Winter Song

by Colin Harvey

  The gradually thickening air outside glowed orange, then red, finally white, and Coeo and Ragnar covered their ears – even Karl's were hurting. The deceleration tugged at his cheeks, muscles and joints. Karl took deep breaths, trying to calm his racing heart, failing miserably. He noticed Bera doing the same and gave her a smile which she returned.

  The juddering grew worse, and to the accompanying roar of the onrushing atmosphere the thrusters added their whine. "That thruster is misfiring again," Loki said, static blurring his voice. "I'm attempting to compensate, but I fear that we are struggling to achieve a shallow enough angle. I've no desire to plunge into a steep dive into the ground."

  "What's the target?" Karl said.

  Loki flashed a map up onto the monitor. "This equatorial sea I have marked, which has not yet frozen."

  "Surtuvatn!" Bera cried. "Where I was born – we're going home!"

  Karl squeezed her hand.

  Loki said, "Fenris is hitting the exosphere." It changed the monitor to show the aft view, where a third sun lit up the sky with an angry orange glow, searing through the atmosphere like an incendiary snowplough.

  The whining of the thrusters increased to a shriek, and a piece of metal spanged out of a side console and flew across the room, fortunately missing everyone. Loki said, "I have increased power to the other thrusters, to compensate for one that has failed."

  "Void all decks except ours of air!" Karl called. "Loki, dump the water and anything and everything else that you can either drop or fire out to act as thrust."

  "Proceeding." The roaring outside increased until it hurt the ears. "We're flattening out," Loki said.

  Bera took Karl's hand. It felt like holding hands on the mile-high funfair on Avalon. Bera said, "If we live–"

  "We will live," Karl said.

  "If we live," Bera said, flashing him a tearful smile, "I want your children. I still miss him." Karl thought of a small cairn, back at Skorradalur. "I want him to have brothers and sisters," Bera said.

  "I want it, as well," Karl said. "But I can't live on two worlds at once." He thought of Maydays, and oncoming fleets.

  "Better still," Bera said. "If they come, if your people come for you, we'll bring them with us."

  "You want to come?" Karl felt the stupid grin all over his face. But the shaking's so bad that she probably can't see it anyway, he thought.

  "That is one stupid grin, Karl Allman," Bera said, nailing that idea. "Yes, I want to come. Would your family accept me?"

  "We'll work something out," Karl said. The juddering grew worse, even rattling his teeth.

  "That child we talked about," Bera said, her words juddering out of her.

  "Yes?"

  "It may be sooner than you think."

  "What?" Karl yelled. Heads swivelled around.

  "Of course, I may just be late because of stress or something, but if I'm not, you're going to be a father… Pappi."

  She burst out laughing. "If you could see your face…" she sobered. "Are you… is it OK?"

  "Yes!" Karl cried, feeling the smile across his face. "Yes, yes! Very OK!" He fought the shaking and rattling to throw his arms around her.

  "I want," Bera shouted, when he let her go.

  "Yes?"

  "I want to see the stars with you!" Bera shouted above the noise.

  And then, all at once the shuddering eased.

  They sat in silence stained by the ringing in Karl's ears.

  On the screen the falling sun slammed into the polar ice cap and an inferno of dust and fire formed a pillar rising high into the cloudy sky in an evil blossoming.

  "Brace for the shockwave," Loki said. Seconds later an invisible fist punched them in the back, turning them end over end, a tiny leaf in a gargantuan storm.

  When the ship finally stopped spinning, Loki opened the screen, and a great white carpeted land lay out below them, stretching as far as the eye could see to the North Pole. The only break was the blue of Saltuvatn, peppered with black rocky outcrops, rushing up toward them.

