A Dream of Ice (29 page)

Through Pao's eyes, from a place of concealment, Mikel watched Priests commit suicide as experiments, use their blood as paint. He cried out his feeling of tragedy and betrayal when two huge gangs of Priests and Technologists both ripped to fragments the banner that was supposed to hold the city together. Back on the mountainside, he felt the urge to raise his arms to the banished red-haired woman in her airship, and suppressed it. He felt guilt for half-believing her but never defending her. He had implored her for a name, to tell him who was planning a grievous assault on Galderkhaan, but she had refused to participate in the insanity. She only wished to get away. Pao had spoken to her sister, Enzo. She left too.

Then the dial of his life whipped madly once more. As a much younger man, Pao felt one glorious moment of ascension, just short of transcending, when the Priests first realized it might be possible to become Candescent. He felt the weight of a dead daughter in his arms, fatally burned in an accident with the Technologists' fire, an event that began the irreparable rift. Over and over and over, he felt Pao's heart shatter as his friends, his city, died one way and another in the fire and liquid rock. He relived the spirits' attempting to bond in dying Galderkhaan, their shrieking agony as flame ate them, flame commanded by her, by the woman in the void . . .

And yet strongest of all, Mikel felt Pao's yearning for Vol. He felt Vol disappear from Pao's life and then from the periphery of his life. He felt the loss of that connection after Pao ascended. Though Vol was also dead, the ascended could not communicate without having transcended as Pao and Rensat had done.

There was much more, out of order, out of joint, often moving so fast as to be incomprehensible. As Mikel fought to hold on to who he himself was, other memories fought back, threatened his physical and mental balance. The leopard seal was back in his mind. Mikel was
becoming squeezed by images, sensations, emotions,
terror
 . . . he was a very narrow entity in the middle. He tried with all his might to resist—

Back!
he ordered himself.
Come back! Stay in the physical!

Slowly, one at a time, Mikel picked up his feet and prayed that when he set each down, it would find the floor. He wasn't sure how long he had been walking through the cavernous tunnel toward the airstream but he knew he was much nearer to the point of its generation. And his shaking skin, organs, and bones warned him that, the mask notwithstanding, this attempt could surely be fatal.

Through it all, Pao was still present. Pao was reaching in and stretching out, trying to thin and control what little of Mikel remained.

The tiles, activated by Pao, added to his woes. Fresh images flooded in, of elegantly appointed row houses in a Scandinavian city, then a staggering fjord—a chasm of lesser gods.

Then a sudden leap to vast grasslands and people hunting with hawks. They looked Asiatic, perhaps Mongolian. These were things
he
knew. Mikel's own knowledge was now part of the ancient database.

Next, Mikel's personal memories were front and center. He was back in Antarctica, scanning the American bases, the planes landing for the summer season, the large supply ships toiling slowly toward the continent. Pao was now merging with Mikel's memories, making them one.

Christ, is this what the stones did to Arni?
Mikel thought fearfully.

He felt the increasing pressure on his ears, on his skull, vibrating through sinew and blood and bone.

And then a jolt, a shock, a mental kick that Mikel had not anticipated. The Galderkhaani hooked into the thought of Flora, and suddenly Mikel's vision filled with the Group's mansion on Fifth Avenue. It gave him a flash of confidence, an anchor. But the location quickly became unpegged in time. Mikel swung from Arni's first interview there and his synesthetic reaction to Flora's office, to a lab where Flora
was comparing the first two artifacts Mikel had obtained, to Flora's new assistant opening packages to reveal black soundboards.

Mikel rejected the image, fought back to the fast-narrowing window that was himself in the present. As he proceeded he heard the sound and feel of the air change and hoped that this was the start of the airstream. He could not afford to hesitate, to think. He had to find the way out.

