Maximum Ice by Kay Kenyon Read Free Book Online Page B

that was only the start of the dying unless they found a way to come fully and truly home. Perhaps their future was, after all, in some bleak, buried city such as this sled-driver spoke of. But their dreams were of land and sky and green living things. So
Ice
, as Wolf called it, could not have it all.
    She left Janos on the shuttle ramp and approached the sled.
    It was in two sections. The forward sled was motor-driven, with short forward runners for turning, and long runners in back and on the cargo sled. On the sloping backs of both sleds were arrayed solar panels linked to storage batteries. Wolf said that on a full charge the vehicle could travel one hundred kilometers. That was an advanced solar collection system, indeed. The preserves, he said, made “good machines.” She would see.
    The sled driver was surly and suspicious, and getting him to talk in the first place had rather been like coaxing juice from a prune, but perhaps he was overawed by the shuttle and all he had surmised of the ship’s technology.
    The driver’s sled had a traction drum mounted between the runners. This rolling drum was studded with traction spikes, which, connected to the motor with a drive belt, propelled the sled. The vehicle started and stopped as the driver pressed or released the accelerator. Behind a badly scratched but transparent windscreen, the driver could sit or stand while steering. Wolf must have been standing when she had seen him float toward the ship to confront the marauder.
    The back section, linked to the front by a hitch, was piled with supplies and braced with a short railing. It bore the body of the man Wolf had killed, the man who had wreaked such havoc, and whom Wolf had been pursuing, he said, for a longstring of such crimes. His use of the term
snow witch
was disconcerting; crew tried to shrug it off, but they didn’t want to touch the body, and Wolf had to load it onto his sled by himself. He was happy enough to do so. There was a price on the outlaw’s head.
    Wolf watched her approach. Zoya had already noted those blue-gray eyes, alert, suspicious. He wasn’t eager to have her as a passenger, but it was a short ride, after all. She stuffed her pack into the back sled, where he had arranged a space for her to ride. She unfastened one of the ropes that bound his supplies and wound it around her pack, careful that the precious radio was well padded from what she could predict would be a jolting ride.
    Wolf gestured for her to get in the sled. Around his neck hung an amulet, shiny black, elaborately carved. Up close, she noted the threads of gray in his beard and his well-seamed face. Bits of sand shaped like flecks of mica collected in Wolf’s beard as the wind blew more steadily, driving a haze of particles across the flats. He looked to be about forty, but his body was hardened by physical exertion and a life on the surface. He could easily overpower her if he had ill intentions, and against that possibility Janos insisted that she pack a gun. She did so, if only to please him.
    She scrambled into her seat. No sooner had she straightened her legs under the forward compartment than Wolf threw a tarp over her head and began lashing it to the sled.
    “Hey, wait!” She pushed the flap away, meeting Wolf’s stony blue eyes. He muttered something.
    Her translator lex said, “Storm will take your head off.” Well, they’d have to deal with idioms, of course, but she got the picture. He might have told her in advance that she should hunker down during their journey under an odorous cloth streaked with unimaginable stains.
    After a moment he was back with two metal struts that he affixed to the side of the car in clamps. Over them the tarp now descended, making a tent over her head.
    “I’m ready,” she whispered to her ear lex. And it told her the New English equivalent, which she called out to Wolf. In another moment the sled motor hummed to life, and they were under way. She wiggled her hand under the