Dark Winter

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

But the hair on his head began to grow again…"

Norse's voice crackled over the galley intercom as condescending sermon, the paternal recitation of a school principal. The experiment had been conducted and its meaning was about to be revealed, so his own particular collection of winter-over lab rats had been ordered at gunpoint to stay in the galley while he announced his intentions from Cameron's old office in the other module, next to the radios he'd destroyed. Abby was being held hostage to ensure their compliance until he completed his lecture and his preparations to leave. The rest listened with gloomy apprehension.

"Then he pushed with all his might, and down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it…"

"He's gone balmy," Dana Andrews whispered.

"He always was," Pulaski said grimly, angry at himself. "The more we listened to him, the more over the edge he went. It fed him. We fed him."

"What the hell is he talking about?" Geller asked.

"I think it's stuff from the Bible," Lewis said, beginning to revive from his near-execution. He had just enough frostbite to make his nose and fingers sting like fire and his shudders were receding only with the help of some soup Pulaski had microwaved. The pain as his skin warmed helped keep him from collapsing. "He quoted some to me when I arrived. It's the story of Samson, destroying the temple of the Philistines."

"I ain't no Philistine. That's something bad, right?"

"It is if he pulls down our temple."

"My God, is he going to destroy the bloody station?" Dana asked.

"He might if we let him. He gets off on toying with us."

The intercom crackled again. "We've finally been stripped of pretense, haven't we?" Norse broadcast. The disembodied sound had an eerie power and Lewis realized that the psychologist had done what Lewis had asked him not to do: Norse had gotten into their heads. It wasn't just a voice, vibrating in air. His presence reverberated in their minds. "I'm revealed as Oz, puppeteer of souls. You're exposed as a thin biologic film on the petri dish of the Pole, as easy to erase as a smear of mold. You joined a society that can't protect you. That can't even recognize its own internal danger. How does that make you feel?"

There was no way for them to reply.

"I've been giving you an experience similar to that which I faced once," Norse went on, a teacher to his students. "In the face of group incompetence I had to rely on myself for salvation. I've been punished for it ever since. So the question is, was my misfortune simply a fateful tragedy of bad luck? Or is it modern civilization, the Age of the Committee, that is to blame? Are there so many of us now, in so many clubs and consortiums and families and clans and boardrooms and unions and seminars and societies, that we've forgotten how to think for ourselves? Act for ourselves? Be ourselves? What happens when the lemmings lead us to nuclear Armageddon or a stock market crash or global climate collapse or starvation from overpopulation or off the edge of a cliff? Will it be the feel-good commune that saves us? Or will it be individual preparation and reliance and free will? When I acted for myself was I exhibiting the worst of human nature? Or the best? I think evolution suggests the latter. I think we've been so cushioned by mere numbers that we've forgotten what evolution demands."

"He is a Nazi is what he is," Molotov said grimly.

"Do scientists have even the slightest idea of the human hardness that's going to be required now to explore the extremes of the universe or survive among the evolving brilliance of machines? Just how strong is your collective? Not very strong, is it? You panicked. You abandoned your work. You locked yourself in. You armed yourself. You quarreled. You turned on each other. You were ready to kill each other. The one who finally woke you up was Lewis, the fingie I set up as the outsider."

There was noise in the background, a scrape of furniture. "Shut up," Norse muttered. They assumed he was speaking to Abby.

"Civilization is a fraud," he resumed, his pontificating reminding Lewis of Mickey Moss. "It's a blip in time, a blemish on a million years of humanoid existence. Society is a fraud. They always fall, always break down. And when they do it comes down to individual survival. When something new is built in the ruins it's the strong individual, the visionary, the freethinker, who points the way. I followed the most fundamental of human instincts: survival. And they hounded me for it! So I came down to their little jewel, their farthest place, the place of night and hypothermia, to test social utopia. And you snapped like a cord in this cold."

"You wouldn't have survived thirty minutes by yourself, you deluded bastard," Pulaski muttered. There was no answer, of course.

"I hope you realize that you've made things far more terrible than I intended them to be," Norse went on. "I wasn't planning much more than an embarrassing psychological paper on station dysfunction, illustrated by depression and mistrust. But God had more in store for us, it seems: He planted an apple in Eden! Mickey was so greedy to get back his meteorite. And so pathetic at the end that he followed it, and me, right into the pit. He begged to be let out again. Let out? Was Lucifer let out? He fell from grace! He'd chosen his own fate! But the rest of you wouldn't stop. You wouldn't stop! First Adams, and then Cameron. It was you who turned on Buck Tyson, not me. You who mistrusted Lewis, not me. You who missed every clue and misplaced every doubt. I used Carl's candle to make a wax impression of Buck Tyson's knife locker lock. I didn't forge Lewis's name, I got him to write it for me. When I wondered how Lewis had escaped the dome, all I had to do was look down at the icicles stabbed into the snow, guess what he'd done, and find the rope to confirm it. I wanted to humiliate your little society, not destroy it. I'd made my point! But you wouldn't stop!" He took a breath.

They waited. He didn't mention Gabriella.

"So. At last it stops. How to end my little demonstration? Closing down an experiment can be as difficult as starting it. I think the best solution is that I leave, alone. I'm at my best alone. I'll give Miss Dixon here a final choice on her fate. She can save herself by coming with me or cast her lot with the morons. I'm indifferent either way."

"Let her go now so we can test your little experiment, tough guy," Pulaski said to the speaker. It was pointless. He was talking to a machine.

"As you saw, my telescope kit allowed me to smuggle down the necessary components of a gun," Norse went on blandly. "You might take me, sure, but I'd be sure to take more of you. Frankly, however, I think there's been enough violence. So this is what we're going to do. I need one hour. One hour to make my preparations! At the end of that time I'll commandeer the remaining Spryte. I'll take my chances on the polar plateau, just as Tyson did. And if you go telling stories to our Vostok friends, well, let's just say that I have a story of my own prepared. I can be quite convincing."

No one bothered to answer this time. They were depleted, defeated by their own mistakes. Spirit had been sucked out of them. It was difficult for them to even look at Lewis, the innocent man they'd almost executed.

"I was the serpent, people, and when I came you had no individual strength to resist my temptation. Look around at those so-called friends of yours. You have none. You have none! You'll all despise each other the rest of your short, miserable lives! Lewis, look at the people who just tried to kill you! And then credit me the path to inner strength. You came ten thousand miles for a family. Which meant you came ten thousand miles for a mirage."

More noise in the background. Then: "Shut up! Shut up!" A long pause.

He resumed. "One hour. One hour and I'm out of your lives. Remain in the galley until I'm on my way. I see that galley door open and the agreement's off. Don't forget, I have Abby."

The intercom switched off.