Dark Winter (29 page)

Tyson stepped up on the treads of the Spryte and looked back at Norse. "If I didn't do it, who did, Doc?"

"I'm not sure you didn't do it. I'm just praying it doesn't matter. Because with you gone and convicted in abstentia, any other murderer escapes suspicion. Which means he has good reason not to strike again."

Pika Taylor always woke first to check the generators and walk the archways, surveying their safety. It was he who discovered the open garage door and the missing Spryte. So much snow had blown into the entryway that he couldn't close the bay and had to fetch help to shovel it clear. His shouts woke the survivors.

A group filed into the garage and gaped at the opening and the tread tracks going up its ramp as if it were as miraculous as Jesus' tomb. The temperature in the vehicle shed had plunged, coating the workbenches and machinery with a flocking of frost. The winter-overs worked rapidly to clear the drifting snow, melt a rim of ice, and shut the bay door against the night. Then they went outside.

The darkness was deepening. The cloudless sky was beginning to spot with stars and the horizon had only the faintest of blushes, the blue there as eerie as the glow of Cherenkov radiation in a nuclear fuel rod pool. The snow glowed silver. There was no wind but it was bitterly cold. The tractor and sled tracks steered for the horizon as straight as the wake of an autopilot boat, the Spryte's message as plain as a telegram. Tyson was pointed toward Vostok station. Their nemesis had fled.

His escape was received as deliverance. The monster was gone. No longer did they have to fear him, hold him, or prepare the runway to export him. Their water crisis was solved in an instant. His blustering hunt for the meteorite became a bad dream. He left behind only the nervous disorientation that follows a nightmare, an emotional tingle as barely contained panic gave way to mutual reassurance. They'd survived! They straddled the tracks in numb relief.

That Norse must have had a role in Tyson's disappearance was quickly assumed. Despite the excitement, the psychologist didn't emerge from his room to follow them out into the snow and he didn't join in the wildfire of announcement. It was as if he already knew what they'd find out there. Rising later, he admitted nothing, nor did anyone pronounce it. Still, he hadn't talked to their bosses at the National Science Foundation and had gone to bed late the night before as if the problem were solved. Norse's equanimity about the mechanic's escape told the rest all they needed to know. He was calm, where Rod Cameron had visibly battled depression. Robert Norse was their rock.

"I wonder if Tyson took the rock," Geller said happily at a late breakfast, working through a celebratory stack of pancakes. "Maybe he found it. Maybe he's the one who took it all along."

"Good riddance if he did," Calhoun opined, forking a sausage.

"Maybe he'll hock it. Maybe we'll meet him years from now on a beach in Hawaii, tanned and retired, still sipping mai tais from Mickey Moss's meteorite. Maybe he's smarter than any of us and got Doctor Bob to help send him to the Russians."

"So?"

"So, it would be ironic if dumb old Buck got exactly what he wanted."

"If I survive this freezer and get back to a beach in Hawaii to see him, do you think I'll give a flying fuck?"

"Alexi," Geller asked with his mouth full, "you think Vostok will take him?"

The Russian shrugged. "Why not? He brings his own car, maybe his own food- even his survival scraps will be better than theirs. They'll radio: Who he is? We'll say a what, a… defector, just so they don't fear him and send him back. He'll work or he'll starve at that base. It will be worse for him than jail here. And he'll find some companions even scarier than he is. Only the hard-core ice-men still survive at Vostok. The real Russians." He grinned. "They chew leather and pound nails with their foreheads."

"The Brits up at Faraday wear leather and paint their nails," Dana said. "And their women are even kinkier." She'd rediscovered her spirit as soon as she blearily woke to find Tyson gone.

"I hear the Kiwis nail their women and leather their foreskins," Geller remarked.

"Well, the Argentines at Esperanza- " Calhoun began.

"Make fun of the Chileans at Bernardo O'Higgins who tell jokes about the Poles at Arctowski who long for the Chinese food at Zhongshan," their psychologist interrupted, sliding into a seat with a cup of coffee. Norse had come into the galley quietly. "It's a wonder any work gets done in Antarctica at all."

