Rings of Ice

Chapter 7: Mindel

Thatch somehow managed to fashion a tepee out of canvas, with a flap on top designed to let smoke out while shielding the interior from rain. This was not entirely successful—nothing could really balk Mindel—but sufficed for the purpose. He made a fire inside. Karen went there, and in due course there was the aroma of roasting meat. It went on a long time, for there were five carcasses to process.

Zena was nauseated, but the two animals were stimulated by the fumes. Dust Devil stopped at the door, not liking the rain; Foundling hesitated, then went on out. In a moment the cat followed. They did not return immediately, so Zena knew they had been fed… something.

The human party had meat for supper. No one was able to take more than a bite, but each person did that much. They had promised, and it had to be. Zena knew the same word was going through all their minds, though it was unvoiced: cannibal.

Next morning Thatch strapped on a pistol—they had plenty of firearms now, because of the spoils of the battle—and took Foundling along for a survey of the region. “Be careful,” Zena told him needlessly.

He was back in an hour. “They’re gone,” he said. “I found their camp, deserted.”

The days went by. They scorched as much meat as possible so that it would not spoil, but mold quickly sprouted on it. In fact, mold grew everywhere. It seemed to have gotten its start during the Gunz rain, and bided its time until Mindel gave it the solidly wet atmosphere it needed. Karen wiped it off the furniture every day.

Thatch’s wound healed. He never made anything of it, though Zena was sure it hurt him. This silent suffering was not a thing she understood. Most people would have used such an injury as a pretext to rest a few days, at least, but Thatch neither expected nor desired such treatment.

One person was always assigned to guard duty, which meant marching around the palisade, getting wet. No raincoat or poncho sufficed in that downpour, and soon they changed tactics. Anyone going outside went naked. The rain was warm, not cold; the hothouse effect had heated it. Zena was not eager to doff her clothes, particularly since her abdomen was beginning to round out, but she was spared that. The others were afraid her baby would suffer if she went out or stood on her feet too long. That cut it down to three: Thatch, Floy and Karen.

On the fifth day of rain, Karen took a hand. “Your turn to go out,” she said to Gus.

“What?” Gus seemed not to understand.

“What if something happened to Thatch? We all have to know our way around,” Karen said persuasively.

“I can’t go out! It’s raining!”

“Why so it is,” Karen said as if surprised. “You had better take off your clothes so they won’t get wet.”

“No!” Gus said, sounding shocked.

Karen stripped, ready for the rain. “I will not return until you fetch me,” she said, and stepped out.

Gus stared after her. “This is ridiculous,” he said. It was all Zena could do to keep from laughing, for he was now using her own phrase. “Thatch, bring her back!”

Thatch headed for the door, but Zena stopped him. “This is between the two of them,” she said.

The door opened. Gus whirled around—but it was Floy, not Karen. “Something up?” she asked as she shook the water off her bare torso. “It’s not Karen’s turn to walk out, but she told me—”

Zena brought a towel and dried her off. The girl did have a good young figure, and getting better as she grew, but she still was almost intolerably clumsy. It was better to help her than to let her bash about doing things for herself. “She says its Gus’s turn,” Zena murmured.

“Oh.” Floy glanced at Gus, comprehending. “Good for her.” Then her eyes fell upon the blonde wig Gordon had used, and something went out of her. She picked it up, crossed to the driver’s seat, and sat down.

For an hour Gus paced about the bus, muttering. No one else spoke. Zena could tell by his reactions the hold Karen had over him. There was a lot of woman out there in the rain!

Thatch took Gordon’s old shirt over to Floy. Karen had laundered the blood out of it and dried it as well as possible. He put it over the girl’s still shoulders, then took the adjacent seat. The members of the group were closer now, drawn together by the common tragedy of Gordon’s death. In the same fashion the others took care of Zena, they now took care of Floy. Yet it would have been infinitely better had Gordon lived.

At last Gus launched himself out into the rain. “Karen! Karen!” he called. “Come back!”

As though she had just left.

Floy looked back, the wig on her head: incongruous, because Zena was so used to the features of Gloria, the statuesque blonde, not this pinched child’s face, prematurely aged by grief. “It won’t work,” she said, and returned to her private reflections.

