*
Further away from the waterfall, the river was still loud, but not so deafening. Idly, Jade identified the birdsongs she had been too distracted to pay attention to earlier.
"Tooo-whit!" was the brown seed-eaters they had dubbed not-sparrows, while "daaa-tatatata" was a bird with beautiful blue plumage that liked to nest in lightning-struck tree trunks.
She smiled, thinking of the expression on Alenn's face when they told her it was called "blue lightning." Official SA designations were unmemorable alpha-numerics, so it was tradition for survey teams to have fun with their unofficial names.
"Pip. Pip. Pipipip."
Jade froze in place, scanning her surroundings for the bird that had voiced that call. Its brilliant crimson plumage was easy to spot where it perched on a high pine branch surveying the area.
"Pip. Pip. Pipipip."
It also wasn't supposed to be here. They hadn't spotted a single sunset bird in the past three days, when during the summer survey they had been so numerous that you could barely go five minutes without spotting one or hearing their song. They had to be migratory, and gone for the winter, so what was this one doing here?
She shook her head again, and picked up the pace. It wasn't long before the trees gave way to the boulders, broken rock, and scraggly grass of the area surrounding the portal. Presumably left by glaciers like similar sites on Earth, it was akin to the Ice badger territory, only with a smaller footprint. This rockfield was a brief break in the forest, rather than the vast expanse that stretched to the north.
The path she normally would have followed along the riverside was under water, so she had to scramble laboriously over and around the jagged rocks beyond the waterline. As she got nearer, she noticed her breath coming in short pants and realized with some surprise that it was from nerves rather than exertion.
"They'll be there," she reassured herself. "They have to be."
They weren't.
The campsite was unmistakable, once she found the holes they'd bored for the shelter anchors. Likewise with the portal site, its footprint carefully marked out with titanium pegs driven into the stone. That was the first task any survey team undertook, placing the outer ring of markers before the portal closed behind them. No one wanted to be stranded by something as simple as an inability to find the portal home.
No one wanted to be stranded, period.
She walked across the portal footprint three or four times before going back to the campsite again. This time, she was struck not just by the complete absence of survey equipment, but by the natural debris scattered across the site. Twigs and pine needles could have blown in in hours, but there was a big branch, or maybe a small tree, lying broken across the stone where the equipment shelter had stood. That could only have come down in a major storm. A winter storm?
"Pip. Pip. Pipipip."
Another sunset bird hopped along the branch, picking at the rotted wood for insects.
Jade's com chirped, making her jump and stare at her wrist as if it had grown an extra hand. She shook off surprise and tapped the controls, growling impatiently when it showed a boot-up screen instead of the status display she wanted.
She waited, bouncing in place, while the screen reported on its data recovery process from an improper shutdown, until it finally let her take control.
The date was wrong, not just for what she remembered but for what she suspected. Her com claimed it was roughly a month beyond the end of their scheduled survey, which would be well into Ice's winter. She stared at the screen for a few minutes, then nodded to herself.
"It's showing the date it ran out of power, the last date in its records. It started up now because the solar cell finally got it back up to a functional power level. Which means… it really is spring."
She sat back on her heels and looked around again, taking note the new growth here, where everything had been dead or dormant during their followup survey. The sunset birds, notably absent before and now seemingly everywhere - when she focused, she could hear at least five calling in the trees and rocks. The river, running high and frigidly cold with ice melt from the mountains. Somehow, impossible as it seemed, she had slept through the winter, on a pile of living bodies.
And now…
She pushed the nascent thought away. Now she needed to build a shelter and a fire, before the sun went down.
*
Survival tasks kept her busy for the next few hours, but later, sitting in the dark watching the flickering flames of her fire, Jade couldn't avoid thinking anymore. The survey team was gone, long gone. She had to be assumed dead.
"Sorry Boomer," she whispered.
Somehow, the cat she might never see again felt more real than any other part of her current situation. Her Mom would take him in, of course, but he would hate it. He was used to being an only cat, and the five Mom had already didn't get along as it was. Her father couldn't take him though - he was gone even more often than Jade was. Than Jade had been…
She sighed. "So… no survey team to rejoin," she said, trying to face the situation head-on without giving in to despair.
"But... that doesn't mean I'm stuck here forever. There's no reason for them to reactivate the portal until a colony group buys the contract, but they had to have a bid, to justify the followup survey. It's been a few months, it's spring - they could start up any day now. One death on a survey team shouldn't be enough to prevent that, not when it was due to something as avoidable as Ice badgers."
She stared at the fire some more, considering the indisputable evidence that no one had come through recently.
"Just because they haven't yet doesn't mean they won't," she reassured herself. "It's still early in the season. So... I stay alive until they get here, and make sure I get through the portal before they finish moving in and close it up again. Right? Right."
It seemed like a reasonable plan. It was better than facing the thought of being stranded alone forever, at least, and it did seem likely that colonists would be arriving sooner or later. And in the meantime, she would do her job. Her com was working again, so she could record all her observations until the colonists arrived. That way she would provide a valuable addition to their survey before heading home.
Jade tapped the record function on her com, and held it up to her mouth.
"Addendum to survey: personal account of escape from an Ice badger larder, after recovering from induced hibernation. I awoke to the sound of purring..."
A satisfied smile spread across her face as she spoke, part of her already looking forward to the next day's work.
~~*~~
If you enjoyed On Ice, you might also enjoy these:
Refuge: Tales From a Zombie Apocalypse
An episodic narrative by Anthea Strezze
When a terrorist attack unleashed a new strain of the bird flu, people worried.
When the resulting pandemic killed millions, it felt like the end of the world.
Then the dead started to rise...
The Trouble With Wishes
Short stories by Anthea Strezze
Everyone wishes sometimes - for things to be different, or easier, or better. But when a wish is granted, can you ever get what you really want?
Zombie Variations
Short stories by Anthea Strezze
What's it like to be a zombie? Do you still feel love and fear? Or nothing but a ravening hunger for the brains of the living?
Coming soon:
Transformations
Short stories by Anthea Strezze
Self-transformation - What sort of motivation does it take to destroy who you are, in the hope of who you might become?
~~*~~
About the Author
A. L. Strezze loves the sense of discovery and wonder that science fiction provides, and strives to bring that sense to life in her stories. She lives in New England with her husband and cat, and maintains a blog at https://AntheaStrezze.com/blog.
Thank you for readi
ng books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends