Beyond the Ice Limit

1

GIDEON CREW STARED at Eli Glinn. The man was standing—standing!—in the kitchen of Gideon’s cabin high in the Jemez Mountains, gazing at him with placid gray eyes. His all-terrain wheelchair—the wheelchair in which Glinn had always sat, virtually helpless, since Gideon had first met him several months before—sat unused ever since he had, to Gideon’s great astonishment, risen out of it minutes before.

Glinn gestured toward the wheelchair. “Forgive this tiny bit of drama. I staged it, however, for an important reason: to show you that our mission to the Lost Island, despite certain regrettable aspects, was not in vain. Quite the opposite: I’m living proof of its success.”

A silence ensued. It stretched into a minute, two minutes. Finally Gideon went to the stove, picked up the sauté pan containing the wild goose breast in a ginger and black truffle emulsion that he had just finished preparing with exquisite care, and dumped it into the garbage.

Without a word, Glinn turned and walked, a little unsteadily, toward the cabin door, using a hiking pole as a brace. Manuel Garza—chief of operations at Glinn’s firm, Effective Engineering Solutions—offered to help Glinn into the wheelchair, but Glinn waved this away.

Gideon watched the two men leave the cabin, Garza guiding the empty wheelchair, the words Glinn had spoken a few minutes earlier reverberating in his mind. That thing is growing again. We must destroy it. The time to act is now.

Gideon grabbed his coat and followed. The helicopter that had brought the EES men to this remote site was still powered up, its rotors whistling, sending ripples of waves through the meadow grass.

He followed Glinn inside the chopper and took a seat, buckling in and donning a headset. The chopper rose into the blue New Mexico sky and headed southeast. Gideon watched his cabin get smaller and smaller, until it was a nothing more than a dot in a meadow in a great bowl of mountains. Suddenly he had a strange feeling he would never see it again.

He turned to Glinn and spoke at last. “So you can walk again. And your bad eye…can you see with it now?”

“Yes.” Glinn raised his left hand, formerly a twisted claw, and flexed his fingers slowly. “Every day they get better. As does my ability to walk without aid. Thanks to the healing power of the plant we discovered on the island, I can now complete my life’s work.”

Gideon didn’t need to ask about the plant. Nor did he need to ask about Glinn’s “life’s work.” He already knew the answers to both questions.

“There is no time to waste. We have the money, we have the ship, and we have the equipment.”

Gideon nodded.

“But before we take you back to EES headquarters, we have to make a little detour. There’s something you must see. I regret to say it will not be pleasant.”

“What is it?”

“I’d rather not say more.”

Gideon sat back, mildly irritated: typical inscrutable, enigmatic Glinn. He glanced at Garza and found the man to be as unreadable as his boss.

“Can you at least tell me where we’re going?”

“Certainly. We’re going to pick up the EES jet in Santa Fe and fly to San Jose. From there we’ll take a private car into the hills above Santa Cruz, and pay a call on a gentleman who resides there.”

“Sounds mysterious.”

“I don’t intend to be enigmatic.”

“Of course you do.”

A small smile—very small. “You know me too well. But since you do, you also know everything I do is with a purpose.”

The chopper left the mountains behind. Gideon could see the shining ribbon of the Rio Grande crawling through White Rock Canyon below them, and beyond that the hills of the Caja del Rio. The town of Santa Fe spread out to his left. As they proceeded over the southern end of town, the airport came into view.

“This talk about your final project,” said Gideon. “You mentioned an alien. A seed. You say it’s threatening the earth. That’s all pretty vague. How about giving me details—starting with why, exactly, you need my help?”

“All in good time,” said Glinn. “After our little excursion to Santa Cruz.”