The Iceman's Lament

He guided the rig off the main haul road. The track seemed more narrow this time, the drop-off more dangerous. A hundred meters or more into the declivity. His breath rasped inside the helmet. He’d repaired the pressure suit after his previous adventure but there’d been no way to test it, of course. He had to trust in his own handiwork.

This is stupid, he thought again, stopping. He needed to return to the rig: once again he was breaking all the rules, blocking the road and putting himself in danger.

Yeah the hell with all that, he sang happily. He wanted to see the Lights again...

It was like a warm bath, he thought later, finally back on the road. A warm bath of benevolence. Once again he had seen the flickering on the horizon, the gathering swarm, and once again he’d felt those icy tendrils of fear clutching at the throat, the stark terror gripping him, and once again he’d stumbled, fallen to his knees.

The Lights had descended. Fear was banished as quickly as it had arrived. They’d swooped and swirled and swept around him and over him, dancing in front of his faceplate until he’d laughed like a hyena, splaying his gloved fingers out and trying to touch them. Based upon the amount of air he’d expended he’d spent a half hour out there, frolicking like a maiden in a field of daisies. It had felt like mere minutes.

And now he broke into an Irish ditty, singing as he drove.

We will do this again, he thought.

We will tell nobody.

This is mine.

Mine alone.

There was a party at the Pole. There was always a party at the Pole. Another one of Flanagan’s rackets: the Quartermaster took a ‘royalty’ from every slug of rotgut hooch the Haulers bought and, complain as they might, they still lined up at the makeshift bar and drank their faces off. Tom shouldered his way into them and ordered a double. Scotch, they called it, but it was more like gasoline, catching in the throat and causing him to gasp.

“God-damn!” he yelled.

“Fuckin’ right!” a hauler, an Australian named Greg, punched him in the shoulder.

Greg was one of the biggest and tallest men on Phoedrus, a permanently-stooped carriage, looming down at you, hands like dinner plates, feet like battered snowshoes, testament to the hardiness of his convict stock. In his teens he’d driven road trains of live beef across the continent. Ice haulers were a natural extension.

Tom looked up at him now. “Greg, I saw the most amazing thing the other day…” he began, despite his earlier resolve.

“Shut yer yap, I’ll tell you what’s amazing,” Greg told him. “Look at that…hah? Lookin’ at you like a slab of fresh steak on the grill…”

And there she was, Meng, a sparrow of a woman with a mane of jet black hair and big almond-shaped eyes, glowering at him over the embers of a long, expensive cigarette.

“Not for me, mate,” Tom muttered. “Don’t want anything to do with that.”

“Not yet, you mean!” Greg laughed.

And, of course, he was right.

He tried to get drunk but ended up pouring his booze discreetly into the crapper. After a while he fancied that he felt a kind of contact high, swaying and singing with the rest of them. And then he got the eye from Meng.

Normally by this point in the evening he would been hammered. And careless. Meng was Flanagan’s woman. At least when she wanted to be. Tom found it astonishing that the Quartermasters heaving bulk could ever be conjoined with hers, a rosebud to his total rot. But he’d accepted the inevitable: Flanagan was power in this place. Tom was not. He was just there when needed.

“Kinda shit that gets you tossed out of an airlock,” he muttered to himself, echoing her footsteps along the corridor.

“Did you ever, like, see anything, out there Meng?” he asked, much later, the pungent aroma of Phoedran herb permeating every corner of her hauler cabin.

“I see you, driving too slow, holding up traffic, that’s what I see,” she told him, knees drawn up under her chin, perfect nakedness silhouetted against the the glow of ice station lights beyond the little porthole window. She had a habit of talking in a Chinese accent, as if she barely understood English. And yet her home was closer to the Ohio River than the Yellow River. She was American, when she chose to be.

He thought about the Lights. He thought about telling Meng. The excitement of it was almost bursting from him. Sooner or later, he knew, he was going to tell somebody. Either that or he was going to lose his shit completely, get sent back down the Well in a straightjacket, babbling about alien life forms that didn’t exist.

Maybe he was simply imaging the whole thing anyway.

They made love again. Sleep descended like a blanket. She stroked his hair.

“Rest, little Irishman,” she chuckled.

