Dark Winter (24 page)

"The guy who doesn't like anybody," Lewis said in exasperation. "Look, I had nothing to do with this! I couldn't even get from Clean Air to the dome! I would have frozen myself if Tyson hadn't found me. You know that. You saw what condition I was in. And I didn't have time to wander clear over here. If anything, the storm proves I'm innocent." He looked expectantly. "Right?"

"It proves you're the one person who knew where the body was."

"I guessed. Why would I go find the body if I killed him?"

"To make sure he's dead?"

That one crossed the line. "Fuck you."

The station manager looked at the new man with frank dislike. "Why are you always in the middle of things?"

"Because everyone else always puts me there!" He pointed to Norse. "Why don't you question Bob? He was out, too! Where the hell was he?"

"I know that," Cameron said quietly. "That's why I asked for both of you to stay here with me, to hash this out." He turned to Norse. "Did you see Harrison?"

"I already told you I did, at astronomy. I left just ahead of the storm. I got back before Lewis did. Adams was going to follow shortly."

"Were the flags intact?"

"They were when I passed them."

"So what do you think happened?"

Norse looked down at the frozen astronomer. "Why not bad luck? A flag blows away, Adams gets lost, finds the shack, the cord somehow fails on its own. It's almost broken through, Adams cranks it too high, the wind catches it…" He considered. "Or not. Look. The only one with any true mobility was Tyson, on the snowmobile."

"Do you think he…"

"I did see them arguing in the weight room," Lewis said, and then instantly regretted having said it. He was doing to Tyson what Cameron was trying to do to him. "But not anything that would lead to this."

"Well, I damn well want to know what would lead to this!" the station manager suddenly shouted in frustration. "I want to know who's ruining my winter! This isn't fair, dammit! I'm sick of you, and I'm sick of Buck, and I'm sick of this damn job!"

"Rod!" Norse snapped crisply. "Rod, Rod. Cool it." His voice was admonitory. "Talk like that and you'll throw everyone in a panic. This is a time for leadership, not accusations. Rationality, not wild suspicion. Maybe it is all accidental. Certainly it's all circumstantial. We've got a small group and a lot of concern right now, even fear, consternation, sorrow, you name it. People will be feeding off each other. We've got to get them to the point of feeding strength, not weakness."

Cameron looked utterly depressed. "How do we do that?"

"First of all, you are the man. The man. Man of the hour. Everyone's looking to you for cues on how to respond. You've got to seem confident, unafraid, in charge. Get it together." Norse looked concerned.

The station manager took a deep breath. "I know. But to lose two of our top scientists, and then this bonehead here"-he nodded to Lewis- "wandering off in the storm… it's just hard, Doc. It's like being in the Navy and grounding a ship. They don't want to hear excuses. You just don't run aground."

"And when you do, you don't surrender. Listen, this is what the station is about. This is what our winter is about. Leadership! The ability of the individual to define the group! You're the keystone. The pivot. The rock."

Cameron closed his eyes. "Some rock." He thought a minute, his chest rising and falling, and then opened his eyes. "I know I've got to get my shit together," he said tiredly. "It's just a little much to take."

"It's a little much for everyone to take. That's why we need you."

He grimaced at his own explosion. "It's lonely at the top," he recited wryly.

"Everyone's alone. That's life."

"Okay." He took a breath. "Okay, okay. Listen. I'm going to ask NSF to send an investigator down here. They sent the FBI to McMurdo once. Maybe they can send somebody here."

Norse was surprised. "A cop?"

"I thought planes couldn't get in here," Lewis said. "If they can, I'm ready to go home."

"There's an outside chance for at least an airdrop," Cameron said. "They've done them in winter before. We've definitely got an emergency here. Maybe they can parachute somebody in. Somebody with a weapon and authority. Someone who knows what to do."

"That might be overreacting, Rod," Norse said.

"Overreacting? With two dead bodies?"

"Two accidents, until we learn otherwise. You put a cop in here and it becomes two victims. You define the problem in the worst possible light. You put your own stewardship in the worst possible light. And nobody will get any work done."

"Bullshit." He pointed at Norse. "Maybe they'll begin by investigating you."

The psychologist sighed. "I'd recommend it, actually, if you don't want to spook everyone else and screw up the whole winter. Concentrate on me."

"Is that a confession?" He was sour.

