Ten Sigmas & Other Unlikelihoods (15 page)

They look among themselves, and I smell the consensus odor. Then one of them turns away angrily. They can’t do it. No consensus.

I collapse onto the snow, head down, and watch the snow swirl between my legs. I am one who was six. The fatigue and despair catch me, and my eyes burn.

I am strength; I do not cry. But still my face is washed with tears for my pod, buried in the snow. My face is fire where the tears crawl. A splash falls into the snow and disappears.

We will sleep here in despair and die before the morning.

I look at them. I must get them down the mountain, but I don’t know how to do it. I wonder what thoughts Moira would pass me if she were here. She would know what to do with these four.

They are four. Mother Redd was a four. Our teachers are fours. The Premier of the Overgovernment is a four. Why do they cry when they are no worse off than our greatest? I am allowed to cry, but not them.

I stand up.

“I’ve lost my pod too, and I am only one!” I shout. “
I
can cry, but
you
can’t! You are four. Get up! Get up, all of you!”

They look at me like I am mad, so I kick one, and she grunts.

“Get up!”

Slowly they rise, and I grin at them like a maniac.

“We will reach the bottom. Follow me. I am strength.”

I lead them across the snow to the spill of the other avalanche. With the nanoblade on my utility knife, I cut a length of the rope that disappears into the snow. At the other end of the rope is my dead pod. I take a step onto the gray avalanche; perhaps I can dig them out as I have dug out Hagar Julian. I hear a rumble as the snow shifts beneath me. More snow tumbles down the mountain. It has not settled yet; more snow could fall at any moment. And I know that it has been too long now. If they are trapped under the snow, their air is gone. If I had turned at once, if I had followed the rope when the avalanche had stopped, perhaps I could have saved them, but I didn’t think of that. Quant wasn’t there to remind me of the logical choice. Bitterness seeps through me, but I ignore it. There are the four who are left to take care of.

I hand each of them a section of the rope, looping us together. Then I lead them down the mountain. It is nearly black, save the light reflected by the moon that splashes upon the snow. The ledge and gaping holes are obvious. It is the hidden crevasses that I fear. But every step we take is better than lying asleep in the snow.

Our path leads to a drop, and I back us up quickly, not wanting the four to gaze into the abyss. I begin to wonder if there is no way down. We were dropped off by aircars that morning. Perhaps the location is so remote that aircars alone can reach it. Perhaps there is no path down the mountain. Or worse, we will pass through the path of an avalanche and die under the piles of snow.

The snowfall is steady now, and in places we are up to our hips. But the effort is warmth. To move is to live, to stop is sleep and death.

The trees all look alike, and I fear we are stumbling in circles, but I know that if we continue downward we will reach the bottom. I see no signs of animal or human. The snow is pristine until we tramp through it.

The line jerks and I turn to see that the last in the line, the one with the broken arm, has fallen.

I go to her and lift her onto my shoulder. The weight is nothing to the ache I already feel. What is another sixty kilograms? But our pace is slower now.

Still the others lag, and I allow rests, but never enough to let them sleep, until the fatigue is too much and I let my eyes droop.

Oblivion for just a moment, then I start awake. To sleep is to die. I rouse the four.

The four. I am thinking of them no longer as a pod, but as a number. Will they refer to me as the singleton? The one? There may be a place for a quad in society. But there is no place for a singleton.

After the Exodus of the Community, after the wars that followed, it was the pods who had remained in control. The pods are now the care-takers of the earth, while the normal humans who are left — the singletons — are backward and luddite. The pods, just a biological experiment, a minority before, are the ones who survived cataclysm. Only now I am no longer a pod; I am a singleton, and the only place for me is in the singleton enclaves. Alone I can not function in pod society. What could I contribute? Nothing. I look at the four. There is one thing I can contribute. These four are still a pod, still an entity. I can bring them to safety.

I stand up. “Let’s go,” I say, but gently. They are too empty to protest. I show them how to put the snow to their lips and drink it as it melts.

