The Ice Limit

by Douglas Preston; Lincoln Child

  The man beyond her was dressed in a white lab coat. He was blade thin, with a badly razor-burned face. One eyelid seemed to droop slightly, giving the eye a jocular look, as if it was about to wink. But there was nothing jocular about the rest of the man: he looked humorless, pinched, as tense as catgut. He fidgeted restlessly with a mechanical pencil, turning it over and over.

  Glinn nodded. “This is Eugene Rochefort, manager of engineering. He specializes in one-of-a-kind engineering designs.”

  Rochefort accepted the compliment with a purse of his lips, the pressure briefly turning them white.

  “And this is Dr. Rachel Amira. She started out as a physicist with us, but we soon began to exploit her rare gifts as a mathematician. If you have a problem, she will give you an equation. Rachel, Gene, please welcome Dr. Sam McFarlane. Meteorite hunter.”

  They nodded in reply. McFarlane felt their eyes on him as he busied himself with opening the portfolio case and distributing folders. He felt the tension return.

  Glinn accepted his folder. “I’d like to go over the general outline of the problem, and then open the floor for discussion.”

  “Sure thing,” said McFarlane, settling into a chair.

  Glinn glanced around, his gray eyes unreadable. Then he withdrew a sheaf of notes from inside his jacket. “First, some general information. The target area is a small island, known as Isla Desolación, off the southern tip of South America in the Cape Horn islands. It lies in Chilean national territory. It is about eight miles long and three miles wide.”

  He paused and looked around. “Our client, Palmer Lloyd, insists upon moving ahead with the utmost possible speed. He is concerned about possible competition from other museums. That means working in the depths of the South American winter. In the Cape Horn islands, temperatures in July range from above freezing to as much as thirty below zero, Fahrenheit. Cape Horn is the southernmost major landmass outside of Antarctica itself, more than a thousand miles closer to the South Pole than Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. During the target month, we can expect five hours of daylight.

  “Isla Desolación is not a hospitable place. It is barren, windswept, mostly volcanic with some Tertiary sedimentary basins. The island is bisected by a large snowfield, and there is an old volcanic plug toward the north end. The tides range from thirty to thirty-five vertical feet, and a reversing six-knot current sweeps the island group.”

  “Lovely conditions for a picnic,” Garza muttered.

  “The closest human settlement is on Navarino Island, in the Beagle Channel, about forty miles north of the Cape Horn islands. It is a Chilean naval base called Puerto Williams, with a small mestizo Indian shantytown attached to it.”

  “Puerto Williams?” Garza said. “I thought this was Chile we were talking about.”

  “The entire area was originally mapped by Englishmen.” Glinn placed the notes on the table. “Dr. McFarlane, I understand you’ve been in Chile.”

  McFarlane nodded.

  “What can you tell us about their navy?”

  “Charming fellows.”

  There was a silence. Rochefort, the engineer, began tapping his pencil on the table in an irritated tattoo. The door opened, and a waiter began serving sandwiches and coffee.

  “They belligerently patrol the coastal waters,” McFarlane went on, “especially in the south, along the border with Argentina. The two countries have a long-running border dispute, as you probably know.”

  “Can you add anything to what I’ve said about the climate?”

  “I once spent time in Punta Arenas in late fall. Blizzards, sleet storms, and fog are common. Not to mention williwaws.”

  “Williwaws?” Rochefort asked in a tremulous, reed-thin voice.

  “Basically a microburst of wind. It lasts only a minute or two, but it can peak at about a hundred and fifty knots.”

  “What about decent anchorages?” Garza asked.

  “I’ve been told there are no decent anchorages. In fact, from what I’ve heard, there’s no good holding ground for a ship anywhere in the Cape Horn islands.”

  “We like a challenge,” said Garza.

  Glinn collected the papers, folded them carefully, and returned them to his jacket pocket. Somehow, McFarlane felt the man had already known the answers to his own questions.

  “Clearly,” Glinn said, “we have a complex problem, even without considering the meteorite. But let’s consider it now. Rachel, I believe you have some questions about the data?”