"We were just wishing Tyson the worst, Doctor Bob," Geller explained. "We figured the Russians would give it to him."

"He's given it to himself. The plateau at Vostok is a half mile higher than the Pole. The world record low was set there- minus 128.6 degrees." Norse said it as if the precision gave him pleasure. "And traveling seven hundred miles is like driving from Berlin to Moscow. He'll be doing well to get there without losing his fingers and toes."

"He brought it on himself."

Norse sipped somberly. "That's the question, isn't it? What was Buck's choice? The central conundrum of psychology. How much of what we do is free will and how much is genes and conditioning? How responsible are we for our actions?"

"One hundred fucking percent," Pulaski said, bringing a bottle of syrup from the pantry to replace what Geller had depleted. "If you don't believe that, then society doesn't work because nobody's responsible for anything. Don't give me the behavioralist song and dance. Tyson was a mean sonofabitch who scared everyone here and deserves every inch of frostbite he gets. The feds are going to have a lot to answer for by not taking him back to begin with, when he started grousing. The Pole is no place for malcontents. Uncle Sam better hope Rod's relatives don't find a good lawyer."

"Lawyers. Now, there's a scary bunch," said Geller.

"I happen to agree with you, Wade," Norse told the cook. "You can't have freedom without accepting free will, and all the risk and responsibility that goes with it. Buck believed that, too. He just wasn't very adept at fitting his philosophy into a group."

"He was damn antisocial," said Calhoun.

"He refused to follow but he also refused to lead," Norse corrected. "He tried to isolate himself in a place where that was a physical impossibility. He had to either change the Pole, change himself, or leave. Rod's death made him realize that, and he left."

That struck Abby, who was listening, as a little too neat. "You're saying he should have tried to take over?"

"I'm saying that just as the natural world is an evolutionary struggle of species against species, society is an intellectual and emotional struggle of ego against ego. You conquer or you submit. You impose your own will or you labor under someone else's. You lead or you follow because life's a dance. Mere rebels, like Buck, simply hang or go into exile." The psychologist sipped his coffee again.

"I thought the whole point was to work together," Abby said. "We're a team. That's what makes the Pole work, our working together."

"Or not work when you have a malcontent. Then it boils down to leadership. I was hoping Rod would come to terms with the need for leadership, or at least I was observing his struggle, and then…"

There was quiet, everyone thinking about the murder.

"You did the right thing to get rid of Buck," Dana finally said. There. It was out in the open. She'd said what everyone knew.

Norse's mouth twisted wryly, not trying to deny it. "He had a knife but… I just gave him a choice and he got rid of himself. It's not a light thing, you know. More like banishment in the Middle Ages. Back then everything was kin and clan. Being forced out was being forced into poverty. No family, no land, no equivalent of social security to take you into whatever old age you could manage. Exile was a kind of death sentence. Down here, with our feudal cluster of bases, maybe it's not so different."

"Don't be so grim, Doc," Pulaski said. "The research stations help each other, they don't besiege each other. Tyson will survive if he can make it. I'm not sure the bastard deserves to survive."

"That is the question, yes?" said Molotov. "Will he make it?"

"No, the real question is how we're going to celebrate his leaving," said Geller. "I propose a thank-God-I'm-still-here dinner and a polar cocktail contest."

"Here, here," Dana said.

"The pig!" Pulaski suggested.

"The what?" Calhoun asked.

"I had one shipped down for our winter solstice party. I'm thinking maybe we need it now. You know, Hawaiian luau? What do you think, Doc? Good for morale?"

"Good for my morale."

"Yes, bring on the mai tais!" Dana said. "And an initiation session into the Three Hundred Degree Club!"

"Is it cold enough?" Geller asked.

"Didn't you feel it this morning?" she asked. "Breathing out there was like drinking Drno."

"The temperature's getting down there," the cook agreed. "We'll have to get an official reading from Lewis out in Clean Air. Assuming he gives us the time of day. That fingie has been treated pretty rough."

Norse looked at the New Zealander. "You ready to accept Jed, Dana?"