Floy had had nobody, until Gordon. What would she do, what would she be, when she came out of her sorrow? Was there hope for her now?

Fifteen minutes later Karen showed up. “I need help,” she said.

Now Thatch went out When they returned, they were supporting Gus, who was blubbering with fear. They got him inside and put him on the back couch, soaking clothes and all.

“I thought he could do it,” Karen said, shaking her head sadly. “But the moment the rain hit him, he collapsed. He’s terrified of falling water. He never got beyond the wall of the bus.”

Zena shook her head. It was hard to believe that a man could be such a coward, but it made things fall into place. Gus did not boss Thatch because he was stronger, but because he was weak. “At least he tried,” Zena said.

Time passed. Their deck of cards became worn, and the books were read and reread. Zena went through every page of the Whole Earth Catalog, knowing that it was largely an exercise in futility. The Earth was no longer whole, and none of these intriguing things could now be ordered. She was morbidly fascinated by the section on childbirth… followed by the one on death.

She wished she could go outside. But she had to content herself with doing calisthenics for health.

Thatch ranged more widely in his search for supplies. He reported that the rain was now eroding the forest land, forming huge new gullies. The paint had been scoured from the outside of the bus.

One day, about a month into Mindel, he came back shaken. “I found their other camp,” he said.

“The attackers?” Zena asked.

“Yes. They had a home base about five miles from here, shored up with rocks. For their women and children.”

Zena felt the ugly, familiar chill. “Children?”

“They had too little food, inadequate shelter. They’re gone now.”

“Children!” Zena exclaimed. “They wanted the bus for the children!”

Thatch nodded. “It looks as if there were six men, five women, and six children of different ages. I saw their skeletons.”

“Skeletons!”

“They were out in the open. Their roof had collapsed, maybe after they were dead. The wild animals, the rain.

“They must have needed the bus more than we did!”

“They attacked us!” Gus said. “What could we do?”

“If I had known,” Zena said.

“They could have talked to us,” Floy said. “We might have taken the children—if they had only asked. But they came instead to rape and kill. So what happened, happened.”

And that was true. There had been occasion for negotiation, when Gloria fetched water for the first man. But the others had cared only for deceit and violence—and had paid the awful price. And Gordon was dead.

The Biblical forty days of the first rain had passed, but this time there was no abatement. Their carefully rationed meat diminished; what they did not eat rapidly enough, the fungus did. There was no hope of lasting out Mindel on their present supplies.

“Only two ways to eat,” Gus said. “First, go out and kill more people…”

“That isn’t even funny,” Zena said. But she was as concerned as any, for the baby inside her was growing large.

“Second, we have to go fishing again.”

And those strange, vicious fish would now be much larger and more irritable, and the constant storm would make the job several times as hard. But what else was there?

They thrashed it out and decided. Gus would stay behind in the bus, for it could not be driven now. Zena would come, and Floy, and Foundling; Dust Devil would stay with Gus.

“Remember, Gus,” Karen said. “If the bus is taken over, they’ll throw you out in the rain.”

Gus nodded. He looked terrified, and Zena felt perverse sympathy for him. Some people were afraid of rain, others of sex. A lot could be tolerated when its exact nature was appreciated. Not understood, not condoned, but tolerated, and that was sufficient.

Still, it was ironic that awkward Floy, who could have stood guard well, was coming to haul on the net while big strong Gus, afraid of being alone, would stay behind.

The complete net was far too bulky to carry, so Thatch fitted a smaller section in his pack. Any fish at all would be better than none.

The descent was horrendous. This was the first occasion Zena had been out for any extended trip since Mindel began falling, and the rain was much stronger than before. She found it hard to breathe, feeling as though she were under water. It was foggy, too, so that visibility was further limited. Not only was the footing treacherous, the landscape had changed drastically. Erosion gullies had become minor canyons. Loud torrents of water smashed down the mountain. It was impossible to cross these; they could toss whole trees about and sunder them unnoticed. A puny human body would be instantly lost.

Karen put her mouth to Thatch’s ear and yelled something. Thatch nodded agreement. He unwound the coil of rope he carried and went to each of them in turn, looping it about their middles. He hesitated before Zena, and she knew why: he was afraid of injuring the developing baby. “If I die, it dies too,” she yelled. “That’s the point of this whole expedition. Tie the rope!”