  “I have a comment about the data.” Amira’s eyes glanced at a folder before her, then hovered on McFarlane with faint amusement. She had a superior attitude that McFarlane found annoying.

  “Yes?” said McFarlane.

  “I don’t believe a word of it.”

  “What exactly don’t you believe?”

  She waved her hand over his portfolio. “You’re the meteorite expert, right? Then you know why no one has ever found a meteorite larger than sixty tons. Any larger, and the force of impact causes the meteorite to shatter. Above two hundred tons, meteorites vaporize from the impact. So how could a monster like this still be intact?”

  “I can’t—” McFarlane began.

  But Amira interrupted. “The second thing is that iron meteorites rust. It only takes about five thousand years to rust even the biggest one into a pile of scale. So if it somehow did survive the impact, why is it still there? How do you explain this geological report that says it fell thirty million years ago, was buried in sediment, and is only now being exposed through erosion?”

  McFarlane settled back in his chair. She waited, raising her eyebrows quizzically.

  “Have you ever read Sherlock Holmes?” McFarlane asked with a smile of his own.

  Amira rolled her eyes. “You’re not going to quote that old saw about how once you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth—are you?”

  McFarlane shot a surprised glance at her. “Well, isn’t it true?”

  Amira smirked her triumph, while Rochefort shook his head.

  “So, Dr. McFarlane,” Amira said brightly, “is that your source of scientific authority? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?”

  McFarlane exhaled slowly. “Someone else collected the base data. I can’t vouch for it. All I can say is, if that data’s accurate, there’s no other explanation: it’s a meteorite.”

  There was a silence. “Someone else’s data,” Amira said, cracking another shell and popping the nuts into her mouth. “Would that be a Dr. Masangkay, by chance?”

  “Yes.”

  “You knew each other, I believe?”

  “We were partners.”

  “Ah.” Amira nodded, as if hearing this for the first time. “And so, if Dr. Masangkay collected this data, you have a high degree of confidence in it? You trust him?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I wonder if he’d say the same about you,” Rochefort said in his quiet, high, clipped voice.

  McFarlane turned his head and looked steadily at the engineer.

  “Let’s proceed,” Glinn said.

  McFarlane looked away from Rochefort and tapped his portfolio with the back of one hand. “There’s an enormous circular deposit of shocked and fused coesite on that island. Right in the center is a dense mass of ferromagnetic material.”

  “A natural deposit of iron ore,” said Rochefort.

  “The flyover indicates a reversal of the sedimentary strata around the site.”

  Amira looked puzzled. “A what?”

  “Flipped sedimentary layers.”

  Rochefort sighed heavily. “Signifying … ?”

  “When a large meteorite strikes sedimentary layers, the layers get reversed.”

  Rochefort continued tapping his pencil. “How? By magic?”

  McFarlane looked at him again, longer this time. “Perhaps Mr. Rochefort would like a demonstration?”

  “I would,” said Rochefort.

  McFarlane picked up his sandwich. He exam
ined it, smelled it. “Peanut butter and jelly?” He made a face.

  “May we just have the demonstration, please?” Rochefort asked in a tight, exasperated voice.

  “Of course.” McFarlane placed the sandwich on the table between himself and Rochefort. Then he tilted his coffee cup and carefully poured liquid over it.

  “What is he doing?” said Rochefort, turning to Glinn, his voice high. “I knew this was a mistake. We should have required one of the principals to come in.”

  McFarlane held up his hand. “Bear with me. We’re just preparing our sedimentary deposit here.” He reached for another sandwich and placed it on top, then tipped on more coffee until it was saturated. “There. This sandwich is the sedimentary deposit: bread, peanut butter, jelly, more bread, in layers. And my fist”—he raised his hand above his head—“is the meteorite.”

  He brought his fist down on the sandwich with a jarring crash.

  “For Christ’s sake!” Rochefort cried, jumping back, his shirt splattered with peanut butter. He stood up, flicking bits of sodden bread from his arms.

