Dark Winter (13 page)

"Doctor Moss found this meteorite in the ice. Now it's missing."

"So?"

"It's been stolen."

Nancy looked skeptical. "Stolen? Why?"

"It's probably worth some money."

The medic barked a laugh. "Not down here it isn't. Who are you going to hock it to?"

"But later, outside…"

"No, that doesn't make sense." Nancy's mind was quick, everyone admitted that, and she was instantly engaged by this mystery. "I mean, steal it now and sit on it all winter? No, no, no. A prank, maybe. A borrowing. When was it missed?"

"I don't know. Couple days ago. I took a look at it because I'm a geologist and Mickey hid it out in the solar observatory and now it's gone."

"Not that long after the last of the summer crew?"

"Yes."

"Then they took it, don't you think? It's gone. Forget about it."

"No, I saw it after they left."

"Saw it? Or a fake? What if Moss swapped rocks? It's an alibi, see. Send the real rock out, bring in a fake, have the fingie tentatively authenticate the phony, and then get rid of it before he can really tell."

Lewis looked at the doctor in surprise. Hodge seemed to have certainly considered the problem in a very short time. "You've heard about this before."

She smiled, a certain grimness to her grin. "About the rock. Everyone has. If I was in charge, I'd start with you."

"They already did. I was searched last night."

"What'd they find?"

He kept his face straight. "A bag of white powder, a wallet full of prophylactics, and an Aryan Nations membership card."

"Told ya you didn't have it."

"My Hustlers they simply confiscated."

"I would have let you keep them."

"So who does have it? Nancy, I need help here. I come down, take a look at a meteorite as a favor, and it disappears."

"So you're questioning me?"

"I need to know who I should question."

"Maybe no one. Maybe you should tell Mickey to go fuck himself. Snooping around isn't going to make you very popular, you know."

"Moss is the station's eight-hundred-pound gorilla. I can't have him on my case all winter, either."

"True," she conceded. "I feel your pain." She thought a moment. "Well. Any number of people need money. Greed is universal. Cameron has no real career except as polar junkie, Linda Brown has a loser boyfriend back home who might marry her if she came with sufficient dowry, Gabriella Reid would be a gold digger if she could find anyone with any gold…" The medic shrugged. "Take your pick."

"See? You do know things."

"That's stuff everyone knows. I'd swipe it, if I could."

"Do you need money, too?"

"I already told you I was pillaged by the son of a bitch I was married to. The bottom line, however, is it would be stupid as hell to take the meteorite at the start of winter. Why have to hide it for eight months? Hocking something from the Pole wouldn't be all that easy anyway. The whole thing makes no sense. Why not wait and steal it in the spring? Mickey is smart, and old, and cranky, and I think he's somehow messing with all of us. Either that or…"

"Or what?"

"If it's one of us?" She thought some more. "I think it was taken not to sell, but to send a message. Make a point. Zing Mickey Moss. Relieve the tedium. Create a joke. Screw him. Screw you."

"But why?"

She shrugged. "Who knows?" She pointed to the door again. "But I wouldn't look for someone greedy. I'd look for someone pissed."

Lewis stood back under the intersection of archways again, more frustrated than ever. Take your pick. Well, hell. This kind of interrogation was really Rod Cameron's job but the station manager had been all too eager to palm the job off on Lewis. Nor was Cameron about to tell Mickey Moss to bug off. Harrison Adams had told Lewis that Moss had been down too long and was worshiped too much. He pushed everything too far, giving the Pole an importance it had never quite lived up to. It was rash to promise discovery and yet Moss promised incessantly, and bragged on work half done, creating pressures for performance that became obnoxious. "It's true he brings in research money and charms when he wishes," Adams had told him. "I've watched him schmooze a whole planeload of government VIPs who fly down for an hour to get their picture taken at the Pole. But he can also be as vain and vindictive as hell. Rod's afraid of him, and probably you should be, too. NSF can yank the old scientist's chain whenever they want to but they never will: Michael M. Moss is their polar god, the eminent graybeard poster boy. Don't cross him."

