Blood and Ice

CHAPTER TWELVE

December 6, 3 p.m.

WHILE ANYONE IN HIS RIGHT MIND would have despaired at the very sight of the marine biology lab at Point Adelie, Darryl Hirsch was beside himself with joy. The floor was a concrete slab, the walls were prefab, triple-insulated plastic, the ceiling was low, and the whole place had the musty, briny smell of old fish and spilled chemicals.

But it was his alone, and he had no one looking over his shoulder as he conducted whatever experiments and studies he chose. For once, he didn't have that highly paid and traitorous flack, Dr. Edgar Montgomery, trying to poke holes in his research and find reasons- as he had successfully done more than once-to have the funding curtailed. This lab, with its bubbling tanks and hissing air hoses, was Darryl's own private fiefdom.

And as far as the necessary equipment went, the National Science Foundation had outfitted the lab with pretty much everything he needed, from microscopes, petri dishes, and pipettes, to respirometers and plasma centrifuges. The large round tank in the center of the room, open at the top, was called the aquarium; it was four feet deep, wide enough to float a rowboat in, and divided like a pie into three compartments. The division was critical since many aquatic specimens had an unfortunate tendency to eat each other. At the moment, the tank held some enormous cod, and someone had handprinted a sign that read: “For Cod's sake, pet me!” The sign hung from the tank, but Darryl knew what a dumb, and dangerous, prank that was. Cod could be very aggressive fish, rising up and snapping at anything from a camera to a human hand. He removed the sign and tossed it in the waste barrel.

Against two walls, there were long metal dissecting tables, and above them rows of shelves which held the smaller tanks, with pale purple lights and strange creatures-sea spiders, urchins, anemones, scale worms-crawling around inside, or suctioning themselves, like the starfish, to the glass.

Darryl spent the better part of the first week just inventorying everything he had, organizing the lab, reviewing his files, orchestrating his plan of attack. What he wanted to do, as soon as possible, was to dive. He wanted to capture his own specimens-most notably the icefishes of the Channichthyidae family-and bring them to the surface alive; that was often the hardest part, as deep-sea creatures who lived under such frigid conditions were extremely sensitive to changes in pressure, temperature, and even light. He had already alerted Murphy O'Connor to his needs, and the chief had assured him that everything from the ice auger to the dive hut would be up and running, just so long as he filled out all the necessary NSF paperwork in advance. The man was a bit rough around the edges, and a stickler for the rules and regulations, but Darryl did feel he'd be someone he could work with.

On a table by the door Darryl had found a Bose one-piece audio system, nicer than anything he had at home, and an eclectic collection of CDs. He did not know whom to thank-the NSF? some previous marine biologist?-but he was grateful, nonetheless. Just then he had on Bach's E major Partita-Bach and Mozart were the best to help concentrate the mind, he had long since determined- and perhaps that was why he didn't hear the knocking on the door. He did feel the blast of cold air, though, and when he looked up from the slide he was preparing, he saw Michael drawing back his fur-lined hood, then zipping open his parka. A camera, on a heavy cord, swung from his neck.

“What were you shooting?”

“Lawson and I went out to the old Norwegian whaling station. I thought I'd get some good atmospheric shots.”

“And did you?” Darryl asked, laying the paper-thin slice of algae across the slide, then slipping it under the microscope's lens.

“Not really. Too much atmosphere this morning. The light is bouncing around off the fog, and it's impossible to get a focus on anything.”

“Let me know when you're planning to go out there again. I want to come.”

Michael laughed. “Yeah, sure you do.” He lifted his chin at the fish tanks and specimen jars. “This is your idea of paradise. I'll never get you out of here.”

Darryl raised his shoulders, as if to concede the point, before adding, “Not completely true. Weather permitting”-which is something that preceded virtually every statement in the Antarctic-”I'll be stepping outside tomorrow morning.”

Michael sat back on a lab stool and brushed some snow off his sleeve. “Really? Where to?”

“Davy Jones's locker,” Darryl said with a dramatic flourish.

“You're diving?”

“I assume so,” Darryl said. “I didn't see any submersibles lying around, did you?”

“In search of what?”

That was a big question, and Darryl didn't have an easy answer. It was what he had come all that way to investigate. “There are about fifteen kinds of Antarctic fish,” he said, deliberately skipping the Latinate names, “that can survive in conditions that no other species can. They can live in freezing waters, in total darkness for four months at a time. They have no scales, and they have no hemoglobin.”

“So in other words their blood is-?”

“Colorless. Exactly. And even their gills are a pale translucent white. What's more, they carry a kind of natural antifreeze, a glyco-protein, that keeps ice crystals from forming in their circulatory systems.”

“And you're going to catch some of these fish?” It was plain from his tone that Michael found everything he was hearing bizarre, to say the least.

