Terminal Freeze (7 page)

“Stabilize!” Creel shouted.

The winch squealed in protest as the operator boosted power to the maximum. The block tilted, yawing wildly, then slowly settled back onto the floor of the cave. The crane operator throttled down for a moment. Then-slowly and carefully-he raised the block again, swung it around, and maneuvered it onto the flatbed. There was a sharp hiss of hydraulics. As the cameras rolled, a few of the other roustabouts secured the block to the vehicle and threw a heavy insulating tarp over it. Within minutes it was all over, the machinery was rolling back up the tunnel, and the countless spacers were being removed from their positions and returned to their canvas bags. And the cat-along with its surrounding block of ice-was on its way to the climate-controlled vault, where it would be kept securely locked until it was thawed and displayed to a live audience of millions.

Conti surveyed the tunnel, a look of evident satisfaction on his face. “We’ll use the departing machinery as a keyframe,” he told Fortnum. “We’ll do a series of cutaways exiting up the tunnel, then a jump cut back to the base. Shoot a lot of coverage. And that’ll be a wrap.”

He turned to Marshall. “So. Ready for that interview?”

As they stepped back into the overpowering warmth of the base’s entrance plaza, Conti nodded for the soundman and Toussaint to accompany them. Then he turned to Marshall. “We might as well shoot this from your lab.”

“It’s this way.” Marshall led the small group down the central staircase, along the wide corridor, then right at an intersection, stopping at a half-open door. “Here we are.”

Conti leaned in, took a quick look around. “This is your lab?”

“Yes. Why?”

“It’s too neat. Where’s all the equipment? The samples? The test tubes?”

“My samples are kept in a refrigerated locker down the hall. We’ve set up separate rooms for the scientific equipment, though we left most of the heavy stuff back in Woburn. This expedition is primarily about observation and sample collection-the analysis will come later.”

“And the test tubes?”

Marshall smiled thinly. “Paleoecologists don’t have much use for test tubes.”

Conti thought for a moment. “I noticed that we passed a more appropriate lab a few doors back.”

“Appropriate?” Marshall echoed. But Conti was already walking back down the hall, the soundman and photographer in tow. After a moment, Marshall shrugged and followed.

“Here.” Conti had stopped outside a room whose every horizontal surface was covered with journals, printouts, plastic sample containers, and instrumentation.

“But this is Wright’s lab,” Marshall protested. “We can’t use it.”

Conti had raised the lens dangling around his neck to one eye and was examining Marshall through it. “Why not?”

Marshall hesitated. He realized that, in fact, there was no good reason why they couldn’t use Faraday’s lab. “Why don’t you interview him, then?”

“Because, Dr. Marshall-how can I put this delicately?-the camera would not be kind to Dr. Faraday. You, however, have a rugged academic appeal. Now, may we proceed?”

Marshall shrugged again. He found it difficult talking to a man who was regarding him through a fist-sized lens.

Conti stepped inside and-lens still in place-motioned Toussaint where he wanted the camera placed. The photographer walked to the back of the lab, followed by the soundman. “Dr. Marshall,” Conti went on, “we’re going to film you walking in and having a seat behind the desk. Ready?”

“I suppose so.”

Conti dropped the lens. “Action.”

As the camera rolled, Marshall walked into the lab, stopping when he saw the tottering pile of papers placed on Faraday’s lab chair.

“Cut.” Conti swept the papers onto the floor, shooed Marshall back out into the hall. “Let’s try that again.”

Once again, Marshall walked through the door and into the office.

“Cut!” Conti barked. He frowned at Marshall. “Don’t just come strolling in. Let’s see some
excitement
in your step. You’ve just made a big discovery.”

“What discovery would that be?”

“The saber-toothed tiger, of course. Let the audience see your enthusiasm. Let them
live
the thrill of this marvel through
you.
”

“I don’t understand. I thought this whole circus was about thawing the carcass, live.”

Conti rolled his eyes. “You can’t take up seventy-four and a half minutes of prime time with that. Please get with the program, Dr. Marshall. We need to show the whole backstory, the buildup. Get the audience to buy in 100 percent. We won’t actually open the vault until the final segment.”

Marshall nodded slowly. He tried hard to do what Conti asked: get with the program. He swallowed his irritation at the artificiality of it all; he tried to forget his indignation at the sacrifice of science on the altar of theatricality. He reminded himself Conti was an award-winning producer; that his
From Fatal Seas
was a landmark among modern documentaries; that having an audience of millions could only be beneficial to future research.

