Rose said, “We weren’t flying the plane.”
“It doesn’t matter. Get him aboard.”
I yanked my arms free and went running. The footing was bad and I slipped and skidded with every step, my arms wheeling around as I ran.
Malik and Rose caught up with me just as I reached shore, but I fought them as much as I could. Once I was taken out across that water, I knew, there would be no way to come back.
But they were two to my one, and finally got me under control. They carried me back along the dock, Malik holding my arms and Rose my legs. I kicked and thrashed, but nothing I could do would make them lose their balance or their grip on me.
Panting, Rose said, “Why don’t you give it up? It’s all over, ride along with it, give it up.”
The other man was still waiting for us near his little boat, showing a heavy impatience. “He should have been tranquilized,” he said, as I was carried close.
“Phail wants him ready to talk,” said Malik.
“If possible,” said the other man.
Malik released my arms and stepped back, and they all three watched me, Malik and Rose warily, the other man wearily. So in the end I stepped down into the little boat with no more trouble.
The other three followed me, the new man taking a position by the engine in the back. Malik released the line holding us to the dock, the engine sputtered and started, and we curved out and away, toward the darkness.
Peering ahead, hoping to see, I tried to remember what I had once known about the Sea of Morning. That it was the largest body of water on the planet, forming the western edge of the rim, extending from the Black River in the south nearly all the way to the White Wall in the north. That its far shore, around on the night side of the planet, was permanently frozen. That the first colonists who’d stumbled on it, not realizing its magnitude, had called it West Lake, a name changed later on by some sentimentalist to Sea of Morning even though the quality of the light here seemed to me more like evening — approaching night.
My own night, it seemed.
Looking back, after a few minutes, I could no longer clearly distinguish the line of the shore. The black water merely faded away toward indistinguishable grayness. There seemed to be some sort of mist behind us, through which the light of Hell feebly burned, dissipating itself, turning the mist dusky rose above, gray below.
I faced front again. I had ceased to wonder why it was I was still alive, but I couldn’t help the proddings of curiosity as to where I was being taken. Some island? Or all the way to the ice-shelf preceding the farther shore?
Neither.
When the ship loomed up before us, it was so sudden I ducked instinctively backward, thinking that the ship and this tiny boat had nothing to do with one another, were unaware of each other’s existence, and would surely crash in an instant, hurling the four of us into water too cold to survive in, too far from shore, surrounded by a mist that hid movement and seemed to deaden sound.
But I was wrong; ship and boat were connected, both parts of the same incomprehensible nightmare. When, after the first shock, I looked up the cold wet black plates of the hull, there was the familiar hammer symbol on the prow, and the name, in white letters: SLEDGE.
Malik’s hand closed on my shoulder. “Take it easy,” he said, close against my ear. “Take it easy, now; don’t get yourself excited.”
A portion of the hull, at waterline, yawned open in front of us, tike the mouth of a whale. We bobbed closer, a cork in a stream, our nose pointing this way and that but always moving steadily closer to the gaping hole, and then we were inside, and the hull shut down behind us again with a great shriek of rusted metal.
Inside, the water we floated on looked bilious. There were yellow lights high up in the metal ceiling, among the metal beams. There were metal walls painted yellow, reflecting the yellow light. There was a black metal platform sticking out of the wall just above the water, and a door in the wall by the platform. The door opened and two sailors in heavy work-clothes came out and stood on the platform.
Malik moved forward to the prow of the boat. One of the sailors tossed him a line, the other end of which was knotted through a metal ring in the platform floor. Malik pulled us hand over hand along the line till the prow of the boat hit the platform. Then the two sailors held the boat, prow and stem, while we all four climbed out.
We stood around as the sailors tied the other end of the line through the ring in the nose of the boat. Then the sailors went back through the door and shut it behind them. They had not once looked at me or at any of the others with me.
The new man said to Malik and Rose, “Take his clothing off.”
I fought them again, this time out of bewilderment, and lost again. They stripped my clothing away and held me shivering. The new man gestured with his head toward the bilious black water just below the platform, and Malik and Rose raised me and threw me out into the air over the water and I fell and the water closed over me.
It was freezing. It was so cold it was like falling into knives. It was so cold it was hot. It was so cold I could do nothing: not breathe, not move my arms, not try to surface nor dive, swim nor float, kill myself nor save myself. I fell into the water like a rubber statue, and sank, and returned to the surface, and bobbed there, shocked beyond reaction.
At the new man’s command, they fished me out again, Malik and Rose. I was held up by their hands like a drowned cat, and the new man said to me, “It is cold.”
I was trembling violently, nerves and muscles snapping in and out of tension. I couldn’t have replied even if I’d had something to say.
He went on: “We are three miles from shore, and moving. We will never be less than three miles from shore, and usually we will be more than that. You couldn’t survive it, I hope you understand that. You’d be dead inside five minutes, if you tried swimming to shore. Do you understand that?”
I tried to nod, tried desperately to nod. I didn’t want him to think he needed to demonstrate his truth to me a second time.
He was satisfied. He said to Malik and Rose, “Take him away. Dry him. Dress him. I’ll tell Phail he’s here.”
Malik and Rose turned me. They opened the door and led me into the ship.
XXVII
I thought: I’ll never be warm again.
I was dry now, in heavy clothing, and sitting in a warm room, but down inside my skin, down in my veins and bones, in my stomach and my heart and my throat, I was trembling with the cold. I sat there and shivered endlessly, my arms wrapped around myself.
Malik said to me, “Oh, come on, Rolf, it isn’t that bad,” and the door behind him opened.
The man who came in was young, but bore himself with such arrogant irritation that it was obvious he had great authority. He said, “Is he ready for me?”
Malik and Rose were both suddenly nervous. “Yes, sir,” said Malik, and motioned at me as though inviting this new one — this must be the Phail I’d heard mentioned — to help himself to me.
Phail came over and looked down at me, a crooked smile on his lips. “And to think I had you once,” he said. “Had you and let you get away. You remember the last time we met?”
I raised my eyes and studied his face. The lines of arrogance were so deep, he must have been born with them. He had a cultured face, a face that showed breeding and education, but also betrayed degeneracy; the scion of a bloodline in decline. His hair was sandy, dry-looking, lying flat to his skull and brushed back from his forehead. His eyes were a peculiarly pale blue, snapping with impatience and contempt.
I said, “I don’t know you.” My voice and enunciation were both affected badly by the chill I felt, embarrassing me. I wanted to be equal to this man, superior to him. I felt instead like a cowering mongrel, waiting for a kick from his boot.