Maximum Ice Read Free

children. And that”—she nodded at the window—“is still home.” She drew herself tall. “Or it will be, when the Rom make their footprints in the snow.”
    Rebeka Havislov dabbed at her eyes with a kerchief. But she was smiling.
    Anatolly sighed. The women were crying and making plans. Perhaps things would be all right, after all.
    Then the crowd was surging forward to embrace Ship Mother and shake her hand.
    Amid the press of well-wishers, Zoya’s voice came unmistakably: “Bring me my boots.”
    As someone ran to do so, she called after him, “And some wine.”

PART I:
A Fearful Symmetry

CHAPTER ONE
—1—
    Zoya lay on her bunk in the shuttle cabin, listening for sounds of earth. But there was nothing, not even wind. The earth was a silent place, at least here, in this wide valley
    The shuttle had set down in northwest Canada, between the continent and Vancouver Island. The names meant nothing now, especially the political names. Among the few relevant geographical names were the mountains. As they had descended yesterday, they had glimpsed the range of the Olympics jutting up through the planet’s new firmament.
    Their landing site had once been the Strait of Georgia. Now it was a broad, flat valley between low hills of crystalline landforms. The shuttle crew was calling it crystal. After they had landed, people crowded around the view screens, seeing the facets, the gem-shapes protruding from the ground like distorted images of the vanished trees. There had been a profound silence as the crew stared out. The sun was setting, putting a glare on the landscape—a little disturbing and overbright, like a good song turned up too loud.
    Zoya sat up. By her wrist lex, it was almost dawn at this latitude and in this season, late autumn.
    She touched the diamond studs in her ear. Their solidity reassured her that she was awake, in the real world. Ah, but what was real? The suspended land of quasi-sleep, or the consensual realm of waking? Both lands had their claim on her. Sleepcould brag of the centuries—but waking always got her immediate attention. There was coffee, for one thing. Good gossip. Winning at cards. Actually, it was a long list, and she recited it every time she awoke—the reasons why life was good, even amid disasters.
    Throwing off the covers, she called for lights and abandoned her bunk. Sleep was hopeless, and a sunrise beckoned. Now she would see all the sunrises, in sequence. The role of Ship Mother could fade, since her people were finished with the long star road. Ship Mother had been the tether to home, conceived as a tradition to preserve tradition.
    But, truly, she was ready to stop parceling out her days.
    In moments she had dressed and was heading down the corridor. Her impulse was to get moving, do something, talk to people—go outside. Only the science crew had been outside so far. You can go out in the morning, Lieutenant Bertak had told her. Easy enough for him to put it off, he hadn’t been waiting 250 years.
    She almost collided with Fyodor Mirga, just emerging from the science station.
    He was dressed for the cold.
    “Going outside, then, Fyodor?” she asked, thinking she might slip out with him.
    Fyodor looked eager. “I couldn’t sleep. Might as well get an early start.” He was supervising the boring in the research tent outside, where a drill had been working through the night to provide a sample core. “The drill is jammed,” he added.
    “Need some help?”
    “Sorry, Ship Mother. Lieutenant Bertak says…”
    He didn’t like to turn her down; only Lieutenant Bertak enjoyed
that.
They had not hit it off well, she and the first mate.
    Fumbling in his pocket, Fyodor brought out a translucentrock, a piece of crystal formed into a tiny, perfect obelisk. He pressed it into her hand. “A piece of the earth,” he said.
    She felt her throat swelling shut. Before she could embarrass herself with tears, Fyodor turned down the corridor, waving good-bye, as two crewmen