Yet someone had. Who had the balls to steal Mickey's rock?

One beneficiary of the mystery was Norse. He was an outsider, too, and the theft was exactly the kind of thing that played with their heads and gave the psychologist more to write about. Except that a stunt like that, the deliberate introduction of an artificial variable, would discredit the reliability of his entire study. Norse had said himself that he couldn't build a rat maze. Besides, the shrink had been surprised at the meteorite's value and was almost as new as Lewis, with no obvious ax to grind against Moss or anyone else.

A beaker, on the other hand, would recognize that any meteorite had value. A beaker might be jealous of Moss. Beakers were insanely competitive, boasting about hours worked, sleep forgone. They could be jealous, even petty.

Yet a scientist risked his career and reputation with any theft, while support personnel risked… what? There was no law or court or jail at the Pole. Theirs was a job, period, and a hard and thankless one at that. Put in a year and get out. There was little the scientists did that the cooks and mechanics and carpenters and safety specialists didn't know about. Some, like Buck Tyson, were openly contemptuous of what amounted to a two-tier system: the intellectuals and the grunts. If you wanted to annoy the eggheads you didn't throw a wrench into the power plant, because that hurt everyone. You… created another kind of turmoil. Like this.

And who was the station sorehead?

Lewis crossed to the archway on the other side and went down its dim half cylinder, the corridor's string of caged lights punctuated by pools of gloom. Pipes and conduit, years past their projected life, extended like rusty ropes on either side, wrapped in fraying, frosted insulation. In two places there were memorial pools of brown frozen water where sewage lines had ruptured before emergency repairs could be made. Sand had been thrown across the puddles until the dirty ice could be chipped out. Someday.

He went through another door to the generator room, more brightly lit and noisy. There were three generators here, one rumbling like an urgent drum, another in emergency readiness, and a third being overhauled. Pika Taylor, the plant manager, was bent over its black interior with ear protectors on, his head down inside his machine like a rabbit entering its burrow. He didn't hear the geologist.

Lewis considered the generator mechanic. Sometimes it was the quiet guys who blew. Look for someone pissed. Pika seemed awfully possessive about his machines. Yet he also seemed as mild as the animal he was named for. What did he have against Mickey Moss? The two were probably unaware of each other's existence. Pika's tuneless whistling hum was the sound of the bubble of preoccupation the man carried with him. He lived in a machine world, largely oblivious to the gossip, intrigues, friendships, lusts, jealousies, and alliances that swirled around him. His myopia was enviable, in a way. Unfortunately, Lewis wasn't allowed to share it.

Without interrupting Pika, he went on.

The gym beyond was the old garage, dark and low, with a frayed net that divided the space in two. It was the site of "volleybag" games, so named because an ordinary ball could be hit too easily up to the arched ceiling. A bundle of rags was used instead. Only a single light was on there, in line with the plea for constant energy conservation. There was no fuel resupply until the end of winter and the resulting twilight was spooky. Empty during the work shifts except… He started when he saw a shadowy woman sitting in the corner.

She ignored him.

"Hey, there," he tried.

No response.

Oh yeah. The woman was a mannequin he'd already been introduced to, the doll dubbed Raggedy Ann that had been brought down to practice CPR on. She was a mascot in the gym the way their slug Hieronymus was in the galley. Now she watched him from the gray twilight, slumped and somehow mocking. Hey yourself.

He turned left through another corridor that led to a second archway that had been added to replace the old garage. Inside was the station's motor pool, such as it was: two aging D-6 bulldozers whose rust had been arrested only by the arid polar air, two tracked exploration vehicles called Sprytes, and four beat-up snowmobiles, including the one he'd tried. It was becoming too cold to use the machines routinely and the main doors had been shut against the growing dimness outside. Blowing snow had made a small drift through the crack where the barn doors joined.

