Dark Winter (40 page)

Lewis let the medicine-ball-sized balloon go, holding on to its light tether. It shot up faster than he expected and the line writhed like a flagellum until Abby grabbed it and controlled its ascent through her fingers. Then hook lifted off and the two lines uncoiled upward together at a steady pace, swimming in the night.

When the helium orb bumped against the icicles overhead a few broke off and fell, forcing the pair to duck. Fortunately, the frozen spikes plunged noiselessly into the snow in the center of the dome instead of banging against the roof of the modules. They stuck out from the ground like knives.

"Careful!" Abby hissed.

"Help me pull it over."

They gingerly tugged on the lines to lower the balloon slightly and bring it under the hole. Then they let rope out again and the orb popped free. Once the gas bag was above the crest of the dome, the wind took it like a fish after bait, the ropes yanked taut. When their grappling hook was carried to the lee side of the opening they hauled sharply down, letting the ice axes wedge against the outside of the roof. As the pair threw their weight against it the aluminum bent slightly, snugging the ax heads tightly against the rim. Lewis jerked on the tether to free the slip knot and the balloon lurched upward and soared away into the night, the tether snaking up and out of sight. Remaining were the hook and its climbing rope, hanging downward from the vent hole. He sighted up the line's length, trying to judge its bite on the roof. It just might hold.

He gave her a kiss of partnership. "I'll be back before Pika wakes up to check the generators."

"Just get up the rope first."

Scaling a rope five stories high by grip alone required considerable strength and risked a bad fall. Lewis instead used a trick he'd learned years ago while mountaineering. Two loops resembling hangman's nooses and called Prusik loops were tied with light line and hung on the main rope with slip knots, so they could be pulled up or down the main line. He slid one two feet above the snow and slipped his boot into its loop. As he put his weight on it, stepping up off the snow, the slip knot tightened and friction held the loop firmly in place like a foothold, giving him his first short ascent. He pirouetted slowly as he held on, watching the rope turn under the grappling hook and waiting to make sure it wouldn't twist off. "Hold the bottom to help keep me steady," he instructed Abby. Then, balancing on the loop, he stooped and caught the second Prusik loop with his glove. He slid it two feet higher than the first and put his other boot into that. Again, the knot tightened and he stepped upward. He wiggled his first boot out of the first knot, loosening its grip, bent awkwardly to slide it just under the knot he was standing on, and transferred his weight yet again. By keeping his weight on one loop at a time, he could slide the knots steadily up the rope and keep climbing.

"I think this is going to work," he said, already breathing heavily.

"What if Gage comes?" Abby asked.

"Seduce him."

The first twenty feet were easy enough. It helped that Abby steadied the rope. Once he got high enough that a fall might seriously hurt, however, his worry about the security of the hook increased. He looked upward, trying to see what was happening in the gloom, but could tell nothing. What if the whole contraption unraveled?

Then this damnable winter will be over, he told himself.

He climbed higher. As he ascended he began to feel a slight breeze from the chilly opening and the stars seemed brighter. Progress! It was like climbing to the mouth of a well. Up, up, up. He was panting from the exertion and awkward in his winter clothes, but he'd need them once he was outside. Abby had become very small below. The roofs of the housing modules formed a geometric pattern, their tops dusted with snow.

He paused for breath again, braced on one trembling leg, glancing below to make sure no one was watching. Gage would probably wander around again in about ten minutes. Even with Abby holding on below, the rope twisted slowly, rotating him slowly first one way, then another. It was too bad in a way the others weren't awake: He was putting on quite a show, a damned circus. The dome seemed higher and higher as he climbed toward its apex, his perspective changing.

Then he felt an ominous jerk, the rope vibrating. The hook was shifting! He froze, waiting with dread for it to slide free and cause his own long plummet to the ice below. But no, the movement stopped and he was still hanging in space, sweating, his body tense, the rope trembling like a plucked string. So much for stopping. He began hauling himself upward again as fast as he could manage.

