Dark Winter

CHAPTER NINE

I think I need some help."

Lewis had found Abby in the greenhouse. It was little more than a closet with burbling hydroponic tanks, potted soil, and the smell of tomato vines, but it was brightly lit by grow lights and a refuge of steamy warmth. Lettuce, tomato, parsley, kale, and other greens struggled to maturity there, adding meager scraps of fresh chlorophyll to meals dominated by canned and frozen foods. While the greenhouse was more hobby than experiment, NASA scientists had visited twice to take notes on the facility as a model for future spaceships. Abby came regularly to help Lena Jindrova tend the plants and get an injection of artificial sunlight.

"I'm kind of busy, Jed," she told him. She was snipping dead leaves.

As he'd feared, his investigation was turning people cool. No one wanted a snoop. Lewis suspected Nancy Hodge had put the others on notice about his investigative efforts. Was their doctor the thief, trying to sabotage any inquiry? Or the enforcer of group propriety? Last night when he'd sat in the galley the conversation had muted. And this morning…

"Abby, I'm in a fix here and I don't know what to do."

She didn't look at him. "Why come to me?"

"Because you've been here longer than I have."

She took another snip. "So has everyone."

"Okay, because we're friends."

"A friend you said blabbed about the meteorite. That may have started this whole mess. That's what I heard."

Jesus. Ice Cream had turned hard again. "We were just discussing who knew about it. You pumped me."

She didn't reply.

"And I didn't come here to ask you about the meteorite."

"I'm disappointed I didn't make your list."

He stopped, exasperated. He'd crossed some unseen line at the station. Some unseen line with her.

At his silence she finally stopped trimming and turned to look at him, allowing some reluctant sympathy. "Maybe that wasn't fair," she allowed. "But I don't know about the meteorite, Jed."

"I came to ask you about something else."

"I don't have any suspects."

"No. Something else."

She let the shears drop by her side. "What, then?"

"Someone slipped this under my door this morning." He took a piece of thick paper from a pocket and handed it to her.

Abby unfolded a five-pointed star cut from yellow construction paper. On it were printed the words, "Deputy Dawg."

She frowned.

"I don't even know what it's supposed to mean," Lewis said.

She crumpled up the star and threw it in a recycling basket. The sorting of trash was a basic ground rule at the Pole. "It means to back off."

"Back off what?"

She looked at him impatiently. "Are you dense? You're the fingie, Jed. No one knows you yet. No one trusts you yet. But you're going around asking questions about Mickey's rock like a cop and implying that the rest of us are a bunch of crooks. Worse, you're doing Moss's dirty work for him. Nobody likes him, either, not really. It's the worst kind of way to try to fit in here, and somebody's trying to tell you politely to cut it out before you're toast for the rest of the winter. Why do you even care who took the meteorite? Nobody else does."

"Because he thinks I might have taken it."

She looked at him with impatience. "And what do you care what he thinks? He's not the person you have to eat with, we are."

"He's Sparco's friend and Sparco hired me and… I'm just trying to do the right thing."

"Well, this is a great community of good-hearted people and you're doing exactly the wrong thing if you want to fit in. Mickey can be a bully and Cameron always feels pressured but those guys aren't the group. We are. And we're not a bunch of thieves."

"I'm just trying to feel my way."

"So do your job, keep your mouth shut, and watch. Learn. Listen. There's a society here and your winter will be miserable if you don't fit into it."

"Tyson doesn't fit into it."

"And is he happy?"

Lewis didn't have to answer.

"In fact, Tyson is an example of the risk you run. I ran into Rod and he's so hot he's got steam coming out of his ears. I think he and Buck had some kind of run-in."

"They did. I saw it."

She looked at him in surprise. She was instantly interested, unable to mask her curiosity. "When?"

"I was in the garage when he told Rod to essentially go screw himself. That mechanic is unbelievable. He's nuts."

