Rings of Ice

Chapter 8: Labor

Karen was haggard. Her normally rounded body had turned gaunt, though she ate reasonably and drank insatiably. She seemed drowsy and very tired, and her breath smelled fruity. Often she retreated to the bathroom to urinate copiously—then gulped more water. This aggravated Zena almost intolerably, but she knew its cause and kept silent. The water was needed to dilute the rampant sugar in her blood—the sugar that could not get to the cells of the body where it was so badly needed. The diabetes was now uncontrolled, for the last of the insulin was gone.

Gus was now alarmed. “Snap out of it, Karen! Can’t I help you?” he asked plaintively, again and again.

Karen only shook her head. Her breathing was deep and labored, and her skin was flushed yet dry. She seemed to have aged, and not graciously; her beauty was gone.

“I’m going out and find some insulin,” Gus said, marching to the door. But there he stopped, balked by his fear of the rain. And as he paused uncertainly, there was a violent shudder in the ground that rattled the plates on the table and made everyone jump.

“Another fissure opening up,” Floy said. “Maybe a volcano.”

“Ridiculous!” Zena said. But it wasn’t really. Not any more. With the enormous pressure of the sea water building up, and the erosion of the counterweight of soil and gravel, intolerable stresses were building. The world, like Karen, was sick; like her, it was developing awful symptoms that seemed paradoxical.

Gus still stood by the door. “You can’t go out,” Zena told him, feeling like a hypocrite for justifying his inability to act. “Where in this flooded world would there be any insulin?”

There was another shudder, and this time they heard the boom of some great explosion. “Must be a volcano,” Floy said. “Crack Toe.”

Gus turned. “You mean Krakatoa.”

“Right. Crack Toe,” she repeated. “Smithereens.”

Even Karen smiled, wanly.

“It can’t make very much difference to us,” Zena said, though she knew that she was being unduly pessimistic, as they should be able to survive the rain, provided the tremors did not dump them all into a crevasse. But with Karen dying…

Karen rested quietly for a time. Then she sat up and vomited. Zena stifled her own nausea and cleaned up as well as she could. Another earth tremor made her take a spill, so that she had to do the job twice, but that seemed fitting. Maybe the world itself was sharing Karen’s suffering.

But the patient saw it another way. “You’re making me suffer,” Karen muttered as the heaves abated. “Just a little pressure on the carotid arteries—you know where to do it, Zena.”

“No!” Zena cried.

“Painless, out like a light,” Karen continued weakly. “After that, it doesn’t matter how. Cut my throat, catch the blood in a basin—”

“God!” Gus said.

“You’d be doing me a favor. And the meat would be better. It’s spoiling right now.” She took a breath. “Promise me you won’t waste the meat.”

“We won’t,” Zena said.

At last Karen lapsed into a tortured sleep. So did the others: it had not been possible while the woman agonized.

The loud rain continued—and so did the booms of the burgeoning volcano. Once Zena got heaved onto the floor, and the entire bus shifted position alarmingly. Zena merely crawled back onto the bed and slept again.

When she woke, someone had covered Karen’s face with a sheet.

“It is time to take her out,” Floy said.

Thatch stooped to pick up Karen’s body. “Let her be!” Gus said.

Thatch hesitated. “No,” Floy said. “She wanted it as it was with Gordon. To help the group, to preserve the baby. It would not be right to waste her. And we promised.”

“That’s right,” Zena agreed grimly. “I’ll help. It must be done.”

“Not with her!’ Gus protested, his body shaking. “I love her!”

“I loved Gordon,” Floy said. “But I ate him.”

Thatch made another motion to pick up the body. Gus lunged to stop him—and Floy leaped on Gus. He cried out in pain. Two bloody streaks appeared across his forehead. “Thatch!” he screamed. “I’m hurt!”

Zena put a hand on Thatch’s shoulder. “She knows what she’s doing,” she murmured. She remembered how Floy had refrained from fighting, when Zena herself had challenged her; that had been judgment, not fear.

Thatch looked back and forth indecisively. “Gus—”

“Gus can’t keep a corpse in here,” Zena said. “He needs a woman.”

Thatch looked at Floy. The girl was lean and hollow-eyed from her own mourning. Her hair was long and wild, and her claws were showing. She was like a hungry tigress, but her dynamism gave her a certain sex appeal. And Gus had always had a certain hankering…

“And I need a man,” Zena said. “I think I could love a man. An independent man.”

Still Thatch hesitated, unable to break his long symbiosis with Gus. It was this more than anything else, Zena realized, that really stood between herself and Thatch. A physical homosexuality would have disgusted her; this emotional mutualism acted more subtly to inhibit other attachments.

