Dark Winter

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The winter-overs gathered in the galley like a convocation of the damned, their faces revealing the underbelly of the human psyche. Dread. Anger. Suspicion. Depression. Their illusions about escape had been buried with Gabriella's body, her snowy grave marked by another bleak cross of black plastic pipe. It was months before the winter was over, and already everyone looked like toast. Several staff members had come in carrying makeshift weapons: lengths of pipe, knives, an improbable hickory-handled hatchet brought down for some long-forgotten purpose. Pulaski arrived with a six-foot length of galvanized water pipe that he'd sawed off at a sharp angle to make the point of a spear. In a society with no guarantee of safety, people were arming themselves as best they could.

Robert Norse had looked the night before like a faith-shaken priest, his shell of infectious confidence cracked by the discovery of Gabriella's body. The news of her death left him haggard, his eyes sunken, and he'd refused to help take down the forlorn corpse. "I can't deal with the rest if I have to do that," he'd said, his voice hollow at the news of her death. "I have to function. One of us has to function." So the dead woman had been laid to rest with no ceremony, her cross the fourth in a row, the gravediggers chilled and spooked and anxious to finish the task and get back inside to the light and warmth of the dome. Whoever had hanged Gabriella might be lurking somewhere out there in the dark of the plateau, waiting for the next one to pick off.

By the following day, however, Norse had collected himself. The disquieting breach in his calm had been repaired. In fact he seemed newly confident, newly knowledgeable, and he came around the tables to tell them all to stay after supper. It was important that they all talk, he said. Important that they use this to grow stronger. Important that he find strength to feed theirs. So they stayed.

When he stood up to speak, it was so quiet they could hear the drone of the ventilation and the burble of the drink dispenser. Their ranks were visibly thinner. It was awful, how small their gathering looked.

"I'm afraid I have some more disturbing news," Norse began.

You could hear the sound of their breathing.

"I've radioed the Russian base at Vostok. There's no sign of Buck Tyson. He never arrived. We have no idea where he is."

There was a long, despairing quiet.

"Don't we?" Geller asked.

Dana Andrews gave a low moan.

"We can't assume anything." Norse looked at them soberly. "Anything. We don't know it's Buck. And somehow, until we come through this, we've got to combat panic. Panic will kill us faster than anything. Distrust will kill us. Paranoia will kill us. I think we're going to have to reach inside ourselves and find the core of what's there. This is a test- a test of what we're made of."

"Cut the psychobabble, Doc," Geller replied. "I'm panicked and distrustful and paranoid as hell. I'm freakin' ready to jump out of my skin, and I'm freakin' ready to call it quits for this winter. I didn't sign on for the Chainsaw Massacre. I want to get out of here before that North Dakota madman annihilates us all."

There was a buzz of assent. If there'd been anywhere to run to, they'd have bolted.

Geller's complaint focused the psychologist on him. Norse looked resolute. "You cut the fantasy, George. We're not going home. We can't go home. This is home, for six or seven more months. You know that."

"So we just go about our little data-collection duties, waiting for Tyson to pick us off one by one?" Mendoza asked. Since the discovery of Gabriella's body he'd refused to hike out to the Dark Sector to continue his research. The other studies were also on hold. The plants in the greenhouse were yellowing, Lena too morose to tend to them. Their routine was breaking down.

"Why are you so sure it's Tyson?" Norse replied.

That startled them. They looked at the psychologist uneasily.

"I was never certain myself. I sent him away for his own safety as well as ours. He could still be traveling. His radio could be broken. He could have gotten lost and died. But coming back here, to prey on us, seems particularly risky. Where's his Spryte? Where is he surviving? Does Tyson really make sense?"

The survivors looked at each other.

"Who, then?" Hiro Sakura asked.

"My bet is Lewis," Alexi Molotov spoke up.

Abby turned to glare at him.

"Goddammit," Lewis groaned. Yet when he looked around the room for support, everyone except Abby shifted uneasily. Pulaski was staring resolutely away, the butt of his new spear on the floor. Lewis had a sense of foreboding. Something wasn't right.

"Lewis," Molotov insisted. "Who just happens to find all the dead. Who can never account for his whereabouts. Who started all this when he came down here. Who was going to meet Rod when our station manager was knifed. Who has some kind of falling-out with poor Gabriella. Who knows everything about this mysterious meteorite."

"If I was the killer would I lead the way to my own victims?" Lewis retorted.

"Yes, because you know where they are!"

"I didn't find Cameron! Dana did! And I'm tired of being suspected just because I'm the newest! Suspect Doctor Bob! He's almost as new as I am!"

