Blood and Ice

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

December 11, 3 p.m.

“I'm sorry,” Karen was saying, “did I take you away from something important?”

“No, no, I always want to hear from you. You know that.” But his heart was in his mouth every time that they did talk on the SAT phone. It was very unlikely she was bringing him good news. “What's up?”

With his foot, he pushed the door to the communications room closed, and hunkered forward on the armless computer chair.

“I just thought I'd let you know that Krissy's leaving the hospital, so you don't need to try calling there anymore.”

For a second, his spirits lifted-Kristin was going home? — but there was nothing jubilant in Karen's tone, so he asked, “Where is she going?”

“Home.”

Now he was puzzled again. That was a good sign, wasn't it? “The doctors think she's improved enough to go home?”

“No, not really, but my dad does.”

That sounded about right. Mr. Nelson was not one to let professionals get in the way.

“He thinks they're not doing enough for her-enough physical therapy enough cognitive stuff-and he's decided to hire all his own people and just have them come to the house, where he can monitor them.”

“Who's going to run the car dealerships?”

“Don't ask me. This is his big idea, and we're all just along for the ride.”

That, too, sounded like the family dynamic; Kristin had been the only one who ever actively refused to go along. And though Michael did not doubt for one minute Mr. Nelson's love for his daughter, he also saw this as a way-a final, irrefutable way-for him to gain control over her again, entirely.

“When is this happening?”

“Tomorrow. But they've been making the arrangements-for hospital beds, ventilators, round-the-clock nurses-for the past week.”

“So,” Michael said, absentmindedly rubbing his left shoulder, “she's going to be back in her old room. That might be good for her.”

“Actually, her old room is upstairs-I don't need to tell you that,” she said, with a wry laugh, “and it's too hard to get everything up there. So we're converting the family room instead.”

“Oh, right. That makes sense,” he said, a burst of static suddenly interfering with the connection. He was trying to sort through it all-was this a good idea, or just a desperate one? Even with nurses coming and going at all hours, how could her parents and her sister really oversee her recovery?

A recovery that Michael had understood, from the doctors, to be impossible.

Lord knows he had tried to believe in it. For the whole of that long, cold night in the Cascades, and for much of the next day, he had forced himself to think only optimistically; he had willed himself to believe that she would wake up and come around again, just as soon as he got her back down the mountain. At daybreak, he'd crawled out of the sleeping bag he'd shared with her all night and rubbed as much feeling back into his own limbs as he could. He had a big purple bruise on his thigh, where he'd been lying on a carabiner, and his left shoulder still ached. He unwrapped another PowerBar and wolfed it down. As he looked up at the dawn sky, he could see a private plane buzzing by overhead. For the hell of it, he waved his arms, shouted, and even blew his whistle, but the plane didn't bank its wings to signal that they'd seen him, much less return for another look. It disappeared to the west, and the only sounds remaining were the cries of birds and the rustling of the wind.

Kristin had not reacted in any way to the whistle or the shouts. He bent low over her, felt for her pulse and checked her breathing. It was low, but steady. He had two alternatives-he could wait where he was and hope that some other climbers would come by- or he could try to move her down the mountain on his own. He glanced again at the horizon. There were clouds coming in, and if they brought rain or fog, then nobody else would be climbing that day. No, he would just have to do it himself, with an elaborate system of ropes and jerry-rigged pulleys. He could lower Kristin maybe ten or fifteen yards at a time, then climb down, redo all the ropes, and try it again. If he could just make it down far enough, he might bump into some casual hikers, or even get close enough to Big Lake that the sounds of his emergency whistle would carry to some boater-provided, of course, that the wind was right.

He gathered up all the gear that hadn't fallen off the cliff, or spilled out of the backpack, and started making his plan. There was another ledge, no bigger than an ironing board, about twenty-five or thirty feet below, and he thought he could maneuver Kristin down onto it. He knew he had to be careful with her head and neck, but for the life of him he couldn't figure out a way to stabilize them; he had nothing firm to use. He would have to take his chances.

