Zodiac Station

Seven

A yellow Sno-Cat sat parked outside our tent. Not like the machine I’d seen at Zodiac, a relic of the 1960s; this one was low and shiny and powerful and very much of the twenty-first century. Even the snow blown over its door sills looked like it had been styled for the brochure. Three pairs of skis stuck out of a rack on the back, and three men in yellow parkas stood peering at our tent. The word ‘DAR-X’ was stencilled liberally on everything I could see: doors, coats, hats, skis.

‘Trouble?’ Even right there, the man outside the tent had to shout over the wind.

Greta nodded.

He gestured to his Sno-Cat. ‘You want out?’

The tent we’d raised so laboriously came down in a hurry. We left it with the snowmobiles. Hagger came with us on his sledge, wagging behind the Sno-Cat like a tin can tied to a car. I glanced out the rear window, and thought what a strange last journey it was for him.

There were only two seats in the cab. Greta and I and the man who’d rescued us sat in the passenger cabin mounted on the back. It was almost more luxurious than the Platform back at Zodiac, complete with folding bunks, a table and even a stove. Our host — the name on his coat said Malick; he introduced himself as Bill — brewed up coffee. We took off our coats in the heated cabin and cradled the mugs to stop them spilling over the bumps. Even the mugs said DAR-X.

‘What is DAR-X?’

‘We say it “darks”,’ he corrected me. I’d pronounced it to rhyme with ‘Daleks’. ‘Deep Arctic Exploration. Oil and gas.’

That explained the high-end equipment. ‘Aren’t there easier places in the world to drill oil?’

He laughed. ‘I guess. But a hundred million years ago, Texas was under an ice sheet too. The majors figure it won’t be long before this place goes the same way.’

I looked out the window at the desolate ice field, and tried to imagine cactuses growing there.

‘I thought oil companies didn’t believe in global warming,’ said Greta.

Bill gave her a look as if she’d started to smell. ‘Even a Prius needs gas.’

‘Well, I’m glad you were around,’ I said emphatically. ‘How did you find us?’

‘Your boss from Zodiac phoned Echo Bay. Said you’d had a breakdown. We were out here anyway, so we thought we’d drop by.’

Greta’s eyes narrowed. ‘Aren’t you supposed to stick to the coast?’

Bill smiled. He smiled a lot. ‘Tourism. Little R & R. We did some skiing over on the Wendel, then stopped by Vitangelsk on the way home. You been to Vitangelsk, Tom?’

‘He just arrived,’ said Greta. ‘He hasn’t been anywhere.’

‘Freaky place. Old Russian mining town—’

‘Soviet,’ Greta corrected.

‘—abandoned in the eighties when Gorby couldn’t afford to keep it open. Spooky as hell. Lenin, Stalin — all the shit that came down with the Wall everyplace else, it’s still there. Commie time capsule.’

‘I’d like to see it,’ I said.

Bill jerked his thumb out the back, where you could just see Hagger’s feet bumping along behind us. ‘What’s the story with him?’

‘He fell down a crevasse,’ I said.

Bill grimaced. He was older than me, probably in his fifties, grey hair and beard, but still wiry, someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. ‘Tough. We lost a guy last year.’

‘How?’

‘Rock fell on his head and knocked him flat. He was frozen solid before we found him. Not so far from here, actually.’

He stared out the window. ‘You look at this place and you think it’s some kind of winter wonderland. But it’s a killer.’

I couldn’t disagree.

The DAR-X camp was a few shacks and cabins sprawled around a huge gantry, on the edge of a bay on the west side of the island. Red lights flashed a warning from the top of the rig. We slept a few hours in the Sno-Cat’s cabin — I could have gone much longer — until a man at the door announced that the helicopter had come.

The Platform was silent and sullen when we got back to Zodiac. I lay down on my bed, but my thoughts wouldn’t let up, so I went to Hagger’s lab. I had a vague idea of packing things up, but the sheer volume of equipment defeated me before I began. Outside, the sun dazzled on the snow; inside, a crippling darkness gripped me. I’ve had it a few times in my life, and this was as bad as any of them. I sat on a stool and stared at the mountains until I had spots in front of my eyes.

Of course I was sad for Hagger. But — I’m ashamed to say — I was also angry, and the more I thought about it, the angrier I got. He’d been my one shot at redemption, after five years as a lab slave, and now he’d ruined it before I’d properly begun, because he couldn’t look where he was going.

Years of injustice seethed out of me: not just what was, but what might have been. The papers I’d have got my name on, the conferences, the seminars. The association with Hagger would have opened so many doors — and maybe one of them would have had a proper academic job behind it. Now I was just the man who’d found the body, a footnote to a piece of academic gossip. I could imagine the conver-sation playing out in the senior common rooms over glasses of sherry.

Hagger fell in a crevasse. One of his old students found him, you know.

Are they sure the student didn’t push him in, ha ha?

Self-pity takes a lot of concentration; I almost didn’t hear the knock. I looked, and saw Dr Kennedy peering round the door.

‘I thought I’d find you here. Quam wants to see you.’

I didn’t move. Kennedy gave me a searching, professional look.

‘Hagger’s death hit you hard, I’m sure. It’s a terrible thing. So … unlikely.’

He advanced into the room. He looked as if he was about to take my arm. I didn’t want to be touched, so I got off my stool and crossed to the door, keeping the lab bench between us.

‘If you need to talk about it …’

‘I’ll be fine.’