So he tied it, still doubtful. They went on, linked like mountain climbers: Thatch in the lead, Karen second, Floy third, and Zena at the rear.

As they descended, the mist became thicker in patches, seeming to flow down in rivers of its own. At its worst, it obscured everything beyond a few feet. They had to go slowly, because it was possible to step into a slippery gully they could not get out of.

Even so, the scenery was phenomenal. Sheer canyon walls loomed, seeming taller than they were because the mist shrouded the upper reaches. Zena was sure the rain could not have made these so quickly; they must be faults in the structure of the mountains, formerly hidden, now exposed by the washing away of the covering dirt and gravel.

Yet not everything had been scoured. The fungus and mildew and moss—whatever the stuff was that she had noted during the dry period—had now multiplied fantastically. The lower and partially sheltered regions were thick with mushrooms. Zena did not know whether the nutrients in the alien water fertilized this explosive growth, or whether the plant growth thrived on sediments from the catastrophic erosion, but thrive it did. Branches and trunks of trees were coated with moss, in some cases inches deep; rocks were transformed into greenish mounds; and even portions of the ground had become a resilient living carpet. The stuff was slippery when squashed, so that she was always afraid of falling. It had a vile smell when bruised.

But Thatch had explored all this region thoroughly, noting the changes as they occurred, and he knew where he was going. Zena was appalled in retrospect, now that she saw the immensity of the ongoing changes. Thatch could have been killed any one of those days of exploration, leaving the others in the bus helpless. No one, however brave or strong, could hope to survive long here without the kind of knowledge Thatch had evolved.

No, not quite true, she reminded herself. Karen had come out here, and Floy. Still, why had none of them told her about this?

She knew the answer to that too. Because they had not wanted to worry her. Because of the baby.

They stepped down into a stream bed. There was very little water here, and Zena wondered why. Most other channels were raging torrents. Then they came to a fault traversing it, and she understood: all the rushing water was being diverted into the lower crevices, leaving this one comparatively high and dry. But woe betide whoever fell into one of the nether reaches!

They stepped carefully over the cross-fault, hearing the roar of subterranean rapids, smelling the spray from the river. The ground shuddered here, making Zena fearful that the entire section of rock on which they walked would momentarily break off and plunge into that awful abyss.

Her pregnancy had turned her into a silly weak woman. She would have to do something about that!

Then a scramble up a rocky incline, under a lone tree that clung to its diminished plot of earth, and down another crevice. For a moment the fog lifted, owing to some peculiarity of the draft, and Zena could see where they were going. It was like a landscape of Mars, with holes like craters and faults like crevices. Or perhaps more like Venus, considering the cloud cover.

Thatch stopped abruptly. “Oh-oh,” he said. “Something new.”

At first Zena did not see what he meant. Then she smelled stronger fumes, something like burning sulfur. And felt warmth—not the mild warmth of the rain, but of a furnace.

Hot steam was issuing from a vent in the nearby rock. It hissed like an irate dragon.

“That was not here two days ago,” Thatch said worriedly.

“Is this a volcanic area?” Karen asked.

“No.”

Zena felt the unpleasant prickle of fear run up her back. “How can it be hot, if—” But she was able to answer that herself. “The subterranean rock is always hot. If a fissure reached down far enough—”

Thatch nodded. “The ocean must be two or three hundred feet above its original level by now. That is a lot of pressure on the land. Enough to push it in, make cracks, force the layers to buckle. Earthquakes—”

“Minor compared to what must be going on in the true volcanic regions.” Zena said. “But it certainly makes me nervous here!”

“Nothing we can do but go on,” Karen said. “We’ll have to keep an eye on it for the next few days, however. If steam starts coming up under the bus—”

Zena shivered. “You would think of that!”

They continued on over the nightmare terrain. It took two hours to reach the sea—less time than Zena had expected. Then she realized why: the sea was much closer than it had been.

“It’s not the sea,” Thatch said, realizing what they were thinking. “It’s the Tennessee Valley Lake —the same one we went to before. Much higher and closer now. But before this rain is done, it will be the sea.”

