Blood and Ice

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

December 13, 6 p.m.

ON THE TRIP BACK, Michael begged, and Danzig agreed, to let him drive the dogsled. After a few rudimentary pointers, Danzig clambered into the cargo shell-it was even a tighter squeeze than it had been for Michael-and said, “Ready?”

“Ready” Michael replied, adjusting his goggles and pulling his furred hood tighter around his face. Then, gripping the handlebars and making sure his feet were planted on snow and not ice, he shouted the order-”Hike!”-that Danzig always used. The dogs, perhaps unaccustomed to his voice, at first didn't move; Kodiak actually turned around and looked at him questioningly

“You've got to do it with some authority,” Danzig said. “Like you mean it.”

Michael cleared his throat-now he felt like he was auditioning for the dogs-and shouted, “Hike!” while giving a sharp jerk on the mainline.

Kodiak, in the lead position, whipped around and jumped forward; the other dogs, taking their cue, started to pull, as Michael ran behind, pushing the handlebars.

“Jump on!” Danzig warned him, and just as Michael got his boots onto the wooden runners, the sled gathered momentum and took off across the snow and ice. Danzig had taken the trouble to point it in the right direction, so Michael didn't have to worry about making a turn, but the task was already harder than he had imagined. As smooth as the surface might look, it was filled with bumps and cracks and stones, and he could feel the shock of each one radiating up his legs. It was all he could do to keep his balance and stay on the runners.

“Loosen up!” Danzig cried over his own shoulder, and Michael thought, Easier said than done.

Still, he tried to let his shoulders fall and his arms bend a bit, and he willed his knees to unlock.

“If you want ‘em to go straight ahead,” Danzig advised, though Michael had a hard time hearing him over the wind battering at his hood, “shout ‘Straight ahead!’ “

Okay, that one wouldn't be hard to remember.

“And if you want ‘em to go slower, pull back on the lines and shout, ‘Easy!’ “

Michael had no idea how fast they were actually going, but the impression of speed was incredible. As he clung to the rubberized handlebars, the icy landscape went flying by on either side. When he'd been hunkered down in the shell, it had been quite different; he'd been warm and protected, and everything had been seen from just a few feet off the ground. But standing up, with the wind smacking his face and rippling at his sleeves-the sound reminded him of the snapping flag at Point Adelie-it was both exhausting and invigorating. A cloud of ice crystals, thrown up by the paws of the running dogs, stung his lips and spattered like rain on his goggles. Carefully, he raised one glove, swiped the crystals away, then grabbed for the handlebars again.

But as he began to feel the rhythm of the team and became accustomed to the swooshing movement of the sled, he began to relax. He could look beyond the bushy heads and tails of the dogs and off into the distance. The base was still too far off to be seen at all, and that was just as well. What he saw instead was simply a limitless continent of snow and ice and permafrost-larger, he knew, than Australia, but so desolate that it made the great outback look crowded. The sled was clinging to the shoreline, which comparatively teemed with life, but just a few miles inland, the seals no longer frolicked, the birds ceased to fly, and even the modest lichen disappeared from sight. It was a desert, as bereft of life-in fact, as hostile to it-as anyplace on the planet. Humans had found a way to reach the South Pole; they could fly over it, they could plant a flag, they could take some measurements, but they could never really claim it. No one could really stay there, and only a madman would want to.

The coppery sun was hanging like a watch fob, in an empty sky. Time had become as fluid for Michael as it did for everyone in the Antarctic-he'd already used up nearly half of the time on his NSF pass, but the days simply flowed into each other like a running stream. He had to check his watch constantly, but even then he couldn't always tell if it was a.m. or p.m. There were several times when he had gotten confused, and occasions when he had suddenly had to part the blackout curtains around his bunk, stagger into the hall, and confirm whether it was night or day with the first person he saw. Once it had been Spook, the botanist, who was seldom seen outside his lab-or “the flower shop,” as it was known to the grunts-and together they had agreed it was afternoon, when it actually turned out to be the dead of night. They'd gone to the commons and been surprised to find it so empty. That was when Michael had looked at Spook more closely and seen the telltale signs of Big Eye-the glassy stare, the slack, though oddly bemused, expression.

It was also when he'd started regulating his own sleep cycle with Lunesta or lorazepam-whatever he could get the good Dr. Barnes to prescribe for him that night.

“There's an old saying,” she'd advised. “If one person tells you that you look tired, don't worry about it. But if two people tell you that you look tired, lie down.”

“What are you telling me?”

