Dark Winter

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The storm blew for thirty-seven hours, the snow crystalline and pitiless, driven so hard by the wind that it sizzled against the outside of the dome like grease in a frying pan. In that long cold twilight of noise and confinement, with no telephone or radio call for help, the winter-overs of Amundsen-Scott base became glumly convinced that Harrison Adams was also dead. In the midst of the storm Cameron led a party, roped and lit, out along the flag route to the Dark Sector astronomy building to look for him again. One flag was down, a bad sign, and they had to use GPS to bridge the gap. They searched the building, endured two hours in the blizzard going and coming back, and found nothing. Any further searching had to wait until the wind died down.

"I told everyone to stay put," Cameron said bitterly as he exhaustedly shed his parka, his nylon frozen over by a sheen of ice. "Why the hell didn't they stay put?"

No predecessor had ever lost two people before.

The great hush that marked the end of the storm came at what the clock said was morning. So much snow had drifted that when they opened the exit door to the ramp again, there was a chest-high wall they had to dig through to get outside. Tyson was told to warm up a Cat to bulldoze more blocking snow away and this time he complied without rebellion. The tragedies seemed to be sobering him. The others marched out in a platoon of orange and fanned out to look for Adams's body. Cameron passed out whistles to signal.

The clouds were gone. It was almost the equinox, the time when the sun would disappear completely from the Pole. The orb scraped the horizon, a trick of light making part of it seem to catch and drag behind in a blob of trailing fire, the brightness washed out by the rim of light fog that surrounded them. The haze was so thick and the light so low that the entire station already seemed shrouded in cold, sepulchral twilight. The temperature was seventy-three degrees below zero. During the storm the windchill had dipped to a hundred and fifty below.

Lewis searched for Adams in a mood of glum depression. Maybe if he'd called about the storm at its first sign the astronomer might have made it. Maybe if he hadn't lost the flag route he'd have run into Adams. He was lucky he wasn't dead himself. Cameron had chewed him out for not staying at Clean Air as he'd been told. "Getting lost puts everyone else in jeopardy. It was a stupid, juvenile, fingie stunt."

Norse asked Lewis if he'd thought up anything new about Mickey's death. "Harrison said he was coming out to see you. I presume there was a reason."

"He didn't tell me that."

"People are pretty bummed out, Jed. We've got to get a handle on what's going on."

"Don't you think I'm trying? It's pretty tough to play detective when no one will talk to me. Help me out on this, will you?"

He grimaced. "People are shy about talking to me, too."

Lewis walked up the flag line now toward the astronomy building, trying to imagine where the missing astronomer might have gone. His own stumbling trek had made him realize how easy it was to get lost. Adams had obviously gone off course while trying to get to Clean Air, for some reason choosing to talk to Lewis personally instead of simply call. Why? Once disoriented, his body shutting down from the cold, Adams would have sought any shelter. Where?

The stark nature of the polar plateau created an illusion, Lewis had realized. The base seemed simple and yet there were more than a hundred separate buildings and structures scattered around: observatories, storage shacks, vaults, telescopes, antennas, and long rows of stockpiled crates called cargo berms. If lost, Adams could have stumbled into a lot of places to seek refuge. Cameron and a few others were already searching the electrical substation shack and telescope support buildings of the astronomy sector, digging into the drifted-over plywood bumps one by one.

Lewis meanwhile squinted down the flag line, holding out his arm to provide a makeshift straightedge. The flags were leaning raggedly, but for the most part they'd held. The astronomer should have been able to follow…

You didn't, he remembered.

And here there was a flag missing. Adams should have retreated.

You didn't, he reminded himself.

Lewis walked to the gap where the flag had fallen and slowly realized that the markers nearer the astronomy complex seemed slightly out of alignment. Going toward the astronomy building the gap seemed hardly to matter: A straight walk from flag to flag would aim you correctly across the break in the route. But turned the other way…

Lewis backed up and sighted again. It was a subtle shift, hardly noticeable with the wind gone and the snow once more lying obediently in place. And yet he knew just how blind he'd been. Going this way, the last two flags would point at an angle that led off the main sled road, toward the white no-man's-land of the runway. A person walking that way would veer away from the dome, fail to find the next flag because of the gap, cross the skiway, and…

Had someone shifted the flags?

Suddenly certain, Lewis started by himself toward a cluster of shacks where the planes taxied. If Adams had gotten into shelter over there, it was possible he was still alive. People had seemed dead on Everest, stone cold, and yet had revived. Inside a shack, Harrison might have had a chance…

A substation and storage shed were padlocked for the winter: No refuge there. But a warm-up shed, used by air crew to rejuvenate as they loaded and unloaded planes, had not been bolted.