Molotov shrugged. "He didn't come for the meteorite."

"That doesn't make me a killer!"

"Maybe you are innocent. But you do not belong here, because you do not really fit. A geologist doing weather, it is absurd! You are not even a real scientist, you are an oilman. A prospector. A fortune-seeker. You should go, go find Tyson, go to Vostok, go and try to get to McMurdo. Just get out of here before our little group shrinks down to nothing." He glanced around. "Do you realize we have lost five people?"

"Go how?" asked Hank Anderson, the carpenter. "I ain't giving him the last Spryte."

"I would," Dana said.

"Hold up here. Let's not run ahead too fast," Norse cautioned. "No more Sprytes, no more disappearances. We need to consider things slowly, rationally. Was Jed the one who led us to Gabriella's body?" He put the question to Abby.

She looked uneasy. "I found it. You know I was going to the attic to find some stuff to entertain us, and Jed didn't…" She looked suddenly confused, remembering his reluctance in going up the ladder.

"Did Lewis pick the KitKat Club to meet?" Dana asked.

"No," Abby said, looking at Norse. "Bob did."

"That's right," Norse agreed. "I suggested to Jed and Abby separately that they go out there. I was trying to bring them back together. I wanted to give them a chance to talk on neutral ground."

Lewis was grateful for the candor.

"So it wasn't Jed's choice to go there at all," Dana clarified.

"Which means he could be the killer!" Geller reassessed wildly. "He put the body there before Bob suggested he go there!"

"George…" Norse began wearily.

"Jed didn't kill Gabriella," Abby insisted. "I'm certain. He's incapable of murdering anyone."

"How do you know that?" Molotov replied. "Are you listening to your head? Or your heart?"

"I saw how shocked he was when we found the body."

"Maybe you remember good acting."

"What about that sign?" Geller interrupted. "That sign around her neck. You know what I want. What does that mean?"

"It means somebody's got the million-dollar rock and should put it out where Tyson, or Lewis, or whoever, can get it and leave us alone," Mendoza said.

"It means somebody in this room can end this!" cried Dana. She jumped up, looking at them wildly. "You know who you are. Who is it, then? Who knows what he wants? For the love of God, let's stop this insanity and give it to him!"

"Maybe it's you, Dana," said Steve Calhoun, just to quiet her down.

"And maybe it's you, Steve!"

A babble of voices erupted, angry and afraid. People began pointing.

Norse watched them evenly and Lewis wondered what the psychologist was thinking, watching his little laboratory of rats. It was Norse who directed them to the attic. And yet Norse had made no secret of it and had seemed more disturbed than anyone, more surprised than anyone… Where was he going with this meeting?

What was Robert Norse really down here for?

The psychologist held up his hand until the group quieted. "Science, people," he suggested. "Our enemy is unfounded fear and suspicion, and our ally is science. Science! Just like it's been for our kind since the ancient Greeks. Rationality, right? Isn't that what you represent? So, we're going to be rational. We're going to beat this with rationality."

"Doc, this whole situation is completely irrational," Geller said. "That's why we're freaking out. We can't rationalize it."

"Can't we?" Norse asked softly. "That's the issue of our winter, isn't it? Can rationality handle the irrational?"

Lewis looked curiously at the psychologist. Wasn't this the issue he'd mused about over beers in the bar when they first met? Hadn't Norse been anti-science? What did the man truly believe? Good acting, Molotov had suggested. Yet what motive did Norse have? What motive did anyone have? How was Gabriella a threat to anyone? Geller was right. It was all irrational.

"Let's play scientific method," Norse went on. "Let's play by the rules that drive this whole place."

"Bob…" Nancy Hodge groaned.

"Hypothesis and experiment, right? Logical progression. And maybe at the end a workable theory that we all agree on, one that lets us decide what action to take. Are you with me? Can we do that?"

The others looked at him uncertainly. Except Pulaski. He was nodding.

"So. What are the possibilities to explain what's going on down here?"

They hesitated like a classroom. "Lunacy," Geller finally mumbled.

"Greed," Mendoza added.

"Some kind of weird vendetta," Dana said. "Terrorism, sort of."

Norse nodded. "Good. Very good. Logic, people, logic. Let's consider the body. Gabriella is found dead, hanged. Suicide?"

"Not from that height," Mendoza said. "No chair to stand on. And why naked? She was probably dead before she was strung up. I say murder. Maybe rape and murder."

"Nancy?" Hodge had inspected the body.

"No semen. She was bruised, scratched. Maybe an attempted rape. I say she went out with a fight." The crowd murmured.

Norse nodded. "Any chance of making an I.D. with clues? Hair? Blood?"