He stepped back out into the hall.

“Action!” Conti called out. Marshall stepped briskly in, seated himself behind the desk, and pretended to busy himself at Faraday’s laptop.

“Cut it and print it,” Conti said. “Much better.” He stepped around the desk. “Now, I’m going to ask you some questions, off camera. You will then answer them, on camera. Remember that in the final print, it’s going to be Ashleigh asking the questions, not me.” He glanced down at a clipboard. “Why don’t you start by explaining why you’re here in the first place?”

“Sure. We’re here for three reasons, really. First, we wanted to see the impact of global warming on subarctic environments, specifically glaciers. Second, we wanted an undisturbed site to conduct our analyses. Third, we had to do it relatively cheap. Fear Base fit all three.”

“But why this mountain, in particular?”

“Because of its glacier. Examining glacial retreat is an excellent way to measure global warming. Let me explain. The upper part of a glacier, the part that gets the snowfall, is known as the accumulation zone. The lower part, the glacier’s foot, is the ablation zone. This is where ice is lost through melting. A healthy glacier has a large accumulation zone. And this glacier-the Fear-is not healthy. Its accumulation zone is small. Dr. Sully’s been recording the speed of its retreat. It took ten thousand years to form the glacier, bring it this far. But the alarming thing is that it has retreated a hundred feet in just the last twelve months…”

He stopped. Toussaint had lowered the camera, and Conti was perusing his clipboard again.
Time is money,
Marshall reminded himself.

Conti glanced up. “What’s the scientific name for the cat again, Dr. Marshall?”

“Smilodon.”

“And what was the Smilodon’s diet?”

“That’s one of the things we hope to discover with more accuracy. The contents of the stomach should-”

“Thank you, Doctor, I get your drift. Let’s try keeping it to general terms. Was this cat a meat eater?”

“All cats are meat eaters.”

“Did it eat humans?”

“I suppose so. When it could catch them.”

A look of impatience crossed Conti’s face. “Would you state that, please, for the camera?”

Marshall glanced at the camera and-feeling a little foolish-said, “Smilodons ate human beings.”

“Excellent. Now, how did you feel, Dr. Marshall, when you discovered the cat?”

Marshall frowned. “How did I feel? Shocked. Surprised.”

Conti shook his head. “You can’t say
that.
”

“Why not? I was very surprised.”

“Do you expect our sponsors to pay $500,000 a minute to hear you were ‘surprised’?” Conti thought for a moment. Then he turned the clipboard over, pulled an erasable marker from his shirt pocket, and scrawled something on the back. “Let’s try something. I’d like to hear how you sound reading this. Just for a sound test.” And he held the clipboard up.

Marshall peered at the handwriting. “It was like peering into the heart of darkness.”

“Again, please? Slowly, and with more drama. Look at the camera, not at the clipboard.”

Marshall repeated the sentence. Conti nodded with satisfaction, then turned to the assistant DP. “Get that?”

Toussaint nodded. Conti turned to the soundman in turn. “Got it?”

“Got it, chief.”

“Wait a minute,” Marshall said. “I didn’t say that. Those are your words.”

Conti spread his hands. “They’re good words.”

Marshall lost his patience. “You’re not interested in scientific accuracy here. You’re not interested in accuracy, period. You just want a good show.”

“That’s what I’m being paid for, Doctor. Now, let’s talk about you.” Conti glanced down at his clipboard again. “I had my researchers do a little digging into the members of this expedition. Your story is particularly interesting, Dr. Marshall. You were a decorated officer. You won the Silver Star. Yet you left the army with a dishonorable discharge. Is this true?”

“If it is, you could hardly expect me to want to talk about it, could you?”

“Let’s try again.” Conti pressed his hands together. “ Northern Massachusetts University is-how shall I put it?-not known for the quality of its academics. How does somebody like you end up a scientist-especially at a place like that?”

Marshall didn’t answer.

“You qualified as a sharpshooter. So why is it you’re the only member of your expedition who refuses to carry a rifle for protection?”

Abruptly, Marshall stood up. “You know what? Go find yourself another poster boy. I don’t think I’m going to answer any more questions.”

When Conti opened his mouth to speak, Marshall stepped closer. “And if you try to ask any, I’ll knock your annoying little ass across this lab table.”