"Harrison!"

No answer.

The building was nothing but a weathered plywood box with a shed roof and a round plastic bubble window to view the runway. Its portable heater was probably in winter storage. Still, it offered shelter from the wind. Lewis tried the door but it was stuck, frozen shut. When he pounded there was no answer. He went around to the window but it was smoked against summer glare and too scratched to see inside.

He studied the door again. A flat orange cord and a bar of ice ran around its frame, thicker than was normal. If the ice had been present when Adams arrived, the astronomer couldn't have gotten inside. Yet why was there so much? As on other buildings, the cord was an electrical heat tape that ran around the jamb that was used to melt accumulating frost and keep openings from sticking. Somehow this one hadn't worked or had gone haywire. The ice had sealed the door.

"Adams!"

His shout drifted away in the cold twilight.

Something else orange caught Lewis's eye, poking out from the bottom of the wall near the door. A scrap of fabric. He stopped to inspect it, brushing snow aside, and slow dread began to settle on him as he dug. It was a mitten, a buried mitten. When Lewis tried to pick it up it wouldn't come because he felt something hard inside, stiff and clawlike.

Fingers.

Attached to someone's arm.

Lewis was holding Adams's frozen hand, reaching blindly out from under the wall of the warm-up shack as if the man were trying to dig his way out of a vault.

He dropped the mitten and backed away.

The arm was reaching out from beneath the shed wall in supplication, its hole too shallow for a body to squeeze through. The astronomer had tried to get out of the ice-locked shed through its floor, burrowing through the snow. He'd been stopped by the underlying ice.

Lewis's heart was hammering. Something had gone horribly wrong. He looked more closely at the ribbon of heat tape. The astronomer had gotten inside. Maybe in his confusion Adams might have cranked the tape temperature too high, melting so much snow that water ran down the frame to create a bar of ice, meaning he could no longer get outside. Yet why had the water then turned to ice? Why had the tape failed?

Lewis followed the cord down to the snow where it turned toward a junction box that supplied electricity. Orange wire came up as he would expect, winding, winding…

At the corner of the shack it was broken.

No. Neatly cut.

Harrison Adams had not died alone. Someone had followed him and effectively locked him in, snipping the tape and imprisoning him in ice.

This wasn't negligence, Lewis thought.

This was murder.

There was a gasp and he turned. Dana Andrews had come up behind him and was looking from the beseeching mitten to Lewis's own hand and the severed cord. Her head rotated from mitten to cord, back and forth, as if at a tennis match.

Then she pulled her plastic whistle out from her parka, put it to her mouth, and blew, and blew, and blew.

The winter-overs swarmed the warm-up shed like a crowd at an accident, looking in horrified fascination at the beseeching arm and severed tape. Everyone kept a wary distance from Lewis. Cameron strode up, puffing after a quick trot from astronomy, took in the scene in a moment, and brusquely ordered the others to leave. "I want Norse and Lewis only. The rest of you back to the dome. I don't want anyone thinking anything. Not yet."

But everyone was already thinking, of course, considering every dark possibility.

"Why us?" the psychologist asked.

"Because we've got some talking to do."

The others trailed off in a line of orange, looking curiously back at the remaining trio and the forlorn shack. Once they were back, their galley would buzz with speculation like a disturbed hive. Cameron, Lewis, and Norse watched until the others disappeared inside and then fetched a wooden beam from the cargo area to batter down the shed door. The ram made a dull, booming echo in the dusky morning, like the dirge of a bell. Finally the ice shattered in a spray like broken glass and the door burst inward.

Adams's last moments were heartbreaking. He must have stumbled inside in exhaustion, seeking a temporary refuge from the mind-deadening wind. The shack was insulated but had no heat. Eventually Harrison would have realized that he was still in subzero cold and had to start again for the dome, but when he tried to go back out the astronomer was frozen in. He'd have butted and kicked and screamed but no one knew where he was; no one could hear him above the howl of the wind. Eventually he must have panicked. With superhuman energy he'd somehow managed to rip up one of the plywood sections that formed the shack's crude floor, nails shattering in the cold. He'd sliced the nylon arm of his parka in the process and scraped his wrist. The floor was dotted with droplets of frozen blood. Then he'd burrowed, throwing a small heap of snow to one side of the room as he tried to dig his way out of his cold trap. The ice was too close to the surface to allow him to squeeze his way out. At some point he'd stopped, from exhaustion or defeat, helpless in a spasm of shivering, and then he'd fallen asleep as his core temperature plunged. Pain, and then no pain. At least his eyes were closed.