They anchored the near side of the net to trees that had not yet been drowned or washed out, and flung the rest into the water. There was no concern about man-eaters here, but there was an obvious current.

Then the bait; chopped-up fragments of human bone and tendon. They let these sink, and waited half an hour for the fish to discover the delicacies and gather. The theory was that the aromas would spread through the water and alert any hungry lake denizens within range.

At length they hauled it in. There were a few small bony fish that looked unhealthy.

Zena sighed. “I know it’s not much of a day and not much of a net, but somehow I expected better.”

“This is a new lake,” Karen said. “The creatures we saw last time must have been a passing phase, and there hasn’t been time for a new population to develop. The original spawning beds must have been washed out. This rain is as hard on the fish as on us!”

Floy had been idly digging in the soaking ground with a stick. She was making a fair hole, since all it took was energy and she wasn’t aiming for any specific place. “Look!” she said.

It was a fat grub. “Bait,” Karen said.

“I was thinking of food,” Floy said. “Must be a lot of these in the ground. It’s so wet and warm—”

Zena made a face, but Karen took the matter seriously. “You’re right, Floy! Grubs, worms, insects—wherever there is some protected dirt, they must be multiplying explosively. If we could eat them, we would never have to stray far from home.”

“Not so fast!” Zena said. “There is very little protected dirt on this mountain. This is a recent alluvial deposit— material carried down by the water as it slows to enter the lake. You can tell, because there is no moss on it. You won’t find similar deposits near the bus. And the grubs can’t be everywhere; probably this one was carried down with the dirt and only survived by chance.”

Thatch looked at the few small fish they had netted. “I can come down here alone each day and bring back a few.”

“Fish and grubs,” Karen said. “It won’t be much, but maybe enough to tide us through until the ocean arrives.”

“I’d as soon eat the moss,” Zena said. Then she lifted her head, startled at the notion. “The moss—if we could eat that—”

“But the smell!” Floy protested, wrinkling her nose. Her lip pulled up as she did it, reminding Zena that Floy’s coordination problems were not over.

“What about the smell of some kinds of cheese?” Zena asked. “They smell like stale urine. So do some wines— and they look the part, too! We could acquire the taste, if there were enough food value.”

Karen nodded. “You may have a point. Let’s try some.”

“It might be poisonous,” Floy said.

Karen harvested a handful of green from the nearest rock. “Possible, but the odds are against it. This stuff hasn’t been around long enough to have natural enemies, so shouldn’t have defenses against them. And its odor may do that job anyway.” She put the stuff to her mouth. “But if it is deadly, there’s only one way to find out.” She took a bite.

The others watched in apprehensive silence while she chewed. “Uh, awful!” Karen said. But she took another mouthful.

“Maybe it would taste better if you cooked it,” Zena suggested. “Cooking changes onions, rhubarb—”

“Could be,” Karen agreed. “If we got rid of the present flavor, then spiced it up with other things.”

Cooking did help some, and spices some more; but mainly they just had to acquire a taste for the green growth. Karen’s digestion did not suffer, so they deemed it fit for human consumption. Once they had accepted the notion of eating the foul stuff, it was like manna from heaven. Instead of fishing, Thatch went out foraging for superior flavors of moss; there were several varieties. The menu was dull, but it kept them alive when all other food was gone.

The rain continued; two months, three months, four. Wurm had now had time to join Mindel and Riss, prolonging the deluge. The water scoured the exterior of the bus and dug out the ground beneath it. Every day they shoveled material back in to shore it up, and carried the largest rocks they could handle, but it was a losing battle against the indefatigable elements. If the rain did not abate soon, the bus would start its slide down the mountain. Already the palisade was gone, and Gordon’s grave, and all the wood that had not been tied together and anchored to the bus.

Thatch was always punctual—until the day he did not return. “The terrain could have changed,” Karen said. “Maybe the roof of a river caved in, and he has to circle back the long way.”

“Maybe he’s hurt,” Gus said. “Somebody should go after him.”

Not Gus himself, obviously. And not Floy; her coordination would merely get her in trouble, too. And Zena was now six months pregnant.

“I agree,” Karen said. “And I am the one. But there’s something you should know.”

“We know it,” Floy said. “You’re out of insulin.”

