Year's Best Scifi 5 Part 38

As the ice holes began to freeze over, the people emerged reluctantly from the water, standing on the hardening ice.

In a freezing hole, a slush of ice crystal clumps would gather. His mother called that Frazil. Then, when the slush had condensed to form a solid surface, it took on a dull matte appearance-grease ice.

The waves beneath the larger holes made the grease ice gather in wide, flat pancakes, with here and there stray, protruding crystals, called congelation. At last, the new ice grew harder and compressed with groans and cracks, into pack ice.

There were lots of words for ice.

And after the holes were frozen over the water-and their only food supply-was cut off, for six months.

When the blizzards came, the huddle began.

The adults and children-some of them little fat b.a.l.l.s of fur barely able to walk-came together, bodies pressed close, enveloping Night-Dawn in a welcome warmth, the shallow swell of their breathing pressing against him.

The snow, flecked with ice splinters, came at them horizontally. Night-Dawn tucked his head as deep as he could into the press of bodies, keeping his eyes squeezed closed.

Night fell. Day returned. He slept, in patches, standing up.

Sometimes he could hear people talking. But then the wind rose to a scream, drowning human voices.

The days wore away, still shortening, as dark as the nights.

The group s.h.i.+fted, subtly. People were moving around him. He got colder. Suddenly somebody moved away, a fat man, and Night-Dawn found himself exposed to the wind. The cold cut into him, shocking him awake.

He tried to push back into the ma.s.s of bodies, to regain the warmth.

The disturbance spread like a ripple through the group. He saw heads raised, eyes crusted with sleep and snow. With the group's tightness broken, a ma.s.s of hot air rose from the compressed bodies, steaming, frosting, bright in the double-shadowed Moonlight.

Here was No-Sun, blocking his way. "Stay out there. You have to take your turn."

"But it's cold."

She turned away.

He tucked his head under his arm and turned his back to the wind. He stood the cold as long as he could.

Then, following the lead of others, he worked his way around the rim of the group, to its leeward side. At least here he was sheltered. And after a time more came around, s.h.i.+vering and iced up from their time to windward, and gradually he was encased once more in warmth.

Isolated on their sc.r.a.p of ice, with no shelter save each other's bodies from the wind and snow, the little group of humans huddled in silence. As they took their turns at the windward side, the group s.h.i.+fted slowly across the ice, a creeping mat of fur.

Sometimes children were born onto the ice. The people pushed around closely, to protect the newborn, and its mother would tuck it away into the warmth of her body. Occasionally one of them fell away, and remained where she or he lay, as the group moved on.

This was the huddle: a black disc of fur and flesh and human bones, swept by the storms of Earth's unending winter.

A hundred thousand years after the Collision, all humans had left was each other.

Spring came slowly.Dwarfed by the desolate, rocky landscape, bereft of shelter, the humans scratched at their isolated puddle of ice, beginning the year's feeding.

Night-Dawn sc.r.a.ped ice from his eyes. He felt as if he were waking from a year-long sleep. This was his second spring, and it would be the summer of his manhood. He would father children, teach them, and protect them through the coming winter. Despite the depletion of his winter fat, he felt strong, vigorous.

He found Frazil. They stood together, wordless, on the thick early spring ice.

Somebody roared in his ear, hot foul breath on his neck.

It was, of course, the Bull. The old man would not see another winter; his ragged fur lay loose on his huge, empty frame, riven by the scars of forgotten, meaningless battles. But he was still immense and strong, still the Bull.

Without preamble, the Bull sank his teeth into Night-Dawn's neck, and pulled away a lump of flesh, which he chewed noisily.

Night-Dawn backed away, appalled, breathing hard, blood running down his fur.

Frazil and No-Sun were here with him.

"Challenge him," No-Sun said.

"I don't want to fight."

"Then let him die," Frazil said. "He is old and stupid. We can couple despite him." There was a bellow. The Bull was facing him, pawing at the ice with a great scaly foot.

"I don't wish to fight you," Night-Dawn said.

The Bull laughed, and lumbered forward, wheezing.

Night-Dawn stood his ground, braced his feet against the ice, and put his head down.

The Bull's roar turned to alarm, and he tried to stop; but his feet could gain no purchase.

His mouth slammed over Night-Dawn's skull. Night-Dawn screamed as the Bull's teeth grated through his fur and flesh to his very bone.

They bounced off each other. Night-Dawn felt himself tumbling back, and finished up on his backside on the ice. His chest felt crushed; he labored to breathe. He could barely see through the blood streaming into his eyes.

