Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [36]
She lurched forward, and her body plunged into the water. It was part baptism, part drowning. She vanished beneath the surface.
19
RLINDA KETT
Beneath the icy ceiling of Plumas, Rlinda and BeBob attended the Roamer funeral of Andrew Tamblyn. The three surviving brothers, somber and confused, worked with their comrades to prepare the ceremony. Though the reanimated ice woman had disappeared into the sea, Rlinda did not assume for a moment that everything was returning to normal.
Maybe Karla Tamblyn was happily playing with whatever creatures she'd found down at the bottom. Rlinda had heard the water miners talk of exotic sea creatures like singing nematodes and glowing jellyfish. A pall had hung over the grotto facility during the past three days, while workers watched, holding their collective breath and waiting for something else to happen.
Because of the Roamers' damned edgy vigilance, Rlinda saw no chance for her and BeBob to escape, and skipping away during a funeral certainly seemed like bad form. Even so, Rlinda was getting awfully tired of sitting on her hands, and she was always cold down here. What did she expect, living on a flat shelf of ice under a kilometer-thick frozen ceiling at the edge of a frigid sea? She had plenty of blankets and heaters in the Voracious Curiosity, but her beloved ship was docked on the surface, and they were stuck down here. . . .
Caleb, Wynn, and Torin Tamblyn had placed Andrew's body in a floating coffin of pressed cellulose, then packed dried icekelp around their brother. Caleb bent over the coffin boat and poured a thick translucent liquid onto the body and the surrounding flammable material. The biting chemical odor of fuelgel struck Rlinda's nostrils.
Wynn and Torin stood together, barely able to contain their tears. The twins exchanged nudges, each encouraging the other to speak first. Finally Caleb said in a raspy voice, "This is the second Roamer funeral for one of my own brothers. Andrew, and before him Bram."
"And before that we all came here to mourn Ross," Wynn added.
"Damned hydrogues," Torin muttered.
Now, there's something we can all agree on, Rlinda thought. The Roamers had good reasons to hold a grudge against the Hansa--she couldn't argue with that--but no amount of rationalization gave them any cause to take it out on her and BeBob.
The three brothers each said a brief reminiscence before they tossed igniters into the fuelgel-soaked boat and pushed the floating coffin into the sea, where convection currents pulled it from the broken shore. The fuelgel burned efficiently, setting the icekelp and cellulose on fire, as well as Andrew's shrouded body. Flames reflected on the frozen ceiling.
Standing on the ice shelf in the cold, Rlinda and BeBob held hands; they could see the steam of their breath. BeBob was actually crying. Her heartstrings might have been tugged a little more if she and BeBob hadn't been held hostage here. Both of them felt like outsiders, witnessing a very private moment.
As the boat drifted farther away, the funereal flames grew hotter until the cellulose coffin broke apart. Caleb turned aside, looking more angry than sad. Torin barely contained his sobs. Rlinda wanted to wrap her arms around him in a big hug, but restrained herself. Sympathy was one thing, reality quite another.
The Roamers kept their gazes down, waiting for the flames to finish burning out. A long, somber silence fell.
But the sheltered seas did not accept the new offering. The water around the remnants of the pyre began to bubble and froth like a cauldron. Hot steam curled around it like the shadow of a tornado. The boiling increased, churning and swallowing up the fragments of the burning coffin.
In the midst of the fury, something white and sharp like an elephant's tusk thrust out of the ocean. A pedestal of ice formed from the water and rose above the surface. Trickles flowed down and hardened like candlewax.
Her milky-white skin sparkling with frost, Karla Tamblyn stood atop the