As his body temperature lowered, he had to avoid surrendering to the sleep that presaged clinical death. His blood slowed, and his heartbeats became less and less frequent. He was using a meagre repertoire of yogic techniques, but couldn’t be distracted by the business of keeping the meat machine running.
He opened up, physically, mentally, spiritually.
In the darkness, he was not alone.
Richard felt the Cold. It was hugely alive, and more alien than the few extra-terrestrials he’d come across. Newly-awake, it stretched out, irritated by moving things and tiny obstructions. It could barely distinguish between piles of stone and people. Both were against the nature it had known. It had an impulse to clean itself by covering these imperfections. It preferred people wrapped in snow, not moving by themselves. But was this its genuine preference, or something learned from Clever Dick Cleaver?
“Hello,” shouted Richard, with his mind. “Permit me to introduce myself. I am Richard, and I speak for Mankind.”
Snow pressed around his face, like ice-fingers on his eyes.
He felt tiny crystals forming inside his brain – not a killing flash-freeze, but the barest pinheads. The Cold was inside him.
“You are not Man.”
It wasn’t a voice. It wasn’t even words. Just snowflake hexagons in the dark of his skull, accompanied by a whisper of arctic winds. But he understood. Meaning was imprinted directly into his brain.
To talk with the Cold, it had to become part of him. This was an interior monologue.
“I am Richard,” he tried to reply. It was awkward. He was losing his sense of self, of the concept of Richard. “I am not Man.” Man was what the Cold called Cleaver. “I am another Man.”
To the Cold, the idea of “other” was still fresh, a shock which had come with its awakening. It had only just got used to Man/Cleaver. It was not yet ready for the independent existence of three billion more unique and individual intelligences. As Richard had guessed, it hadn’t previously had use for numbers beyond than One/Self. The corpse-cores of its snowmen weren’t like Man/Cleaver. They were tools, empty of consciousness. Had Cleaver killed his staff because he knew more voices would confuse his ice mistress? Probably.
What would Leech have said to the Cold? He would try to make a deal, to his own best advantage. Richard couldn’t even blame him. It was what he did. In this position, the Great Enchanter might become a senior partner, stifle the Cold’s rudimentary mind and colonize it, use it. Leech/Cold would grip the world, in a different, ultimately crueller way. He wanted slaves, not corpses; a treadmill to the inferno, not peace and quiet.
What should Richard say?
“Please,” he projected. “Please don’t k— us.”
There were no snowflakes for “kill” or “death” or “dead”. He shuffled through the tiny vocabulary, and tried again. “Please don’t stop/cover/freeze us.”
The Cold’s mind was changing: not in the sense of altering its intention, but of restructuring its internal architecture. So far, in millennia, it had only needed to make declarative statements, and – until the last few days – only to itself. It had been like a goldfish, memory wiped every few seconds, constantly reaffirming “this is me, this is my bowl, this is water, this is me, this is my bowl, this is water”. Now, the Cold needed to keep track, to impose its will on others. It needed a more complicated thought process. It was on the point of inventing a crucial mode of address, of communication. It was about to ask its first question.
Richard had got his point over. The Cold now understood that its actions would lead to the ending of Man/Richard. It had a sense Man/Richard was merely one among unimagined and unimaginable numbers of others. For it, “three” was already equivalent to a schoolboy’s “gajillion-quajillion-infinitillion to the power of forever”. The Cold understood Man/Richard was asking to be allowed to continue. The life of others was in the Cold’s gift.
“Please don’t kill us,” Richard repeated. There was a hexagram for “kill/end” now. “Please don’t.”
The Cold paused, and asked “Why not?”
X
It was getting dark, which didn’t bother Jamie. He lifted his goggles and saw in more detail. He also felt the cold less. Most of his teammates were more spooked as shadows spread, but Gené was another nightbird. You’d never know she’d come close to having a dirty great icicle shoved all the way through her chest. Perhaps she had a little of the Shade in her. She’d said she knew Auntie Jenny.
Regular Keith was bewildered about what had happened while he was away, and Susan was trying to fill him in. Sewell Head was quoting weather statistics since before records began. It was snowing even harder, and the slog to Alder wasn’t going to be possible without losing one or more of the happy little band. Finding shelter was a high priority. They were in the lee of Sutton Mallet church – which was small, but had a tower. The place was securely chained.
