“Was she attacked?” Marisa asked.
I tried not to think of Lovecraft. “By whom?”
“I don't know. Were there any tracks?”
I shrugged. Dragging Courtney out into the snow to freeze would definitely leave tracks, but when the wind didn't erase them, the camp was littered with tracks. Unless they had claws or were the size of manhole covers, nobody would notice.
We wrestled her the rest of the way inside, then knelt beside her. Warm or not, her skin showed the pale death of frostbite. Even her torso was frozen solid. I rolled her over, looking for signs of violence, but found nothing. Then, Marisa tossed a jacket over her. Courtney had been a bit naive, but she'd also been a truly nice person, and it seemed criminal to invade what little was left of her privacy.
“Could you get us some more heat?” I asked. Courtney must have liked to keep her tent cool, because with two of us in here generating lots of “hot” molecules for the bots to play with, it should have been warming up a lot faster.
“Sure.” Marisa ran a finger down the tent's autoseal flap to make sure it had fully closed behind us, then turned to the tent computer. She seemed glad of having something to do. “How warm?”
“Doesn't matter.” I was trying to examine Courtney's head, pushing the blond hair aside to look for blood or bruises. My gloves made it slow going. “We'll turn it back down when we leave.” I didn't need to say so she doesn't thaw. That was another horror story. Something about Antarctica must generate them.
* * * *
Ten minutes later, the tent was room-temperature-warm and I was sure that whatever had happened to Courtney hadn't left a mark. I'd been kind of hoping she'd somehow bashed her head and concussed herself. I'd once been on a climb in Patagonia where someone did that; waking up, he'd tried to walk home—a problem because “home” had been Florida.
Suicide? The thought made me shudder. If I had to go, I'd rather toboggan off the Headwall.
The wind was picking up and we'd accidentally loosened a couple of tent stays in our efforts to get Courtney inside. The result was a nasty flapping that made it hard to think.
“I can deal with that,” Marisa said, making a rapid enough exit that only half of the now-warm air disappeared with her. As clients go, she was several cuts above the norm. Most would have expected me to be the one to go out in the cold—and the vast majority wouldn't have had a clue what to do, even if they'd been inclined to help.
Meanwhile, I scooted over to the control panel to see if Courtney's letter smacked of suicide.
“Dear Mom and Dad,” it read. “I tried, but it was too tough. The view was fabulous, though, and Greg, one of the guides, was so cool when I had to go back, letting me do it by myself, as though I was a real climber, even though obviously I'm not. And, though I never got anywhere close to the top, this is the most beautiful place I've ever been. I'll never forget it, even if I live to be a hundred.”
Date-stamped four hours ago, it had never been sent. But only that recently, Courtney had been very much nonsuicidal.
She also seemed remarkably solidly frozen for only four hours’ exposure. At these temperatures the first touches of frostbite can hit unprotected flesh within a minute, maybe less. But the body hoards its lasts sparks of life, and to get that deeply frozen takes time. Though the lack of clothing would have sped it up considerably.
I turned back to Courtney and again touched her neck, in the irrational hope that somehow being back indoors had miraculously revived her. But other than the soft layer of skin—just as warm as it had seemed outside—the flesh beneath was rock hard.
Then Marisa was back, though getting into a tent without tracking a bunch of snow in with you is a slower process than getting out, and this time, most of the remaining warm air managed to make its exit. But I had to give her at least an A- for effort. A better grade than Courtney, for all her niceness, had managed for anything.
I didn't want Marisa to have to read Courtney's last words, so before she could knock the snow off her boots and pull her feet inside for the tent to reseal itself, I blanked the screen and opened a new panel, picking the acoustic controls because, however good a job Marisa had done with the tent stays, the wind was still making a lot of noise. I ticked on the reverse-phase acoustic damping—another power hog, but for the moment I didn't care.
The wind noise died as the sensors identified the source of the sound and used another of the tent's nifty innovations to turn the walls into a surround-sound speaker web that cut it off almost too effectively.
