The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 19

Newly-awake, it stretched out, irritated by moving things and tiny obstructions. It could barely distinguish between piles of stone and people. Both were against the nature it had known. It had an impulse to clean itself by covering these imperfections. It preferred people wrapped in snow, not moving by themselves. But was this its genuine preference, or something learned from Clever Dick Cleaver?

'Hello,' shouted Richard, with his mind. 'Permit me to introduce myself. I am Richard, and I speak for Mankind.'

Snow pressed around his face, like ice-fingers on his eyes.

He felt tiny crystals forming inside his brain — not a killing flash-freeze, but the barest pinheads. The Cold was inside him.

'You are not Man.'

It wasn't a voice. It wasn't even words. Just snowflake hexagons in the dark of his skull, accompanied by a whisper of arctic winds. But he understood. Meaning was imprinted directly into his brain.

To talk with the Cold, it had to become part of him. This was an interior monologue.

'I am Richard,' he tried to reply. It was awkward. He was losing his sense of self, of the concept of Richard. 'I am not Man.' Man was what the Cold called Cleaver. 'I am another Man.'

To the Cold, the idea of «other» was still fresh, a shock which had come with its awakening. It had only just got used to Man/Cleaver. It was not yet ready for the independent existence of three billion more unique and individual intelligences. As Richard had guessed, it hadn't previously had use for numbers beyond than One/Self. The corpse-cores of its snowmen weren't like Man/Cleaver. They were tools, empty of consciousness. Had Cleaver killed his staff because he knew more voices would confuse his ice mistress? Probably.

What would Leech have said to the Cold? He would try to make a deal, to his own best advantage. Richard couldn't even blame him. It was what he did. In this position, the Great Enchanter might become a senior partner, stifle the Cold's rudimentary mind and colonize it, use it. Leech/Cold would grip the world, in a different, ultimately crueller way. He wanted slaves, not corpses; a treadmill to the inferno, not peace and quiet.

What should Richard say?

'Please,' he projected. 'Please don't k- us.'

There were no snowflakes for «kill» or «death» or «dead». He shuffled through the tiny vocabulary, and tried again. 'Please don't stop/cover/freeze us.'

The Cold's mind was changing: not in the sense of altering its intention, but of restructuring its internal architecture. So far, in millennia, it had only needed to make declarative statements, and — until the last few days — only to itself. It had been like a goldfish, memory wiped every few seconds, constantly reaffirming 'this is me, this is my bowl, this is water, this is me, this is my bowl, this is water'. Now, the Cold needed to keep track, to impose its will on others. It needed a more complicated thought process. It was on the point of inventing a crucial mode of address, of communication. It was about to ask its first question.

Richard had got his point over. The Cold now understood that its actions would lead to the ending of Man/Richard. It had a sense Man/Richard was merely one among unimagined and unimaginable numbers of others. For it, «three» was already equivalent to a schoolboy's 'gajillion-quajillion-infinitillion to the power of forever'. The Cold understood Man/Richard was asking to be allowed to continue. The life of others was in the Cold's gift.

'Please don't kill us,' Richard repeated. There was a hexagram for 'kill/end' now. 'Please don't.'

The Cold paused, and asked 'Why not?'

X

It was getting dark, which didn't bother Jamie. He lifted his goggles and saw in more detail. He also felt the cold less. Most of his teammates were more spooked as shadows spread, but Gene was another nightbird. You'd never know she'd come close to having a dirty great icicle shoved all the way through her chest. Perhaps she had a little of the Shade in her. She'd said she knew Auntie Jenny.

Regular Keith was bewildered about what had happened while he was away, and Susan was trying to fill him in. Sewell Head was quoting weather statistics since before records began. It was snowing even harder, and the slog to Alder wasn't going to be possible without losing one or more of the happy little band. Finding shelter was a high priority. They were in the lee of Sutton Mallet church — which was small, but had a tower. The place was securely chained.

'Can't you break these?' Jamie asked Gene.

'Normal chains, yes. Chapel chains, I have a bit of a mental block about. Try the spoon bender.'

Susan stepped up and laid hands on the metal. She frowned, and links began to buckle.

'Where's Head?' asked Keith.

Captain Cleverclogs wasn't with them. Jamie couldn't understand why anyone would wander off. Had the last snowman got him?

'Here are his tracks,' said Gene.

'I can't see any,' said Keith.

'Trust me.'

Jamie saw them too. Sewell Head had gone into a thicket of trees, just beyond what passed for the centre of Suttoh Mallet. There were buildings on the other side.

'I'll fetch him back,' he said.

'We're not being that stupid, Jamie,' said Susan, dropping mangled but unbroken chains. 'You go, we all go. No sense splitting up and getting picked off one by one.'

She had a point. He was thinking like Dad, who preferred to work alone.

Beyond the trees were ugly buildings. A concrete shed, temporary cabins.

'This is Derek Leech's weather research station,' said Gene. 'Almost certainly where all the trouble started.'

Derek Leech was in the public eye as a smiling businessman, but Jamie's Dad called him 'a human void'. Jamie had thought Dad a bit cracked on the subject of Derek Leech — like everyone else's parents were cracked about long hair or short hair or the Common Market or some other bloody thing. He was coming round to think more of what his old man said.

'Shouldn't we stay away from here?' cautioned Keith. 'Aren't we supposed to join up with folks more qualified than us?'

'You mean grown-ups?' asked Jamie.

'Well, yes.'

'Poor old Swellhead'll be an ice lolly by the time you fetch a teacher.'

Beside the building was a towering snowman. Bugs, grown to Kitten Kong proportions. The front doors were blown inward and jammed open by snowdrifts. It was a fair guess Head had gone inside. If he could get past the snow-giant, they had a good chance.

'Susan,' he said. 'Can you concentrate on the snowman? At the first sign of hassle, melt the big bastard.'

The woman snapped off a salute. 'Since you ask so nicely,' she said, 'I'll give it a whirl.'

'Okay, gang,' he said. 'Let's go inside.'

They sprinted from the thicket to the doors. Bugs didn't make a move, but Keith tripped and Gene had to help him up and drag him.

Inside the building, which was an ice-palace, the wind was less of a problem, and they were protected from the worst of the snow. Overhead lights buzzed and flickered, bothering Jamie's eyes. He slipped his goggles back on.

They found Sewell Head in a room that might have been a mess hall. He was acting as a valet, helping a