Blood and Ice

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

December 9, 1 p.m.

DARRYL FELT A LOT LIKE an astronaut who'd just been told he couldn't take his space shot.

“But I feel fine,” he repeated as he watched Dr. Barnes make another note on his chart.

“That's not what your body temp indicates,” she said. “You're still suffering some hypothermia from yesterday's dive, and I'm not letting you go down today, no matter what you say.”

As Darryl had predicted to Michael, the chief had indeed authorized another dive, to retrieve the sunken chest if nothing else. And as for the ice princess, he'd said they should bring her up, too, if she wanted to come.

“But you're letting Michael go,” Darryl now complained to Charlotte in a last-ditch appeal.

“Michael is fine,” she said, “and besides, if Michael leapt off a bridge, would you do that, too?” She laughed, scrawled something else on his chart, and Darryl knew that he wasn't going to get anywhere with her.

He buttoned his shirt up and hopped off the examination table. In his heart, he knew that Charlotte was right-he was still feeling the effects of the dive. No matter how much hot tea he drank, and how many pancakes smothered in syrup and butter he ate, there was still some spot at his core that remained chilly. Last night, he'd slept under every blanket in the room, and at around 3 a.m. he'd awakened, nonetheless, with his teeth chattering.

“Killjoy,” Darryl said, as he left the infirmary. In the hall outside, he bumped into Michael, just coming back from delivering his own medical clearance papers to Murphy's office.

“You coming?” Michael asked, and Darryl had to give him the bad news.

Michael looked surprised. “You want me to talk to her for you?” he said, nodding at Charlotte's office.

“Wouldn't do any good. The woman is made of stone. You just go out and make the discovery of a lifetime without me-I'll be in the lab guzzling your bottle of wine. It ought to be safely thawed by now.”

Michael clapped him on the shoulder and loped off down the hall. Darryl pulled on his parka and his hat-even the shortest excursions, from one module to another, required protection from the elements-and, after a quick stop in the kitchen, headed back to the marine biology lab.

Although he had a lot of more important things to do, the bottle of wine was waiting for him, right in front of his lab stool, and he did find the damn thing strangely intriguing. True, it wasn't going to make his name or his reputation in the scientific community, but how many times did you get the chance to study some historic artifact? He felt like the guys who scraped the encrustations from the Titanic's dishes just to see the doomed ship's name appear again. And this bottle had a good chance of being far older than anything from the White Star line.

He reached into the tank, filled with room-temperature seawa-ter, and lifted out the bottle. Illegible shreds of the label hung down into the water. When he held it up to the light and tilted it, he could see the liquid sloshing around inside. Plenty of wine left-and possibly aged to perfection-for a victory toast that night. All he would need for his routine tests were a few drops. And it would be nice to know-if he ever did submit a small piece on the find to a scholarly journal-what kind of wine it had been.

The cork had held, reinforced as it had been by a quick and durable coating of polar ice. He took out the corkscrew that he'd just borrowed from the commons kitchen, but he was afraid to just insert it into the bottleneck and start drilling away. He wanted to go slow, and make sure the wine remained as uncontami-nated as possible. First, he secured the bottle in the vise attached to the counter; the clamp was normally used on reluctant bivalve shells. After a quick survey of the lab and its instruments, he selected a scalpel freshly sterilized in the autoclave and used it to cut away the remnants of the red sealing wax around the tip of the bottle. When had the wax been applied, and by whom? A French peasant in the time of Louis XVI? An Italian winemaker during the Risorgimento? A Spaniard, perhaps, and contemporary of Goya?

He placed the waxy bits in a pile to one side, then inserted the tip of the scalpel between the cork and the bottleneck and began gently to cut around the edge. He wanted the cork to be as loose as he could make it before employing the corkscrew. When the circle had been completed, he put the scalpel aside and stopped just long enough to put the triumphal march from Aida on the Bose audio system; then, to its opening flourishes, he placed the mechanical corkscrew to the cork and began to turn the handle. There was a moment of resistance, followed by a smooth entry-so smooth that Darryl was afraid the cork was going to disintegrate, after all. But the corkscrew eventually made it all the way through, and its lateral wings began to rise as the cork came up and out in one sustained motion. There was even an audible pop as the cork broke entirely free.

