They stacked the ice in a fissure in the cavern, on a metal grid so its meltwater could drain. As best they could, diverted the stillicide that slid down the face of the rock.

Now, in late summer, they still had ice.

Remembering was odd in this heat. That January day the first time she noticed Leo properly.

The languid way he wielded the pick. A sort of liquidity to it.

She did not think she was a body person. But. His had surprised her.

All the science here. All the tech. The astonishing engineering of burrowing through ancient rock to connect pipes to the floor of a full reservoir. And to keep their beers cool, it came down to a pickaxe. Not that, in that freezing January, any of them could imagine it would ever be warm again.

The sun though, now, was fierce. The only evidence of last night’s rain a grateful lushness in the leaves.

It was the first night Cora had spent alone for some time and she lay awake listening to it drum on the eco-foil walls of the pod.

The rain had been brief and heavy.

They needed it. The reservoir was low.

Now, the late-morning heat shimmered off the body of the train.

Cora understood the differentials. The load temperatures inside the vacuum wagon; how condensation formed immediately as the tanks filled; how the friction of the travelling train affected its surface temperature.

She felt she knew the train in some ways, as if it was a living thing.

She could not get used to the guns, though. They were as foreign and recent as the guards.

Cora thought of the cold water deep in the reservoir, loosing into the gravity feeders. Saw it, in her mind, as a liquid dark and slumbering, suddenly energised and burst into a white tumbling rush. Something passive and silent abruptly breaching with unbridled noise.

That was her thing. Latent capacities. The potential of a material to change the form of its energy.

Hence this block of ice. Hence this afternoon’s project. Leo did not believe it could be done.

It made more sense to collect the flowers first, but Cora knew that once the train was loaded, the mechs would be in the pumphouse, and she wasn’t in the mood for Ryan. Ryan would know Leo was away.

She could do without whatever mean little thing he’d do if they met. Whatever sharp little reminder.

He’d got worse since she and Leo had given up trying to pretend things were just casual, and Leo’d moved in with her.

She was still partly surprised. A year ago, she wanted more than anything to transfer to the Ice Dock project. Perhaps, she wondered now, to get away from Ryan. And then this thing with Leo happened. Quite by surprise. And. The idea of playing with icebergs melted away. She was happy.