Beastchild

said, pointing down the mountainside. "We don't have to go clear to the bottom after all."
        Two hundred yards down, there was a boarding station on the middle of the mountain. Stairs wound around a pylon, then jutted out near the top on a support beam, stopped at a platform which served as a boarding and debarking station. It was all quite ghostly seen through the waves of snow, like the ruined tower of a long dead civilization.
        Leo was forty feet away, kicking up clouds of white as he stomped down the steep slope, huddled against the wind, cradling the heat source against his chest. Hulann shook off his reverie and followed. At the base of the stairs up to the platform, Leo was waiting, staring up the steel rungs, licking his lips, squinting as if wrestling with a difficult problem.
        "Ice," he said to Hulann.
        "What?"
        "Ice on the stairs. No maintenance since the war. It's not going to be easy to climb up there."
        "There's only thirty steps."
        The boy laughed. "I wasn't suggesting we give up. Come on." He grabbed the single hand railing and started climbing.
        Before they were even halfway up, Leo slipped twice, banging his knees on the icy steel, and fell backwards once. If Hulann had not been close behind to stop him, the boy would have rolled to the bottom, banging his head on riser after riser, scrabbling uselessly at the purchaseless ice. When they realized that the reason Hulann was having no trouble was because his hard toe claws shredded the ice under him, the alien went first, making the glossy stuff into runneled treads which the boy could manage.
        At the top, they found the controls were frozen solid, jammed with drifted snow. They used the smooth gray heat source to melt this, freeing the levers. They studied the board until they were relatively certain of what they were doing; then Hulann depressed what appeared to be the proper device. There was a grumbling somewhat louder than the storm, a deep, angry sound like gods are said to make. Slowly, it grew louder. Louder still. Until it was the sustained cough of an avalanche bearing down on them.
        Then the yellow bee car rolled into view, and they saw the source of the artificial thunder: the cables were sheathed in ice from disuse, and the advancing car was cracking this away as it pressed toward its summoners. Long, translucent chunks fell down toward the white earth. The bee pulled next to the boarding platform, stopped slightly beyond it, swaying in the wind, the door only half aligned with the platform.
        They were forced to chip at the ice sealing the seam of the sliding portal. When that broke away, they opened the cablecar, jumped from the platform into the shiny interior. Hulann was fascinated with the dozen passenger seats, all bright black plastic leather studded with chrome -though surely the interior of a naoli spacecraft was quite a deal more spectacular than this simple cabin.
        Leo called from the far end of the cabin-fifteen feet away. He was standing by a console, much like the one on the platform outside. Hulann went to him, looked down.
        "We're in luck," the boy said, pointing to the topmost toggle on the board. Beside the toggle was a label telling where the cab would take you if you chose to flip this one. THE FRENCH ALPINE, it announced.
        "What's that?"
        "A hotel," Leo said. "I've heard of it. I didn't know we were close to it, though. It'll be a good place to rest."
        Hulann reached forward and set the toggle.
        The bee jolted and began humming as it moved back the cable toward the top of the mountain.
        They looked through the window in front of them, holding onto the safety bar that ran around all sides of the cabin, except where there were seats. The snow spat at them, coursed around them as they moved into the heart of it, gaining speed. It was very strange to be plummeting up, to be speedballing without the touch of wind. Hulann held tight to the safety bar, inspecting the magnificent view, seeing: -the gray snake of the cable stretching into the snow haze; -the rimed land stretching to all sides, losing its contour under the coverlet of winter, losing character and sex, like a sleeping giant concealed by cotton; -the great dark pines that bristled like whiskers out of the cold foam; -an onrushing pylon, steel arms spread to receive them, then jolting past them, making them sway so all these