Dark Winter

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The most important thing is to stay calm."

Robert Norse was magnificently calm, an inspiration, a pillar, an anchor. He was their nucleus and everyone else in the galley an excited, buzzing electron. The group was threatening to fly apart and the psychologist was the station's magnetic center. Norse hadn't been voted to leadership in the wake of Cameron's death and yet he'd quietly assumed it, with the backing of Nancy Hodge- her own authority established by her brisk, no-nonsense willingness to take charge of the station manager's bloody corpse. Norse's accession made a kind of sense. As a psychologist he was their odd duck, their voyeur, but he was also free of the everyday scientific allegiances and rivalries that might have made any other leader unacceptable to at least part of the group. He was a beaker and yet he wasn't. He conveyed sympathy and yet had a detachment that seemed to make him unflappable. Now the psychologist's eyes swept the room like a hose, trying to extinguish the panic that smoldered there. It was not just murder, but murder within a family: There was an incestuous nature to the stabbing that struck at the group's social core. Tyson! By going after their station manager it was if the mechanic had vandalized their church, violated their taboos. He'd struck at the station's head and heart. It would be all Norse could do to keep the group from lynching him.

"We'll calm down when that murderous bastard is out of here," Geller heatedly replied. There was a growl of assent. Fear was close to turning the winter-overs into a mob.

Norse held up his hands. "Please. I understand your emotion. I understand your fear. But our choices aren't easy. We don't have a jail cell, we don't have a police force, and there's a limit to what we can do."

"We don't have a gun and we don't have a good lock and we don't have a sheriff," Geller added. "What we've got is a psycho built like Hulk Hogan hiding somewhere on station and not even a cap pistol to defend ourselves with. We're in one hell of a fix, Doc."

"Is there any weapon on station at all?" Norse asked.

"Closest we come is the flare gun Rod used to try to signal Harrison. It might hurt if fired into your eye but short of that…"

"That's something, though. Let's start with that. Where is it?"

"With the emergency stuff in the fire closet," said Hank Anderson, the carpenter who helped coordinate fire teams. "It ain't much."

"Well, I don't want Tyson to have it, either. Can you get it, please, and deliver it here?"

"How about the fire axes?" Geller asked.

Norse shrugged. "Yes. Let's bring them to the galley, too, until this is sorted out."

Anderson nodded and left.

"Okay," Norse went on, "I've contacted the National Science Foundation about our situation down here and I've asked Abby- at their request- to hold off on other e-mail or communication to the outside world for a while. We're going to keep this in-family."

"No!" Gabriella protested. "I want to talk to my friends!" There was a rolling murmur of support and anxiety. Nothing was more important than their electronic link.

The psychologist nodded again. He never disagreed. "You're right. Communication is what we need above all else. That's why we're talking now. And we'll reestablish contact to the outside world as soon as we can. But this is an explosive situation and people are trying to get a handle on it. We've got some circumstantial evidence, a volatile mechanic who's disappeared, and laws that say he's innocent until proven guilty. The folks back in D.C. need some time to sort this out and consider what our options are." He hesitated. "It was Rod's idea after Adams was found to ask them to send help down, like the FBI agents that went into McMurdo a few years back to pick up that cook who flew off the handle. I'll confess I talked him out of it as premature. I thought it would hurt his career. Maybe I was wrong. But even then it was too late to get a plane to actually land. It's winter, the runway is shut down, and the Guard crews who fly are long gone. It's dangerous to fly. It makes no sense to risk more lives if there's any other alternative."

"There is no alternative!" Dana Andrews shouted.

"Yes, let's open the damn runway!" astronomer Carl Mendoza agreed. "Get out the bulldozers! We'll figure them out without Buck. Plow without Buck. Put flame pots and flares out without Buck. We have to ship Tyson out of here before we lose the whole winter."