Zena was horrified. She had buried the knowledge that Karen’s time was running out, and had almost convinced herself that the crisis would never come. “Oh, no!” she cried. “Is that true?”

“True. I have been rationing it, but there are limits. I have enough for only a few more days. I have been able to function well enough because I have not been eating much. But if I have to go out in that storm, I need to be fully alert—and that means eating a big meal and using all my remaining supply in one dose.”

“No,” Zena said firmly. “You can’t do that.”

“I’m not making excuses,” Karen said. “I have been resigned to my situation for some time. The number of days remaining is less important than the use to which they are put. I had hoped to be on hand to help with the baby; now I know that is not to be. I think I ought to go look for Thatch; you need him for survival. But if I fail—”

Gus had seemed not to understand the nature of the dialogue. Now he came to Karen. “You’ll be all right,” he said reassuringly. “You don’t need that stuff. Maybe a few days withdrawal pains…”

“Maybe so,” Karen agreed with a half-smile.

Zena exchanged glances with Floy. Both knew that the end of the insulin meant the end of Karen. Gus was fooling himself, and Karen was going along, rather than aggravate the situation. It was easier—for everyone—if the truth were suppressed—until the end.

“Come on back,” Gus said.

Karen went with him. Zena was disgusted.

“What is it like?” Floy asked, watching them go. “I can see Karen likes it. Gordon said I was a child, so he never…” Her face clouded up, as it did whenever she remembered Gordon, and she was unable to continue.

“I can’t tell you,” Zena said. “I only did it to get pregnant; I never felt anything.” Except discomfort, she added mentally, and disgust.

“You’re such a damn prude!” Floy cried.

Zena slapped her, hard.

The reaction was unthinking, but she did not regret it. They had been cooped up for a long time. The nerve of this child!

Zena had half expected Floy to burst into tears, but the girl reacted like her fighting cat. She crouched, flung back her wild hair, and raised fingers like claws.

Zena remembered that eyeball, and suddenly she was afraid.

Then Floy relaxed. “Aw, you can’t help it,” she said with infinite scorn.

Zena found herself crying. That one sentence defined her so accurately! There was something seriously wrong with her reactions to men, and she couldn’t help it. She was as crippled as Floy, or Karen, or Gus.

Where was Thatch? Without him the group was surely doomed! Karen was the only other really competent member, and she would soon be gone.

Zena was carrying Thatch’s baby. Surely that meant something. What would be the fate of that infant if its father died?

Could Thatch be dead already? There were a thousand perils in that deluge. Every day the landscape changed; now torrents cut through new channels, tore out new chunks of acreage. And the strange new insects were multiplying, many of them huge and slick, at home in the rain but hungry for blood. If he had blundered into a nest of Mindel hornets…

“I must find him,” Zena said.

Floy moved over to the door, barring the way. “You can’t. Karen’s the only one can do it.”

“I must.” Zena approached the door. “Move—or be moved.”

Again that catlike crouch, the bared claws. They were all overreacting to the slightest stimuli, ready to duel on any pretext, yet the aggressive forms had to be honored. Zena saw herself as much as victim as Floy—and yet would not yield.

“I’m sorry we fought,” Floy said. “But we need that baby. There may never be another in this world. You’re staying here.”

Did the girl appreciate the ironies? No matter! Zena drew her knife. The blade was sharp and the point hung inches from Floy’s face. “I’m sorry too,” she said. “But I will not be balked by a child.” She was not certain which child she meant.

Again Floy relaxed. “I guess not,” she said. “But I’d better come with you.”

Strange girl! But she had backed off when that was necessary, showing good judgment “If I can’t find him, how could you?”

“It’s not him I’m thinking of.”

“Well, why don’t you think of what’s inside the bus? If Thatch is lost, and I don’t come back, in a few days there’ll be only one possible source for a baby.” Dirty fighting, but a point that had to be made sometime.

Floy’s eyes widened. “God, yes!” she said.

Zena went on down and out. The rain hit her like the blast of a waterfall, knocking her back against the bus. The tempo had increased! It was now four of five times as great as the rate during the Gunz deluge. Mighty Mindel, whose strength was as the strength of… never mind! She opened her mouth to breathe, and the liquid poured in. She spat it out and tried to breathe through her nose, but that was worse.