Perhaps it was the funeral-home atmosphere or my unwillingness to believe that Courtney had suddenly gone off her nut, but I was again thinking about murder. Maybe the cheery note to her parents was a forgery. Maybe she'd been smothered and dragged outside. There was certainly enough disorder in the tent to indicate that she'd been thrashing around quite a bit, shortly before the end. But why would anyone want to kill a florist? And if they did, why not wait until she got back home?
For someone to slip in and out of camp, unnoticed, they'd have to know when our group was going to be high on the mountain, where we might not notice a ski plane coming in low. That required either phenomenal luck or a compatriot to radio out the information. And even then, how would they know Courtney would be here alone?
Or maybe Courtney wasn't the target. Maybe she'd just stumbled onto the intruder. Or vice versa. That at least made sense. The Pachelbel tent wasn't the only piece of experimental equipment, and my tent computer was full of telemetry and specs that wouldn't be good for a competitor to get its hands on. The computer was secure enough that nobody could easily break into it, but literally cutting it out of the tent wall to examine back home? That was different. For that matter, was I even sure my tent was still here?
I managed not to look as panicked as I felt. “I've got to check something,” I told Marisa. “Do you want to go back to your tent?”
“No.” She'd been kneeling beside Courtney in an attitude that seemed almost one of prayer. Maybe it was. “It doesn't seem right to just leave her like this.”
A moment later, I was out the door.
I'd nearly forgotten the wind, and I'd taken off my breath mask in the oxygen-enriched air of the tent. Now the wind and thin air sucked my breath away. Still, the oxygen wasn't any lower than on the highest peaks in the Alps, so I didn't really need assistance. I gave myself a moment to adjust, glancing around the camp and up on the Headwall. No tents were missing, and there were no dots coming down the rope from above. Marisa had truly whomped the other climbers, and we'd be the only ones in camp for at least another couple of hours. Again the cold fingers ran up and down my spine. With a murderer on the loose, the Antarctic is a very lonely place. Briefly, I wondered if it was safe to leave her, then shrugged it off. Courtney's killer had to be long gone.
Still, I picked up my ice axe from where I'd dropped it when I first ran to Courtney. Can't let it get buried in snow, I rationalized. But it felt reassuringly solid in my hands.
* * * *
Fifteen minutes later, I was sure my data hadn't been touched. My tent looked just as I'd left it, and my computer's security files showed no signs of break-in. Maybe the murderer had blundered into Courtney's tent, looking for mine, killed her, and fled in panic. The weird way she'd frozen was probably a side effect of whatever he'd used to kill her—one that would make more sense when we got her body back to McMurdo for an autopsy.
I hadn't meant to leave Marisa alone so long, but as I crawled out of my tent, I again had to stop for my breathing to adjust. The mask and selective permeability membranes in the tent walls were a mixed blessing. Between them, they could concentrate oxygen well enough to make it feel almost like living at sea level, but that meant you never acclimated. Going outside without the mask was the high-altitude equivalent of walking out of an air-conditioned mall on a summer day. On Himalayan climbs, it's dangerous; without masks, unacclimated climbers can black out and asphyxiate in a matter of minutes. Here, it's just
a nuisance.
Or is it? Courtney certainly hadn't been wearing her mask. Could her tent's membrane have broken down, leaving her wheezing and making a panicked run for a neighboring tent, only to collapse en route? But damn it, we weren't that high. And the tent had been working just fine when Marisa and I were in it. Not to mention that most people in such a situation would retain enough wits to at least grab a coat and boots.
The walk back to Courtney's tent was short enough that I'd not even gotten close to piecing together a coherent story when I was greeted by familiar sounds. Marisa had apparently also found the damping too effective, and was playing something that sounded like Courtney's favorite music. Not that it was easy to tell, from outside. The tent's speaker web is designed to optimize interior acoustics. Nobody seemed to have tested it with an ear to how it sounds from a distance. However perfect the tuning might be inside, what you heard from outside was acoustic mud, which might be okay for your local garage band, but does not work for Pachelbel.
