Icy Clutches (2 page)

A list of attendees had been waiting for them in their room when they'd arrived. “Julene Oliver,” the sixth entry had read, “Supervising Park Ranger (GS-13), Olympic National Park, Washington. And spouse."

When he'd seen that, he'd had terrifying visions of the “spouses’ programs” awaiting him. “My God,” he'd said, “I can see it now. ‘Morning bus tour to Kumquat Village, where you will be greeted by lifelike Indians and served a traditional Indian lunch of mud-broiled salmon cakes, to be followed by a program of authentic Indian war dances. In the afternoon, a leisurely visit to nearby Totem Shopping Mall.’”

"I wouldn't worry about it,” she'd said. The closest mall's in Juneau."

"I'm glad to hear it. I must be lucky. Come to think of it, I guess there won't be any bus tours either."

There wouldn't be any bus tours because there weren't any roads; none besides the dirt strip between the lodge and the little airport at Gustavus ten miles away. The only way in or out of Glacier Bay was by boat from the coast, or by airplane—one scheduled flight a day in, one out; a tree-skimming, thirty-minute hop between Juneau and Gustavus.

That had all been this morning. By the end of the week, he now feared, he'd be more than ready for a visit to Kumquat Village. Maybe by tomorrow.

The harried-looking man on Julie's other side detached himself from the general conversation and leaned across to them.

"You're talking about spousal activities?” he asked Gideon. “You're not finding enough to do?” The possibility seemed to cause him real concern. “It's a shame you're the only spouse here. If we had a few more I'd have arranged something interesting. Maybe,” he said, his eyes brightening, “I could—"

"That's okay,” Gideon said quickly. “That's all right. No problem at all, Arthur."

In the absence of the superintendent of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve (on vacation in Hawaii) Assistant Superintendent Arthur Tibbett was the ranking park official and the host at the welcoming dinner for the class. A soft, compact man with a vaguely beleaguered air, he seemed a fish out of water at this table of fit, outdoorsy men and women; a paper-pusher among the nature children. Already he bore the mark of his kind, the bureaucrat's habitual little pucker of anxiety between his sandy eyebrows. His interest in—and probably his knowledge of—prusiks and Kleimheists had run out early. For the last twenty minutes he had been going through the motions: here a minuscule nod, there a preoccupied murmur of agreement, here a vacant smile while his fingers tapped restlessly on the table.

Spousal programs seemed to be more in his line. “Last year,” he told Gideon with his first show of enthusiasm, “we flew them to Haines to see
Lust for Dust,
which is really a great show. And did you know they have the world's tallest totem pole there? But I just can't justify the cost for one person. My budgetary allocation for—"

"Really, I'm fine, Arthur.” Spousal activities. Was the term itself repellent, lascivious even, or was it just his mood? “I'm having a great time. Don't give me a thought. Really.” He tipped his head toward the table at the other end of the room. “The white-haired man over there...he looks awfully familiar. You wouldn't happen to know who—"

"Oh,” Tibbett said lukewarmly, “you mean Professor Tremaine."

Gideon snapped his fingers. “Tremaine! That's M. Audley Tremaine, isn't it?"

"It
is?"
Julie said, impressed.

The three of them looked across the room at the suave and celebrated host of “Voyages,” television's preeminent science program and king of the Sunday-afternoon ratings, if you didn't count football season.

"He looks exactly the way he does on television,” Julie said. “Will you just look at that tan?"

"He didn't get it around here,” the pallid Tibbett said, managing to make it sound like an accusation.

"What's he doing here?” Gideon asked. “The lodge is closed for the season, isn't it?"

"Technically, yes, but it's kept open for Park Service training at this time of year, and he just horned in, to put it candidly. The man doesn't have a scruple about bypassing regulations. A friendly telephone call to his good friend the deputy secretary of the interior, and here he is with his entourage, working on his great opus."

That would explain Tibbett's animosity. The assistant superintendent was not a man to look with favor on the bypassing of regulations.

"Opus? Is he writing a book?” Julie asked.

"Yes. You've probably heard about his being involved in an avalanche here at Glacier Bay years ago?"

Julie nodded. “He was the only survivor."

