Dark Winter (28 page)

"That's the problem," Calhoun spoke up. As the other station carpenter, he was one of the most familiar with the construction of the station. "This base has no real locks worthy of the name. You can pry apart most of the walls with a can opener. The habitable parts he could break out of, I'll bet. We could bolt and weld some kind of coop, but how to heat it, plumb it, feed him? Jails are complicated."

"How about sticking him out in Bedrock?" suggested Geller. Bedrock Village was the nickname of the station's emergency shelter Quonset huts, called Hypertats. They were a bright blue cluster several hundred yards from the dome with their own generator. "Put him at a distance, like Lewis."

"And how do we keep him out there?" asked Calhoun.

"Guard him."

"How? He's so big you'd need at least two of us, both men, three shifts a day, seven days a week- come on! We can't lock him and we can't guard him and we can't feed him. Unless we want to spend the rest of the winter just doing that."

"The only practical solution is to ship him out of here, Robert." It was Nancy Hodge, and it was odd to hear her call Norse by his formal first name.

For the first time, Norse looked mildly exasperated. "They can't land a plane, it's too cold. Anything below minus fifty-five and the hydraulics freeze up. You know that."

"We know we're facing the worst emergency this base has ever encountered and we need something done before we all go nuts. Doctor."

Norse looked annoyed. He didn't like criticism from another professional. The others shifted uncomfortably.

"There's one other solution, of course," Pulaski said grimly. "We try him, and do to him what he did to Rod Cameron."

"Fuckin' A," Geller said.

"No way!" Linda Brown protested. "Wade"-her tone was scolding- "we're not executioners. We have no legal authority. We have no moral authority."

"We do when our lives are at stake," the cook said quietly. There was no reply. Pulaski looked dangerous, the old soldier. "Sometimes it's you or him. Kill or be killed."

"Whoa. Come on, people." Norse raised his hands again, wearily. "Let's not go off the deep end. Cueball, I understand your feelings but try to keep them in check."

"Just don't go off by yourself," Pulaski told the others with a growl. "Not until we find the bastard."

Norse nodded. "Okay. Good advice. Stay together. Stay alert. But before we go on a manhunt let me talk to NSF. It's off-hours in D.C. now but I'll call when I can. I'll stress the dire nature of our situation again. Maybe they can find a break in the weather to somehow parachute an agent in here."

There was cautious hope.

"Or maybe I can think of something else."

Tyson jerked awake in the dark and sat up, banging his head. He heard the sound of the grate to the cramped utility tunnel being removed and someone dropping down into his burrow. He brought an arm with a knife out of his sleeping bag and extended it toward the entry to his hideaway, his wrist betraying an irritating tremble. If a mob came for him he was going down fighting, but he felt trapped. Hunted. Outnumbered. Doomed. "That you, Bob?"

"It's me."

The answer came as a relief. He'd left a note for Norse when the commotion started. The shrink was the only one he'd been able to talk to in this zoo. The only one he trusted. Then he'd hid here, fearing for his life. The psychologist had whispered through the grate that he would come back after a station meeting. Now it was two A.M., he saw by the illuminated dial of his watch, and Norse had dropped down into the man-sized conduit for wires and pipes that ran from the garage all the way to the fuel arch. Most station personnel didn't know the utility tube existed, and that was buying him time. Tyson was hoping he could camp there until things cooled down.

"What's the verdict, Doc?"

Norse kept his voice low. "It's not looking good."

No, it wouldn't look good, would it? He'd never exactly been Mr. Popularity with the grab bag of nerds and cretins they'd assembled to endure this insanity. Tyson could just imagine what kind of a fair hearing he'd get from them now. He'd told them all what he truly thought, never a great idea, and now it was payback time. One-on-one he could take any of them, but a group would hamstring him like wolves. Jimmy, you are well and truly fucked, he told himself. Should have practiced that shit-eating grin. "It hasn't looked good since I left North Dakota," he said aloud.

Norse actually chuckled for a second. He switched on a small penlight, providing them with a beam of illumination. "And how good could it have looked there?"