In the morning, the chaos of ice extraction: sweating heavily in the exo-suit, carving great chunks of dirty blackened ice into more manageable slabs, heaving them up into the trailers until the load towered up over the rig like some overloaded Jingle truck on the road to Kandahar.

Done, he checked the load and went back inside the cab, made adjustments to the ride control, checked his comm and filed the electronic paperwork. As he warmed up, a weather alert came across. Solar storm. Alarms began to clang outside.

Shields began to rise around the station. Tom made ready to power down.

“F351, you’re done, get going,” the dispatcher told Tom.

Tom hesitated. He really didn’t want to spend the next six hours locked in the Station but the radar was showing the storm moving in rapidly. He keyed the mike and confirmed with the dispatcher.

“There’s no room here,” he was told sharply. “You want that bonus or what?”

Ice waits for no man, thought Tom again. The entire Eleanor Station energy supply depended upon it.

He spooled up the engines, released the multiple brakes in a great hiss of compressed air that beaded up into globules and dropped like frozen bulbs of glass. The rig began to move, slowly, taking up the slack as the cab, tilted forward like a workhorse, began to pull.

Christ, that’s a lot of weight, he thought as the rig strained and bucked. It was going to be slow going

A solar storm in itself was routine: winds could gust to a hundred miles an hour, rocks clanged like cannonballs off the armored hulls of the hauler. But it was hardened against radiation. The rig was the safest place to be.

Still, you didn’t send a hauler out from base into one of those things. The danger lay not with the durability of the rig, but with the reliability of the communications network. In a storm, if it went down, the driver would be out there, essentially blind, until it came back up. The Weather Station at the Pole should have shut him down, made him stay up there until it passed. That was the right thing to do.

But the Right Thing was never the Done Thing, not on Flannegan’s watch.

No time to think about it now. Tom poured coffee, slid his drivers chair back out of the way and stood at the consoles. He let her run on auto at slow speed until he could get a feel for the way ahead, peering out through the forward screens, the big-lick 3500-style tinpot headlights throwing out a great of tongue of fire five hundred yards into the gloaming. More power, the slow thrum of engines under the steel floor, gauges coming up and “Ah, yer a mighty girl” he chanted, plotting his course, speed building below him.

Only nine more hours, maybe twelve at a stretch, he’d be home.

Two hours later he was still out on the plain, pulling four hundred tons of ice and struggling to maintain momentum. The tractor carved deep ruts in the regolith, trailers following like obedient sheep but then the storm was coming at him slantwise like a drunken lout, pushing him into fresh powder where the wheels struggled for grip and all manner of alarms bleated. Among them a louder alarm blared: temps on the main engine rising dangerously.

“Come on baby, come on,” he muttered, threading the rig up into the mountains. There’d be a little relief as the wind was blunted. Still, as he pushed harder up into the Front Range the engine temperature continued to rise.

There might be a leak. F-351 could be bleeding precious bodily fluids. Not something you wanted to deal with in the middle of a storm. He slowed to an absolute crawl and let the Number Two engine idle. Slowly the temperature came down. He ran diagnostics. Nothing else remiss. And then, looming ahead, barely visible through the swirling maelstrom, he saw the Breadloaf.

“Well now,” he grinned. “What a coincidence…”

“I need an hour or two at least,” he told the Pole Captain, explaining his situation.

“So the road is blocked,” the Captain seethed. With the storm abating he’d been about to release the other haulers.

“Looks that way,” Tom feigned irritability as he made ready his pressure suit. “The computer shut down Number Two,” he lied. “I can override it it but…”

“Just wait there until we send out a tech,” the Captain ordered.

“Not fuckin’ waitin’ here all day!” Tom yelled. “By the time your friggin’ tech gets out here I could be back at Eleanor already. I know how to do the override…”

The captain was silent. He knew Tom was right. It was against regs, of course, letting a hauler play God with a multi-million dollar piece of equipment. But the haul road would be at a standstill until he was back online.

“Jesus, could you have found a better place to break down?”

“Yeah, I’ll try harder next time.”

“Alright, alright. Look…sit tight, let it cool down, see what it looks like in an hour. Then call me back…”

“You want me to just SIT here for an hour?”