"Not with the instruments I have down here."

The psychologist nodded again, taking a breath. "Okay, suspects. Possibility one: Tyson somehow came back and did it, for reasons unknown."

"Because he's bloody Jack the Ripper of Amundsen-Scott base!" Dana said.

"Possibility two: Tyson didn't come back and we have a different killer."

Several people looked at Lewis. He looked squarely back at them in disgust.

"Who?" Hiro prompted. He was a scientist. He liked this step-by-step.

"It could be a single killer is responsible for all the deaths: either Tyson, or Tyson was never responsible in the first place and we exiled the wrong man. Alternately, it could be we have a second killer, a copycat killer. It could be the deaths are some weird mix of murder, accident, and suicide."

"They don't seem linked," Geller said. "That's why I say it's a fruitcake."

"And which one of us is that, George?" Mendoza asked lightly.

"I'd say we're all a little balmy," the maintenance man muttered. "Just for being here." There was nervous laughter of agreement.

Norse nodded again. "Other possibilities? What are they, people? Come on, hypothesis."

"Jealous lover," Linda Brown said softly. "She slept around too much. Someone finally got mad." The idea seemed to give her a certain satisfaction. Nobody was sleeping with Linda Brown.

"Okay. So, we consider who slept with her."

"Who didn't?" Calhoun cracked.

"I'll bet you didn't, you horse-faced nail pounder," Gage Perlin said.

"You'n me, Gage, we're the only ones homely enough to be left out! Every other male is suspect!" Calhoun laughed.

The other men said nothing, not wanting to admit or deny a relationship.

"What else?" Norse said.

"Someone trying to sabotage the base," Lewis spoke up. "A foreign agent." He looked at Molotov. Take that, Russian finger-pointer. "Maybe Mickey or somebody stumbled on something strategic."

"Someone chasing the meteorite for something other than money," Lena Jindrova suggested. "Maybe it has evidence of Martian life. Something philosophical. Theological."

"Hmmm, interesting," Norse said. "Dana, you read the Bible. Does life on another planet threaten your view of our world?"

"My beliefs are compatible with science. And I didn't kill anybody."

"The government playing with our heads," the postdoc Gina Brindisi suggested. She pointed at the psychologist. "They sent you down here to watch us all go nuts."

Norse shrugged to concede the point. "It's true I'm in shrink nirvana. As George said, we're all balmy and getting nuttier by the minute." Uneasy laughter again. "But at this point I'd rather have you sane."

"Maybe they're faking everything," spoke up Gerald Follet. "It's a hoax. They want us to panic, like that radio broadcast of War of the Worlds."

"Except the bodies are real," Geller said glumly. "Take a walk out to Boot Hill if you don't believe that."

"Opportunity," Abby suddenly said. "You've got a score to settle and people are dropping like flies. What better time to murder? It's lost in the crowd."

"That's good," Norse nodded. "I like that one. It could be any of us, taking revenge on anyone." He scanned their faces. People were looking more confused than ever. More wary and suspicious than ever. Lewis didn't like the way the meeting was going. How was this a help?

"What good are these ideas if they're not testable?" Hiro interrupted as if reading Lewis's mind. "We can speculate our way into the grave."

"Good question. Ideas?"

"Somehow figure out who really boinked Gabriella," Geller suggested. "Who was lover enough to care, to be jealous."

"Oh please," Dana groaned.

"No, really. To eliminate some of us."

"That doesn't eliminate anybody," Mendoza said with exasperation. "Maybe it was someone she wouldn't sleep with. Maybe it was a jealous woman. Maybe it had nothing to do with her love life."

"Well, then eliminate people who couldn't have been around the victims. Make a spreadsheet of our whereabouts."

"So where were you, George, when these deaths occurred?"

"I don't know."

Mendoza threw up his hands in exasperation.

"What about your files?" Abby asked the psychologist quietly. "Don't you have basic information on all of us? Didn't Rod? Doesn't Nancy? Don't you have suspicions?"

Norse opened his mouth as if to speak and then stopped a moment, as if considering the idea for the first time. "Not from the files. You all left the box next to 'Are you a murderer?' blank on your application forms. Making someone a murderer on the basis of a psychological screening test is a little reckless, don't you think?" There was a slight edge to his voice as he replied to her, this woman who'd turned him down.

Abby looked unsatisfied. He hadn't denied having a suspicion.

"I don't see that this discussion is getting us anywhere," Molotov complained. "I have my suspicion, which I have voiced." He looked again at Lewis. "But unless someone wants to confess, we are no closer than before. It is a nice try, Doctor Bob, but you cannot rationalize what makes no sense."