At last Thatch nodded. He bent again to pick up the body. “Thatch!” Gus cried again, but Thatch ignored him. He hauled Karen’s corpse off the couch and down the hall toward the door.

Gus tried once more to interfere, but halted as Floy came at him. “I can do what she did,” Floy said. “I know how you feel. I’ve been through it all.” She spoke with a low intensity that showed she meant it.

They got the body outside. Zena glanced back, unable to restrain her morbid curiosity. Gus and Floy were already on the back couch, in an embrace of antagonism or of passion. Probably some of each—but it was what was required at that moment.

The rain blasted down, instantly matting the hair over the dead woman’s face and obscuring visibility. “That girl’s got courage,” Zena said. Actually she was yelling, to get over the noise of Mindel.

“So have you,” Thatch called back.

He dumped down the body. Zena couldn’t even tell whether it splashed, because everything was a splash out here. She had the sheet, and now laid it over the face.

Thatch drew his knife. Zena held Karen’s hair tightly while Thatch cut around the neck. The sheet concealed the sight of what they were doing, and the rain washed away any blood there might have been before it showed. It should not have been wasted—but there were limits.

“So have you,” Zena said, averting her gaze anyway.

“She showed me how,” he said, misunderstanding her comment.

There was another tremor, a violent one. The corpse jumped into the air. Zena screamed involuntarily, and Thatch jerked back. His glasses flew off his head; they had been anchored by a chain around the back of his head, but this must have broken.

Even through the thick rain they saw it: the flare of Crack Toe letting go. The falling water turned red, and Zena thought she saw a halo from the refraction. Then the sound came, as of a mountain being torn apart.

Slowly the sight and sound faded. Zena’s attention returned to things nearby. “Your glasses!” she cried.

Thatch held them up. The lenses had been shattered.

“Can you see without them?” she asked.

He nodded. “Well enough—close range. You are beautiful.”

“That’s well enough,” she said. Why this coy banter, amidst the most grisly business of butchering a friend? Was she losing her grip on reality?

They returned to work. The head jerked and rolled with the force of cutting. It felt like a living thing, struggling to get free. Zena vomited into the storm, but did not relinquish her hold. It had to be done.

After an interminable time the head came away. Zena lifted it by the hair and forced herself to look. It was no longer Karen, but the mask of a stranger, severed at the neck. Still, she knew that some of the water streaming down her face was tears. If only there had been some other way…

Zena wrapped it carefully in the sheet and set it on the step of the bus, just inside the door. “We’d better do the rest now,” she said. “While I’m still heaved out.”

They removed Karen’s clothing and Thatch took up the knife again. But the blade trembled. “I can’t carve a woman!” he said miserably.

Zena looked down at the headless corpse and saw what he meant. The head had been a necessary thing, and he had done that before. Now a beautifully feminine torso was exposed. Only a certain type of man would be able to mutilate those attributes, and Thatch was not that type.

Gus normally bullied Thatch into finding a way. Zena was not going to do that; she wanted such bullying to stop. “I’ll start it,” she said. She knew that once the body had been defeminized, Thatch would be able to continue. He would have to, because Zena lacked the physical strength to sever the bones and tissues of that body.

She took the knife. It was glistening and clean, for the rain scoured it constantly. She gritted her teeth and made an incision. The blade was sharp, and it was like cutting meat—unsurprisingly. Then she retched again, her stomach knotting. But there was no escape in sickness; this job, like every job since the first rain started, had to be done.

She carved. Through much of it her eyes were closed, but she kept going.

When she was done she turned the blade over to Thatch.

She saw a discoloration on his teeth and knew that he too had been puking. She reached out to catch his hand, touched by this first sign of genuine weakness in him. She brought it to her lips for a wet kiss.

Then they both leaned over the body from opposite sides and kissed each other on the lips. It was the first time, for even in the sexual embrace she had always turned her face away. It was unutterably sweet.

There was no refuge from the horror of Karen’s demise but love. With love they could continue. Zena knew that this feeling, so long and hard in coming, would never depart.

Zena held while Thatch carved. It was a long, difficult, awful job—but her spirit glowed with that transcendent emotion, and time was nothing. She loved Thatch—and through him Floy, and even Gus, and Karen and Gordon, and Dust Devil and Foundling… and herself. Love.

At last they were done, all but the smoking of the new meat. They reentered the bus, to find Floy and Gus recovered. Zena kissed Floy, then Gus, and returned to Thatch, and nothing needed to be said.

“Do you think Karen’s spirit is with Gordon now?” Floy asked.