  At the far end of the table, Garza sat with an astonished look on his face. Glinn was expressionless.

  “Now, let us examine the remains of the sandwich on the table,” McFarlane continued as calmly as if he were giving a college lecture. “Please note that all the pieces have been flipped over. The bottom layer of bread is now on the top, the peanut butter and jelly have reversed places, and the top layer of bread is now on the bottom. It’s what a meteorite does when it hits sedimentary rock: it pulverizes the layers, flips them over, and lays them back down in reversed sequence.” He glanced at Rochefort. “Any further questions or comments?”

  “This is outrageous,” said Rochefort, wiping his glasses with a handkerchief.

  “Sit down, please, Mr. Rochefort,” said Glinn quietly.

  To McFarlane’s surprise, Amira began to laugh: a deep, smooth laugh. “That was very good, Dr. McFarlane. Very entertaining. We need a little excitement in our meetings.” She turned to Rochefort. “If you had ordered club sandwiches like I suggested, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  Rochefort scowled as he returned to his seat.

  “Anyway,” said McFarlane, sitting back and wiping his hand with a napkin, “strata reversal means only one thing: a massive impact crater. Taken together, everything points to a meteorite strike. Now if you have a better explanation for what is down there, I’d like to hear it.”

  He waited.

  “Perhaps it’s an alien spaceship?” Garza asked hopefully.

  “We considered that, Manuel,” Amira replied dryly.

  “And?”

  “Occam’s razor. It seemed unlikely.”

  Rochefort was still cleaning the peanut butter from his glasses. “Speculation is useless. Why not send a ground party to check it out, and get some better data?”

  McFarlane glanced at Glinn, who was listening with half-lidded eyes. “Mr. Lloyd and I trust the data we have in hand. And he doesn’t want to draw any more attention to the site than he has already. With good reason.”

  Garza suddenly spoke up. “Yeah, and that brings up the second problem we need to discuss: how we’re going to get whatever it is out of Chile. I believe you’re familiar with that sort of—shall we say—operation?”

  More polite than calling it smuggling, McFarlane thought. Aloud, he said, “More or less.”

  “And your thoughts?”

  “It’s metal. It’s basically an ore body. It doesn’t fall under the laws of cultural patrimony. At my recommendation, Lloyd created a company that is in the process of acquiring mineral leases to the island. I suggested that we go down there as a mining operation, dig it up, and ship it home. There’s nothing illegal in it—according to the lawyers.”

  Amira smiled again. “But if the government of Chile realized this was the world’s largest meteorite and not just some ordinary iron deposit, it might take a dim view of your operation.”

  “A ‘dim view’ is an understatement. We might all get shot.”

  “A fate you barely escaped smuggling the Atacama tektites out of the country, right?” Garza asked.

  Throughout the meeting, Garza had remained friendly, showing none of Rochefort’s hostility or Amira’s sardonic attitude. Still, McFarlane found himself coloring. “We took a few chances. It’s part of the job.”

  “So it seems.” Garza laughed, turning over the sheets in his folder. “I’m amazed you’d consider going back there. This project could create an international incident.”

  “Once Lloyd unveils the meteorite in his new museum,” McFarlane replied, “I can guarantee you there will be an international incident.”

  “The point,” Glinn interjected smoothly, “is that this must be carried out in secrecy. What happens after we conclude our part of the business is up to Mr. Lloyd.”

  Nobody spoke for a moment.

  “There is one other question,” Glinn continued at last. “About your ex-partner, Dr. Masangkay.”

  Here it comes, McFarlane thought. He steeled himself.

  “Any idea what killed him?”

  McFarlane hesitated. This was not the question he’d expected. “No idea,” he said after a moment. “The body hasn’t been recovered. It could well have been exposure or starvation. That climate isn’t exactly hospitable.”

  “But there were no medical problems? No history that might have contributed?”

  “Malnutrition as a kid. Nothing else. Or if there was, I didn’t know about it. There was no mention of illness or starvation in the diary.”