“Don’t fuck around, Lieutenant. I’m gonna get a tech online if we need to and he can walk you through it.”

“Yes sir…”

Tom shut the comm off. He gave a little laugh. He’d just bought himself some free time.

They’ll check the computer logs. They’ll find out you were lying.

But they won’t. Nobody checks jackshit, not in this place.

’Ice waits for no man,” he sang as he made ready once again to go EVA. “But me.”

He was lying on his back, arms spread, legs spread, his eyes dancing as the Lights did their swarming swooping swirling ballet. Suddenly they swirled into a dark-robed form: Priest. Judge. Creator. A spike of fear lanced through him and he scrambled backwards, small stones skidding under his gloved hands as he pushed himself up.

“’Bless me father for I have sinned,” he rasped, somehow in this moment invoking his lost Catholicism.

The crime you suffer for is not your crime, said the Lights.

He stepped back. The voice came through his speakers like a well-modulated bass saxophone, a bullfrog in the bottom of a deep deep well. Any doubts as to the sentience of this life form vanished. Not only was it sentient, it could see into his soul.

But it is noble of you to bear the mantle of blame for others

The bottom dropped out of his world. The past flashed before his eyes: father-brother bog-road bloody shovel in the darkness, cleaving down through the bone like the ringing of a broken bell. He clambered to his feet.

The Voice continued, deepest of bass saxophones, modulating through the speakers of his helmet.

On Ganymede you did no harm.

The untethered barge in a slow-motion ballet of death. Explosions in space last only as long as the oxygen that feeds them and all you feel from a distance is a muffled crump as 8000 tonnes of metal blossoms into a debris field.

The lives that were lost were not because of you, Lieutenant Kelly.

Gottlieb. So drunk he could barely stand.

It was negligence but it was not your negligence, Lieutenant Kelly.

He bowed his head. This life form, these Lights, they had drilled into and extracted the twin traumas that had defined his life. He could feel a weight lifting.

Exoneration will be yours, Lieutenant Kelly. Your rank will be restored.

He understood now how it must feel to be held in the arms of a heroin embrace. The drugs they shot you up with during particularly grueling interstellar transits were nothing like this.

You will guide the giant ore barges to their asteroids.

“Exonerated…” Tom sighed.

Once again will you pilot an atmosphere-capable shuttle out to the waiting ships.

The voice continued its basso-profundo rumble, reassuring him, praising him, lathering over his anxieties and anger, all fading into this lovely wooly ether.

The sins of the father need not be revisited upon the son…

But now, another voice.

He ignored it, dimly aware that the tears were freezing on his face.

Continue, he instructed the Lights.

But when a man takes the road to destruction, the gods provide ready transportation.

But this new voice was insistent, higher in pitch, growing in intensity, bleeping in the back of his helmet.

There will come a reckoning. There will come a reconciliation, Lieutenant, and...

But a new voice came to the fore. It was an alarm. In his his suit, over-riding everything. He felt a flash of anger at the intrusion. The Lights grew silent, he could sense them preparing to withdraw.

He was running out of oxygen. And he had been out here beyond the ability of his thermal units. Frost was building up on the inside of his faceplate.

The Lights pulled back, the robed form dissipated, the basso-profundo began to fade.

“No…no, don’t go…” But they were gone, leaving him alone on the mountain slope.

The euphoria drained out of him. He stood there in absolute desolation.

“Don’t go,” he mumbled.

The alarm changed tone. Pulsing now, painfully. Do we have your attention? The air supply in his pressure suit was down to just ten per cent.

It’s alright it’s alright he huffed, tearing himself away from the scene. Don’t bloody panic. He had a little emergency power left. Gradually, the faceplate cleared. He began to trudge back to the little alcove off the haul road.

Don’t panic, he reminded himself as the alarm signalled five per cent. You panic, you’re dead. Walk. Watch where you’re going. Don’t. Bloody. Fall.

He could see the rig. Bing…three percent. You’re OK. Keep walking. Don’t run.

But then the regolith. He sank almost to his knees in it.

Ah Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ…Bing! Two percent. Wading through the swamp of molasses like some terrible dream only it wasn’t a dream. It was here. It was now. Bing! One per cent.

