The Arctic Code (22 page)

“Guess you don't know everything,” Eleanor said.

“You are right about that.” Skinner pointed his gun at Finn's head. “Miss Perry, where is your mother? And do not even consider lying to me again, or Mr. Powers here will pay.”

“N
O
!” D
R
. P
OWERS CRIED
. “S
KINNER, HE
'
S A CHILD
!”

Eleanor panicked. “She's in the village! Please! Just— just don't shoot!”

Finn was shaking so hard, Eleanor could see it through all his layers of gear.

“Village?” Skinner said. “What village?”

“PLEASE!” Eleanor shouted. “Take the gun away!”

“Answer my question, Miss Perry.” Skinner extended the barrel even closer to Finn. “What village?”

“
Their
village!” Eleanor's voice deteriorated. “Under the ice sheet.”

Skinner held still for several moments without
speaking, the gun unwavering. “Show me,” he finally said, turning the gun on her.

Eleanor nodded her acquiescence, glad Finn was no longer in danger, then bowed her head as she led the way toward the fissure. She felt Amarok's people watching her, and she betrayed them with every step, passed the wounded and the dead, men, women, and wolves. But what else could she do? The battle was lost.

Skinner gave an order to one of his men. “Keep them here until I return. Take no chances. If they give you trouble, shoot them.”

“Yes, sir.”

Skinner pressed the gun to Eleanor's back. “Let's go, Miss Perry. Just you and me.”

They left Polaris Station behind and crossed the quarter mile of ice. As they approached the fissure, Dr. Skinner shook his head. “I should have noticed this before. Where does it lead?”

“All the way down,” Eleanor said.

They climbed down in silence, passing Amarok's empty sled. At the sight of it, all Eleanor could think was that her mother had been right. It had been suicide to think the villagers could make a stand against the modern world and prevail.

After they had descended some distance, Skinner spoke up. “I must say, I'm surprised to see you
alive, Miss Perry. After our last communication, I'd been expecting to find a corpse waiting at those coordinates. You seemed to be in bad shape.”

At the reminder of his deception, a spark of anger ignited in Eleanor, lighting a path through her despair and defeat. She followed its heat, coaxing it to life. “What did you do to Luke?” she asked.

“Mr. Fournier? He escaped right after you did. Fled to Barrow, I believe.”

At least he was alive and unharmed.

“I know about the rogue planet,” Eleanor said.

Skinner sighed. “That is unfortunate. Your silence is critical, Miss Perry.”

“So you're going to kill me? Kill my mom? Kill everyone who finds out about it?”

“Don't be absurd,” he said. “You will all be given the opportunity to adopt the Preservation Protocol.”

“Preservation Protocol?” Eleanor remembered that name from her science class, the conspiracy theory Mr. Fiske had dismissed. So it was real. “Is this what you call
preservation
?”

“You waste my time, Miss Perry.”

“How?”

“You lack the maturity to understand.”

“I understand perfectly well that you have a gun to my back.”

“You think I am evil,” Skinner said. “But I am safeguarding human life on this planet in a systematic way that maximizes its chances at a meaningful survival. Millions have died as a result of this ice age. Billions will follow. What does your life amount to among them? The relative value of a single life is insignificant when compared—”

“My life is NOT insignificant!” Eleanor stopped and spun around to face him. He still held the gun, but she didn't care. “My mom's life is not insignificant! Neither is Uncle Jack's! Or Finn's! They all deserve to know! They deserve the chance to fight—”

“NO!” Skinner bellowed. “Human beings are not equipped to handle this threat! If it had been left to the population at large, our world would already be in a state of chaos with ZERO chance of survival!”

His argument sounded familiar. It echoed the discussion between Eleanor's mother and Dr. Powers over Amarok's decision to fight for his home against the spheres of Polaris Station. Skinner almost sounded like her mom.

“Has anyone gone up there?” Eleanor asked.

“Where?” Skinner asked.

“To the rogue world.”

He sighed. “You make my point for me, Miss Perry. Why would we waste our diminishing energy
resources on a pointless mission to a lifeless, uninhabitable world? If you were in charge, we'd—”

“It isn't uninhabited,” Eleanor said.