Norse kept nodding. "Absolutely. We're going to look at every possibility. But right now NSF is asking us for three things. First, no panic. Okay? No panic. We have to keep a clear head. Second, no yelling to the world over satellite. And third, no rashness, nothing that will stain the reputation of the station in the future. Think! This is what you trained for. This is what you're paid for. Keeping things together, keeping it going. Okay? Can we lower the temperature here?" He waited for a response.

"Chill out," Hiro Sakura finally said. "It is easy to do at the South Pole." There was strained laughter at his thickly accented observation, a slight release of tension.

Norse smiled slightly, gratified at the help. "Okay. Now, what do we know? Dana found Rod's body with a stab wound. Someone had put toast on Buck's door, and the same kind of toast was in Rod's mouth. And Tyson's disappeared. It looks bad, but that doesn't mean we can be certain he's a murderer."

"Bullshit," said Pulaski. "We're certain he's a slug-eating, shower-hogging, work-shirking sonofabitch who's deliberately tried to scare the crap out of just about everyone in this room! Why not a murderer?"

"The bastard had it in for Rod from the beginning," added Mendoza. "He did nothing but complain and threaten. We all saw them almost get into a fistfight. He had it in for Harrison, too, and he was out the day Adams died. Him and Lewis."

"We all know Buck carried a chip on his shoulder," Norse cautioned. "We don't know he snapped."

"We have Mickey's death as well," Pulaski reminded. "Tyson didn't like him, either."

"Yes," Nancy Hodge chimed in. "Which could mean that Rod learned something about those deaths that the killer didn't want discovered. He panics, they fight…" She shrugged. "It could happen."

"It did happen." Alexi Molotov stood up. "Listen, Doctor Bob, I appreciate your efforts to keep things as, what you say, sensible. We are scientists, that is how it should be. But we have had three deaths. Three deaths! In our tiny group! And now this angry mechanic who makes knives is hiding somewhere and we have no weapons and maybe no chance of help from the outside world." He looked at them expectantly.

"What are you saying, Alexi?" Norse asked quietly.

"That we hunt him down before he hunts us. Like the Russian wolf."

"Hunt him down?"

"String him up," Geller said, only half jokingly. "First tree we find."

"No, we are not executioners," Molotov said. "Let your authorities investigate when they can, but you are right, it will not be until spring. In the meantime, he has to be quarantined, confined, so the rest of us feel safe."

"Like Lewis was."

"Like Lewis still should be," Dana said. Lewis wasn't there, having been ordered to stay out at Clear Air for his own safety. "I don't trust him, either. He's the one who started all this."

"That's unfair," Abby said, coming to his defense. "He's just new."

"You're sweet on him, Ice Cream, but he gives the rest of us the willies. Besides, where was he when Cameron died? I heard he was on the squawk box setting up a meeting with our dead leader."

"Yes," Molotov said. "He radioed. We heard it."

"Right," Abby retorted. "And if he was going to knife him, would he broadcast a rendezvous?" She was angry. "Where were you, Dana? In the arch with the victim, as I understand it. Maybe you killed him, and made it look like Tyson."

"That is so completely out of bounds…"

"Enough!" Norse raised his hands. "Enough, enough, enough. Let's deal with Mr. Lewis later. He stays in Clean Air until we sort this out."

"How can we sort it out when he's never here to defend himself?" Abby protested.

Norse ignored her. "We think we have our killer, so let's not go off the deep end pointing fingers at others. The problem is Buck. The issue is Buck. Where can we keep him when we catch him?"

"That's the problem," Calhoun spoke up. As the other station carpenter, he was one of the most familiar with the construction of the station. "This base has no real locks worthy of the name. You can pry apart most of the walls with a can opener. The habitable parts he could break out of, I'll bet. We could bolt and weld some kind of coop, but how to heat it, plumb it, feed him? Jails are complicated."

"How about sticking him out in Bedrock?" suggested Geller. Bedrock Village was the nickname of the station's emergency shelter Quonset huts, called Hypertats. They were a bright blue cluster several hundred yards from the dome with their own generator. "Put him at a distance, like Lewis."

