Harry Turtledove - A World of Difference

“Yes, and a leader of warriors,” Lopatin agreed.

“Taught him everything he knows about fighting,” Juksal repeated. The Minervan boasted like a veteran, too, the KGB man thought. Lopatin had listened to more stories about the Great Patriotic War than he ever wanted to remember. Almost all of them, a security man’s automatic cynicism told him, were lies.

He was drawing near the boats at the makeshift landing when he happened to recall a piece of a war story he had thought long forgotten. The fellow who told it was a Stalingrad survivor and had the campaign ribbon to prove it. “The worst of the worst times,” he had said, “was when the Germans had us pinned back against the Volga and the drift ice on the river made it damn near impossible to get supplies across to us.”

Lopatin looked at the chunks of ice floating by, looked at the coracle to which he was about to entrust his precious, irreplaceable neck. He wished-oh, how he wished he had never remembered that story.

Emmet Bragg frowned as he examined the latest photo from one of the weather and mapping satellites Athena had left in orbit around Minerva. Emmet had a whole spectrum of frowns, Irv thought-this one went with real live serious problems. “What’s hit the fan?” Irv asked.

“I’m not quite sure,” Emmett answered; the frown changed shape, to reflect his uncertainty. “Here, see what you make of this.” He leaned over to show Irv the picture, pointing with a ballpoint pen at the part that was troubling him. “This dark line here?” Irv asked.

Emmet nodded. “That’s the one. Nothing like it on any earlier pictures o’ that area. That’s the country just west of Jotun Canyon from here, you know.”

“I recognized it.” Irv peered at the picture. Now he was frowning, too. “What do you suppose this is?”

“A lousy picture, for one thing, through scattered clouds and without enough resolution. I wish we had a Defense Department special instead of these miserable terrain-mappers-that’d tell us what was what.”

“Back when we set out, who’d have thought we’d need to be able to kibitz at card games from space?” Irv asked reasonably.

“Nobody, worse luck,” Emmett answered. “But I wish somebody had, because one of the things that line could be is the Skarmer army headed out to do its thing.”

Irv felt his frown deepen till it matched the one Emmet was wearing. “Yeah, it could, couldn’t it? They could be doing something else just as easily, too, though, or it might not be Minervans at all.”

“I know, I know, I know.” Bragg looked unhappy. “A spy bird would tell us, one way or the other. As is, all I can do is guess, and I hate that.” The mission commander sat brooding for a minute or so, then snatched at the radio set. “Who are you calling?” Irv asked.

“Frank,” Emmett said. He spoke into the microphone:

“Frank? You there? Answer, please.”

A moment later, Frank Marquard did. “Your humble canyon-crawler is here, humbly crawling his canyon. Found another fossil about twenty minutes ago, too. What’s up, Emmett?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I think maybe the Skarmer are coming. If they are, they’ll be heading up our side of Jotun Canyon. I don’t think you want to be there when they do.”

“Are you certain they’re coming?” Frank asked. “I’m further north than I’ve been before, and I’ve found some interesting strata here, things that don’t poke through down by Athena. I don’t want to leave if I don’t have to.”

“I’m not sure,” Bragg said, looking as though the admission pained him. He always looked that way when certainty eluded him, Irv thought.

“Then I’m not leaving,” Frank said.

Bragg made a fist, pounded it against his knee. He glanced over toward Irv. Order him back, the anthropologist thought. But before he could speak, Bragg turned back to the microphone. “You be alert out there, you hear me!” he said.

“Sure I will,” Frank said. “We need more lerts.”

“Not a good time for jokes,” Bragg said with a snort. “I mean it. Athena out.” He was shaking his head as he put down the mike. “Lerts.”

“If it’s not fight there in front of him, Frank doesn’t worry about it,” Irv said. He thought of Pat’s bitter words the night after Sarah had flown across Jotun Canyon. He had done his best to avoid thinking of that night ever since or thinking of Pat in anything but a purely professional way. Most of the time, that worked pretty well. For a moment, though, even his skin remembered how she had felt in his arms.

“Yeah, I know,” Emmett said, bringing Irv back to the here-and-now. “But I can’t make him come in just on account of my vapors. He’s got his job to do, down there in the canyon.”

“I suppose so,” Irv said. He sounded halfhearted, even to himself.

Bragg looked at him. “You, too, huh?”

“Yeah. Logically, though, you’re fight. Don’t misunderstand me, Emmett.” Walking in front of a train was surer trouble than getting on Emmett Bragg’s bad side. Offhand, Irv could not think of much else.

“Yeah, logically.” Bragg grunted. “Then why don’t I like it?”

The KGB studied Disneyland because visiting Soviet dignitaries liked to go there. One of the attractions, Lopatin had learned from a friend, was something called “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.” Never having read The Wind in the Willows, Lopatin did not know much about this Mr. Toad, but he was sure the fide he was taking was wild enough to horrify any amphibian ever hatched.

The coracle tossed in the surge like a toy boat in a bathtub with a rambunctious three-year-old. All the Minervans in it were blue with fright. Could Lopatin have changed color, he would have been blue, too. He wondered if Tolmasov had let him go along in the hope he would drown, and thought of ways he could get revenge even on a Hero of the Soviet Union when he got back to Earth.

If he got back to Earth. At the moment, he would not have given a counterfeit kopeck for his chances of making it to the far side of Jotun Canyon, let alone home again. Two boulders of ice had already missed the boat by a lot less than he cared to think about; he had fended off another one, fortunately smaller, with a pole.

And his coracle was luckier than many. One of the chunks of iceberg that just missed it smashed a boat a little further downstream. Minervans splashed into the water as the coracle instantly turned to kindling. A couple of warriors managed to hang on to floating debris; the rest simply disappeared.

Even if he managed to grab something, Lopatin knew, he would quickly perish; this temporary river was frigid as the waters around Vladivostok in December. There, at least, the Minervans had the advantage on him. To them, any liquid water was warm. They might drown, but they would not freeze. A dubious distinction, he thought.

The spray blowing in his face had already left his nose numb. And when he bent down to scoop water from the bottom of the coracle, the cold bit into his fingers through the heavy gloves he was wearing. His feet had also started to freeze.

Lopatin was bending to bail again when Fralk screamed, “Paddle! Paddle hard for your lives!” The KGB man jerked erect. A veritable ice mountain was bearing down on the boat.

“Mother of God!” Lopatin shouted. He had called on the devil’s relatives often enough in his career, but could not remember the last time he had named any of the Deity’s. Luckily the Minervans, unlike his comrades, would not notice.

He grabbed a paddle from one of the males, jammed it into the water again and again. He did not know whether he was a better paddler than the warrior but could not bear to depend only on the efforts of others for his survival. Slowly, so slowly, the coracle moved ahead. The blue-white slab of ice, sailing along as majestically as a dowager queen, took no notice of the artificial insect in its path.