about that plan bothered Zena. She couldn’t pin down the thought, except that it had no connection to her sundry other objections about their proposed lifestyle. Maybe she was merely inventing nebulous disasters.

  “I don’t like going to the city any better than you do,” Gus said. “But our last haul was well worth it. If we can do that again, we’ll be set for a long time to come. And if we can grow a decent crop, and raise some animals, we can have a good supply for the next rain. I’ve got the long haul in mind.”

  “We could all wind up dead for the short haul, heading into a big city,” Zena said.

  But the nearby landscape was so bleak that there didn’t seem to be much of a choice. True, they might find intact pine forest further north—but they couldn’t eat pine needles.

  They moved out cautiously. There was only one shovel, and that was needed for almost continuous road repair— or outright road building. Where the concrete and asphalt had resisted the ravages of the rain and run-off, the underlying foundation often had not, so that whole sections of highway bridged gorges. It was easier and certainly safer to drive over straight bedrock wherever feasible.

  It took three days to reach the environs of the city. The Chattahoochee River had spread its boundaries enormously and excavated a canyon through the city—a swath of nothingness. Even now, with the rain stopped, a sizable run-off remained, and flooding was bad. Many buildings still stood, and Zena was curious to know what was inside them. Forty days without electricity, or fuel, or food…

  “Look there!” Gus cried, pointing.

  It was a complex of tremendous fuel storage tanks. “All the gas we’ll ever need!” Floy said excitedly.

  “If no one else thought of it before us,” Zena said.

  “And if that’s refined gasoline,” Gordon said.

  “All right,” Gus said, taking charge. “We’ll strike at night, same as before, it may be guarded. If we can find a tap or something, maybe we can get what we need without anybody knowing the difference. But we’ll plan a good getaway route, just in case.”

  At night they moved in as close as they dared with the bus, then parked and made a stealthy approach. Karen and Zena watched the tanks from a reasonable distance. Floy and the cat waited further back, and Gus of course was in the bus. They were to relay signals if anything went wrong.

  The two women waited for what seemed an interminable time. There were sounds from various directions, but nothing significant. “Could be stray animals,” Zena whispered, not reassured.

  Then something flew through the air. It landed with a pop and burst into flame. The entire area was illuminated—and Thatch and Gordon were shown up plainly beside the nearest tank.

  “Raise your hands,” a man’s voice shouted. “We’ve got a machine gun trained on you.”

  A machine gun! Zena moved toward the voice, which was only fifty feet ahead of her. She knew Karen would fade back to relay the news. Zena dared not run, as her shoes would make too much noise.

  Thatch and Gordon raised their hands. Men came out of the shadows—three, four of them. “So you’re looking for gasoline, eh?” one said. “That means you’ve got a working truck, maybe. Where is it?”

  Counter-trap—and they had walked into it Neither Thatch nor Gordon answered. “Well, we’ll make you talk!” the man said grimly. Something glinted in his hand.

  Zena threw herself on the shapes by the machine gun. She clubbed one man on the back of the neck with the side of her hand, then wheeled to face the other. “Hey!” he yelled. Then he was rolling on the pavement, stunned by the force of her throw.

  “Let them go!” Zena called to the group near the tank.

  But even as she spoke, both men nearby rose and came at her. “It’s a girl!” one exclaimed.

  Zena dived for the machine gun. She had had a briefing in firing such a weapon once, but that had been a long time ago. She would have to bluff it.

  She turned the gun on its tripod to cover the two. “Get back!” she cried.

  A scuffle broke out near the tank. She glanced there, and saw in the light of the flare that the four men were piling on the two. This was quickly getting out of hand.

  She pulled the trigger. Her hand caught somehow in the mechanism, so that a fold of skin was pinched, but it fired! She whirled the massive thing around to cover the tank group, while the two near men dropped to the ground. She didn’t think she had hit anyone; they were merely getting out of the way—as well they might!

  “Someone’s got the gun!” one of the nearby men yelled.

  “Charge it!” one of the four by the tank yelled back. “We’ll grab these two as hostages!”

  Zena knew they would do it. In moments Thatch and Gordon would be captive and probably dead—and her, too. There could be no honor or mercy, after the devastation of the rain. She saw the men in motion.

  She pulled the trigger and held it down. The machine gun vibrated as the bullets poured forth. She swept the muzzle through a wide arc, trying to avoid the area where Thatch and Gordon were. There
was a scream.

