Dark Winter

CHAPTER EIGHT

Now what, Sherlock?

Lewis stood indecisively at the junction of tunnels near the entrance to the dome. Two corrugated steel archways, both completely buried under the snow, branched at either arm. To his left were the generators, gym, and garage. BioMed, the sick bay, was to his right, tucked into the same arch that held the station's fuel supply. The tunnels were like a huge half culvert, cold and dimly lit, and a scuffed layer of dirty snow coated their plywood floors like old sawdust. The medical facility was a windowless metal box the size of a truck trailer. Inside this makeshift hospital Doctor Nancy Hodge dispensed everything from useless advice on the inevitable polar crud- "We can't escape each other's viruses; deal with it"-to better-appreciated painkillers, stitches, and antiseptics. If seriously hurt, their lives were in her hands. If desperately ill or wounded, there was probably little she could do.

It was a place to start. By necessity, Hodge knew everybody.

Lewis wanted to find the meteorite. Not for itself so much as to find who'd caused him this trouble. Any thief must have known the fingie would be suspect. And of all the people on base, he was least equipped to probe because he was the fingie, the outsider. He really knew no one. Which the thief knew, too.

"You can be more objective because you're new," Cameron had told him.

Bullshit. It was a sop to Mickey Moss and a thankless job for Krill, low man on the totem pole. But he'd do it to save his winter.

And if he found the rock, he'd be tempted to keep the dang thing.

But first he had to find it. Find someone who knew people's secrets.

The four men who'd met in Comms had searched each other's rooms in the quiet hours before breakfast and found nothing of interest except Moss's fondness for a box of scratched vinyl LPs he'd shipped with an old turntable, a barrel-shaped kit telescope that Norse was assembling to look at the winter stars, and a shelf of pathetic how-to-be-a-boss books next to Cameron's bedside. Norse had a chess set, Cameron a jigsaw puzzle, Mickey a book of crosswords. Lewis wasn't surprised at the lack of smoking guns. No one was going to put the rock under his pillow. But it had satisfied him to rifle through their belongings as they had his. Served them right.

Now he pulled open the door and stepped into BioMed. "Doctor Hodge?"

The medic looked up with a start. A small pharmacy of pills was scattered on the wool blanket of the sick bay bed. Nancy was bent forward from a chair and going through it, sorting drugs into piles. The doctor jerked at the intrusion and some of the pills went awry.

Nancy hastily rolled them back. "Don't you knock?"

"I didn't know we were supposed to."

"Sometimes I have patients."

"I thought you'd use the lock."

She was slightly mollified. Lewis was new, after all. "We never use it because someone might be in a hurry in an emergency. Looking for stuff when I'm not around. Is this an emergency?"

"Not exactly."

"Then knock next time." She began scooping up pills and putting them into bottles. "So. You got the crud?"

"No." He glanced around. There was an examining table and the single bed. "Just wanted to pick your brain."

The doctor straightened and leaned back in her metal chair, looking curious and mildly wary. She got tense and excitable when patients showed up, a lapse in bedside manner that had already made base personnel reluctant to seek her care. Had there been some kind of malpractice back home? Or was she still just adjusting to the Pole? Now she gestured toward the bed as if there were a need to explain. "Look at all this medicine that's accumulated over the years. Antibiotics, aspirin, laxatives, even seasick pills. Some are pretty potent. I'm trying to sort it out." She held up two pills. "One to make you bigger, and another to make you small."

"Your own pharmacy."

"I could market on street corners." She smiled slightly and he realized how rarely Nancy mustered amusement. She wasn't dour, but she was serious. Tired, maybe. Thin, her face beginning to line, her hair to gray, her eyes to lose their optimism. Late forties and tough as horn. "Not something we'd advertise to NSF."

"That's the odd thing, isn't it?" Lewis said. "That in theory we could do anything we want down here and nobody would ever know."

Nancy shrugged. "That's the theory. The truth is that everyone is such a blabbermouth that sooner or later the feds in D.C. know everything. Which probably is just as well." That half smile again. "Keeps the place from exploding."