"You can't rationalize without information," Norse corrected. Now he looked directly at Lewis. Suddenly he was the teacher, a lesson about to become apparent. "I've led you through this speculative exercise to demonstrate the dangers of jumping to conclusions, but I've also done a little investigation of my own. Since the shock of finding Gabriella I've considered all the possibilities you just voiced, thought of all the ways a murderer might leave clues. Everything we know is circumstantial, but in our desperate situation maybe that has to be enough. Wade?"

Pulaski stood up. He had positioned himself between Lewis and the door. The cook stood with his legs apart, as if bracing for attack, and looked somber, even sad, his new spear his staff. "You all know what good little recyclers we are," the cook began. There were smiles and a few snickers. They were supposed to separate all trash into labeled containers in the cold of the dome. Miscreants who dropped things into the wrong bin brought a regular outburst from Linda Brown, who was in charge of the recycling program. She'd threatened to kill one or two. Hyperbole, of course, but the bins had been one more source of casual tension. "We have no incinerator at the Pole. We have no dump. Everything that flies into the Pole eventually flies out of it. Every bit of garbage we've generated this winter is still here."

He paused. They were quiet, waiting.

"The sign around Gabriella's neck was made from letters cut from a magazine. So I looked in the paper bin for its source. What I found at the bottom was this." He held up a copy of a popular science and environmental journal. "It has an article on meteorites." He flipped it open, showing ragged pages. "And a lot of letters cut out from the middle."

Norse was looking at Lewis. "And where's the cover, Wade?" he asked the cook. "Where's the address label that will tell us whose magazine it was?"

"It was Jed!" Dana gasped. "I've seen him read that. We all have!"

"From the library…" Lewis objected.

"Torn off and missing," Pulaski said. He nodded at Dana. "So I checked Jed's room. Couldn't find a thing except…"

"Yes?"

"There were ashes in the soup can I'd given him the first night to use as a chamber pot. He'd never bothered to give it back."

Lewis stood up, his head dizzy, dumbfounded by a combination of outrage and fear. He was being set up. "That's a lie," he choked. Everyone was looking at him. Even Abby looked confused.

"I've bagged them for lab analysis in the spring," Pulaski said, holding up a baggie. "Maybe the lab people can tell if they came from the magazine stock. In the meantime…"

"This is absurd, those ashes could have come from anywhere."

"I saw you reading it!" Dana yelled.

"The magazine must have been stolen- "

"See! This is what I am telling you!" Molotov shouted. "Lewis, Lewis, Lewis! Every time it is Jed Lewis!"

"The hell it is!"

"What do you propose we do, Alexi?" Norse asked quietly.

"If there is only one more Spryte, then I agree, I don't want to give it to a murderer. If we cannot send Lewis away, then I do not want him wandering around. We need to lock him up. I don't trust him."

"Dammit, I'm being framed! That's no proof!"

"There is no proof of your innocence, either."

"Guilty until proven innocent, right, Alexi?" Lewis said heatedly. "Like Tyson? Is that how you did it in the gulags?"

The Americans shifted uncomfortably.

"Prove that you did not do it," the Russian insisted. "Everyone saw you with Gabriella. No one saw her since."

"I did not cut up that magazine," Lewis insisted. "Wouldn't I hide it? Would I leave the ashes in my own damn room? Think, dammit!"

"This is what we are doing, thinking about what has happened!"

The silence was thick, a congealing presumption of guilt.

"So we put him in the sauna," Pulaski suddenly summed up. He'd thought this through. "Just to be safe. It's our thickest box. We can put a crossbeam outside the door. We keep him locked down until this is resolved. He's right, it isn't proof, but we can't prove he didn't do it, either. Or anyone else. So I say safety is priority one. No more wandering around. No one leaves the dome. No one even goes down the archways to the generators or the fuel. We block up the entrances so no one can exit the dome and no one can enter. We search every inch of this aluminum beanie. We watch each other. We enter a state of siege."

"That sounds like a police state," Mendoza said.

"No, Carl. A state with police. A citizen militia. Us. So no one else has to die."

Mendoza frowned, considering it.

"Another thing," Pulaski said. "That means the science goes on hold."

"NSF isn't going to like that," Norse pointed out.

"Fuck NSF. If they're not getting their data, maybe they'll figure out some way to resolve this thing. Send in an FBI agent like we've talked about. Get us the hell out of here. Something."

There was a murmur of approval. Enough was enough.

"This is a radical decision to lock Lewis up," Norse said. "To lock the rest of ourselves in. I think it has to be a group decision."