I shrugged. Features sell, so the techies and marketing folks brainstorm every imaginable add-on, some of which are guaranteed to drive you crazy if you have to live with them. Unknown to the tourists, I had a reserve of tried-but-true equipment, just in case. Most of the other guides had been using it all along. Testing the latest-greatest isn't part of their job descriptions.
The wind was abating, and I could hear my boots squeaking in the snow as I approached the tent, feeling guilty about having left Marisa.
“Hi,” I called. “Sorry that took so long.”
I'd forgotten about the damping. The moment I touched the autoseal there was a yell, followed by a yelp and a curse.
“Greg? Is that you? Keep away if you're not. I've got a weapon.”
“It's me.” And she'd better not have anything nasty. Reassuring as it was, I'd parked my ice axe in the vestibule. Things like that can punch holes in the tent, and nobody's ever invented a DaemonBot that could deal with that. Still, I hoped she didn't bash me with the cooking pot the moment I stuck my head inside.
Instead, she was mopping at the floor with a piece of Courtney's cast-off clothing. “Sorry. I'm sure it sounds ghoulish, but I was starting to crash, so I made some hot chocolate. I was saving some for you, but I jumped so hard I damn near threw it all over the place. Couldn't you have at least said ‘hello'?”
“I did. The damping ate it.” It was yet another feature that was too damn effective. At max, it not only blocked wind noise, it squelched pretty much any other outside sounds. I stared at the stove, wondering whether to state the obvious. “Did you burn yourself?”
“Not badly.” She tried to look contrite. “Sorry.” She finished her mopping. “Do you want anything? I'll use the vestibule this time.”
“No, thanks.”
“Okay, but could you open the flap a bit? Or turn down the heat. It's awfully warm in here.”
It seemed okay to me, but coming in from outside it's always hard to gauge. I shrugged and adjusted the autoseal to leave a small gap, a couple of inches from the top. Marisa was the only client who'd made any attempt to acclimate ("I want to get as much of the real experience as possible,” she'd said the first time I caught her without a mask) and losing some of the oxygen-enriched air wasn't going to affect her enough to worry about.
“Thanks,” she said. “Did you find anything?”
“Nothing useful.” I told her my industrial-espionage theory. “If that's what happened, the guy must have stumbled over poor Courtney"—I found myself trying not to look at her body—"killed her, and run off in a panic.” I paused. “Or maybe he didn't panic. Maybe he took the time to set up this weird puzzle to throw us off track.”
“So he stripped off her clothes without roughing her up, then forced her to lie down in the snow until she died?”
“Maybe he had a gun.”
“I think I'd rather be shot. But maybe you're right. Why didn't he complete his mission?”
“Because if anything was missing we'd have known it was murder.”
She sat back. “So he figures that we wouldn't suspect because we'd think she's weird enough to go lie down in the snow?” She pulled off her jacket and set it in a corner. “Could you open that a bit further? This place is really warm.”
I adjusted the autoseal to double the size of the opening. I'd shed my own climbing jacket, and could feel a cold draft on my back, but Marisa was farther from the door.
I explained my oxygen-deprivation theory. “Maybe the murderer figured we'd think that was what happened.”
“Kind of far fetched. And...”
“And...?”
“What the hell did he do to her skin?”
“Some chemical, I guess.” That was the weak link. If such a chemical existed, why would the murderer carry it unless he was planning to use it? And if he was planning it, why didn't he then rob us blind while he was at it? But if I couldn't make the murder theory work, I was back to creepy crawlies or an alien death ray.
Marisa shivered. “Maybe. It sounds awfully convoluted. Can you open that flap a bit more?”