"I'm wondering if you know everything."

"What does that mean?"

"About the people who come down here. You get their records, and you might have some insight as to what makes them tick."

She laughed. "If you mean their organs, yes. If you mean their heads, no. That's Doctor Bob's business."

"He's too new. You've been with everybody for four months."

"As their medic, not their mother."

"I just need somebody who might have insights."

That slight smile again, and a sigh. "Lewis, you're looking at a woman who realized not long ago that she doesn't know anything about anybody." She held up her left hand, displaying that white streak on her ring finger. "A medical marvel who just happened not to notice that the man she'd lived with for eighteen years had taken up with one of her own nurses, drained her savings, and eloped to Mexico- until he sent a 'Dear Jane' letter from a Guadalajara cyber-cafe. You want medical advice, maybe I can help. You want to understand people? There's nobody more clueless than me." She nodded toward the door.

He stood his ground. "Well, you're the only person I can think of to start."

"Start what?"

"Getting Mickey Moss off my back."

She regarded him speculatively for a moment. Finally she pushed away from the pill-laden bed. "What's the problem?"

"Doctor Moss found this meteorite in the ice. Now it's missing."

"So?"

"It's been stolen."

Nancy looked skeptical. "Stolen? Why?"

"It's probably worth some money."

The medic barked a laugh. "Not down here it isn't. Who are you going to hock it to?"

"But later, outside…"

"No, that doesn't make sense." Nancy's mind was quick, everyone admitted that, and she was instantly engaged by this mystery. "I mean, steal it now and sit on it all winter? No, no, no. A prank, maybe. A borrowing. When was it missed?"

"I don't know. Couple days ago. I took a look at it because I'm a geologist and Mickey hid it out in the solar observatory and now it's gone."

"Not that long after the last of the summer crew?"

"Yes."

"Then they took it, don't you think? It's gone. Forget about it."

"No, I saw it after they left."

"Saw it? Or a fake? What if Moss swapped rocks? It's an alibi, see. Send the real rock out, bring in a fake, have the fingie tentatively authenticate the phony, and then get rid of it before he can really tell."

Lewis looked at the doctor in surprise. Hodge seemed to have certainly considered the problem in a very short time. "You've heard about this before."

She smiled, a certain grimness to her grin. "About the rock. Everyone has. If I was in charge, I'd start with you."

"They already did. I was searched last night."

"What'd they find?"

He kept his face straight. "A bag of white powder, a wallet full of prophylactics, and an Aryan Nations membership card."

"Told ya you didn't have it."

"My Hustlers they simply confiscated."

"I would have let you keep them."

"So who does have it? Nancy, I need help here. I come down, take a look at a meteorite as a favor, and it disappears."

"So you're questioning me?"

"I need to know who I should question."

"Maybe no one. Maybe you should tell Mickey to go fuck himself. Snooping around isn't going to make you very popular, you know."

"Moss is the station's eight-hundred-pound gorilla. I can't have him on my case all winter, either."

"True," she conceded. "I feel your pain." She thought a moment. "Well. Any number of people need money. Greed is universal. Cameron has no real career except as polar junkie, Linda Brown has a loser boyfriend back home who might marry her if she came with sufficient dowry, Gabriella Reid would be a gold digger if she could find anyone with any gold…" The medic shrugged. "Take your pick."

"See? You do know things."

"That's stuff everyone knows. I'd swipe it, if I could."

"Do you need money, too?"

"I already told you I was pillaged by the son of a bitch I was married to. The bottom line, however, is it would be stupid as hell to take the meteorite at the start of winter. Why have to hide it for eight months? Hocking something from the Pole wouldn't be all that easy anyway. The whole thing makes no sense. Why not wait and steal it in the spring? Mickey is smart, and old, and cranky, and I think he's somehow messing with all of us. Either that or…"

"Or what?"