The force of the wind grew stronger and he knew he was close. Then the rippling haze of the heat from the vent began to flow beside him, then behind him. He was closer. Then the howling of the wind returned, faintly at first, and he saw an opening ahead. There was no door and he realized that this room was inside a cave like the one where he'd found the sled. The Technologists had been ambitious but practical: they used existing geology wherever it was feasible. The wind tunnel would provide the added benefit of a primitive form of ventilation, providing a cooling aspect to the room.

Mikel wrapped his arms protectively around his head, and with a guttural cry jumped forward into the stream. The air lifted him as before and smashed him into the wall. Mikel shrieked in pain—his right wrist was surely broken. He took several more hard knocks to his shoulder and arms but not hard enough to break them, or him. And then he was in the sweet spot—rolling over and over helplessly but managing to stay in the center, without a sled. According to what he recalled of the map he was flying away from the city toward the sea. His broken wrist was numb but as long as he remained relaxed he could keep from spinning out of control.

But he was not out of Pao's reach entirely. The tiles were still all around him. The clarity of the images faded even as the pace of Pao's search increased, frenetic with determination.

Get out of my head!
Mikel screamed inside, but to no avail.

Pao knew he could not count on Mikel but he was probing, desperate. Mikel saw Fifth Avenue, his own apartment. He saw places he had been in Manhattan that he had forgotten.

And then Mikel felt his own mind unsqueeze and return. Countless hours after it had all begun, it all swiftly faded. Every feed from Pao simply dribbled away. Distance must have become a deciding factor.

Mikel's first complete thought without Pao there to interfere—or help—was an immediate, very practical concern: he had no idea how to locate his entry point to the tunnel—the entry point on which his life depended. If he missed it, was there another route to the surface? Even if there were, he would be too far from the base to survive.

Mikel mentally manipulated his way along the network he had seen on the map. After many long minutes of re-creating them carefully, Mikel detected something ahead that he had seen before: a mosaic where the tiles were silent. Their darkness practically shouted to him from the expanse of wall, where gleaming tiles were as regular as subway stops. Perhaps this one was missing pieces, the circuits broken. All he knew was that they were unique among the mosaics he had seen since descending the dormant lava tube and it was the only hope he had.

But how to get out of the airstream? Mikel shifted his body and was immediately thrust up to the ceiling, lost his breath, but then rolled to his right and dropped. And suddenly, he was at the base of the broken tower, skidding forward painfully. He let his body do all the work, turned his will over to muscle memory, and surrendered control to his body and to the mask.

A minute later he felt for the panel. He found it and stopped moving.

There was no time to do a status assessment. His head was like a bag of cement powder, opaque and thick and lacking the porosity even for thought. He hobbled as fast as he could on his sprained ankles up the twisted, overturned spiral stairway, hauling himself up with his left arm, his right arm stabbing him with pain.

There was just one word in his head:

Safe.

He pulled himself from the tower and collapsed on the surface of the lava tube. With trembling fingers he pulled the mask from his skin so he could breathe the air firsthand.

Safe.

And suddenly, he was looking into the eyes of Siem der Graaf.

“My god,” Siem said, crawling between two pink flares toward Mikel's stricken, ravaged face.

“You're still here!”

“Something happened. Something we could not explain. They agreed to let me come back—”

Mikel fumbled for his belt. “I must . . . call New York,” he gasped, pressing the mask into Siem's hand. “My . . . I have to tell her.”

“Wait until we are out of here,” Siem implored.

“No time!” Mikel said. His arm shaking, he retrieved the radio and called Flora. Though he was nearer to the surface, the static was thick, communication difficult.

“Where are you?” Flora answered abruptly.

“I'm near a tunnel under the ice—I
found
it!” he blurted. “I found Galderkhaan!”

“Oh my good lord,” Flora said.

“
Listen
. I have been with two Galderkhaani souls—you must find that woman . . . the one in the Haiti video.”

“Caitlin O'Hara?”

“I don't know her name, just . . .”

“She is here with me now,” Flora said.

“Protect her from the souls!” he said as interference broke up their communication. “Damn it!” He tried to fuss with the buttons, but it was no use.

