Icy Clutches

Chapter 2

Professor Tremaine was not altogether pleased with the way things were progressing. Oh, they had gone reasonably well during the introductory dinner the night before (Anna's characteristically vulgar comment aside), but now, at breakfast, he sensed an undercurrent of tension, of reserve. In the cases of Anna Henckel and Walter Judd he could guess at the reasons, ridiculous though they might be, but what did the others have to be touchy about? By the end of the week there would be cause enough, but why now? They had never met each other before. They were enjoying a quite luxurious stay at Glacier Bay at his expense, were they not? Well, perhaps not at his expense, but it amounted to the same thing, didn't it? If they didn't want to come, why were they there? Had anyone forced them?

Or was he imagining things? Might they be not touchy but star struck, now that they grasped that they would actually be working directly with him for the next few days? Sometimes he forgot the impact that meeting a celebrity had on ordinary people. Absurd, really-he was quite the same as anyone else-but there it was, and he supposed it was up to him to do something about it. The better their initial relations, the better things would go later.

He pushed the remains of his buttered English muffin away, signaled for another cup of coffee, and got out his box of Dunhills. He lit up, sucked in a deep lungful of smoke, tucked a loose end of his paisley ascot into his shirt collar, and cleared his throat. “We have twenty minutes before we leave for Tirku Glacier,” he said, “and it occurs to me that there may still be some unanswered questions about just why we are here. If so, please feel free to ask them."

He peered at them with warm sincerity and lifted his eyebrows to indicate that such questions were welcome. More than welcome.

Gerald Pratt's lean, weathered hand went slowly up. Everything Gerald Pratt did went slowly. In that way he reminded Tremaine of Pratt's brother James, killed in the avalanche in 1960. Physically, too, the resemblance was there if you looked for it: the bony nose-broken and poorly mended in Gerald's case-the long face, the lantern jaw. Was this what James would have come to if he'd lived? James, too, had sometimes been maddeningly measured in speech and manner, but there had been a spark, an intensity, flickering beneath that quiet surface. This the dark, gaunt, torpid Gerald lacked utterly. But Gerald was in his fifties, of course. James, his younger brother by a year or two, had never reached thirty. Ah, well, Tremaine thought with the tinge of melancholy that often came with his first cigarette of the day, there was something to be said for dying young.

He smiled tolerantly. “There's no need to raise our hands here, Mr. Pratt."

Pratt lowered his hand. “I'm no scientist,” he said in the laconic, deliberate way that had already begun to grate on Tremaine's nerves. “Comes to that, I'm not much of a reader either. So…” His cheeks hollowed as he drew on his pipe. “So…” One cloud, two clouds, three clouds of nauseous, yellowish-brown smoke emerged in slow procession.

Tremaine made a conscious effort to keep from tapping his foot with impatience. The tolerant smile began to congeal. “Yes…?"

"So I'd appreciate it,” Pratt finally droned, “if you'd tell us just why we're here and what's expected of us. Sort of in a nutshell."

"You didn't get a letter from Javelin Press?"

"I saw it,” Pratt said. “Didn't make a whole lot of sense.” He ran a hand through lank, black, thinning hair.

"Well, then, let me see if I can make it clearer.” In Pratt's case, Tremaine suspected, the problem was not awe, or touchiness either. The man was permanently out to lunch, that was all. “As you know, I am nearing the completion of a book on the Tirku botanical survey party of 1960. Until now I have never discussed those last fateful hours on the ice with complete candor. Now I think it's time to tell the story, the full human story, which no living person but myself knows. It is scheduled for publication in May of next year-1990 being the thirtieth anniversary of the expedition."

He lifted his coffee and sipped. “The idea came to me that before I prepared my final draft it would be a good idea to review the material with people who might have some unique personal or scientific insights into it. Thus, some weeks ago, I asked my publisher about the possibility of gathering a small group together for that purpose. Javelin Press readily agreed, and here we are. As I mentioned last night, I will be reading the manuscript aloud over the next several days, and all of you will be free to make whatever comments or suggestions you care to, as I go along."

"Mm,” Pratt said, sucking at his pipe and looking no less thoughtfully obtuse than he had before. He was wearing oil-stained orange coveralls. Yesterday, it had been oil-stained brown coveralls.