"If it's one of us?" She thought some more. "I think it was taken not to sell, but to send a message. Make a point. Zing Mickey Moss. Relieve the tedium. Create a joke. Screw him. Screw you."

"But why?"

She shrugged. "Who knows?" She pointed to the door again. "But I wouldn't look for someone greedy. I'd look for someone pissed."

Lewis stood back under the intersection of archways again, more frustrated than ever. Take your pick. Well, hell. This kind of interrogation was really Rod Cameron's job but the station manager had been all too eager to palm the job off on Lewis. Nor was Cameron about to tell Mickey Moss to bug off. Harrison Adams had told Lewis that Moss had been down too long and was worshiped too much. He pushed everything too far, giving the Pole an importance it had never quite lived up to. It was rash to promise discovery and yet Moss promised incessantly, and bragged on work half done, creating pressures for performance that became obnoxious. "It's true he brings in research money and charms when he wishes," Adams had told him. "I've watched him schmooze a whole planeload of government VIPs who fly down for an hour to get their picture taken at the Pole. But he can also be as vain and vindictive as hell. Rod's afraid of him, and probably you should be, too. NSF can yank the old scientist's chain whenever they want to but they never will: Michael M. Moss is their polar god, the eminent graybeard poster boy. Don't cross him."

Yet someone had. Who had the balls to steal Mickey's rock?

One beneficiary of the mystery was Norse. He was an outsider, too, and the theft was exactly the kind of thing that played with their heads and gave the psychologist more to write about. Except that a stunt like that, the deliberate introduction of an artificial variable, would discredit the reliability of his entire study. Norse had said himself that he couldn't build a rat maze. Besides, the shrink had been surprised at the meteorite's value and was almost as new as Lewis, with no obvious ax to grind against Moss or anyone else.

A beaker, on the other hand, would recognize that any meteorite had value. A beaker might be jealous of Moss. Beakers were insanely competitive, boasting about hours worked, sleep forgone. They could be jealous, even petty.

Yet a scientist risked his career and reputation with any theft, while support personnel risked… what? There was no law or court or jail at the Pole. Theirs was a job, period, and a hard and thankless one at that. Put in a year and get out. There was little the scientists did that the cooks and mechanics and carpenters and safety specialists didn't know about. Some, like Buck Tyson, were openly contemptuous of what amounted to a two-tier system: the intellectuals and the grunts. If you wanted to annoy the eggheads you didn't throw a wrench into the power plant, because that hurt everyone. You… created another kind of turmoil. Like this.

And who was the station sorehead?

Lewis crossed to the archway on the other side and went down its dim half cylinder, the corridor's string of caged lights punctuated by pools of gloom. Pipes and conduit, years past their projected life, extended like rusty ropes on either side, wrapped in fraying, frosted insulation. In two places there were memorial pools of brown frozen water where sewage lines had ruptured before emergency repairs could be made. Sand had been thrown across the puddles until the dirty ice could be chipped out. Someday.

He went through another door to the generator room, more brightly lit and noisy. There were three generators here, one rumbling like an urgent drum, another in emergency readiness, and a third being overhauled. Pika Taylor, the plant manager, was bent over its black interior with ear protectors on, his head down inside his machine like a rabbit entering its burrow. He didn't hear the geologist.

Lewis considered the generator mechanic. Sometimes it was the quiet guys who blew. Look for someone pissed. Pika seemed awfully possessive about his machines. Yet he also seemed as mild as the animal he was named for. What did he have against Mickey Moss? The two were probably unaware of each other's existence. Pika's tuneless whistling hum was the sound of the bubble of preoccupation the man carried with him. He lived in a machine world, largely oblivious to the gossip, intrigues, friendships, lusts, jealousies, and alliances that swirled around him. His myopia was enviable, in a way. Unfortunately, Lewis wasn't allowed to share it.

Without interrupting Pika, he went on.