It had happened almost three decades before, but it was everyday knowledge. Tremaine, who had been heading a botanical research team, had been trapped in a crevasse on Tirku Glacier for a day and a night. Later, he had used this ordeal as the cornerstone of his career. It was a rare episode of “Voyages” that didn't have some reference to it, however oblique. The pitted facial scars from a barrage of two-hundred-mile-an-hour ice spicules and the limp caused by the loss of three toes to frostbite had added to his allure, visible reminders of a life filled with danger and exotic adventure. His eaglelike profile and elegant, nasal baritone hadn't hurt either. He had begun appearing on talk shows in the seventies, had introduced “Voyages” with immediate success in the mid-eighties, and had been America's best-known science popularizer ever since. Somewhere along the way he had left his academic pursuits—some said his academic integrity—behind him, although guests on his show were still instructed by the producer to address him as “professor."

"Well,” Tibbett explained, “now it seems he's writing a tell-all book about it.
Tragedy on Ice."

"Sounds like something starring Peggy Fleming,” Julie said under her breath. Tibbett guffawed immoderately, then turned it into a discreet cough.

"Who are the others?” Gideon asked. “Why would he need an entourage?” Anything was better than Heibler clamps and lateral load-bearing stress.

Tibbett peered at them again. “The gray-haired woman is Dr. Anna Henckel. She was Tremaine's assistant on the original survey. And the, ah, portly gentleman next to her is Dr. Walter Judd; he was on it too. The others—well, I don't have their names straight, but I understand they're relatives of the three people who were killed. Tremaine is using them all as resources, I gather."

"M. Audley Tremaine,” Gideon mused after a moment. “I'd sure like to meet him."

Julie stared at him. “Are you serious? The only time I remember you watching ‘Voyages’ was when it covered human evolution. You ranted and fidgeted through the whole thing. You were yelling at the television set. You called him a pompous charlatan, as I recall."

Tibbett blinked and eyed Gideon with transparent respect.

"That's because the man got everything so completely screwed up,” Gideon said. “In one hour he single-handedly managed to set popular understanding of evolution back ten years. Remember how he ‘traveled back in time’ and talked to those ‘Neanderthalers'? Those actors with fur pasted on them, grunting and squatting and hopping—
hopping,
for God's sake—all over the place, like big, hairy fleas?"

"I remember,” Julie said. “You made your point very clearly at the time. Or at least very loudly. So then why do you want to meet him?"

"Because of the work he did back in the fifties, before my time. Before he was M. Audley Tremaine, for that matter."

"Come again?"

"He used to go by his first name; Milton, or Morton..."

"Melvin,” put in Tibbett. “Melvin A. Tremaine. I suppose it isn't dashing enough for him nowadays."

"Right, Melvin A. Tremaine. He was a pioneer in the study of postglacial plant succession; very important stuff for physical anthropology. Some of the definitive work on late Pleistocene human skeletal dating was based on his research on vertical pollen distribution analysis."

Julie nodded. Tibbett's eyes glazed slightly.

"He and I are colleagues in a way,” Gideon said. “He was at U-Dub twenty or thirty years before I was."

"U-Dub?” Tibbett echoed.

"He's speaking native dialect,” explained Julie. “It means University of Washington."

"I see,” said Tibbett, who obviously didn't.

"U-Dub,” Julie said. “It's short for U.W."

"Oh.” Tibbett searched visibly for something to talk about. He didn't want to go back to Heiblers either. “You know, next year is the thirtieth anniversary of the Tirku project, and the department is going to put up a memorial near the site of the avalanche.” His lips twitched their disapproval. “No possible connection to the publication of his book, of course,” he said tartly. “Well, tomorrow I have to accompany him and his party out to the site—as if I didn't have anything more important to do—where they'll choose the location for the plaque."

He snorted. “Probably an idea dreamed up by his press agent. I know no one consulted
me
about it. The whole thing's ridiculous. It's not as if anyone ever goes in there, in any case, so who's going to see it? He's simply exploiting the majesty of the United States government to promote his book, that's what he's doing."

Tibbett grumbled on in this vein for a while, not without Gideon's sympathy. Still, Tremaine's contribution to post-glacial plant succession was a real one, and Gideon's respect for the man as a scientist was high.

He drained his coffee. “Do you think he'd mind if I went over and said hello?"

But as Gideon put the cup down, Tremaine and his party began getting up. Tremaine nodded curtly to the others and headed for the exit, his limp quite marked. He was smaller than he appeared to be on television, perhaps five-nine. His path brought him within a few feet, and Gideon stood as he approached.

