Marc Stiegler - Kath in Winter

It had been pitch black there in the middle of a hundred tons of snow. But what his eyes could no longer see, his other senses described for him with terrible surety. He had felt the snow and its bitter coldness. A burning, tingling sensation ran quickly down the tips of his fingers. He had realized he was going to die of hypothermia. He cursed under his breath.

But his attempt to curse had failed. Only then had he realized that he wasn’t breathing. The initial fall had knocked the breath out of him, and the densely packed snow had crushed his lungs. He had realized that the freezing cold would not be quick enough to kill him. He had tried to shout; but that hadn’t worked, either. He had fought for consciousness, for one last gasp of air…

And now he was here. No snow touched him at all. Lying there with his eyes closed, he was quite puzzled. He inhaled—and the breath came easily, no mean feat with crushed lungs. Even more puzzling, he felt warm, warmer than he had felt since he had reached the Himalayas. Of course, sometimes people felt a gush of warmth as they died of hypothermia, a merciful illusion cast by a failing body. How real it seemed now!

He opened his eyes to a dream: she sat before him, the woman whose smile could light a galaxy.

Although Ross Herrick smiled at her, she did not move. He murmured a greeting.

This time, unlike all the other times, she replied. “Well, Mr. Herrick. It has been a long time, hasn’t it? Though I imagine it doesn’t seem all that long to you now, does it? Indeed, if things have gone as they should, you should be rather surprised by the sudden absence of snow. And the question must arise in your mind, is this heaven… or is this hell?” Her smile held more than a hint of wickedness, and her voice sounded rather triumphant. The quaver in her voice, he noticed, was gone; she sounded as young as she looked.

He tried to decide what to be confused about first. That voice, it was the voice of Kathleen Tepper, and those eyes, those were the eyes of Kathleen Tepper, and he had just met her a couple of weeks ago, before starting the expedition. But the face matched his old photograph of her; and what had happened to the expedition, anyway?

And Kath started laughing. “Your face!” she said, “Your range of expressions in the last five seconds has just been priceless. Ah, Mr. Herrick, you have repaid me for all the irritation you put me through.”

He opened his mouth to speak—and then glimpsed the view out the window. He realized that, despite the perfection of the mimicry, this room he occupied was not his own. He knew because the view from his window was impossible—when he looked out, he did not see the mountains of Vermont. Instead, he saw the oceans of planet Earth. All of Earth, floating in a vast black starfield. He looked back at Kath.

“Are you beginning to understand, Mr. Herrick?” She laughed again. “It really is a marvelous new world. Why, I myself have a spaceship, no larger than a Coke can, that can… well, more of that later.” She harrumphed. “You are a very lucky fellow, you know. The temperature at 25,000 feet, on the side of Mt. Everest, buried under the insulation of a few hundred tons of snow, was, as it happens, minimally adequate to preserve your body. It was so minimal as to be quite worrisome, in fact. Yours was a very difficult restoration indeed, Mr. Herrick.”

He remembered the snow, and shuddered. “How long?”

“By the standards of your old life, a very long time, Mr. Herrick. But fear not; you will be back in the swing of things in no time. You will be provided with your own private tutor to help you.”

“You?”

Kath nodded. “Oh, don’t be too impressed with yourself, Mr. Herrick. Much of your education will not be conducted in person. You’ll be using the full line of Kathleen Tepper’s Educational Holoworlds to hasten your learning experience.”

“Holoworlds, huh? What happened to cybervid?”

“I’m afraid I missed that whole era, Mr. Herrick. Fortunately they developed a far superior medium before reviving me. Very thoughtful of them, too.”

At last, Ross began to laugh himself. He laughed until the there were tears in his eyes. “Miss Tepper… uh, if you’re going to be my private tutor, would you mind if I called you Kath?”

“Of course not, Mr. Herrick. As a friend of mine once said, ‘I think this could be the start of a long and beautiful friendship.’ ” Imperiously, she held out her hand. “Now get out of that bed and come with me. I have so much to show you.”