“Pardon me?”

“I won't, but what I said is that the rogue world isn't uninhabited.”

He snorted. “Don't be ridiculous.”

Eleanor wished she could see his face to know if he was being sincere. Could it be that he didn't know? Perhaps he didn't. Perhaps no one did.

“Miss Perry,” he said, adopting a condescending tone, “rogue worlds travel the harsh vacuum of space. They are orphans, without a parent star to give them energy and create the conditions to sustain life. They are
dead
by definition.”

Eleanor turned away from him and resumed her descent. Perhaps if he saw the Concentrator, he would understand. Perhaps if he realized what the earth faced, he would stop what he was doing. Amarok and his people couldn't fight the G.E.T., but perhaps Eleanor could change their course.

“You need to see something,” she said.

W
hen they reached the end of the canyon, and the cavern opened wide, Skinner's even, calculated demeanor finally slipped, if only for a moment. “My God,” he
whispered. “I've never seen anything like this.”

Eleanor pulled off her mask. “It's warm down here,” she said. “You won't need your gear.”

Skinner removed his mask too. “Those huts up ahead,” he said. “They appear to be constructed of mammoth bones.”

“They are,” Eleanor said. “That's Amarok's village.”

“Who is this Amarok you keep mentioning?”

“He's the man you shot,” Eleanor said, filling each word with venom.

“Where is your mother?”

“I told you, in the village.”

“Do you know the location of the energy signature?”

“On the other side of the cavern.”

“Take me there.”

Eleanor led him past Amarok's other sled, between the mammoth-bone huts, to the center of the village, where Skinner stopped and called, “Dr. Perry? Come out, please! I have your daughter!”

Eleanor watched the flap of their hut from the corner of her eye, waiting for her mother to emerge. She didn't.

“Dr. Perry!” Skinner shouted.

Silence. Still no sign of her mom. Eleanor wondered where she could have gone. They would have passed
her if she'd come up the crevasse.

Skinner jabbed Eleanor in the ribs with his gun. “I believe you have lied to me, Miss Perry.”

“This is where she was when I left,” Eleanor said. “I swear.”

“Hmm.” He narrowed his eyes. “Then take me to the energy source. If you have lied to me, your liability will have exceeded your usefulness.”

Eleanor felt a fresh surge of fear. Without her mom, she was alone down here with this man. He could shoot her, at any moment, in the name of preservation.

“It's this way,” she said, and led him onto the tundra.

As they walked, he remarked on the vegetation, the geological features, the smell of the air. “This entire cavern is an ice age time capsule,” he said. “How is this possible?”

Eleanor wondered where Kixi was but willed silently for her to stay there, out of Skinner's sight. “It's an effect of the Concentrator,” she said.

“Is that what Dr. Perry named the energy source?”

“Yes,” Eleanor said.

Before long, they arrived at the final hill. As they reached its crest and looked down into the crater, Eleanor saw her mother standing at the base of the Concentrator.

“Mom!” she shouted. “Run!”

“Eleanor?” her mother called “What—?” But then she saw Skinner, and the gun, and she paled.

“Stay where you are, Dr. Perry,” Skinner said.

Eleanor's mother nodded. “Aaron, what are you doing? That's my daughter.”

“Everyone has daughters,” Skinner said, walking Eleanor down the slope. “Everyone has sons. Or a mother, or cousins, or a husband, or a best friend. Your relationship warrants no special status.”

When they reached the base of the crater, Skinner shoved Eleanor toward her mother, who caught her in her arms. They hugged for a moment.

“I'm sorry,” Eleanor whispered.

“No, sweetie,” her mother said. “I—”

“A Concentrator, you called this?” Skinner still had the gun pointed at them, but he was looking upward into the shifting, impenetrable branches.

“Yes,” her mother said. “This is what has been concentrating the telluric currents.”

“Ley lines.” Skinner shook his head with a huff. “Who would've thought?”

“Aaron, please listen to me.” Eleanor's mother let go of her and took a hesitant step toward Skinner, hands up in front of her. She was about to try reasoning with him after all. “This is not a source of energy.”