"I have great confidence in the value of the contributions to come,” Professor Tremaine said. “Dr. Henckel here was the assistant director of the project, of course, and I'm sure she will have much to offer. The same applies to Dr. Judd, here on my right, who is the only other surviving member. You, Mr. Pratt, and Ms. Yount next to you, and Dr. Fisk there, as close relatives of the three young people who lost their lives, are in a position to provide many insights into their personalities and characters, of which I could hardly be aware."

He paused for a beat, as they liked to say in television. “I need hardly add that all of your contributions will be gratefully acknowledged in the book."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Anna Henckel stiffen at that. He was right, then. Still nursing that ancient and absurd grudge, was she? Well, he'd forgotten it long ago. Not that her savagely vindictive letters to the Journal of Systematic Botany wouldn't rankle even now, if he let them. And what about that virulent and unjustified attack on him at the 1969 American Society of Plant Taxonomists congress in Phoenix? If anyone had the right to a grudge, he did. Fortunately, that wasn't the kind of person he was. As far as he was concerned, bygones were bygones. Water under the bridge.

He smiled again at Pratt. “Does that clarify things, Mr. Pratt?"

"I suppose so,” Pratt said with a shrug. He poked with a finger at his thin, dark mustache. “Tell the truth, though, I don't really see what I can add."

There Tremaine agreed with him. He didn't see what any of them could add-for what he'd told Pratt hadn't been quite true. This gathering hadn't been his idea at all. It had come from Javelin Press; from their attorney. Javelin had been on the losing end of an invasion-of-privacy settlement not long before, and they were still skittish. The best way to avoid problems, the attorney had said, was to “co-opt potential adversaries by involving them in the developmental process.” If they chose not to participate, they would be asked to sign a statement so indicating. But they had chosen to participate.

At first Tremaine had thought it was a terrible idea, but as time passed he began to see some value in it. There were going to be some unsettling revelations in his book, and no doubt some-probably all-of these people were going to be upset. Better to deal with that before the book came out, rather than after. It might make for some unpleasant moments this week, but he could deal with that. He was no stranger to confrontation.

"Be glad to do what I can to help, though,” Pratt said around the stem of his pipe. Laconic he might be, but the man had a way of mumbling on. And on.

"Thank you.” Tremaine's crisp nod was meant to terminate the exchange.

"And whose idea was it to meet here, of all places?” Anna Henckel asked tartly. “Also yours, Melvin? To add a touch of sentiment?"

Anna was baiting him, of course. Aside from her sarcastic tone, she knew very well that he'd dropped the unfortunate “Melvin” when he'd begun to host “Voyages.” Well, she had been a mean-spirited woman twenty-some years ago. Had he really expected her to change? She certainly hadn't changed much physically. At sixty, she was as boxy, stone faced, and stern as ever; blankly impassive, magisterial, humorless, detached. Even that chopped-off, battleship-gray hair (a few decades ago it had been battleship dun) seemed like a self-righteous reprimand to his own carefully groomed white mane.

And yet hadn't there been a time, so long ago that it was hardly credible now, when he had seen her in a different light? When her now-guttural speech had been husky and soft, her thick body narrow-waisted and lush? When he had actually believed-briefly, to be sure-that the young and exotic Anna Henckel, with her camellia-petal skin, might be the woman he…With an imperceptible shake of his head he dismissed the repellent thought. Well, at least he had made it through that demented phase without blurting out some mortifying amatory declaration to her.

"Yes, also my idea,” he said benignly. As always, the sound of his own rich, confident baritone pleased and soothed him. “It seemed to me it would be fitting."

That much was true. He had suggested Glacier Bay as the logical meeting place without giving it much thought. And now he was quite pleased that he had. The idea was already producing dividends. That toast last night was going to make a fine opening scene for the book (sans Anna's muttered contribution, naturally). And now, happily, they would be leaving in a few minutes to choose a place for the memorial plaque. And that little excursion would surely furnish the material for a splendidly poignant final chapter for his book. It would provide a needed sense of completion, of a circle come closed. Or would it do better as an epilogue? More sense of closure that way…

Dwarfed by the ghostly white immensity of Tirku Glacier, we stood silent and bareheaded in the wan sunlight. Or would mist be more evocative? Yes, make that mist. Who was going to remember? We were there to pay tribute to Jocelyn Yount, Steven Fisk, and James Pratt, whose remains were forever locked in the great ice flow, but my thoughts were "I have a question."