“Lie down-and take it easy.”

Michael knew that he'd been pushing it-photographing everything, making endless notes in his journal, trying to master all the polar skills from igloo construction to, right now, dogsledding-but he was conscious of the limited time he had at Point Adelie, and he didn't want to overlook anything. On New Year's Eve, the supply plane would carry him back out, and he didn't want to find himself back in Tacoma, wondering why, for instance, he hadn't taken some photos inside the old Norwegian church-already he was planning to get back there-or how he'd failed to solve the mystery of Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming.

Even now, he knew, the block of ice was slowly thawing. He'd have to go and see it as soon as they got back to base and get some more photos of that stage in the transformation. It was funny, but that was how he'd come to think of it-as a metamorphosis. The ice was the chrysalis, from which the two lovers would emerge-for lovers, he felt certain, was what they must have been. Who else would have been so yoked together, with coils of chain, and consigned to a watery grave? He tried to imagine the scenario, any scenario, that would make sense of it all. Were they captured and thrown into the sea by a jealous husband? Or was it done at the orders of a spurned wife? Had they violated some code of conduct- a code of the sea, or, given the gold braid on the man's uniform, of the military? What crime could they have committed that such an awful crime would have been committed in turn against them?

The dogs made a wide circle to skirt some uncommonly high sastrugi-windblown ridges of snow and ice-and Michael was reminded again that the dogs knew the route better than anyone. And they were heading home, to their comfortable kennel, with its straw-lined floor and food bowls. All he had to do, most of the time, was hang on to the handlebars and stay on the runners. He hadn't heard a peep out of Danzig, and he had the distinct impression that the man was asleep, his chin resting on his chest, his hood gathered close around his face. Whether that was a sign of his confidence in Michael, or in the dogs, wasn't clear, but Michael hoped he could make it all the way back to the base without waking him.

Far off on his left, out on the ice floes, he saw a tiny red light flash, and a few minutes later he saw it again-the beacon, he realized, on top of the dive hut. Michael had witnessed some of the traps being hauled up from the bottom, several of them containing stunned and gasping fish, with translucent gills and white eyes, and he'd watched as Darryl transferred the ones that had survived the trip to specimen buckets. But how, he wondered, could such a confirmed vegetarian and animal rights activist do this kind of work?

“Rationalization is the key,” Darryl had said. “I tell myself that, by studying the few, I can save the many. The first step in getting the world to conserve natural resources is to remind the world that they are imperiled.” He'd lifted one dead fish by its tail and gently deposited it in a separate bucket, packed with ice. “And if I work fast, I can still get an interesting blood sample, even from this one.”

As the sled drew parallel to the dive hut, the dogs turned inland, several of them yelping in gleeful anticipation. The blades swished through the snow as the sled surmounted a low hill, and now Michael could see the camp. The various modules and sheds and storehouses looked, from here, like the Lego blocks he'd played with as a kid, strewn about in only the rudest semblance of order. A collection of black and gray structures, with huge yellow Day-Glo circles painted on their roofs so that the camp could be spotted by the supply planes in the long, dark austral winter.

Hard as it was to live there in the summer, with the unending light, Michael could barely fathom how anyone withstood a winter at the South Pole.

Danzig stirred in the shell and raised his head. “We there yet?” he mumbled.

“Almost,” Michael said.

Now he could see the American flag, so stiffened by the wind that it looked flat.

“But since you're awake,” Michael said, “what do you say to get the dogs to stop?”

“Try whoa.”

“Try it?”

“It doesn't always work. Pull back on the lines, hard, and step down on the brake.” Michael glanced down at the metal bar, with two claws, that served as the brake, and prepared to step on it as soon as the sled got within a hundred yards of the kennel. He didn't anticipate a swift stop.

From the ocean side, he could hear the distant roar of a snowmobile, and he couldn't help but compare it to the smooth, natural whooshing of the sled. As a photographer-somebody who relied upon all the latest gizmos-he knew he was in no position to throw stones at technology. Hell, if it hadn't been for airplanes, he'd never have gotten here, and if weren't for digital cameras, he'd be fumbling with a lot of frozen, broken, and scratched film. But the noise of the snowmobile, which looked like it would arrive back at the base just about as he did, was an intrusion nonetheless, like a power mower breaking the perfect quiet of an August morning. He wondered, as he watched it zip across the ice like a black bug skittering across a tabletop, if Darryl was on board, loaded down with fresh specimens.