Zena had to set aside her own returned misery while she considered the ramifications of the question. What would be the right answer? “Karen was a good woman,” she said. “A brave, good woman. Gordon was a good man, and he has been alone long enough. It is only right that they be together. They have to do what is best in their life, just as we must in ours.”

“That’s beautiful,” Floy said. “I am not jealous now.”

Then, as once before, they were hugging each other, expressing in tears the emotions that could not be properly conveyed in words.

Now they were four, and the two animals. Thatch continued to forage for edible moss, and Zena carved and cooked the meat in small portions. The rain went on, and the noise and motion of the volcano.

At five months of the Mindel deluge, something under the bus collapsed. They tumbled out of bed, alarmed. Zena, seven months pregnant, clung to the furniture while Thatch leaped down the steps to check outside.

“Foundation’s gone!” he yelled. “The whole area’s been undermined. The bus is falling into a sink hole! The next ’quake will—”

“We’ve got to get out!” Zena cried. “If we get stuck in an underground cavity, we’ll never survive the rain!” She had thought the worst was over when Karen died; now she knew that none of them had any guarantee of survival.

“It can go any time,” Thatch said. “Jam everything you can into the packs and get out in a minute or two! I know where we can find temporary shelter.”

Zena packed feverishly. She didn’t bother with clothing, but concentrated on useful items: the knives, tools, rope and remaining smoked meat. She tossed the first pack out to Thatch, and worked on another. Floy made a quick, clumsy search of the closets and cupboards, pointing out the essentials. Gus just stared.

“Okay—out!” Zena cried, leading the way. The bus shifted again, terrifying her as it added emphasis to the directive.

“I can’t!” Gus cried.

Floy showed him her claws. “Move!” she yelled.

She herded him like a frightened stallion, forcing him to the steps and down. Gus screamed as the rain struck him—but fear of the little beast behind him forced him on. They scrabbled out of the depression the bus was in following Thatch in a circuitous but secure route. Dust Devil hated the rain almost as much as Gus did, but bounded after Foundling on a parallel route.

Once clear of the bus they stopped to link up with the rope. Thatch took the lead, with Zena second; then Gus, and Floy right behind him. Gus’s eyes were tightly closed; only the tug of the rope and Floy’s screeched directions got him moving in the right direction. They forged on through the torrent, a motley party.

Thatch guided them to a rocky overhang. The water had undercut it, then changed course; now the stone offered partial shelter. “This is solid,” Thatch said. “And there’re several routes away from it.”

Gus huddled against the stone wall, taking no other interest in survival.

“There are still trees and rocks,” Floy said. “We’ll have to build our own shelter, here. And a covered fireplace, so we can cook. Gus and I will fetch in rocks; can’t have Zena lifting too much.”

Zena was angry at the girl’s assumptions, but realized after a moment that she was witnessing a promising phenomenon. The clumsy child, so recently become an effective woman, was now stepping into the leadership breach. Zena was unable to do that, especially in her present condition, and Thatch was not the type. Gus was a loss. If Floy could do it, why protest?

But could Floy do it? Gus seemed to be a lost cause.

“Come on, Gus,” Floy said. “You have more muscles than any of us; show us what you can carry.”

Gus did not move. Exposure to the storm had completely inactivated him.

Floy went to kneel beside him. “Now I’m going to show you three things,” she said gently. “First, the intellectual: we need your help, because Zena’s getting near baby-time, and Thatch has to forage where only he can go, and I just don’t have the ability to pick up a big slippery rock and move it. If you don’t pitch in, it won’t get done—and we’ll never get out of this rain, and we’ll die here like Gordon and Karen, and have to eat each other, one by one, and you’ll be the last to go, and you’ll be alone in the rain.”

“No!” Gus cried in terror.

“Second, a promise,” Floy said. She tore off her soaking clothing to reveal her slender but rather attractively developed body. “The moment we have shelter, you and I are going to have a lot of fun, you know what kind.”

That disgusted Zena—but not the way it once might have. It was evident that it was a very real inducement to Gus, who had always admired Floy’s body and had had recent experience of its potentials. Even Thatch was looking at Floy with male appreciation. Sex, obviously, always loomed large in the interests of men, and now it was an excellent tool. Perhaps that was why men had been evolved with the desire, the women with the appeal. If women had craved it as men did, they would never have been able to use it effectively.

“Third,” Floy continued, “if you do not move this instant I will give you this.” And she flicked one finger out from her palm, the long nail gleaming. The effect was like the sudden opening of a switchblade, right under Gus’s nose. The nail made a little quiver, as of an incipient thrust at the man’s left eye, and Gus hurled himself away and into the rain.

