Snowman Read Free

foxes he can handle. This once he can make an exception and teach a yo-yo the fundamentals."
    "Monte, she doesn't want to learn. She's afraid."
    "I don't want to hear about it. Get them together."
    Cathy waited at the bottom of the expert's slope for Barry Harkness, the resort's name downhill skier. He was a prima donna who had been recruited from Vail. Nominally in charge of the ski school, he did little but practice, though all his efforts hadn't qualified him for the U.S. Olympic team. An almost-ran with the temperament of a soprano, off the slopes he appeared at the resort's social functions and danced all night at the Snowplow Discothèque or stood being admired by a throng of women. But he was worth it to Great Northern. His name was plastered on all the ads the resort ran, because despite his Olympic failure, he was still a celebrity with skiers. Not many people can ski down a twelve-thousand-foot mountain at seventy miles an hour without crippling themselves.
    An audience applauded his downhill run, and Barry greeted them with a wave of his poles and a fey smile. Janice and he would make a perfect couple, Cathy thought as she edged into the group of instructors. They'd produce large massive-boned Nordic children with straight teeth and ruddy skin, who were complete idiots.
    Cathy took Barry aside, razzle-dazzled him with flattery, then laid her dilemma on him. She concluded by saying, "You've never seen anything like her—all woman, could be Farrah Fawcett-Major's twin sister."
    He nodded approvingly. "Okay, she gets a lesson." Then, having second thoughts, he asked the instructors who had served in her retinue, "What's this muttin really like?"
    "She's got a loose deck," said one.
    "Love it," Barry replied, an uncomplicated emotion playing across his impassive face.
    "She won't be easy," said another.
    Cathy listened patiently to the macho, juvenile chatter, hoping the challenge would entice Barry.
    "She'll be screaming by the time she's off the chairlift, and we'll be snowplowing by cocktail hour," Barry said confidently.
    "Twenty dollar's says you von't," said Erich, the Kitzbühel Wunderkind . He had been hired in spite of bad references (three paternity suits against him the previous season) when Monte had insisted on having somebody with a German accent, to lend European dignity to the instructional staff.
    "My method never fails," Barry began expansively. He nodded to Cathy, treating her as one of the boys. "Her arches and ankles will be aching. Muscles pulled in the calves. Her can'll be sore, and that's when, gentlemen, I'll recommend my St. Moritz special foot bath . . ."
    "How's it work, Barry?" Cathy asked.
    "I run a hot tub, add a jigger of rum, two of Lavoris, and a squeeze of Vitabath to make the water bubble. Muffin takes off her warm-ups, slips into a robe. Then I plant the flags for the Giant Slalom."
    "If you skied like you pork you'd be an Olympic gold medalist," Baxter, a lean ex-Aspen skeptic, said.
    "Barry, you can't make a conquest just talking. It's time you met Janice," Cathy said.
    "You're on for twenty, Kraut," Barry said. "Anyone else?"

Chapter Two
    In the timeless universe inhabited by the Snowman there was no sense of location. He had been formed in the graveyard of Antarctica just as the ice age, the Pleistocene Epoch, was ending and Neolithic man was beginning to evolve.
    The extreme climatic changes which altered the land masses of what came to be known as Asia and the Americas forced the Snowman to adapt to his surroundings and gradually mutate.
    As he grew larger, he fed on dying whales and sharks in the Antarctic, and when this source of life became scarce, he moved on. The hair on his body had become rock-hard bonelike extensions, and his gray skin had been able to absorb ice and fuse it so that it shielded him from the elements.
    As his appetite increased, his digestive tract and biochemical glandular functions became more sophisticated. He had always been a flesh eater and