Anti Ice Stephen Baxter

Archiwum

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little good-humored wrestling.
Holden proved to be over-ample of girth, short of breath and generally unhealthy; Pocket was
wasted and rather frail; and Traveller though willing enough, vigorous and limber was seven
decades old and a mild asthmatic, a condition not aided by the wholesale destruction of his nose and
sinuses in some ancient anti-ice accident. So it was I who would work on alone in our exercise
bouts, the youngest and healthiest of us all.
The afternoons we would while away with games the Phaeton bore several compendia of games
such as chess and drafts, manufactured in a special miniaturized form for ease of storage; and we
would also indulge in a few hands of bridge, with Traveller's patent magnetized card decks. Holden
was a willing player but rather unadventurous, while Sir Josiah proved imaginative but rash to a fault
in his play! Poor Pocket, drafted in to make up the four, knew little more than the rules of the game;
and after the first few rubbers the three of us discreetly drew lots to determine who would bear the
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Anti-Ice
misfortune of partnering the poor fellow.
Supper was the heaviest meal of the day, served around seven, usually with wine and followed by a
globe or two of port with cigars; Pocket drew the blinds at this hour, excluding the unearthly
heavens beyond the hull and allowing us the illusion of a comfortable sanctuary. It was quite
pleasant to sit in companionable silence, lightly strapped to our wall-chairs, watching cigar smoke
curl toward the hidden air filters.
The evening would close, more often than not, with a rendition by Traveller on his collapsible piano
of a few hymns, or, more likely, of some of the rowdy variety-palace numbers of which he appeared
to hold an encyclopedic knowledge. With the port settling inside us we would float at all angles
around the engineer, his coat tails floating in the air as he played, bawling out ditties that would have
made our mothers blush!
And so for the next several days our ship traveled on, a tiny bubble of warmth, air and English
civilization, adrift on a river of celestial darkness.
Once the vertiginous fear generated by our state of continual falling was passed and also, in poor
Holden's case, a severe physical sickness reminiscent of mal de mer we found the sensation of
continual drifting more than pleasant. The novelties of floating, the endless ingenuity of Traveller's
marvelous gadgets, and the sheer peculiarity of our position all combined to make our predicament
at first fascinating and even enjoyable.
But the darker side of our situation was never far beneath the surface of my thoughts, and as time
wore on the dangers and uncertainty confronting us emerged ever more clearly in my mind, as
sand blows steadily away to reveal buried ruins.
My dreams centered on Fran�oise.
I passed idle hours envisioning the love which might one day blossom between us and my dreams
were so intense that sometimes it was as if I knew already that feeling of companionship, of relief
that one is no longer alone, that comes from true love. And, even beyond that: as I meditated further,
Fran�oise's sweet and distant face became transformed in my mind into a symbol of the human
world from which I had been torn.
Each morning I would watch eagerly as Pocket folded back the blinds, hoping beyond hope that
somehow our situation might have changed during the night, that our flight might have been
reversed by our unseen pilot (though Traveller impatiently explained more than once that were the
engines engaged again we should hardly sleep through the experience). But each morning I was
disappointed; each morning Earth shriveled a little more, demonstrating that we continued to recede
from the planet of our birth by hundreds more miles every minute.
So we four strangers, thrown so suddenly into this aerial jail together, waited out the days. We were
tolerant of each other wary even. Holden and Traveller bore their plight with stoicism and
fortitude, broken only by Traveller's impatience to return to his various engineering projects on
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Earth. (Personally I found my work, and Spiers's malevolent little face, easy to forget.) And
Pocket though the most vertigo-prone of us all seemed as happy in his domestic routine as if he
were on solid ground.
But as time went on without change, boredom, resentment and claustrophobic irritation grew within
me like weeds; and on the fifth morning, as I sat in my chair facing Pocket's bacon and toast
breakfast and listening to Traveller and Holden discuss the vagaries of the Stock Exchange,
something broke inside me.
I rose from my chair and dashed away my breakfast tray. "I can no longer listen to this!" I hovered in
the air like some avenging angel, an effect spoilt only by fragments of orbiting toast.
Traveller looked up, a blob of marmalade perched comically on his platinum nose. "Good God,
Wickers. Restrain yourself, sir."
I felt my anger shine through the trembling of my voice. "Sir Josiah, for the hundredth and last time
my name is Vicars, Edward Vicars; and as for restraint, I have had quite enough of that over the last
several days."
Holden said gloomily, "This will do no good, Ned."
I turned on him. "Holden, we remain trapped in this ridiculous padded box which hurtles ever more
deeply into the untracked void! And yet you sit and debate hypothetical stock movements "
Traveller took another bite of toast. "What alternative do you propose?"
I thumped my fist into my palm. "That we abandon this game of normality; that we sit down and
discuss ways of wresting back control of this vessel from the deranged Hun who has occupied the
Bridge."
Holden said, "Ned "
But Traveller nodded. "We will converse on any subject you nominate," he said with a rasp. "But,
sir, you will allow me to finish my breakfast in good order."
I spluttered, "Breakfast? How can you swallow toast in a situation unparalleled in the experience of
man when, indeed, our very lives are at peril..."
I continued in this vein at some length, but the old gentleman would have none of it; and I was
forced to subside, fuming, and wait until breakfast was over and cleared away.
Traveller, utterly composed, wiped his long fingers on a napkin. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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