Frozen Solid: A Novel

by James Tabor

  “No. I didn’t want to get in the way. SORs require that a female be present when another female is being examined by a male physician. We don’t have any registered nurses, so sometimes I fill in. Don’t I, Doc?”

  “Yes, yes. That’s true. Agnes does help out on occasion.” He directed Hallie to an exam table. Merritt followed. He drew the privacy curtain.

  “Dr. Leland, I’ll need you to disrobe on top to your underwear, please.”

  She stripped down to her sports bra. He asked the usual questions and performed the usual checks, listening to her heart and lungs, percussing her back and chest. After asking her to lie down, he palpated her abdominal area.

  “All just fine,” he said. “I’ll draw some blood and do a throat swab. You can leave a urine sample on your way out.”

  “I get the blood and urine,” she said. “But why the swab?”

  Merritt answered: “People come here from all over. We like to know what they bring in. It can help if there’s a serious outbreak. Right, Doc?”

  “Yes, exactly,” Doc said.

  He directed Hallie to a blood-drawing chair against the wall, sat in front of her on a wheeled stool. He arranged her arm correctly, straight line from hand to shoulder, applied the rubber tourniquet four inches above the draw site, tapped inside her elbow several times.

  “Good veins,” he said.

  “I bet you say that to all your patients.” She knew how trite that was, but she hoped to settle Doc down a bit. He had seemed nervous when she’d arrived and had become more so as the exam had progressed. His hand was unsteady as he swabbed the draw site with an alcohol pad. When he brought the syringe toward her arm, he couldn’t make the proper alignment, needle parallel to vein. He sat back, took a deep breath.

  “Are you all right?” Hallie asked.

  “Sorry. Too much coffee this morning, on an empty stomach. Let’s try that again.”

  He got it on the second try. He filled three Vacutainers, slipped the needle out, and covered the venipuncture site with a cotton ball and a piece of medical tape. Merritt, Hallie noted, had watched the whole draw very closely.

  “Just one more thing and we’ll be through,” Doc said. He examined her eyes and ears, then put a tongue depressor into her mouth. “Say ahhh.”

  She did.

  “Say ahhh again and look up this time. Here comes the swab.”

  She did that, too, and with his other hand he stuck the swab’s cotton tip down her throat. Way down her throat. She had performed throat swabs herself and knew that the tip was supposed to contact the tonsillar columns on either side of the uvula. Doc’s swab went deeper. She gagged, violently. He pulled the swab out and secured it in a sterile container. “Quite a gag reflex you have there,” he said.

  “My gag reflex is actually minimal,” she said.

  “How would you know?”

  “I’m a technical diver. Stuff gets down there. I know. You went pretty deep with that.”

  “We go deeper here at Pole because some pathogens thrive only beyond the tonsillar/uvular region. Can’t have them slipping through the net, can we?”

  She stood up. “Are we finished here, Doctor?”

  Merritt walked over. “Glad to have that out of the way.” She patted Hallie’s shoulder.

  “I can give the urine sample now,” she said.

  Doc and Merritt exchanged glances. Merritt waved a hand. “You know what? Enough for one day. Go grab a coffee. Or rest.”

  Halfway to the galley, she stopped. Something was bothering her about the exam, and she couldn’t decide what. The procedures Doc had performed had been just like those done by countless doctors throughout her life. His hand had been shaky for the blood draw, but that wasn’t it. What, then? She started off again, still wondering.

  A male Polie came shuffling toward her in his own little pod of light. He was tall, with a long, rust-colored beard, and he was bent over a smartphone, texting.

  She got it. Doc had not recorded any of the data produced by his exam. Not on paper, not in a computer. Merritt hadn’t written or recorded anything either. Then why in hell would they do an examination?

  There was only one answer.

  They didn’t care about the results.

  Then what was the reason, if not obtaining data from her?

  Only one answer: doing something to her.

  29

  THE INFIRMARY, WITH ITS THREE HOSPITAL BEDS, WAS, FOR REASONS Hallie could not imagine, halfway down the corridor from Doc’s office. Another human factors decision, perhaps—to ensure that medical officers got enough exercise shuttling back and forth.

