Thorns

TWENTY-ONE: AND SOUTHWARD AYE WE FLED

“I don’t understand,” Lona said. “How can it be summer here? When we left, it was winter!”

“In the Northern Hemisphere, yes.” Burris sighed. “But now we’re below the Equator. As far below as it’s possible to get. The seasons are reversed here. When we get summer, they have winter. And now it’s their summer here.”

“Yes, but why?”

“It has to do with the way the Earth is tipped on its axis. As it goes around the sun, part of the planet is in a good position to get warmed by sunlight, and part isn’t. If I had a globe here, I could show you.”

“If it’s summer here, though, why is there so much ice?”

The thin, whining tone of her questions annoyed him even more than the questions themselves. Burris whirled suddenly. There was a spasm within his diaphragm as mysterious organs spurted their secretions of anger into his blood.

“Damn it, Lona, didn’t you ever go to school?” he blazed at her.

She shrank away from him. “Don’t shout at me, Minner. Please don’t shout.”

“Didn’t they teach you anything?”

“I left school early. I wasn’t a good student.”

“And now I’m your teacher?”

“You don’t have to be,” Lona said quietly. Her eyes were too bright now. “You don’t have to be anything for me if you don’t want to be.”

He was suddenly on the defensive. “I didn’t mean to shout at you.”

“But you shouted.”

“I lost patience. All those questions—”

“All those silly questions—isn’t that what you wanted to say?”

“Let’s stop it right here, Lona. I’m sorry I blew up at you. I didn’t get much sleep last night, and my nerves are frayed. Let’s go for a walk. I’ll try to explain the seasons to you.”

“I’m not all that interested in the seasons, Minner.”

“Forget the seasons, then. But let’s walk. Let’s try to calm ourselves down.”

“Do you think I got much sleep last night, either?”

He thought it might be time to smile. “I guess you didn’t, not really.”

“But am I shouting and complaining?”

“As a matter of fact, you are. So let’s quit it right here and take a relaxing walk. Yes?”

“All right,” she said sullenly. “A summertime stroll.”

“A summertime stroll, yes.”

They slipped on light thermal wraps, hoods, gloves. The temperature was mild for this part of the world: several degrees above freezing. The Antarctic was having a heat wave. Chalk’s polar hotel was only a few dozen miles from the Pole itself, lying “north” of the Pole, as all things must, and placed out toward the direction of the Ross Shelf Ice. It was a sprawling geodesic dome, solid enough to withstand the rigors of the polar night, airy enough to admit the texture of the Antarctic.

A double exit chamber was their gateway to the ice-realm outside. The dome was surrounded by a belt of brown bare soil ten feet wide, laid down by the builders as an insulating zone, and beyond it was the white plateau. Instantly, as Burris and the girl emerged, a burly guide rushed up to them, grinning.

“Power-sled trip, folks? Take you to the Pole in fifteen minutes! Amundsen’s camp, reconstructed. The Scott Museum. Or we could go out for a look at the glaciers back the other way. You say the word, and—”

“No.”

“I understand. Your first morning here, you’d just like to stroll around a little. Can’t blame you at all. Well, you just stroll all you like. And when you decide that you’re ready for a longer trip—”

“Please,” Burris said. “Can we get by?”

The guide gave him a queer look and stepped aside. Lona slipped her arm through Burris’s and they walked out onto the ice. Looking back, Burris saw a figure step from the dome and call the guide aside. Aoudad. They were having an earnest conference.

“It’s so beautiful here!” Lona cried.

“In a sterile way, yes. The last frontier. Almost untouched, except for a museum here and there.”

“And hotels.”

“This is the only one. Chalk has a monopoly.”

The sun was high overhead, looking bright but small. This close to the Pole, the summer day would seem never to end; two months of unbroken sunlight lay ahead before the long dip into darkness began. The light glittered brilliantly over the icy plateau. Everything was flat here, a mile-high sheet of whiteness burying mountains and valleys alike. The ice was firm underfoot. In ten minutes they had left the hotel far behind.

“Which way is the South Pole?” Lona asked.

“That way. Straight ahead. We’ll go over there later.”

“And behind us?”

“The Queen Maud Mountains. They drop off down to the Ross Shelf. It’s a big slab of ice, seven hundred feet thick, bigger than California. The early explorers made their camps on it. We’ll visit Little America in a couple of days.”

“It’s so flat here. The reflection of the sun is so bright.” Lona bent, scooped a handful of snow, and scattered it gaily. “I’d love to see some penguins. Minner, do I ask too many questions? Do I chatter?”

“Should I be honest or should I be tactful?”

“Never mind. Let’s just walk.”

They walked. He found the slick footing of ice peculiarly comfortable. It gave ever so slightly with each step he took, accommodating itself nicely to the modified joints of his legs. Concrete pavements were not so friendly. Burris, who had had a tense and pain-filled night, welcomed the change.

He regretted having snarled at Lona that way.

But his patience had snapped. She was strikingly ignorant, but he had known that from the start. What he had not known was how quickly her ignorance would cease to seem charming and would begin to seem contemptible.

To awake, aching and agonized, and have to submit to that thin stream of adolescent questioning…

Look at the other side, he told himself. He had awakened in the middle of the night, too. He had dreamed of Manipool and naturally had burst from sleep screaming. That had happened before, but never before had there been someone beside him, warm and soft, to comfort him. Lona had done that. She had not scolded him for interfering with her own sleep. She had stroked him and soothed him until the nightmare receded into unreality again. He was grateful for that. She was so tender, so loving. And so stupid.

