Dark Winter (42 page)

"I don't even know where they are," he confessed. "Haven't had time to poke around."

"Nancy said Rod kept them in boxes in the closet."

He glanced over his shoulder at a storage closet behind him. "You want me to find them?"

"I'll get them."

He looked at her speculatively. Here was an opportunity to repair a relationship, perhaps. She'd been avoiding him up to now. "Okay."

The woman nodded her thanks.

"We've been through some rough times, Abby," he tried. "It's important we all come together in a situation like this."

"I know." She looked a little impatient. She'd said her tooth was hurting but he couldn't help but plunge ahead. Abby, his failure with her, represented a rare defeat. It gnawed at him.

"I realize you've been upset about Lewis but I don't know what else I can do for him until we get Comms up and running and some of this sorted out. I… I know I came on a little strong with you at the party. I wonder if we could at least be good friends."

She swallowed. "We are friends, Bob. Just not that kind of friend."

He got up from his desk and moved around to her. "The group worries me, frankly. It's weaker than I was expecting. I'm trying to hold people together but there's a real chance someone's going to get in a fight or try to run away or get emotional and do something dangerous. The beakers are the worst because they have the least to do, now that the grid is down. If there's trouble I'd like to be able to count on you."

"Of course you can."

He took her right hand in both of his, enclosing it. The grip was not tight but the power there was unmistakable. It emanated from him like a force. "If anything bad happens I'd like you to stay by me. I'm thinking of assigning pairs, a kind of buddy system, and I'd like to partner with you. Boy-girl, mostly- I think each gender has its strengths and could help look after the other. And I know it's a little sexist, but I'd like to think I could help protect you in a crisis. Do you understand what I mean?"

She smiled more bravely than she felt, actually confused by what he meant. What crisis? "I guess so," she evaded. She needed to get to that box. "I would like to know you better, Bob. That's one reason I came down for the winter, to get close to people. With Jed locked away I'm learning how important that might be."

He was looking at her with an intensity she found unnerving. She wished he'd sit back down. "Are you?"

Abby pulled out of his grip. "But not right now, not with a toothache. Let me get Nancy to look at this and decide what we can do. After I get fixed maybe we can talk. Maybe you can tell me more about yourself. I'm very curious. You're kind of mysterious, you know."

She got a glimpse of his annoyance at her elusiveness and then his face masked over. "Everyone's mysterious. Even to themselves."

"Well, my mystery is my own dental work. I'm going to dig out that file."

He shrugged, stepping away. "Of course. I hope Nancy can help. Get you a painkiller or something." Obviously dissatisfied, he sat down and went back to writing. It looked personal, like some kind of diary.

Abby went around the desk and into the storage closet, finding the cardboard box that Nancy had described. Lifting it down, she began rifling through it, praying he wouldn't come help. She could feel him glance over occasionally to watch her. "I'm surprised you can think to write after all that's happened," she called. "Even concentrate. What is it?"

There was a long silence. Then a shuffling of paper. "A narrative of an important time," he finally said. "Explaining things to myself."

"That's what writing does, doesn't it?"

"That and explaining things to the world."

She found what she was looking for, slipped it into her own file folder, and put the box back. "It's too bad Clyde was burnt in the explosion," she commented as she went back past his desk, clutching the X rays. "The repair work would go a lot faster with his expertise."

"Awful," Norse said. He straightened a little. "Yet disaster can bring out the best in people as well. It's a kind of test, I think. Being cut off from communication from the outside world has forced us to rely a little bit more on ourselves. Like you and me. It's terrible to say so, but the trauma has given a real edge to my research."

She smiled. "Hoping for the worst?" She tried to keep it light, without any edge to it. "Shrink nirvana?"

"Sounds awful, doesn't it?" He shook his head at himself. "I find myself in an awkward position between participant and observer. Victim and beneficiary."

"Our leader, now."

"No, no. Camp counselor, maybe."

"Our director."