"Think about it. Suppose you get your G-man. He parachutes in and interrogates me. Or Lewis. Or Tyson. People are freaked out. A small group like this can turn on a person and make his life miserable. I've read about it. I've seen it. And then you've got somebody under a cloud, preoccupying everyone, until spring. What are you going to do with them for the rest of the winter? How does anyone get any work done? I think we need to calm things down, not hype them up. And NSF is going to go ballistic if you turn an accident into a murder investigation. If you really need a fall guy, make it me. I'm not doing physical science. I'm not worried about what they might ask."

"I'm not looking for a fall guy! I'm looking to keep things under some kind of control! What do you suggest, Doctor Freud?"

"Just that we all cool off for a day or two. That we don't panic the bureaucrats in D.C. for a day or two. If one of us is a murderer… well, we're not going anywhere. We chill, and separate, and wait."

"What does that mean?" Lewis asked.

"Quarantine, Jed. There's going to be a lot of gossip and speculation about this, it's inevitable. Especially with you finding the body, after the e-mail to Mickey. I think you should stay out in Clean Air for a while longer, this time with a sleeping bag. We'll bring you your meals. You can collect your data for Sparco and be… safe."

"Under house arrest," Lewis clarified. "So everyone else feels safe."

"Temporarily. It's for your own good."

"Doc, there's not even a john out there."

"We'll bring you a bucket. Just for a few days, until we sort things out."

"I can't believe this! Is Tyson going to be quarantined?"

"Buck quarantines himself. Everyone's avoiding him like the plague anyway."

"Are you going to be quarantined?"

"Oh no!" He smiled. "Because this is what I came down for."

"To watch us," Cameron said bitterly. "Watch us go nuts."

"To watch the variable in the experiment once Jed is out of the way." Norse smiled thinly. "Who had mobility? Who had motive? I'm going to watch the habits and patterns and movements of Buck Tyson. And save your career by letting you solve this one yourself."

I Make My Decision When the shit hits the fan there's no time to be polite to the weaklings. Fleming and Kressler had just killed themselves with their own reckless idiocy, Fat Boy had doomed himself by waddling off the rope against all orders, and the rest of the kids were sniffing and sniveling like a pack of whipped dogs. Somehow I had to find some spine in them if we were going to get out of this mess. I mostly felt contempt that they'd allowed themselves to be herded onto this ledge. That I'd allowed myself to be herded. And outrage that my life was at risk because of the incompetence and bad judgment of others.

I didn't deserve to die.

Still, I bit back most of what I wanted to say. I needed two of them, the two best, to ascend the cliff with me so we could belay the rest of the sheep back off the dead-end ledge my colleagues had led them to. I needed the remainder to break out of their freeze-up panic. The wind was rising, the snow getting thicker, but if we moved quickly, moved NOW, we still might get up to the saddle and descend the glacier on the other side before we became totally lost in a whiteout.

"They're dead but you're not!" I snapped at them about Fleming and Kressler. "Don't think about them, think about yourself! If you're going to survive this it's going to have to come from inside YOU! I need fire in your bellies or you're all going to DIE!"

More weeping and moaning. Jesus H. Christ. They were falling apart. Some of the kids were starting to shiver, a first warning of hypothermia, and we'd all lock up if we didn't get moving. So I had to be realistic. When the shit hits the fan, it's no time to tell fairy tales. It's triage time. Some were going to make it and some probably weren't. Fat Boy was dead meat, as far as I was concerned. He'd blundered, and was about to pay for it big time. The strongest of the rest of us had a chance. Maybe.

Women and children first is lunacy at a time like that, a sure invitation to disaster. I like girls as well as any man, but not at the end of a rope that's holding me to a crumbling rock wall. So the first decision I made was that the females stayed behind. They were supposed to be better in cold anyway, right? Epidermal layer and all that. If they huddled maybe they'd last through the storm if I could get back with help. If, if. The storm was building and help was a long time off. Nobody was helicoptering in, nobody was climbing back up, not until this little snow spat was over. Bad luck, but there it was. So the ladies would have to wait and hope for the best. I was taking the strongest boys. If the bucks remembered what they'd learned, maybe a few of us could make it.