“Can’t you break these?” Jamie asked Gene.
“Normal chains, yes. Chapel chains, I have a bit of a mental block about. Try the spoon-bender.”
Susan stepped up and laid hands on the metal. She frowned, and links began to buckle.
“Where’s Head?” asked Keith.
Captain Cleverclogs wasn’t with them. Jamie couldn’t understand why anyone would wander off. Had the last snowman got him?
“Here are his tracks,” said Gene.
“I can’t see any,” said Keith.
“Trust me.”
Jamie saw them too. Sewell Head had gone into a thicket of trees, just beyond what passed for the centre of Sutton Mallet. There were buildings on the other side.
“I’ll fetch him back,” he said.
“We’re not being that stupid, Jamie,” said Susan, dropping mangled but unbroken chains. “You go, we all go. No sense splitting up and getting picked off one by one.”
She had a point. He was thinking like Dad, who preferred to work alone.
Beyond the trees were ugly buildings. A concrete shed, temporary cabins.
“This is Derek Leech’s weather research station,” said Gene. “Almost certainly where all the trouble started.”
Derek Leech was in the public eye as a smiling businessman, but Jamie’s Dad called him “a human void”. Jamie had thought Dad a bit cracked on the subject of Derek Leech – like everyone else’s parents were cracked about long hair or short hair or the Common Market or some other bloody thing. He was coming round to think more of what his old man said.
“Shouldn’t we stay away from here?” cautioned Keith. “Aren’t we supposed to join up with folks more qualified than us?”
“You mean grown-ups?” asked Jamie.
“Well, yes.”
“Poor old Swellhead’ll be an ice lolly by the time you fetch a teacher.”
Beside the building was a towering snowman. Bugs, grown to Kitten Kong proportions. The front doors were blown inward and jammed open by snowdrifts. It was a fair guess Head had gone inside. If he could get past the snow-giant, they had a good chance.
“Susan,” he said. “Can you concentrate on the snowman? At the first sign of hassle, melt the big bastard.”
The woman snapped off a salute. “Since you ask so nicely,” she said, “I’ll give it a whirl.”
“Okay, gang,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”
They sprinted from the thicket to the doors. Bugs didn’t make a move, but Keith tripped and Gené had to help him up and drag him.
Inside the building, which was an ice-palace, the wind was less of a problem, and they were protected from the worst of the snow. Overhead lights buzzed and flickered, bothering Jamie’s eyes. He slipped his goggles back on.
They found Sewell Head in a room that might have been a mess hall. He was acting as a valet, helping a man dress in arctic gear. Jamie recognized the bloke from the telly. He was the one who said “If I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t own it.” He must love lots of things, because he owned a shedload of them.
“Hi,
” he said. “I’m Derek. You must be the new Doctor Shade.”
Yes, Jamie realized. He must be.
Leech’s smile jangled his shadow-senses. The dark in him was something more than night.
“I’m a big fan of your father’s,” said Leech. “I learned to read from tear-sheets of the newspaper strip they ran about his adventures. Ahh, ‘the Whooping Horror’, ‘the Piccadilly GestapO’. How I longed for my own autogyro! I have a car just like Dr Shade’s. A Shadow-Shark.”
Jamie remembered that there had been two Rollses in the snow. Whose was the other one?
“Leech,” said Gene, acknowledging him.
“Geneviève Dieudonné,” said Leech, cordially. “I thought you’d aged hundreds of years and died.”
“I got better.”
“Well done. Though live through the night before you pat yourself on the back too much. Where’s the rest of the army? The heavy mob. Ariadne, Jago, Mrs Michaelsmith, Little Rose? The Cold’s already got Jeperson. We need to go all-out on the attack if we’re to have a chance of stopping it.”
“We’re it, right now,” said Jamie.
“You’ll have to do, then.”
Jamie boiled inside at that. He didn’t even know the people Leech had listed. Whoever they might be, he doubted they’d have done as well against the snowmen.
“Who might you be, my dear?” Leech said to Susan.