"What about our work?" Lewis protested. "I thought we were all down here for the research. What about Jim Sparco's data? Global warming? We won't get anything done with what you're proposing!"

"And I say no more victims," Pulaski responded. "No more sacrificial sheep. This is a state of emergency until we can get out of here, get help, get something. If we block up the entrances no one can get us from outside. None of us can wander off to be picked off. We arm everybody. I train everybody. If a killer strikes, I want it to be a fight. I want noise. I want screaming. I want the attacker so bloody punctured with wounds that there's no question who did it. And then I want to fry him myself." He looked at them fiercely.

"It's liable to feel a little claustrophobic," Norse cautioned.

"Winter's already claustrophobic," Pulaski said. "Better claustrophobic than dead." Most of the others nodded. It was time to bar the door. It was time to pen Jed Lewis. The geologist looked around for support and saw none. Abby was looking morosely at the floor, outnumbered, alone, and confused by doubts.

"You can make a fight of it or you can cooperate," Pulaski told him. "I'm not saying it's you. I'm saying we won't know it's not you until we remove you as a variable. Like we tried to do at Clean Air."

"Except he goes in the storm when Harrison dies," Molotov said. "Calls Rod when Cameron dies."

Slowly Lewis sat down, dizzy with fear.

"Another thing," Geller said. "I say no more censorship. No more e-mail cancellation, no more radio silence. It's time the world knows what's going on down here, not just the bureaucrats at NSF. It's time we screamed bloody murder."

"Damn right!" Dana said.

"I understand what you're saying." Norse looked uneasy. "I know we need help. But before we get on the horn, hollering our heads off, let's cool the jets a minute. We've got a new polar base planned. We've got a hundred million dollars riding on how these events are characterized in the media. If you guys get on the net and start yelling for your mothers, it's going to sound like Charles Manson."

"So?" Geller asked.

"The whole polar program could be in jeopardy."

"And with our lives at stake, how many of us give a rat's ass about the polar program right now, Doctor Bob?" Pulaski demanded.

Norse waited, letting the question add weight. "I don't know," he said softly. "How many?"

People shifted uncomfortably. "It's survival, Doctor," Dana said quietly.

"What do you propose to say to your friends? Who can help you? What good is it to contact them right now except to worry them needlessly?"

"I'll bet they're worried already by not hearing from us," Dana said.

"I'm just suggesting we give NSF a chance to handle this."

"Screw that," said Geller. "They should've parachuted an investigator in the minute Mickey disappeared. They've left us swinging in the wind. I say we tell the world what's going on."

Norse's eyes polled the room. They were against him on this one.

"All right," he surrendered. "Broadcast your panic. Destroy this station. Maybe that's what the killer wants."

"We're bottled up," Pulaski said defensively. "We need release."

"You're also professionals. I thought."

The two men looked at each other.

"I can't stop you," Norse said. "I know that."

Pulaski hesitated. He was a cook, not a beaker. Norse had unconscious rank. Norse was looking at a bigger picture. "Okay, then how about this," he said reluctantly, looking at the others. "We have leverage, people. Leverage! It's like Doctor Bob says- we broadcast this in the right way and we can turn this station into a fiasco. Too unstable. End all funding for it. Close it up and send it packing. And that's our stick with NSF! Let's call them, and tell them what we've discussed, and give them twenty-four hours to figure out a way to get us out of here. I don't care if it's the space shuttle or a dog sled, we deserve to go home. And if they can't do that, then we talk about this to the world. The world! Let the chips fall where they may."

"Twenty-four hours isn't much time," Norse said.

"They've had time and done nothing."

The others nodded.

Norse took an unhappy breath. "All right. Deal. Let me talk to them on the phone when the satellites come in view. I agree, they need to know how antsy we all are. I'll talk to them about Lewis, about Tyson, about everyone. Let me think of what I want to say and we should be ready to phone in"-he looked at his watch- "an hour, say."

"I want to hear what you tell them," Geller said.

"And I don't want to talk as a committee. They'll get a babble and things will be more confused than ever. Give me a chance, okay? A chance to save the winter. One day. Clyde Skinner will be helping and he can listen. Okay, Clyde?" Skinner was their radioman.

He nodded.

"Meet me there in an hour to fire things up," Norse said.

It was enough. Everyone appeared to agree on this compromise.

"Jed goes into the sauna, at least for the time being. And Cueball, why don't you start figuring how to lock us in, like you said? Our world shrinks down to this dome. Spaceship Pulaski." Norse looked at them and took a breath. The group was still under control. If nothing more happened, maybe they could make it.

"I'll do my best to resolve this thing," Norse promised.