The kennel was at the back of the station, beyond the quad where the dorms and administration modules were set up, back where the labs butted up against the equipment sheds and generators. Even though the generators were placed as far away from the dorms as possible, there were still many nights, if the wind was down, when Michael could hear their constant thrumming. When he'd complained about it at breakfast one morning, Franklin had said, “Worry about it when you don't hear that racket.”

The dogs cut a narrow path past the ice-core bins and the botany lab, past the garage where the Sprytes and snowmobiles and augers were housed, and on toward the kennel, across a winding alley from the marine biology lab. Michael shouted “Whoa!” to almost no effect, and pressed with both feet on the brake. He could feel its steel claws digging into the permafrost and slowing the speed of the sled, but they weren't slowing it enough for a soft landing. He shouted again and leaned back, with all his weight, on the mainline, until he saw the brush bow, at the front of the sled, lift an inch or two, and the dogs gradually wind down. Kodiak stopped straining against the harness and fell into a trot, and the others immediately followed suit. The blades coursed almost silently across the snow and ice, until the sled pulled up to the kennel-an open shed with a hayloft above, illuminated by a glaring, white light. From the happy reaction of the dogs, it looked to them like the Ritz.

“Nice job, Nanook,” Danzig said, hoisting himself up and out of the shell. “What's on the meter?”

Sinclair had heard the sled arriving-the barking of the dogs, the runners cutting through the snow. But he didn't dare to open the door to see what was out there-for all he knew, a guard might be posted right outside.

There were no proper windows, either, but he did see a narrow glass panel running just below the flat ceiling, close to the door, and he quietly drew a stool over to it. He stepped up on the stool-his socks, still damp, squishing on its seat-and tried to peer outside. The noise of the dogs was quite close. But the window was so encrusted with snow and ice, he could barely see anything. On his side of it, however, there did appear to be a handle of some kind-like a crank-and when he turned it, the bottom of the window lifted, pushing some snow out of its way. He cranked it again, and now he had a couple of inches through which he could see. The blast of wind, despite the narrowness of the aperture, was forbidding.

He saw an ice-packed alley, with a team of wolfish dogs prancing through it. There were two men on the sled-one, in a bulky, hooded coat, was driving, and the other, wearing a necklace of bones around his neck, was riding in the carriage. The sled ground to a halt inside a wide-open barn-brightly lighted, even though it appeared to Sinclair to be midday outside-and the man in the sled clambered out. Sinclair could not hear what the men were saying. But his attention was drawn instead to the back of the dog pen.

His chest was there. The one that had contained the cache of bottles.

The men pushed their hoods back and lifted some sort of heavy dark spectacles from their eyes. The driver was young-maybe Sinclair's own age-tall, with longish black hair; the other man, with a full beard and wide Slavic cheekbones, was older and stocky. Neither of them wore anything that suggested a uniform, or national allegiance, of any kind, but that was little help. Sinclair had known soldiers, so weary and so encumbered with gear, that by the time they arrived at the front, they looked more like a band of hooligans than Her Majesty's own.

The bearded man was untying the harness lines-Sinclair was reminded of his own horses and carriages, back at his family's estate in Nottinghamshire-while the driver filled a stack of bowls with food from a sack. One by one, the dogs were tied to stakes, spaced a few feet apart; their eyes were riveted on the bowls as the young man dispensed them. While the dogs devoured their meals, the bearded man hung his overcoat on a wall hook-he had some other coat on underneath it-where Sinclair saw a motley assortment of other garments, hats and gloves and even a pair of those green spectacles, also hanging.

More and more, he knew that he would have to raid that barn. There was food (even if it was only considered fit for dogs), there was clothing… and there was his chest.

“What do you see?” Eleanor whispered.

“Our next objective.”

He climbed down from the stool and began to put his own clothes back on.

“Are they dry yet?” Eleanor asked. “If they're not dry…”

He lifted his saber out of its scabbard-it stuck for a second, before sliding free-then slid it back in again. He hoped he would not have to draw it, but it was best to know, that if things came to such a pass…

“What do you want me to do?” Eleanor asked, her voice not only soft but weak. He knew she hadn't really tested her strength yet-for that matter, neither had he-but he wondered if she would be fit to travel, as they would no doubt have to do, and especially in what appeared to be the same hostile climes they had last encountered.

“I want you to get dressed again,” he said, undraping her shawl from the stool where it had been drying, “and come with me.” She stood up, a bit unsteadily, and he wrapped the shawl, still warm from the grate, around her shoulders. She stepped into her shoes, and he bent down to button them for her.

