The Cold Pools by Chris Ward

Coming up to the cold pools along the main approach road it was difficult to see anything other than the huge bluff that formed a natural barrier against the heat rising up from the valley as thick as smoke.  Already, cheaper tourist hotels were beginning to make an appearance, with their gaudy facades and neon signs and promises of low-cost bus tours up to the main site itself.
    Karen and myself, however, had a better room in one of the larger resorts up on the bluff.  The brochures promised the best views of the valley, and the freshest, coolest air that only the pools could provide.
    We were heading uphill past the first cluster of hotels when the car began to choke.  ‘Damn it,’ I swore, punching the dash.  Karen reached over and touched my arm, and when I looked towards her, her smile calmed me.  My own cold pool , I thought. My very own .
    ‘We’re almost there,’ she said.  ‘Don’t worry.’
    I smiled and felt a welling in my throat.  She smiled back, but her grin was just a little too wide to be safe and I saw one of the sores along her jaw line break open and begin to trickle pus down her neck.  I didn’t want to say anything, but she had obviously felt it and reached up with a tissue to dab it dry.
    I watched her as she arched her neck and tried to assume a swanlike posture of elegance and grace.  She glanced out of the car window and then back at me, her eyes defiant, but it was too late.  Feeling hopeless, useless, I began to cry.
    ‘Oh, Lewis, don’t ,’ she hushed me.  ‘I can’t bear it.’
    I swallowed down a sob and tried to be brave for her, but I knew that it didn’t matter, it was a waste of time.  Nothing I could do or say would ease the variant of skin cancer that ravaged her body; nothing would make this trip anything other than the last wish of a dying woman.  Karen had dreamed of seeing naturally cold water for the first time, and it was only with sizable donations from friends and family that we could make this trip and afford the high prices at all.
    I urged the complaining car on up the steep road that jagged back and forth across the bluff’s face.  Karen, ever cheerful, leaned forward in the seat, eyes straining for the sign the brochure had promised we would see about halfway up.
    ‘There it is!’ she shouted, and I smiled at her joy as I wiped away a tear with one hand.  ‘Quick, turn it off!’
    I flicked off the air-con and together we lowered our windows.  At first I didn’t feel it, perhaps because we’d started too early, but then, as we passed the sign I felt the cool breeze brushing against my face.
    The only breeze in the world beneath seventy-seven Fahrenheit: optimum room temperature.  For the past twenty years even night had been over eighty.  You could replicate the conditions of course, but here, on this bluff, was the only place you could feel it outside the comfort of your own home.
    Okay, so I had friends that claimed the peak of Everest was cooler, but as the road being built to the summit was barely half done and the plateau itself sat like a dead king in the middle of the most scorched of lands, it wasn’t really accessible for the masses.
    No, here was the only recognised place in the whole world where the air was cool, and as we finally emerged at the top of the bluff, we saw the reason why.
    My breath caught in my throat, and I heard Karen gasp beside me.  There, ahead of us, still some ten miles off but looming like a great blue-white cliff, was the world’s last glacier.
    ‘Oh my,’ Karen said.  ‘It’s even bigger than I expected.’
    I just nodded, speechless.  The road moved down a slight incline into a valley where dozens of hotels dominated the small town of Cold Pools, named after the lakes and pools that had formed at the foot of the glacier, a town so close to the glacier’s front that it remained in shadow for most of the day.  The brochure also told us that every year the glacier’s slow advance meant a dozen