Dark Winter (3 page)

"Buck, we're on a team," Cameron said after him. "Lewis here is part of the team."

The bear turned. "It ain't a team, it's a caste, and it's beaker glory on G.A. frostbite. If I could have waved goodbye to this zoo I would've been on time for that." He sized up the newcomer, who was wondering what G.A. meant, and pointed a stubby finger. "You watch your ass around here, Lewis, because it's cutthroat island among the beakers whenever someone throws grant crumbs our way. You got any sense, you'll look out for Number One. And don't pay any attention to all the brown-nosing, middle-management, ass-kissing bullshit, either." His finger swung to Cameron. "I'll take a fucking shower when I fucking want to." He went in one of the rooms and the door slammed.

The station manager was looking after the man unhappily, his mouth working as if he were still deciding what to say.

"Who the hell was that?"

"That was Tyson. Our mechanic." It was a mutter.

"The guy they said was sulking?"

"Don't pay any attention to him." Cameron shook his head unhappily. "He fought to get hired down here and has bitched about it ever since. He's a malcontent and a loser." The station manager frowned at his own candor. "He'll come around." Cameron glanced at his watch, suddenly losing interest in the tour. "Listen, I'll finish showing you around tomorrow, including where you work. You'll be up for it then. For now, just take it easy, try to get used to the altitude, get over the jet lag, and unpack. Okay?"

"Is that guy having a bad day, or what?"

"Every day's a bad day for him."

Lewis went back to his room, sat on his bunk, and scratched the frost, watching a strip peel off under his fingernail. Pulled into the path of heat, the crystals began to melt. Welcome, fingie.

He decided to remain philosophical. First of all, he'd volunteered for this. Walked out of his oil patch job and straight into unemployment in a fit of righteous environmentalism and self-doubt. It was a miracle he'd met Jim Sparco and fit his emergency need for a polar research assistant. A miracle he'd been given a purpose again. There was no question he was meant to be here. Expertise, desire, and opportunity had all neatly fit.

And second, he knew, sailors, inmates, and astronauts had certainly endured worse. Despite the spongy outer wall, his room was toasty enough- except that he couldn't use the word toast. That was Antarctic slang for burn-out, that late-season time when the monotonous lack of color and smell and sound and variety left a winter-over with an Antarctic stare, the mood of the condemned, and the social skills of roadkill. They'd warned him about it at the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, the agency that employed him. Toast, toasty, toasted, crouton. Not a nice thing to be. So let's just say warm. Cheery. Anticipatory. Nervous. And someday, even if not toast, perhaps depressed, bored, loopy, horny, hungry, sleepy, and dopey. They'd warned him of all those things, the list sounding like a casting call for Snow White.

At least he had his own room, a polar luxury. The winter-overs had cheered and whooped when that last LC-130 roared away, its engines burning so rich in the cold that they left four black streaks of soot on the snow. The departure meant independence, room, a tiny cell of privacy. Lewis understood the reaction. They were beginning! The plane lifting off left him feeling both trapped and satisfied, newly secure. He'd made it! All the way to the South Pole! Every problem he'd ever had was temporarily gone, lost across a no-man's-land of ice. Every relationship was a fresh start. With just twenty-six souls, every person was important. Vital. Even that grump Tyson. Lewis had an important job with clear parameters, unique opportunity, and no everyday hassles for the next eight months.

No escape, either. No backing out.

He liked the finality of it.

"My fellow fingie!"

Someone new filled the door of his room, smiling. Clean-shaven, but a skull as distinctive as the cook's: close-cropped stubble except for a darker Mohawk streak on top. Despite this bizarre choice he was a handsome man a decade older, Lewis judged, late thirties, with bright blue eyes that flicked curiously around the barren chamber like a detective's. Nothing much to see yet, of course, so they came to rest on Lewis. "Robert Norse." He put out a hand. "Recent arrival and resident shrink."

The two men had to stand at the foot of the bed in the cramped quarters, squeezed too close. "Jed Lewis." He took the offered hand, hard and dry.

