Piers Anthony - Rings of Ice

But what bothered Zena most was not external but internal—the subtleties of group interaction. Thatch drove, Gloria cooked, Floy and the cat stood guard at night, Gus exerted his peculiar type of leadership. Karen kept Gus happy. Every person was finding his function. Except Zena.

She tried to participate, but somehow found herself excluded. The foraging parties no longer included her, and there wasn’t much to do inside the bus except play cards. She felt useless.

Not that the others held it against her. They were all oddly solicitous of her needs. She was not being shunted out of the party; rather she was being set up for some very special position obvious to everyone except her. What could it be?

They had reached high ground. The rain still came down, but there was no further concern about flooding. It would take weeks for the water to reach this height at an inch an hour.

“We’ll have to get as far up in the mountains as we can,” Gus said. “So we’ll need a real load of supplies— grain, canned stuffs, medicine.”

“It’s all been raided,” Thatch objected.

“Not by a long shot. Smart people are saving it. We just have to find their cache.”

“Hey,” Floy said, delighted. “We’ll raid the raiders!”

“That’s about it,” Gus said grimly. “And they’ll be tough cookies. But it’s that or starve.”

They kept watching for likely prospects. As they skirted a city—there was no way to tell which one it was, as all signs and landmarks had been altered by the storm—they saw lights at one large building. Only a temporary thinning of the attendant fog enabled them to see the glow from a distance. “Warehouse,” Gus said with satisfaction. “Whatever they have in there, we need—you can bet on it.”

“It’ll be guarded,” Thatch said. None of them bothered to raise moral objections any more; they had all long since recognized that the survival of the most competent was the new morality. “Guns, probably.”

“And booby traps,” Gordon said. “Otherwise it would have been raided and cleaned out by now.”

“All of which makes it an excellent place to avoid,” Zena said, growing alarmed.

“Which is what everyone else must have been thinking,” Gus said. “By now they must be getting careless. Most of them sleeping, while only one or two guards are on duty. Distract those, and we can take our pick of what’s inside—so long as we make it fast.”

“Fine, in theory,” Gordon said. “But what’s going to distract a couple of armed men looking out into the rain?”

“Girls, of course.”

“Now wait a minute!” Zena said.

“Yes,” Gordon agreed. “Nude or near-nude. Dancing, maybe. Striptease. That’d be good for five or ten minutes.”

“I have no intention of—” Zena began, outraged.

Gus waved her aside. “Not you, of course. You’ll guard the bus.”

“What do you mean, ‘of course’?” Zena demanded.

“I get the hint,” Karen said. “He sees me as more the striptease type. Okay, if that’s what it takes to put sugar on the table—”

“Not you either,” Gus said. “You’re needed at the other end.”

“Surely you don’t mean the child,” Zena cried, proceeding from one sense of outrage to another.

“That child isn’t badly built,” Gus said. “Stand up, Floy.”

Floy stood, putting her hand against the wall to prevent herself from lurching off balance. Gus put his hands about her waist, cinching it. “See, she’s slim but female, and she’s got a bust, too.”

“Preposterous!” Zena cried.

“Can I dance?” Floy asked wistfully.

“That’s the general idea, honey,” Gus said.

“You know that won’t work!” Zena said. “Gus, this is sickening!”

“She can dance,” Gus said evenly. “She just needs the right music.”

“Sure, that’s right!” Floy said eagerly. “The music’s always wrong! But good music—”

“This is pointlessly cruel!” Zena said.

“Will you shut up a minute?” Gus demanded. “Anything sexy is sickening or cruel to you! We’ve got a job to do.”

Furious, Zena shut up. Better to find out exactly what Gus was up to, so that she could scotch it before someone got hurt.

“We don’t have much in the way of musical instruments,” Gus continued. “But we have some pans and tools. You’ll have to play them yourselves, of course.”

“Of course,” Gordon agreed, taking up pan and screwdriver. He struck the one with the other, producing an unmusical clash. “You try it too, Floy.”

Floy tried it too. Then they banged together, and the noise was earsplitting in the confines of the bus.

“Now dance,” Gus said, holding his hands over his ears.

Floy flung out her arms. They smashed into the furniture. “Ow!” she yelled.

“Well, you need more room to do it right,” Gus said. “That’s been your problem all along. You have the idea, though.”

“Do you really think it’ll work?” Floy asked, so excited it was painful for Zena to watch.

“Sure!” Gus said. “So long as you give yourself room and beat the music right.”

Gordon put on his blonde wig. “I hate to get this wet,” he said.

“It’s a good cause,” Gus said. “Get back to the bathroom and convert. I’ll talk to the others.” Gordon went back, and Gus continued: “Now Thatch and Karen—you know what you have to do?”

They nodded. “But no killing,” Karen said.

It was belatedly evident to Zena that much discussion and planning had been done while she was asleep. This whole thing had been blocked out in advance as a contingency, and now the pieces were meshing nicely.

Why had she been excluded? She was ready to help, to do her part; they all knew that. Every person in the group had to pull his weight for the survival of the whole.

Gloria came forward. “Now it has to be coordinated,” Gus cautioned the rest. “We don’t dare bring the bus too close at first, and when we do it’ll be sans lights. If they don’t go for the diversion, call it off immediately. We don’t want to take losses.”

“They’ll go for the diversion,” Gloria said. “You watch.”

Zena felt numb. This was like a commando raid—and she was being excluded and ignored.

“Zena, sit up here,” Gus said. “I think I have this driving straight, but you’ll have to tell me if anything goes wrong.

Gus—driving? “I can drive it,” she said.

“No, I know where it has to go,” he said.

Zena shook her head with resignation and took the passenger’s seat.

“Raiding party get out first,” Gus said, fastening his hands tightly on the wheel. “We’ll give you time to get close. Listen for the music.”

“Check,” Thatch said. “That’s one thing about the rain—it’ll cover our noise and our tracks.”

Gus drove. It was clumsy, and the vehicle tended to wander, but he guided it down a side road toward the lighted building. Karen must have been instructing him, Zena realized. She could easily have told him about the basic rules of driving, and demonstrated, during those long shifts when the others were asleep or inattentive.

As the building loomed higher, Gus stopped, stalling the motor on the brake. “Now!”

Thatch and Karen got out and disappeared into the night. The rain closed in behind them like a wet shield. Gloria came up and helped Gus re-start the motor. “I’ll walk ahead now,” Gloria said. “You move along slowly without lights, and I’ll whistle if I meet a hole or an obstruction.”

“Right,” Gus said. Zena saw that his hands were sweaty on the wheel. How had they prevailed on him to actually do useful work?

Slowly they proceeded. The darkness was not total; it was possible to make out the general channel of the road between the buildings. Then the glowing torches of the building came into full view.