  A shape charged upon her. She spun the gun again and let go another burst. The man crashed down beside her, his body touching her elbow, and she knew he was dead or dying.

  “Thatch! Thatch!” she cried. “Get out of there! I’ve got the gun!” She had the sick feeling that she had hit him too.

  But a shape got up near the tank. “Right!” Thatch’s voice came. He started to run.

  Two more shapes lifted. “Which one’s Gordon?” Zena screamed, not daring to fire.

  “Gordon’s gone already!” Thatch called back.

  What did that mean? She saw the two figures converge on the one. The gun vibrated again. The two fell.

  “Enough! Enough, Zena!” It was Gordon’s voice, from close at hand.

  But she couldn’t stop. There was something about that massive, savage weapon with its shuddering death that infused power into her hands and arms and body, locking her grip. The stream of bullets continued to flow, pounding into the metal of the huge tank that acted as a backstop. There was the heady smell of gasoline.

  “Stop!” Gordon cried. “You’re holing the tank!” He dropped to his knees and yanked her hands away from the gun.

  Too late. A sheet of fire rose from the region of the torch and engulfed the tank. Gasoline was leaking out and burning as it emerged.

  “Back! Back!” Gordon cried, hauling her up.

  They ran, raggedly. Zena stumbled and felt a pain shooting through her foot. But she had to go on, limping; the foot seemed able to bear weight.

  Gordon hauled her around the corner of a building. “God, I hope Thatch gets clear!” he gasped.

  Then the big tank ignited. There was a sort of whoosh and a flare of light. Zena had a picture of a human figure silhouetted against the blast. Thatch?

  “Come on!” Gordon yelled, pulling at her arm. When she didn’t move, he stopped and put his shoulder under her body and picked her up. He ran with her away from the ballooning heat and noise.

  “Thatch! Thatch! Thatch!” she cried, over and over.

  “I don’t know! I don’t know!” Gordon yelled back.

  The terrible light faded somewhat as they put another building between it and them. Now they were near the bus.

  Karen was there, and Floy. “I knew it wasn’t safe to go near you and that machine gun,” Karen explained. “So I brought word back about the trouble. Then we heard the tank go off—”

  “Thatch! Thatch!” Zena cried as Gordon set her down. “Ow! My ankle!”

  “He told me to move out while he covered the rear,” Gordon said. “I thought he was right behind me.”

  “I must have shot him!” Zena said with a sick certainty.

  “God Almighty!” Gus swore. “You shot Thatch?”

  “I was trying to stop the men chasing him.”

  “She hit the tank,” Gordon said. “That’s why it went off.”

  Karen looked at Zena’s hands. “This one’s bleeding,” she said.

  “Forget that!” Gus shouted. “Get out and find Thatch!”

  There was a second boom. Bright, roiling smoke rose over the buildings. “All those tanks are going to go!” Gordon said. “If he’s near there, it’s hopeless.”

  “You bitch!” Gus yelled at Zena. “It’s your fault!”

  Zena could not defend herself. It was her fault.

  Dust Devil jumped from Floy’s shoulder and bounded into the night. There was the sound of someone approaching.

  “They’ve found us!” Karen cried, shrinking back. Normally she was unflappable; but her limit had been passed. Or she was running low on blood sugar again.

  “No, that’s him,” Floy said. “Dust Devil doesn’t run to anyone he doesn’t know. Not like that.”

  It was him. “I had to be sure no one followed us,” Thatch said. “I circled around.”

  “Let’s go!” Gus cried. They piled into the bus, and Gordon drove it rapidly along their escape route.

  No one spoke to Zena again. What could they say: that it was all right that she had messed up the whole project, set fire to the very gasoline they had come for, and almost shot Thatch?

  Chapter 5: Rape

  “We have enough to get us back where we were,” Gordon said. “After that, we’re stationary.”

  “We’ll be better off in the forest,” Gus said glumly.

  The trip that had taken three days down took only hours back, for they knew the route and had no further need for caution. Their laborious road-building paid off in need, in speed. But it also blazed a trail for the city men to follow, later.

  They passed their prior stop and went on. The meter for the gasoline read empty, and the last of their reserve gallons was in the tank.

  Now they had to slow, for they had no pieced-together road here, and wanted none. Gordon turned off the motor whenever they stopped for construction, and coasted wherever he could. Sometimes they used the pulleys, so that the bus could traverse seemingly impassable terrain with minimum disturbance. If they were lucky, it would fool the pursuit.

  “Trees!” Floy cried happily.

