Frozen Solid: A Novel

by James Tabor

  She had never feared dead bodies, even badly damaged ones. But these bodies were different. They evoked a childhood terror from some very deep place, unspeakable, nearly irresistible—a fear that these bodies might rise and take her back to their own realm. It was hard not to jump and run.

  She put on the surgical mask and gloves she had taken from the lab, removed from her pockets plastic bags and oronasal swabs. She inserted one swab deep into Lanahan’s right nostril, past the turbinates and up into the ethmoid sinuses, until she felt hard resistance. She rotated the swab shaft between shaking fingers, then carefully withdrew and bagged it. She repeated the process in Lanahan’s left nostril, then took samples from Montalban and Bacon. The nasal blood was frozen, but she was hoping that the bodies had not been here long enough for the cold to have killed all of the pathogens present. Looking down at the three dead women, she said, “I’m sorry I had to do that. But I think you would have wanted me to. Thank you all.”

  She closed up the bags and left the morgue, felt her fear slipping away. By then she was shivering so hard she had to clamp her jaw shut. How ironic it would be, she thought, to survive the cryopeg only to freeze here.

  On the way in, she had used the dive knife to scratch a small arrow at every corner where she’d needed to turn. In less than five minutes she was standing in front of the air-lock doors.

  The lab where Emily and Fida had worked was on Level 1, Pod A, behind the air-lock door with the warning sign. It was kept locked, but Merritt had given her a key when they first met. Hallie had seen dozens of microbiology labs just like it, except most were bigger. Rows of white wall cabinets, two stainless steel sinks, a workbench with a ventilator hood. On a central bench rested an autoclave, a centrifuge, microscopes, racks of test tubes, Bunsen burners, dessicators, incubator cabinets.

  In the time it had taken her to reach the lab, her body heat had begun to soften the tiny red ice clusters on the swabs. She set out six petri dishes with red agar growth medium and used a sterile wire inoculating loop to transfer matter from the cotton-tipped sticks, swiping them back and forth in three separate sections on the surface of each dish. “Making a lawn,” it was called.

  Since she wasn’t sure what she was trying to grow, she didn’t know the optimal incubation temperature. Many pathogenic bacteria liked eighty-six degrees Fahrenheit, so she set the lab incubator for that and waited for it to warm up.

  Nothing would happen right away. Bacteria typically took from twenty-four to seventy-two hours to colonize growth media. Hopefully any pathogen in the blood samples would be a fast grower. She walked down to the far end of the lab to examine the Vishnu sample she had retrieved. It rested in a thirty-gallon tank full of cryopeg water that Guillotte had collected while she was diving. The tank itself resided in a chest freezer, the only way to keep the water as cold as it had been in the cryopeg. Nothing about the organism had changed, which she took as a good sign.

  At the door, with her hand on the light switch, she paused, then decided to double-check the incubator temperature setting. As tired and brain-weak as she was, it would have been easy to get it wrong.

  She peered through the glass window.

  “Damn!” She actually jumped back a step.

  Stripes like bright yellow pencil lines had appeared on the red agar in all the dishes.

  By the time she finished in the lab, it was okay for her to be seen walking around. Hallie came to the place where the corridors diverged. One led to Merritt’s office, the other to Graeter’s. Merritt or Graeter? She stopped, leaned against a wall, waited out a dizzy spell. Merritt had been right: it was getting worse. On top of everything else, her throat was sore, and not just from the first day’s frostbite; the discomfort felt deeper and more painful, like the onset of a strep infection.

  Where had she been going? It took her several seconds to remember. She looked both ways down the intersecting corridor. Left would take her toward Merritt’s office. Right to Graeter’s.

  40

  GRAETER WASN’T THERE.

  She went to the comms office and asked. “He’s out on the iceway,” the comms operator said. “Some landing lights are out.”

  “I thought it was Condition One.”

  “Yeah. But planes won’t land without those lights working right. Gotta be ready for them.”

  “Did he take someone with him?”

  “Nope.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “Couple hours, I expect.”

  “As soon as he gets in, will you tell him to call me, please? It’s important.”

  “Sure will, Doc.” All Draggers called all Beakers “Doc,” she had learned.

  “Thanks.”