The Bull was lying on his back, his loose belly hoisted toward the violet sky. He was feeling his mouth with his fingers.

He let out a long, despairing moan.

No-Sun helped Night-Dawn to his feet. "You did it. You smashed his teeth, Night-Dawn. He'll be dead in days."

"I didn't mean to-"

His mother leaned close. "You're the Bull now. You can couple with who you like. Even me, if you want to."

"...Night-Dawn."

Here came Frazil. She was smiling. She turned her back to him, bent over, and pulled open her genital slit. His p.e.n.i.s rose in response, without his volition.

He coupled with her quickly. He did it at the center of a circle of watching, envious, calculating men.

It brought him no joy, and they parted without words.

He avoided the Bull until the old man had starved to death, gums bleeding from ice cuts, and the others had dumped his body into a water hole.

For Night-Dawn, everything was different after that.

He was the Bull. He could couple with who he liked. He stayed with Frazil. But even coupling with Frazil brought him little pleasure.

One day he was challenged by another young man called One-Tusk, over a woman Night-Dawn barely knew, called Ice-Cloud.

"Fight, d.a.m.n you," One-Tusk lisped.

"We shouldn't fight. I don't care about Ice-Cloud."One-Tusk growled, pursued him for a while, then gave up. Night-Dawn saw him try to mate with one of the women, but she laughed at him and pushed him away.

Frazil came to him. "We can't live like this. You're the Bull. Act like it."

"To fight, to eat, to huddle, to raise children, to die.... There must be more, Frazil."

She sighed. "Like what?"

"The Collision. Our purpose."

She studied him. "Night-Dawn, listen to me. The Collision is a pretty story. Something to make us feel better, while we suck sc.u.m out of ice."

That was Frazil, he thought fondly. Practical. Unimaginative.

"Anyhow," she said, "where are the people we are supposed to help?"

He pointed to the western horizon: the rising ground, the place beyond the blue-gray mountains.

"There, perhaps."

The next day, he called together the people. They stood in ranks on the ice, their fur spiky, rows of dark shapes in an empty landscape.

"We are all humans," he said boldly. "The Collision threw us here, onto the ice." Night-Dawn pointed to the distant mountains. "We must go there. Maybe there are people there. Maybe they are waiting for us, to huddle with them."

Somebody laughed.

"Why now?" asked the woman, Ice-Cloud.

"If not now, when? Now is no different from any other time, on the ice. I'll go alone if I have to."

People started to walk away, back to the ice holes.

All, except for Frazil and No-Sun and One-Tusk.

No-Sun, his mother, said, "You'll die if you go alone. I suppose it's my fault you're like this."

One-Tusk said, "Do you really think there are people in the mountains?"

"Please don't go," Frazil said. "This is our summer. You will waste your life."

"I'm sorry," he said.

"You're the Bull. You have everything we can offer."

"It's not enough."

He turned his back, faced the mountains and began to walk.

He walked past the droppings and blood smears and scars in the ice, the evidence of humans.

He stopped and looked back.

The people had lined up to watch him go-all except for two men who were fighting viciously, no doubt contesting his succession, and a man and woman who were coupling vigorously. And except for Frazil and No-Sun and One-Tusk, who padded across the ice after him.

He turned and walked on, until he reached bare, untrodden ice.

After the first day of walking, the ice got thinner.

At last they reached a place where there was no free water beneath, the ice firmly bonded to a surface of dark rock. And when they walked a little further, the rock bed itself emerged from beneath the ice.

Night-Dawn stared at it in fascination and fear. It was black and deep and hard under his feet, and he missed the slick compressibility of ice.

The next day they came to another ice pool: smaller than their own, but a welcome sight nonetheless.

They ran gleefully onto its cool white surface. They sc.r.a.ped holes into the ice, and fed deeply.

They stayed a night. But the next day they walked onto rock again, and Night-Dawn could see no more ice ahead.

The rock began to rise, becoming a slope.

They had no food. Occasionally they took sc.r.a.pes at the rising stone, but it threatened to crack their teeth.

At night the wind was bitter, spilling off the flanks of the mountains, and they huddled as best theycould, their backs to the cold, their faces and bellies together.

"We'll die," One-Tusk would whisper.

"We won't die," Night-Dawn said. "We have our fat."

"That's supposed to last us through the winter," hissed No-Sun.

One-Tusk s.h.i.+vered and moved a little more to leeward. "I wished to father a child," he said. "By Ice-Cloud. I could not. Ice-Cloud mocked me. After that n.o.body would couple with me."