His glove touched the taped ax shafts and he could hear the moan of the wind across the top of the dome. He slipped the top loop as high as it would go, boosted himself up, put out one hand, and grasped the rim. An aluminum tube ran around the four-foot-wide opening, slick and cold and hard to hang on to. He awkwardly leveraged his head upward and a blast of Antarctic wind hit him like a slap. As claustrophobically cold as it was inside the aluminum dome, the windchill outside was twice as bad. Once more its power sucked his breath away. Yet that way promised release. If he could just lever himself up a few more feet…

He leaned against the rim and began twisting his boot, trying to work it out of the final loop. The damn thing worked like a snare. He came loose awkwardly, catching his boot tip on the line and tangling himself. He grunted in fear as his legs and weight abruptly dropped free. His fingers clenched on the aluminum rim and his body snapped straight as he hung on his gloves, swaying back and forth like a pendulum, with the hard white floor five stories below. Abby's upturned face was a white oval, the hook somewhere behind him. Dammit! He dangled a moment, collecting his wits, and then, muscles straining, Lewis worked his way hand over hand around the trim to the grappling hook, grabbed it, and got his feet wrapped around the main climbing rope again, sliding the Prusik loops down out of the way. He pushed upward with his legs, shoving himself back up into the wind and the darkness outside the dome, and worked high enough to get the leverage he needed for a final desperate lunge that would let him belly-flop onto the dome's slick roof. It took a second to catch his breath. Then he squirmed around to a sitting position and looked down through the hole.

Abby was gesturing wildly. Perlin must be coming! She'd already tied the end of the rope to his pack of supplies. The rope was deliberately more than twice the length needed to reach the top of the dome and he hauled the slack up quickly. Finally the pack itself jerked off the snow and began to dance upward as he pulled, while Abby ducked behind Comms. And here came the plumber, cold and hunched, walking again with a crude spear made from a knife lashed onto a sawed-off mop handle, ambling across the point where they'd just been standing, without noticing the fresh scuffle of snow.

Perlin never looked up at the backpack oscillating silently over his head. Striding to check the barricaded entrance by the archways, he disappeared from view.

Lewis pulled the pack up the rest of the way, put it on, reversed the hook, and pitched the climbing rope down the outside of the geodesic structure. Grasping it and walking backward, he gingerly made his way down the face of the dome to the snow, the aluminum making a faint hollow pop as it flexed under his weight.

It became so steep that he had to let go and drop the last few feet, rolling into the drifts that mounded against the dome. Then he bounded up, shaking himself like a dog. He was out! The freedom, after being locked in the sauna, was exhilarating.

Lewis looked around. All exterior lights had been shorted out in the explosion and the base was dark. A ground fog of blown snow skittered waist-high across the plateau. Yet above this miasma he could see surprisingly well. The stars were a shoal of diamonds, the Milky Way a brilliant white arch. Their galaxy! He'd never seen so many stars, so close and so brilliant. They were a swath of luminous paint. He tilted his head back to drink them- bite them, as Sparco had promised. The glory of it stunned him with the force of belated recognition: Yes, I'm a part of that. He stood for a moment gaping, oblivious to the cold.

"This is why I'm down here," he murmured.

Then he began walking toward the dark blue huts that marked Bedrock, the emergency shelter that housed a small auxiliary generator. He had about three hours.

The Hypertats were modest and modern Quonset-shaped huts that had been installed as an emergency refuge in case the dome somehow failed. Insulated, modern, and cramped, they were designed to keep people alive until rescue could be organized. As winter deepened they were drifting with snow, and no one, so far as Lewis knew, had been inside them this season. Behind them was an emergency generator building. This shed was deliberately unlocked and had clear instructions posted inside so that any survivor would be able to start the machine. Still, it took Lewis fifteen minutes to push aside snow blocking its door. Inside, the machine was brittle and cold, ice crystals glittering as his flashlight played over it, the fuel like jelly, and with the grid down the batteries had lost much of their charge. There was enough to start warming the cylinders but then the batteries petered out and it took another twenty minutes of hard labor for Lewis to hand-crank the diesel to get it going. Each reluctant chug that died increased his sense of desperation. Just as he was thoroughly frustrated by its mulelike reluctance, ready to scream with resentment, it coughed and rumbled and gave him the first real hope he'd had for some time. Energy! A source Norse and Pulaski had overlooked! The roar seemed cacophonous inside the shed but he knew the generator's modest chug couldn't be heard from the distant dome. Yet it was enough to make electricity for the Hypertats, and power was power. This juice was going to let him reach the outside world.

