Maggie Gee - The Ice People

She was screaming in my ear, ‘Are you winding me up?’

I wasn’t. It was a very faint hope. ‘No … no … I’ve — lost touch with him. I’m sure he’s all right —’ I couldn’t tell her I feared he was dead.

‘He’s fifteen years old. You can’t have lost touch —’

‘Temporarily. I thought I should ring you. He was absolutely fine, healthy, happy —’ I realised this call was impossible, but I’d had to make it, just in case he was there. ‘Got to go,’ I said, and then ‘Don’t worry.’

‘Where the hell —’ I hung up as her voice skated skywards. I was shaking, and cursing myself for a fool.

The force of her hatred. Sheer blind hatred. Of course, no wonder. I had stolen her son.

She never knew how much I’d loved him. If she had known, she would have let me see him, she wouldn’t have locked him away from me and forced me to take desperate measures.

She didn’t know how I’d cared for him. She didn’t know — I wished she had known, there was a childish part of me that wished she knew — she didn’t know I had been a hero. I wished she had seen me sailing the Channel, shooting at bandits, fighting off wolves. Perhaps I still wanted her to praise me. She didn’t know I had sacrificed everything to try to give Luke a life in the sun, him and his children, our grandchildren, for surely in Africa there would have been children. She didn’t understand I was trying to save him from the nanomachines, the thrumming headsets, the speaking buildings, the wretched tech-births, the rare sickly children, the lonely sexes. She didn’t understand that I wanted to free him from all the debris of the ice people. And now I had failed, she would never know.

I hated her for not knowing me. Yes; for not appreciating me. That was what women had done to men — they had lost interest, turned away, they no longer reflected what we did or showed in their faces what we were. Lighting us up, making us taller. It isn’t a lie, if it comes from love. My mother’s eyes shone when she looked at my father. And without that reflection, men were terminally lonely. We froze into ourselves, we accepted the ice.

The trail went dead on the Costa del Sol, no longer quite so sunny by the next summer. Inland, however, where the wild bands lived, the sightings had become more frequent, more detailed. The rumour had found a home on the screens; people contributed their stories of a blonde young man, godlike, handsome, running with a pack of swarthy children. I followed up every one of these sightings, but never got more than a road to travel, olive groves to tread, villages to wait in, hoping vainly for a glimpse of them so at least I would know if it were my son … The god, El rubio, the blonde one.

It was clear, in the end, he didn’t want me to find him.

My hands are so cold I can hardly write, though I’m wearing two pairs of xylon gloves, and most of the fingers are intact. Kit goes past, grey, crooked, head skewed away from me, ugly little arse-eye. Thrusting along, muttering, angry. He doesn’t look at me directly, but I know he’s seen me, I know I’m rumbled.

Time’s running out, I’m sure it is. I’ve had my fun, but nothing lasts. I’ve nearly got to the end of my story, but the Doves can’t wait, and the boys can’t wait –

They’d better come, then. I’ll be ready.

Saul will meet them face to face.

Time ran out in the old life too.

It went too fast when I was following a lead, trying to drive to some high village before the wild children moved on. It was slow as death when there was no news, but months mysteriously turned into years, and I had to take a job as an interpreter with a travel firm, friends of Pedro. You could feel time pressing in the middle distance, in the cooling of the climate, even here, as the ice advanced steadily across Euro, as the winter citrus harvest failed, as the golden Spanish summers grew paler, shorter — though the ice would never reach this coast. And then there was the nagging, immediate time that was just my reckoning of Luke’s age, he was fifteen now, perhaps taller than me, old enough for sex, though I don’t suppose he waited, and then sixteen, old enough to vote, had there been elections, or anything to vote for; and then he was seventeen, and a stranger, and then he was eighteen, and I gave up hope.

To say ‘I lost hope’ is not the whole truth. I gave up hope of reclaiming him. I gave up hope of ever completing my dream voyage to Africa. Taking Luke back to Samuel’s land. Completing the circle I’d drawn in my head. The serpent with its tail in its mouth. I thought that circle meant something precious, but maybe to Luke it was prison, incest … Children always have different dreams.

I gave up hope of ‘saving’ him.

Perhaps it was the salvajes who saved him.

I never stopped hoping that I would see him. I imagined him, more times than I can tell you. I would see brown figures on a far horizon where the heathazed hill met the fluid blue, and among the brown, a flash of blonde, and I’d drive hellforleather up some dirt track to find they were goats with a strange blonde girl who looked at me as if I might kill her, there must have been such longing in my eyes … In cities it was worse, with such a scrum of lost children, and occasionally a blonde head among the others. But never Luke, never my child.

Until once. Just once. I’m sure I saw him. I’m reluctant to say, in case it disappears, like a dream of happiness you start to wake up in. I’ve only told this once before, and that was to — to — Yes, I told Sarah. For nothing could be over until I had seen her, however old and tired we were.

In 2064, Luke was twentyone, or would have been, if he survived.

It was time to go home, but where was home? Should I use my one visa and try to cross to Africa, or should I take Dora back to England? Poor Dora, battered now, her feathers dull … She had never been the same since I tried to sell her, though I’d never completed my side of the bargain. A certain reproachfulness was in all her responses, a certain watchfulness in her logic, as if she were waiting for me to show my hand. It didn’t matter. We were used to each other.

Of the four adventurers, only two remained.

It was suddenly possible to go back to England, though there was only one reason for going. I checked through old records, and my name was no longer on police files as hunted. Perhaps because, after Wicca’s fall, all their accusations were discounted, perhaps because police records were in chaos.

She was on her way to sixty. We were both old. Surely it was time to talk to each other. Besides, I did have something to give her. The recording Luke did with Dora that morning, at the very last point before his voice broke. Second, the news that Luke was probably –

No, no ‘probably’s. She wouldn’t want conjecture.

I had been away from England for seven years. I travelled armed. Most people did. There were no more weapons checks on boats or planes. Flying had become increasingly dangerous, with nearly all the big airlines collapsing, most of the central airports taken over by Outsiders — children, or Wanderers, or the starving — and air traffic control a thing of the past. I bought the cheapest ticket I could get through my work. Why should I care if we were hijacked (there were hijacks now ten times a day)? What did it matter if we crashed in flames? This company owned three ageing planes and flew to a private airfield in Kent. They boasted of ‘Dee Icing’ as if it were an extra, but I took no notice. Why should I care?

I found I did care, when the very young pilot, who had a frightened, foolish voice, told us at the end of a juddering flight that he couldn’t get the undercarriage down and would have to attempt a crash landing. The stewardess came shrieking along the gangway, the first time she’d shown her face that day, pushing our heads into crash position, but at the last moment the wheels rumbled down, there were three hard bumps as we bounced off the runway, the brakes roared on and we stopped in time. I realised I cared, because of Sarah.