Couldn't tell them the grim facts, of course. Sometimes when you're honest with yourself you still have to lie to the others. Especially if they might survive and tell stories about you afterward. So I told them I was leading the strongest of us to the top of the cliff and that we'd try to belay anyone else who wanted to come up if we could, and if we couldn't do that we were going to get help and they should all sit tight until we got back. Trust me! Hold on to each other and pray! We're all going to get through this!

Bullshit.

I took the two I thought just might make it. I truly did. Chisel Chin was a big-balled sonofabitch wise guy who had the endurance of any two of his classmates and was eyeing routes even as I tried to settle the rest of the herd. Carrot Top was jumpier and not as strong, but he was big and reasonably competent and hadn't spaced out like Ponytail Boy, the third candidate I had in mind. That one had developed a thousand-yard stare like he'd already seen the angelic choir, so I didn't think I could rely on his presence of mind. Maybe if we could really rig a rope to help the others, Ponytail could be the first to try to follow. I shook him, telling him that. Meanwhile, however, I'd have to rely on the other two.

We roped up, slipped on our packs, and readied ourselves to go back up the way we'd come down. What a moronic mess. Somebody asked about Fat Boy and I admit I was a little curt at that point, saying Fat Boy was just going to have to look after himself for a while and if he gave them any grief, they could just roll lard ass over the edge. They stared wide-eyed at my moment of honesty and actually shut up for half a minute. Gee, did I let a fart? What did they think was going to happen to Fat Boy? I loathed their innocence. I truly did.

So. I'd start the first pitch, hammer in a piton, fix a rope, and let Chisel Chin come up to me. Then I'd go on, my partner braced so that if I fell, the piton and Chisel Chin combined just might hold me in space. I might drop thirty feet before the rope brought me up taut, but that's a hell of a lot better than three thousand. Then another piton, another point, Carrot Top coming on, too, and we'd work our way up the cliff. Bing, bang, boom. Fleming and Kressler had taken too much rope, so we had to take all the remaining line from the others if we hoped to fashion a line all the way back up to the top. If we made it, great. If we didn't, the others weren't getting off that ledge anyway.

Just before we started I faced away from the weeping group, looked out to the gray eternity swirling all around us, and fumbled under my coat. I was mindful of what had happened to Kressler and Fleming and was determined that it wasn't going to happen to me. It wasn't prophetic. I was counting on those two kids, sure. But if you're going to survive in this jungle of ours you prepare for every contingency. You have to think ahead. Every time I've won in life it's because I've thought two or three moves down the road. A step ahead: That's the secret.

So I took out a silver commando knife, slipped it out of its sheath, and tucked it into a strap near my neck where I could snatch it out easily. Just in case. Then I turned to the others and actually managed a reassuring grin.

What a hero I was.

We started back up.

Flat gray clouds spoiled the final exit of the sun. There was a week of overcast, as dark and featureless as a pot lid, and when it blew away, the lingering orb was finally gone and the long polar night had begun. The sky was still dusk blue. A couple of stars popped out, tiny and cold, the first outriders of the glory to come. Instead of seeming foreboding, the approaching dark heralded a kind of peace to Lewis. The sun's scheduled disappearance meant it would reappear on schedule, too, and when that happened he would be near release from the Pole. Meanwhile, the ground had lost shadow and definition and the boundary between snow and sky became even more indistinct.

At first he didn't mind his isolation in the Clean Air quadrant. It spared him the necessity of trying to prove his own innocence. He didn't have to act some kind of normal relationship with a group of people half suspicious that he might be a murderer at worst and a bad-luck enzyme at best. Solitary, he called it, except that each day he had four hours in which orbiting satellites lifted high enough above the polar horizon to allow access to the Internet. Lewis monitored world news that seemed increasingly remote, shopped for products he had no use for and couldn't get delivered, and kept his mentor Sparco updated on his weather measurements. He found himself surprisingly intrigued by the accumulating data points of temperature, wind, snow, carbon dioxide, and ozone. Graphing the readings was like painstakingly sculpting a work of art. When winds were calm he watched from the windows as Gerald Follett launched his atmospheric balloons, observing the quiet routine of inflation, rigging, and recording. The man had declined Lewis's help, looking nervous when Lewis even offered, but the regularity of the task was somehow reassuring. Life went on. There was a purity to the science, and a purity to the dry cold that Lewis found bracing. Meteorology itself was a constant dance of interwoven factors, like the twisted glass of a kaleidoscope suggesting different global futures.