Dark of the Woods

VI

If it wouldn't have been for the snow and the bitter cold, Davis would have praised their luck and thanked every god he had ever heard of. They climbed on through the dark hours without being molested, trusting to the faint gleam of the snow cover whenever that was possible and breaking out a hand torch when the trees grew too thickly to allow natural light in — what little of it there was — and they could no longer trust to put their feet down before them, unable to make out the lay of the land and any obstacles or pitfalls that might be present. There was no sound of pursuit, no voices on the slopes below, no copter blades overhead. The mountainside was often steep, but never so sharply angled that climbing gear or techniques were required. These were old mountains, a range that had been weathered away through thousands of years. It was more like hiking, though strenuous and exhausting. Still, all would have been well if the storm had not grown and grown in fury, mounting into the range of blizzards with every passing hour.

The wind roared through the tress, rattling the many-forked branches so rudely that there was a continual dull roar over which they had to shout if they wished to speak. Often, he felt as if he stood below a mighty waterfall, within inches of the spot where the river dashed itself into the rocks. As long as the trees were tightly packed, the worst of the stinging cold was blocked from them. But several times, they were forced to pass through long stretches where the density of the trees was as much as 50 % below average and the howling hurricanelike masses of air tore down upon them, made them bend double to keep from being blown away. Once, on a steeper slope where the wind was banked off the mountain above and shunted right down through the nearly treeless expanse they were trying to negotiate, they had had to hold tightly to the trees, Davis locking his legs around her body to hold her as best he could. In the short moments when the wind abated, they would rush forward to another handhold, anchor themselves in time to be struck again by the hammering blows of their invisible enemy.

By the middle of the night, the snow was falling so hard that it was nearly impossible to see more than an arm's length ahead, even with the aid of the electric torch. Davis had never seen such a heavy storm in his life and found himself, for long moments, stopping to look with wonder at the white deluge that was smothering the land. Invariably, Leah would stop behind, holding his free hand, squeezing it to urge him onward. He wished he had given himself the energy boost he had provided her with the drugs of the medkit.

They made the top of the mountain some time before dawn and struck across the relatively flat topland, grateful for the chance to just walk without the necessity to fight the pull of gravity and the slipperiness of the earth that wanted to send them tumbling backwards and down. They made very good time once on the level, despite the drifts that bogged them down and concealed obstacles which Davis, more and more, found himself tripping over, sprawling into the wetness with all their gear. Leah had been carrying the suitcase for some time, but the weight of the two rucksacks was enough to make him feel as if his feet were not only sinking through snow at every step, but through an inch or two of the ground as well.

As the first rays of light touched the sky behind the thick cloud cover and made the gray horizon a slightly lighter shadow, they reached the far side of the mountain and came to the point where the ground began to slope downwards again. In the first hundred yards of the descent into the ravine between this and the next looming landrise, he fell twice, almost knocking himself out the second time. When he got up to continue, she grabbed his arm and said she was very tired.

When he turned, certain she was only trying to save his feelings by blaming a halt on herself, he found that her eyes were sunken, her cheeks drawn and pale inside the hood of the Alaskan survival outfit. He had forgotten that the energy those drugs had provided would not stop the wear and tear on her body, but would only give her the energy to go on despite the way she felt. She must be agonizingly weary, as exhausted as he was. He nodded, struggled a hundred yards back up the slope, found a copse of trees in which the snow was not so deep as in the more open land. He shucked off the baggage, took a large square of durable plastic out of the suitcase, unfolded it, tied it to some branches to make a partially effective lean-to in which they might huddle.

Inside, they sat close, sharing what bodily warmth managed to escape through their heavy clothing. Now that the harsh whip of the wind was off them, it seemed not nearly so cold as it had all night — even when they were walking and constantly on the move, building bodily warmth. They did not talk, simply because they were too weary to think of what to say, to form the words if they could think. And their mouths were a slight bit numb from the stinging cold. Words, however, proved unnecessary. They opened two cans of stew with warming tabs in their bases and enjoyed a hot meal. They drank water from one of the bottles, then filled up what they had drunk with snow. When they were finished, they leaned together again, head to head, and nestled under the blanket which had heat radiators woven into its threads, an item Davis was especially pleased to have thought of bringing.

Madness, he thought. Madness, madness, madness… We'll never make it. We don't even know, for certain, where we're going. We may even be lost at this moment, though she thinks she knows her way around. Madness…

He looked at Proteus, bobbling at the other end of the lean-to, and wondered what the mechanical protection system was thinking — if it were capable of initiating a thought on its own. Cold was another quantity/condition which it could not protect him from. He could freeze to death, if he had not remembered this blanket, and Proteus could do nothing to stop the slow but certain progress for even a fraction of a second.

