Dark Winter (44 page)

"Yes, Abby's," Lewis said impatiently. "Does that make her the killer?"

"Nancy was smart and the murderer was in too much of a hurry to look at her folder," Norse went on. "It was a grave mistake. Because when we looked at the X rays…" He glanced at the cook.

"They were Jed's," Pulaski concluded quietly.

The group began to buzz like a disturbed hive. What had Lewis been mumbling about X rays? Lewis felt dizzy. The cook pulled out the film of his teeth and it began to be passed around the room like damning proof. Everything had gone horribly wrong.

"I'm sure you can appreciate how embarrassing this is for me," Norse said sadly. "I came down here thinking I was a pretty good shrink. I thought I was a decent judge of character. I bet that Jed Lewis could be trusted. I told Rod he could be trusted. I stuck up for him when the rest of you were suspicious. But I was wrong, dead wrong, and I mean dead in the most literal way. I don't expect you to forgive me. I certainly won't forgive myself. All I ask is that we act, and act now."

"Act how?" Gina Brindisi said in a small voice.

Norse took a breath. "Jed Lewis appears to have directly or indirectly killed six people. Maybe seven, if he's butchered Abby. It's not for me to say if we know that beyond a reasonable doubt. It's for you. But for our own survival and peace of mind, we can't wait out the winter. We can't wait for distant rescue. The final say has to be a group decision, but…"

"You want to execute him?"

Norse looked at Gina sadly. "I don't want to execute anyone. None of us does."

"But what, then?" Geller asked. "Where can we keep him?"

"I want Antarctica to do it."

There was a long silence as they realized what he meant.

"You mean put him outside the dome," Pulaski clarified.

"Where he can sabotage even more!" Dana objected.

Norse shook his head. "I want him tied out on the snow until he can't do us any more harm. If we remove most of his clothing it won't take very long. It's not that cruel a death. He'll shiver and go to sleep. And none of us have to be the executioner."

They looked at Lewis uneasily: hateful, fearful, sad.

"He's a shrink, dammit!" Lewis shouted. "He's playing with your minds!"

"All this trouble started when Jed Lewis arrived," Norse summed up. "I predict it will end when Jed Lewis is no longer a factor. I don't want to risk anyone else. We're facing a catastrophe and have only each other to rely on. I won't do it alone, but I'll do it with you. We'll do it together, as a group, in unity. And then it will all be over."

"If we freeze him can we reopen the station?" Mendoza asked. "Get back to work?"

"We can if you believe he's your killer."

"Listen to me," Lewis groaned. "Norse is not Norse! He's an impostor! He's manipulating you! He's playing with the station for some kind of sick experiment!"

"Is that so?" Pulaski asked. He shook his head, wondering what fantasy Lewis would weave next.

"I called out to learn about him and nothing adds up."

"You dialed up from the sauna?" Geller said derisively.

"No, no-o-o," Lewis said. How to get through to them? "I got outside the dome, went to Clean Air! I started the generator at the emergency camp and rerouted some power- "

"Bullshit. The dome's sealed."

"I went out through the vent hole, at the top."

"How? With a stepladder?"

"I used one of Jerry's balloons. Ask him, one's missing."

They turned to Follett, who looked puzzled. "A balloon?"

"To carry a rope up to the top of the dome. I know it sounds crazy but it worked."

"How did you get my balloons?"

"I stole one," Lewis said, less desperation in his voice now. At least they were paying attention.

"So you're a thief." It was flat confirmation.

"To get out!"

Follett waved his hand dismissively. "I don't believe a word you say."

"Go count!"

"Count what? I've lost track of my balloons. It proves nothing!"

"Damn right, it doesn't," Geller said.

"You've heard Bob, now hear me," Lewis insisted desperately. "Everything he's told you is backward. Everything he's told you has been twisted around. There's a psychologist named Robert Norse who got lost in New Zealand. Who died, I think. And our Norse followed him and took his place and came down here to, to…"

"To what?" Pulaski asked.

"I don't know. To screw us up somehow. But that's not the real Norse." He pointed to Bob.

"Who is he, then?"

"I don't know."