"I thought he took a radio," Norse said.

Cameron searched for one.

Adams had it in his pocket but its battery was dead. Someone had failed to recharge it. The astronomer probably hadn't checked.

"It looks like someone broke the heat tape," Lewis said dully.

"Cut it," Cameron said.

"What tape?" Norse asked.

Cameron pointed to the orange cord around the door. "You've seen these to keep the doorjambs from freezing?" He pointed to a dial at the bottom of the door. "Adams, or someone, cranked this tape way too high. It would have created a Niagara of meltwater around this jamb. Then the tape broke or was cut."

"I don't get it."

"If you wanted to seal someone inside an unheated shack at the height of a blizzard, that would be the way to do it. Melt some water, get the doorway wet, and then cut the heat off. The door would freeze as if it were welded." He looked at the other two.

"You're saying someone trapped him?"

"I'm saying I don't know how the hell else that tape broke."

"Maybe it was just an accident," Norse said. "Everything's brittle in the cold."

"Like Mickey."

"Yes. Two accidents."

"And what kind of luck is that?" Cameron's tone was bitter.

"Sometimes random chance clusters. You're a scientist and you know that. Unfortunately, the cluster fell on your watch. I'll be the first to testify you did all you can."

"Testify? At my trial?" The station manager gave a sharp laugh. "At my funeral?"

"I just mean when NSF asks questions about this. You've had bad luck, Rod."

"Jesus. One storm and I'm down two beakers. Is that some kind of record, or what?"

"Mickey didn't die in the storm."

"No, I lost him in clear weather. Christ Almighty. I wish I was the one who was dead." He looked gloomily down at Adams. "Can't someone pull his fucking neck gaiter up over his face so I don't have to look at him?"

Stooping, Lewis did so.

"Accident my ass."

"If it wasn't an accident, then why?" Norse asked.

Cameron looked grimly at Lewis. "That's the question, isn't it? Jed, why was Adams coming to see you in Clean Air?"

"I don't know. It's not like we were buddies."

"Why did you leave Clean Air after I told you not to?"

"To help find him! I couldn't last out that storm, I'd starve. I thought I'd meet him coming back to the dome. It was stupid to tell me to stay out there, Rod. I should have left before I did."

"Did you see Harrison in the storm?"

"No, of course not."

"But you saw Tyson."

"He saw me."

"You were riding with him. Tyson and you, together. The guy who doesn't like Adams."

"The guy who doesn't like anybody," Lewis said in exasperation. "Look, I had nothing to do with this! I couldn't even get from Clean Air to the dome! I would have frozen myself if Tyson hadn't found me. You know that. You saw what condition I was in. And I didn't have time to wander clear over here. If anything, the storm proves I'm innocent." He looked expectantly. "Right?"

"It proves you're the one person who knew where the body was."

"I guessed. Why would I go find the body if I killed him?"

"To make sure he's dead?"

That one crossed the line. "Fuck you."

The station manager looked at the new man with frank dislike. "Why are you always in the middle of things?"

"Because everyone else always puts me there!" He pointed to Norse. "Why don't you question Bob? He was out, too! Where the hell was he?"

"I know that," Cameron said quietly. "That's why I asked for both of you to stay here with me, to hash this out." He turned to Norse. "Did you see Harrison?"

"I already told you I did, at astronomy. I left just ahead of the storm. I got back before Lewis did. Adams was going to follow shortly."

"Were the flags intact?"

"They were when I passed them."

"So what do you think happened?"

Norse looked down at the frozen astronomer. "Why not bad luck? A flag blows away, Adams gets lost, finds the shack, the cord somehow fails on its own. It's almost broken through, Adams cranks it too high, the wind catches it…" He considered. "Or not. Look. The only one with any true mobility was Tyson, on the snowmobile."

"Do you think he…"

"I did see them arguing in the weight room," Lewis said, and then instantly regretted having said it. He was doing to Tyson what Cameron was trying to do to him. "But not anything that would lead to this."

"Well, I damn well want to know what would lead to this!" the station manager suddenly shouted in frustration. "I want to know who's ruining my winter! This isn't fair, dammit! I'm sick of you, and I'm sick of Buck, and I'm sick of this damn job!"

"Rod!" Norse snapped crisply. "Rod, Rod. Cool it." His voice was admonitory. "Talk like that and you'll throw everyone in a panic. This is a time for leadership, not accusations. Rationality, not wild suspicion. Maybe it is all accidental. Certainly it's all circumstantial. We've got a small group and a lot of concern right now, even fear, consternation, sorrow, you name it. People will be feeding off each other. We've got to get them to the point of feeding strength, not weakness."

