Dark Winter

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Dana Andrews shivered, and it wasn't just from cold. The shadowy fuel arch gave her the creeps, this dank tunnel that stank of petroleum and was so dimly lit. Accordingly, she started down the shadowy steel-roofed tunnel that held the station's petroleum supply with exasperated reluctance. Where the bloody hell was Rod Cameron?

Since coming upon the stiff, reaching hand of Harrison Adams, Dana had become more and more of a dome slug, clinging to the light and warmth of the galley and berthing floors like a child retreating to a bedroom. The winter was not beginning at all like she'd hoped. Thanks to Mickey's meteorite the station team seemed rent by suspicions and rivalries. Two deaths and the increasingly bizarre behavior of Mr. James "Buck" Tyson had smashed through the serenity she'd sought like a bus through a window. In reaction, Dana spent what time she could under the grow lights in the station greenhouse, helping Lena tend the hydroponic plants and trying to fight her own impending depression. God, it was claustrophobic here! Her work on polar atmospheric circulation was lagging to the point where she might not gain the tenure at the University of Auckland that she'd hoped to achieve by wintering at the Pole. She needed Tyson to help her sled and service her instruments pronto but it was impossible to get the mechanic to do anything unless he was ridden by Cameron, and the station manager had avoided Tyson since the two had almost come to blows two days before in the galley. It was an ugly situation. Cameron oscillated between bursts of annoying spunk, in which he'd radiate false optimism in a pathetic attempt to rally the troops, and a private gloom so profound he was becoming reclusive. Half the time he hid himself in his office and the other half he set off on pointless inspection tours of the tiny world of the dome. Then it would be up to the winter-overs to find him so they could get some work done.

Like now.

The crazy Americans were wrecking her work! Wrecking her future! It was hard being a woman in science, and she needed some good data, a solid discovery, to establish herself. Some stroke of dumb luck like Mickey's rock. Some commitment to the often mundane and tedious tasks that made up the painstaking minutiae of modern research. She needed logistical help and she needed to talk to the station manager alone. Have it out with him. Get him to snap out of it.

Their cook, who served as unofficial recording secretary of the comings and goings at the base, had told her that Cameron was checking the fuel that supplied the station. The generators suckled off four hundred thousand gallons of imported fuel kept in a chain of tanks in the arch behind Nancy Hodge's BioMed. The heat was as precious as oxygen. Periodically Cameron or Pika walked the tunnel to check the integrity of the valves and pipes as carefully as the hull of a boat. The fuel arch represented survival, but it also served as an excuse for Cameron to disappear. He'd taken to inspecting it more than necessary.

"Rod!" Dana cried out impatiently. She was standing on a steel grate catwalk that ran the length of the tunnel, looking for some sign of the station manager along the line of tanks. The system was new, installed two summers before to replace rubberized bladders that NSF had feared were too susceptible to leaks or sabotage, and the new metal had the reassuring solidity of a battleship. It was also cold. Her call echoed off the tanks and bounced to the archway's far end, the wall there lost in darkness. There was no reply.

Dana hated the gloom of the arches, where cones of light from infrequent bulbs were separated by pockets of deep shadow. For a moment she considered returning to the galley and surrendering to a cup of tea. But no, she needed to get her project firmly on track and that meant talking candidly to Cameron in a place where they could have a moment's privacy. Tyson was lurking and wandering around like a perverse moron, eating slugs and hogging shower water and boasting he would find the meteorite and make himself rich, and he'd scared poor Gina Brindisi half to death by jumping out from behind a shed out on the Dark Side as if to make a joke out of the common belief he was ready to erupt. Everyone hated him, and hated the water rationing he had perversely imposed on them. Everyone feared him. Norse seemed like the only person able to even talk to him, but their conversations had little apparent effect. Tyson was two hundred and fifty pounds of coiled resentment, impenetrable to reason and uncaring of consequences. There was no sign he'd taken heed of the toast Dana had tacked to his door. The mechanic in fact seemed to enjoy being an outcast. Cameron had to reestablish control or the base would become dysfunctional. It was time for Cameron to stand up to Tyson. Time to be a man.

Reluctantly she continued walking down the catwalk, her boots making a rhythmic thud that repeated behind as if someone were following her. Unable to resist, she turned. No one there.

"Rod?"

She'd neglected to bring a flashlight and so couldn't see well into the dark crevices between the tanks. Still, she should be able to detect the movement of Cameron poking about. Nothing. Was he even here? Dana began walking faster toward the end of the fuel arch, impatient to conclude her search and get out.

"Cameron, dammit, where are you?"

There! A dark shadow, moving ahead. Hadn't he heard her? The figure rose and then sank as she followed. Her boots rapped quickly.

"Rod!"

He didn't reply. Was the idiot playing hide and seek?