Tremaine surfaced. “Dr. Fisk?"

At forty, Dr. (of dentistry) Elliott Fisk was the youngest of the group, a balding, unappetizing man whose remaining fringe of hair had been allowed, perhaps even encouraged, to grow into a stringy curtain that hung limply from the level of his ears. A close-cropped but equally offensive gray-splotched beard straggled over his face and neck, growing in all directions. With rectangular gold-rimmed glasses framing glittery eyes, a pinched nose, and a tight little mouth working behind the sparse beard, he was like a cartoon anarchist from the editorial pages of Tremaine's childhood. All that was needed was a spherical bomb with a sputtering fuse in each hand.

Astonishing that he should be a dentist. Tremaine could conceive of no circumstance, no emergency, under which he would allow the man to insert his fingers into his mouth. Elliott was the nephew of Steven Fisk, whom he resembled not at all, and Tremaine had taken a near-instant dislike to him on meeting him the day before.

Little wonder. Like his uncle, Fisk had a way of provoking confrontation. But whereas Steven's combativeness had been the natural result of a thin skin, an absurdly high opinion of himself, and an unfortunate predilection for brawling, Elliott seemed like a man who had consciously chosen a carping churlishness as the maniere d'etre best suited to his philosophy of life and who worked doggedly at maintaining it. Despite his bohemian appearance he was a smug, captious faultfinder who had taken up an inordinate amount of time at dinner the night before with his aimless quibbling over what he persisted in calling “administrivia."

"Why couldn't…” he had asked in his sulky, complainer's voice a dozen times, and Tremaine had worn himself out fending him off with shrugs and smiles. Why couldn't they be given per-diem expense accounts instead of having to keep track of and record every individual expenditure? (Because that's the way Javelin's accounting department wanted it.) Why couldn't each of them be scheduled to attend only those sessions to which he or she might have something to add, instead of having everybody sit through every minute? (Because arranging individualized schedules was too damn much work.)

The detestable Fisk had even gone out of his way to sneer at the book's title, Tragedy on Ice. Tremaine was still seething about that. What business was it of his? Besides, it most certainly did not sound like something starring Dorothy Hamill.

Dr. Fisk's question this morning was in character. “I'd like to know why you couldn't just give us copies of the manuscript to review individually instead of making us spend all this time sitting around while you read the stuff to us.” He used his forefinger to probe at something-a bug, probably-in the scrubby hair at the corner of his jaw.

Tremaine's chin lifted. Because that's the way I want it, that's why, you repulsive creep. I'm not about to have six copies of my unpublished manuscript floating around. He made himself relax. “That's a good question, Doctor,” he said with an appreciative and thoughtful nod, “but the fact is"-he patted the thick burgundy-leather binder in front of him-"that this is the only copy of the manuscript in existence."

"Is something stopping you from making more? How much would it cost? If you look at it from a cost-benefit perspective, the time saved would more than compensate for the few out-of-pocket dollars expended."

Cost-benefit analysis? Dollars expended? Was the man a dentist or a bureaucrat? Both, now that Tremaine thought about it. If he remembered correctly, Fisk owned a seedy chain of dentures-while-you-wait establishments in Chicago.

Tremaine turned the full force of his craggy smile on him. “I'm sure you're right. It's just that it seems to me that the, er, relational dynamics produced by our, our interfacing would produce a productive level of, of…” He took a breath and finished strongly. “…of metacommunication over and above that possible in a series of essentially one-on-one transactions."

This dubious and high-flown melange had come from a “Voyages” program on “communication science,” which his producer had talked him into doing a year or so ago. The entire subject had seemed like pretentious claptrap to him at the time, and still did. But it had gotten good ratings, and here it was, proving quite useful after all: Fisk, after opening his hairy mouth somewhat in the manner of a startled carp and making a few chewing motions, fell back silent.

"Well, then,” Tremaine said smoothly, “if there are no further-"

"May I ask a question? If there's time?"

"Certainly, Shirley-I mean, Miz Yount,” he said with exaggerated emphasis and a resolutely gracious smile. He had called her “miss” on meeting her the evening before, and she had been quick to reprimand him in that twangy, chalk-on-blackboard voice of hers. Shirley Yount was the dead Jocelyn Yount's fraternal twin sister, a ropy, toothy woman of fifty-three with plucked eyebrows and upswept coppery hair straight out of the fifties. Here, too, the family resemblance was apparent, but once again the years had taken their depressing toll. Her sister had been a striking six-footer, dreamy, athletic, and sveltely seductive. Shirley, equally tall, was gawky and mannish. In the square neckline of her blouse her collarbones jutted out aggressively, and the deeply tanned skin on her flat chest was as coarse as pebbled cowhide.