"And how do we keep him out there?" asked Calhoun.

"Guard him."

"How? He's so big you'd need at least two of us, both men, three shifts a day, seven days a week- come on! We can't lock him and we can't guard him and we can't feed him. Unless we want to spend the rest of the winter just doing that."

"The only practical solution is to ship him out of here, Robert." It was Nancy Hodge, and it was odd to hear her call Norse by his formal first name.

For the first time, Norse looked mildly exasperated. "They can't land a plane, it's too cold. Anything below minus fifty-five and the hydraulics freeze up. You know that."

"We know we're facing the worst emergency this base has ever encountered and we need something done before we all go nuts. Doctor."

Norse looked annoyed. He didn't like criticism from another professional. The others shifted uncomfortably.

"There's one other solution, of course," Pulaski said grimly. "We try him, and do to him what he did to Rod Cameron."

"Fuckin' A," Geller said.

"No way!" Linda Brown protested. "Wade"-her tone was scolding- "we're not executioners. We have no legal authority. We have no moral authority."

"We do when our lives are at stake," the cook said quietly. There was no reply. Pulaski looked dangerous, the old soldier. "Sometimes it's you or him. Kill or be killed."

"Whoa. Come on, people." Norse raised his hands again, wearily. "Let's not go off the deep end. Cueball, I understand your feelings but try to keep them in check."

"Just don't go off by yourself," Pulaski told the others with a growl. "Not until we find the bastard."

Norse nodded. "Okay. Good advice. Stay together. Stay alert. But before we go on a manhunt let me talk to NSF. It's off-hours in D.C. now but I'll call when I can. I'll stress the dire nature of our situation again. Maybe they can find a break in the weather to somehow parachute an agent in here."

There was cautious hope.

"Or maybe I can think of something else."

Tyson jerked awake in the dark and sat up, banging his head. He heard the sound of the grate to the cramped utility tunnel being removed and someone dropping down into his burrow. He brought an arm with a knife out of his sleeping bag and extended it toward the entry to his hideaway, his wrist betraying an irritating tremble. If a mob came for him he was going down fighting, but he felt trapped. Hunted. Outnumbered. Doomed. "That you, Bob?"

"It's me."

The answer came as a relief. He'd left a note for Norse when the commotion started. The shrink was the only one he'd been able to talk to in this zoo. The only one he trusted. Then he'd hid here, fearing for his life. The psychologist had whispered through the grate that he would come back after a station meeting. Now it was two A.M., he saw by the illuminated dial of his watch, and Norse had dropped down into the man-sized conduit for wires and pipes that ran from the garage all the way to the fuel arch. Most station personnel didn't know the utility tube existed, and that was buying him time. Tyson was hoping he could camp there until things cooled down.

"What's the verdict, Doc?"

Norse kept his voice low. "It's not looking good."

No, it wouldn't look good, would it? He'd never exactly been Mr. Popularity with the grab bag of nerds and cretins they'd assembled to endure this insanity. Tyson could just imagine what kind of a fair hearing he'd get from them now. He'd told them all what he truly thought, never a great idea, and now it was payback time. One-on-one he could take any of them, but a group would hamstring him like wolves. Jimmy, you are well and truly fucked, he told himself. Should have practiced that shit-eating grin. "It hasn't looked good since I left North Dakota," he said aloud.

Norse actually chuckled for a second. He switched on a small penlight, providing them with a beam of illumination. "And how good could it have looked there?"

"It's better than its reputation. I had room, back home."

The psychologist nodded. "And that's what you need now. Room."

"What are they gonna do to me, Doc?"

"Nothing, if you're not here."

The two were silent for a moment, Norse giving time for this statement to sink in. He was also waiting with his next question. "Did you do it?" the psychologist finally asked point-blank.

"Hell no." That was simple enough.

