Stephen Baxter: Anti-Ice

“Ned, I would like to show you another invention.” His face still disfigured by that ghastly smile he began to open his restraints.

“…What?”

“A conception of Leonardo’s—one of the few Latins with any sense of the practical. I think you’ll find it amusing…”

And those were the last words he spoke to me before his fist came crashing into my temple.

Cold air slapped me awake. I opened my eyes, my head throbbing.

The Little Moon filled my eyes.

I was sitting in the hatchway near the base of the Smoking Cabin. My legs dangled out of the open hatchway; the battle-strewn ground was many hundreds of feet below. A strange khaki pack, like a soldier’s knapsack, was fixed to my chest.

Startled to full wakefulness I made to grab at the lip of the hatchway. A hand rested on my shoulder; I turned and stared at long fingers dully, as if they comprised some odd spider.

It was Traveller, of course. He said, shouting over the rushing air, “It is nearly done, Ned. The supply of Antarctic anti-ice is all but exhausted. Now I must finish it.” He laughed, his voice distorted by the hole in his face.

His tone was terrifying. “Traveller, let us land in safety and—”

“No, Ned. Once, our young French saboteur told us that to waste a few ounces of anti-ice was worth the life of a patriot. Well, I’ve come to believe he was right. I mean to destroy the Phaeton, and in this act of atonement to hasten the removal of the anti-ice curse from Earth.”

I searched for words. “Traveller, I understand. But—”

But there was time for no more; for I was administered a kick to the small of my back, which propelled me feet first from the vessel and into mid-air!

As the chill air whistled past my ears I screamed, convinced I was to die at last. I wondered at the depths of despair which had compelled Traveller to commit such an act—but then, after a fall of fifty feet, there was a sharp tug to my chest. Cables fixed to my pack had tautened, and now I dangled, slowly descending. I looked up—uncomfortably, for the straps of the pack had bunched under my armpits. The cables were fixed to a construct of canvas and cable, an inverted cone which was catching the air as I fell and so slowing my fall to a safe rate.

Squirming in my straps I looked down, beyond my dangling feet. The anti-ice thunderhead, still growing, climbed high over the corpse of Orléans. The armies of France and Prussia lay spread out beneath me, but there was little sign of movement; and I found it inconceivable that men should resume killing each other after such an event. Perhaps, I reflected in the silence and calm of my mid- air suspension, now that the world’s anti-ice was virtually exhausted, this ghastly—accident—would serve as a warning for generations to come of the perils and horror of war.

Perhaps Traveller had at last achieved his goal of a warless world—but at a cost he would find difficult to accept.

From somewhere above my canopy there came a roar, a flash of steam and fire. I twisted my head back once more—there was the Little Moon staring down, bemused, at this tortured Earth—and there went the fabulous Phaeton, rising for the last time on her plumes of steam.

The ship continued to climb, unwavering. Soon only a vapor trail, reminiscent of Gladstone’s shell, marked out her path; and it became obvious that Traveller had no intention of returning again to the world of men. At last the trail thinned to the near-invisible as Traveller reached the edge of the atmosphere… but it was a trail that pointed like an arrow at the heart of the Little Moon.

Now his intention was clear; he meant to drive the craft into the bulk of the satellite itself.

Some minutes passed. Traveller’s trail dispersed slowly, and I swung impotently but comfortably beneath Leonardo’s canopy; I kept my eyes fixed on the Little Moon, hoping to be able to detect the moment of the Phaeton’s impact with it—

The world was flooded with light, from horizon to horizon; it was as if the sky itself had caught fire.

The Little Moon seemed to have exploded.

Barely able to see, I fell heavily to the ground among a group of wondering French infantrymen.

November 4, 1910

Sylvan, Sussex

My Dear Edward,

I trust this parcel finds you as it leaves me: that is, in good health and spirits.

No doubt you will be surprised, on opening this latest package from home, to find the customary missive from your dear mother replaced by these few pages of scrawl from myself. And I hope you will forgive me if I omit the usual bulletin of news of home; of these matters I will only say that we all remain hale and hearty, and miss you tremendously.

My intention in writing to you is to try in my own inadequate way to make up for the deficiencies in understanding which should exist between us as father and son. I accept full blame for this; and you may have realized that our last lengthy conversation before your posting to Berlin—you remember: that affair of pipes, whiskey and carpet slippers before a dying fire, late one Saturday evening—was an earlier attempt to break through this barrier between us. I failed, of course. And yet, in the purity of your anger that evening, how my heart was rent to see in you so much of myself, the self of thirty or forty years ago!

Let me simply say this. I am your father. I do not regard myself as a coward, or less than a patriot. You need have no shame on that score, I assure you. But my views on the coming conflict with Prussia are clearly not ideas you feel able to share.

I have no desire to impose my philosophy on you; you are an Officer in the finest army in the world, and I am very proud of you. But I want you to understand me. When war comes—as I believe is inevitable—then, praying God preserve you, it will assuredly change you, for better or worse; and I want to try, one last time, to explain myself—my life, since those fateful days of 1870—to the young man I have raised.

You have read my own manuscript account of the adventures which befell me forty years ago—as well as the more polished rendering by Sir George Holden. George, before his untimely death from an illiberal intake of port and other substances, managed to parlay his experiences into a lucrative and rewarding career. He made his fortune, of course, with his scientific romance The New Carthage, whose premise was the discovery of anti-ice by the inhabitants of that ancient city, and their subsequent and spectacular revenge on their enemies, the Romans. The critics thought it “a smooth read but hardly plausible” …which was exactly the judgment of Josiah Traveller when he threw Holden the idea all those years ago aboard the Phaeton!

I begrudge George none of his windfall earnings—good luck to the fellow—but such self-publicity was not for me.

After my return to England in the aftermath of the use of that first Gladstone Shell, I resigned my post in London and returned home to Sussex. I studied, took my articles and have since worked quietly—and as far as possible anonymously—as a solicitor of no more than modest achievements in the local area.

But I have watched the unraveling of global events following that cataclysmic autumn; and it has seemed to me sometimes that human affairs have unfolded like a shabby flower about the single, dazzling point of light that was the Gladstone Shell.

I will not dwell on what I saw of the devastation of Orléans. I pray God you are spared such sights, Edward. But perhaps your career will take you to that ghastly site where the Prince Albert still rests, immobile since receiving its little gift from the Prussian artillery, a rusting monument to another war.