Blood and Ice

CHAPTER THIRTY

December 14

The infirmary at Point Adelie did not actually have a proper morgue, but then it didn't really need one. The whole continent of Antarctica was a cold-storage unit, and Murphy decided to keep Danzig's body in the coldest and most protected spot of all-the glaciology vault built ten feet under the core bin. After the geologist's body had been recovered from the crevasse the year before, that was where they'd kept his body, too. Betty and Tina were less than thrilled, but they understood the gravity of the situation and were willing to make the accommodation.

“Just so long as you seal the body up tight,” Betty said. “We can't have any risk of contamination to the core samples.”

“And I don't want to feel the poor guy's eyes boring through the back of my skull,” Tina added. “It's spooky enough already down there.”

With that, Michael had to agree. He had volunteered to help Franklin with the removal of the corpse; he felt he owed at least that much to Danzig. After Charlotte had made some basic preparations, the body was zipped into a clear plastic body bag, then into a second bag of olive-green canvas. Michael and Franklin had used a gurney to transport it down the bumpy concourse to the glaciology lab; the wind was blowing so powerfully that the gurney was tipped over twice, and each time that Michael had to lift the body again, he felt a chill descend his spine. The corpse was already beginning to stiffen up, either from rigor mortis or the effects of the subzero temperatures. It felt to Michael like he was lifting a human statue.

The steps down into the ice vault had been cut out of the permafrost, and rather than try to negotiate the gurney down them, Franklin and Michael simply carried the body, by its shoulders and feet, underground. A single white light on a motion sensor went off as they entered and bathed them in a hollow glare. There was an earthen slab carved from one corner of the vault, and Franklin gestured at it with his chin. Michael hoisted up his end-the head and shoulders-and they swung the body onto the slab. It landed with a thump. On the other side of the vault, a cylindrical ice core rested on a long lab table, held by a vise. Several drills and bits and saws hung from a wall rack. In a continent of cold, this place struck Michael as the coldest spot of all-and the most frightening. A frozen tomb that called only for a millstone to be rolled across its entrance.

“Let's get the hell out of here,” Franklin said, and Michael thought he saw him surreptitiously cross himself.

At the top of the stairs, huddled in the freezing wind with her arms around herself, was Betty. “I hope he's not going to have to be there long,” she said to Franklin.

“Whenever the next plane can make it in,” he said, already stomping off toward the rec hall. But Michael lingered. He had a generous slice of cold roast beef in his pocket for his pet skua, and when he pulled it out, Betty smiled. “Ollie will be beside himself.”

Michael brushed away the snow that had once again piled up in front of the plasma crate, knelt and looked inside. There he was- bigger than ever-his gray bill poking up out of a nest of slender wood shavings. Seeing his benefactor, the bird shook himself all over and waddled to his feet. Michael held out the roast beef, and after regarding it for a second, Ollie lunged forward, grabbing it in one swoop and gulping it down. “Next time maybe I should bring some horseradish,” Michael said. The bird looked up at him, perhaps waiting for more. “One day he's going to have to fly away” Michael said over his shoulder, and Betty chuckled.

“What, and give up a good thing?”

When Michael stood up again, she said, “Face it-that bird is tame and probably wouldn't survive a day in the wild. They don't serve roast beef there.”

“But what happens when my time here is up?” Michael said. “I can't exactly take him back to Tacoma.”

“Don't worry,” Betty said. “Tina's already drawing up adoption papers. Ollie will be fine.”

That put his mind to rest, at least on that one small point. It seemed so long since he'd been able to rectify anything in this world-much less save it-that he was grateful even for any little unforeseen break. Maybe the curse he'd felt ever since the Cascades disaster could be lifted, after all… one tiny bit at a time.

Trudging back toward the commons, he passed one of the search teams Murphy had sent out-one made up of Calloway the divemaster, and another grunt whose hat, with a big brim and earflaps, was pulled so far down that Michael couldn't even identify him. “Evening, mate,” Calloway called out, waving a flashlight, and Michael lifted a gloved hand in acknowledgment. “If you see any lost dogs,” Calloway added, “you'll let me know, right?”

