wisest.
They survived — Tedesco.
As icicles? — Chaney.
The wind blew spicules of ice against their backs as they sat below the glacier, staring up.
Someday they'll be warmed — Tedesco.
They'll join society again, in its next great era, as if no time has passed at all — Jask 'pathed.
If there is another great era — Chaney.
Night fell across the plain.
The air grew colder still.
They'll take up the reins of the Earth long after all of us have turned to dust — Melopina.
Chaney said, This is nothing but a morgue full of zombies, then.
A cryogenic laboratory, full of paying customers — Jask.
Morgue and zombies, Chaney insisted.
The grave robber should know — Tedesco.
Chaney got to his feet, slapped his hands against his sides to knock away the thin film of ice that had begun to form on him. He looked up at the glacier one last time. No matter what they are, he 'pathed, they are not the Black Presence.
The others rose, too.
We can't afford to waste time — Chaney.
We'll eat and start walking — Tedesco.
Without sleep? — Kiera.
If we pause to sleep, our food may run out before we get out of these arctic climes and into regions where game flourishes, Tedesco 'pathed.
Over a cold supper of beef jerky, Tedesco explained the markings on his third map.
At least, Kiera 'pathed, we know where the Presence is. We have only to get there.
Let's not build false hopes, Melopina 'pathed. Perhaps none of these three locations is inhabited by the Presence.
They all looked at the bruin.
He tore off a chunk of meat from a stick of jerky and shrugged. Melopina may be right.
If she is, Chaney 'pathed, what do we do then?
No one had an answer for that.
Coda: Deathpit and Beyond
31
IN the first two weeks of her term as the Preakness Bay General Merka Shanly drafted a complex set of rationing laws and initiated a governmental committee to research the science of agriculture and the many sciences of manufacturing with a mind toward making the enclave self-sufficient within the decade. In the fourth week the rationing laws were put into force, and the research committee delivered its initial report, listing possible research material sources “and manpower requests for the main body of the task. Merka personally supervised the punishment of ration-law violators and issued decrees for the conscription of men and women to work under the direction of the research committee. The historical tradition of, and the ages-old respect for, the office of General was such that — although they muttered disconsolately among themselves — none of the population took public exception to the new order of things.
In the fifth week of her reign Merka Shanly was moved back into the Military Suite, where the quarantine had been lifted after careful sterilization of every room. She put her clothes in the closets, disposed of the garments of the dead man. At night she expected to be plagued by his ghost or, at the very least, by nightmares in which the old General played the leading role, but neither came to pass. Perhaps that was because she had no time to wallow in guilt. She had time only to make changes in the enclave's life — and to wait fearfully for someone to discover that she was an esper, a tainted creature worthy only of death.
Throughout the sixth, seventh, and eighth weeks she administered the affairs of Preakness Bay with a single-mindedness that prompted Ober Iswan to comment, in private, that never had the Committee on Leadership exhibited such foresight as in the selection of Merka Shanly. When the holy Iswan made this observation to other members of the committee, they only smiled and nodded polite agreement. Iswan took their taciturn reactions to imply that they were more modest men than he had once thought. He never seemed to notice that his comrades had received special governmental considerations ever since the election of the new General — almost as if they were being repaid for some special service to the enclave.
In her ninth week, having read preliminary reports from the research committee, Merka Shanly instituted the first working farm within the boundaries of the enclave. Soil tenders were conscripted, crops were planted, and experiments in self-reliance were begun.
In her tenth week, when she should have been glorious beneath her wreath of accomplishments, Merka Shanly was in the lowest emotional ebb of her entire life. Two things conspired to bring about this gloom: her own developing esp power, which labeled her as an outcast but which she could not accept, being so dedicated to Lady Nature and so certain that her plans would benefit her kind; and her need for a man. The first she had learned to accept, and she had become adept at concealing her telepathic radiations. But the second was a greater problem. She was one of those people who needed physical contact, sexual experience, as much as water and food. Her self-denial, generated by her fear that a lover would learn of her extrasensory perception, had led to a frustration she could not much longer bear.
In the middle of her eleventh week in the august post of commander in chief of Preakness Bay she convened the Committee on Fruitfulness, of which she was chairwoman. The last meeting had been two months earlier, and much business had accumulated. At the end of the session, as the committee members were rising to leave, she ordered them seated and presented her own petition for a mate. She had one man in mind, Kolpei Zenentha, by whom she had once borne a child and who was the best lover she had ever had. He was currently engaged in attempted offspring generation with a woman named Kyla Daggeron, and the preemption of an already established sexual relationship was unheard of. Merka Shanly suggested that this was another rule that must be changed.
It was.
At the end of the eleventh week Kolpei Zenentha, a tall, slim, dark-haired man in his early thirties, moved into the Military Suite.
That first night Merka Shanly wore him out, then issued him a hypodermic of a virility drug and wore him out again. He slept all through the next day, like a child who had played too hard.
In her twelfth week of office Merka Shanly created another research committee and assigned it the task of establishing a large library of prewar books and tapes. By radio the committee could learn what titles other enclaves possessed and arrange for the copying of what volumes Preakness Bay lacked. The transportation of these books from one enclave to the other would entail arduous journeys for conscripted soldiers, but the establishment of a good reference library was essential to the rebuilding of a human Golden Age.
In the thirteenth week she rested.
In the fourteenth week as she was caught up in orgasmic delight, playing rider to Kolpei Zenentha's mouth, she forgot herself, and let her mind reach out for his. She touched him telepathically, transmitted her joy to him without words…
And was found out.