She sighed. "I don't know. When I saw him with that severed cord, and Harrison's hand reaching through the snow… I thought the worst. Unlike Abby, here, I can't warm up to Lewis. He's quiet, hard to read. But yes, we're down to just twenty-two now. Buck's escape points to Lewis's innocence, right?"

"Let's assume so," the psychologist said. "I don't think they were Butch and Sundance. Bonnie and Clyde."

"God, I didn't even consider if the killer had an accomplice!"

Norse looked at her evenly. "Or if Tyson was the wrong man."

She looked uncertain. "We still don't know for sure, do we?"

"We never know for sure on anything. In a courtroom or down here. All the important things in life remain a mystery. So, your verdict on Jed. Your responsibility. Your choice. Your call."

She glanced at Abby. "Bring him in." She sighed. "It was Buck. Or I'll go crazy."

"Call Lewis up, Cueball," Norse told their cook. "Find out if we're going to get weather severe enough to let we fingies join your club."

Every tribe has its initiation, Lewis thought. This is mine.

The temperature at Clean Air had actually registered only ninety-eight degrees below zero but he'd promised Norse that it would keep on dropping and then altered the thermometer link to the dome to make sure the reading on the galley television screen fell to minus one hundred. The slight subterfuge seemed justified after all he'd gone through. This was his way back into the fold.

Pulaski, who'd done this once before, briefed those who assembled outside the sauna. "First of all, this club- short of having walked on the moon- may be the most exclusive on the planet," he told them. "You've gotta be at the Pole when it's a hundred below, which means you've got to be here in winter, which means you've got to be stupid enough to sign on for eight toasty months of cheerful isolation." There was nervous laughter among the group.

"Accordingly, it may also be the most foolish club on the planet. There's some polar plunges into the Antarctic ocean at Palmer, and dips into the frozen lakes near McMurdo, but for sheer idiocy I think we take the cake. This is a story you can tell your grandchildren about- and if you do, they'll have you institutionalized."

The tittering had an edge to it.

"Exhibit One is this temperature gauge." He pointed to the dial registering the temperature inside the sauna. "As you can see, our cedar box is crawling upward to two hundred degrees above zero, just about enough to let me slow-roast some meat. That's you." He gave his best evil smile, the lights glinting off his bald head. Cueball could look scary when he wanted to.

"Exhibit Two is your appearance. This is the South Pole, people, and you look like you bought tickets to Tahiti." Laughter again. Thirteen of the twenty-two survivors were bunched outside the sauna door, men and women segregating into separate groups. All were wrapped in towels, had tennis shoes on to protect their feet, and clutched balaclavas, scarves, or gaiters to cover their mouths at the critical moment. Still, there was more bare skin on display than they'd seen for months. Their bodies looked pasty in the fluorescent light, like shelled oysters. The clumped flesh was as depersonalizing as a military haircut.

"Exhibit Three is the goal: to endure the heat until it hits the two-hundred-degree mark, to drop your towels, and then to sprint stark-raving naked except for shoes and head covering to the South Pole marker, or as close to it as you care to go, given safety and screaming common sense. A three-hundred-degree-difference shock to the senses. For those of you hoping for an erotic experience, let me disappoint. We dim the lights for privacy, and subzero temperatures have a way of diminishing- and I do mean diminishing- any sexual ardor. Nature attacks any and all appendages. I urge you to listen to your body and retreat prudently: We had a case of genital frostbite one year and it was not a pretty sight. Nipples, noses- anything that sticks out."

"Jesus, they got more encouragement at Omaha Beach," Geller muttered. "You're not exactly getting my spirits up."

"That's just what I'm saying, George. Don't get anything up."

"Or don't get it up around me," Nancy Hodge added.

"I shrivel every time I have to see you, Doc."

"Yeah. I noticed."

"Ooh, that hurts!" the men hooted. "That's more painful than the cold!"

"Who does get it up for you, Nurse Nancy?"

"If this is an issue for you, George, there's some new drugs in BioMed that might help."

More moans and laughter.

"Okay, enough anticipation," Pulaski interrupted. "Doctor Bob can take care of all your Freudian problems while you're packed like Pringles in the sauna. I'll open the door to let you out after it hits two hundred. Move briskly, but not recklessly. Don't fall on the ice and break your leg."