He was struck with, the thought that Proteus was a fugitive now too. Proteus was running with them, was here to protect them so they could escape from the Alliance government. That made him a traitor and a fugitive from “justice.” He wanted to laugh but did not have the energy, and he fell asleep before he could frame even a fragment of another train of thought…

It was not a quiet sleep.

This was not the time for that.

There were dreams:

He was in a house made of ice, each room a frigid cubicle without differentiation. He was naked, and his skin was growing blue, numbing, lacing over with glittering particles of frost…

He was trying to find the doorway…

There did not appear to be one.

It grew colder and colder until, shimmering out of nothingness, stalactites and stalagmites formed in the room, made of ice, effectively barring his way and making him a prisoner of this one chamber.

Then, as he crumpled on the floor and felt his strength ebbing out of him, one spot in the wall began to melt, the water running down and puddling around him, warm and pleasant, life-giving. A portal appeared in the wall, and Leah was there, smiling. She walked toward him, seeming to skim on the water, and the ice melted around her and the cold air became warm. He grasped her, and feeling returned to his flesh.

And just as they were kissing, a man without a face, dressed in a blue uniform with brass buttons, tapped Davis on the shoulder, separated him from Leah, and started leading her away.

The ice began to reform.

The flesh that had been warm grew cold again.

He raced frantically after the uniformed man and the girl, trying to regain her, but his feet kept freezing to the floor, slowing his progress, while they moved swiftly, the ice melting before them and solidifying behind…

He wasn't going to catch her.

Never…

Ever …

He opened his mouth to scream, wondering if that would crack the ice watts of his prison …

… and was awakened by the boom of a pistol shot fired very nearby…

He grabbed for his own gun, slapping his hand against an empty holster. He had confiscated the weapon from the Alliance representative at the Sanctuary, and now someone had confiscated it from him, in turn. He looked about the lean-to and saw Proteus; nodes gleaming all colors as the machine bobbled irritably, swayed from side to side as it tried to ascertain just what sort of role it should play in the transpiring events. Leah was near the left opening of the shelter, and it was she who had lifted his pistol from the holster and had been using it. She held it in both hands, as if it were too heavy for her to manage in one, and pointed it at the white landscape beyond the entrance.

“What is it?” he asked. Suddenly, it seemed as if they must have been mad to stop and sleep.

“Wolves,” she said.

He relaxed a little. Wolves might be cunning and powerful, but not so cunning and not so powerful as a man with a gun or a vibra-beam weapon working as a soldier of the Alliance. He moved over to where she sat, looked through the opening. Not more than six feet away, a great gray-brown wolf, much like those that Proteus had fought off the day before, sprawled in the thick carpet of snow, great red blotches of blood staining the purity around it. Its mouth was open, its tongue lolled to the side.

“I didn't want to wake you,” she said. “I thought this might be equipped with a built-in silencer. It wasn't.”

“I didn't know you could use a gun,” he said.

“Everyone was a soldier in the last days of the war.”

“I guess so.”

“There are others,” she said quietly, staring intently at the clumps of brush that pushed through the snow.

“Where?”

“They scattered when I shot. But they're not too far away. You can be sure of that.”

“Proteus—”

“I discovered something unsettling about your Proteus,” she interrupted, looking behind at the grav-plated weapons system which floated above the earth in absolute silence.

“What?”

“He's your protection robot, not mine. The wolves kept coming closer. He kept scanning them, very attentively, but I realized that he was not going to shoot any of them unless they went for you. If they attacked me, it was perfectly all right.”

He nodded, a quiver of horror running through him as he contemplated the serious oversight in their preparations he had made. He had been thinking of Proteus as their guardian, not as his own private soldier, for he had been extending the new concept of “us” everywhere the old concept of “me” had prevailed. But Proteus would be oblivious of emotional developments such as that and would stand blithely by and watch her perish if her own life was not imperiled by the same enemy and at the precise same instant as Davis's own.

The cataracted eyes of the spherical defender stared out into the winter wasteland: white viewing white.

“From now on,” he said, “well tie the plastic down so that there's only a single entrance instead of two. If I hadn't been so tired this morning, I would have done that. Then I'll sleep near the open side, with Proteus near the entrance.” He pushed up the sleeve of his coat and the sleeves of the two sweaters which he wore beneath it. “We've been asleep for about five hours. It's getting on toward the end of the morning. If we're going to make use of the daylight to walk, we'd better get started.”

They drank more water and ate some chocolate, then carefully folded the blanket to unalign its heat emanators so that they could cool, packed things away, took down the plastic sheet that formed their shelter and stowed that. In fifteen minutes, they were ready to move out, with Leah carrying the suitcase and Davis toting both rucksacks. They set out down the mountainside with a great deal more ease than they had managed in their sleepiness and exhaustion the first time, five or six hours ago.