"He's got so much anger it's scary. It's not the Pole. There's something wrong with him. Some basic resentment of other people, or frustration with his own life."

"They should never have let him come down here."

She nodded. "I think Rod went to Doctor Bob for advice. Tonight he's called a meeting. And that's why it's not a good time to play Columbo, Jed. There's too much tension on station and the winter's starting poorly. Things are coming to a head."

"About the meteorite?"

"About water."

Amundsen-Scott station sat on a freshwater ocean, but it was frozen into ice that stayed a permanent sixty degrees below zero. Imported jet fuel ran a heater that melted a bulb of liquid water in the ice cap called a Rodriguez Well, but raising the temperature of the ice to the melting point was enormously costly. It took a gallon and a half of jet fuel just to fly in a gallon more for use at the Pole.

"Liquid water here costs more than gasoline at home," Cameron told the assembly in the galley that night. "Every drop we consume represents energy we can't use for heating or lights or to run our instruments. If we were on a nuclear submarine we could shower all day, but we're not. And we're using water faster than it's budgeted."

"How much faster?" Carl Mendoza asked.

"About fifty gallons a day."

Some of the others turned to look at Tyson, who was slouched in the shadows along a back wall. He looked determinedly bored.

"Are you listening, Buck?" Cameron called to him.

For a long minute the big man didn't answer. Then: "What? Hard to hear you, Rod. Might need to wash my ears out tonight."

There was an uneasy silence in the room. Tyson looked huge, surly, mean. Everyone was waiting to see what Cameron would do. What Cameron could do.

The station manager waited, letting the silence and uneasiness build. Finally he went on. "The reason we're using so much water is, of course, a mystery." There was a murmur of surprise, but Doctor Bob was watching Cameron expectantly, nodding slightly. "The one thing we do know is that if we're going to make it through the winter with a sufficient fuel reserve, we have to curb our excessive consumption."

"One person has to," astronomer Harrison Adams muttered.

"So," Cameron continued blandly, ignoring Adams, "I'm being forced to announce a new rationing policy. Effective immediately, showers are being cut from two to one a week."

"What?" Geller shouted. The crowd erupted. Several turned to glare at Tyson. He had straightened in initial surprise but now was grinning sardonically, enjoying their outrage, seeming to feed off it.

"That's not fair!" Dana Andrews protested.

"Rod, you can't do that to the maintenance crew," station carpenter Steve Calhoun objected. "We get dirty, man. We stink. Once a week is too long in between."

"And I'm not going to lose my privileges to accommodate that blowhard baboon!" Mickey Moss thundered, pointing at Tyson. "He's a bully!"

"Sticks and stones, man," the mechanic mocked him.

"I'm going to break you!" Moss shouted at Tyson. "Not just here but after, when we get home! Your performance is going to dog you the rest of your life!"

"Fuck you, Mickey Mouse."

Moss was seething, fighting for self-control. "The rest of your life, Tyson."

Cameron held up his hand. "This rationing is temporary until water consumption appears to be coming back into line with projections. I'm leaving it up to the rest of you to figure out how to make sure that comes about."

There was quiet again, everyone looking speculatively at Tyson. He looked back at them defiantly, saying nothing.

"This is your fault," Lena Jindrova finally hissed, standing up to look at the big man, who topped her by a good foot. "You are the pig who is making the rest of us suffer."

"Fuck you, too, Lena."

"You are the pig like the old party bosses in Czechoslovakia, pulling everything to themselves, caring for no one."

"This whole water-rationing crap is bullshit. We've got plenty of fuel. More than we can use."

"You're wrong, Buck," Cameron said quietly.

"You are like a worm that cares only for itself," Lena went on heatedly. She pointed to the galley serving counter, where a glass mason jar held a leaf of lettuce and the curled form of Hieronymus. "Our mascot has more heart than you. More soul."