“Please, let me get you out of here,” Siem said.

Mikel was panting, looking around.

Siem put the mask into a pocket and reached for Mikel's right arm. Mikel groaned in pain. Siem tried the left arm, gave his support to the man, and the two of them staggered toward the crevasse on
their knees. “The base move is delayed so our radios are back on. You've been through hell it looks like—I'll have them lower a harness.”

“Quickly!” Mikel urged. “If he finds her, if he finds the
ulvor
—”

“What did you just say?” Siem asked, his eyes suddenly fearful.

Mikel reacted to Siem's look. “Why? What's happened?”

Siem held Mikel's hand to keep him from grabbing at his face. “Mikel,” he said sharply, needing to get through to him. “I heard that word before. We all did. And others. They were something like ‘
Enzo, pato, Vol
.' ”

“
How
did you hear that?” Mikel demanded. “Siem,
where
?”

“Something happened earlier—a vision, fire, a voice!”

“What kind of fire?”

“It was like something alive . . . a face.”

“The flame that was pursuing me,” Mikel said, more to himself than to Siem. “It had to be, it could
only
be. A soul afire, locked in that state by the tiles—like Pao and Rensat. But that soul was only ascended, unable to communicate with them.”

“Mikel,
what are you saying
?”

Mikel ignored him.
Enzo. Pato. Vol
. He didn't know what
pato
meant, but he inferred, almost at once, what Pao and Rensat must never have suspected of their beloved friend Vol: that it was
he
who initiated the Source. Yet it made sense that he would have wanted to sabotage it, or turn it on to show that it wouldn't work. How horribly surprised he must have been.

“All right,” Mikel went on, “someone, some soul, possesses this information. But Pao doesn't have that information, and even if he did he couldn't get back to stop him. He doesn't know—”

There was a punch inside Mikel's skull. His mouth swung slack as he stared into Siem's eyes. All in a rush, Pao was fully back in his mind. There was a cry of unutterable anguish as Pao realized the truth about his lover and friend.

Suddenly Mikel knew that he had been used, that Pao had pulled a
ruse, only pretending to fade out with distance. The power of the tiles, controlled by Rensat, had allowed Pao to remain with him. And Mikel also realized with horror that now Pao had both names: Vol, from Siem . . . and Caitlin O'Hara, from Flora, from his own gullible stupidity.

“I gave it
all
to him!” Mikel cried.
I told him that it was a radio . . . to communicate with. And he knew I would use it for just that! All he had to do was wait a little longer.

Now Pao departed, for real. Mikel's vision cleared though his head swam. His mind was his own again.

But in exchange for that freedom, he may unwittingly have given Pao the world.

And then, held tight in Siem's arms, he passed out.

•  •  •

Mikel clawed to wakefulness.

He was in a truck, lumping across the Antarctic terrain. Crushed between Bundy, who was driving, and Siem, who was half-leaning against the passenger-side door, Mikel was still in the harness that had been used to haul him up; the retreat from wherever to wherever had obviously been hasty.

“Thank you,” Mikel said, his mouth dry.

Siem looked over at him. “You're welcome.”

“I—I know you won't understand, but what I said before—we have to warn the Group. Warn the woman.”

“We will,” Siem said. “Hold on . . . let me get you some water.” He reached into the mesh pocket hanging low on the door, by his feet.

“Not important,” he said. “She's in terrible danger. I must call. Stop so I can get out and find a damn signal!”

“Wait until we reach—”

“Damn it, I
must
get it,” they heard Mikel moan. “Please.”

“We can't stop the truck!” Siem told him.

“Why not?”

“Some scientist you are, you bloody dope!” Bundy said. “This fast on the ice—the momentum will crash the module into us, so just . . .”

“Dear god, what's wrong with you
both
?” Mikel said. “You have no idea what's happening here!”

Mikel struggled to reach across Siem and grab the door handle.

“What are you doing?” Siem cried, grabbing his wrist.