Norse studied him, probably looking for the twitches and ticks that he'd been told in shrink school would reveal a liar. Well, let him look. As far as Tyson was concerned he was trapped in the looniest of loony bins, and Norse was the asylum's Big Nurse. The psychologist's professional opinion was worth about as much as the cheap tools they gave Tyson that kept snapping in the cold. When he dropped the phony psyche bullshit, however, Norse wasn't a bad guy. He listened. Kept in shape. Looked after himself.

"You're too obvious, aren't you?" Norse finally said. "Too angry, too mouthy. So obvious that I don't know if I believe it. It's the kind of crime that seems blood simple. Too dumb. You're not dumb, are you, Tyson?"

"Dumb enough to come down here."

Norse smiled. "That could be said about all of us."

"What's going to happen to me, Bob?"

"The ideal would be to ship you back. Let people sort this out in the States where emotions are a little less raw. The trouble is, I don't think they're going to get a plane down here. It's cold and it's getting colder. We've got at least six more months of isolation. You want to spend six months in this tunnel?"

"I don't want to spend six months in this whole fucking base. You know that. I've made no secret of it. I just want out."

"You and everyone else about now."

"That's right. And I'm as scared as they are. I didn't kill nobody. I'm being set up, maybe by that fingie Lewis. All the trouble started when he came. The only thing I'm guilty of is saying what I think. They crucify you in this world if you say what you think."

"Amen to that."

"It's like we talked about, Doc. The importance of self-reliance. The fucking duty of self-reliance. Everyone pays lip service to this touchy-feely group shit but that's only because they hope somebody like me will carry their load. Do the shit work. Until you won't do it for them. Then they turn."

Norse betrayed nothing. "My concern is that you get a fair hearing."

"Well, I ain't gonna get it here."

"I know."

"So what the fuck do I do now? They won't listen to me. I can't fight them all. I didn't want their bullshit commune and now I'm the bad guy. It's because I won't play the game. It's like that movie where the island kids go crazy. That 'Lord' thing, what was it?"

"Flies. Lord of the Flies."

"That's what it feels like. Like I'm the only sane one. Is that crazy?"

Norse grimaced. "It may be the only rational reaction to this base. My fear is that humans aren't meant to be in a place like this. So cold. So bleak. It does things to them, physically and mentally. We evolved in Africa, for Christ's sake. Coming here is an act of hubris. Greek hubris. The pride that goes before the fall. So I sympathize with where you're coming from. I admire your insistence on being an individual."

Tyson nodded. "You gotta keep them away from me, Doc."

"I've been thinking about your situation," Norse went on carefully. "We had a meeting and the mood was ugly. I calmed them down for a while but six, seven more months? I don't know. I can't hide you that long. I can't keep the others functioning that long, not with you tucked down here like a troll. A few of them want to try and execute you."

"Jesus H. Christ." The mechanic was quietly frightened. "About your only hope would be another killing while you're locked up, taking suspicion off you, if you're telling the truth and the killer is someone else. Otherwise, it all points to Buck Tyson. The new totem of evil. Unfair, perhaps- I wouldn't be in this hole with you if I thought you truly dangerous- but very human. So I've come to suggest a long-shot chance, one you once suggested to me when we were looking for Mickey."

"What's that?"

"Vostok."

"What?"

"I think you should seek asylum. Go to another base, winter over, and surrender to the American authorities in the spring. By that time the situation may have cleared up a bit, who knows? Otherwise it's a risk that something might trigger a mob mentality and you find yourself in Salem as Witch Number One. You get my meaning?"

"Yeah, but holy shit, trying to get to Vostok…"

"No airplane is going to get in here like a magic carpet. The others are fantasizing that there's a chance but there isn't any, not really. You're going to have to flee overland. The closest refuge is the Russian base. Seven hundred miles but it's fairly flat going across the polar plateau. No crevasses, no mountains. Bad food, good vodka, and better company than you'll find here the rest of the winter. It's a risk to try to reach it but I don't know what else to offer. Obviously, I think the risk is even higher if you stay here."