Cameron looked utterly depressed. "How do we do that?"

"First of all, you are the man. The man. Man of the hour. Everyone's looking to you for cues on how to respond. You've got to seem confident, unafraid, in charge. Get it together." Norse looked concerned.

The station manager took a deep breath. "I know. But to lose two of our top scientists, and then this bonehead here"-he nodded to Lewis- "wandering off in the storm… it's just hard, Doc. It's like being in the Navy and grounding a ship. They don't want to hear excuses. You just don't run aground."

"And when you do, you don't surrender. Listen, this is what the station is about. This is what our winter is about. Leadership! The ability of the individual to define the group! You're the keystone. The pivot. The rock."

Cameron closed his eyes. "Some rock." He thought a minute, his chest rising and falling, and then opened his eyes. "I know I've got to get my shit together," he said tiredly. "It's just a little much to take."

"It's a little much for everyone to take. That's why we need you."

He grimaced at his own explosion. "It's lonely at the top," he recited wryly.

"Everyone's alone. That's life."

"Okay." He took a breath. "Okay, okay. Listen. I'm going to ask NSF to send an investigator down here. They sent the FBI to McMurdo once. Maybe they can send somebody here."

Norse was surprised. "A cop?"

"I thought planes couldn't get in here," Lewis said. "If they can, I'm ready to go home."

"There's an outside chance for at least an airdrop," Cameron said. "They've done them in winter before. We've definitely got an emergency here. Maybe they can parachute somebody in. Somebody with a weapon and authority. Someone who knows what to do."

"That might be overreacting, Rod," Norse said.

"Overreacting? With two dead bodies?"

"Two accidents, until we learn otherwise. You put a cop in here and it becomes two victims. You define the problem in the worst possible light. You put your own stewardship in the worst possible light. And nobody will get any work done."

"Bullshit." He pointed at Norse. "Maybe they'll begin by investigating you."

The psychologist sighed. "I'd recommend it, actually, if you don't want to spook everyone else and screw up the whole winter. Concentrate on me."

"Is that a confession?" He was sour.

"Think about it. Suppose you get your G-man. He parachutes in and interrogates me. Or Lewis. Or Tyson. People are freaked out. A small group like this can turn on a person and make his life miserable. I've read about it. I've seen it. And then you've got somebody under a cloud, preoccupying everyone, until spring. What are you going to do with them for the rest of the winter? How does anyone get any work done? I think we need to calm things down, not hype them up. And NSF is going to go ballistic if you turn an accident into a murder investigation. If you really need a fall guy, make it me. I'm not doing physical science. I'm not worried about what they might ask."

"I'm not looking for a fall guy! I'm looking to keep things under some kind of control! What do you suggest, Doctor Freud?"

"Just that we all cool off for a day or two. That we don't panic the bureaucrats in D.C. for a day or two. If one of us is a murderer… well, we're not going anywhere. We chill, and separate, and wait."

"What does that mean?" Lewis asked.

"Quarantine, Jed. There's going to be a lot of gossip and speculation about this, it's inevitable. Especially with you finding the body, after the e-mail to Mickey. I think you should stay out in Clean Air for a while longer, this time with a sleeping bag. We'll bring you your meals. You can collect your data for Sparco and be… safe."

"Under house arrest," Lewis clarified. "So everyone else feels safe."

"Temporarily. It's for your own good."

"Doc, there's not even a john out there."

"We'll bring you a bucket. Just for a few days, until we sort things out."

"I can't believe this! Is Tyson going to be quarantined?"

"Buck quarantines himself. Everyone's avoiding him like the plague anyway."

"Are you going to be quarantined?"

"Oh no!" He smiled. "Because this is what I came down for."

"To watch us," Cameron said bitterly. "Watch us go nuts."

"To watch the variable in the experiment once Jed is out of the way." Norse smiled thinly. "Who had mobility? Who had motive? I'm going to watch the habits and patterns and movements of Buck Tyson. And save your career by letting you solve this one yourself."

I Make My Decision

When the shit hits the fan there's no time to be polite to the weaklings. Fleming and Kressler had just killed themselves with their own reckless idiocy, Fat Boy had doomed himself by waddling off the rope against all orders, and the rest of the kids were sniffing and sniveling like a pack of whipped dogs. Somehow I had to find some spine in them if we were going to get out of this mess. I mostly felt contempt that they'd allowed themselves to be herded onto this ledge. That I'd allowed myself to be herded. And outrage that my life was at risk because of the incompetence and bad judgment of others.