The terrible winds had died, though there were now and then gusts that startled them and unbalanced them, toppling them into snowbanks. The snow was still falling, rather heavily but in less than a blizzard pace. They could see some distance ahead, and the way looked uniformly easy down this ravine and up the other side, at least. There were drifts of snow as high as their waists in some spots, though these could most always be circumvented if they took time and patience to find their way. Everywhere, the white stuff was up to mid-calf on Davis and up to the girl's knees, which slowed and tired them and made them wonder whether they would be able to make the sort of time necessary to stay well ahead of the Alliance forces that must — at dawn— have struck out on their trail.

When they reached the bottom of the depression and started up the opposite slope, they found that going down through the waves of the drifts had been far easier than pushing upwards through them. They were required, now, to fight the angle of the earth, the treacherous and unseen footing beneath winter's blanket, and the stiff resistance of more than a foot of fine, tightly packed snow. Near the top, they were presented with yet another obstacle: an overhanging drift that crowned the last twenty feet of their path and made reaching the top of the second mountain difficult if not impossible. At Davis's suggestion, they worked to the right, moving horizontally now, searching for a break in the overhang through which they might struggle to achieve the blessed levelness of the summit. But they found, three hundred yards along, that the ravine dropped into a sheer cliff where there was no toehold and that the overhanging drift continued beyond even this. They were forced to backtrack, following their own footprints, until they came to their starting point. They worked left, then, and found much the same situation there as well. There was no break at all in the deep and unscalable snow wall that blocked their progress.

“What now?” Leah asked, setting the suitcase down and wiping perspiration off her forehead. She had to resist an urge to pull off the heavy coat for a feeling of coolness against her skin. That body heat that now bothered her was exactly what she needed to maintain her life, she knew, and the blast of frigid air that would hit her when she stripped might very well give her the pneumonia that both of them feared.

“Two things,” he said.

“Full of ideas aren't we.”

“Don't congratulate me until you hear how unpleasant both of the possibilities are.”

“They couldn't be any more unpleasant than waiting here until we either freeze or get caught.”

“Well,” he said, wishing he could drop the rucksacks but knowing if he did he would never put them on again, “we can either turn back, climb the other side of the ravine, cross to another way down the first mountain, and make a second attempt at getting off it, then work our way back in the direction we want to go. The flaw is that we may run into the same thing — or something worse no matter where we go. And it's still snowing — which means every hour we delay getting on our way, there's another inch of snow we have to push through.”

“Sounds bad.”

“I don't like it either.”

“The second way, then.”

He frowned. “We break a way through the drift hanging over us, go. right through and on our way.”

“It looks seven or eight feet deep, anyway. We don't have a shovel, and even if we did we couldn't use it properly from a slope like this.”

“We do have Proteus,” he said.

She grinned. “Of course! The weapons!”

“Don't get too excited, love. There's a hazard. Proteus will refuse to get more than a few feet from me, which means we'll have to be right where he's working. And since his range of fire isn't great enough to work from the bottom of the ravine or the other side, we'll have to stand about halfway up the slope while he blasts away. If there's a slide, we're going to be right in the path of it.”

They both looked at the shelf of white above them. “What if he uses the vibra-beam instead of the projectile weapon?” she asked.

“I can't direct that one. It's an automatic system at his discretion, just like the plasti-plasma tentacles. But the projectile business responds to vocal commands. It's all we have.”

“Slide or not,” she said, “we might as well try it.”

“Gun left,” he ordered the robot.

It extruded the barrel from the smooth sheen of its hull.

“Gun up,” he directed.

It complied.

Traction left. Fraction left again. Steady.”

He looked once more at the shelf of snow that was suspended overhead.

Somewhere behind, a wolf howled.

“Fire one!” he ordered.

The shell exploded in the middle of the drift, blasted snow in all directions, sent a fine white mist rolling down the ravine and across them. When the air cleared, approximately a third of the way had been torn open.

“Gun up, fraction,” he directed. “Up fraction again. Fire one!”

The shell exploded, and there was a screeching, whining rumble from above. Cracks appeared in the crusted drift. It jerked, seemed to descend, in mass, an inch or so. Then everything let loose with an horrendous roar and the entire snow shelf swept at them with the speed of a locomotive.

Davis grabbed Leah, tried to leap with her up the slope toward the avalanche, with the intention of reaching the cleared section where there was little snow left to fall. But before he could get there, the wave of cold snow and ice swept over them, pulled her from his grasp and carried her away, toward the bottom of the small valley…