No, there he was again, popping up and dipping down. A nonsense pattern. Was he circling around each tank? He was going to make her walk all the way, she could tell. Sighing, she went on, deeper and deeper into the cold gloom. She could hear the tinkle of her frozen exhalations crystallizing and falling away behind her.

"Bloody silly Yank."

Then a thought occurred to her. She stopped, her blood thumping in her ears, and considered her situation again with sudden doubt. What if the figure at the end of the archway wasn't Cameron at all? What if it was somebody like that Lewis, who always seemed to turn up in the wrong places? Or Tyson, growling like a wounded bear? Here she was alone, in this dark, spooky place, with no weapon, no escort…

Nervously she reached inside her parka and pulled out the whistle she'd kept since finding Harrison Adams, the fingie Lewis standing there with broken heat tape in his hands as if he'd snipped it himself. She'd had nightmares about that one.

"Rod?" Her call was quiet, but still it echoed away.

Cautiously she moved ahead again, waiting for the elusive stranger to reappear. There! She stopped and he stopped, as if freezing. My God, who was it? Why wouldn't he approach? "Who's there!" Her weak challenge echoed away.

You can't run, she told herself. Not if you're going to live here for seven more sinister, slogging, dome-slug months. She edged ahead, cautious now, her whistle in one mitten. The figure moved upward and then slipped down and away. Damn, that was unprofessional! You didn't duck around like a silly jack-in-the-box! Not after all that had happened!

She was almost to the end and left the illumination of the last light, the archway like a receding cave. Her eyes were adjusting and she could make out dark shapes. The tanks sat in their trim, mute line, these farthest ones already empty. And yet she saw no one. No movement. She stopped, perplexed and frightened.

"Rod?"

This was weird.

Dana turned to retreat, her skin prickling under her parka. Something was wrong, she could sense it, and she felt a growing dread at being here. It was time to go back to the galley. Cameron was a lost cause, a supervisor who had no business supervising. Her data could wait. Global atmospheric circulation could wait. She'd spend the winter watching bloody videos if she had to, and try to pick up the pieces back in Auckland.

She strode back purposefully, fighting the impulse to break into a clumsy run. And then there he was again, somehow having circled around her, rising up in front of her in the distance, elusive and ill-formed…

She stopped. He stopped.

And suddenly it dawned on her.

"My shadow!" She glanced upward. As she passed under each light, the shadow of her form appeared and faded on the tanks ahead. Her elusive fugitive was her own advancing form. She'd been frightened of herself.

She laughed, the sound sharp and relieved. "Silly goose."

Her heartbeat began to slow, her sweat to cool her. She shivered again. Enough of this nonsense: Back to the galley! To hell with tea, she was ready for a tumbler of single malt! She walked again, quickly now, her boots banging as if she were on the boardwalk of a pioneer town, deciding firmly that her days of searching for her wayward station manager were over. Enough craziness! If Cameron wanted some research progress to show for the winter, he could damn well start working more effectively with the scientists. And if not…

She stopped again. There was something odd about the snow between two of the tanks, she realized.

Dana peered closer into the dimness. Coming this way, the shadows cast by the light made apparent what had failed to draw her eye in the opposite direction. The snow was heavily trampled, sprayed as if kicked. There was a geometric regularity down there in the scuffed area, she saw: a white curve against the dark paint of a tank. The curve of… a boot. A white bunny boot.

She glanced quickly around. No one there.

"Rod?"

Just leave it. Send someone else. But no, they'd think her a girlish fool.

Her pulse racing again, she climbed over the railing and down from the catwalk and walked unsteadily toward the boot. She could see a leg now, its black nylon windpants extending into shadow, and then another leg, knee up. The figure was on its back. My God.

She stopped, dizzy with fear. Why, why, why was she the one to stumble on these troubles? The whole winter was terribly unfair. She breathed a moment, closing her eyes, gathering her courage. Then she opened them again. The snow was blotchy and as she came near she realized that between the tanks it was colored red. Bright red.

Shaking now, she stepped in the gap, leaning unsteadily against one of the tanks. It was Cameron, sprawled on his back, his parka hood off, and his eyes screwed shut with pain. He'd frozen that way. He lay as if on a red disk, a platter of congealed blood. His parka was soaked with it, and a wisp of steam came from a ragged tear in his chest.

Rod hadn't been dead very long.

Feeling her gorge rise, she leaned closer. It appeared to be the kind of wound a sharp weapon would make. Something like a knife: a big knife. Cameron's mouth was open as if hollering as he went down, and so something was stuffed in it as if to cut the noise. A cloth, perhaps, to gag him. Smother him.

She knelt, reaching. But what had seemed like a cloth crumbled in a shockingly familiar manner and, trembling, she pulled a piece out and backed into the light where she could see what had been crammed down the station manager's throat.

It was a piece of rye toast. Exactly the same kind she had tacked to Buck Tyson's door.

Dana turned and threw up.