Bedrock's small generator was never designed to power the other outlying buildings. Yet it connected to a substation shack with an electrical panel and, if switched and rerouted as Abby had instructed, it could shunt electricity away from the emergency shelters and out to Clean Air. He trudged to the shack, butted it open, and searched with his flashlight for the right switches. He hesitated only a moment. If he threw the wrong ones he could short out the entire system. But no, they were clearly labeled, and one by one he flipped them over as the woman had instructed. No sparks flew. No circuits shorted. He looked outside. Hallelujah. A deck light had come on at Clean Air.

Abby knew her stuff.

The light would alert anyone watching, but no one should be watching. The others had blinded themselves by barricading the dome.

Lewis set off for his workplace, boots crunching in fresh crust. It was eerie how dead the rest of the station looked. Everything was in silhouette under the stars, the antennas mute, the telescopes blinded. It was like walking a ghostly ruin. The snow was a frozen sea, an undulating series of drifts he strode up and down like a boat, his trail leading from one half-buried flag to the next. He wondered about the distant future. Would humans stay at the Pole forever or retreat someday? Would everything they had built eventually become as ghostly as the abandoned Navy base?

While fairly confident he wouldn't be missed until morning, Lewis flicked off the deck light once he clambered up the metal steps to reach Clean Air. He also didn't take the chance of turning on a light inside his old workplace. Instead he flicked on an auxiliary heater and used his flashlight to pick his way to one of the computers, dragging some furniture over to block its glow from the windows. He didn't want to be interrupted by pursuit. Only then did he turn the machine on. There was the familiar whir and bleep, and a faint crackle as photons danced in the tube.

Lewis checked his watch. The satellites that tied them to the Internet cleared the horizon at intervals of eight hours. The next one was rising now.

The temptation to simply sound a cry for help was powerful but was unlikely to bring any meaningful response. He couldn't stay out here to wait for a reply because he'd be missed in the sauna and a hunt would be on. And even if the National Science Foundation decided to dispatch the Texas Rangers at his strange SOS it would take at least days- and more likely weeks, in winter- to mount the logistics to fly to the Pole. All the military transports were back in the United States, their National Guard crews had dispersed, and their cold weather gear was stored. The Pole was designed to be self-sufficient until October. The winter-overs were facing a danger they'd have to deal with themselves, and before they could deal with it he had to understand what their peril was.

There was now one person of uncertain past, one person leading them to an even more uncertain future. Lewis launched a web search.

Robert Norse.

He started with the usual string of search engines: Alta Vista, Yahoo, AOL, Google, MSN. The results were frustrating because the name was too common. There were scores of references to Bobs and Norses, but none obviously fitting their psychologist. He turned up Robert's Rules of Order and a reference to Norse mythology, a link to a Warhammer game and a construction company in Minneapolis. "Come on…" There were even puzzling references to New Zealand, referring to outdoor hiking trips there. What the hell was that about? "Damn brainless Internet clutter."

He tried searching professional journals but quickly became lost in a bog of poor indexing and the ceaseless accumulation of academic publication. So much stuff that no one could read it, and so dense no one could understand it. Brilliant people in a cocoon of irrelevance. He didn't have the vaguest idea who Norse might have written for anyway. And what would an academic study prove?

Stymied, he decided to try news media databases instead. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal came up empty, but a Los Angeles Times brief from two years before mentioned Norse as a visiting lecturer at San Diego State University. The sentence came in a story about a psychological conference on human adaptation to extremes. It said Norse was planning polar research. "We're looking at the adaptability of people to stressful conditions," he'd told the reporter. Well, that made sense. Frustratingly, there was nothing more. The university web site had no listing for Norse: no picture, no biography, no vital statistics.