Norse pumped vigorously. He looked fit, muscular, his frame erect with an almost military tautness. There was an intense energy to his friendliness. His teeth were perfect, his eyes assessing, his smell of aftershave. The scent made Lewis realize how little there was to smell at the Pole besides what people brought with them. By the end of the winter he'd know everyone's smell, he supposed. Their voice, ticks, expressions, inflections, and flaws. Their past and intended future. It had to be a psychologist's paradise.

"Except everyone calls me Doctor Bob. Nicknames are endemic here, and you'll get one, too. I only arrived a week before you."

Lewis looked pointedly above Norse's brow. "A psychologist? So explain the haircut, Doc."

Norse smiled, running a hand along the crown of his head. "I got this at McMurdo on a dare. Polar plunge sort of thing. Supposed to add to solidarity. I'm hoping it helps me fit in. Be one of the gang."

"Isn't that the kind of thing you do in junior high?"

"People try to fit in from preschool to the mortuary, without exception, instinctually. Basic monkey behavior. Everyone wants to belong without ever asking why. You do want to belong, don't you?"

"I guess." Lewis thought about his answer. "I want my life to stand for something. I'm willing to join a team to do that."

"An idealist!" Norse grinned. "And you think before you talk! A self-examined man!" He nodded. "I'm impressed. Maybe." He pretended to consider the issue. "Or are you simply a joiner? A conformist? A follower? Is the way to self-realization through society? Or inside yourself?"

"I've got a feeling you've got the answer."

"I came down here to get the answer. And being a shrink is like being a cop or a priest or a journalist. Everyone tenses up. So I have to adopt camouflage." He knocked the top of his skull. "A haircut. And, unlike tattoos, this goes away."

"We'll probably tattoo each other, too. The cook said we've volunteered for prison."

Norse nodded. " 'Then the Philistines seized him,' " he suddenly recited, " 'gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding in the prison. But the hair on his head began to grow again…' "

"Say what?" Norse was quite the gabber.

"Story of Samson. Ever read it?"

"I think I caught the movie."

"Instructive story. Watch out for Delilah." He winked.

"Is there something religious about this place? The cook asked about my name."

"Oh no. Just literate."

Lewis sat on his bunk to get some space. The guy seemed friendly enough, but he didn't know what to make of a psychologist. Especially one who so blandly gave himself away. "I heard about you. I was told you'd want to analyze me."

Norse took half a step back, as if exposed. "Really? Analyze what?"

"That I'm a geologist in a place with no rocks."

"A geologist? On an ice cap?" Norse nodded sagely, considering, and then leaned forward like a mock confidant. "I'm sure the Freudians would have something to say about that. So. Why are you in a place with no rocks?"

"Because it has no rocks." Except it did, of course, but Norse didn't need to know that.

"I see." Norse mulled this over. "Makes perfect sense. Like a shrink in a place with no complications. You're quite sane, aren't you?"

"I'd appreciate a professional opinion."

"Ah. That will cost you. And I didn't bring a couch. So…" He thought. "Do you have a piece of paper?"

Lewis looked around.

"Wait, I think I've got one." Norse pulled out a sheet of folded paper from a pocket inside his sweater. It was blank. "I carry this around to make notes. Dumb idea, because it scares the hell out of people when you do. Anyway, sign your name. Instant handwriting analysis."

Lewis was curious and did so, handing the paper to Norse. The psychologist studied it. "Oh dear. My quick and dirty judgment is that you'll fit in with our group quite well."

Lewis smiled. "So what are you doing here, Doc?"

"Me? I'm using us all as guinea pigs for a future trip to Mars. The Pole is like a spaceship, NASA hopes. Communal. Also confined, hostile, and dark. Months of isolation. How does that make us feel?"

"I feel nauseated."

"That's the altitude. Took me three days to adjust. Some never do- I think it was your predecessor who rotated out a few weeks back. And mentally? I'm still adjusting. Will be for eight months, I suppose. That's why I dropped by. Antarctic veterans have one perspective, newcomers another. I'm hoping you'll share your observations as the winter goes on."

"Observations of what?"

"Whatever goes on."

Lewis shook his head, bemused. "I heard the power went out."

