Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [24]
They settled into the snow. Kim pulled her hood up and adjusted the foul-weather mask while Solly changed into boots. The lake surface was rough in the lights, and when she opened the door the wind tried to tear it out of her hand.
They couldn’t see much of the village, just one or two houses in the water. An old lifeguard tower stood near the tree line. And a white building stenciled SNACK SHED was sinking into the sand. “This is Cabry’s Beach,” said Kim, reading the name off the map.
Solly climbed down and looked around. The wind blew his hair into his eyes.
“Didn’t you bring anything to wear on your head?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t know we were going for a walk.”
“You’ll freeze.” She looked into the backseat. “I’ve got a mountain hat back here somewhere.”
“It’s okay, Kim. I’ll be fine.”
She found it and held it out for him. But he looked stubbornly back at her. She shrugged and switched on her wrist-lamp. “Maybe you should wait here.”
“Let’s go,” he grumbled, pulling up his jacket collar and stuffing his hands into his pockets.
She turned up the heat in her jacket, and they started for the trees. Their boots crunched in the snow. The wind blew in steadily off the lake and they walked with their backs to it. Neither tried to talk until they’d made it to the shelter of the forest.
“You okay?” he asked when they were in the trees. His hair was already covered with blown snow.
“I’m fine.” It was a deep hood and she felt as if she were looking out of a tunnel.
He pointed the way and took the lead. Overhead, something shook snow out of the branches.
Kim looked up, and wondered about the wildlife. “Solly,” she whispered, “are there, do you suppose, any animals here we need to worry about? Cougars, maybe? Or bears?” The terraformers in their wisdom had neglected nothing. Green-way even had mosquitoes.
“I never thought of it. I don’t know.”
“Are you by any chance carrying a weapon?”
“No,” he said. “If we run into something, we’ll beat it off with a stick.”
“Good,” she grinned. “Nothing like being prepared.”
They pushed through thick brambles and shrubbery, crossed glades, and eventually found a trail that seemed to be going in their direction.
They passed a collapsed house, entangled in new-growth trees, almost invisible until they were within a couple of meters. And a bench, incongruously set off to one side of the trail. “This was probably the way to the beach at one time,” Solly said.
She looked at her map. “Yes. Here it is.”
“How’re we doing?”
“Headed in the right direction. It’s not much farther.”
“You don’t think we ought to come back and do this in the morning?”
“We’re here now, Solly. Let’s just take a quick look, so I can say I’ve been here, and then we can head out.”
After Tripley’s disappearance, the villa and its furnishings had been willed to Sara Baines, his mother. According to the reports, Sara had closed up the house, but had been unable to sell it. The town was emptying out; people had too many bad memories, there were doubts whether the rest of the mountain might come down, the dam could go at any time.
So nobody had really lived in the house since Tripley came back from that last flight.
They left the trail at a glade with a tumbled shed, clumped through a stream, skidded down a slope, and got confused about directions because nobody had thought to bring a compass. “Don’t blame me,” said Solly. “I thought we were going to sit in the flyer and look at the lake.”
Kim was now in the lead. The trees closed in again. In some places the snow was too deep for her hiking shoes. It got down her ankles, and her feet got cold.
It was hard to keep a sense of direction. On one occasion they came out in a swampy area along the lake shore. They turned back, retraced their steps for about a hundred paces, and struck off in a new direction. Kim had never been a hiking enthusiast, and she was beginning to have second thoughts when the ground started to rise.
“This might be it,” she said. “The place was on the brow of a low hill.”
It was a slippery climb. They took turns