Success, Darryl thought, as he bent down to inhale the first fumes of this vintage wine… and immediately recoiled.

If he'd been wondering if the wine would still be even remotely drinkable, he would wonder no more. The odor was vile. He gave it a few seconds to dissipate, then, pricked by curiosity, put his nose to the bottle again. It wasn't just a bad aroma-and it wasn't just wine that had long ago turned to vinegar. The scent was something else, and it was something that, to a biologist, was disturbingly familiar. His brow furrowed, and he opened a counter drawer to remove and prepare a clean slide.

“All right, mates,” Calloway was saying in his manufactured Aussie accent, “I want you to listen carefully to what I'm about to say and do exactly what I tell you.”

Suited up once more in the suffocating dive suit, and with Bill Lawson dressed just the same, Michael was not about to argue with anything. He just wanted to get into the water as quickly as possible.

“You've got dual tanks today, but that still gives you a max- max, I say-of ninety minutes. And given the exertion of sawing through submarine ice, probably a fair bit less than that. Any difficulty with the saw, and you come up, pronto! Got that?”

Michael and Lawson nodded.

“That means, any tear in your suit, no matter how small, and you come straight up. Any tear in your skin-anything that leaks blood-and you come up even faster. We've seen leopard seals around the dive hut today, and you know they're not your friends.”

Michael did know-the Weddels were frisky but harmless; their close cousins, distinguishable by their large reptilian heads, were not. A Weddell would play with you, but a leopard, with its immense curving mouth, would bite.

“If you have to, defend yourselves with the ice saws.”

Each of them had been equipped with a fifty-two-inch-long Nils Master ice saw; it wasn't necessarily the most precise ice-cutting instrument, but with its wing-nut design and razor-sharp teeth, angled inward like a shark's, nothing could cut through underwater ice faster.

“Michael, you know where you're going, right? So you'll go down first and lead the way. Bill, you take the net and salvage line and follow.”

Michael was nodding the whole time while he inched in his fins toward the beckoning ice hole. A cool bloom seemed to rise up off it and into the overheated dive hut, and he noted that its diameter had been enlarged.

“That's it then, mates,” Calloway said, slapping Michael on the shoulder to indicate it was time to go. “Masks on, feet in the deep freeze.”

Michael sat at the edge of the hole, then slipped down the icy funnel and into the sea. He didn't have to go in search of the sunken chest; an earlier dive team had already gone down and retrieved it, and he'd seen a team of huskies dragging it back on a sledge toward the base camp. A big guy named Danzig was mushing them, and as he passed Michael, he raised one hand in salute. Word had quickly spread around the compound that Michael had made a pretty unusual find, and even if the ice princess didn't turn up, his stock had definitely risen.

Michael knew that she was going to turn up.

After orienting himself in the water, and waiting for Lawson to take the plunge, Michael turned away from the dive and safety holes and swam off toward the glacier wall that appeared in the distance. Much as he regretted it, he did not have his camera with him; Murphy had forbidden it. “I don't want you mucking around with photography down there,” he'd said. “You have limited time, and if you're right about what you saw”-he still hadn't been willing entirely to concede the point-”you're going to have your hands full helping Bill to cut through all that ice.” With his saw in one hand and a flashlight in the other, Michael propelled himself through the water like a seal, undulating his body and working his fins for all they were worth. Still, it was harder work, and more time-consuming than he thought, just to reach the glacier. It was difficult to gauge distances underwater, and especially so there, where the ice cap cast a pall over everything. Once in a while, a break in the ice might let some direct rays of sunlight penetrate the depths, creating a shaft of gold aimed straight at the black and benthic regions below, but otherwise the ocean water was a very pale and clear blue, like an early-morning sky in summer.

And his glove was leaking-not a lot, not so much to be dangerous, but enough to make things uncomfortable already. The glove was the one noncontiguous part of the suit, and as such, no matter how tightly you tried to seal it, there could be a certain amount of penetration. The linings underneath it absorbed the moisture as it leaked in, eventually bringing it to body temperature, but in the meantime it was a numbingly cold reminder of just what a hostile climate he was traveling in.