“Really?” he said. “Because I just measured it from the surface, and I can assure you this is most definitely a source of energy.”

“No,” her mother said. “You don't understand. This is
the
energy. The earth's. Calling it a resource would be like calling your blood or your DNA a resource. Remove it, and you die.”

“The earth is already dying,” Skinner said, gaze roaming back up the trunk of the Concentrator, voice becoming absent. “But if we are clever, some may survive.”

“The earth isn't dying,” her mother said. “It's hemorrhaging. Right here, where this object is embedded. But we can stop it—”

“Stop it?” Skinner said. “Quite the opposite, Dr. Perry; we need to exploit it while we can. Where is the wasted energy going now?”

“To the rogue planet,” Eleanor said. “That's what I tried telling you before. That planet up there isn't just pulling the earth out of orbit. It's stealing the earth's energy.”

“How do you know this?” Skinner asked.

Eleanor lifted her chin. “I've . . . seen it. In my mind.”

Skinner smirked at Eleanor. “Is that so?” Then he turned to Eleanor's mom. “Do you concur with your
esteemed colleague's psychic assessment, Dr. Skinner?”

Her mom's back stiffened. “Don't you
dare
mock my daughter.”

“Look at that thing!” Eleanor pointed at the Concentrator. “Does that look natural to you? It's been here for thousands of years! And someone—something—put it here!”

Skinner paused. He appeared to be thinking about Eleanor's statement. “I grant there are unanswered questions, Miss Perry. But nothing that you have said changes the fundamentals of our situation.”

“What fundamentals?” Eleanor asked.

“The invading world will continue to pull the earth out of orbit,” Skinner said. “The earth will continue to freeze. Our
only
hope is the plan I conceived when I first discovered the rogue planet: to stockpile enough energy for a handful of humans to survive until the rogue planet has moved out of our solar system and our orbit has corrected itself. You see, Miss Perry, that is what rogue planets do. They roam. They move on.”

“Not
this
rogue planet,” Eleanor said.

“That is an absurd proposition, Miss Perry. Are you really suggesting that someone is up there steering an entire planet as though it were a car, stopping to fill up at our pump?”

When he said it that way, Eleanor heard the
absurdity in it and had no reply.

“This site presents an unparalleled opportunity,” Dr. Skinner said. “To stop it, as your mother suggests—” He paused. Then he looked hard at Eleanor's mom. “What did you mean by that, Dr. Perry? What exactly were you doing here when we arrived?”

Eleanor's mother took a step back. “I was trying to shut it down.”

“To what end?”

“If we can somehow disable it, we can stop the hemorrhaging. We can save the earth's energy.”

“But I
will
save the earth's energy—”

“No, Aaron, not your way,” her mother said. “And I'm not giving up. I'll go to the press. I have evidence. You won't get away with this lie anymore.”

“I see.” Skinner looked up at the cavern's ceiling for several moments and then nodded once to himself, firmly. “Dr. Perry, you and your daughter have been deemed imminent threats to the Global Energy Trust and the success of the UN's Preservation Protocol. Please move back up the hill.”

The way he said it made it sound like some kind of official pronouncement.

“Imminent threats?” Eleanor's mother said. “What does
that
mean? You—”

“Dr. Perry, please move up the hill,” Skinner said.

“Aaron, you—”

“Now!”

Eleanor flinched. So did her mother. They stepped away from the Concentrator and walked out of the crater. Skinner followed behind them.

When they reached the top of the hill, Skinner said, “Keep walking.”

“Why?” her mother said, turning around. “Where are we going?”

“I am putting some distance between you and the Concentrator,” he said, his pistol unwavering.

Dr. Powers had said they didn't know what Skinner was capable of. He had already shot Amarok. Was he going to shoot them? At that thought, Eleanor's legs weakened, and she almost lost her footing.

Her mother folded her arms and widened her stance. “I'm not going anywhere. This is ridiculous. What happened to you, Aaron? You used to be a scientist. What are you doing with a gun?”

“You are a talented scientist yourself, Dr. Perry,” Skinner said. “I'd much rather you joined me. But since you've made it perfectly clear that won't be possible, I need you to turn around now.”