The gym beyond was the old garage, dark and low, with a frayed net that divided the space in two. It was the site of "volleybag" games, so named because an ordinary ball could be hit too easily up to the arched ceiling. A bundle of rags was used instead. Only a single light was on there, in line with the plea for constant energy conservation. There was no fuel resupply until the end of winter and the resulting twilight was spooky. Empty during the work shifts except… He started when he saw a shadowy woman sitting in the corner.

She ignored him.

"Hey, there," he tried.

No response.

Oh yeah. The woman was a mannequin he'd already been introduced to, the doll dubbed Raggedy Ann that had been brought down to practice CPR on. She was a mascot in the gym the way their slug Hieronymus was in the galley. Now she watched him from the gray twilight, slumped and somehow mocking. Hey yourself.

He turned left through another corridor that led to a second archway that had been added to replace the old garage. Inside was the station's motor pool, such as it was: two aging D-6 bulldozers whose rust had been arrested only by the arid polar air, two tracked exploration vehicles called Sprytes, and four beat-up snowmobiles, including the one he'd tried. It was becoming too cold to use the machines routinely and the main doors had been shut against the growing dimness outside. Blowing snow had made a small drift through the crack where the barn doors joined.

The garage was more brightly lit than the gym but still had a dungeon feel. Chains hung from overhead tracks used to hoist engine blocks, the red paint of their steel hooks flaked and faded into a semblance of dried blood. Metal racks built against the walls of the arch held a shadowy armory of spare and abandoned metal parts, intricate and mysterious. Pegboard above workbenches held racks of tools, heavy and sharp. A steel mesh floor laid across the snow was slick with dripping oil. The air stank of fuel fumes. A blowing heater kept its temperature barely above freezing.

A thousand places to hide a rock.

There was a screeching rasp and shower of sparks behind one of the parked Sprytes and Lewis made his way in that direction. He had no better plan of approach than with Nancy Hodge. Gee, Tyson, you got the meteorite? You being so disliked and all.

"Hey, Buck!"

Tyson glanced up from the spinning grinder with impatient annoyance and reluctantly turned, bracing himself against the likelihood of another work request. As he took his foot off the grinder pedal, its whir died away.

"Yeah?" It was a grunt.

"How's it going?"

Tyson squinted. "It's going."

Lewis looked at what the mechanic had in his hand. Flat metal, shiny and sharp. It was an opening. "I heard you made knives."

Tyson glanced around. "So?"

"As a hobby? You sell them back in North Dakota?"

"So?"

Maybe this was the wrong time to draw him out. The mechanic was on shift, and obviously not working on whatever he was supposed to be working on. He was probably afraid Lewis would tell Cameron. Lewis cast about for a revealing question. "Where do you get the material?"

"What?"

"For the knives? Where do you get the metal?"

The mechanic looked at him as if he were blind. "We've got enough scrap to build a fucking battleship. Every bit of useless junk you can think of except what we really need."

At least he was answering. And he took things. "What do you use for handles?"

Tyson considered his visitor. What was this about? He had no illusions about people who came into his garage. They all wanted something, and screw them. Still, he answered. "Metal. Wood. Bone. Hard rubber. Plastic. Why?"

"I'm thinking of buying one."

The mechanic looked wary.

"For Christmas presents. We'll be home by then."

Tyson waited for more.

"How much?" Lewis asked.

"What?"

"How much for a knife?"

The mechanic considered. "Hundred bucks."

"For a knife!"

"Handmade and engraved at the Pole." He deliberately huffed out a cloud of vapor, a plume like cigarette smoke. "I put up with a lot of shit to make these."

"Would you consider fifty?"

That baleful look again. "No." Then he reconsidered. "Maybe seventy-five."

"I'm on a budget, Buck."

"So am I."

There was a long silence, each watching the other. Tyson didn't act like an imminent millionaire. Another dead end. "When will they be finished?"

"Long before you get home." He grinned at that.

Lewis smiled falsely. "You got some I could look at?"

The persistent interest softened Tyson slightly. He shrugged. "In my locker in my room. Maybe I could show you later."