Finally she dropped her head and sucked in air through her teeth. She shaded her eyes with one hand, peering about. The rain and fog were so dense it seemed like night; effective visibility was ten or twelve feet. The ground was all water.

She went out in it, treading carefully to find the rock inches beneath her, making her stagger. One foot landed in an unseeable hole, and she fell.

She was unhurt, but fear for her baby made her decide that for the time being four feet were better than two. She proceeded to the edge of the level area that had been the palisade enclosure. Here the water streamed away downhill, disappearing into the misty ambience.

“Thatch! Thatch!” she cried, but her voice was lost in the roar of storm and rapids. How could she ever find him?

She scrambled on, clinging to whatever offered. There had been a time when she could have managed such travel well despite the barrage of water, but now she was six months along.

A stone gave way. Suddenly she was rolling helplessly, carried along by gravity and the flow of water. The roaring grew louder, signaling the proximity of a cataract, therefore her demise.

“Thatch!” she cried while choking on water. Her voice as she heard it sounded the way Gus’s had, that first time he had been hurt at the start of this adventure. Had she sunk so low! Then: “I love you!”

She splashed into a deep pool, flailing wildly, bobbed to the surface and gasped for air. A current was bearing her along somewhere, so she fought it. Her hand caught hold of something and held.

The water was not cold, and it shielded her from the force of the rain, so she remained where she was while she assessed her situation. What was a pool doing here? There should be nothing but erosion gullies and canyons.

Silly question! The contours of the land were changing so drastically that no new feature should be surprising. She was lucky she wasn’t dead.

Yet.

Still, she had not found Thatch—physically. But emotionally—had she meant it? Had the truth come out at last, that she had twisted her way unwillingly into love with the father of her child? Was that why she had faced down Floy and braved Mindel to seek him out?

Now she wasn’t sure. It was easy to love, when there was no future in it. What about the reality, the giving of one’s whole being to another? Could she ever do that?

Of only one thing was she certain: she could no longer exist without him.

Now she just had to find him. She swam around the rocky edge of the pool, seeking a suitable place to climb out.

There was none. The stone was either slick underneath the flowing water, or covered with slimy lichen that broke away in handfuls, providing no purchase. The slope was too steep to permit her to climb out independently.

She was not hurt; a few stinging scrapes were all the wounds she had sustained in her tumble. She was not cold, or sick. But she was caught, and probably doomed, for she could not tread water forever.

She had caught hold of something, during her first flailings. Where was it now?

She swam back, rechecking carefully. Under the greenery was the root of a tree, invisible from the water but still solid. The tree itself was gone, but the root seemed firm. She hauled on it.

The thing came loose in her hand. It was only a half-buried piece, dislodged by her efforts.

“Zena!”

It was Thatch, out of sight but close by.

“Here!” she cried.

“In the pond?”

“Yes!”

“I’ll send down the rope.”

And the end of the rope came down; she located it by the faint splash into the water, hardly distinguishable from the continuous splash of rain. She caught and pulled herself up, hand over hand, sliding on her fat belly over the moss. It was not far; the same slipperiness that had trapped her, now made the travel easier. So long as her feet were able to punch through to find purchase.

Thatch caught her arm at the leveling of the bank. He stood her on her feet. “Floy said you had gone out,” he said.

“I was afraid—” But her fears seemed foolish, in the face of his obvious health. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m glad I found you! If anything had happened—”

“Aren’t you going to bawl me out? For getting in trouble?”

“I don’t understand.”

No, he wouldn’t. Thatch never blamed anyone for anything, however culpable others might be. “So you know why I came out?”

“Yes.”

She hesitated. “You do?”

“Floy told me.”

Zena suffered a flash of anger. “What did Floy tell you?”

“We’d better get back.”

“She told you that?”

“No.” Verbal plays were still wasted on him; he always answered literally. “But it isn’t safe for you to stay out here.”

“What did she tell you?”

He paused, but then answered. “That you love me.”

Zena clenched her teeth. Why couldn’t she have said it herself? Was it really easier to get pregnant by a man, than to tell him she loved him?

“I know the way back,” Thatch said.

She went with him, wordlessly.