Tyson scowled, the resentment in the room toward him so palpable it made the air they breathed like syrup. You could smell the sweat, the electric tension. In a moment Cameron had turned everyone against him. "That slug?" the mechanic growled ominously.

"More brains, more work, more everything."

"Little Hiero?" The mechanic pushed himself away from the wall and made his way around the folding chairs where the others sat, his work boots ringing on the floor as he walked. He was supposed to have taken them off, as well, before entering the galley, and they left a trail of snow and grease. The others watched him warily, resentfully, none quite daring to interfere with whatever he chose to do next. He walked up to the counter and picked up the mason jar with the gastropod. "This slime sucker here?"

"Don't you touch him!" Lena warned.

Tyson held the jar up to the light. "Oh yeah. I see what you mean. He's cuter than any bitch in this room."

"Buck, put it down," Cameron commanded. He now looked worried. Tyson's open defiance hadn't been planned.

"Cool it, Tyson." Pulaski stood up, too, muscles tensing.

"I'm cool, Cueball." Then the mechanic made a sudden violent swing of his arm and brought the jar down on the galley counter with a crack. The glass shattered and Lena screamed. The slug slid a short distance on the stainless steel, braked by its own slime. Tyson flicked a couple of pieces of glass off the animal and gingerly picked it up between two fingers, holding it up in front of the crowd.

"Is this what you prefer to me, Lena?"

"You put him down!" she cried.

Norse had become rigid, his gaze flicking around the room, taking it all in.

"Do you think I give a flying fuck what any of you think of me?" Tyson asked them, turning in a slow half rotation to give everyone a clear view of the slug. "Do you think I give a diddly damn about any of you? We're all down here for bucks and glory and to punch the time card home, man. I don't give a shit about the science, I don't give a shit about the station, and I sure as hell don't give a shit if the rest of you don't get a single shower for the rest of the fucking winter. Here's the bottom line. I don't need you. I don't want you. I sure as hell don't like you. I ain't afraid of you." He held the slug closer to his face, scrutinizing it. "And this is what I think of this little guy here."

He opened his mouth.

"Buck, if you do that you're bloody dead on station!" Dana Andrews cried.

"Suck my dick, Dana." He crammed the animal in.

"No!" Lena shouted.

"Jesus Christ," Pulaski said in disgust. The crowd groaned.

Tyson chewed twice, his look wildly defiant, and then swallowed, the gulp audible. There were flecks of slime on his beard. He deliberately belched.

"Why in the name of God did you do that?" Cameron breathed, his look one of horror. He took a shaking step toward Tyson, and Norse put a hand on the station manager's arm.

"Here's another rule for you ass-kissers," Tyson said, wiping his mouth. "No pets in Antarctica."

Lena was looking at him in hatred. Pika regarded the mechanic in disbelief.

"This your idea, Bob?" Tyson asked the psychologist. "Turn everyone against me? Well, surprise, surprise, they already were. So fuck you, too."

Norse, composing his expression into something opaque, didn't answer.

"I'm crazier than you thought, aren't I?" Tyson persisted.

"You're setting yourself alone, Buck," the psychologist warned quietly.

"You're right on that one." He waited for another challenge, his look amused, but none came. "Okay? We done here? Gotta hit the showers, man."

The quiet was as thick and cold as the ice cap.

He left.

Lewis could hear the bubble of the juice dispenser in one corner.

"One shower," Cameron finally said shakily.

The others looked frustrated, furious, sick.

That night, someone nailed a piece of burnt toast to Buck Tyson's door.

It was two nights later that Jed Lewis was roused from his bed once more, again in the early hours of the morning. Cameron burst into his room and flicked on the light.

"What? What?"

"Get up, we're organizing a search."

"Now?"

"Sooner than now. Get your ass in gear." The station manager looked sick.

"What's going on? Is it the meteorite?"

"Screw the meteorite. Now something's really wrong."

"What?"

"I can't believe this is happening to me."

"What, dammit?"

"Now Mickey Moss is missing."