His look was sardonic. "No matter how well you plan things, everything comes out differently. You make things up as you go along."

"And how do you know where you're trying to go, Bob?" She seemed genuinely interested.

"I'm a psychologist. Inside instead of outside. Soul instead of stars. At some fundamental level I'm not sure they're all that different. The goal of any life is to justify yourself to yourself. Or at least explain yourself."

"That sounds like what a shrink would say."

"That's what an honest man would say."

She left and he watched her go with a concealed hunger: her slim back, the nape of her neck, the curve of her hip, that coy primness he wanted to possess and violate. Her presence was tormenting him like a hunger, inflating his desire. The more she put him off, the more he wanted her.

But he couldn't let that interfere with the experiment. Couldn't let that interfere with himself! Still, Norse allowed himself the luxury of pondering her for a while, considering their encounter. She'd been more receptive this time, he thought, as if she were thawing. Ice Cream! Getting Lewis out of the way had helped. Getting rid of him entirely would help more. Too bad there was just one more Spryte, but he needed to reserve that for himself… Norse imagined triumphing with her, he her only hope of survival, getting her to do the things he needed. Too bad she had a damn toothache.

Maybe in the end they could leave together.

He looked at what he had just written. I acted on the best plan I had at the time.

Adaptable, yes. But always a step ahead. Always a step ahead.

It really would be quite the brilliant paper. He took up his pen again.

It wasn't until later, much later, that another possibility occurred to him and he stood up from his desk, suddenly alarmed.

"Damn her!"

He wrenched open the closet door, threw down the box Abby had pawed through, and flipped frantically to his own folder, cursing as he did so. He opened it.

His dental X rays were gone.

She was taking them to Nancy Hodge.

There were red droplets on the snow between the galley and BioMed, a bright disturbing trail that announced more trouble. Abby followed them at a trot, the X rays in her mitten. The door to the sick bay was locked and she groaned inwardly. She remembered that the increasingly paranoid Nancy Hodge was locking herself in, and the need to knock was maddening. Every second seemed vital. Norse was no fool, and Abby feared he'd come storming out from his office at any moment. She needed Nancy to make the X ray comparison so they could get the others to help.

"Nancy, open up!" She pounded anxiously with the flat of her hand.

There was a pause, then a reply muffled by the door. "I'm busy."

There wasn't time to be busy! They had to learn the truth about Norse! Abby hammered on the door again, impatient and irritated. "Hurry up! It's an emergency!"

"I've got an emergency in here!"

"Nancy, please!"

She heard a muffled oath and the bang of something being shut, then the quick clump of footsteps. The door opened and Nancy looked out, her eyes looking tired and harassed. "You'll have to come back later. I'm treating Gina."

"Please, I've got to talk to you now."

"Abby, I've got blood all over the place in here."

Abby stepped up to the level of BioMed and peeked past Nancy to the examining room beyond. Clyde Skinner was lying on the lone bed, his eyes bandaged. Gina Brindisi was sitting on the table, her face white and scared looking, her pants on the floor. One of her legs was smeared with blood, a slashing wound on her calf looking partly sewn up. "My God, what happened?"

Nancy looked back over her shoulder at Gina. "She tripped over some damn pike or battleax Calhoun made. We're all going to poke each other's eyes out with those things. It's crazy. I've got to finish up these stitches to stop the bleeding."

"Can't we talk for a second first?"

"Abby, she's leaking all over the damn table! Are you hurt or sick?"

"No."

"Then come back later." She started to close the door.

"Wait!" Abby thrust her boot inside, preventing its closure. "It's about everything that's happening!"

"I'm trying to patch up everything that's happening! I'll talk to you later!"

"Please!"

Nancy was annoyed now. "Get your foot out of my door! Damn you and damn this place anyway!"

Abby was thinking furiously. How much time before Norse figured out what she was up to? She couldn't wait until later, not if she was going to try to get into Norse's room for more evidence. She needed to be in two places at once! And now Nancy was distracted.