  “Graeter stopped by and told me what you did,” Bacon said. She reached out the hand that was not in a cast, and Hallie took it.

  “You’d have done the same for me.”

  “Tried like hell, anyway.”

  “Well, ya look like ya coulda been a contendah,” Hallie said.

  “I goddamned well feel like it.” The accident had left Rockie with a concussion, a fractured left wrist, a broken nose, a cracked rib, and a gash across her forehead that Doc had used five stitches to close. Both eyes were black and puffy. “I was lucky. If the Cat had flipped and fallen on me, I’d be a stain in the snow.” Bacon sipped water and set the glass back on her bedside table. “So you really climbed down into the crevasse using hammers?”

  “I got lucky, too. The wall wasn’t dead vertical.”

  “Amazing.”

  “Do you feel up to talking just a little?”

  “Sure. But Doc gave me a shot. I might doze off right in your face.”

  “What happened out there?”

  “Wish I knew. I was heading out for the grade. I got a nosebleed and everything started to spin.”

  “That must have been scary.”

  “If I’d had time to think about it. Next thing I remember, waking up here.”

  “I know you’d been sick. That sick?”

  “I didn’t think so, or I wouldn’t have been on the Cat.”

  “When did it start?”

  “My Pole cold, six months ago. This new thing, last week.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Some Polarrhea. Comes and goes. So to speak.”

  “You saw Doc yesterday morning?”

  “Getting to be a regular customer.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “I went in last week.”

  “What was wrong?”

  “Nothing with me. He needed to update my Pole medical file.”

  “Do you remember what he did?”

  “The usual. Weight, blood pressure, blood and urine samples, throat swab.”

  “How soon after that did you get sick?” Hallie asked.

  “Hadn’t thought about it. Couple days later. Maybe the next day.” She shrugged. “All the people going to that office … not surprising.”

  “This may sound strange, but can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt you?”

  Hallie had expected surprise, but Bacon just nodded. “Sure. Couple of Draggers I blew off at parties. A few Beakerholes who think they know more about Cat work than I do. Oh, and one rebuffed lezzie.”

  “Mad enough to sabotage your machine?”

  “Cat was fine. It was me. I just passed out.”

  “You said you knew Emily Durant.”

  “Liked her, too. She didn’t have her head up her ass, like some Beakers.” Bacon stopped. “Present company excepted. But the last month or so …”

  “What happened?”

  “She stopped talking, never smiled, got Pole eyes—just staring off at nothing all the time. Used to be, she’d say hi when we met and talk. Then it was like she looked right through me.”

  The same thing Merritt had told her. “Why do you think that happened?”

  “Too much ice time. Look, I know where you’re going with this. I was surprised as hell when I heard she OD’d. She never struck me as the drugging type. Down here, you get so you can spot the weird ones. Boozers, ga
mblers, sex addicts, S&M freaks.”

  “How would you spot them?”

  “They walk funny. And wince every time they sit. All that paddling and whipping.”

  “Ah. I knew Emily Durant well. And I cannot believe she was into drugs.”

  “How long since you’d seen her?”

  “Several years.”

  “A good while. And she’d been at Pole a year,” Bacon said.

  “Merritt told me that, too. But still …”

  Hallie looked around. It was like any hospital room back in the world, except smaller, dimmer, and colder. Adjustable bed, rollaway tray, one chair, a bathroom, wall cabinets. Even a television monitor hanging from the ceiling.

  “Can you think of anyone down here who would have wanted to hurt Emily?”

  “No. But there are a lot of Polies I don’t know. Why?”

  How far to go with Bacon? Ease into it. “If you don’t buy the overdose story, which I don’t, then what’s left?”

  It took a second, but Bacon understood. “Jesus. That is some heavy shit, Hallie.”

  “Do you know anything about Vishnu?”

  “From World Religion 101. Some Hindu god, right?”

  “Right. But connected to the station?”

  “You lost me.”

  “Emily and Fida had identified an extremophile. Vishnu was what they called it.”