"Somebody goofed, which was great for me because it injected a variable." Norse smiled. "It's like having a lab where I didn't have to build the rat maze. I was planning a briefer visit but I got delayed in New Zealand and then the medic, Nurse Nancy, said she could use some help over the winter. I had a sabbatical leave, an opportunity to observe… The fates conspire, no?"

"So that's what's to blame."

"Yes, destiny." Norse said what Lewis had just thought. "Destiny and free will. A little of both, I think. And we're the two newcomers here, you and me. Right?"

"I guess so."

Norse nodded. "So, Jed. I want to be your first friend."

Lewis met most of the others at dinner, a confusing blur of fresh faces. Twelve scientists and technicians and fourteen support workers to keep them alive. Lena Jindrova, their greenhouse grad student, was the youngest, at twenty-three. The oldest was the man Lewis had been quietly sent by Sparco to meet, sixty-four-year-old Michael Mortimer Moss. The astrophysicist wasn't in the galley and no one seemed surprised.

"Mickey Mouse is determining the fate of the universe," an astronomer named Harrison Adams told Lewis when he asked. "Far too important to eat with we mortals. So he takes Twinkie-type crap out to the Dark Side and broods, the god on Olympus. It will all sound ennobling in his autobiography."

"Mickey Mouse?"

"Nickname." Adams chewed. "We call him that behind his back because he's pretentious. Not a bad guy, really, but the Saint Michael stuff gets a little old when you have to work with him. Although I will concede, he's the quintessential OAE."

"Old Antarctic Explorer. Decades of Ice Time."

"Jim Sparco knows him," Lewis said. "Seems to admire him. Told me I should meet him."

"Yes, you should. Mickey Moss built this base. He made it all possible, as he'll remind you at every opportunity. But Jim Sparco doesn't have to hear those tiresome reminders, like I do. Or compete with him for grant money, like Carl Mendoza does. Or put up with his bullying, like our dear ineffectual station manager Rod Cameron does. Or jump to his orders, like our G.A.s do."

"Someone else used that. G.A., I mean."

"General Assignment. Assistant. Grunt. Serf. Supporter. Except you never find one when you need one. They're the people who really run this place. It's like officers and noncoms. We outrank them in everything except what really counts."

"I detect some worldly cynicism."

"You detect polar realism. You've joined a family, Jed, and like all families ours has some history."

"Am I going to regret it?"

"Not if you fit in."

Lewis got some food, taking a tray and nodding at the cook. Pulaski was being helped by a plain but friendly woman named Linda Brown. She looked at the tiny helpings on his plate and laughed. "First-night fast." She patted her ample hips. "Even I remember. Dimly."

He took his meager meal and sat down. If Adams seemed a bit sour, the rest seemed to be laughing and joking. Everyone was exclaiming about the shipment of fresh food. Lettuce! Tangerines! There was a vigor to the group, a buzz of energy and camaraderie that Lewis found appealing. They were excited at the departure of the last plane, which marked the true start of winter. Yet there was also a social sorting as they ate, he noticed: four of the women together in apparent defense against male attention, other females mixed casually with the men; scientists tended to congregate at one table, maintenance personnel at another. Those at Lewis's table made jokes about his pallor. They remembered what arrival was like.

"When do I stop being the fingie?" he asked, knowing full well that no one newer was coming until October.

"When you're so cold that your face is beginning to frostbite, your balls have shriveled to peas, and your hands feel like shovels," Carl Mendoza, an astronomer, told him.

"I think I've got an inside job."

"I know what you do. Wait until you commute to work."

"But you get acclimated, right?"

"You get frozen so many times you're incapable of thaw." Mendoza pointed with his head. "Like our Russian aurora expert."

"What cold?" Alexi Molotov said, reaching for the butter.

"Or when you join the Three Hundred Degree Club," said the medic, Nancy Hodge. She was in her late forties, a thin and once-pretty woman with the kind of lines that suggested she'd seen a little too much of life. Her welcoming smile had a twist to it. No ring, but a white mark where one had been.

"What's that?"

"You'll see."