  McFarlane watched Glinn page through his folder. The meeting seemed to be over. “Lloyd told me to bring back an answer,” he said.

  Glinn put the folder aside. “It’s going to cost a million dollars.”

  McFarlane was momentarily taken aback. The amount was less than he had expected. But what surprised him most was how quickly Glinn had arrived at it. “Naturally, Mr. Lloyd will have to sign off, but that seems very reasonable—”

  Glinn raised his hand. “I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood. It’s going to cost a million dollars to determine whether we can undertake this project.”

  McFarlane stared at him. “You mean it’s going to cost a million dollars just for the estimate?”

  “Actually, it’s worse than that,” Glinn said. “We might come back and tell you EES can’t sign on at all.”

  McFarlane shook his head. “Lloyd’s going to love this.”

  “There are many unknowns about this project, not the least of which is what we’re going to find when we get there. There are political problems, engineering problems, scientific problems. To analyze them, we’ll need to build scale models. We’ll need hours of time on a supercomputer. We’ll need the confidential advice of physicists, structural engineers, international lawyers, even historians and political scientists. Mr. Lloyd’s desire for speed will make things even more expensive.”

  “Okay, okay. So when will we get our answer?”

  “Within seventy-two hours of our receipt of Mr. Lloyd’s certified check.”

  McFarlane licked his lips. It was beginning to occur to him that he himself was being underpaid. “And what if the answer’s no?” he asked.

  “Then Lloyd will at least have the consolation of knowing the project is impossible. If there’s a way to retrieve that meteorite, we’ll find it.”

  “Have you ever said no to anyone?”

  “Often.”

  “Oh, really? Like when?”

  Glinn coughed slightly. “Just last month a certain eastern European country wanted us to entomb a defunct nuclear reactor in concrete and move it across an international border, undetected, for a neighboring country to deal with.”

  “You’re joking,” said McFarlane.

  “Not at all,” said Glinn. “We had to turn them down, of course.”

  “Their budget was insufficient,” said Garza.

  McFarlane shook his head and snapped his portfolio sh
ut. “If you show me to a phone, I’ll relay your offer to Lloyd.”

  Glinn nodded to Garza, who stood up. “Come this way, please, Dr. McFarlane,” said Garza, holding open the door.

  • • •

  As the door hissed shut, Rochefort let out another sigh of irritation. “We don’t really have to work with him, do we?” He flicked a clot of purple jelly from his lab coat. “He’s not a scientist, he’s a scavenger.”

  “He has a doctorate in planetary geology,” said Glinn.

  “That degree died long ago from neglect. But I’m not just talking about the man’s ethics, what he did to his partner. Look at this.” He gestured at his shirt. “The man’s a loose cannon. He’s unpredictable.”

  “There is no such thing as an unpredictable person,” Glinn replied. “Only a person we don’t understand.” He gazed at the mess on his fifty-thousand-dollar Accawood table. “Naturally, we’ll make it our business to understand everything about Dr. McFarlane. Rachel?”

  She turned to him.

  “I’m going to give you a very special assignment.”

  Amira flashed another sardonic smile at Rochefort. “Of course,” she said.

  “You’re going to be Dr. McFarlane’s assistant.”

  There was a sudden silence as the smile disappeared from Amira’s face.

  Glinn went on smoothly, without giving her time to react. “You will keep an eye on him. You will prepare regular reports on him and give them to me.”

  “I’m no damn shrink!” Amira exploded. “And I’m sure as hell no rat!”

  Now it was Rochefort whose face was mottled with an expression that might have passed for amusement, if it had not been so laced with ill will.

  “Your reports will be strictly observational,” Glinn said. “They will be thoroughly evaluated by a psychiatrist. Rachel, you’re a shrewd analyst, of human beings as well as mathematics. You will, of course, be an assistant in name only. As for your being a rat, that’s entirely incorrect. You know Dr. McFarlane has a checkered past. He will be the only one on this expedition not of our choosing. We must keep a close watch on him.”