"I can't fucking believe this."

"My idea is you take a Spryte like you said. If anyone can do it alone, you can. You've trained for survival. You're prepared to tough it out. And we can survive without one of the machines. Pull a sled loaded with fuel and food and take along a GPS to help you navigate. With minimal sleep and decent weather you could reach Vostok in several days. If you have to hunker down for a storm you can take enough along to survive for a few weeks. If the engine doesn't break down, you can make it. And if it does… well, you're our best mechanic, right?"

"Me and Pika."

"Right. So we have Pika to keep things going here, and you keep your Spryte going out there."

Tyson groaned. "But if I completely break down, I'm fucked. A couple hours at a hundred below…"

"And you go to sleep." The meaning was clear. There were worse ways to die.

Tyson took a breath, considering the stark choice. He knew he couldn't stay there. "Will the others let me do it?"

"I haven't told them. I'm not going to ask them. We have to move now. Fait accompli. Their disappointment at losing a Spryte will be more than mitigated by their relief at losing you."

"Thanks."

"I'm giving it to you straight, Buck."

The mechanic nodded glumly. "A mob or the plateau."

"When you don't have any friends, you have to rely on yourself."

They waited, Tyson mulling it over. If he got a hole in the weather it should be possible. He had the skills to earn his way at Vostok…

"Or we can go face the others in the galley now," Norse said.

The mechanic shook his head. Fuck those bastards. "They want it to be me. That's the problem."

"You can rely on them or rely on yourself."

Tyson hesitated, gathering his courage. There was a certain hopelessness in his eyes, a realization of having made an irrevocable wrong turn. Then, fatalistically: "I'm out of here."

"It's for the best, Buck. Best if you leave soon."

"Don't worry about that. If I'm leaving I ain't going to let the screen door hit my butt on the way out." He unzipped his bag, suddenly anxious. "You gonna help?"

"I've taken the liberty of doing that." Norse backed up, removed the grate, and crawled out. The mechanic followed him. They stood in the gloom of the garage, looking at the vehicles. "The Spryte is fueled, the sled loaded, you're ready to go. It's best to be well away before morning, just in case some self-righteous sheriff gets it in his head to chase after you with a snowmobile."

"Agreed." Tyson looked at him curiously. "Why you helping me, Doc?"

"I've found myself thrust into a curious position of responsibility. My profession is people, and I know what they're capable of. You ever hear of the Swordfish?"

Tyson shook his head.

"It's classified, but word gets around in professional circles. Nuke sub on a long, secret mission under the Arctic ice. There was a quarrel, a popular ensign was killed, and there wasn't a chance to surface or return. They were sitting off a Russian base, for Christ's sake. They did a quick court-martial but there was no brig, just like here. You know what they did with the offender?"

"Do I want to know?"

"Loaded him into a torpedo tube and fired him out. He was kicking, screaming, pleading, crying, it didn't matter. He'd made no friends and everyone was around the bend with tension anyway. There was hell to pay when they got back, of course, and a few careers ended. But at the time, ejecting him into the Arctic Ocean seemed the right thing to do. That's what I'm worried about here. The right thing to do."

Tyson nodded dumbly.

"I'm gambling on this one, Buck. Gambling on you. So punch on out of here and hope you make friends with the Russkies. Your boots and parka are in the cab."

Tyson looked at the Spryte, resignedly determined. "I'll make it. What are you going to tell them?"

"That I helped you go. If I get blamed for it, I'll tell them you pulled a knife on me."

"Adding to my reputation."

"Until winter's over and the truth comes out. I have to live here, too."

Tyson stepped up on the treads of the Spryte and looked back at Norse. "If I didn't do it, who did, Doc?"

"I'm not sure you didn't do it. I'm just praying it doesn't matter. Because with you gone and convicted in abstentia, any other murderer escapes suspicion. Which means he has good reason not to strike again."