  “A what?” Bacon asked.

  “Sorry. An organism that survives in extreme environments. Like subfreezing, supersalty water.”

  “Oh. And what’s special about this one?”

  “They thought it might save the earth.”

  Bacon laughed, winced, touched her ribs. “Yeah, right.” Then, watching Hallie: “Wait. You mean, really?”

  Hallie gave a quick explanation.

  “So you think somebody might have killed her over that stuff?”

  Hallie told Bacon about the link between NASI and GENERCO.

  Bacon shook her head, wide-eyed. “Do you think things like that really happen?”

  “I know they do,” Hallie said.

  “Graeter killing Emily.” Bacon rubbed the cast on her wrist, shook her head. “The man can be a world-class asshole. But murder? I don’t know. He’s more like … wounded. Lot of scar tissue over that man’s heart.”

  “You may be right. What about triage?”

  “What about it?”

  “Do you know anything about it down here?”

  “It’s probably part of disaster planning. Why?”

  She explained what she had seen in the video log.

  “You think that guy might have killed her?”

  Bacon’s voice trailed off. Hallie heard a soft buzzing in her ears, and the room slowly faded.

  Bacon’s laugh brought her back. “Hey. I’m the one who got the shot. You took a little trip.”

  “Did I?”

  “Classic microsleep. See it all the time here.”

  Hallie rubbed her face. It had happened before. One second she was there in the room, talking, and then she was gone, and then something snapped her back awake. “I’m sorry, really. Don’t mean to be rude. I just—”

  “No worries. We’ve all been there.”

  Come at this from a different direction. “Can you think of anyone at Pole who could be a killer?” she asked.

  Bacon didn’t frown, look shocked, or even surprised. She nodded. “Sure. That’s easy. Let’s see. I’d start with that asshole Brank. Then there is—”

  Bacon stopped talking and stared at Hallie. One arm went to her throat. She frowned, coughed, tried to speak. Her face began to swell. A rash erupted, bright red, as if someone had slapped her, hard. Her wrists puffed up, and the rash appeared there, too. The facial swelling grew worse. Bacon’s head was thrown back, mouth open, and her chest heaved as she struggled to breathe.

  Hallie grabbed the receiver off the wall-mounted phone, hit 0, and, the instant the comm operator answered, yelled, “Emergency in the infirmary. Rockie Bacon is choking. I need help NOW!”

  Bacon began to convulse, her body’s response to a lack of oxygen and a buildup of carbon dioxide. Her lips and fingertips turned cyanotic blue, and her face had swollen so badly that Hallie could barely see her eyes. Foam bubbled at the corners of her mouth. She fell back against the pillow, her chest heaving against a closed airway.

  Hallie looked around for something she could use to perform an emergency tracheotomy, but there was nothing in the room. The door burst open and Doc rushed in.

  “What happened?”

  “She can’t breathe. Can you do a trach?”

  He stood there staring, not speaking, frozen. Hallie had never seen an albino flush. His face turned red, pinched in on itself, and Hallie thought he was going to cry.

  “Doctor!” she snapped. “We need—” Bacon’s body stopped convulsing, went limp. “Get me a kit. I’ll open her airway.” She smacked his shoulder.

  That brought him back. He ran out and returned in thirty seconds with gloves, a scalpel, a hemostat, an endotracheal tube, and an ambu bag. He jumped onto the bed, straddled Bacon, bent her head back, made a vertical incision just beneath the thyroid cartilage, rotated the scalpel 360 degrees to create a circular opening, used the hemostat to control the trachea, and pushed the endo tube through. He rotated it to secure the tube’s flanges inside the trachea, attached the ambu bag, and started pressing it to inflate Bacon’s lungs.

  Under normal circumstances, the bag should have compressed with very little force. Doc squeezed, squeezed harder, and then with so much force that his face reddened again.

  “Nothing’s going through!” he said. Holding the bag in his left hand, he started punching it with his right fist.

  Hallie touched his arm. “The swelling must have closed her trachea all the way down.”

