Terminal Freeze

34

The front windows of the Sno-Cat 1643RE were vast-they took up the entire face of the cab-and from his vantage point in the driver’s seat Marshall had a panoramic view of the storm. Although the heavy glass and metal shielded him from the worst of the fury, he was all too conscious of how the big vehicle swayed under the fierce gusts and of the ice pellets that hammered incessantly against the roof and sides. The wind cried and moaned constantly, as if frustrated in its desire to peel back the steel and get at him.

Marshall took his eyes off the swirling whitescape long enough to glance at his watch. He had been driving now for almost forty minutes. Once he’d cleared the immediate area of the camp and its labyrinth of lava fissures, he had made good time. The permafrost was quite level, and he’d managed a steady thirty miles an hour: he didn’t know the maximum safe operating speed and was playing it safe. He’d lied to Logan about his expertise-he’d never driven a Sno-Cat in his life-but the vehicle had proven mercifully easy to handle, its controls similar to a truck or tractor, with extra switches for the plow, winch, rotating beacon, and transmission-pan heater. The hardest thing to adjust to had been the four independently sprung steel tracks, hydraulically steered by the front and rear axles, which-combined with the cab’s alarming amount of glass-gave him a lurching, almost vertiginous sense of being perched far too high off the ground.

The Cat’s half-dozen halogen headlights lanced ahead, barely penetrating the murk. Marshall peered along their beams into the raging storm, then glanced over at the GPS mounted onto the control panel. He knew the Tunit camp was situated near a frozen lake; Gonzalez had mentioned as much. There was only one such lake in the GPS unit’s database within a thirty-mile radius to the north, but it was sizable. That made fuel his biggest concern. The Cat had half a tank. That meant twenty-five gallons to reach the lake, find the village, and get back to the base. And Marshall had no idea how much fuel the enormous machine used.

He drove on, wipers flailing at the whirlwind of snow and the needles of ice peppering the window. He shook his head blearily, trying to clear it, wishing he’d brought a thermos of coffee. Was it really only thirty-six hours since he’d discovered the creature was missing?

Again, Marshall found himself wondering why exactly was he making a trip that could well prove a wild-goose chase at best-and ruinous at worst. If he broke down out here in the Zone, lost power, he’d never be found in time.

The Tunits have the answer. Some scientist had written those words, fifty years ago. The man had felt them important enough to commit to paper, to encrypt, to conceal within his quarters. And now, today, someone had been savagely killed. And another assaulted in the most bizarre way. Almost forty people were in grave danger. If there was even the merest chance the Tunits knew something-an old myth, some oral tradition, anecdotal evidence, anything that could shed a little light on what was afflicting the base-it was worth the risk.

And there was another, more personal reason. No matter where he’d gone or what he’d done over the past seven days, it seemed to Marshall he’d never quite been alone. There was a presence, always there, always watching: two yellow eyes, big as fists, with pupils like bottomless black pools. Since he’d first seen them looking back at him through the ice, those eyes had haunted him. The paleoecologist in him wanted-needed-to understand this creature better. Even if Faraday was right, even if it was somehow still alive and behind the recent atrocities, Marshall felt a yearning to decipher its mysteries. And he would travel a lot farther than thirty miles in a blinding snowstorm to accomplish that.

The cab shook violently once, then twice-the terrain was growing uneven. Marshall cut his speed. The GPS showed the lake directly ahead now: a vast wall of blue that took up the entirety of the tiny screen. And then there it was, beyond the windows: a dim line in the howling murk, covered with drifting snow, recognizable as a body of water only by its uninterrupted and featureless horizontal line.

Marshall slowed the Cat. Turning the wheel, he began to cruise along the edge of the lake, scanning carefully for any sign of habitation. He’d used ten gallons of gas already; that meant he could spare only two or three more in his search. The frozen ground sloped down steeply toward the lakeshore, and he had to keep a tight hand on the wheel and a steady pressure on the foot throttle to maintain forward traction.

Suddenly the Cat sheered violently to one side. Realizing a crevasse yawned ahead, Marshall turned the wheel sharply in the opposite direction and stepped on the gas. The cab shook as the metal tracks crabbed along the slick ice sheet. Marshall feathered the engine, trying to find the balance between traction and forward motion, struggling to keep the tracks from slipping sideways into the widening crevasse. The big vehicle whipsawed back and forth, at last struggling over the lip of the ice sheet and falling heavily forward onto level ground once again.

Marshall let the Sno-Cat roll to a stop. He sat there, idling, as his heart gradually slowed. Then, applying pressure to the throttle again, he eased forward, moving gently away from the steep shoreline.

Then, through the swirling snows, he saw something-or thought he saw something: gray shapes in the strange late-summer twilight. He stopped the Cat, staring hard through the glass. It was off to the side, away from the lake. Twisting the wheel, he inched the Cat forward. As he approached, the dim shapes resolved themselves into rudely built igloos: two of them, snow-scoured and pathetically small, surrounded by vortexes of swirling ice.

Marshall stopped the vehicle, killed the engine, zipped his parka tight. Then he exited the cab and clambered down the trapezoidal tread. Turning his head away from the teeth of the wind, he approached the first igloo. It was dark and cold, its entrance tube a black void. He staggered over to the second igloo, knelt before its doorway. It, too, was tenantless, the fur blankets and skins within cold and stiff.

Beyond, Marshall could now make out three additional igloos and a larger snowhouse. There were no other structures around, and he realized with surprise just how small the last Tunit community really was.

These three igloos were just as deserted as the first two had been. The ice walls of the snowhouse, however, danced with a faint, flickering orange glow. A fire was burning inside.

For a moment, the winds slackened, as if to rest from all their blowing. As the clouds of snow subsided, Marshall could once again make out the strange, blood-red northern lights lowering in the sky. They cast an eerie crimson glow over the tiny village of ice.

Taking a deep breath, he made his way to the snowhouse, drew back the caribou skin that served as a door flap, and stepped cautiously inside. The interior was dark, low-ceilinged, and full of smoke. A profusion of skins and blankets covered the floor. Marshall brushed the ice and snow out of his face and looked around. As his eyes adjusted, he realized there was only one occupant: a figure in a heavy caribou-skin parka, kneeling before a small fire.

Marshall took another deep breath. Then he cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said.

For a long moment, the figure remained motionless. Then, slowly, it turned toward him. The face was a dark hollow within the fur-lined hood. The figure raised a hand to the hood, pulled it back with an unhurried, deliberate motion. A wizened face marked with intricate tattoos stared up at Marshall. It was the old shaman who had come to the base, warned the scientists to leave. He held a reindeer antler in one hand, decorated with fantastical lines and curlicues, and an intricately carved bone in the other. There were several small items scattered across the reindeer skin before him: polished stones, tiny fur fetishes, animal teeth.

“Usuguk,” Marshall said.

The man gave a faint nod of his head. He didn’t seem surprised to see him.

“Where are the others?”

“Gone,” the man replied. Now Marshall remembered the voice: quiet, uninflected.

“Gone?” he repeated.

“Fled.”

“Why?”

“Because of you. And what you have awakened.”

“What have we awakened?” Marshall asked.

“I have spoken to you of it already. Akayarga okdaniyartok. The anger of the ancient ones. And kurrshuq.”

There was a pause in which the two men regarded each other in the flickering light of the fire. The last time they met, the old man had seemed anxious, frightened. Now he looked merely resigned.

“Why did you remain?” Marshall asked at last.

The shaman continued to look at him, his black eyes shining in the reflected firelight. “Because I knew you would come.”