Tanith Lee - Cold Fire.pdf - Tanith Lee - widez2

Cold Fire

Tanith Lee

Asimov's Science Fiction

February, 2007

2006 saw publication of Here in Cold Hell , the second volume in the author's Lionwolf

Trilogy (Tor Macmillan), Piratica 2: Return to Parrot Island , the second book in a female

pirate saga (Dutton), as well as L'Amber from Egerton House. Egerton House has just

released two more novels, Creyglass and To Indigo , while the last Lionwolf novel, No

Flame But Mine , and the third Piratica book are due out later this year. Ms. Lee has

recently sold short stories to Weird Tales and Realms of Fantasy and novellas to Firebird

and the SF Book Club.

We was ten mile out from Chalsapila, and it's a raw night. The sea mist brewing thick as

wool. Then little tramp ship come alongside. I on the bridge with Cap'n. He my brother.

Kinda. Jehosalee Corgen. Well. But sudden the tramper puts up her lights. She's gotten a lot

of sail on for what she's at, maybee tracking tobaccer or hard liquor up and down. They take

a need of that, in the little ports along Great Whale Sound.

—Fuckendam, say Corgen. —What this bitch go to want?

I shrug, don't I. How the hell I know. I amn't no sailor, I. He picks me up drunken at

Chalsa, tooken me aboard. I can trim bit of sails, take a watch, that kinda stuff.

Now the tramper swim in close, making signal.

Across the black night water, Corgen and her cap'n speak.

Sounds threat-like ta me.

—What he say? ask Beau, the mate.

Afore I can offer, he goes up ter see.

Then so does I.

We stand there on the poop, with the great wing of foresails over, and lanterns flash,

and I hear other cap'n tells Corgen—Hey, this good for ye and yor crew. Make lotta dolla.

—Don't need no more cargo, say Corgen.

—Nar, yer take this, no cargo, just tow. Like horse with wagon.

—This gurl ain't no horse, say Corgen.

—Hey hey, she a good ship. Has the weight ta do it.

I think the guy on tramper he sound like a Rus. Looks too, big, good-looken guy, and

beard.

He say, —All ye do, tow dammen thing outa back and up. Get maybee nine hundred

dolla. We given ye wodka too.

Shooting star is went over, like a silver angel spit.

Seems to me maybee guy on tramper is eying me real much. I go off. Then Beau come

back aways. —Govment, say Beau from mouth corner. —Seems we havta.

Corgen's busyness on sea never much legal. But govment boats turn a blind ey, ifn you

make nice. So we'll do this, what so this is.

In a bit, tramper boys bring some stuff aboard, boxes, a crate, wodka in big cans like for

kerosene. They gives ta Corgen where to go to pick up thing wants the towing, and he writes

down careful. He sign a paper too. The tramper turns off up the side of the night.

Boxes, stuff, full of food.

I hear Beau ask Corgen soon what the fuckdam we be go to carry.

—Chunk bludy ice, Corgen say. —Chunka ice and tow her up into bludy Artic.

—So high?

—Higher maybee. High as she go.

—For why in Christ's name?

Corgen shrug. —For nine hundred dolla.

Weather is clear, sea nearly smooth. Now we was sailing norard easterly, where the tramper

say go. And all that pass us is fisher boats for the cod-fish, and the faint shadow that come

and go of the land. First night ends and then a day, and when the sun low, making the sky

red, Hammer up in look-out call he can see something new on the water. Men went go up

rigging, to see, and so do I. Hanging there I can make out a kinda island, but it all put

together of boats and rafts, with nets drifting, and there torchlights burn, so's as the red sea

and sky getten black, this island what is no island, she go red.

—What there behind?

We crane forard like birds, stretch our necks. Behind the torch smokings stand

something pale, like it was a misty pane of glass, so the dark-ness show through.

—A berg what that is.

—Nar. None of they here.

—A berg, I tells you. They come down this far, from Grenland. A great narrer one.

Like a piece of glass, like I say, so it is. A piece of great ice, chipped offn sailing free,

as the icebergs do.

Then come another ship, a big one she is, with no colors but with guns, and men on her

deck all armed, officers and soldiers, only they ain't wear-ing any uniform, but you can see

they are, the ways they's stood.

Corgen and Beau and Bacherly, they get rowed offn away.

We set ta wait. Don't go no closer.

Over on the island of boats men move around in the light and shadow, can't see what

they do, that's all. The berg, if it a berg, none of us sure, goes fainter in the smokes.

Along of midnight, Corgen and the others they bring back.

Corgen has face like dried white fish. Other two ain't much pinker.

They come aboard. Corgen grabs me. —Pete O Pete, say Corgen.—Christ. I never

shoulda took this on. Thin luck, the days we leaves Chalsapila.

Then he puts his head down on my shoulder, like as when we was childa and ma was

raw ter him.

The six other men on Corgen's bucket, they clusters around, and the over us sails nod,

cos the wind's getting up from the south.

—Cap'n, what's to do?

He lifts his head. He look scared and sick.

—Never word'll come outa me, he say. —Shitten govment say we must, so we do. I can't

tell you. You'll be to see it, morning come.

We stand round him, and his boys look like they have mutiny running in the back of their

eyes. Then Corgen rechanges to his own self. He reach out and grip Hammer and Bacherly

and shake pair of them so as the bones rattle under their clothes. —We got no choosing.

Like birth and dy-ing. No choosen. So we take it. Bruk the wodka out, Beau. We've a long

haul to the North fuckdam Pole.