“You'll be my first call.”

As he approached the marine biology lab, Michael saw that the lights were on, and even under the wind he could hear the strains of classical music playing inside. Detouring to the lab, he tried the door, but it stopped short, and he could see that a rope had been tied around the handle on the inside.

“Who's there?” he heard Darryl shout.

Michael shouted back, “It's me, Michael.”

“Hold on.”

Darryl came over to the door, slipped the rope off the handle, then let him in.

“That's some high-tech security system you've got there,” Michael said, stamping the snow off his boots.

“It'll have to do until Murphy gets a real lock put in.”

“But it only works when you're inside. What do you do when you're not here?”

“I'm posting a sign.”

“That says what?”

“That says there are several amphibious specimens loose in here and that they're all poisonous.”

Michael laughed. “And you think that will work?”

“No, not really” Darryl admitted, returning to his lab stool, “but then I think the thieves have already got the only thing they actually wanted.”

On the counter in front of him, Darryl had a fish, about a foot long, splayed open from one end to the other, with pins holding its skin back. The whole thing was nearly transparent. Its gills were white, and its blood-if there was any-had no more color than water. Only its eye, fixed and dead, was golden. Michael was unpleasantly reminded of biology class in high school. The next victim was already lined up, sitting almost motionless at the bottom of a supercooled tank with frost coating its rim, on the other side of a row of glass jars, the size of shot glasses; all the jars were filled with solution, but two or three also contained small organs extracted and preserved for further study.

“Should he be watching this?” Michael said.

“That's why I've blocked his view with the jars.”

“Looks sort of like a perch,” Michael said, of the fish being dissected.

“You've got a good eye,” Darryl said. “It's part of the perchlike suborder, JVotothenioidei.”

“Come again?”

“Over the past fifty-five million years,” Darryl began, clearly happy to hold forth on such topics, “the temperature of the Southern Ocean has steadily decreased, from about twenty degrees centigrade to its present-day extremes, roughly minus one point eight degrees centigrade. The Antarctic marine environment also became more and more isolated. The water got colder, migration got harder, and the shallow-water fish either had to adapt, or die. Most of them went extinct.”

“But not these guys?”

“These guys,” Darryl said, with evident fondness and satisfaction, “toughed it out. The notothenids hung out at the bottom of the sea, biding their time. They acclimated themselves by developing a lower metabolic demand and raising their individual oxygen solubility. They could store the oxygen and hold on to it longer in their tissues.”

“Not in their blood?” Michael asked, remembering Darryl talking about some of this before their first dive. “They have no hemoglobin?”

“So you do pay attention,” Darryl said. “I'm impressed. Since they have no red blood cells, their blood is clear, but it does carry a natural antifreeze, a glycoprotein that's made of repeating units of sugar and amino acids. The glycoprotein depresses the freezing point of water two hundred or three hundred times more than would normally be the case.”

Michael could follow only the gist of the explanation. “So, they've got their own natural antifreeze, like you put in your car?”

“Not exactly,” Darryl said, at the same time delicately extracting the fish's heart and plopping it with tweezers into one of the jars. Michael got a whiff of formaldehyde. “Unlike the ethylene gly-col you put in your radiator, the molecules of fish antifreeze behave differently; yes, they do protect the fish from freezing, even in supercool water, but just so long as the fish is careful not to-”

There was a loud banging on the door, and when Michael turned he could see the improvised rope handle stretch.

“Now what?” Darryl complained.

“It's probably Calloway-they're doing a complete search of the base.”

Darryl grudgingly got off his stool. “But why come here? To search the scene of the crime?”

“They're not looking for the bodies,” Michael warned him. “Murphy's keeping all that as quiet as he can.”

Darryl stopped and looked at Michael. “They think I've got the dog team in here?” Shaking his head, he unlooped the rope.