  “Um, ma’am?” He looked at the comms office door, then back to her. His face was partially hidden by his long, lank brown hair and the requisite Pole beard. But underneath all the hair she saw that he was very young. He had large, fanlike ears, bulb cheeks with blemishes, a receding chin, and a squashed-looking nose. And fear in his eyes. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “These women that died?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “Rockie Bacon was sick and had a bad accident. I don’t know about Harriet Lanahan or Diana Montalban.”

  He paused, looked uncertain, then went on: “You think there’s something down here? Some germ?”

  Reassuring lie or frightening truth? She decided on a little of both. “I don’t know that. But I do know that only women have died.”

  He lowered his voice. “People are saying you brought something.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “Don’t make much sense to me.”

  “No. Why not?”

  “You aren’t dead.”

  “There is that.”

  “Tell you one thing. This is my first tour at Pole. And my last.”

  “Can’t say I blame you.”

  “Ask you something else?”

  “Sure.”

  “Doc Fida took a penguin?”

  “It’s what they’re saying.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I didn’t know him well,” she said.

  “I knew Doc Fida.”

  “You don’t use his Pole name?”

  “He didn’t like it. I could relate. One they gave me? Neuman. As in, Alfred E.”

  Hallie understood. Beautiful people sought their kind. So did those at the other end of that spectrum.

  “He was a little weird. Everybody gets a little weird down here. But him just up and taking a penguin? Doesn’t compute for me.”

  “You know what? Me neither.”

  He seemed relieved to hear that he was not the only one.

  “Good talking with you,” Hallie said.

  “You, too.”

  She started away. His voice stopped her. “Hey, Doc?”

  “Yes?”

  “Strange people down here. A lot of ’em are scared shitless. Do well to watch your back.”

  41

  THE ALTITUDE, DRYNESS, AND POLARRHEA HAD LEFT HER DEHYDRATED. She had no appetite for solid food, but she needed liquid: juice, water, coffee—well, maybe not coffee just yet. She headed for the galley, thinking that she had not had such an unbroken run of bad luck for as long as she could remember. She was still thinking that when she came off the serving line with two big glasses of apple juice and her luck suddenly changed. Maynard Blaine was alone at a corner table, twirling spaghetti around a fork. She sat across from him.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be locked up or something?” he said.

  “It’s prime dinner time. Why aren’t there any people here?”

  “They’re afraid. Don’t want to be with other people.” He forked up a ball of spaghetti dripping with marinara sauce. “Especially not with you. I heard Graeter put you under house arrest. How come you’re out?”

  “How come you’re here, Maynard?”

  He shrugged. “I h
ate my goddamned room.”

  “No, I mean, how come you’re still sitting here with me?”

  “I think it’s probably bullshit, what they’re saying.”

  “That I brought in some exotic germ?”

  “Yes.” He stopped twirling spaghetti, looked more closely at her. “Maybe I was wrong, though. You don’t look so good.”

  “Aw, well, thanks for the compliment, Embie.”

  He looked as if she had slapped him.

  Polarrhea had turned out to be productive in more ways than one. Maybe there really was something to high colonics, after all, she thought. Ambie wasn’t short for a name beginning with “A-M.” Emily’s Georgia accent had made it sound that way on the video log. She had been saying “Embie.” Short for M.B. And those were the initials of Maynard Blaine.

  “What did you call me?”

  She leaned forward, lowered her voice. Not really necessary, because only one other table was occupied, and that man was well out of hearing. But she wanted to make an impression. So she hissed just one word:

  “Triage.”

  He rose too quickly and spilled spaghetti sauce on his shirt. He stood there, staring down at the bright red blotches, seeming to have forgotten all about her.

  “Sit down,” she snapped. “We can do this right here, just the two of us, or with Graeter.”

  He sat.

  The fury she had been holding in made her voice shake. “You told me you barely knew Emily. I know you were sleeping with her. Why did you lie?”

  He glanced around, leaned forward. “Please lower your voice.”

  “It is low. But it’s about to get louder. Talk to me.”

  “Would you want to be known as the jilted boyfriend of a scientist who died under suspicious circumstances?”

  She sat back. That was reasonable. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Pole brain. But too soon to let it go. “Other people must have known about the two of you, though.”