“We need to go.” The one with the broken arm tries to walk. I walk beside her with a hand on her good arm.

The pine forest gives way to denser deciduous trees, and I feel warmer, though the temperature cannot have risen much. But the trees think it’s warmer, so I think so too. The snow is less heavy here. Perhaps the storm is letting up.

“This mountain,” I say, “is less than seven kilometers high. We can walk seven kilometers easily, even in the cold. And this is all down hill.”

No one laughs. No one replies.

The wind is gone, I notice, and with it the snow. The sky is gray still, but the storm is over. I begin to think that we might not die.

Then the last in our line steps too close to a ravine, and he’s down the side, sliding from sight. The next two in line, unable or unwilling to let go, slide after him, and I watch the slithering rope.

Again, I think. Again with this damn rope pulling me away. I let go of it, and the rope disappears into the gray below. The woman at my side doesn’t even know what is happening.

The ravine is three meters down, lined by a steep, but not vertical, slope. I see the three who have fallen at the base. I have no way to get them out, so I must follow.

I take the woman over my shoulder, and say, “Hold on.” I slide down the hill, one arm to balance me, one arm to hold her, and my legs folded beneath me, lowering myself down the slope.

No hidden tree branches, I hope. There are none, and sooner than I think, we are at the bottom of the ravine.

The three others are there, sprawled at the edge of a small, unfrozen stream. Sometime in the past, water has carved a cave-like trough into the ravine wall. The woman on my shoulder has passed out, her face gray, her breathing shallow. How bad is her fracture? I wonder. How much worse have I made it? Manuel would have known an elegant way to get her down.

The air is warm here, in this grotto that is nearly below the ground. It is like a cave; the ground is a constant temperature a few meters below the surface, regardless of the blazing heat or the blowing snow. I squat. It may be five degrees.

“We can rest here.” We can even sleep, I think. No chance of frostbite. We can’t get wet; the stream is too shallow.

A few meters down the streambed, I find an indentation. It is dry rock with roots overhanging. I carry the woman there and lead the others one by one to the cave.

“Sleep,” I tell them.

My body is exhausted, and I watch the four fall asleep at once. I cannot. The female is in shock. I have made her arm worse by slinging her over my shoulder. She is probably bleeding internally.

I look at her gray face, and console myself that she would be dead if we were still a thousand meters up the mountain.

Unless they had sent another aircar.

I sit there, my heart cold, not sleeping.

I have always been strong, even when we were children, before we first consensed. I was always taller, stronger, heavier. And that has always been my weapon. It is obvious. I am not about deception. I am not about memory, or insight, or agility. I am quick when threats are near, yes, but never agile.

I never thought I would outlive my pod. I never thought I’d be the one left.

I don’t want to think these things, so I stand up, and use my utility knife to cut two saplings that are trying to grow in the gully. Using the rope, I fashion a travois. It will be easier on the female.

“You should have left us on the mountain.” It is the one who I had first found in the snow. His eyes are open. “You’re wasting too much energy on a broken pod.”

I say nothing, though I could acknowledge the truth of it.

“But then you wouldn’t know that. All your thinking parts are missing.”

He’s angry, and he is striking out at me because of it. I nod.

“Yes, I am strength and nothing more.”

Maybe he wants to fight, I think, so I add, “I saved your life today.”

“So? Should I thank you?”

“No. But you owe me your life. So we will walk down this mountain in the morning, and then we are even. You can die then, and I won’t care.”

“Pig-headed.”

“Yes.” I can’t argue with that either.

He is asleep in moments, and I am too.

*

I am stiff and cold in the morning, but we are all alive. I squat on the stones and listen for a few moments. The trickle of the water muffles all sound. I can’t hear the whine of a rescue aircar. I can’t hear the shouts of searchers. We have traveled so far that they will not look for us in the right spot. We have no choice but to continue on.

A wave of doubt catches me unaware. My choice has doomed us. But more than likely staying on the mountain would have done the same, only sooner. These four want that, I know. Perhaps I should too.