  Karl took Bera's hand as the Winter Song fell toward the sea.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many people helped with this book, and my thanks go especially to Skorri and Haraldur Aikman, Mike Brotherton, Mike Carroll, Roy Grey, Michael Lucas, Josh Peterson, Sharon Reamer, Rob Rowntree, Bernard Scudder and Nik Whitehead. Praise is due to them, but any mistakes are mine.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Colin Harvey lives in Bristol in the south-west of England, with his wife Kate and spaniel Alice. His first fiction was published in 2001, since when he has written novels, short stories and reviews, edited anthologies. He has judged the Speculative Literature Foundation's annual Gulliver Travel Research Grant for five years. His next novel, Damage Time, is also due to be published by Angry Robot.

  www.colin-harvey.com

  Extras…

  DAMAGE TIME

  by Colin Harvey

  Coming soon

  from Angry Robot

  Shah sighed and closed the feed.

  "Anything?" Marietetski said. The light glistened off his shaven scalp, which was so black it looked blue. "Maybe," Shah tried to suppress an ache at leaving those searing blue skies behind for the sooty rain of New York. "The memory's from Arizona, and it's a boy, which fits our amnesiac. It's fresh too, no softening of the images like you'd expect with old memories – no imprinting what we'd have liked to have happen, over what did." "Arizona would fit the soil type taken from the vic's fingernails," Marietetski said. "He's got Hopi tattoos on his forearm. Did you say that there was a cistern with Hopi style designs?"

  "Yep," Shah said, running thumb and forefinger down an invisible beard on either side of his mouth. "I think we've got enough to farm it out to Neuvo Mexico. 'Bout time they started running decent ID files on their new citizens, isn't it? They wanna buy the state, they should take responsibility for their new citizens."

  Marietetski's laugh was more of a grunt. "Too busy building their new border," he said. "Besides, most people want to go the other way nowadays. Maybe their Missing Persons people can turn up some long lost relatives here? Had to be a reason he ended up in New York." "I think they aren't too bothered about talking to any of the Displaced about whether any of their relatives are missing," Shah said. "Besides, if that memory was him, and his family couldn't support the kid while he was fit – that was why he left – what chance will they have of taking back a vegetable? The bastards that did thi… ripping almost all his memories and posting them, for what, for a few calories?"

  "Easy, easy," Marietetski said, patting his shoulder before walking away.

  Shah hunched over his desk, surrounded by metrehigh mountains of clear plastic folders each bulging with paper. Around him, the ten by ten metre-square room was packed with desks at which uniformed and plainclothed men and women sat and worked quietly. "Doodling?' Captain van Doorn's quiet voice cut through what noise there was.

  "The psych analysts like to call them 'thought representation graphics'," Shah said without looking up. The thoughts they represented were primeval – anger, sadness, fear – but his voice was level.

  "I've heard you say you grew up calling them doodles. You gonna clear some of these?" Van Doorn slapped his hand on one of the miniature mountain ranges on the desk.

  Shah stared up at the seamed face. "Better we don't have 'em at all. Heaven knows, we shouldn't save the last of our trees if it means we can't find a file for two seconds." "That's right," van Doorn said, ignoring Shah's sarcasm. Shah continued as if van Doorn hadn't spoken, "My old man used to talk 'bout how a hundred years ago the futurologists claimed there'd be paperless offices. Hah. Turn of the Millennium they gengineered parasites, auditors, who made everyone afraid about everything. They scared our bosses 'bout seventeen different types of backups all crashing at once and how if we couldn't find a tiny piece of paper that it'd send us all to hell that they reckon it's better we spend our time shuffling papers than catching perps."

  "You finish
ed ranting, dinosaur?" Van Doorn added, "Paper isn't made from trees anymore. Everyone knows that."

  He didn't wait for an answer, so Shah had to settle for glaring at his broad back and muttering, "Yeah, pseudoyeast. I know that's where it comes from,helmet-head." He tore a corner off and chewed it, then spat it out. "Don't taste any better than it ever did, though." He stood up, and placing one hand on the top of the nearest pile to hold it in place, pushed the bottom six inches of the pile off his desk and into the garbage can.

  Shah returned to his doodles. His stylo gouged deep holes in the scrap 'paper' that he used up faster than anyone else in the office.