There was a strained silence. Conti looked at him-the same appraising look he’d given him just before Wolff produced the contract. After a long moment, he spoke. “Let me explain something to you, Dr. Marshall. I am a powerful man-and not just in New York and Hollywood. If you decide to make an enemy of me, you’ll be making a rather large mistake.” He wiped the scrawl off the clipboard with the palm of his hand, then turned to Toussaint. “See if you can track down Dr. Sully. Something tells me that we’ll find him more cooperative.”

Later that night, Marshall found himself walking through the equipment-crowded corridors of B Level. In his lab and his quarters, he’d felt preoccupied and distracted-feelings not helped by the raucous conversations and clatter of passing gear. Knowing that, as usual, he’d find sleep difficult, he headed toward the surface to take the nightly walk that had become something of a habit with him.

He climbed the stairs and walked into the entrance foyer, his steps ringing on the metal-and-linoleum floor. The MP post was manned, as he knew it would be: since the documentary contingent had arrived, Sergeant Gonzalez had kept it staffed day and night, despite all the other demands on the soldiers’ time. But to Marshall ’s surprise the sentry station was manned by Gonzalez himself.

The sergeant nodded to him as he came up. Despite being well into his fifties, the man radiated a feeling of almost inexhaustible strength. “Doctor,” he said. “Going on your evening constitutional?”

“That’s right,” Marshall said. He felt a faint surprise: he didn’t know Gonzalez kept track of his movements. “Sleep’s a little hard to come by.”

“I’m not surprised-what with that frat party going on down there.” Gonzalez frowned. His bullet-shaped head seemed attached directly to his shoulders, and as he shook it in disapproval, heavy bulges appeared at the nape.

Marshall laughed. “They are a little noisy.”

Gonzalez scoffed. “Beg pardon, Doctor, but the noise is the least of it. There are just too damn many of them. We weren’t expecting half this many, and it’s putting my base under strain. The physical plant’s old, it’s been maintained only for light use. And this is hell and gone from light use. There are only four of us, we can’t nursemaid all of them. This afternoon Marcelin found one of them wandering out of bounds, in the military operations sector.” The frown deepened. “I’m half tempted to file a formal complaint.”

“Things should ease up soon. I think a dozen or so are leaving tomorrow.” He’d heard that once the bulk of the setup was complete, the roustabouts would be heading back south.

Gonzalez grunted. “Won’t be soon enough for me.”

Marshall glanced speculatively at him.
My base,
Gonzalez had called it. The man had reason to feel possessive. Now close to retirement, he’d supposedly spent almost thirty years at Fear Base, totally isolated, four hundred-odd miles north of the Arctic Circle. It seemed almost unbelievable-no doubt the other three soldiers couldn’t wait to finish their tours. Perhaps, Marshall speculated, he’d been here so long he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. Or perhaps-as Ekberg had hinted-he was just a man who valued his privacy.

Waving to Gonzalez, he headed toward the main entrance. The large external thermometer in the weather chamber displayed minus five degrees Fahrenheit. Opening his locker, he donned his parka, balaclava, snow boots, and gloves. Then he stepped through the staging area and pushed the outer doors open into the night.

The apron of concrete outside the base lay still beneath a vast dome of stars. He paused a moment, acclimating himself to the sharp chill of the air. Then he set off into the night, gloved hands in pockets, careful not to trip over the power cables that snaked underfoot. The wind had died away completely, and a gibbous moon lent a spectral blue light to the landscape. With the entire documentary staff currently inside Fear Base, the prefab huts and storage sheds were preternaturally silent. Everything seemed to be asleep. The only noise came from the powerhouse, which grumbled under the strain of supplying the power-hungry new inhabitants.

He paused at the perimeter fence, glancing carefully left and right. Since they had first arrived, there had been at least half a dozen polar bear sightings, but tonight no dark shapes could be seen prowling the endless permafrost or ugly coilings of ancient lava. Pulling his hood more tightly around his face, he walked past the empty guard post, letting his feet find their own path.

Soon he was climbing the steep valley toward the glacier, his breath streaming behind in great clouds. As he warmed to the work, his stride lengthened and his arms swung easily at his sides. A good dose of exercise, and just maybe he’d be able to sleep through all the noise the film crew generated.

In fifteen minutes, the slope lessened slightly. The hulking machinery had been repositioned and he had an unobstructed view of the glacier’s tongue, a deep blue wall of ice that seemed to glow in the moonlight with inner fire. And there, in its shadow, was the small black hole of the ice cave…

He stopped. There were figures standing at the mouth of the cave. Three of them, shadows within shadows.