He slowed up in the water and turned to make sure Lawson- the ever-cheerful Boy Scout leader-was still with him. He could see his face mask glittering in the water, the sharp tip of his ice saw, and the salvage line playing out behind him; it was tied to his harness and tethered up top to a 200-hp winch behind the dive hut. The line, normally used for dredging up oil barrels and sunken wreckage, had two thousand yards on it and could withstand a couple thousand pounds of weight. Michael turned around again and continued toward the glacier. As it loomed above him, and below, he felt a note of hesitation, even fear, that he had not felt the first time. Then, he had been unaware of what the ice held. Now, he not only knew, but he was there to steal it. The walls of ice seemed more defensive now, like the walls of a fortress erected by some ancient god of sea and ice, and Michael felt like a soldier about to try to breach them.

There was even a low murmur of noise, a crackling and grinding, from the ice itself. He hadn't noticed it before. But the immense glacier was moving, it was always moving, though so slowly it could not be seen, and only seldom heard. Michael drew closer to the wall, and now he knew that the hard part was about to begin. The wall was vast, and finding the body was a question not only of longitude but of latitude. He could roughly gauge the section of wall where he had seen it, but at what depth? He would have to travel both up and down the wall, and that could take time. He motioned at one large area with his arm, and indicated to Lawson that he should begin to scout the glacier there. Michael himself moved thirty yards off, and to orient himself took one long look back at what was called the down line-it extended from the safety hole, far, far away, and there were colored pennants attached to it for better visibility. He tried to recall if this was the angle he'd had on it the day before. But he couldn't remember at all. He had been so shocked that he'd just paddled away backwards, in a burst of bubbles and flapping fins.

What he did remember was the quality of the light, and that, he decided, would be his best clue. The weather today was much like the day before, and the unchanging sunlight-if he could just remember how bright, or dim, it had been when he discovered the body-could steer him in the right direction. The water and the light was not the pristine blue that he was inhabiting now, so he deflated his suit and allowed himself to sink, staying close to the wall, a dozen yards or so. He swept the flashlight across its rough mottled surface in even strokes, back and forth, while looking for anything- a fissure in the rock, an unusual formation-that might trigger a memory. But so far, he saw nothing.

What he did notice was the creeping cold, colder than the water even a little ways off. The iceberg gave off a freezing breath that made him have to wipe his mask with the back of one glove. It also made him wonder what it could possibly be like to be a captive of that ice for decades, even centuries. To be absorbed, suspended, immobilized-like one of Darryl's specimens floating in a jar of formaldehyde-forever. Lifeless, but immaculately preserved. Dead, but not gone.

And he thought then of Kristin, lying perfectly still in her hospital bed in Tacoma.

He raked the tip of the saw against the glacier, and slivers of ice immediately came loose, like the skin curling off a potato. Another drop or two of frigid water seeped into his glove.

He went lower still, and the light grew dimmer, more like the quality of the light that he recalled. He swam from one side to the other of a wide swath, gradually working his way down, until something in the ice looked different-a spot where it didn't sparkle quite so brightly in the concentrated beam-and he went straight for it.

The closer he got, the darker and colder the water became, but his heart was beating fast. He waved his arms and fins slowly to keep his position, and surveyed the wall. There was indeed something buried here (there had been moments, though he confessed them to no one, when he, too, had wondered if he'd imagined it all) and he quickly waved his flashlight beam at Lawson, still a considerable distance above him, to catch his attention. Then he swam even closer, peered in at the ice… and saw her face staring out at him.

But it was-and it was not-what he remembered. He had remembered a look of utter horror on her face, eyes wide and mouth shaped in a scream… but that was not what she looked like now. Although it was impossible-and he knew he would never try to explain this part of it to Murphy O'Connor-her eyes were level, and her mouth composed. She looked not like a person in extremis, but instead like someone in the midst of a mildly troubling dream. Someone who would soon awaken.