Floy did have the necessary qualities of leadership!

Zena lay under the shelter, feeling the pangs of what threatened to be forthcoming labor. “But it is only eight months!” she cried. “Too soon. Too soon!”

Floy came to sit beside her. In the past month of industry, the girl had grown subtly. Her coordination had become almost normal, and there was an air of competence about her that was reassuring. Of all the group, she had adapted best to the necessities of Mindel. “How do you know?” Floy asked.

“I kept count!”

“You started with Thatch just after Gunz.”

“That was ten months ago!” Zena sounded shrill in her own ears.

“Right. So it could be nine months now for the baby, or even overdue. Why worry about it?”

“It’s eight months! I know. I don’t want it premature!”

Floy had learned not to argue with unreasonable women. “I’ll get you some green soup.”

“Who’s going to deliver the baby?” Zena cried. “I wish Karen were here… or even Gloria.”

“Karen is here—in spirit. Her body is part of ours, part of your baby’s too. She makes us strong, the same way. Gloria, too.”

Floy’s only moments of weakness were still when she remembered Gordon. Now it was only a pause, a silence, a moment of rather pretty sadness.

Then something made them both listen, startled. “What is it?” Zena demanded.

“The rain’s stopping!” Floy cried. “Mindel’s down! And Ring Riss, and Ringworm…”

“Ringworm!” Zena echoed, and started laughing uncontrollably. Floy joined her. Together they lay and looked out of the rock shelter, weak from foolish mirth.

They crawled out and looked at the sky. A huge band of cloud remained, but the configuration had changed. To the south the sky was clear; to the north it looked as though the rain continued.

“The whole canopy is drifting into the polar opening,” Zena said. “There’s not enough vapor left to support the full cloud cover!”

“We made it through!” Floy said. “We made it!”

In a moment they heard a halloo, and Gus came charging up the mountain slope. “The rain stopped!” he yelled unnecessarily.

They waited for Thatch, then commenced an exploration of the post-canopy world. It was spectacular, now that the fog had lifted and the slanting sunlight touched the earth. Zena had to shield her eyes, unused to the direct sunlight for six months and more. The glare seemed intolerable at first, but she squinted happily.

Little vegetation of the old style remained, for the rain had washed out roots and soil. But the new moss that clung to rock was luxuriant, coating every partially protected surface with green and gray and brown.

The hardest rock had held up; but anything susceptible to erosion by water or gravel had been cleaned out. Gullies like the Grand Canyon opened below their residence. And the new volcanism had altered the landscape in its own fashion. Steam issued from cracks in the stone, and the water that flowed near these vents was hot.

To the west, Crack Toe smoked calmly. This was the first time they had actually seen it. Zena was almost disappointed to find that it was a rather small development, not even properly conical. It was a gap in the side of a regular mountain, with a dribble of solidified lava trailing beneath it. Who would have believed that all that noise and motion could have emanated from that!

Below was the ocean—the real ocean, now. They stood on an island a few miles across, surrounded by other islands: the tops of the former Appalachians. All the rest of the world had been drowned.

They picked their way down to that great sea, two thousand feet above the level of the old one. Already the moss was beginning to wither, as it was dependent on the thorough moisture of the rain and fog. But there was no concern about food; there was life in the ocean. Apparently the fish had adapted to the breakup of their spawning grounds and the dilution of the salt water and had multiplied during the storm.

Zena marveled at that. She had thought the limits were much narrower. For one thing, she had understood that much sea life was dependent on direct sunlight. But she could think of two explanations: first, that there had been many quick extinctions, as in ages past, leaving room for those better able to cope with the changed environment. Second, that this type of thing had indeed happened before, so that the creatures of the sea had prior experience. No doubt there had been an explosion of the fungus life in the sea as well as on land, providing an alternate source of food. Fungus was independent of light, so it was always ready to fill the vacuum.

What had happened to the fishes of the sea at the time of Noah’s flood? Geologically, this was still soon after that deluge. The sea creatures would not have forgotten, genetically, how to handle it.

In addition, the warmth of the water, plus the wealth of refuse washed down from land, had provided an ideal growth medium for those species ready to take advantage of it. The net would feed the little party of four people and two animals indefinitely.

“The world is ours,” Gus said, pleased. His whole personality seemed to have sprung back the moment the rain stopped. Had he already sealed off the deluge as a nightmare?

A sinuous ripple approached. It was an alligator, a large one. The reptiles, like the fish, were doing well!

“This warm weather, and all that water,” Zena murmured. “The cold-blooded creatures thrive on it. The world is really theirs.”