More slowly, he approached. The three were talking: he could hear the muffled sounds of conversation. They turned at the crunch of his footsteps and to his surprise he recognized the other scientists: Sully, Faraday, Penny Barbour. The only team member missing was Ang, the graduate student. It was as if they had converged here-with a single mind-at the site of the discovery.

Sully nodded as Marshall joined them. “Nice night for a walk,” he said. One of the expedition’s hunting rifles was slung over his shoulder.

“Beats the madness back at the base,” Marshall replied.

If he’d expected the ever-politic Sully to protest at this, he was mistaken. The climatologist made a sour face. “They were filming some sequence in the tactical center, next door to my lab. Posing as us, if you can believe it. Must have done at least a dozen takes. Couldn’t hear myself think.”

“Speaking of films, how did your interview go?” Marshall asked.

The sour face deepened. “Conti stopped in mid-take. The soundman was complaining, saying-get this-that I was swallowing my words.”

Marshall nodded.

Sully turned to Barbour. “I don’t swallow my words, do I?”

“Bloody yobs crashed the file server this evening,” she said by way of reply. “As if they didn’t bring enough laptops of their own, they had to steal our processing cycles as well. Gave me some chat-up about ‘special rendering requirements.’ I didn’t half cause a fuss.”

“There was only a single empty seat when I went to dinner,” Marshall said.

“At least you got a seat,” Barbour said. “I waited, standing, for ten minutes before I packed it in. Took an apple and a bag of crisps back to my lab.”

Marshall glanced at Faraday. The biologist wasn’t joining in the conversation. Instead, he was staring into the cave, apparently lost in thought.

Although Marshall knew better, he heard himself ask anyway. “So, Wright, what’s your take on things?”

Faraday didn’t reply. Instead, he just kept looking into the dark maw that lay before them.

Marshall gave him a gentle poke. “Hey, Faraday. Rejoin the living.”

At this, Faraday glanced over. The moon had lent a spectral sheen to the lenses of his glasses, and he stared back at them like a goggle-eyed alien, looking perpetually surprised as usual. “Oh. Sorry. I was thinking.”

Sully sighed. “Okay, let’s have it. What’s the dire theory for the day?”

“Not a theory. Just an observation.” When nobody replied, Faraday continued. “Yesterday, when they were cutting the Smilodon out of the ice?”

“We were there,” Sully said. “What about it?”

“I took some readings with a sonar spectrometer. You know, since the earlier readings from the remote imager, top-down, were quite imprecise, and having access to a cross-section I wanted to-”

“We get the picture,” Sully said, waving a gloved hand.

“Well, I spent much of this afternoon analyzing the readings. And they don’t match.”

“Don’t match what?” Marshall asked.

“They don’t match a Smilodon.”

“Don’t be daft!” said Barbour. “You saw it, didn’t you? Like the rest of us, and all?”

“I saw very little, in an extremely cloudy medium. The sonar analyzer gave me far more data to examine.”

“So what are you saying?” Marshall asked.

“I’m saying that whatever’s inside that block of ice appears much too large to be a saber-toothed tiger.”

The little group fell silent, digesting this. After a few moments, Sully cleared his throat. “It must have been illusory. Some debris cloud you saw, maybe a lens of sand or gravel, trapped in a position to resemble the corpse.”

Faraday simply shook his head.

“Just how much larger, exactly?” Barbour asked.

“I can’t be precise. Perhaps twice as big.”

The scientists exchanged glances.

“Twice?” Marshall exclaimed. “So what
did
it look like, then? Mastodon?”

Faraday shook his head.

“Mammoth?”

Faraday shrugged. “The readings are pretty clear on the issue of size. They’re not as clear on, ah, shape.”

Another silence.

“Those were cat’s eyes,” Barbour said in a low voice. “I’d bet on it.”

“Sure seemed that way to me,” Marshall said. He glanced back at Faraday. “Positive those new readings are accurate?”

“I ran the analysis twice. Cross-checked everything.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” said Barbour. “If it’s not a Smilodon-not a mastodon-not a mammoth…then what the bloody hell is it?”

“There’s one way to find out,” Marshall said. “I’m tired of being pushed around our own research site.” And he began walking briskly down the slope in the direction of the base.