  "Got you a coffee." Marietetski placed the cardboard cup with its steaming inky contents beside his pad. "NoCal okay?"

  "Thanks," Shah said without looking up. Then he straightened, for even the thirty-seven calories of the murky sewage would go onto Marietetski's account, and count toward his young partner's government-approved fifteen hundred-calorie basic allowance. "NoCal's just fine. Thanks for remembering it." Kids of Marietetski's age had long ago had any kind of sweet tooth ripped from them by a world of shortages.

  Marietetski shrugged. He had as many cases as Shah, but far fewer folders, and they were anorexic by comparison. He picked up a particularly thin folder and replaced one piece of paper with another. "Couldn't have you spitting coffee all over me." When Shah didn't rise to his provocation, he added, "Bitch, huh?"

  "I got nine-hundred-ninety-seven on-going cases." Shah poked the stylo savagely through the paper. "You know, I know most of them lead back to a single source. Arson, burglary, petty theft, prostitution, memory-ripping: their common denominator's called Kotian. And can we prove it?"

  He glared at the windows, which for all their self-cleaning implants, seemed to accumulate grime in the way New York's windows had always picked it up. Then he turned that glare on Marietetski. He said three words: "Five more weeks." Marietetski made a what-can-I-say gesture.

  "Five more fricking weeks and I could have, should have been sleeping late, strolling down to Manny's for breakfast, then working out how I was going to spend all of that free time that retirees earn." The words spilled from him now, a white-hot lava-flow of accumulated resentment and frustration. "Van Doorn just comes out with 'SuperAnn Fund Deficit' like it's a traffic report. No frickin' 'sorry, we're raising the retirement age by another five years, and you've got to work till you drop'."

  He stopped abruptly. Took deep breaths, and visualized a beach, waves breaking on tropical golden sands. Gradually, his heart-rate slowed, and he opened his eyes. Marietetski's patrician features were carefully blank, composed into their usual impassive mask. Only his eyes gave him away. But instead of their usual distant contempt, Shah had caught a flicker of sympathy.

  Then Marietetski grinned. "Walk down to Manny's? You'd die of boredom in a month with no Kotian to bitch about!"

  "I'm a dino, all right," Shah said. "I arrest perps, not make up shit about why our clean-up rate for hour-old crimes has dropped from seventeen-point-three per cent, to seventeen-point-two."

  "Hey, Triceratops, it's up to seventeen-point-five. Climbed point-three of a base point over that bust of Jeffreys yesterday. The perp owned up to eight more dockets."

  "Well, hallelujah," Shah raised his cup in a mocksalute. "It might even get us off the bottom of the league, but hijo, I gotta tell you, while you're yoked to me, you ain't going to get that Cop of the Month award." Marietetski shrugged. "Who wants to go to the Micronesian Enclave anyways? I went there on my honeymoon. And Beijing? Big deal. No, I'm just happy being a dino-sitter."

  The sheer outlandishness of the claim made Shah burst out laughing, and his partner grinned.

  Both men sipped at their coffee, staring into space. Then Shah strolled across to the recycler, and stared out of the window at Ellis Island and the radioactive stump that was all that was left of the Statute of Liberty, bathed in the watery sunshine that separated several bands of showers.

  A woman's voice called from the partition separating the front of desk from the office, "Excuse me… sir? Sir, you there with the dark grey suit? Could you help me? Please?"

  Shah looked over. It had been on the tip of his tongue to tell her to talk to Hampson, who was staffing the front desk. Then he saw the line of people, and let out a low whistle, before double-taking on the woman herself. Shah turned to see Marietetski's raised eyebrows, and caught his partner's nod toward the desk. He noticed that almost all of the men had stopped working to stare, and that Marietetski was grinning."Your treat," the young man mouthed.

  "What's the problem, ma'am?" Shah said. Hampson hadn't even looked over, but was trying to calm a couple of irate Chinese down.

