White Heat (52 page)

    Edie
grimaced. 'No,' she said. '
Spirits
come from the spirit world. Meteors
come from outer space.'

    'ALH
84001, you know about that?' he said. She had proved herself sufficiently that he
wanted to pull rank on her. This was good.

    She
shook her head.

    'No,
of course you don't,' he said, pleased.

    'You
could tell me,' she said. 'Just to pass the time. Or, if you don't feel like
it, I've got some stories.'

    'Christ,
no,' he said. 'Goose-men, walrus spirits, I've had a bellyful of that shit.
Smile, interact with the natives, kiss my ass.'

    'Then
educate me,' she said.

    He
looked at her quizzically. She answered him with a weak smile. She'd offered
him an outlet for his loneliness and he'd taken it.

    'ALH
84001 is the fancy name for a meteorite found in Antarctica. Ten years ago, a
guy called David McKay, working at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, claimed
it contained fossilized life.'

    A
thin, cold snow was beginning to fall. DeSouza got up. They were obviously
waiting for someone, or something.

    'Ah
shit,' he said.

    Edie
craned her neck in the direction of the tent. 'It's warm in there.'

    He
motioned her to go ahead. At the entrance to the tent he told her to stop and
lift the flap far enough back so he could see in. He went in backwards, took
out Derek Palliser's rifle, cracked it open and threw it into the snow. While
he was occupied, Edie peered into the gloaming, trying to think of some way she
might trick DeSouza out of his weapon. Her eye fell on the footprints he had
made in the new snow. The pattern was familiar, the same zig-zag with the brand
stamp and the ice-bear logo she'd seen up on the bluff just after Felix Wagner
was shot.

    The
professor emerged from the tent carrying a reel of fishing twine. Pushing Edie
inside with his rifle butt, he motioned her to sit then bound her ankles and
wrists. Then he sat back and lit one of Derek's Lucky Strikes. Silence fell,
interrupted only by the sound of the policeman's light snores. It seemed as
though DeSouza had decided not to say any more. She'd have to tread carefully.
She knew for sure now that he was a killer. He had shot Felix Wagner. She
wanted him to know that she knew, that someone else was keeping his secret.
Waiting until he'd nearly finished his smoke, she ventured:

    'Is
that how you and Felix Wagner met? You both worked at the Space Center?'

    DeSouza
shrugged. 'The guy was a jerk. A zero.' His face contorted into a snarl. They'd
met as freshmen at the University of Washington's Arctic Club, he explained.
Later, after Wagner had made a lot of money in real estate, he used his
connection to DeSouza to join the Arctic Hunters' Club.

    'Felix
was a hustler, not a real hunter. Once he was in the club, he cultivated
Fairfax for his contacts and Belovsky for his money. You should have seen him,
oiling up to those guys. Bear hunting in the Caucasus, shooting pheasants in
some English castle. It was grotesque.'

    'That
was when he found out about the stone and the diary, right?' Edie watched
DeSouza's face for signs of irritation but saw none. He seemed to have
forgotten that she was his captive.

    'I
guess that selling the same information to Zemmer and to Belovsky and thinking
neither of them would find out wasn't exactly a smart move,' she said.

    DeSouza
looked at her with an expression of grudging admiration. He was back in the
game.

    'Not
so stupid as you say, eh?' he said, with some regret. 'Better for you if you
had been.'

    'Wagner
was stupid and look what happened to him,' she said. 'Andy Taylor too.'

    DeSouza's
snarl returned. 'Wagner always had these hangers-on and they were always
bozos.' He took a breath to calm himself. 'I didn't have anything to do with
the Taylor business. Didn't have to. The Russians got there first.' DeSouza
laughed.

    Edie
took her cue and went in closer. 'Tell me about ALH 84001.'

    He
looked at her, weighing up whether or not she was worth the effort of
engagement, then softened. The loneliness again.

    'Last
year,' he said, 'McKay went back to the stone and analysed it using . . .'He
hesitated, shot Edie a wary look and drew back. 'Never mind.'

    Edie
brought to mind the report Mike Nungaq had given her, and scanned through all
the technical terms she could remember.

    'Electron
microscopy?'

    DeSouza
cracked a tiny smile. Her reward was for him to continue. Right now, what he
needed, even more than he thought he needed the stone, was someone who
understood his obsessions.

    'All
the work so far has been focused on magnetite. All the official work, that is.'

    'Official
work, walrus ass,' she said, dismissively.

    'I'm
getting to like your style,' he replied, more relaxed now

    'It's
just a lack of brains,' she said. He was so easy.

    'You
know what nanobes are?'

    She
shook her head. This time she really didn't.

    'Tiny,
fossilized extraterrestrial forms, a billionth of a metre in diameter. They've
been found in magnetite and halite here on earth and in ALH 84001. Some say
they're a form of life but it's never been proved.'

    She
could feel the energy coming from him again.

    'I
think I can prove that they
are
life and what's more, that they lived on
Mars.'

    She held
her breath. There was a plane coming. She could feel the rumble before the
noise became audible. DeSouza hadn't detected it yet.

    'Do
you know what that means? Men win Nobels for less.'

    So
that was it. The realization was all the more terrible for its mundanity. Like
so many brilliant men and women driven solely by their ambition, DeSouza had
traded in his humanity somewhere along the way

    'But
to do that you need the stone,' she said, a little too loud, eager to distract
him while she tried to determine the direction of the engine sound.

    He
tipped his head slightly to the side. 'And research time.'

    'Which
costs money,' she said.