The others groaned. Norse had a pitying smile.

"No, listen! He came to Auckland after the real Norse had disappeared on some hike or climb! Gabriella had the date. Nancy Hodge was going to compare the dental X rays Norse sent in advance to NSF with the ones this impostor brought down with him. But when I went to see her she was already dead! Think! Why would I kill her?"

"Because maybe you are the impostor," Molotov said slowly. "You, the geologist doing weather, which makes no sense. You who show up at the last minute. You, who knew about the value of the meteorite. You, whose X rays are on the dead body."

"Norse planted them there! Why would I leave them?"

"Because we found you before you looked at them," Geller growled. "Just like Bob said."

"What Jed has just told you is completely absurd," Norse added unnecessarily.

"He's looking for some chance to escape," Dana said. "Some chance to kill again."

"Dammit, I'm trying to save the rest of you!"

"Then where are these X rays you claim incriminate me?" Norse demanded. "Let's see this supposed proof!"

"I don't know," he admitted more quietly. "I don't have them."

"And I don't have them, either. I looked for my X rays after we captured you and they've disappeared. Very convenient, isn't it, for you to remove any chance for me to prove my own innocence? Your whole story is tissue, Lewis. I don't even believe you got out of the dome."

Inspiration struck. "Really? Because I can prove that part to you! The rope I used is hidden in the snow behind Comms! Would I have put a rope there if I'm not telling the truth? Go out to a working computer like I did! Use the satellites like I did!"

"And look for what?" Mendoza said. "People with the same common name?"

"Just do it and draw your own conclusions, Carl."

Norse looked uncertain. "Maybe you planted that rope as an alibi."

"Come on, you know that's crazy! I didn't plan this! Look, let's go out into the dome if you don't believe me!"

There was an uneasy silence. They wanted it over. They just wanted it to be him.

"Let's look," Steve Calhoun, the carpenter, finally said, standing up. "I'm not exposing anybody until I'm certain. I don't know what a rope proves, but if it's there we can at least see if it's long enough."

"It's long! I doubled it, in a loop, so I could pull it back down!"

"Maybe long enough to hang you, if it comes to that," Pulaski warned.

"If I'm telling the truth, will you look into the rest of it?"

They were wary, but here was something easy to check. The assembly pulled on parkas and boots and went outside, circling behind Comms.

"There! I buried it there!"

Several moved forward and dug with their mittens. Nothing.

Lewis was confused. "No, it was there somewhere! Dig more!"

He watched them with growing hopelessness as they dug and kicked.

The rope was gone.

"Everything you've ever told us has been a lie, hasn't it?" Pulaski said quietly. "All this slaughter for a damn meteorite?"

Lewis felt dizzy. He was exhausted from fighting them. Everything he tried made things worse. He slumped on his knees on the snow. "Then ask Abby," he groaned.

"We can't find Abby," Dana said.

"Please. Lock me up if you don't believe me. Just check out Bob before you put me out in the cold." His gaze flickered from one face to another, looking for an ally. Several looked away.

"We tried that," Geller told the others. "And every time we do, another of us winds up dead."

They unwired and unbolted the smaller door that led to the dome ramp, breaching their fortress for this one grave duty. Then they filed upward to the plateau like a hooded procession of monks, Lewis bound and hobbled. Everyone was there because Norse insisted that everyone be there, that they make this decision together, that they unify as a group. "When we explain that we did this to save the station, it has to be unanimous," he told them. "Beyond a reasonable doubt."

Several looked sick. But they came along.

The night outside was green and gold and red, a shimmer of auroral light caught by the earth's magnetic field. Lewis was going to die under the colors of Christmas. The stars had added their illumination to the starlit glow of snow, and the plateau was a silver mirror of color, a spangle of galaxies. They glittered above and glittered below, like the spark of Mickey's neutrinos. The survivors marched on a platter of stars.

A long metal tube used for ice coring was solemnly screwed into the snow at the South Pole stake until it was as rigid and strong as a fence post. They would tie Lewis there. The temperature was almost a hundred degrees below zero again, the air still. "It's kinder than what he did to our friends," Pulaski told the others, to help stiffen their resolve. "He'll go quickly and then it will be over."