“But perhaps we should wait, here?” she said. “Who's to say that we will be harmed?”

“A nurse,” he said, still fastening the shoes, “would not be-not if they have the slightest shred of decency. But a nurse with your peculiar affliction,” he said, standing and looking into her emerald eyes, “might prove to be another matter. How should you explain it to them?” He did not even need to elaborate on the additional problems that a British officer, also so afflicted, might face, should he fall into the wrong hands. If there was one thing that he had learned from his time in the East, one thing that he knew could be relied upon, it was the boundless cruelty of one man to another.

He had also learned to trust no one; if you prized your life at so much as a farthing, it was critical to do your own reconnaissance and make your own decisions. Otherwise, you could find yourself in dire straits indeed… riding, to take a wild example, straight down the barrels of a Russian gun battery…

When he had wrapped her as warmly as he could, he climbed up onto the stool, saw that the two men had gone, then, getting down, went to the door. He pried it open a crack-the wind came howling in to greet him-and then enough to step outside.

Looking to either side, he saw no one-only low dark buildings, made not of wood but of tin or some other metal-squatting, at intervals, along a barren concourse. The sky had the same burnished glow he remembered from the deck of the Coventry, when the snowy albatross had sailed onto the yardarm and watched, impassively, as he and Eleanor were grappled in chains and hurled into the freezing sea.

Eleanor tentatively stepped out after him, lifting her face to the sun; she closed her eyes, and to Sinclair her skin looked as smooth and white and lifeless as marble. Her long brown hair blew loosely around her cheeks, and her lips parted to take in the frigid air as if she were about to taste some rare delicacy. In a way, that's just what it was-windblown air, as cold and unsullied as a glacier, coursing across their exposed skin. Cold as it was-so cold it made their faces burn and their fingers tingle-it was the taste, and the scent, and the feeling, of being alive. For years-centuries, perhaps-they had been immured in their frozen cell, unmoving and untouched. But this, even more than the breaking of the ice, or the warming air from the grate, brought back that painful bliss of living. Sinclair didn't have to say a word, nor did she; they simply stood there, at the top of the snowy ramp, savoring the physical world-even one as hostile and intemperate as this.

One of the dogs across the way looked up from licking his bowl and let out a low growl. Eleanor opened her eyes and took them in.

“Sinclair…” she began, but he interrupted, saying, “There's a sled, too.”

“But where will we go?” Her eyes traveled down the dreary alleyway and off at the distant mountains.

“The dogs will know. Surely they're employed to go somewhere.”

He took her hand before she could offer it and started down the ramp. His boots were ill suited to the snow and ice and he found himself slipping several times. His scabbard clanged against the metal handrail, and he quickly looked about in alarm, but in the roar of the wind it was doubtful anyone had heard. They scurried across the passage, and into the glare of the shed, where they were separated from the dogs only by a wooden partition a few feet high.

As Eleanor leaned back against the wall-already she was exhausted, and her knees were shaking-Sinclair made straight for the clothing rack on the wall. He selected a long, billowy coat-it was as smooth as silk, but its fabric had no sheen-and forced Eleanor into it. It weighed much less than he thought it would, and was so big that she could virtually wrap it around herself twice. The bottom hung down onto the floor, and the hood, when he drew it up, fell around her face like a monk's cowl. But she had soon stopped her shivering.

“You put one on, too,” she said.

Sinclair took a shorter coat from the pile-it was red with a white cross on its sleeves and another on its back, and hung down to his thigh. But he did not know how to fasten it at first; there was a long ribbon of tiny metal ribs that ran down its front, and he pushed them together, thinking they might bind somehow, but they did not. Fortunately, he also found some metal buttons, under a narrow placket, that he found would snap together when pressed.

The dogs were restive, and done with their food. Several of them stood, staring, at Eleanor and Sinclair. And when he went to the food sack, one of them barked, no doubt thinking he was about to receive a second ration. But Sinclair dipped into the bag, and came up with a handful of rounded pellets, the size of shot, and put them to his own nose. The smell was vaguely horsey. He put one in his mouth; the taste was gritty but acceptable. He swallowed one, then the whole handful. They were crunchy but not nearly as hard as ship's biscuits.

“Here,” he said, holding out another handful to Eleanor. “They're not much, but no worse than army rations.”

But the smell seemed to upset her, and she turned away, shaking her head. Sinclair poured the pellets into one of the red coat's voluminous pockets. There wasn't time to argue about it now. He had too much to do.