I didn't deserve to die.

Still, I bit back most of what I wanted to say. I needed two of them, the two best, to ascend the cliff with me so we could belay the rest of the sheep back off the dead-end ledge my colleagues had led them to. I needed the remainder to break out of their freeze-up panic. The wind was rising, the snow getting thicker, but if we moved quickly, moved NOW, we still might get up to the saddle and descend the glacier on the other side before we became totally lost in a whiteout.

"They're dead but you're not!" I snapped at them about Fleming and Kressler. "Don't think about them, think about yourself! If you're going to survive this it's going to have to come from inside YOU! I need fire in your bellies or you're all going to DIE!"

More weeping and moaning. Jesus H. Christ. They were falling apart. Some of the kids were starting to shiver, a first warning of hypothermia, and we'd all lock up if we didn't get moving. So I had to be realistic. When the shit hits the fan, it's no time to tell fairy tales. It's triage time. Some were going to make it and some probably weren't. Fat Boy was dead meat, as far as I was concerned. He'd blundered, and was about to pay for it big time. The strongest of the rest of us had a chance. Maybe.

Women and children first is lunacy at a time like that, a sure invitation to disaster. I like girls as well as any man, but not at the end of a rope that's holding me to a crumbling rock wall. So the first decision I made was that the females stayed behind. They were supposed to be better in cold anyway, right? Epidermal layer and all that. If they huddled maybe they'd last through the storm if I could get back with help. If, if. The storm was building and help was a long time off. Nobody was helicoptering in, nobody was climbing back up, not until this little snow spat was over. Bad luck, but there it was. So the ladies would have to wait and hope for the best. I was taking the strongest boys. If the bucks remembered what they'd learned, maybe a few of us could make it.

Couldn't tell them the grim facts, of course. Sometimes when you're honest with yourself you still have to lie to the others. Especially if they might survive and tell stories about you afterward. So I told them I was leading the strongest of us to the top of the cliff and that we'd try to belay anyone else who wanted to come up if we could, and if we couldn't do that we were going to get help and they should all sit tight until we got back. Trust me! Hold on to each other and pray! We're all going to get through this!

Bullshit.

I took the two I thought just might make it. I truly did. Chisel Chin was a big-balled sonofabitch wise guy who had the endurance of any two of his classmates and was eyeing routes even as I tried to settle the rest of the herd. Carrot Top was jumpier and not as strong, but he was big and reasonably competent and hadn't spaced out like Ponytail Boy, the third candidate I had in mind. That one had developed a thousand-yard stare like he'd already seen the angelic choir, so I didn't think I could rely on his presence of mind. Maybe if we could really rig a rope to help the others, Ponytail could be the first to try to follow. I shook him, telling him that. Meanwhile, however, I'd have to rely on the other two.

We roped up, slipped on our packs, and readied ourselves to go back up the way we'd come down. What a moronic mess. Somebody asked about Fat Boy and I admit I was a little curt at that point, saying Fat Boy was just going to have to look after himself for a while and if he gave them any grief, they could just roll lard ass over the edge. They stared wide-eyed at my moment of honesty and actually shut up for half a minute. Gee, did I let a fart? What did they think was going to happen to Fat Boy? I loathed their innocence. I truly did.

So. I'd start the first pitch, hammer in a piton, fix a rope, and let Chisel Chin come up to me. Then I'd go on, my partner braced so that if I fell, the piton and Chisel Chin combined just might hold me in space. I might drop thirty feet before the rope brought me up taut, but that's a hell of a lot better than three thousand. Then another piton, another point, Carrot Top coming on, too, and we'd work our way up the cliff. Bing, bang, boom. Fleming and Kressler had taken too much rope, so we had to take all the remaining line from the others if we hoped to fashion a line all the way back up to the top. If we made it, great. If we didn't, the others weren't getting off that ledge anyway.

Just before we started I faced away from the weeping group, looked out to the gray eternity swirling all around us, and fumbled under my coat. I was mindful of what had happened to Kressler and Fleming and was determined that it wasn't going to happen to me. It wasn't prophetic. I was counting on those two kids, sure. But if you're going to survive in this jungle of ours you prepare for every contingency. You have to think ahead. Every time I've won in life it's because I've thought two or three moves down the road. A step ahead: That's the secret.

So I took out a silver commando knife, slipped it out of its sheath, and tucked it into a strap near my neck where I could snatch it out easily. Just in case. Then I turned to the others and actually managed a reassuring grin.

What a hero I was.

We started back up.