“How about blasting a channel through the ice with heavy bombers?” Ōnishi suggested.
Davey and Ilyukhin shook their heads, and Scott said, “Bombers can’t even get off the ground in this weather.”
Lü Gang asked, “Aren’t the B-2 and Tu-22 all-weather bombers?”
“Pilots aren’t all-weather.”
Marshal Zavyalova nodded. “The adults didn’t actually think that all-weather meant wretched stuff like this. Besides, even if they did take off, visibility is so poor that it would be impossible to blast a precise channel. They’d just punch a few holes in the ice, and ships still couldn’t get in.”
“What about large-caliber naval guns? Or mines?” Pierre ventured.
The generals shook their heads. “Same problem with visibility. Even if they could make a navigable channel, there’s not enough time.”
“Besides,” Huahua said, “it’ll damage the ice surface and render the one viable solution impossible.”
“What solution?”
“Walking across the ice.”
The several kilometers of snow-blown coastline was densely dotted with abandoned cars and hastily erected tents, all covered in a thick layer of snow that made it a piece with the snowy plain behind and the frozen ocean on either side. When the children saw the group of young leaders walking toward them along the coast, they came out of tents and cars and ran over, surrounding them with a huge crowd of people. The children were shouting something, but their words were carried away by the wind. A few Chinese children were close to Huahua and Specs, and called to them, “Class Monitor, Studies Rep, what are we going to do?”
Huahua didn’t reply immediately, but climbed on top of a tank buried in the snow next to them and shouted down to the crowd below, “Children, walk across the ice. Walk to the edge of the ice shelf, where lots of ships are waiting for us!” He realized his voice wasn’t carrying very far in the gale, and crouched down to say to the nearest kid, “Pass that on back!”
His words spread through the crowd, passing to other nationalities through translation units, or through gestures that made his meaning clear enough to keep it from getting distorted.
“Have you gone crazy, CM? The wind is so stiff out on the ocean and the ice is so slippery, we’ll be blown away like sawdust!” yelled one of the children.
Specs said, “If everyone holds hands, we won’t blow away. Pass that back.”
And so, lines of children soon appeared out on the ice, almost a hundred in each, all holding hands and walking through the blizzard. As they crept away from the shoreline they looked like stubborn wriggling bugs. The line of national leaders advanced onto the ice first. Huahua had Davey to his left and Specs to his right, followed by Ilyukhin. Dense, windblown snow tumbled over their feet, making the children feel as if they were walking through the white deluge of surging rapids.
“So that’s how this period of history ends,” Davey said to Huahua through his translation unit, with the volume turned to maximum.
Huahua replied, “That’s right. Our adults had an old saying, ‘This too shall pass.’ No matter how hard things might get, time always just keeps going forward.”
“Makes sense. But things are going to be even harder. The passion that Antarctica sparked in children’s hearts has turned to disappointment, and American society may lapse back into violent games.”
“Chinese children might return to their indifferent stupor, and the interrupted Candytown might return.” He sighed. “It’s gonna be tough.”
“But I might not be involved in any of that.”
“Is Congress really going to impeach you?”
“Those sons of bitches!”
“But you might end up luckier than me. A head of state isn’t a job for anyone.”
“Yeah. Who would have thought that a thin page of history could fold up to be so thick?”
Huahua didn’t quite get Davey’s last reference, and he didn’t bother to explain. The bitter cold and strong ocean wind prevented them from speaking, and it was all they could do to keep moving forward, or occasionally help up companions who slipped on the ice.
A little more than one hundred meters away from Huahua, Second Lieutenant Wei Ming was also trudging arduously through the blizzard. During a sudden lull in the wind, he heard the call of a cat. At first he thought it was just a figment of his imagination, but when he looked around he noticed a stretcher he had just passed on the ice. It was buried in the snow and he had mistaken it for a snowdrift. The meowing was coming from underneath. He left his column and slipped and slid over to the stretcher, where the cat had jumped down and was shivering in the snow. He picked it up, and then recognized it: Watermelon.
Pulling the army blanket off the stretcher, he saw Morgan lying there, clearly seriously wounded. Her face wore a white beard of frost, and her eyes glittered with fever. She didn’t appear to recognize Wei Ming, and when she spoke a few words, her voice was as weak as a thread in the driving wind. Without a translation unit, Wei Ming couldn’t understand her anyway. He tucked the cat back under the blanket, pulled it over Morgan, and then went around to the front of the stretcher and started pulling. He made slow progress; when the next column of children caught up to him, a few members broke away and came over to help him carry the stretcher forward.
For ages, swirling snow was all the children could see in the expanse of white around them, and although they strove to move forward, they felt as if they were frozen in place on the ice. But just as they were too numb to move, hazy black silhouettes of ships appeared ahead of them, and they were informed via radio not to proceed any farther. They had reached the edge of the ice shelf, where the ice was not frozen solid, and they could fall through at any time. The ships would dispatch landing craft and hovercraft to fetch them. By the time they received the message, over a thousand children had already fallen through crevasses into the icy sea, but the vast majority of them managed to reach the edge of the ice.
Smaller black shadows, separate from the distant fleet, gradually took shape through the snow, dozens of landing craft pushing through the floating ice. When they reached the solid ice, they opened their rectangular maws to let the children swarm aboard.
Wei Ming and the other children carried the stretcher onto one of the landing craft. It was a vessel especially for the wounded, so his companions left at once and he never knew what countries they were from. Under the cabin’s dim yellow light, Wei Ming saw Morgan staring blankly at him from the stretcher. She clearly hadn’t recognized him yet, so Wei Ming picked up Watermelon and said, “You can’t take care of him anymore. Why don’t I take him with me to China?” He set the cat down and let it lick its master’s face. “Don’t worry, Lieutenant. We went through so many devilish games and made it out alive, and life will go on. We’ve survived the impossible, so blessings must be in store. Goodbye.” Then he put Watermelon into his backpack and left the boat.
Huahua and a few generals from other countries were coordinating the boarding, and preventing the children who were temporarily unable to board from crowding too far forward and collapsing the ice shelf with their numbers. Farther back on the ice, children from different countries clustered together into large masses to shelter from the cold as they waited. All of a sudden Huahua heard someone call his name, and he turned around to see Wei Ming. The two former classmates embraced.
“You came to Antarctica too?” Huahua asked incredulously.
“I came a year ago with B Group Army’s advance team. I’ve actually seen you and Specs quite a few times from far off, but it didn’t feel right to disturb you.”