But Darryl was fairly used to that. “Catching them isn't really very hard. When they swim, it's very slowly, and most of the time they just sit on the bottom, waiting for some hapless krill or smaller fish to wander by.”

“How would they feel about my wandering by?”

“You want to come with me?” He could see from the smile on Michael's face that he meant it. “Do you know how to dive?”

“Certified on three continents,” Michael said.

“I'll have to check with Murphy and make sure that it's okay.”

“Don't bother,” Michael said, springing off the stool. “I'll do it.” He was out the door before he'd even finished zipping up his coat, and Darryl wondered if he'd just made a smart call or an utterly insane one. Did Michael have any idea what he was getting into?

But Michael did know. Whenever a new challenge presented itself, and he felt even that slightest flicker of hesitation-sometimes confused with the instinct for self-preservation-he immediately overruled it. The adrenaline rush was what he lived for-and these days, he knew no better counteractive than that to the depression that was always, subtly, tugging at his sleeve. If he let his mind wander, it would invariably, by Byzantine routes he could never have traced, find its way back to the Cascades… and Kristin. And it was only by losing himself in some extreme challenge, or tortuously wrestling his thoughts in another direction, that he could find any real peace.

The night before, when he'd found himself descending into that bottomless pit, he'd mustered up his courage and called her younger sister's cell phone. Though he was a world away, the base had a powerful satellite hookup, courtesy of the U.S. military, and apart from brief bursts of static and a telltale delay, the connection was pretty good. Karen sounded amazed.

“So you're calling from the South Pole?” she'd said.

“Not exactly, but damn close.”

“And are you freezing to death?”

“Only when the wind blows… which is always.”

There was a silence on the line, while the words made their way to her-and they both wondered what to say next.

Michael finally broke the impasse by asking, “Where are you right now?” and Karen laughed. Damn, it was so much like Kristin's laugh.

“You won't believe this,” she said, “but I'm at the skating rink.”

Michael could instantly picture it. “Are you in the Skate and Bake?” That was the coffee shop attached to the rink.

The connection faltered, then came back as Karen was saying “… hot chocolate and a bear claw.”

He could see her in his mind's eye, in a bulky cable-knit sweater, in one of the tiny booths.

“Alone, or are you on a hot date?”

“I wish. I've brought along a book on William Rehnquist. That's my hot date.”

Michael wasn't surprised. Karen was every bit as bright and blond and pretty as her older sister, but she'd always been something of a loner. And even though plenty of guys asked her out- and she sometimes went-she never went out with anyone for very long. It was as if she put up books as a barrier to intimacy, a way of steering clear of emotional entanglements.

They talked for a bit about her classes, and whether or not she'd have time to work at the Legal Aid clinic, then she turned things back to Michael's adventures on the way to Point Adelie; he told her about the voyage on the Constellation, and getting to know Darryl Hirsch and Dr. Barnes. When he described the albatross crashing through the windscreen of the aloft con, she said, “Oh, no! That poor bird!” and Michael had to laugh, ruefully. It was just what Kristin would have said-her concern for the bird immediately superseding any worry about the people involved.

“Don't you care about what happened to me?” he said, feigning exasperation.

“Oh, yeah, that, too. Were you okay?”

“I lived, but the Ops officer got hurt, and she had to be taken back to civilization.”

“That is too bad.” There was a pause, or else it was just a transmission delay. “But I really do worry about you, Michael. Don't do anything too dangerous.”

“Never do,” he said, then regretted it instantly, because it had brought them around, at last, to the one thing they had both been avoiding… and the one occasion when he had indeed let something dangerous, and foolhardy, happen.

Karen must have felt it, too, because she said, “Not much new with Krissy I'm afraid.”

Michael had expected that.

“But my parents are very big on this new stimulation and arousal program. They bang wooden blocks together next to her ear, or shine a flashlight right into her eyes, on and off and on and off. The worst is they put a drop of Tabasco sauce on her tongue- I know for a fact that Krissy hated Tabasco-to see if it would make her swallow, or spit.”

“Did it?”

“No… and even though the doctors and nurses all encourage my folks to keep on trying, I think it's all just to give them a sense that they're doing something.”

Michael could really hear-even over the thousands of miles- all the resignation and sorrow in her voice. Karen was just not a sentimentalist, or a believer. Mr. and Mrs. Nelson were Lutheran, and went to church regularly, but their daughters had long since abandoned the faith. Kristin had defied their parents outright and made sure that every Sunday morning she was off kayaking or rock climbing somewhere, but Karen had simply let things slide, tactfully, until they stopped asking her to go and she stopped having to come up with excuses. And that same gulf was evident when it came to Kristin's predicament. Her parents, despite what all the tests might show, would keep on battering away, while Karen would look hard at the CT scans, discuss the latest findings with the doctors-frankly and plainly-and come to her own conclusions.