  The forest began—tightly meshed pine trees. Gordon pulled into the forest as far as possible, found a sheltered, level place, and stopped. “We made it!” he said. “And we still have a few drops left for an emergency.”

  Just in time, for it was dusk. They had spent all night and all day without noticing it, getting away from the city and into the high wilderness. Zena’s hands were ingrained with dirt, and she had several painful blisters.

  “Okay,” Gus said. “We’ll sleep here tonight and take stock in the morning. Floy stands guard until midnight, then Glory.”

  “I’ll do it,” Zena said. “Gordon needs some rest.”

  “Sure he does—but you can’t do it!” Gus snapped. “You have a bad hand and foot and you’ve been working your ass off and you lose your head in a crisis. You’ve got to take care of yourself.”

  So that she could be a breeder, she thought bitterly. Gus didn’t care about her welfare; he was thinking of posterity. He was taking care of her the same way he would a ten-gallon drum of gasoline: needed for future use.

  Karen fixed supper and they all ate, sparingly. Then Floy went out with her cat, Gordon rolled into his bunk, and Gus took Karen to the back room.

  Zena lay on her dinette-bed, wide awake. Why had she done it? How could she have blundered so? In retrospect it was obvious that she should have stopped firing the machine gun the moment the two men following Thatch went down. Instead she had hysterically blasted the tank and precipitated the conflagration.

  She had lost her head. And she had murdered several men.

  “Zena?” Thatch said from the floor.

  “Oh, Thatch—I’m sorry!” she said miserably.

  He sat up. “I just wanted to say—I thought we were finished when those men ambushed us. They had knives, and they were going to use them to make us tell where the bus was. The idea of torture—it terrifies me. When you took over the machine gun—”

  “I ruined everything!” she finished.

  Gordon dropped down from his bed. “You saved our lives!” he said. “Nothing less would have made those bastards stop.”

  Pleased by this unexpected support, Zena did not know how to express herself. “You forgot to change!” she said. Always before it had been Gloria who slept.

  “That whole project was ill-conceived,” Gordon continued. “You were the only one who argued against it. We should have known there would be no more free gasoline. You did the right thing, breaking up the mousetrap.” Then he looked at his wig, hanging on a hook by the bed. “I didn’t forget. I took it off. I’m going out to take a walk with Floy.” He went out.

  Zena felt tears in her eyes. “He’s generous,” she said.

  “Floy prefers him as a man,” Thatch said.

  “That isn’t what I meant,” she said, embarrassed. Was this Floy-Gordon thing becoming serious? A fourteen-year-old child…

  “He’s right,” Thatch said
. “Gus was mad because his plan didn’t work out. He doesn’t like being wrong. We never had a chance.”

  “Oh, let it drop!”

  “I thought I was going to die. You saved us. The sound of that gun was the sweetest thing I ever heard. And it was brilliant of you to hole the tank, so that they’d be too distracted to organize a pursuit.”

  “That was an accident!”

  “Oh.” There was an awkward pause. “Well, I just wanted to thank you.”

  Just like that, she thought. Thatch decided she had saved his life, so he gave her a formal, almost dispassionate thank-you. Because it was the proper thing to do.

  “Nobody ever helped me like that before,” he said. “Except Gus.”

  Except Gus. Zena felt a wave of nausea. There seemed to be no immediate cause. Certainly she did not object to weaning Thatch away from Gus. So what was bothering her now?

  She thought it through, and realized that it was not the result of what had happened, but the anticipation of what was about to happen.

  She got down beside Thatch on his mattress. “I can’t do anything else right,” she said. “And I’m not going to be much good at this. But I guess it’s time.”

  “Zena, don’t—”

  “No, it has to be. I’ve proved I can’t do anything else, as I said. I’ll be stiff as a board and I may throw up, but Gus is right. It has to be.”

  “Zena, this is preposterous!” he said alarmed.

  “That’s my line, not yours.”

  “Without love, without joy—”

  “Take it or leave it,” she said, though she was trembling so violently she was sure he noticed. “Do you want me to go to Gordon instead?”

  He pondered. “Maybe you’d better.”

  “What?”

  “Or Gus. He always knows what to do.”

  “I ought to slap you!”

  “Yes.”

  Her fear was replaced by a stunted kind of fury. “I don’t understand you at all!”

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “Going into something without knowing, without planning—that’s asking for trouble.”

  “So I discovered, yesterday.”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  “Don’t make me feel even worse.”