Second night on the new course, two of Corgen's men jump over. You can see the land, can

reach it if swim strong, and though that sea cold, men have their reasons.

Another man, Bacherly, he go over next night and not so lucky. Struck the side and

stunned him. He's drunken, I guess. We pull him back aboard and empty him of water, but

then he lie raving and shaken till Corgen speak to him. —I tell him, bite yer tongue or I'll throw

ye back down.

Sight of land is gone by then. Bacherly is quiet, but sometimes he puke, or he cries.

The others is make to be brave. A coupla of them make pretend we don't tow no thing at

all. Ando cusses a lot. He anyway allays do that.

None of them much goes aft to look. It doesn't matter if they looks, it amn't a danger—no

moren towing it. They did tell us, when they brung it, and all the cables and chain was fixed

and the hooks to hold all, they do tell us then, the ice on the berg is old and set so hard, thick

as stone wall, the officer say, ten feet—forget it—this more twenty feet thick of ice. Can't stir.

Can't break. This why it must be took to go upways north, to the Pole, this why. Though it

came, officer believe, from the Southron Pole below, all the wide mile down at the earth's

end. From there. And all this time, the ice held. So now, cold as we go, now it shall never

give way. He swears that too, on the Bible.

Since Chalsapila, when Corgen finds me in alley, I don't drink. Even the Rus blue and black

wodka, sharp as spikes, I left it alone.

I saw to the work I can do, and I eat when others have their food, though they keep back

the food the tramper gave us for when this is done and over. Also I play them cards. Corgen

gives me some money, so I can gamble on cards too and pay up when lose, which I do.

Sometimes when I climb up the yards, I tend the ties and canvas, but then I set a while, and

look back along the ship to her stern, back to where the berg is. It is about half ship's length

behind, seems to drift there. If was not for the iron ca-bles, you should think it only followed

us.

He said, the officer, the ice is twenty feet thick.

Yet I see through. Transparent, the officer say, like crystal, this type of berg. Means

nothing, still thick as five stone walls.

By see through it, I mean it's as like you look through frost on glass. I remember a gurl

once, she wants her drink in a frost glass. Like that.

If any of the others see me, staring back, they never show at that time. Only Bacherly is

sick, crying in the hold on his blankets. When I go to want to give him the hot soup he throws

it down and he say I'm mad, to sail the ship. He say I never needed to go on, I coulda gone

over side and ashore, I, like the other two that jumped over. He forget me that I can't swim.

But anyhow, strange though that is, I amn't afraid of it. What I am feel-ing as I look at it, I

don't think to be fear. But each day or night then, ei-ther I'm up in the rigging, and watch

toward the stern, or then I go up on the aft deck, and whoever is to be there at wheel, he give

me a glance.

One say —Right glad I am that sail tween me and that sea.

One say —You insane, Pete Corgen. I allays knew ye was. Is drink rottened yor brain.

As him he drink from wodka can.

But I go on by to rail, and I stood there, and I look. The first night I am doing it, the

moon's up, and the biggest, brightest of the stars. Shines right through the ice, like the

electric light in the bar shone through that gurl's frost glass.

I never am mad, as that man say. I be have seen them as are mad. I am not.

Now it seems, that first time, never I see it so good, not when it come, and they ties it to

the ship. Perhaps then I couldn't. As when you young, the first time you truly see a gurl, you

canna look proper at her, though she is to be all you ever think on.

But first night in moon's shine. Well.

Christ. Like fire it is. But dull in frost. Frozened. Yet beautiful.

Beautiful.

Once saw a metal forged, was steel. It went go that color, afore the cool-ing starts. But

this, this is tween the heat and the cool. White red. Red sil-ver. How can I say?

The shape.

Well.

I have see a lizard once. Yet this now not really like this lizard, which was only small, a

kind creature.

And this ain't kind. Nor small.

Well.

How can I say?

Well, let me say, first time I fuck a gurl, when I have seen her nakd, and there she is, my

heart in my throat she so sweet and so.

There's no word.

And this, neither no word.

And still I must try explain.

Up in the column of the narrer ice the shape do stood, and it have the body of a lizard

among the giant kind. The backbone is curving, flext like a curl of rope. And all covered with

scale is it, like a great fish. And it is have wings. The wings are more like they of the butterfly.

But tough, the wings, tough as sails, and have a pattern, but this like the kind of written book

I canna read, the pattern. And it has legs, and forelegs like long arms, and on them like

hands, both on the feet and the front feet, hands. And the hands do have to be with claws.

Each claw look to be length my forearm. Then there is long neck, and the head.

What is head of it? Like horse, a little. But not like horse. No, like the lean head of race

dog, long, and thin. It with two ears, set back. Ears are like dog ears. And the shut eyes like

lizard's eys.

I don't know what it is, this thing, in the ice. But I say to you, long afore I see this, I've look

in some books. What books say want go hard for me, and the picture too, and yet, piece by

piece, sometime I will read then. This name I bring out. Dragon.

Dragon, dull red as burnt fire and cloved over frost white, wings spread like a moth

against a lighted candle, and the eys shut. Shut eyes. No mov-ing. Still like dead. Dragon.

Dragon.

This we tow.

The weather it held, with the sea in pleats and slow, and soft gray sky that has sun like a

lemon slice, and by night a moon like a ghost.

Porpus teem through water, wet slick speckle, like cats. Then is later, and the packs of

the flat ice drifting by, and above over us black head tarna flying.

All this while the dragon coil in the berg. No moving.

The twenty feet ice of the berg glister but never cracks. Each dayup, Corgen comes out

Tanith Lee - Cold Fire.pdf

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