And he began to run, to stumble, thrashing madly towards the rig like a drowning swimmer to a raft. No air left. He had thirty seconds, maybe a minute.

Did you lock the fucker? Do you remember the codes? Will you asphyxiate while it resets your password? Bing!

He had just time to stop, take in one long deep lungful of air, and then the alarm went into a continuous flatline high-pitched monotone. He held his breath, thrashed forward, stumbled, fell, got back up again. He could feel the gorge rising, the desperate need to exhale. F-351 was meters away. And then he was letting it all out, blessed relief. And nothing more to take in. One last desperate lunge and the lip of the entry hatch met his fingers. He dangled, pulled himself up, smacked his fist against the control button.

In the airlock, against the safety protocols, he tore off his helmet and writhed on the floor, breathing in deep lungfuls of oxygen and regolith as high-pressure air hosed him clean. Bad idea to inhale regolith: the shit was like tiny particles of asbestos. Very bad stuff. But he was asphyxiating fast. He would have breathed exhaust from the engine if he’d had to. He made the airlock run the rinse cycle repeatedly, coughing, puking, gasping. And finally, as the light turned green and he punched the button to admit him into the cabin, the first thing he heard was the bleating of the comm.

“F-351, F-351, come in, do you read me? F-351…”

“I’m here,” Tom gasped.

“What the hell, Kelly? We’ve been calling you for fifteen minutes.”

“Sorry…” he scrubbed at his scalp. “Jeez…I guess...I guess I fell asleep…”

“Fell asleep?” The Pole Captain was incredulous. “How the hell can you sleep through the comm blasting at you?”

“Because I’m fucking tired maybe? Captain? Back-to-back hauls? Ain’t there a safely reg about that?”

Silence for a moment. Nobody ever invoked the safety rules. Tom scrubbed his scalp again.

“F-351,” the Captain intoned ominously. “What is the status of your Number Two engine at this point?”

“85% capacity. Still cooling down but well within safety margins now. Looks fine…”

Minutes later he was underway. On the screen he could see the daisy chain of haulers far behind him. He would not have held them up anyway, he realized.

But if he had. If they’d all been backed up behind his empty rig while he frolicked with an alien life form…Didn’t bear thinking about it. He would have returned and then they would throw his ass back down the Well.

You oughta tell someone about this, he thought.

“Why?” he asked aloud. “What would they do?”

He had a suspicion the answer would not be to his liking.

On the inbound back to Eleanor, a blip on the transponder: another hauler coming up fast behind him.

“Annie” he laughed into the comm.

Annie from Athlone. Her rig was smaller than F-351 and a lot faster, used for hauling supplies rather than ice.

“Well will ye get the feck outta my way, Mr. Freightliner,” she cackled back. “C’mon now, let a woman show ye how it’s done.”

“Cool yourself,” he chided playfully. “Ice waits for no man.”

“Well you can take yer ice and shove it up your arse! I’m comin’ through.”

And she was, he realized, the blunt prow of her hauler looming up in his rearward camera. Smaller than F-351 or not she was still pulling eight or nine trailers and was moving at almost twice his speed.

“Annie!” he cautioned. “Wait! There’s no room!”

But Annie had pulled out, coming up alongside, a great shower of sharp rocks spraying out from under her wheels.

“Bloody hell,” he thundered, guiding F-351 off to the side. He feathered the engine brakes, the trailer brakes, the gargantuan rig sliding sideways and spinning in the softer regolith of the shoulder. “Annie!”

A cluster of huge boulders loomed up ahead. She was right alongside now, no room to maneuver. He braked harder, losing all forward momentum.

“On the rocky road to Dublin” she sang as her rig blasted him with rocks like cannonball off a metal bucket and his rig slewed drunkenly sideways, the boulders filling his forward screens.

With seconds to spare she cleared the front of his tractor unit and he pulled sharply back into the road.

“I will spank you like the red-headed whore you are!” he yelled into the comm.

“Ye’ve to catch me first, Tom Kelly!” she yelled back as her rig drew further and further ahead and finally disappeared like a ghost into the gloaming.

And he threw back his his head and laughed, despite the danger she’d caused.

“Love you, Annie,” he called after her.