"It's better than its reputation. I had room, back home."

The psychologist nodded. "And that's what you need now. Room."

"What are they gonna do to me, Doc?"

"Nothing, if you're not here."

The two were silent for a moment, Norse giving time for this statement to sink in. He was also waiting with his next question. "Did you do it?" the psychologist finally asked point-blank.

"Hell no." That was simple enough.

Norse studied him, probably looking for the twitches and ticks that he'd been told in shrink school would reveal a liar. Well, let him look. As far as Tyson was concerned he was trapped in the looniest of loony bins, and Norse was the asylum's Big Nurse. The psychologist's professional opinion was worth about as much as the cheap tools they gave Tyson that kept snapping in the cold. When he dropped the phony psyche bullshit, however, Norse wasn't a bad guy. He listened. Kept in shape. Looked after himself.

"You're too obvious, aren't you?" Norse finally said. "Too angry, too mouthy. So obvious that I don't know if I believe it. It's the kind of crime that seems blood simple. Too dumb. You're not dumb, are you, Tyson?"

"Dumb enough to come down here."

Norse smiled. "That could be said about all of us."

"What's going to happen to me, Bob?"

"The ideal would be to ship you back. Let people sort this out in the States where emotions are a little less raw. The trouble is, I don't think they're going to get a plane down here. It's cold and it's getting colder. We've got at least six more months of isolation. You want to spend six months in this tunnel?"

"I don't want to spend six months in this whole fucking base. You know that. I've made no secret of it. I just want out."

"You and everyone else about now."

"That's right. And I'm as scared as they are. I didn't kill nobody. I'm being set up, maybe by that fingie Lewis. All the trouble started when he came. The only thing I'm guilty of is saying what I think. They crucify you in this world if you say what you think."

"Amen to that."

"It's like we talked about, Doc. The importance of self-reliance. The fucking duty of self-reliance. Everyone pays lip service to this touchy-feely group shit but that's only because they hope somebody like me will carry their load. Do the shit work. Until you won't do it for them. Then they turn."

Norse betrayed nothing. "My concern is that you get a fair hearing."

"Well, I ain't gonna get it here."

"I know."

"So what the fuck do I do now? They won't listen to me. I can't fight them all. I didn't want their bullshit commune and now I'm the bad guy. It's because I won't play the game. It's like that movie where the island kids go crazy. That 'Lord' thing, what was it?"

"Flies. Lord of the Flies."

"That's what it feels like. Like I'm the only sane one. Is that crazy?"

Norse grimaced. "It may be the only rational reaction to this base. My fear is that humans aren't meant to be in a place like this. So cold. So bleak. It does things to them, physically and mentally. We evolved in Africa, for Christ's sake. Coming here is an act of hubris. Greek hubris. The pride that goes before the fall. So I sympathize with where you're coming from. I admire your insistence on being an individual."

Tyson nodded. "You gotta keep them away from me, Doc."

"I've been thinking about your situation," Norse went on carefully. "We had a meeting and the mood was ugly. I calmed them down for a while but six, seven more months? I don't know. I can't hide you that long. I can't keep the others functioning that long, not with you tucked down here like a troll. A few of them want to try and execute you."

"Jesus H. Christ." The mechanic was quietly frightened. "About your only hope would be another killing while you're locked up, taking suspicion off you, if you're telling the truth and the killer is someone else. Otherwise, it all points to Buck Tyson. The new totem of evil. Unfair, perhaps- I wouldn't be in this hole with you if I thought you truly dangerous- but very human. So I've come to suggest a long-shot chance, one you once suggested to me when we were looking for Mickey."

"What's that?"

"Vostok."

"What?"

"I think you should seek asylum. Go to another base, winter over, and surrender to the American authorities in the spring. By that time the situation may have cleared up a bit, who knows? Otherwise it's a risk that something might trigger a mob mentality and you find yourself in Salem as Witch Number One. You get my meaning?"