They wrestled Lewis out of his parka and slit open his windpants, the sting of the invading cold instantaneous. They disregarded his wince. Their souls were as frozen as the Pole now, their mood vengeful. They'd had enough. They were going to extinguish their own fear.

"You're killing an innocent man," Lewis gasped as the cold hit him. "When I'm gone it will all start again and then this will be on your conscience, too."

"Can't we gag him?" Geller asked.

"He's trying to divide us," Mendoza added.

"No, let him talk," Norse said. "Let him predict. So that when it does end, after he's gone, you can all take heart in the knowledge that you did the right thing."

They looked at Lewis, waiting for him to say more, and in the end he didn't know what more to say.

When they lashed him to the coring tube it burned through his thermal undershirt like hot iron. He writhed against it, struggling to think, already in mental shock because the absurdity of his dilemma was overwhelming. He'd come to the bottom of the world for companionship, and his companions were about to kill him. He'd come for purpose, and instead had found death. The sky was the most glorious he'd ever seen and he was about to see nothing ever again.

It was insane.

He wanted to weep, but his tears had frozen, too.

"How long will it take?" Lena Jindrova asked, her voice trembling.

"He'll be lucky to last half an hour," Pulaski replied.

"This doesn't feel right," she whispered.

Norse put his arm around her. "It's right if we do it together."

The coring tube was high enough that it was impossible for Lewis to slip his bonds over the top of it. They stood in a semicircle around him and watched for a moment, sickly fascinated, but he was beginning to shiver and no one wanted to watch this death for very long, the slow freezing that all of them unconsciously feared.

"Do we really all have to be out here?" Gina Brindisi asked.

"It has to be unanimous," Norse said. "So there's no finger-pointing afterward. So we can come together afterward."

"I'm not taking any satisfaction in this," she said.

"I am," Geller muttered. "I hope it fucking hurts."

"When the shivering stops, so will the pain," Pulaski promised. "His brain will shut down pretty fast." He finished his knots and stepped back.

They watched Lewis clench against the cold and then go into a quick spasm of shivering, his stare hollow now and far away. Then he'd shake again, rattling against the stake like a husk in the wind.

"I'm leaving," Gina threatened. A few others nodded.

Norse turned away as well, addressing the others. "This is pretty difficult for some of us. A hard choice, hard to watch. Hard for me. We don't need any more nightmares. Can you stand watch, Cueball? You've been a soldier. I'd like to take the rest of us back to the dome. We've got some healing to do."

The cook looked at the hopeless Lewis. "Go heal."

They turned, a depleted platoon, Lewis hanging from the coring tube as if he were about to be shot. Six dead, a seventh dying. Abby missing, Skinner blinded. And months of isolation to go. It had been a disaster to allow the fingie to come at the last minute. A disaster not to have screened him first, not to have incorporated him from the beginning, not to have learned something about his warped personality.

A disaster to trust.

Their next job was to find Abby, deal with her, and then somehow piece the station back together. Endure the dark winter. Wait again for the first blush of sunlight, and with it their distant rescue.

"Goodbye, Jed," Gina said sorrowfully as they began to move away.

"Good riddance," Calhoun amended.

They started to follow their own boot prints back to the dome.

And then a shout from the crest of the ramp, two figures stumbling toward them. Again they had the anonymous hoods up but the one in the lead was obviously Abby, struggling over the sastrugi drifts of snow because she was bent with some burden on her back. Her left hand was extended to her companion, who could only be Skinner. "Stop!" she shouted again. Her high voice drifted, a crystal note, a bell on the stillness of the plateau. "Let him go!"

"Don't listen to her!" Norse warned. He'd stiffened.

But they did stop until she stormed up, gasping for breath, her gaiter a white beard of ice. Straightening her back, she rolled something off that looked like a squat mortar and let it fall with a plop on the snow. Skinner stopped beside her, swaying unsteadily, goggles missing but his eyes swathed, his head cocked at an angle toward a sky he couldn't see, so that he could hear better from one ear at the edge of his hood. He looked stricken.