Piers Anthony - Rings of Ice

“I can’t tell you,” Zena said. “I only did it to get pregnant; I never felt anything.” Except discomfort, she added mentally, and disgust.

“You’re such a damn prude!” Floy cried.

Zena slapped her, hard.

The reaction was unthinking, but she did not regret it. They had been cooped up for a long time. The nerve of this child!

Zena had half expected Floy to burst into tears, but the girl reacted like her fighting cat. She crouched, flung back her wild hair, and raised fingers like claws.

Zena remembered that eyeball, and suddenly she was afraid.

Then Floy relaxed. “Aw, you can’t help it,” she said with infinite scorn.

Zena found herself crying. That one sentence defined her so accurately! There was something seriously wrong with her reactions to men, and she couldn’t help it. She was as crippled as Floy, or Karen, or Gus.

Where was Thatch? Without him the group was surely doomed! Karen was the only other really competent member, and she would soon be gone.

Zena was carrying Thatch’s baby. Surely that meant something. What would be the fate of that infant if its father died?

Could Thatch be dead already? There were a thousand perils in that deluge. Every day the landscape changed; now torrents cut through new channels, tore out new chunks of acreage. And the strange new insects were multiplying, many of them huge and slick, at home in the rain but hungry for blood. If he had blundered into a nest of Mindel hornets…

“I must find him,” Zena said.

Floy moved over to the door, barring the way. “You can’t. Karen’s the only one can do it.”

“I must.” Zena approached the door. “Move—or be moved.”

Again that catlike crouch, the bared claws. They were all overreacting to the slightest stimuli, ready to duel on any pretext, yet the aggressive forms had to be honored. Zena saw herself as much as victim as Floy—and yet would not yield.

“I’m sorry we fought,” Floy said. “But we need that baby. There may never be another in this world. You’re staying here.”

Did the girl appreciate the ironies? No matter! Zena drew her knife. The blade was sharp and the point hung inches from Floy’s face. “I’m sorry too,” she said. “But I will not be balked by a child.” She was not certain which child she meant.

Again Floy relaxed. “I guess not,” she said. “But I’d better come with you.”

Strange girl! But she had backed off when that was necessary, showing good judgment “If I can’t find him, how could you?”

“It’s not him I’m thinking of.”

“Well, why don’t you think of what’s inside the bus? If Thatch is lost, and I don’t come back, in a few days there’ll be only one possible source for a baby.” Dirty fighting, but a point that had to be made sometime.

Floy’s eyes widened. “God, yes!” she said.

Zena went on down and out. The rain hit her like the blast of a waterfall, knocking her back against the bus. The tempo had increased! It was now four of five times as great as the rate during the Gunz deluge. Mighty Mindel, whose strength was as the strength of… never mind! She opened her mouth to breathe, and the liquid poured in. She spat it out and tried to breathe through her nose, but that was worse.

Finally she dropped her head and sucked in air through her teeth. She shaded her eyes with one hand, peering about. The rain and fog were so dense it seemed like night; effective visibility was ten or twelve feet. The ground was all water.

She went out in it, treading carefully to find the rock inches beneath her, making her stagger. One foot landed in an unseeable hole, and she fell.

She was unhurt, but fear for her baby made her decide that for the time being four feet were better than two. She proceeded to the edge of the level area that had been the palisade enclosure. Here the water streamed away downhill, disappearing into the misty ambience.

“Thatch! Thatch!” she cried, but her voice was lost in the roar of storm and rapids. How could she ever find him?

She scrambled on, clinging to whatever offered. There had been a time when she could have managed such travel well despite the barrage of water, but now she was six months along.

A stone gave way. Suddenly she was rolling helplessly, carried along by gravity and the flow of water. The roaring grew louder, signaling the proximity of a cataract, therefore her demise.

“Thatch!” she cried while choking on water. Her voice as she heard it sounded the way Gus’s had, that first time he had been hurt at the start of this adventure. Had she sunk so low! Then: “I love you!”

She splashed into a deep pool, flailing wildly, bobbed to the surface and gasped for air. A current was bearing her along somewhere, so she fought it. Her hand caught hold of something and held.

The water was not cold, and it shielded her from the force of the rain, so she remained where she was while she assessed her situation. What was a pool doing here? There should be nothing but erosion gullies and canyons.

Silly question! The contours of the land were changing so drastically that no new feature should be surprising. She was lucky she wasn’t dead.

Yet.

Still, she had not found Thatch—physically. But emotionally—had she meant it? Had the truth come out at last, that she had twisted her way unwillingly into love with the father of her child? Was that why she had faced down Floy and braved Mindel to seek him out?

Now she wasn’t sure. It was easy to love, when there was no future in it. What about the reality, the giving of one’s whole being to another? Could she ever do that?

Of only one thing was she certain: she could no longer exist without him.

Now she just had to find him. She swam around the rocky edge of the pool, seeking a suitable place to climb out.

There was none. The stone was either slick underneath the flowing water, or covered with slimy lichen that broke away in handfuls, providing no purchase. The slope was too steep to permit her to climb out independently.

She was not hurt; a few stinging scrapes were all the wounds she had sustained in her tumble. She was not cold, or sick. But she was caught, and probably doomed, for she could not tread water forever.

She had caught hold of something, during her first flailings. Where was it now?

She swam back, rechecking carefully. Under the greenery was the root of a tree, invisible from the water but still solid. The tree itself was gone, but the root seemed firm. She hauled on it.

The thing came loose in her hand. It was only a half-buried piece, dislodged by her efforts.

“Zena!”

It was Thatch, out of sight but close by.

“Here!” she cried.

“In the pond?”

“Yes!”

“I’ll send down the rope.”

And the end of the rope came down; she located it by the faint splash into the water, hardly distinguishable from the continuous splash of rain. She caught and pulled herself up, hand over hand, sliding on her fat belly over the moss. It was not far; the same slipperiness that had trapped her, now made the travel easier. So long as her feet were able to punch through to find purchase.

Thatch caught her arm at the leveling of the bank. He stood her on her feet. “Floy said you had gone out,” he said.

“I was afraid—” But her fears seemed foolish, in the face of his obvious health. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m glad I found you! If anything had happened—”

“Aren’t you going to bawl me out? For getting in trouble?”

“I don’t understand.”

No, he wouldn’t. Thatch never blamed anyone for anything, however culpable others might be. “So you know why I came out?”

“Yes.”

She hesitated. “You do?”