It took the better part of an hour to rig up a system and tie Kristin's limp body into it-and another hour just to get the two of them down onto the ledge. By then, Michael was soaked in sweat and covered with a thousand cuts and scratches. He sat on the ledge, one hand on Kristin's leg-if only she would show some sign of consciousness, if only she could talk to him for even a few seconds-while the other held his canteen. He drained the last few drops. A few pieces of rock, disturbed by their recent descent, crumbled down onto their precarious aerie.

The dark clouds were coming closer.

He looked down, at the tops of the pine trees and the waters of Big Lake, and he knew that this system would not work. It was taking too long, and he did not dare keep her out on the mountain for another night. He decided to go for broke. Shedding every ounce of unnecessary equipment, and stripping down to his climbing shorts and T-shirt, he strapped her to his back, with her arms dangling down at her sides, her crushed yellow helmet resting on his own shoulder, and started climbing down. Either he would make it to the bottom and carry her out of the forest below, or they would die together, falling out of the sky.

All the way down, he whispered to her. “Now, hang on,” he'd say. “I've just got to find a toehold.” Or “Don't let this worry you, but I think my shoulder is starting to separate again.” Or “What would you say to a nice big steak at the Ponderosa? You're buying.” Her head would loll around his shoulder, and sometimes he could feel her warm breath on his neck, but that was enough-he knew that she was with him, that she was alive, that he would get them out somehow. By late afternoon, the storm clouds had completely filled the sky, but they hadn't burst. There was only a faint mist in the air-its coolness actually felt good-and an occasional drop or two of rain. “Please, God, do me one favor-hold the rain till I get off this damn mountain.”

And God had kept his part of the bargain. Michael had made it across the slope at the foot of Mount Washington and into the shelter of the pine forest before all hell broke loose. Thunder clapped and sheets of rain poured out of the sky. Briefly, he knelt on the wet earth, breathing in the rich scent of the pine needles, letting the rain wash over him. He had used it to wash the grime off Kristin's face, and wet her lips with it. Her eyelids quivered when the droplets fell on them. But otherwise, there was no sign of life.

He tried to pick her up again, but all his limbs were quivering with exhaustion and he could barely move. He didn't care. He pulled Kristin up into his arms and leaned back against the trunk of a tree, his face lifted toward the branches above, and lay there, for how long he never knew. When he stirred again, soaking wet and shivering, it was dark. The rain had stopped, and a full moon was out. He draped Kristin across his back once again, and staggered in the moonlight back toward the Big Lake parking lot, where he'd left his Jeep. When he broke out of the trees-filthy, wet, and bleeding, with an unconscious girl on his back-he saw two young guys in U. of Washington sweatshirts, unloading a pickup truck. They watched him coming toward them as if he was a Sasquatch. “Help,” he mumbled. “We need help.”

And then, according to the two frat brothers, he had passed out cold.

The moment Darryl had seen the two figures in the ice, he knew it was time for him to step in. Enough of the ice had been cut away- or melted away by Michael's lights-that he could actually see, when he crouched in front of the block, the pommel of a sword at the man's side. Its gold tassel was frozen in an upside-down position.

“You've done great work,” he said again to Betty and Tina, “but let's get this inside my lab now and finish the job.”

Michael had gone for the phone, but Betty and Tina acted as if they wanted to wait for his verdict. “Michael will be back in a few minutes. Let's talk about it then.”

But Darryl was no fool, and he knew what was afoot. Give scientists-even glaciologists, why should they be any different? — a taste of something really extraordinary, and they'll never let go. So much of science was routine lab work, endless experiments, blind tests, statistical breakdowns, that when they found something groundbreaking, something that had come out of nowhere-and that, in addition, had the potential to make some headlines in the outside world-there was a natural reluctance to let go.

He had to work fast, and decisively. He scurried back toward the equipment sheds, where the snowmobiles and Sprytes and augers were kept, and rounded up Franklin and Lawson, who were already privy to the find. He brought them back with an industrial dolly, the ones they normally used to transport drums of diesel fuel, and while Betty complained that Darryl was moving too fast, and Tina fretted about the scientific integrity of the specimens, Darryl had his two recruits throw the tarp back over the substantially diminished ice block, then tip it back onto the dolly. Carting it around the corner, they pushed it up the ramp that led into the safe harbor of the marine biology lab.

