Dark Winter (17 page)

"Enough, enough," Cameron said. The station manager was trying to look stern but was fighting the start of a smile at this needling Tyson was getting. The mechanic looked uncomfortable and scowled, avoiding anyone's gaze. It wasn't easy being toast.

"Is this going to work?" Alexi Molotov interjected. "You would have to be stupid to steal a meteorite and hide it in your room, no?"

"Who said people were smart?" Norse replied.

"You would be even more stupid to find the meteorite and not keep it for yourself," said Hiro. "Perhaps we should check the pockets of our two doctors at the end." The others laughed nervously. "Perhaps they hunt for themselves."

"You agree to a strip search, Doc?" Pulaski asked lightly.

"Only if you can hide a meteorite in there," Norse replied. Laughter again, the tension breaking slightly. "Look, everyone can come along but the idea is not to embarrass anyone. Nancy and I are used to handling things in confidence. We're trying to eliminate suspicion, not create it. Trust us, this once, so you can trust each other."

With glances, the group polled itself in uneasy silence. Tyson looked angry but said nothing. Lewis had no sympathy for anybody. I've already been probed, he thought. Now it's your turn.

Adams spoke up. "I agree to this search," the astronomer said. "I have nothing to hide. But I think we also need to start using our heads as well as our feet. Maybe Mickey left other clues. Electronic ones. If I could get his passwords I could examine his hard drive."

Carl Mendoza wryly smiled, as if there were something more behind this idea than Adams was admitting. Geller smirked. Cameron looked questioningly at Abby, their computer technician.

"I have them," she said in a quiet voice. "It's privacy, again."

"I guess I'd draw the line at our hard drives," Norse said uneasily. "That's like reading our thoughts. We do need some privacy."

"I'm not talking about our files, I'm talking about Mickey's," Adams said. "I worked with the guy. Maybe he left a note. This is an emergency, dammit."

"It's for his own good," Mendoza added guilelessly.

Geller rolled his eyes.

"If Mickey's dead, so is his issue of privacy," Adams went on.

The psychologist opened his mouth to disagree again and then closed it, considering all the ramifications. "It's a group decision."

Cameron looked at the group. "Well?"

No one objected.

"Let's do it, then," the station manager said quietly.

Norse and Nancy Hodge left the galley to go through the berthing areas. Abby and Adams departed to open up Moss's hard drive. The mood of the remainder was somber. Cameron tried to lead a desultory discussion about outdoor safety but no one responded. Nobody wanted to talk about rules. The clock seemed to have stopped.

"What if we never even find Mickey?" Dana abruptly wondered aloud.

"We'll find him," Pulaski said. "Ten to one he had a stroke over this meteorite and got covered up by snow. Another good wind and his parka will pop back out."

"I'm not even willing to say he's dead yet," Cameron said. "But if he is, it's a lesson to us all. Sign out, take a radio."

"That's the third time you've said that," Geller groaned. "We learned that stuff way back in Denver and Mickey knew it, too. Look, can we continue this discussion upstairs? I need to clear my sinuses." Upstairs was the bar.

"Yeah," Steve Calhoun, the station carpenter, chimed in. "There are times when life needs to be dealt with through an alcoholic stupor."

"Getting drunk isn't very professional at a time like this," the station manager objected. He was worried how this would all look in the reports. Look back home.

"But it's damned rational," Dana rejoined.

"NSF wants us to keep our wits about us."

"Your Yank bureaucrats are ten bloody thousand miles away! For God's sake, Rod, we're going to bloody choke each other if we can't lighten up!"

The station manager looked at them gloomily. Tyson had already put everyone on edge, and now this. He was clearly outnumbered. "One drink each, then. That's all."

"Right, Dad." They pushed past Cameron and surged upstairs, crowding the small room like frat boys in a phone booth. All but Tyson, who remained downstairs, determinedly alone. Cameron hesitated, not wanting to wait in the same room with the mechanic. "I'm going to check on Harrison!" he called.

"We won't miss you!" Dana sang back.