The garage was more brightly lit than the gym but still had a dungeon feel. Chains hung from overhead tracks used to hoist engine blocks, the red paint of their steel hooks flaked and faded into a semblance of dried blood. Metal racks built against the walls of the arch held a shadowy armory of spare and abandoned metal parts, intricate and mysterious. Pegboard above workbenches held racks of tools, heavy and sharp. A steel mesh floor laid across the snow was slick with dripping oil. The air stank of fuel fumes. A blowing heater kept its temperature barely above freezing.

A thousand places to hide a rock.

There was a screeching rasp and shower of sparks behind one of the parked Sprytes and Lewis made his way in that direction. He had no better plan of approach than with Nancy Hodge. Gee, Tyson, you got the meteorite? You being so disliked and all.

"Hey, Buck!"

Tyson glanced up from the spinning grinder with impatient annoyance and reluctantly turned, bracing himself against the likelihood of another work request. As he took his foot off the grinder pedal, its whir died away.

"Yeah?" It was a grunt.

"How's it going?"

Tyson squinted. "It's going."

Lewis looked at what the mechanic had in his hand. Flat metal, shiny and sharp. It was an opening. "I heard you made knives."

Tyson glanced around. "So?"

"As a hobby? You sell them back in North Dakota?"

"So?"

Maybe this was the wrong time to draw him out. The mechanic was on shift, and obviously not working on whatever he was supposed to be working on. He was probably afraid Lewis would tell Cameron. Lewis cast about for a revealing question. "Where do you get the material?"

"What?"

"For the knives? Where do you get the metal?"

The mechanic looked at him as if he were blind. "We've got enough scrap to build a fucking battleship. Every bit of useless junk you can think of except what we really need."

At least he was answering. And he took things. "What do you use for handles?"

Tyson considered his visitor. What was this about? He had no illusions about people who came into his garage. They all wanted something, and screw them. Still, he answered. "Metal. Wood. Bone. Hard rubber. Plastic. Why?"

"I'm thinking of buying one."

The mechanic looked wary.

"For Christmas presents. We'll be home by then."

Tyson waited for more.

"How much?" Lewis asked.

"What?"

"How much for a knife?"

The mechanic considered. "Hundred bucks."

"For a knife!"

"Handmade and engraved at the Pole." He deliberately huffed out a cloud of vapor, a plume like cigarette smoke. "I put up with a lot of shit to make these."

"Would you consider fifty?"

That baleful look again. "No." Then he reconsidered. "Maybe seventy-five."

"I'm on a budget, Buck."

"So am I."

There was a long silence, each watching the other. Tyson didn't act like an imminent millionaire. Another dead end. "When will they be finished?"

"Long before you get home." He grinned at that.

Lewis smiled falsely. "You got some I could look at?"

The persistent interest softened Tyson slightly. He shrugged. "In my locker in my room. Maybe I could show you later."

"My dad might want one, too."

"I don't care who wants them."

"He likes crafted stuff."

"Show me some cash. Then we'll get serious." Tyson turned back to the grinder.

Lewis glanced around again, spotting nothing of interest. The mechanic might be a grouch but there was none of the evasion expected of a thief. Lewis turned to go, thinking he might try Abby next and worrying she'd be more annoyed than helpful.

He was no investigator. This entire fiasco was a waste of time…

"Tyson!"

Rod Cameron was stalking into the garage toward both of them, looking sleepless and angry.

"Jesus fuck…" The mechanic turned, stiffening. The mechanic's grip on the blade tightened and Lewis could see the knuckles whitening. He looked at Lewis accusingly, as if he'd led the station manager here, and Lewis shook his head in denial. What the hell was this about?

Cameron strode up and stopped, rocking slightly on his ankles, his mood stormy. "What the hell are you doing here?" he asked Lewis.

"Talking with Buck while my computer defrags." He raised his eyebrows, trying to prod Cameron's memory. The investigation.

"Oh." He looked at Lewis curiously and Lewis shrugged again. Nothing. "Well, go poke around somewhere else, Lewis. I need to have it out with Tyson." The manager's eyes darted back to the mechanic. He was gathering himself for a fight.

"Sure." Lewis took a step back.

"You don't have to leave, fingie," Tyson said quietly. "No secrets here."