"My dad might want one, too."

"I don't care who wants them."

"He likes crafted stuff."

"Show me some cash. Then we'll get serious." Tyson turned back to the grinder.

Lewis glanced around again, spotting nothing of interest. The mechanic might be a grouch but there was none of the evasion expected of a thief. Lewis turned to go, thinking he might try Abby next and worrying she'd be more annoyed than helpful.

He was no investigator. This entire fiasco was a waste of time…

"Tyson!"

Rod Cameron was stalking into the garage toward both of them, looking sleepless and angry.

"Jesus fuck…" The mechanic turned, stiffening. The mechanic's grip on the blade tightened and Lewis could see the knuckles whitening. He looked at Lewis accusingly, as if he'd led the station manager here, and Lewis shook his head in denial. What the hell was this about?

Cameron strode up and stopped, rocking slightly on his ankles, his mood stormy. "What the hell are you doing here?" he asked Lewis.

"Talking with Buck while my computer defrags." He raised his eyebrows, trying to prod Cameron's memory. The investigation.

"Oh." He looked at Lewis curiously and Lewis shrugged again. Nothing. "Well, go poke around somewhere else, Lewis. I need to have it out with Tyson." The manager's eyes darted back to the mechanic. He was gathering himself for a fight.

"Sure." Lewis took a step back.

"You don't have to leave, fingie," Tyson said quietly. "No secrets here."

Lewis hesitated. He was curious. Cameron glanced at him, waiting for him to go, but Lewis thought Tyson might let something useful slip. "Maybe I can help."

Cameron blinked. It might help to have a witness. "Okay. No secrets." He turned to Tyson. "What're you doing, Buck?"

Tyson looked sourly at his boss. "Stuff."

"You get this Spryte fixed?"

"The machine's a piece of shit."

"We need it anyway."

"It's fucking dangerous if it breaks down."

"It's fucking all we've got. And I thought you were a good mechanic."

Tyson looked from Cameron to Lewis, wondering how belligerent he could afford to be, and spat, deliberately, the spittle hitting the floor. "I'm working on it."

Cameron looked at the big man's fist. "What's that, then?"

Tyson looked at the metal in his hand with apparent surprise and then held it up, the sharpness glinting in the light. "Piston rod," he said, deadpan.

Cameron looked at the hoisted knife and then back at Tyson. "I looked at the water budget this morning. Do you know the daily ration is off fifty gallons?"

"Why no, boss, I don't."

"It's because of your damn showers, isn't it?"

"Beats me."

"I do. I've been timing you."

"Then you've got more time than I do."

"You're using as much water as six other people!"

"So melt some more."

"You know the Rodriguez Well is slow!"

"Two months ago you were complaining I was too dirty."

"That's because you stank every time you came to meals! You'd clear an entire table, like some goddamn wino! Are you insane, or what?"

"Don't you wish you'd sent me home?" Tyson smiled.

"You know I couldn't find a replacement, you goddamn butthead!"

Tyson pointed at Lewis. "Sparco did. You could, too. There's still time to get a plane in here, maybe. For an emergency. I feel appendicitis coming on."

"I'm warning you, Buck…"

"Because I wish you'd send me home." The mechanic tossed the knife aside onto the metal workbench, where it rang like a bell. He raised his big hands. "You want to compare hands, Rod?"

"Don't you threaten me."

"You want to compare those soft, white, thin-fingered paws of yours, which hardly ever get out of your warm fucking office, with mine, which get so hard I gotta soak 'em in Vaseline and wear gloves to bed? You want to spend a day under this Spryte or the Cats, where the metal's either so hot from the stinking engine, spewing carbon monoxide, that I burn my hands, or so cold that I burn 'em again? You want to work on shit so brittle that it shatters like glass, and string extension cords so stiff they snap like a twig?" He glowered as he spoke, like a looming thunderhead. "Don't talk to me about your fucking precious water! It's the only damn thing keeping me sane!" His volume had grown to a roar.