I didn’t want sympathy from these people I hardly knew. Luckily, Quam wasn’t the man to give it. He sat behind his computer and his papers, a silver-balled executive toy click-clacking on his desk, and waved me into the chair opposite. The picture of a bureaucrat. He looked cross. Hagger’s death affected us all in different ways: for him, it was a tragedy of paperwork.

‘You’ll have to write it up, of course. Can’t be helped — but keep it brief. There’s nothing anyone could have done. Terrible accident.’

‘And me?’

He looked surprised. ‘The plane’s coming for Hagger tomorrow. You’ll go too.’

‘But what about his research? There must be experiments in progress — I could finish them up. So it doesn’t go to waste.’ It’s what he would have wanted, I almost said. But that would have been too trite.

Quam shook his head. There was a picture on his desk I’d just noticed — two girls, about secondary-school age. No sign of their mother, and no wedding ring on his finger. I guessed long seasons at the poles took their toll on any marriage. Not that I was in a position to judge.

‘I don’t think there’s any profit carrying on his work. My understanding is that he’d run into a bit of a dead end.’ He winced. ‘Unfortunate turn of phrase. But, frankly, it’s probably for the best.’

‘For the best,’ I repeated. ‘Are you saying—’

‘Of course not.’ He rowed back in a hurry. ‘Martin Hagger was a great scientist who made valuable discoveries.’ The words sounded so pre-baked I thought he must be reading them off his computer screen. ‘But he’d had his fifteen minutes of fame. Between you and me, he was a busted flush.’

I didn’t need to hear this. ‘Was there anything else?’

‘That’s it.’ Quam smiled, as if there were no hard feelings. Then remembered something as I reached the door.

‘Don’t forget to return your ECW gear before you go.’

I stepped into the corridor and almost ran straight into Greta. She must have just come in from outside: her face was red, and the frost on her eyelashes had just melted, so it looked like tears. She barged through the door and slammed it behind her.

‘She’s upset,’ said Kennedy, loitering a little further down the hallway. Clearly a psychologist.

‘They’re sending me home,’ I said. I didn’t want to talk to him, and I couldn’t bear to go to my room, so I went back to the lab. Perhaps I’d find something to take with me, some crumb of Hagger’s experiments I could work up into a paper. It was the least he owed me.

Quam’s warning echoed in my mind. He was a busted flush. But that couldn’t be right. Hagger had been on a roll, at the top of his game. The Nature paper on sea-ice evolution had catapulted him to the head of his field. And he’d been working flat out. There had to be something worth publishing.

His notebooks would be the place to start. I looked on the workbench next to the fumes cupboard, where I’d seen them all lined up the day before.

The notebooks had vanished. You could see the place where they’d been — the only clear space in the lab — but the notebooks weren’t there. Instead, just a single Erlenmeyer flask, placed very deliberately, as though the empty space had bothered someone.

Who could have moved the notebooks so quickly?

I turned on Hagger’s computer. Another antique: it took almost a minute for the logon window to appear. The cursor winked at me and waited for a password.

I didn’t know the password. Did anyone?

Frustrated twice over, I turned to the rest of the lab. I rummaged through the drawers and the cabinets. I even looked in the fridge. It was full of water samples in sealed bags, each labelled with codes I didn’t understand. In the freezer compartment, I found a foot-long tube of ice wrapped in a plastic bag with a reference number scrawled on it in black marker.

I supposed the lab would have to be cleared out, ready for the next occupant. At least it was something to do. I found some boxes and started to lay them out on the floor.

‘This is bullshit.’

I jumped; I hadn’t heard her come in. Greta shut the door behind her, though there was hardly room for both of us with the boxes. She looked furious.

‘I thought … if anyone should do it, it should be me,’ I said weakly.

‘Quam wants to cover it up,’ she announced.

‘Cover what up?’

‘Martin’s death.’

I didn’t understand. ‘How could he do that?’

‘Because he’s scared. He’s base commander, it’s his responsibility. Hagger should have had a buddy with him.’

It seemed tough to blame Quam because Annabel and Hagger had broken the rules. ‘Hagger’s an internationally renowned scientist,’ I said. ‘Quam can’t pretend it didn’t happen.’

‘He’ll say it was an accident.’

‘It was an accident.’

Greta gave me one of her impenetrable looks. ‘Now you sound like Quam.’

I sat down on Hagger’s stool. I was still short on sleep; my head hurt. ‘Can you … explain?’

‘Martin didn’t walk into that crevasse by accident. He knew it was there. He’d rigged the ropes.’

‘He could have tripped.’

‘He was lying on his back.’

‘Maybe the ice broke.’

‘And where was his gun?’

I shook my head. ‘I didn’t see it.’

‘At the bottom of the hole. Not slung on his back. He must have been holding it when he fell.’

Suddenly, everything fell into place. ‘A polar bear. That’s why he had the gun out. The bear advanced, Martin stepped back — and fell into the crevasse.’

Greta’s face hardened. ‘That’s Quam’s theory.’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘There was no bear.’

‘How do you know?’

‘No tracks.’

‘Are you sure? They’d be easy to miss.’ I picked up a glass pipette from the counter and turned it over in my fingers. ‘Everything was such a panic.’ Not, I had to admit, that she’d been panicking.

‘The first thing you look for on Utgard is bear tracks. Every time you go out, every time you stop. There were no tracks.’

‘So what do you think happened?’

She looked at me like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

‘Someone pushed him.’