“Have you ever seen Antarctica from space?” Lona asked.

“Many times.”

“What does it look like?”

“Just as it does on maps. More or less round, with a thumb sticking out toward South America. And white. Everywhere white. You’ll see it when we head for Titan.”

She nestled into the hollow of his arm as they walked. The arm-socket was adaptable; he extended it, making a comfortable harbor for her. This body had its merits.

Lona said, “Someday I want to come back here again and see all the sights—the Pole, the museums of the explorers, the glaciers. Only I want to come with my children.”

An icicle slipped neatly through his throat.

“What children, Lona?”

“There’ll be two. A boy and a girl. In about eight years, that’ll be the right time to bring them.”

His eyelids flickered uncontrollably within his thermal hood. They gnashed like the ringing walls of the Symplegades. In a low, fiercely controlled voice he said, “You ought to know, Lona, I can’t give you any children. The doctors checked that part out. The internal organs simply—”

“Yes, I know. I didn’t mean children that we’d have, Minner.”

He felt his bowels go spilling out onto the ice.

She went on sweetly, “I mean the babies I have now. The ones that were taken from my body. I’m going to get two of them back—didn’t I tell you?”

Burris felt oddly relieved at the knowledge that she wasn’t planning to leave him for some biologically whole man. Simultaneously he was surprised at the depth of his own relief. How smugly he had assumed that any children she mentioned would be children she expected to have by him! How stunning it had been to think that she might have children by another!

But she already had a legion of children. He had nearly forgotten that.

He said, “No, you didn’t tell me. You mean it’s been agreed that you’re going to get some of the children to raise yourself?”

“More or less.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t think it’s really been agreed yet. But Chalk said he’d arrange it. He promised me, he gave me his word. And I know he’s an important enough man to be able to do it. There are so many of the babies—they can spare a couple for the real mother if she wants them. And I do. I do. Chalk said he’d get the children for me if I—if I—”

She was silent. Her mouth was round a moment, then clamped tight.

“If you what, Lona?”

“Nothing.”

“You started to say something.”

“I said, he’d get the children for me if I wanted them.”

He turned on her. “That’s not what you were going to say. We already know you want them. What did you promise Chalk in return for getting them for you?”

The spectrum of guilt rippled across her face.

“What are you hiding from me?” he demanded.

She shook her head mutely. He seized her hand, and she pulled it away. He stood over her, dwarfing her, and as always when his emotions came forth in the new body there were strange poundings and throbbings within him.

“What did you promise him?” he asked.

“Minner, you look so strange. Your face is all blotched. Red, and purple over your cheeks…”

“What was it, Lona?”

“Nothing. Nothing. All I said to him … all I agreed was…”

“Was?”

“That I’d be nice to you.” In a small voice. “I promised him I’d make you happy. And he’d get me some of the babies for my own. Was that wrong, Minner?”

He felt air escaping from the gigantic puncture in his chest. Chalk had arranged this? Chalk had bribed her to care for him? Chalk? Chalk?

“Minner, what’s wrong?”

Stormwinds blew through him. The planet was tilting on its axis, rising up, crushing him, the continents breaking loose and sliding free in a massive cascade upon him.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she begged.

“If Chalk hadn’t offered you the babies, would you ever have come near me?” he asked tightly. “Would you ever have touched me at all, Lona?”

Her eyes were flecked now with tears. “I saw you in the hospital garden. I felt so sorry for you. I didn’t even know who you were. I thought you were in a fire or something. Then I met you. I love you, Minner. Chalk couldn’t make me love you. He could only get me to be good to you. But that isn’t love.”

He felt foolish, idiotic, shambling, a heap of animate mud. He gawked at her. She looked mystified. Then she stooped, seized snow, balled it, flung it laughing in his face. “Stop looking so weird,” she said. “Chase me, Minner. Chase me!”

She sprinted away from him. In a moment she was unexpectedly far away. She paused, a dark spot on the whiteness, and picked up more snow. He watched her fashion another snowball. She threw it awkwardly, from the elbow, as a girl would, but even so it carried well, landing a dozen yards from his feet.

He broke from the stupor that her careless words had cast him into. “You can’t catch me!” Lona shrilled, and he began to run, running for the first time since he had left Manipool, taking long loping strides over the carpet of snow. Lona ran, too, arms windmilling, elbows jabbing the thin, frosty air. Burris felt power flooding his limbs. His legs, which had seemed so impossible to him with their multiple jointing, now pistoned in perfect coordination, propelling him smoothly and rapidly. His heart scarcely pounded at all. On impulse, he threw back his hood and let the near-freezing air stream across his cheeks.

It took him only a few minutes of hard running to overtake her. Lona, gasping with laughter and breathlessness, swung around as he neared her, and flung herself into his arms. His momentum carried him onward five more steps before they fell. They rolled over and over, gloved hands beating the snow, and he pushed back her hood, too, and scraped a palm’s-load of ice free and thrust it into her face. The ice trickled down, past her throat, into her wrap, under her clothing, along her breasts, her belly. She shrieked in wild pleasure and indignation.

“Minner! No, Minner! No!”

He thrust more snow at her. And she at him now. Convulsed with laughter, she forced it past his collar. It was so cold that it seemed to burn. Together they floundered on the snow. Then she was in his arms, and he held her tight, nailing her to the floor of the lifeless continent. It was a long while before they rose.