Cameron instinctively stepped backward. The big man was at the barest edge of control. The station manager was sputtering. "I've about had it with you."

"No, you haven't, you ineffectual snot!" The mechanic seemed to expand with frustrated rage, like an inflating balloon. He filled the garage, dark and hairy, and Lewis felt nervous, too. Tyson was losing it. "You haven't had it with me for another eight, fucked-up, gloriously boring months! You can't get away from me, and I can't get away from you, and so you can take your lunatic work calendar and cram it like a suppository up your soft supervisory ass!" The mechanic waited defiantly for a response, quivering with rage, and yet there was none, Cameron momentarily speechless at this outright defiance. The station manager had gone rigid. Then Tyson turned arrogantly back to the workbench, picking up the knife.

"That's outright insubordination!" Cameron finally managed.

"You need me, I'll be in the shower."

Cameron looked at the mechanic's back with a mixture of disbelief and hatred. "This time you've gone too far," he choked, trembling with outrage.

"So fire me."

"I'm writing you up in my e-mail report."

Tyson laughed. Cameron looked bitterly at Lewis, who was embarrassed at this exchange. The manager knew he couldn't let this one go. Couldn't risk losing control. Couldn't bear the humiliation.

"This time, Buck Tyson, you're toast."

We Decide as a Group

Kids come out of their childhood thinking they'll be taken care of. Kids show up in college with this sorry-ass misapprehension of helplessness glued between their ears like slow-setting concrete, as hapless as clams, as dim as donkeys. Fix me. Be fair.

Fat Boy had been carried his whole life, I'm sure of it. Instead of being forced to get fit to survive, he'd always found a place on the team, always convinced the others to wait up, always whined his way into some kind of second-class acceptance. Fat Boy always got bailed out. And now he needed to be bailed out by me.

Who knows why the hell he unroped himself? To rest, to pee, to make the rest of us wait- what does it matter? He'd insisted on joining the group and was now slowing the group he'd joined, defining our chain by its weakest link. The end of his rope lay trailing on the snow like a foolish scribble. Somewhere he'd unleashed himself and was gone.

I looked at the summit, pink and swollen in the dawn light. I looked at the clouds to the west, which were beginning to mound into a grayish wall. If he cost us too many minutes, he'd cost all of us the climb. Unacceptable.

I wanted to take my team and Kressler's team up to the top. Let Fleming find him. He'd lost him. Why ruin it for everyone? Why ruin it for me? But Kressler sided with his friend and they insisted the entire class stay together. So down the tracks we went, the other kids grumbling and cursing, looking for the point where our chubby little moron had decided to wander off by himself, and myself so potentially eruptive that I knew better than to say anything. I half hoped Fat Boy had already found a crevasse and was gone for the next ten thousand years, frozen like the dense brick he was until a glacier spat him out. Then maybe we could still make the top.

I should be so lucky.

It turned out that the idiot Fleming had lost him a full quarter mile back, never having turned to check on the end of his string. The weak-lunged half-wit! Couldn't say that, either, of course, but Fleming was a lousy climber, truth be told. Piss-poor instructor. He was too nice, always a mistake. Made me uneasy. There's a difference between self-control and weakness. So back we went, a quarter-mile backtrack, and sure enough footprints led off the main trail we'd beaten and away in a meandering wander down one side of the saddle. What was Fat Boy thinking? We hadn't followed his trail for fifty yards when there was a break in the snow like a bite in a sandwich. The kid had obviously triggered a slide and been carried over the edge with it. I can't say I felt much pity. I frankly looked at the evidence with a certain feeling of satisfaction. Life was just. Finis. Can we go to the top now? But I bit my tongue.

Great surprise and consternation, of course. Wails, tears, and so much phony emotion I thought the sheer weight of the pathos would trigger another avalanche. As if anybody really liked the dumb kid! But of course we had to do the right thing, and the right thing was to clamber up and around, risking us all, and getting so close to the edge of Wallace Wall that we all might soon join Fat Boy in Paradise. I kept looking for a place to plant my ice ax once the class started the slide over. Except we didn't, and then, wonder of wonders, we heard a frightened scream.