"Dr. Tremaine? My name is Gideon Oliver. I'm a great admirer of your work—"

He stopped, startled. The dessert menu card he'd absently continued to hold had been snatched from him by Tremaine. “Certainly,” the silver-haired television star said. “Delighted."

Tremaine plucked a pen from the inside of his jacket, scrawled something across the card, thrust it back into Gideon's hand, and went on his way.

Gideon stared at his back for a moment, then looked down at the card.

"Happy voyages,” it said. “Best wishes, M. Audley Tremaine."

As he did most mornings, Gideon awakened just before the alarm clock was due to go off. And as he did most mornings, he found himself nestled against Julie's back. He sighed, nuzzled her neck, and reached out to click off the alarm before it buzzed.

Julie stirred and muttered into the pillow, “It can't be six o'clock already. It can't be."

"I'm afraid it is."

She groaned softly and turned herself into him, snuggling her chin into the hollow of his shoulder. For a while they lay quietly, pressed against each other, dozing and content. For Gideon, this was perhaps the best part of the day. Was he at heart such a pessimist that he should awaken each morning filled with gratitude, with relief, almost with amazement, at having her lying by his side?

"I love you,” he said. He bent his head to kiss her hair.

She murmured something, worked herself closer still, and fell asleep again, her breath warm and sweet against his chest.

At 6:10 he disengaged himself, got shivering into his robe, and turned up the room's thermostat. He put up some coffee in the automatic coffee maker on its own little shelf over the sink and stood waiting for the water to boil, staring numbly at his wild-haired, unshaven reflection in the mirror. Morning coffee was his responsibility; that was one of several mutually agreeable arrangements they had worked out by trial and error. Cooking chores were evenly split, but Julie did the dinner dishes, in exchange for which Gideon hauled himself out of bed to make coffee every morning.

It was a system that seemed eminently equitable in the evenings, but somehow less fair in the mornings, especially in a cold, burnt-rose Alaskan dawn when there had been no dinner dishes to do the evening before. Maybe a little renegotiation was in order. He scratched a sandpapery cheek and smiled at his reflection. What the hell, why not just admit that he enjoyed making coffee for her, carrying it to her, watching her stretch and come awake smiling?

"Mmmm,” she called, “smells wonderful.” She yawned, shoved some pillows up against the headboard, and pushed herself partway up with her eyes still screwed shut. Julie was like a zombie in the morning, barely articulate and only marginally coherent until she'd had a cup of coffee or been awake for an hour. Whichever came first.

He brought the pot and the cups to her on a tray, put them on the nightstand, and sat on the side of the bed. She had nodded off again, chin on her chest. He kissed her cheek, at the corner of her mouth. She mumbled something. He kissed the side of her throat. With her eyes still closed she murmured some more and lifted her arms to go around his neck.

"Mmm,” she said again, while he continued nuzzling, “'zis serious?"

"I'm afraid not,” he said. “You have to be dressed and out of here in twenty minutes.” He loosened her hold and poured coffee into the Styrofoam cups for both of them, then stuck hers in her hand, closing her fingers around it. “What's on your agenda anyway?"

Julie took another swallow to gather strength for speaking. “Latest techniques in victim location. All-day field trip. You?” Complex sentences, or even complete ones, were not to be expected first thing in the morning.

"Me? I'm not doing anything. I'll relax, that's all."

Her eyes finally opened to regard him doubtfully. “You're going to spend an entire day doing nothing?"

"Absolutely. With pleasure. I've gotten too goal-oriented, that's my problem. From now on I just take life as it comes."

[Back to Table of Contents]

Professor Tremaine was not altogether pleased with the way things were progressing. Oh, they had gone reasonably well during the introductory dinner the night before (Anna's characteristically vulgar comment aside), but now, at breakfast, he sensed an undercurrent of tension, of reserve. In the cases of Anna Henckel and Walter Judd he could guess at the reasons, ridiculous though they might be, but what did the others have to be touchy about? By the end of the week there would be cause enough, but why now? They had never met each other before. They were enjoying a quite luxurious stay at Glacier Bay at his expense, were they not? Well, perhaps not at
his
expense, but it amounted to the same thing, didn't it? If they didn't want to come, why were they there? Had anyone forced them?