  "I've lost my ID – or it's been lifted," the woman said in an accent that smacked of money. She was jaw-droppingly beautiful, probably – Shah guessed – cosmetically enhanced, and any of her clothes probably cost more than what he made in a month . She glanced round at the people around her as if she had awoken in the midst of a pack of hungry feral dogs. She looked close to tears. "I've been waiting for almost an hour and this, ah, gentleman–" she nodded at Hampson, "well, he's clearly very busy, but I don't even have enough credit for a glass of water. Please?" Her voice rose on the last word, but she subsided at Shah's outstretched hand, palm down in a stay calm gesture. "It's okay, ma'am" Shah said. "I'll get you a glass of water. You just have a seat, and take a few deep breaths, and I'll be back in a few seconds." On the way to the cooler, Shah passed Hampson and hissed in the duty officer's ear, "What the hell's going on? She's been waiting an hour."

  "No she hasn't," Hampson said without taking his eyes off the Chinese tourist, nor without allowing his fixed smile to waver as he answered the Mandarin tirade in a loud, slow voice; "I understand your frustration, sir, but until we can get an interpreter – and we can't get one for another hour – we're just going to have to try one another." Shah reached the water cooler. "Fine looking woman," Detective Stickel said. The vertical line between her eyebrows deepened. "Course you'd help just as much if it were a guy, wouldn't you?"

  Shah filled two cups. "Course I would. Good Samaritan and all."

  "A what?" Stickel's head retreated an inch, as it often

  did when she was surprised.

  "Read your Bible," Shah said.

  This time Stickel's head recoiled a full three inches, and her eyebrows shot up. "You? Telling me to read that old book-thing? Ha, that's a good one!"

  Does she know I'm a musselman-boy? Shah wondered. Is that what she means by the 'You?' He kept his face dead-pan though, letting none of his thoughts show. "Oh, I'll quote any old bit of religion." Shah raised one cup. "L'chaim!" He tossed it down and refilled it, slowly, all to irritate the waiting Stickel who was a royal pain in the ass. "See, Hebrew too! I'm covering all the bases, just in case God turns out be real, and he's affiliated." "Yeah," Stickel said to his retreating back, then removing any doubt, "Salaam."

  As Shah passed again, cups of water in hand, Hampson turned from the Chinese tirade for a moment. "Can ya take care of her? Please?"

  Shah almost said, "Loss of ID, while it's serious, only needs the counter-sig of one of the Duty Officers." But it had already been a long day, and he had five more years of long days. "Ah, fuck it," he muttered, and kicked open the partition door. "Ma'am? Follow me to one of the interview rooms. We"ll sort this out now."

  "Thank you," she said, her voice wavering momentarily.

  Shah waited, then walked alongside her, listening to the clack of her heels on the floor tiles, breathing in her faint perfume and studying her out of the corner of his eye. Tumbling blonde hair, tip-tilted nose almost too perfect, and he'd already noticed the wide but rosebud mouth and cornflower blue eyes. That she was half a head taller than him in her heels was all that marred her perfection – and oddly enough, that made her human. "That a mark on your temple?" he said when he sensed that she was about to make a smartass comment about him looking her over.

  "This?" Sh
e pointed at the faint pink scarring on her skin, but didn't touch it, which impressed him more. "Where they caught me when they lifted my eyepiece." She grimaced. "I am such an idiot. You hear stories about the street-gangs mugging people for their pieces, but you never think it'll happen to you. They left my purse, which only makes it more galling."

  Shah held the door to the interview suite open for her. "Thank you." She shot him a dazzling smile, and he stood in the doorway collecting his thoughts and enjoying watching the play of her ass beneath her expensive skirt. He strode in and waved to the visitor's chair. "Take a seat, Ms…" and wondered idly whether everyone knew and shared Marietetski's pity over his bad news; Anything to stop staring.

  "Debonis." She sat and crossed an elegant leg. He guessed that just her pointed-toed stilettos cost a few thousand bucks, or duty-free rupees, as seemed more likely. "Aurora Debonis. The little bastards skinned me while I was out shopping,"