Fat Boy wasn't done with us.

As the one instructor who really knew what he was doing, I had the other two belay me and edged downslope for a look over the cliff where Fat Boy had fallen, leaning so far that the rope was taut as piano wire. At first I couldn't see a damn thing in the dim predawn light but then I made out movement on a ledge about three hundred feet below. The kid had slid down a chute, bounced off into space, and then by a miracle had somehow fetched up about three thousand feet shy of the real bottom. He saw my silhouette and started screaming to beat hell. The smart thing to do would have been to leave him right then and go get help.

Except that the storm was coming.

Kressler and then Fleming had to take their turns edging down to see, minutes ticking by, our window closing. It was a mess, all right. A right royal snafu.

The triumvirate met. My advice was to get the rest of the kids off the mountain. Better to lose one than fifteen. Lower a bag down to Fat Boy and come back with a chopper and a medic unit when the weather allowed. Let's not be heroes now.

Kressler didn't like it, and I knew why. It was his class, really. We were assisting. A rescue would get in the newspapers and questions would be asked about why our dumb blubber buffalo had been allowed to wander off into an avalanche chute. Wouldn't look good for our fearless leader to have allowed such an elementary mistake. Kressler was up for department chair and the competition was vicious, as it always is in the ivied halls of academia, where so many fight so relentlessly for so little. His rivals would use this embarrassment against him. Silly, but there it is. Careers have turned on less. He'd really rather just bundle the kid down the mountain himself, if it was all the same to us. Come back a hero, smelling roses. It was the political thing to do.

No way, Jose.

But then Fleming, willing to brown-nose an up-and-coming department chair with the best of them- in order to grease his own skids toward tenure- sided with the ambitious idiot. The pair was convinced they could pull off this bit of derring-do.

Kressler was actually pretty good, technically, but Fleming was in over his head and didn't have the judgment of a flea. He trusted, always a mistake. And he trusted Kressler to be able to somehow snatch Fat Boy off that wall and save us all from an awkward morning-after of questions.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Except those clouds were coming. That was their trump card. I'd actually heard a little about the approaching storm- I'd volunteered to monitor the radio- but decided not to share it with the doomsayers the evening before because it might have cramped our try for the summit. In hindsight maybe that wasn't the smartest thing in the world to do but I thought we had time and I wanted the top, dammit. That was the whole point. We could have beaten the storm if not for the unroping of Fat Boy. Now the other two used the weather to justify our immediate rescue of the idiot. Left alone, the bozo might actually die. And then what was now mere bad luck becomes major fuckup. Turns Kressler from rising star to object of inquiry. So here's the plan. We climb down to Fat Boy- all of us- and then continue down an "easy" route that Kressler knew on Wallace Wall. We all get down off the mountain pronto. Disaster turns into rescue. Fat Boy becomes a trophy save.

Jesus.

The voice of reason, being me, gently pointed out that the pack of amateurs we were leading didn't have the skills to do this kind of Matterhorn macho shit. I told Kressler that he could go down there while Fleming and I took everyone else back down the glacier. But Kressler said he needed Fleming, and Fleming said Fat Boy was so heavy they really needed two more young studs to help, and no one wanted to break up the party, and so in the spirit of eternal togetherness the decision was made, over my quiet objections, to take fourteen kids down the hard way in hopes of saving one and avoiding any awkward questions.

I'm sure they'd tell you it made sense at the time.

The kids were frightened. "We need your help on this one," the other two instructors told me. I caved. With more camaraderie than sense I put on a happy face, announced we were all making a brief detour, and agreed to take Kressler's dubious route, picking up our overweight blubber baggage along the way. We'd look so smart when we reached the bottom!

Ah, togetherness.

A couple of the girls were weeping. A couple of the guys looked whiter than the snow. The sun was just cracking the eastern range.

We started down.