He went to the chest at the rear of the pen and knelt beside it. The chains were gone, the hasp had been broken off, and the lid was barely attached. He raised it slowly, and inside found his sodden campaign coat, his stirrups, his helmet, a couple of his books- miraculously, still frozen solid and seemingly intact-and, finally, three unbroken bottles labeled, though illegibly, as Madeira from San Cristobal. He grabbed these first, wrapped them in the campaign coat, then carefully tucked the bundle into the shell of the sled. There were empty cargo bays, he discovered, running from the front of the sled to its rear stanchions, and he tossed everything else he could think of-his riding gear, his books-into them.

Finally, he dragged a sack of the food pellets toward the sled, and the dogs-now perhaps convinced that their provisions were being stolen-all stood up, on silent alert, at their neatly spaced stakes. That, or maybe it was just the odor he gave off. Sinclair had noticed that animals often became anxious in his presence… ever since Balaclava.

The lead dog-a massive creature with eyes like blue agate- barked furiously, and strained at his stake.

“Quiet down!” Sinclair urged, trying to keep his voice low but commanding. He prayed that the howling wind would keep anyone from hearing.

But as he lifted the bag into the sled, the dog leapt into the air, restrained only by the short chain running from its collar to the stake.

“Enough!” Sinclair declared. Eleanor was cowering against the wall, but Sinclair led her over to the sled and helped her to climb inside it.

“How will you ever harness them?” she asked, her voice nearly inaudible under the hood.

“The same way I've harnessed horses all my life.” Though, truth be told, he was wondering himself. He had not expected a rebellion. And he needed to quell the noise, immediately, or his whole plan would be for naught.

He came around the wooden partition and lifted the front of the harness-not so different from what was used on a coach-and-four-and shook it out. The other dogs studied him intently, but the lead dog, again, would have none of it. Barking loudly, he jumped at the intruder, but was yanked back to the ground by the buried stake. Instantly, he scrambled to his feet, spittle flying from his jaws, and leapt again-only this time the stake bent, then burst up out of the ground. Even the dog seemed surprised by it, shooting past Sinclair and banging his snout against the wooden wall. Wheeling around, and dragging the chain and stake, the dog charged at Sinclair, who managed to step to the side and parry the attack with one arm. The loose stake got snared on another one, still rooted in the permafrost, and in the few seconds it took for the dog to shake itself free, Sinclair dodged behind the partition.

Eleanor shouted his name, but Sinclair warned her to stay in the sled. The dog started to come at him one way, but when he saw Sinclair retreat toward the rear of the pen, where the wooden stairs led to the loft, he changed his direction and ran around the other side. Sinclair was halfway up the steps when he felt the dog's fangs digging into his boot, ripping at the leather-oh, how he wished he had his spurs on now-and as he struggled up the last few steps, he had the dog hanging off his leg. With his bare fingertips, he clawed at the floorboards while kicking out at the dangling animal.

When the dog abruptly lost its grip and fell, Sinclair stumbled up and into the loft. The rest of the team was barking below, and as Sinclair turned around and braced himself, he could hear the loose dog's paws scraping for purchase on the narrow stairs; then he saw its huge head, eyes ablaze and jaws open, appearing at the top. He knew what he had to do, and as the dog hurled itself through the air at him, he drew his sword and met his enemy with the upturned blade. The dog yowled as its own weight and the force of its charge impaled it on the saber, pulling Sinclair's arm down with it. He fell beside the writhing animal, his wrist pinned below its neck. He pushed himself back, drawing the saber out as he went, but the weapon had already done its work. The dog, blood spurting from its wound and clotting the white fur, lay twitching on the straw-covered floor. He pushed himself farther away, out of reach of any last lunge, and waited for his own breath to return. There was a gurgling sound from the dog's throat, and now he could hear Eleanor's anxious cries.

“Sinclair! Are you all right? Sinclair!”

“Yes,” he replied, trying to keep his own voice down. “I'm all right.”

He looked at his torn boot, where the dog's spittle coated the leather, and he could feel his own blood seeping down his calf. The dog had bitten hard. He got to his feet and, stepping around the dying dog, went back down the stairs. The glaring white light, from some kind of globe he saw affixed to the ceiling, sent his own shadow lurching down before him. It was, most assuredly, a world of wonders-heat from smokeless grates, illumination from glass bowls, coats made of fabric he had never felt-but it was not altogether unrecognizable. No, he thought, as he wiped the scarlet stain from his hand, in its bloody essentials the world hadn't changed.