“I might be Susan Rodway. Or Susan Ames. Mum got remarried, and I have a choice.”
“I know exactly who you are,” said Leech. “Shade, why didn’t you say you had her? She’s not Rose Farrar or an Elder of the Kind, but she’s a bloody good start.”
Susan began primping a bit at the attention. Jamie couldn’t believe she’d let this hand-kissing creep smarm her up like that. He’d never understand birds.
“Now, Sewell,” said Leech, addressing his instant orderly. “Get on the blower and tell Miss Kaye to pull her finger out. The telephone kit is in the laboratory down the hall – the room with the tied-up-and-gagged idiot in it. It’s simple to use. You’ll have the specs for it in your head somewhere.”
Head meekly trotted out of the room. He was taking orders without question.
Leech looked over the four of them – Jamie, Gene, Susan, Keith.
“Susan,” he said, “can you do something about the room temperature?”
Susan, bizarrely, seemed smitten. “I can try,” she said, and shut her eyes.
A little warmth radiated from her. Some icicles started dripping. Jamie felt his face pricking, as feeling returned.
“Good girl,” said Leech. “You, young fellow-me-lad. Any chance of getting some tea going?”
“Give it a try, sir,” said Keith, hunting a kettle.
Jamie already resented Derek Leech. For a start, he had released all those triple LPs of moaning woodwind hippies which got played over and over in student common rooms. Even if he weren’t the literal Devil, that alone made him a man not to be trusted. But he was magnetic in person, and Jamie felt a terrible tug – it would be easier to go along with Leech, to take orders, to not be responsible for the others. Dad could be like that too, but he always drummed it into Jamie that he should become his own man. Dad didn’t even disapprove of him being in a band rather than joining the night-wars – though he realized he’d done that anyway, as well. If he was the new Dr Shade, he was also a different Shade.
It was Leech’s world too. If this big freeze was spreading, it was his interest to side with the angels. If everyone was dead, no one would make a deal with him. No one would buy his crappy music or read his raggy papers.
Jamie saw that Gené was sceptical of anything Leech-related, but Susan and Keith were sucked in. Keith had found his grown-up, his teacher. Susan had found something she needed too. Jamie had been revising his impression of her all day. Leech saw at once that she was the most useful Talent in their crowd. Jamie hadn’t even noticed her at first, and he had been around Talents all his life. Susan Rodway was not only Shade-level or better in her abilities, but extremely good at keeping it to herself. She kept talking about the things she couldn’t do, or making light of the things she could.
Leech had been briefly interested in Jamie, in Dr Shade – but he had instantly passed over him, and latched onto Susan.
He realized – with a tiny shock – that he was jealous. But of whom? Susan, for going to the head of the class? Or Leech, for getting the girl’s attention? There wasn’t time for this.
“What did you say about Richard Jeperson?” Gené asked Leech.
Jamie knew Jeperson was Fred and Vanessa’s guv’nor at the Diogenes Club. He tied in with Gené too.
“Mad, definitely,” said Leech, with just a hint of pleasure. “Dead, probably. The Cold took him – it’s a thinking thing, not just bad weather – and he went outside, naked. He lay down and let himself be buried. I tried to stop him, but he fought like a tiger, knocked me out . . . gave me this.” Leech indicated a fresh wound on his forehead.
“Stone in a snowball,” he said. “Playground trick.”
Gené thought a few moments and said, “We’ve got to go out and find him. He might still be alive. He’s not helpless. He’s a Talent too. If he’s buried, we can dig him up.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” said Leech.
Anything Leech thought was a good idea was almost certainly good mostly or only for him. But Jamie couldn’t see any alternative. He knew that Fred would give him a right belting if he let Jeperson die.
“Okay, I’ll go,” he said. “Gene, Susan, stay here. Give Mr Leech any help he needs . . .” That is, keep a bloody eye on him! Gene, though worried for her friend, picked that up.
Leech was bland, mild, innocent.
“Keith,” said Jamie, at last. “Find a shovel or something, and come with me.”
Keith, infuriatingly, looked to Leech – who gave him the nod.
“Come on, find someone useful inside you. Let’s get this rescue party on the road!”
Keith gulped and said, “O-okay, Jamie.”