Music came on. A few of the winter-overs began tapping to its beat, relieving some of the tension. It was creepy being searched. Creepy having their station manager be so morose. Creepy having Moss disappear.

Lewis got a beer. The elbow-to-elbow jostling made him feel less isolated and he began to cheer up a little. The music was cranked higher. He wished he could talk to Abby but she was off with Adams. He was curious about her now. There was something she wasn't telling.

Molotov came over instead, his water glass half full of vodka. "Now, Lewis," he said, clasping the American on the shoulder. "From you I need to know how to sell this rock. In America, where all the money is. Just in case I ever find it. Yes?"

"Too late, buddy. Secret's out. If we ever find it I'm afraid it's going to stay with Uncle Sam."

"Well then, let's spend the winter looking for another one!" The Russian grinned, showing a steel flash of old Soviet dentistry. "The jewel of Mars, no?"

Everyone was joking about what Norse and Nancy would find in their rooms. Lingerie. Sex toys. Marijuana grow lights. Offshore bank accounts. Jimmy Hoffa.

"It's like going nekkid," said Calhoun.

"Except the docs are the only ones to see us in our birthday suits," his companion woodworker, Hank Anderson, said. "And praise God for that. I see the crack of your ass too much already, every time you bend over to drive a nail."

"Didn't know you were lookin', Henry."

With nothing else to do while they waited, some people began dancing, awkward in the press of bodies. Lewis, still feeling isolated by his own clumsy investigation, maneuvered himself against a wall. He thought the bar was a good idea to break the tension but he wasn't really in a mood to talk. He felt like bad luck himself.

He watched Gabriella Reid slither through the press of people, teasing, taunting, a serial flirt, inviting attention. Eventually she came up to him, grinning at his wallflower stance, a beer in one of her hands. "You're all alone."

"People are learning to avoid me."

"It's unfair that people blame you."

"I guess it's because I'm new."

"I like new people." She rolled a long-neck on her lips, eyes dancing. "Antarctic Ten, I judge."

"I've heard what that is." He was wary.

She smiled mischievously behind the bottle. "Okay. Eleven, maybe. How about me?"

He smiled distractedly, glancing beyond her. Abby still hadn't come back.

"Don't bother with Ice Cream. She's frigid."

Lewis focused on the woman in front of him. "Frigid? Or careful?"

"She holds things in. Not me." Gabriella swayed in time to the music and handed him her beer. Turning a circle, she pulled her waffle-weave long-underwear top over her head. A silk undershirt beneath showed the line of a low bra and the bump of nipples. "Getting hot in here. Hot enough for the Three Hundred Degree Club."

"What is that, anyway?"

She smiled mysteriously. "The place where you learn where you really are."

The music cranked still higher and it became difficult to hear, the beat pounding against the walls. No one was obeying Cameron's admonition of one drink. The winter-overs were sweating. The air was rich and dark and heavy. The mood was tribal. Lewis allowed himself to dance once with Gabriella and then, when Abby didn't return, did it again.

She smiled at him. The invitation was obvious.

"What are you doing down here?" he stalled, raising his voice above the music.

"I like to be at the center of things."

"The Pole?"

"Everything comes together here. All the lines, all the numbers. It's a place of power. I worship natural powers, you know. Nature. Instinct. Emotion."

"What about science?"

"That's for beakers. What about feelings?"

"Beakers have them."

"No, they don't. They have to be drawn out."

She made him nervous. "I'll bet you're good at that."

"I can show you the way."

Christ. It was tempting. "Excuse me. I've got to check on something."

"Don't check too long."

He moved away, maneuvering toward the bar. He ducked behind as if looking for something and Geller sidled over. "Looks like you still have a friend."

"She makes me nervous."

"She'll make more than that, buddy. Until you lay off the meteorite and we figure out what's up with Mickey, she might be about the only friend you have."

Lewis looked at the maintenance man sourly. This place was too damn small. "Why does everyone assume I'm to blame?"

"I don't." Geller sipped a scotch. "There's so many people sick of Moss that I won't be surprised if we never find him. Who wants to?"

"I don't believe that."