“Hey, mate, what you afraid of?” Calloway said as he barged in, with the grunt in the long-brimmed cap close behind.

They stood just inside the lab, pounding the snow off their coats and boots.

“I just prefer it when people call ahead.”

“I'll do that,” Calloway said, clapping him on the shoulder, “next time.” He caught sight of the lab bench and its eviscerated subject.

“Icefish?” Calloway said. “You know, the bigger ones make some pretty fine filets.” He moseyed over, and scanning the specimen jars said, “But I think I'll take a pass on what's left of this mess.”

The grunt in the cap-Michael recognized him now, his name was Osmond and he worked with Uncle Barney in the kitchen- trailed along after, poking his nose into some cabinets and under some counters. What on earth, Michael wondered, could he possibly think he would find there?

“But this fish here, this fella's still fresh,” Calloway said, sticking with his customary outback impression, and gazing down into the cooling tank. “Judging from those bony lips, I'd say this one is a Charcot's icefish.”

“You would be correct,” Darryl said, sounding mollified; he was always appreciative when anyone displayed some knowledge of marine life. “We just caught it in the last batch of traps.”

Michael came around to the other side of the table to get a better look, and he saw a long fish with an armor-plated head and a flat nose, like a duck's bill. Its skin was so thin that he could see the complex pattern of plates and bones just inside. Darryl, too, came around, perhaps to point out some of its unusual features, but bumped into Osmond, who'd completed his rudimentary inspection of the premises and had decided to join the party.

“You can see right through it,” Osmond said, slowly; Michael didn't think he had a lot going on upstairs. “It's like he's Casper the friendly fish.”

There were smiles all around as Osmond bent his head over the tank to get a closer look, but then Darryl suddenly glanced at the brim of his hat, and shouted, “No! Get back!”

Darryl swiped at the cap, but it was already too late-a great blob of snow and ice, shimmering like a cascade of diamonds, slid down off the brim and splashed into the tank. The fish moved, surprised by the movement, and, possibly thinking that some food source had wandered by, raised its head toward the surface. The rain of ice crystals pattered on the surface, some bobbing a few inches down, and touching the fish on its nose and gills.

“Goddammit!” Darryl cried, and a second later Michael could see why-the quivering fish stopped moving, its body straightened out, and as Michael looked on with amazement, a fine latticework of ice swiftly rippled across its entire length in a chain reaction, turning it as stiff as a board and as dead as a doornail. Slowly it floated, staring and transparent, back to the surface of the tank.

Michael was confused. “But I thought you said these fish had antifreeze in their blood.”

“They do,” Darryl said mournfully, “and that's what keeps them alive in supercool water, at the lower depths. But ice floats, remember, and so it doesn't penetrate the benthic regions. If these fish actually come into contact with ice, the ice crystals act as a nucleus, a propagating agent, and overwhelm their defenses.”

“Geez,” Osmond said, holding his wet cap in his hands now. “I'm really sorry. I never knew something like that could happen.” He looked around at the others to see if he was in serious trouble.

“It's all right, mate,” Calloway said. “If it's no good to the beakers, it's still fine for the bouillabaisse.”

“Not this one,” Darryl said. “I can still thaw it out and drain the blood.”

“The blood,” Calloway said, dubiously. “That's what you want?”

“That blood, my friend, contains secrets the world will be very glad to have one day.”

Calloway tapped Osmond on the sleeve, as if to say ‘Let's leave the loonies to their crazy experiments,’ and they skulked off toward the door. “I'm sure you're right about that, Doc,” he said, then they ducked out into a blast of howling wind and whirling snow.

Darryl picked up a pair of tongs, lifted the icefish out by its tail, and laid it on the counter. It was so hard it actually wobbled in place.

“Now I can see why you don't exactly put out the welcome mat to the lab,” Michael said.

“And why I wanted that lock,” Darryl replied. But then, picking up a scalpel, he plunged right back into his work as if Michael wasn't even there. A minute or two later, Michael pulled on all his gear and went out into the teeth of the gathering storm.