Scattered Suns - Kevin J. Anderson [196]
Strangest of all, he actually sensed his mother down there, felt her existence. Determined to bring her back, if only to give her a proper Roamer farewell, Jess moved laterally. He parted the frozen water and let it fold behind him until he hovered like an insect in amber before the sunken rover. The vehicle had come to an equilibrium in the hardened slush. Its windows had been smashed open by the pressure, its interior filled with metal-hard ice.
But Jess plunged in as if the barrier was not there. Inside, he saw a solidified human form like a statue in the driver’s chair. Her arms were spread out, as if welcoming the embrace of death. For some reason, Karla had opened her helmet’s faceplate at the last moment. He had heard of people in the last stages of extreme hypothermia who experienced inexplicable physical reactions, hot flashes that made them attempt to tear off their clothes.
Karla’s face was frozen, her eyes open, her mouth set in a contented line, not quite a smile, but certainly not fear of impending death. She’d been at peace in the end. She’d had time to say her goodbyes, to accept her fate, knowing no one could ever come to rescue her. Jess remembered that day as one of the longest in his life, gathered with his father and Ross and Tasia in the communications shack. She hadn’t sounded surprised by anything they said, just happy to hear their voices as she slowly faded...
Now, with energized water flowing around him, Jess moved his hands, sketching out lines like a sculptor mapping a block of marble. With nothing more than a thought, he cut Karla Tamblyn free of her icy prison. Carrying her body, still surrounded by a shell of solid ice, he drifted backward until he emerged from the wrecked rover.
All around him, he melted and flowed a pathway through the ice, which immediately re-formed behind him. To him, water was an infinitely mutable environment. He surrounded them with a bubble that rose through the barrier.
Looking up through hundreds of meters of solid ice at the dim glow of daylight far above, he willed himself to rise with his mother in his arms. Never had he felt so grateful for the wental abilities; at last, he could make use of them in a way that would not hurt other human beings.
Reaching the surface, Jess kept his mother encased in the sheltering block of ice. After so much time, he did not want her fragile body damaged by exposure to hard vacuum. He made his way to the wellheads and the external markers of the Plumas water mines. Then, choosing his path carefully, he sank again, paralleling one of the lift shafts until he reemerged beneath the frozen crust.
Under the light of the artificial suns he rested Karla’s body on the icy shelf. As if shaping clay, he ran his bare palms over the outside of the block, letting just a spark of wental energy trickle out so he could smooth the sheath. He let a bit of the power fade its way inside, seeking the tiny spark that Jess saw within his mother’s frozen form. The water around her began to glisten with diamond droplets, brighter than ice.
His three uncles hurried out from their heated enclosures. “By the Guiding Star!” Wynn cried. “Is that Karla? Bram’s sweet wife Karla—”
“How did you ever find her, Jess?” Torin asked.
“The wentals helped me. I have let the water entities touch—”
Jess suddenly reeled as images, words, and thoughts sang through the wentals within him, a message picked up by the other dispersed water entities. One of his volunteers, a water bearer...Nikko Chan Tylar! He had found Cesca, and they were in great danger.
“I have to go,” Jess barked. “The base on Jonah 12 has been destroyed. Cesca’s in trouble.” He ran toward the lift shaft and the vertical passage that would take him out to his wental starship.
His uncles stared after him, then turned uneasily back to the frozen but slowly melting shape of Karla Tamblyn. “But...what do we do with her, Jess?”
Overwhelmed by the desperation in Nikko’s