What a difference: Jocelyn the svelte, leggy colt; Shirley the tough and sinewy old mare.

During dinner the evening before, she had wormed her way into sitting beside him and had yammered away endlessly, telling him at least three times how thrilled she was to meet him in person. (Was there another way to meet someone?) But of course Tremaine was used to this kind of cretinous gushing, and long resigned to it, particularly from middle-aged spinsters like Shirley Yount.

He was, however, irked by a side-of-the-mouth archness of manner, as if even her most vapid remarks-of which there were many-were really sly, private digs of wit and substance. Tremaine, who prided himself on his perceptiveness about such things, had been unable to decide whether there really was malice behind that tediously saucy facade. Or whether it was a facade at all. Either way, by now it had gotten well under his skin. (Considering that this was only Monday morning, there was quite a lot about this ill-assorted group that had already gotten under his skin.)

But what could she have to be hostile about? Here she was, an unattractive, unmarried department-store buyer in Cincinnati or Cleveland or some such place. Thanks to Tremaine's doing, she was enjoying the trip of a lifetime: an all-expenses-paid stay at the premier vacation destination of western Alaska. She would be talking about it-and about what M. Audley Tremaine was really like (in person)-for years at her mah-jongg meetings, or wherever such people gathered socially nowadays.

She leaned forward to frown through gargantuan, hexagonal glasses. “One thing I've always wondered is-oh, is it all right to ask something about the survey? Is that permitted?” There it was again; that annoying ability to make a seemingly innocuous question sound like a tongue-in-cheek insult. Our Miss Brooks getting ready to slip one to the high-school principal.

"Of course,” Tremaine said.

"Well, I can't help wondering why it was that Dr. Henckel and Dr. Judd weren't out there with everyone else that day at the glacier. I've always wondered about that. Or shouldn't I ask? If I shouldn't, I'll just shut up. I don't mean I wish they had been there, I just mean…” She trailed off, as she often did, into a macaw-like squawk. “Ha-HAH!"

Ah, was that what was bothering her? The fact that her sister had been cut off at twenty-five while an uncaring Providence had allowed these two overstuffed, middle-aged people who had played it safe to plod comfortably on with their lives? Fine, that was right with him. It was their problem; let them handle it.

As he expected, it was Walter who crumbled first. As all who knew him came sooner or later to learn, Walter's tugboat of a body; his jolly, chuckly, zesty air of enjoying life to the full; and his ruddy complexion (latently apoplectic, if you asked Tremaine) hid a constitution forged in tapioca.

"Well, now, I wouldn't exactly say I stayed behind," Walter said, chuckling on cue.

Tremaine shifted restlessly. Between Walter's chuckle and Shirley's squawk, it was not going to be an easy week. Almost equally irritating, Walter had become a belly flaunter in the years since Tremaine had last seen him. The way some men thrust out their chests, he joyfully displayed the blimp-like protuberance at his front. He wore his suspenders wide and his pants low, the better to accommodate it. If he wasn't patting it, he was rubbing it. If he wasn't rubbing it, he was tapping it with a rolled-up magazine, or a pen, or even a ring of keys.

"No,” Walter continued, setting his hands on that great belly and dosing his eyes, “the fact of the matter is that I flew out there with the others in the morning, fully intent on executing the commands of our glorious leader.” He opened his eyes. A jocular wiggle of tufted brows was directed toward Tremaine, but Tremaine, keen observer that he was, noted the accompanying tic just above Walter's padded jaw line. He smiled back coolly.

"However,” said Walter, “the Fates intervened.” He chuckled meaninglessly. “Or perhaps the Furies. A medical crisis developed shortly after we deplaned, and I was unable to continue.” He paused for a rumble of throaty, empty laughter. “Down for the count, so to speak. So I had to remain behind at the shore, where the plane would pick us up later."

"Yes, that's the part I'm not too clear on,” Shirley persisted with a smile that revealed rather too much wet, pink gum line. “The medical crisis.” She eyed him coyly, her long, purplish nose honed. “Or isn't it any of my business? I mean, I'm just curious, so tell me to shut up if…well… ha-HAH!"