* * * *
There wasn't much left to do in the tent, and much of what we'd already done had probably been counterproductive. If it was a crime scene, between the hot chocolate and crawling all over everything, we'd certainly made a mess of it. But before leaving, I decided to search Courtney's belongings. Thinking about chemicals had made me wonder about drugs. Maybe there wasn't a murderer. Maybe Courtney was on some drug—illicit, or a medication gone haywire—that would not only explain her behavior but set off some kind of heat-generating reaction in her skin. I'd never heard of such a thing, but at least it didn't require murderers, monsters, or suicide.
But there wasn't much in her luggage out of the ordinary except rainbow earrings and a pendant that looked like a kitten or maybe a tiger cub. Kittens and rainbows: that, not drugs, was the Courtney I'd known.
I turned to her computer, looking for personal files or a journal, though even she was likely to have password protected anything important. Meanwhile, Marisa had moved closer to the door, shielding me from the draft.
Then, as I was discovering that Courtney had indeed kept a journal but that the password wasn't “penguin,” “kitten,” or “rainbow,” the draft reintensified.
I glanced back to discover that Marisa had now opened a foot-long slit in the autoseal.
“What the hell?”
“It's too damn hot.” She'd shed another layer and pulled down the zipper on her thermal shirt. “Can't you feel it?”
Suddenly, I had no interest in Courtney's diary. “Actually, it's rather chilly.”
She was tugging at her shirt, fanning herself. “No way.”
“I can see your breath.”
She exhaled, generating a nice cloud of steam. Her eyes went wide. “What...?”
“I don't know, but I think maybe you ought to put your jacket back on.”
“But it's so hot.”
“Not it. You.” I reached out to touch her forehead with the back of my hand, like my mother used to when I was a child. “Maybe you've got a fever.”
Fever was an understatement. She was burning up. She was also beginning to shiver. “Jacket,” I said, desperately trying to remember everything I knew about fever and chills. It wasn't much. As long as you had a safe water supply—which we certainly did—infectious disease wasn't much of a problem on mountaineering expeditions. What I did remember was that chills generated heat, which fed the fever in a runaway process that could kill you if your core temperature got too high.
There was a medkit in my tent.
“Are you with me?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Don't do anything until I get back.”
This time, I was gone less than a minute, panting in the thin air. I'd tracked a lot of snow into my tent, but I could deal with it later.
Marisa was shivering worse than ever. But if anything, she was hotter to the touch. I nearly spilled the medki
t in my haste to find a thermometer.
The first thing I found was one of those infrared skin-temp things. They usually give too-low readings in cold weather, but this one read an impossible 112 degrees. Luckily, there was also an oral thermometer, but Marisa was shaking so violently I wasn't sure she could keep it in her mouth. Then, even as I watched, the shivering began to abate. Could you spike a fever and begin to recover that quickly?
While she incubated the thermometer, I rummaged through the medkit, trying to think of a fever med stronger than aspirin. An antibiotic might help, but the best emergency response to a fever, as I recalled, was an ice bath. Get the temperature down first, then find the cause.
Kind of like what Courtney had tried to do.
The thermometer was supposed to beep when it reached a stable reading, but Marisa was trying to talk around it and apparently it wasn't stabilizing. Her speech was slurred, but not yet incoherent. “Hot, hot,” she mumbled, trying to fumble at her clothes. “Burning. Hot.”
I gave up waiting for the beep. Could her temperature be changing so fast that it never had time to stabilize? I almost didn't want to look. In an adult, one hundred and five degrees is life-threatening. A hundred and eight is brain frying. It was hard to believe I wasn't going to see a truly devastating number.
Instead, it was ninety-one degrees.
I knew a lot more about that than I did about fevers. That's stage two hypothermia: slurred speech, lost coordination, bad judgment. Below that comes stage three, which starts with lassitude and ends with unconsciousness. Death comes somewhere about seventy-five degrees, give or take.
Maybe the thermometer was broken. I thought about popping it in my own mouth to give it a test, but hesitated. What if whatever Marisa had was contagious?
I touched her forehead again and found it hotter than ever.
Just like Courtney.
Analog SFF, January-February 2008 Page 32