XI
Derek Leech was on the telephone again. Really, the man had the most terrible manners. He had some minion bother Catriona, then brushed her aside because he wanted to talk with Maureen Mountmain, of all people. Catriona passed the receiver to the woman, who listened – to her master’s voice? – and clucked. Yes, Mr Leech, no Mr Leech, three hags bloody full, Mr Leech . . . Catriona caught herself: this was no time to be a cranky old woman.
The Cold was getting into the Manor House, overwhelming Louise Teazle’s bubble of summer. Frost grew on the insides of the windows. Sleet and snow rattled against the panes.
In the gloom of the gardens, drifts and banks shifted like beasts.
Catriona had pain in her joints, and was irritated. She could list other age-related aches and infirmities, exacerbated by the Cold.
Only Rose Farrar and Ariadne were immune. Rose skipped around the drawing room, exhaling white clouds. Ariadne stood by the fireplace – where the wood wouldn’t light, and shivers of snow fell on tidy ashes – and smoked a cigarette in a long, elegant holder.
Paulette Michaelsmith shivered in her sleep, and Louise rearranged her day-blanket without any effect. Karabatsos and his wife huddled together. Mr Zed was white. Swami Anand Gitamo chanted mantras, but his nose was blue. Lark and Cross, the white-coats, passed the china teapot between them, pressing their hands against the last of its warmth. Even Anthony Jago, who feared not the ice and fire of Hell, had his hands in his armpits. The house itself creaked more than usual.
“Richard?” exclaimed Maureen. “Are you sure?”
Catriona, who had been trying not to listen, had a spasm of concern. Maureen had blurted out the name in shock. She and Richard had . . .
Maureen hung up, cutting off Catriona’s train of thought. The room looked to Maureen for a report.
“Derek needs us all,” she said. “He needs us to hurt the Cold.”
A lot of people talked at once,
then shut up.
“Catriona,” said Maureen, fists pressed together under her impressive bosom, “your man Richard Jeperson is lost.”
“Lost?”
“Probably dead. I’m sorry, truly. Derek says he tried to reach the Cold, and it took him. It’s a monster, and wants to kill us all. We have to hit it with all we’ve got, now. All our big guns, he says. Maybe it can’t be killed, but can be hurt. Driven back to its hole.”
A tear dribbled from Maureen’s eye.
“Reverend Jago, Lady Elder, Rose . . . you’re our biggest guns. Just tear into the Cold. Miss Teazle, work on Mrs Michaelsmith – direct her. Think of the heat-wave. Karabatsos, clear a circle and make a summoning. A fire elemental. The rest of you, pray. That’s not a figure of speech. The only way we can beat this thing is with an enormous spiritual attack.”
The news about Richard was a terrible blow. Catriona let Maureen go on with her “to arms” speech, trying to take it in. She was not a sensitive in the way any of these Talents were, but she was not a closed mind. And Maureen had said Richard was only probably dead.
Mr and Mrs Karabatsos were the first to act. They rolled aside a carpet and began chalking a circle on the living room floor.
“Excuse me,” said Catriona. “Is this your house?”
Karabatsos glared at her, nastily triumphant. Catriona would not be looked at like that in her home.
“No need to bother with that,” said Anand Gitamo.
“Summoning a fire elemental requires a circle, and a ritual,” said Karabatsos. “Blood must be spilled and burned.”
“Yes dear, spilled and burned,” echoed his wife.
“In normal company, maybe,” said the Swami, sounding more like plain old Harry Cutley. “But we’ve got extraordinary guests. We can take short cuts. Now, you two sorcerers shut your eyes and think about your blessed fire elemental. Extra-hot and flaming from the Pits of Abaddon and Erebus and all that. Think hard, now think harder. Imagine more flames, more heat, more burning. Take your basic fire elemental, add the Japanese pikadon, the Norse Surtur, Graeco-Roman Haephaestus or Vulcan, the phoenix, the big bonfire at the end of The Wicker Man, that skyscraper from The Towering Inferno, the Great Fire of London in 1666, enough napalm to deforest the Republic of Vietnam and the eternal blue flame of the lost city of Kôr . . .”
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 19 Page 72