    The
engine was audible now. DeSouza had heard it. He motioned Edie to stand up
then, taking out his hunting knife and cutting the fishing line around her
ankles, he said:

    'Come
meet an old friend.'

    It
was snowing and a low cloud had fallen across the sea. The sound of the plane
grew louder. As they stood on the shale listening to the swell of the engine,
the air began to vibrate. Instinctively, Edie checked the direction and
strength of the wind.
Tarramiliivuq;
it was turning to the north. A
terrible dawning began to edge its way across her mind.

    Johannes
Moller. That fat old walrus fart was in this deeper than she'd realized.

    A
spot appeared among the clouds, blooming then resolving into the familiar shape
of a Twin Otter. But the plane coming towards them wasn't Moller's.

    It
was Auntie Martie's.

    A
surge of hope shot into Edie's throat. She wanted to whoop. Martie had seen
them.

    'She's
your aunt, isn't she?' DeSouza shook his head. 'And you people always say
family comes first.'

    She
looked at him, anxious now and unsure of his meaning.

    The
plane was descending rapidly and heading directly for the shoreline. Edie
waited for Martie to swoop up and bank around in preparation for a landing on
the water parallel to the shore, but the Otter advanced towards the land,
dropping until it seemed as though it was skimming the waves. DeSouza began to
look alarmed.

    'What
the fuck?'

    The
Otter kept on coming. It was no more than a hundred metres from them now,
flying so low they could feel the air around them being sucked towards the
wings, so close that Edie could almost see the expression on her aunt's face.
As it grew nearer, DeSouza cracked. She heard him cry then make a sudden dive
for the shale, covering his head with his hands, his rifle lying unprotected
beside him. The plane roared overhead then swooped upwards. In an instant Edie
was making a beeline for the rifle, struggling against the ties on her wrists.
The plane rose and banked.

    Before
she could reach it, DeSouza jumped up and grabbed the weapon, swinging it
wildly. Before he could gather himself, the plane had turned and was coming in
for another pass.

    Edie
watched it approach. As the Otter swung in low once more she stumbled
backwards, making for the tent. Momentarily distracted by the sound of her feet
on the shale, DeSouza lurched about and raised his rifle. The bullet passed her
with a whistle and ricocheted off the rock behind. The plane was nearly on
DeSouza now. She saw him drop and again cover his head with his arms. Racing
for the tent, she scoped about for Derek's rifle, thinking she might just have
time to grab it, dive into the tent, cut the fishing line around her wrists and
reload before DeSouza got to her. By now the plane had completed its swoop. She
could hear the engine screeching into an ascent. Behind her, DeSouza would be
lifting himself off the ground. Her head was fizzing and she felt every muscle
stiffen. Glancing back, she saw him raise his rifle and instinctively hit the
shale.

    The
plane was banking over the sea ice, preparing for another pass. DeSouza was
heading her way now, shouting and screaming obscenities, his rifle pointed at
her head. She felt her breath catch in her throat. Suddenly, DeSouza stopped,
settled the rifle into his shoulder and leaned into the sight. There was a loud
crack and for an instant everything seemed to stop. She felt a spray of blood
across her face and she froze, uncomprehending. DeSouza fell forward.

    He
was kneeling in the shale, his face buried in it as though he had been caught drinking
at a stream. An unearthly gurgling sound was coming from his chest. A pool of
blood began to spread out from his mouth. Edie stood up and turned to see Derek
Palliser, lowering his rifle and cracking a smile.

    'Square
knots.' Derek limped towards her. 'Edie, you think of everything.'

    As
the plane moved out into the open water and was coming round for a landing she
told Derek what had happened, filling in the details as they went to fetch
Saomik Koperkuj, carrying him back to the beach in a tarp. He was so light, so
frail, it was a wonder he was still alive, but he was. Sick, with a shallow,
racing pulse, but alive.

    Martie
was waiting for them. There was no time then for explanations. They loaded the
old man onto Edie's snowmobile trailer and from there onto the seaplane.

    By
the time they went back for DeSouza he was already dead.

    'You
go with the old man,' Derek said. 'I'll call the science station, get someone
to come pick up the director.'

    She
and Derek looked at each other. Something passed between them.

    A
short while into the flight, Koperkuj seemed to regain consciousness and began
to groan. Edie reached for the first-aid kit tied to the back of the bulkhead
and pulled it down. The plane gave a little lurch over a cloud and dislodged a
box packaged in shrink wrap lying behind it. Pushing it to one side, Edie took
out a foil of Vicodin tabs from the first-aid kit, crushed a couple up, pulled
aside the old man's trousers and, donning a pair of vinyl gloves, inserted the
powder into the old man's rectum. Pretty soon, the groaning stopped.

    She
pulled off the gloves and threw them aside, picked up the box and noticed the
distinct vinegary, vegetable smell, the same smell she'd noticed in Martie's
cabin. Her aunt was preoccupied with something on the instrument panel. Drawing
out her knife, Edie made a small cut in the shrink wrap around the box then
through the card, opened it up and inserted her thumb and finger. A white
powder clung to her thumb. She raised it to her mouth and took a little on her
tongue. The bitterness made her shiver.

    She
thought about her aunt's incessant scratching and the burn marks on the spoon
in her cabin. She remembered now, too, how delicately her house had been
searched, with a knowledge of the places she might put things, care taken to
put every object back in its exact place. So that's who DeSouza had meant by an
'old friend', when he had ironized about Inuit putting family first. It was
Martie he'd been waiting for, Martie who had warned DeSouza they were on their
way.