"Listen to me!" Abby hissed urgently. "Listen, or we're all going to die!" Her determination interrupted Nancy's impatience, piercing the doctor's anger. For just a moment the medic was listening. "Norse is not Norse," Abby insisted in a low voice. "Do you understand? Bob is not Bob. He's someone else, some impostor, and that means he could be behind all this craziness that's been going on. I can't come back later, I have to find the one thing that will convince the rest of you, so I'm going to send Jed over here instead, okay? I'm going to send Lewis. He can explain."

Nancy looked wary, curious, fearful. "He's locked up."

"I'm going to let him out. It's important. Nancy, you have to trust him. You have to trust me. It's our only chance."

The doctor shook her head. "I don't trust anyone anymore."

Abby thrust the folder of X rays at her. "These are Norse's dental X rays. You've got another set here. I need you to compare the two as soon as you stitch up Gina. Hurry, before Bob comes!"

"Abby…"

"Just do it! You'll see! I'm going to send Jed to fill you in and then I'm going to come back if I find what I think I'll find. Then the three of us will go to the others."

Nancy took the folder uncertainly. "I don't understand…"

"Just look at the two sets! See if they match! Please, Nancy, I think you're our last chance!"

"Last chance?"

"To get away from the Pole alive."

Lewis darted across the snow under the dome like a wraith for what he hoped was the last time, carrying as a crude defense one of the ice axes he'd used as a grappling hook. He had descended like a spider back into the dome the night before, pausing on the roof to untie the hook from the rope and thrust it in his belt. Then he doubled the rope around one of the framing braces on the dome. Its ample length allowed him to descend back into his imprisonment on the doubled line and then retrieve the entire rope by pulling on one end, reeling it in until it slipped out of the dome brace and fell down on the snow. He hid the rope behind Comms and tucked the axes in a maintenance closet near the sauna. Then he'd waited in his cedar jail in an agony of impatience, anxious to see if Abby could figure a way to follow up on the mystery.

She'd finally come to him panting like a sprinter, gasping out the tale of her acquisition of Norse's X ray and its delivery to Nancy Hodge. The doctor had been too busy to listen, Abby said hurriedly, because she was bandaging up Gina, but now Nancy was waiting for him in BioMed and Abby was about to pursue a hunch about what she might find in Norse's room. It was all hunches now, a gamble that they could save all their lives by uncovering the truth about one. Yet what if he was wrong? Then the only alternative might be the kind of desperate escape Tyson had resorted to, stealing the other Spryte and setting off for McMurdo. Probably dying in the attempt.

Now he looked around carefully to avoid interception but, surprisingly, no one was around. Eating? Moping? Arguing? Maybe Norse had started some kind of bizarre encounter group. He slipped into the archway, surprised at how easy this was, and went to the door of the medic's module. He reached for the freezerlike door handle and stopped. It was hanging askew, its lock apparently broken. Hadn't Nancy said they didn't lock the sick bay? Why was it pried open now? Hesitantly, he knocked.

No reply. The door creaked open a quarter inch.

"Nancy?"

No answer.

He pounded harder. "Hodge? You in there?" Again, silence. "It's Lewis! We need to talk!"

Then a faint moan. "Help…"

It was Clyde Skinner.

"For God's sake, help…"

Where was Nancy? He shoved open the broken door and stepped inside, shutting it against the cold. "Clyde?"

"Who is it? Who is it?"

It was Skinner, all right, the burnt radioman. He was lying in the sick bay bed with his face swathed in bandages, blind and helpless, clutching his sheets.

"It's Lewis. I've come to help."

"Lewis?" His voice betrayed dread. "You set the bomb."

"No, I didn't, Clyde. Someone's setting me up."

The man lay quietly, looking afraid.

"What happened? BioMed was locked. Where's Nancy?"

"You've come to kill me, too, haven't you?"

"No! No, no. I'm trying to help. What the hell happened?"

"Where's Abby?"

"I don't know."

"Nancy told me to talk only to Abby."