“Now what?” Franklin said, looking around at the cluttered space, packed with hissing oxygen tubes, clattering instruments, and tanks filled with alien creatures bathed in lavender light.

“I want it in there,” Darryl said, stepping to the large aquarium tank. Earlier, he had removed the subdividers, emptied out the old water, scrubbed the tank from top to bottom, and refilled it with fresh seawater. It was now one large tub. He'd taken the resident cod out to a hole in the ice and slipped them through. If they were still part of someone else's experiment, then they should have been so labeled. Through the ice cover, he could dimly make them out as they slithered away-along with a darker form, swiftly approaching. No doubt a leopard seal who had suddenly spotted his lunch buffet. Life in the Antarctic was a precarious business.

Franklin moved the dolly to the lip of the tank, and Lawson stepped into the water; wearing his trademark kerchief on his head, he looked a bit like a buccaneer about to wade out to his prize.

“You know the water displacement's gonna wet your floor, right?” Franklin said, and Darryl replied, “That's why we've got the floor drains. Go ahead.”

With Lawson bracing it from inside the pool, and Darryl helping Franklin to tilt it forward gently, the ice block slowly made its way over the rim of the pool, then, as Lawson jumped back, it completed its descent, splashing into the water and sending, as Franklin had predicted, a wave of temperate salt water sloshing onto the floor and over the tops of their boots. As the tarp drifted free, the ice seemed to float and settle for a few minutes, with the two figures lying back to back, before the ripples in the tank subsided and the block became still.

His prize, at last.

Franklin took a long look at it, then said, “I wouldn't want to work in here alone with that.”

Lawson, stepping out of the tank drenched, looked like he felt the same way.

But Darryl wasn't bothered in the slightest. His eyes were riveted on the slab of ice, which now rested, horizontally, in the pool; the seawater rose enough to cover nearly all of it. If his calculations, based on the thickness of the ice and the temperature gradient in the aquarium, were correct-and his calculations generally were- the bodies would float entirely free in just a few days. Cool, but still intact and well composed.

Once Franklin and Lawson had gone, he closed up shop. There wasn't much he could do in there immediately; the most important thing was to go out and check some of his underwater nets and traps, and see what fresh examples of the antifreeze fish-as the marine biology crowd referred to them-they might yield. You never knew when, or how, the additional specimens might come in handy.

Before leaving, he turned off the overhead fluorescents, but the lab still glowed in the lights from the tank and the aquarium, radiating a pale purple that pervaded the steel-and-concrete space, and only failed to reach into the farthest and darkest corners. He pulled on his coat and gloves and hat-God, it got to be a nuisance after a while, all this dressing and undressing-and opened the door to a blast of freezing wind. Closing it firmly behind him, he tromped down the icy ramp and off toward the shore.

Inside the lab, the various denizens of the tanks, ranged all along the walls and shelves, went on about their quiet, confined, and ultimately doomed lives. The sea spiders stood up on their spindly hind legs and used several others to probe the glass. The worms moved through the water, spooling and unspooling like ivory ribbons. The starfish spread themselves flat, suctioning themselves to the walls of their prison. The big-mouthed, nacreous ice fish swam in endless tight circles. The hoses burbled, the space heaters hummed, the wind howled around the outside of the module.

And the slab of ice in the aquarium slowly, imperceptibly, melted. Little by little, the cool water circulating in the tank eroded the thickness of the ancient ice. Occasionally, there was a crackling sound, as the seawater found a minuscule fissure and rushed to fill it. Tiny, almost invisible striations appeared here and there, like scratches on a mirror. Air bubbles surfaced and popped. The black PVC pipes that brought the freshwater into the tank and removed the same amount of water that had now been cooled by the melting ice kept the temperature at a steady thirty-nine degrees. In a day or two, the ice would become thin enough to see through clearly, thin enough to let in the faint purple glow of the lab… so thin the block might begin to split and crumble.

And then the ice would have to relinquish, however grudgingly, everything it still held captive.