"No, no, my dear lady-my dear Shirley, if I may-that's all right. As a matter of fact it was…” He leaned forward and paused theatrically, then finished in a stage whisper: “…a mosquito bite!"

The words appeared to penetrate Gerald Pratt's lethargy. "A mosquito bite, did he say?” The murmured question floated out of a haze of turgid brown smoke. “Is that right?"

"An infected mosquito bite,” Walter said, “despite which I was heroically bent on continuing my mission.” A pause for another forced chuckle. “But our glorious leader, in his greater wisdom, forbade it. I ask you: What could I do but submit as gracefully as I could?” He concluded this annoying performance with an exasperating tattoo played out on his abdomen.

How inexplicable were human emotions! Tremaine almost shook his head with wonderment. For almost three decades, it appeared, Walter had maintained this foolish resentment against him because-well, why? Because Tremaine had almost certainly kept him from being killed in the avalanche, wasn't that what it amounted to? Was that what the man would have preferred? Not that it wouldn't have been what he deserved, inasmuch as it was his fault they had to be out there in the first place.

In any case, Tremaine's insistence that he remain behind had surely been correct. The infected bite had been ugly, with long streaks of brilliant red radiating from the wrist almost to the armpit. Walter had been on penicillin for ten days afterward. With a condition like that, one remained quiet; one did not stimulate blood circulation by scrambling up and down glacial flows. Even if he had survived the avalanche, he would probably have come away with gangrene. Was that what he wanted?

And yet Tremaine sympathized to some extent. There was something undeniably absurd about being kept from a rendezvous with destiny by a mosquito bite. But then that was the sort of person Walter was; a man of limited scope and inconsequential vision, fated by a feeble character to be stymied by minor obstacles. He had hardly protested very vigorously that morning when Tremaine “forbade” him from continuing. What could Tremaine have done if this whale of a man had insisted on going with them? Clamped him in irons? But of course he hadn't insisted at all. He'd merely whined and submitted, as the manuscript made quite clear-one of several things poor Walter was not going to be very happy about.

Tremaine wondered how happy he was with his life as a whole. Probably not very. A few years after the survey, when Walter failed-deservedly-to gain tenure, he had moved to Alaska, first to take an undemanding teaching position at a community college in Barrow, a school whose chief (only?) distinction was that of being the northernmost institution of “higher” learning on the North American continent. From there he had found his way into state government and a lackluster career in the Department of the Environment. Now it was rumored that the governor, apparently no judge of competence, was about to appoint him head of the department, a highly visible, cabinet-level post. Well, good luck to the Alaskan environment, was all Tremaine had to say.

Anna barely waited for Walter to finish before she got in her two cents’ worth. “As for me,” she announced in that contentious way of hers, “I did remain behind in Gustavus on the day of the avalanche. We were correcting some errors in the mapping and distribution analyses."

She flicked a glance at the shiny-faced Walter but didn't bother to explain that it was his bungling and incompetence she was talking about. Well, no surprise there, Tremaine thought; it was him, Tremaine, she was saving her ammunition for.

Turning, she stared at Shirley with stolid condescension. “Is this satisfactory to you?"

Just like Anna, Tremaine thought. Never pass up an opportunity to make waves.

Shirley smiled glassily. “Well, if it's all right with you, it's certainly all right with me, dear."

Now there. That was an example. Had that been a gossamer-cloaked jab of some kind? Had some electric current imperceptible to the masculine nervous system passed between them? Had Anna-unthinkable idea-been bested in some mysterious female clash of personalities? Anna herself seemed to think so. With a sulky shrug she fished in her bag for her pack of cigarillos.

Tremaine almost chuckled himself. This wasn't something that happened to the formidable Dr. Henckel very often.

And on this pleasant note their breakfast meeting came to an end. Arthur Tibbett, the assistant superintendent who was to accompany them to the glacier, made his appearance.

"Tibbett, Tibbett,” Tremaine mused aloud. “Do I know you?"

"I don't think so,” the administrator said.

"We haven't met?"

"Not to my knowledge."

Rather a stuffy sort, Tibbett; every inch the minor functionary. Well, well, no matter. Tremaine was not about to let the puffy manner of a petty bureaucrat affect his sunny mood. On to Tirku Glacier.