The alligator poked its head up on shore, and the four people stepped back hastily. They had no real fear of it, because they were better equipped to maneuver on the land. But it did seem that Man was now a minority species on the planet.

“We’ll have to make a raft,” Gus said. “Travel about, find others like us, start civilization over.”

Zena, long on her feet, suddenly sat down on a mossy rock. “Oh-oh,” Floy said. “Raft’s going to have to wait.”

“Look!” Gus cried, pointing across the water. “A boat!”

“Just let me rest,” Zena said. “It’s not due yet.”

“Halloo!” Gus called, waving his hand in the air.

“Listen,” Roy said, “I’m no expert, but I think it is due. We’ve got to get you back home.”

Thatch’s head turned back and forth. He didn’t know whether to watch the boat or help Zena. But his decision was soon made. “A stretcher,” he said. “We’ll make a stretcher and carry you back.”

“It’s coming!” Gus exclaimed. “Two men.”

“There’s nothing to make a stretcher,” Floy said. “We’ll have to set up right here. See if there’s a hot spring near.”

“No.” Zena protested futilely. “Not for another month!”

They made her as comfortable as possible, gathering soft moss to make a temporary bed. The contractions eased, then came again, harder. Zena knew it would happen long before a month had passed. She must have miscounted, after all.

Now the boat came near. It was a canoe, or rather a kayak, covered over with animal skins to seal out the water. The upper halves of two people showed, stroking with paddles on opposite sides so that the little craft glided smoothly and swiftly forward. A man and a woman, both young and vigorous.

“We’d better parlay with them before we go anywhere,” Thatch said. “Maybe they can help.”

But the boat stopped thirty feet from the shore, its occupants backpaddling to hold it in place. “We don’t want any trouble,” the man called. “You stay on your island, we’ll stay on ours, okay?”

Gus and Thatch exchanged puzzled glances. “Trouble?”

Floy strode to the bank. “We have a woman in labor here. No drugs or anything. You’re the first human beings we’ve seen since the second rain began. Please, help us!”

The kayak moved closer. “They do!” the woman said. “And we thought we had problems!”

“I don’t see any weapons,” the man said.

“Weapons!” Gus cried. “We don’t want to fight! Too many people dead already.”

“He has a scar,” the man said.

The woman peered at Gus. “No, that’s not the one.”

“I put that scar on him, if you really want to know,” Floy said. She showed her fingers. “But that was a personal matter. We don’t want to—”

“We had to eat two of our own number just to get through,” Gus said.

“Shut up!” Floy hissed, too late.

“You killed your own?” the man demanded suspiciously.

“No, of course not,” Gus said. “One was killed when bandits attacked us, just as the rain was starting. The other was a diabetic. We—” He broke off, remembering Karen. “What do you care, anyway? If you don’t want to help—”

“Those bandits,” the man said, showing interest. “Were they white or black?”

“White,” Gus said. “One of them had a scar on his face. They came in with guns and knives, trying to take our home and women. We killed four. We don’t have any decent home anymore, so there’s nothing for you to take, if that’s what you’re—”

“Wait!” Zena cried, interrupting him. “They’re black! That’s why they distrust us!”

Gus did a double-take. “So they are! What difference does it make?”

“Those bandits,” the man said. “They hit us a week before the second rain. Killed two men and a child, burned our house. We thought it was a race war. But if they went after you too—”

“You have children?” Floy asked.

“Three of them. Not ours; we’re not a family. Weren’t, anyway, before the rains. We had to eat our dead, too; there wasn’t any other way, except the moss.”

“Well, the bandits are dead,” Gus said. “We found their camp.”

“Zena and I worked over scarface,” Floy said with relish. “And Dust Devil finished him off.”

“We gave him that scar,” the woman said.

“Any of you know nursing or medicine?” Floy asked. “We can’t wait long.”

“We have one old lady, used to be a midwife. You want to come in with us?”

“Sure,” Gus said. “For now, anyway. See how it works out. We have a net for fishing, but it’s hard to handle without plenty of manpower. Not much else we can contribute.”

The boat pulled up to shore. “Okay,” the man said.

“One of you came back with me, meet our people. Don’t expect too much, at first—we’re leary of whites, after what happened. But we’ll make do, make a new start together. Joy’ll stay here with you, talk things over. We’ll fetch our midwife.”

The pangs of labor were upon Zena again, but now she knew things were going to be all right. Joy was coming toward her solicitously, while Thatch struggled to enter the unfamiliar craft.

“Were you picked up in Florida?” Zena asked between spasms, remembering the girl they had lost.

“No. Never been there,” Joy said.

Oh, well. Mankind would continue—and perhaps this time it would build on a better foundation.