"You can bet Adams is going to use those passwords later to snare some of Mickey's data. Clues my ass. He's robbing the dead. And you noticed Carl Mendoza? He looks like he won the lottery. With Moss not undercutting him he might actually keep his grants."

"That's cynical."

"You lose money to the wrong people and you get cynical."

"Moss said he made everyone else's research possible."

"As long as they sucked up. Moss was also a Class-A prick."

"What do you think happened to him?"

"That he saved his reputation by dying."

It was after midnight. Then one, two o'clock. Everyone danced with everyone. Stocky Dana Andrews shook like a Maori, and Lena Jindrova turned an erect circle with a drink perched bizarrely on her head. Gabriella moved sinuously among the other men, her body a kind of social lubricant, erasing inhibition. Even Linda Brown, Pulaski's plain and overweight assistant in the kitchen, lost her stiffness and began to gyrate. The steaminess brought a kind of communion that relieved the anxiety over Mickey. For a blessed respite, the chill disappeared.

By the time Norse's head appeared at the foot of the stairs, then, they were drunk. He bounded upward and Nancy was right behind him, her eyes wide and dark, following with a hand on his belt. A ragged chorus of hoots and Bronx cheers erupted at their reappearance. "The underpants police!"

The crowd parted slightly to embrace them and pull them in, like an amoeba swallowing prey. "Who is it?" a drunken Pulaski shouted. "Which of us is the thief?"

Norse grinned reassuringly. "We found not a hint of scandal. You're all the most boring people in the world."

Now the crowd booed, clamoring for salacious detail. Who had the most secrets to hide?

"Our lips are sealed," Nancy said.

"Ply them with alcohol!" Pulaski cried.

A bottle of champagne erupted, fountaining over the two newcomers. Norse and Nancy ducked, but not quickly enough. White foam spewed over them, adding to the heady salt and sweetness of the room's cloying air. It ran down their clothes, making them sticky.

Norse staggered in the press of bodies and gasped, suddenly grabbing the neck of a bottle and taking a swig. He passed it to Nancy and grinned with relief at this enclosure by the crowd. His eyes swept them triumphantly and for just a moment Lewis thought he saw a wistful shadow in the psychologist's survey of the others, the same longing to belong that Lewis himself felt. Then commanding self-assurance replaced it, like a mask. Norse was the king of self-control.

Lewis could learn from him.

"What now?" Geller shouted.

"We've still got a mystery," Norse said, handing back a few keys they had been lent for personal lockers. He drank again. "We tried to put things back, but Carl, I accidentally broke one of your candles. Just clumsiness. I apologize."

"You didn't puncture my sex doll, I hope."

"No, but I had to inflate her to make sure she worked."

"Do we trust?" Dana asked.

Norse grinned. "Personal choice."

"Does that mean we're innocent?"

"It means you can choose to believe in each other."

"And how long do we keep partying, Doc?" Geller asked.

"Until I've drunk enough myself. Or until Harrison- "

As if on cue, though, the music abruptly cut. Everyone groaned. The lights came up and they were blinking, the communal mood shattered. It was Cameron, who'd come up quietly and slipped behind the bar. "Time to pack it in," the station manager said gruffly.

The group protested. "Rod- "

"Shut up. We've got something."

That silenced them. More footsteps, and Abby and Harrison Adams trooped up the stairs. They looked graver than Norse and Nancy and as they pushed into the hot room the crowd split apart from them, squeezing against the walls, as if this news threatened to be unwelcome. Everyone was suddenly uneasy again. It was deathly quiet.

"Did you find anything in the rooms?" Cameron asked Norse and Nancy from the bar.

"Nothing," Norse replied.

"Well, Harrison found something," the station manager said grimly. "Doctor Adams?"

"There's an e-mail on Mickey's drive," the astronomer said. "We're going to trace it if we can. Meanwhile, it points to a place we haven't looked."

"Which means I need a few men to volunteer now, pronto, and the rest of you in bed so I can have you tomorrow, half awake and not too hungover," Cameron said.

"What's going on?" Mendoza asked.

"It's a place I hadn't thought to look, frankly. We're going to go there now."