"Who showed up?" she asked. "At the con. Anybody I knew?"
Thor cocked his head. "It's been a while since you've been around. Let's see. You know Chuck Umber. He's there; but he's not in on this. Too much risk he might let something slip into his fanzine. You know Tom Degler and Crazy Eddie. Wade Curtis is supposed to show. There are even rumors that Cordwainer Bird is in town."
"Real pros?"
"Yeah, I know. They try to keep a low Pro-file." He grinned and nudged Mike with his elbow. "Ever since Archcon in '06. Somebody on the Con Committee forgot to tell the Pro Guest of Honor that it was cancelled. You know Nat Reynolds, he showed up anyway and said the hell with it, let's have a party, and the police nabbed him. So the professionals have been staying clear of cons."
"Now, there," said Mike, "is the real Minicon. It was cancelled. You can't have less than zero attendance." Sherrine guessed he had forgotten which side of the argument he was on.
Thor shook his head. "I think there were twenty or so at the party in his hotel room--"
"That was a con party, not the con itself--"
"--before the cops busted us."
"Minicon is still going," Bruce said, breaking in. "It has to be going. The last thing we need is for the cops to find a broken convention and wonder where we all went."
"Hmm, yes." It was starting to hit her. She'd never been underground before. Now… One hint and her job was done. A couple of slips and she'd be a wanted woman. "Thor, you've been hiding out for a while--"
"Eight years." He sounded proud.
"What's it like?"
A shrug. "Not too bad, if you have friends. And if the 'danes aren't hunting you too hard. There are folks in the midwest, farm country, who are only too glad for a hand with the chores; room and board and no questions asked. You try not to spend too much time in one place, though."
"No," she said. "I suppose not."
Bob glanced over his shoulder. "Having second thoughts?" he asked, turning back to his driving.
"Sure. And third and fourth." She took her mittens off and rubbed her hands together. "So. What are the plans once we get there?"
They all looked at her. "Plans?" said Mike in a simulated Mexican accent. "We don' need no stinking plans."
Sherrine snorted. Fans.
They sailed west on I-94, headed for the Dakota Glacier. Bob drove carefully, trading speed for certainty. On clear sections of the highway, he floored it; where roadside clutter and shrubbery provided cover for police cars, he slowed to a respectable sixty. After a while, the chatter died down and everyone settled into their own thoughts. Sherrine tried to imagine what they would need for a short trip onto the Ice. Her grandparents kept a lot of equipment in their barn.
Thor carried an Irish tin whistle because, as he put it, you never knew when you might need one. After a few miles had passed and the talk had died down, he pulled it from his pocket and began playing. His fingers fluttered through a few traditional tunes: jigs and reels and such; then he started in on some serious filking. Sherrine joined in the singing. Thor played "The Friggin' Falcon," "Banned from Argo," and the classic "Carmen Miranda's Ghost Is Haunting Space Station Three."
Just past St. Joseph, Sherrine stopped singing and stared north through the van's side window. One by one the others dropped out, their voices dying in mid-chorus, until Mike was singing alone.
" 'I wrote Dying Inside and you snubbed it! Son of Man's out of print totally! You'll be sorry you didn't buy Nightwings! No more damn science fiction for me!"
Mike trailed off. Following their gaze, he twisted and looked over his shoulder. "Great Ghu!" he said.
"Yeah," Sherrine said quietly.
The northern horizon glowed a pale, phosphorescent white, as if an artist had drawn a chalk line across a blackboard.
Steve hopped to the other side of the van and peered through the window. "I didn't know it was this far south," he said.
Mike peered out. "The Ice Line runs northwest from Milwaukee to Regina. It doesn't come as close to the big cities because of the waste heat."
The California fans had never seen the Ice. They stared in respectful silence.
Sherrine spoke up. "You can't live in the Twin Cities without feeling the weight of the Great Ice somewhere over the horizon, flowing toward you like crystal lava."
"Three years ago," said Bob, "you couldn't see it from the highway."
"And last year," she added, "you could only see it in midwinter." The Ice ebbed and flowed with the seasons, like tides on a hard, white ocean. But some of the snow that fell each winter failed to melt the next summer. The weight in the center of the pack forced the edges to flow outward, and the Line moved a few more miles toward civilization. She began to shiver uncontrollably, even though she was wearing a thick down coat and the car heater was running full blast.
Thor noticed and smiled. He blew a few plaintive notes on his whistle; then declaimed:
"Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire."
Everyone chuckled. "That's from 'Fire and Ice,' " Thor said. "By Robert Frost."
"Frost," said "Mike. "That's appropriate."
Will Waxman grunted. "Finish the stanza," he said.
Thor stopped smiling and looked out the side window at the shimmering horizon. After a while, he continued in a voice so soft she had to strain to hear him.
"But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice."
The farther west they drove, the closer the Ice came to the highway. What had begun as a distant white smear on the horizon crawled closer and closer. She knew that the movement was an illusion, that the Ice was not actually moving toward them. It was only that the highway and the Ice Line were converging. Still, it was creepy to watch that slow, implacable approach. Mike started singing "The White Cliffs of Dover," but no one joined in, and he soon fell silent.
CHAPTER THREE
"The Ice Was Here, the Ice Was There, the Ice Was All Around…"
Bob noticed the lights of a General Mills gasohol station shining like a baby's smile just off the highway. A barely legible sign proclaimed the town of Brandon. He turned onto the exit ramp and drove into town. Twenty-four-hour gas stations were on the endangered species list. The van was down to a quarter tank and he didn't want to pass up the opportunity.
The snow on the state road was a foot deep and unplowed. The van with its oversized tires was an ice breaker on a frozen sea. The snow made eerie crackling sounds in the night as the van drove through it.
Brandon was deserted. Everything in town was dark, except the few streetlights. The moon reflecting off the crusted snow cast a dim, pearly light over the blank houses. There was not so much as a porch light on. Sherrine didn't suppose that Brandon had ever been very lively at four-thirty in the morning, but this felt different. Not just sleepy, but empty.
Bob pulled into the General Mills station and honked the horn, but no one responded. After a minute or so, Thor said the hell with it and climbed outside. His boots broke through the crust and he sank into the snow to his knees. He waded through the snow to the row of pumps. "Premium okay?" he asked. He unhooked the hose and flipped the switch. "Power's still on." When he squeezed the pump handle nothing happened.
"Mechanism's frozen," he called out. He unscrewed the gas cap and stuck the nozzle in. Then he stood there squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing until the gasohol began to flow into the tank. Mike gave a huzzah and he and Bruce slapped each other's hand.