Lawson swam down toward him, the salvage line trailing behind, and when he, too, saw the face in the ice, he held still in the water, taking it in. All along, Michael knew Lawson had been secretly dubious, wanting to believe what Michael had said but well aware of the tricks that deep-sea diving can play on the mind. But this was no trick, and now he would know that for sure. If they were going to extricate her, they would have to get to work fast-there were at least several inches of ice covering her, and covering whatever else there might be clinging close behind her.

Lawson placed his saw against the ice, about five or six feet down, and indicated that he would be cutting laterally there. He lifted the tip of Michael's saw, and made a horizontal cutting motion about three inches above the woman's head. The plan was to leave just enough leeway to be safe, but no more than that-a block of ice with a body inside was going to weigh a ton as it was.

Michael tucked his flashlight back into its belt loop and let the jagged teeth of the saw bite into the ice. He drew the blade toward him, like drawing the bow on a violin, and a thin groove opened. He pushed it back and the groove deepened, translucent slivers of ice peeling away. It would be a long job, but the saw seemed up to it. The hard part was making sure that he kept his body, and his fins in particular, angled away from Lawson, who was working below.

It was also important to keep his eyes on the deepening groove and not let them stray to the face in the ice. Looking at her could make his blood run cold, and the iron chain wrapped around her neck was the stuff of nightmares. He tried to regulate his breathing and listen not to his own thoughts but to the hissing of the regulator, and the occasional groan or sputter from the ice. It crossed his mind, in the strange way that he knew humans anthropomorphized everything, that the glacier was in pain, that it could feel the bite of the saw cutting into it, that it was fighting to hold on to its frozen prize.

But it would not win. Michael made steady progress up top, and when he felt that he'd gone deep enough, he turned to making a vertical incision. Gradually, both he and Bill were cutting a box around the figure, and around the other shape-also human, or something else entirely?-that lurked behind. Michael saw Lawson check his dive watch, then hold up a hand with bulky fingers spread, twice, to indicate that they should cut away whatever else they could for ten more minutes. After that, it would be up to the winch to do the rest.

Lawson removed a dagger-sharp piton from his harness kit, and with steady blows drove it into the back of the ice block they'd been carving. Then he drove several more. The idea was simply to create enough of a fracture plane behind the block that a sudden and powerful tug would tear the whole piece loose. When he had the pitons in, he unfurled the net, wrapped it as best he could around the chopped block, and secured it with several more pieces of Alpine hardware-the same sort that Michael routinely used on mountain climbs. When that was done, and he had clamped all the hardware to the unbreakable salvage line, he gave the line three hard tugs, waited, then gave it three more.

Michael and Lawson back-paddled a few yards off and waited for the winch to kick in. The first thing they saw was the salvage line, which had shown almost no slack, suddenly straighten out like an arrow; Michael could hear a high-tension thrumming in the water, and a second or two later, he saw the ice block budge. It inched forward, then stopped; he could hear the cracking and grinding of the ice. It was like sliding a block out of a gigantic pyramid, and he suddenly had a terrible vision of the whole ice wall crumbling down around him. He moved farther back and inflated his suit to rise a few yards higher in the water.

The winch must have pulled again, because the ice block came forward on one side, then the other, almost like a penguin waddling across snow. Again, it stopped, still clinging precariously to its frozen perch, before issuing a mighty agonized groan and toppling forward, away from the iceberg, and swinging free above the bottomless sea. Lawson quickly swam toward it, and even as the winch began to haul it up and toward the dive hole, he attached himself like a limpet and knotted the back portion of the net for added safety. Michael, stunned, was quickly left behind, as he watched the block of ice, the size and shape of a big refrigerator, drifting away, with Lawson holding on and hitching a ride. The glove on Michael's left hand was leaking again, leaving his wrist feeling like an ice-cold iron bracelet had been bound around it. His air tank beeped a warning, and with his ice saw at the ready in case of a leopard seal attack, he followed the trail of bubbles up from the depths and toward the bluer waters above.

From below, the ice block looked like a crystal ornament, something that might twinkle on a Christmas tree, as it sailed back up out of the void and into the living world… carrying its strange and petrified cargo.