Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Intrigue

“The traces I was monitoring just quit.”

“Do you think the spell burned out? Is it exhausted?”

“Maybe,” Karlini said dubiously. “I don’t know. Even if it did, I’m kind of worried it might have had some significant last gasp planned on its way out. “

“There,” announced the captain, pointing dead ahead.

“What?” said Karlini. “Oh!” A hundred feet ahead of them, a dimple had appeared in the surface of the water, as though a smooth transparent ball a double-arm’s span in diameter had been pressed into it. A river swell spilled into the hole, swept around its concave side. Rather than passing out of the hole and sweeping on across the river, though, the mound of water that had sloshed in tracked around the inside surface of the pit and then kept rotating, like the blade of a slowly spinning drill bit. With a gurgle and a swoosh that were dearly audible to the watchers in the ship, the edges of the hole spread out and the water on the walls inside began to revolve in earnest as though a plug was being pulled out of a drain hole in the bottom of the riverbed.

“Have you ever -” said Shaa.

“No,” stated the captain. “All hands on deck! Prepare for - what?” This last word was directed at Shaa, with a raised eyebrow and a lowered voice.

Shaa shrugged. “The unknown.”

“Aye,” muttered the captain. Then, shouting again, “Prepare for the unknown!”

People spilled onto the deck. Shaa was only peripherally aware of them. Ahead, the open whirlpool cone had abruptly started to fill from the bottom, to fill explosively, to fill and overflow . A mound of water, no, a hill, built above what had just been a hole, a surging mass of green and brown river water, green and brown except for the streaks of white inside it. Streaks? No, not streaks, but part of a single rushing shape, and the water was light green, not dark, and not just a mound but a frothing, tumbling -

The top of the water erupted. Spray flew to all sides, showering the boat a hundred feet away. Out of the mass of hurtled water burst the largest iceberg yet, not merely larger but large in any human-sized sense of the word, in fact fully twice as wide as the beam of the Not Unreasonable Profit itself. Directly toward which, of course, as it fell back onto the water, sending loose another titanic sheet of spray, the iceberg began to drift.

“Hard a-port!” yelled the captain. There was marginally more iceberg on their starboard side than there was to port, but it was still clearly a doomed gesture. There was obviously no chance of getting out of the way.

“Somehow,” said Shaa thoughtfully, “I believe I expected this.” He braced himself for the impact, and the inevitable dive into the water. Next to him, though, there was an electric whine. Shaa started to turn his head toward Karlini.

Something clear and shiny rippled past the comer of his eye, warping the scene behind it like an arm-thick fountain of pure water or a twisting crystal bar; it darted toward the iceberg, leaving a twinkling trail of distortion in its wake. The thing hit the iceberg a bit left of center and immediately slid like oil out across its surface. The note of the whine deepened; crunching, cracking, and grinding appeared on top of it; and the entire iceberg began to fibrillate. Fissures appeared. A cloud of snow lifted from its surface, and then the entire iceberg disappeared beneath the sudden compact blizzard with a powerful crack . Shaa dove for the deck and covered his head with his arms. Hail pelted down. The ship rocked, heaved, lurched, and the heavier fragments began to thud down around them on the deck. Shaa felt a smash to his shoulder and a near-miss sprayed splinters across his arms. Shaa gave it another few seconds, heard the patter begin to trickle off, and levered himself to his feet.

Ahead, waves lashed back and forth across the area where the giant iceberg had been; the ship itself had almost reached the spot. With an additional heave and a perceptible twist-and-slide to starboard, the ship bounced its way through the turbulent zone, bashing past the larger floating fragments that were the major remains of floating ice. The deck around Shaa was dented and bashed and a coating of broken ice twinkled over the entire bow of the ship. The others around him were regaining their feet as well. Next to Shaa on his right, the captain winced at him through gritted teeth as he moved one elbow gingerly around. Shaa eyed Karlini. “Looks like you were expecting this, too,” Shaa told him. “That’s not something you usually keep whipped up, is it?”

“All things considered,” said Karlini, shaking his head vigorously, sending a sheet of icicles flying off his hair, “it looked like it might come in handy. I thought a melter would take too long, so ...” He shrugged.

“I agree with your assessment,” Shaa said thoughtfully. “Just think of the energy transfer you’d need to push out to flash-liquefy that much ice. Why, it would be …” Shaa paused to calculate.

Wroclaw had produced another bucket, this one unsoiled by any noxious cleaning fluids, and - ever thrifty - was using it to gather up chunks of ice for the kitchen. The captain had moved to deal with the crew as they checked for damage and made things generally shipshape once again. Karlini, gazing off the bow and sunk deep in his calculations, apparently failed to notice the approach of Roni and Tildamire, even though the ice through which they had to crunch rested as much as several inches thick on the deck. Roni directed a fondly rueful glance at Karlini. In the best of times, her husband didn’t usually notice much that was going on around him without having his attention deliberately directed on it.

Shaa bent to pick up a chunk of ice. “Neat, Karlini, very neat. See - the cleavage surfaces are smooth, not powdered. “

“Are they really?” Karlini said.

“What have you boys been up to?” said Roni.

“So after all this, what do you think?” Karlini asked.

“Difficult to say,” said Shaa, turning the ice cube over in his hand, pausing to examine one surface more closely. “A good question indeed.”

“Either someone’s been trying a new recipe,” Roni said, with a sharp glance at Wroclaw, who shook his head emphatically, pointing with several jabs of his finger at Karlini, “or someone’s got some explaining to do.”

“Free will,” stated Shaa. “Random chance.”

“Or deliberate action,” said Karlini, gazing intently at the sky.

“Should we pay attention to them, do you think?” Shaa said to Karlini, sotto voce . “Or shall we prepare to get hit over the head with something nasty?”

Karlini looked wildly around. If Shaa had observed the approach of the women and had decided to show no sign of it, Roni’s husband had clearly and in actually noticed not a thing. Karlini was predictable, but so was Shaa, when you got right down to it; Roni had been quite careful about which one of them all she’d picked to marry. She looked at her husband, nodded her head in mild but familiar exasperation, then grabbed his shoulders with both hands and shook.

“Dear!” said Karlini. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Roni told him. “No thanks to you. Or is it?”

“As a matter of fact -”

“What are you guys talking about?” said Tildy.

“An attack,” Shaa said, “potentially.”

Tildy’s mouth fell slightly open, then closed with a thoughtful pursing. “You really think …?”

“I often try to,” Shaa said; his difficult mood had not entirely evaporated with the iceberg’s own vaporization.

“I mean, you really think somebody would try to attack us with a hunk of ice ?”

“It’s a significant possibility,” said Shaa. He gave up studying his ice cube and popped it in his mouth.