  “Shit,” the doctor said. “God damn it to hell.” He let go of the bag, struggled down off the bed, and buried his face in his hands. Hallie realized that he was crying. Rockie was not coming back. She pulled the sheet up, covering Bacon’s grotesquely swollen face, and helped Doc sit in the room’s one chair. She had never seen a physician go to pieces like that.

  “I can’t take any more of these,” he sobbed. “I took an oath, goddamnit.”

  Agnes Merritt came into the room just at that moment.

  “Rockie’s dead,” Hallie said. “Some kind of allergic reaction. She asphyxiated.”

  But Merritt was staring at the doctor, who was still crying. “What happened to him?” she asked Hallie.

  “I think he needs some rest.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “What?” The question Hallie would have expected was what Doc had done. Why would Merritt care what he’d said?

  “Did he tell you anything?”

  “Just that he couldn’t take any more of these. I think it’s safe to assume he meant people dying.”

  Merritt actually appeared relieved. “Come on, Doc, let’s go back to your office.” Merritt was stronger than she looked. She lifted him bodily from his chair and guided him out to the hall. To Hallie she said, “Graeter’s been notified. He should be here any minute.”

  After Merritt left, Hallie realized that the chief scientist had not even glanced at Rockie’s body.

  30

  WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, THREE P.M. SHARP, SIXTH FLOOR OF THE National Science Foundation headquarters, new and gleaming, lush with huge potted plants and bright with vast expanses of glass. Not having to keep secrets has its advantages, Barnard thought.

  “Dr. Donald Barnard. I have an appointment with the director.” Barnard was surprised to see a young man of East Indian descent behind the executive assistant’s desk in the director’s anteroom. When he had come up, executive assistants were secretaries, and secretaries were women. Like Carol, who was about his age, in his own office. But these were different times, even in Washington—perhaps especially in Washington, where failure to be politically correct could scuttle careers.

  “Dr.
Barnard, of course. Just give me one moment, please.”

  The young man’s voice made Barnard think of soft chimes. He passed through the door behind him, reappeared in less than a minute. “I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting, sir. Please go in.”

  He held the door for Barnard and closed it behind him. A short, trim man with dark skin and close-cut black hair—another East Indian, Barnard guessed—came toward him, hand extended.

  “David Gerrin. So pleased to meet you.”

  31

  THE NSF BUILDING’S ENTRANCE LOBBY WAS EQUIPPED WITH BIG revolving doors of the kind more commonly found in New York City. Barnard disliked them. He had once seen a darting child’s leg broken by such a door, whose infrared stop sensor was four inches higher than the top of the child’s head. Nevertheless, he had to admit that being trapped and spinning like a gerbil in a treadmill was probably a more fitting end to the meeting just concluded.

  Outside, gray drizzle was freezing into stinging sleet, forming a dangerous sheen on pavements and sidewalk. Barnard turned right and walked west on Wilson Boulevard, then turned right again onto North Stuart Street. He had not gone twenty steps when a gray Toyota Camry double-parked in the street abreast of him. The car had surprised him the first time he’d ridden with Bowman, whom he’d half-expected to show up in an armored, machine gun–toting Aston Martin. Barnard had said something about it, and Bowman had laughed. “Invisibility is the best armor of all,” he’d said.

  Barnard got in. “Back to BARDA.”

  Earlier that morning, at about ten, Barnard had been surprised to see Bowman in his office so soon after their four A.M. meeting. He had been more surprised by what Bowman brought.

  “Thirty-two scientists at the South Pole now,” Bowman reported.

  “More than I would have thought.”

  “Not a problem. I had some people create and analyze a deep-source data mass. Information from birth to present day for every one of the scientists. Tons of terabytes.” He grinned—looking, Barnard thought, like a wolf.

  “They did that for you so quickly?”

  “When they call, I’m there for them. Works both ways. Every human life is a collection of data. Ninety-nine percent mediocre—in the statistical sense of remaining within certain parameters. Think of a seismograph readout—an endless line of one-inch oscillations. Then something extraordinary—Krakatoa, say—makes the needle jump. A life graphs like that. Long stretches of small squiggles, then a spike.