Michael knew what those conclusions were. And after they'd hung up, he found that he couldn't sit still-not an uncommon problem for him-or even stay indoors. He put on his heavy-weather gear, and his deep green eye goggles, and went outside, alone. The chief was strict about the buddy system-you were never to go very far unaccompanied, or without entering your itinerary on the blackboard, but Michael intended to stay close to the base… and he definitely did not want company.

A hard wind was blowing, the American flag snapping so hard it sounded like gunshots. Michael made a trip around the encampment, which was laid out in a rough square; there were the main modules-the administration and commons, the dorms and infirmary-then upslope, and lying just outside the central quad, the outlying structures. These were the labs-marine biology, glaciology geology, botany-and the equipment sheds. The base had snowmobiles, boats, graders, all-terrain vehicles called Sprytes that looked like Jeeps with tractor treads, and God knows what else, all housed in tin-roofed shacks with double doors closed by unsecured padlocks. Who was going to steal anything? Where would you go with it? In a separate shed, with a hard-packed earth floor, covered with straw, there were a dozen huskies with bushy gray fur and ice-blue eyes. Sometimes at night, their howls would mingle with the constant wind, and swirl, like the cry of forlorn spirits, around the outside of the dorms.

As Michael passed by the narrow windows of the rec hall, he could just make out the sound of the upright piano. He looked inside and saw one of the grunts-a guy whose name he thought was Franklin-barreling his way through a ragtime number, while Betty and Tina, the sturdy glaciologists, swatted a Ping-Pong ball back and forth with the regularity of a metronome. Both of them, he'd learned, had winter-overed-meaning, they'd stayed at the base over the long, dark austral winter, when the sun never shone and the fresh supplies seldom came and the outside world might as well have been another planet. You actually earned a medal for doing that, and he'd seen one on Murphy's lapel, too. It was a badge of honor, a kind of street cred, that the grunts and the beakers alike all respected.

But once he turned the corner of the rec hall, the wind suddenly hit him full in the face, so hard that he could lean into it, almost falling, and yet be kept standing. He picked his way carefully across the loose scree, the wind tearing at his clothes, and down toward the icy shore. It was never clear where the ground ended and the ice entirely took over, but it hardly mattered. It was all rock hard and equally unforgiving. In the distance, he could see a flock of penguins skittering down a frozen hill, then sliding on their bellies into the freezing waters. With a mittened hand, he fumbled for the drawstring on his hood and pulled it so tight that only his goggles remained uncovered. The sun, as cold and silver as an icicle, hovered slightly higher in the sky than it had the week before, making its slow but inexorable progress toward the southern horizon, and oblivion. The temperature, the last time he'd checked, was twenty below zero… but that didn't take into account the infamous wind-chill factor.

A gray-and-white blur shot past his face, and he instinctively raised a hand against it. A second later, it shot past again. It was a skua, one of the scavenger birds of the Antarctic, and he realized he must be standing too close to its nest. Knowing that the birds always aimed for the head, the highest point of any intruder, he lifted one arm above his hood and, as the bird buzzed his mitten, looked around. He didn't want to step on anything. A few yards behind him, there was a tiny hillock, which afforded some protection from the raging winds. The skua's mate was tending to two chicks there. She had a live krill in her beak, one she must have just plucked from the water. Its many legs were still waving wildly. Michael stepped a few paces back, and the papa bird, apparently satisfied by his retreat, returned to the nest.

The two chicks were both crying for the food, but one was larger than the other, and every time the little one chirped, the bigger one whipped round and pecked at it. Each time that happened, the littler bird was driven farther from the protection of the nest, but the parents seemed completely unperturbed. The mother dropped the krill from her hooked bill and, while the little chick looked on forlornly, its sibling snatched it up and wolfed down the entire thing.

Michael wanted to say, Come on already, share and share alike, but he knew that no such rules were in play here. If the little chick couldn't fend for itself, its parents would simply let it starve. Survival of the fittest, at its most unadorned.

The little chick made one last try at returning to the nest, but the bigger one flapped its wings and pecked again, and the little chick retreated, its head down, its pale gray wings clutched tight around its body. The mama and papa stared impassively in the other direction.

And Michael took his opportunity. He stepped forward, and before the baby bird, not yet fully fledged, could scuttle away, he bent down and scooped it up between his mittens. Only its white head and the black buttons of its eyes poked out from his hands. The papa bird screeched, but not, Michael knew, at his kidnapping the chick; it was only because he'd come too close to the nest and the fat heir apparent.

“Get lost,” Michael said, holding the baby chick close to his chest. Then he turned around, the wind at his back, and let it blow him halfway up the slope and toward the warmth of the rec hall. What, he wondered, would Kristin have named the little foundling in his mitts?