"Yeah, but holy shit, trying to get to Vostok…"

"No airplane is going to get in here like a magic carpet. The others are fantasizing that there's a chance but there isn't any, not really. You're going to have to flee overland. The closest refuge is the Russian base. Seven hundred miles but it's fairly flat going across the polar plateau. No crevasses, no mountains. Bad food, good vodka, and better company than you'll find here the rest of the winter. It's a risk to try to reach it but I don't know what else to offer. Obviously, I think the risk is even higher if you stay here."

"I can't fucking believe this."

"My idea is you take a Spryte like you said. If anyone can do it alone, you can. You've trained for survival. You're prepared to tough it out. And we can survive without one of the machines. Pull a sled loaded with fuel and food and take along a GPS to help you navigate. With minimal sleep and decent weather you could reach Vostok in several days. If you have to hunker down for a storm you can take enough along to survive for a few weeks. If the engine doesn't break down, you can make it. And if it does… well, you're our best mechanic, right?"

"Me and Pika."

"Right. So we have Pika to keep things going here, and you keep your Spryte going out there."

Tyson groaned. "But if I completely break down, I'm fucked. A couple hours at a hundred below…"

"And you go to sleep." The meaning was clear. There were worse ways to die.

Tyson took a breath, considering the stark choice. He knew he couldn't stay there. "Will the others let me do it?"

"I haven't told them. I'm not going to ask them. We have to move now. Fait accompli. Their disappointment at losing a Spryte will be more than mitigated by their relief at losing you."

"Thanks."

"I'm giving it to you straight, Buck."

The mechanic nodded glumly. "A mob or the plateau."

"When you don't have any friends, you have to rely on yourself."

They waited, Tyson mulling it over. If he got a hole in the weather it should be possible. He had the skills to earn his way at Vostok…

"Or we can go face the others in the galley now," Norse said.

The mechanic shook his head. Fuck those bastards. "They want it to be me. That's the problem."

"You can rely on them or rely on yourself."

Tyson hesitated, gathering his courage. There was a certain hopelessness in his eyes, a realization of having made an irrevocable wrong turn. Then, fatalistically: "I'm out of here."

"It's for the best, Buck. Best if you leave soon."

"Don't worry about that. If I'm leaving I ain't going to let the screen door hit my butt on the way out." He unzipped his bag, suddenly anxious. "You gonna help?"

"I've taken the liberty of doing that." Norse backed up, removed the grate, and crawled out. The mechanic followed him. They stood in the gloom of the garage, looking at the vehicles. "The Spryte is fueled, the sled loaded, you're ready to go. It's best to be well away before morning, just in case some self-righteous sheriff gets it in his head to chase after you with a snowmobile."

"Agreed." Tyson looked at him curiously. "Why you helping me, Doc?"

"I've found myself thrust into a curious position of responsibility. My profession is people, and I know what they're capable of. You ever hear of the Swordfish?"

Tyson shook his head.

"It's classified, but word gets around in professional circles. Nuke sub on a long, secret mission under the Arctic ice. There was a quarrel, a popular ensign was killed, and there wasn't a chance to surface or return. They were sitting off a Russian base, for Christ's sake. They did a quick court-martial but there was no brig, just like here. You know what they did with the offender?"

"Do I want to know?"

"Loaded him into a torpedo tube and fired him out. He was kicking, screaming, pleading, crying, it didn't matter. He'd made no friends and everyone was around the bend with tension anyway. There was hell to pay when they got back, of course, and a few careers ended. But at the time, ejecting him into the Arctic Ocean seemed the right thing to do. That's what I'm worried about here. The right thing to do."

Tyson nodded dumbly.

"I'm gambling on this one, Buck. Gambling on you. So punch on out of here and hope you make friends with the Russkies. Your boots and parka are in the cab."

Tyson looked at the Spryte, resignedly determined. "I'll make it. What are you going to tell them?"

"That I helped you go. If I get blamed for it, I'll tell them you pulled a knife on me."

"Adding to my reputation."

"Until winter's over and the truth comes out. I have to live here, too."