I touch my pockets one by one. I am hungry, but I already know there is no food. I was just stepping out of the tent for a moment. I had not prepared myself for a long journey in the cold. I check the pockets of the injured one, but she too is without food.

“Do you have food?” I ask the male, the one who argued with me. “What’s your name anyway?”

“Hagar Jul —” he starts to say, then stops. He glares at me. “No food.”

I squat next to him. “Perhaps I can lead you back up the mountain, and then you’ll forgive me for saving you.”

“’Saving’ is a debatable term.”

I nod. “What’s your name?”

We have been classmates for ten years, and yet I do not know his individual name. We have always interfaced as pods, never as individuals.

He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, then says, “David.”

“And them?”

“Susan is the one with the broken arm. Ahmed and Maggie.” These three are still asleep on the ground.

“The others may still be alive,” I say, and as I say it, I know it is what I wish for myself. But I saw the river of snow that carried them away.

“We didn’t find Alia and Wren,” he says, and then he coughs. It is to hide the sob.

I turn away, not wanting to embarrass him, and I say, “One of them found our tent. She may still live.”

“That was Wren. Alia was near me.”

“A rescue party —”

“Did you see a rescue party?”

“No.”

“A body will survive for an hour in the snow if there’s air. If there’s no air, then it is ten minutes.” His voice is savage. The other three stir.

“It was like swimming in oil. Like swimming in a dream while smothering,” David says.

“David.”

It is Maggie. She pulls him close, and I smell the tang of consensus. They gather near Susan and sit for minutes, thinking. I am glad for them, but I walk down the stream several meters, not wanting to be reminded. I am a singleton now.

The creek twists and turns. I pull myself across a rotten pine tree blocking the way, banging loose a rain of brown needles. My breath hangs in the moist air. It is not cold anymore, and I feel like a thaw has passed through me.

The stream widens and opens up over a rocky basin where it spills in white spray. I see the valley before me, shrouded in mist. A kilometer below, the stream merges with a river. The ground to the river is rough and rocky, but not as snowy as we have traveled until now. Nor is it as steep.

We’d left for the survival trip from a base camp near a river. I can only suppose that this is the same river. Following it would lead us to the camp.

I hurry back to the four.

They stand apart, their consensus concluded. David hoists Susan’s travois.

“Are you ready?” I ask.

They look at me, their faces relaxed. This is the first time these four have consensed since their pod was sundered. It is a good sign that they can do it with just four.

“We’re going back to find Alia and Wren,” David says.

I stand for a moment, voiceless. They have reached a false consensus. It is something that we are trained to detect and discard. But the trauma and loss they have suffered has broken their thought processes.

David takes my silence for agreement, and he pulls Susan up the streambed.

I stand, unable to resist a valid consensus, unable to stop them from climbing back up the mountain. I take one step toward them, perhaps to fall in line with them, but I stop.

“No!” I say. “You’ll never make it.”

The four of them look at me as if I am a rock. It’s not false consensus; it’s pod instability. Insanity.

“We need to re-form the whole,” David says.

“Wait! You’ve reached false consensus!”

“How could you know? You can’t consense at all.” The biting words jolt me.

They start walking. I run to intercept, placing a hand on David’s chest.

“You will die if you go back up the mountain. You can’t make it.”

Ahmed pushes my arm away.

“We have to get back to Alia and Wren.”

“Who was your ethicist?” I say. “Was it Wren? Is that why you’re making faulty consensus? Think! You will die, just like Wren and Alia are dead.”

“We had no ethical specialist,” Maggie says.

“I saw the river from the end of this gully. We’re almost to the camp! If we turn around, we will never find our way. We will be on the mountain at night. We have no food. We have no shelter. We will die.”

No response but a step forward.

I push David hard, and he stumbles. Susan screams as the travois slams onto the rocks.

“You have reached a faulty consensus,” I say again.

Pheromones flood the air, and I realize much of it is mine: veto, a simple pheromone signal we all know but rarely use. David swings at me, but I stop his fist. He is not strength.