  “We were discreet. Rarely ate together, no public displays of affection, all very professional.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t care one way or the other. She wanted it that way.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “She was afraid if word got around, it could hurt her chances for more grants.”

  “Who would have cared?”

  “Graeter and Merritt both file performance reports on everybody here. In case you haven’t noticed, women are not his favorite people. Women who sleep around are beneath the bottom of his shit list. She thought he would ding her big-time for it.”

  “Do you know anything about Vishnu?”

  “Yeah. It was the stuff Emily found in the cryopeg.”

  “What did she tell you about it?”

  “Not much. Ate carbon dioxide like a champ, I think. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Talk to me about Triage,” she said.

  Hallie had read the expression “the blood drained from his face,” but she had never actually seen it happen. His mouth opened halfway, but nothing came out. Finally, not looking at her, he said, “About what?”

  “I’ll be back with Graeter, Embie.” She stood up.

  “Please don’t call me that. And sit down. Please,” he whispered.

  “The last time.”

  “It could be the end of my career if it goes farther than this table.”

  “Could be the end of more than that if you’re involved with Em’s death.”

  She had to lean forward to hear. “I’m engineering a new virus that can immobilize enemy combatants without killing them. ‘Humane warfighting’ is what it’s called.”

  “By whom?”

  “The project originators.”

  “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  “You know how picornaviruses have those really long, multifunctional, untranslated region fives? My work focuses on a ribosome entry source in one of those regions that’s very susceptible to protease manipulation. I want to stimulate the protein synthesis in infected cells, which should increase their pathogenicity and give it a neurological affinity.”

  “Why in God’s name would you be doing that at the South Pole?”

  “There’s no place for it to go.”

  “To go? You mean, if there’s a breach?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’re using the whole station as one big BSL-4 containment lab.”

  “Jesus, no. I told you that before. My lab is biosecure. And Triage isn’t supposed to kill people, anyway. Just immobilize them.”

  “Isn’t supposed to. But you’re not sure about that, or you wouldn’t be working down here. You just told me that.”

  He didn’t agree, but neither did he deny it. Hallie’s stomach clenched again. The churning and rumbling in her gut was clearly audible.

  “Polarrhea,” Blaine said. “Lucky you.”

  “Is there any chance your pathogen could have breached containment and killed those women?”

  “No way in hell.”

  “How much experience do you have working with Level Three and Four pathogens?”

  “Enough. Or I wouldn’t have been picked for this project.”

  “What’s the first step in donning a Chemturion BSL-4 biosafety suit?”

  “Take a piss.”

  That was right. “Who’s running this operation?”

  “NSF.”

  She was about to laugh in his face, but then she remembered what Fida had said about NSF’s national security origin.

  “I know it sounds crazy,” he protested, trying to regain some composure and control. “But there it is.” He shrugged. “How did you find out?”

  “Believe in ghosts?”

  “What? No.”

  “You should. Emily told me everything.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Like how you mixed Stoli and beer and Ecstasy at the New Year’s Eve party. Got drunk and high and babbled on about things you shouldn’t have. And like how she dumped you, but you kept hanging around, stalking her. I could go on.”

  He stared, speechless.

  “Let me ask you something else. And keep in mind that I might already know the answer to this question. Just seeing how many lies you’re telling. What did you dress up as for January’s Thing Night?”

  “A Walking Dead.”

  She waited, holding his eyes.

  “Really. I swear. A zombie.”

  “Can anybody verify that?”

  “I don’t know. The costume was really good. Part of it was a rubber mask over a lot of my face.”

  “Do you work with a partner?”

  “In the lab? No. Security.”

  “Have you ever been down into Old Pole?”

  He looked at her like the Pole might already be depriving her of certain faculties. But when he spoke, he sounded hugely relieved to be talking about something other than Triage. “Yes.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Humor me.”

  “Creepiest place you could possibly imagine. Like something straight out of the old Thing movie. The walls and ceilings are collapsing. Everything is fifty years old. Stinks. No lights. It’s like a labyrinth. You can get good and lost down there.”

  Sounds just like a cave, she thought. She loved caves. “If it’s so bad, why go there?”

  “There’s old booze, for one thing, stashed in odd places. But mainly, it’s fucking different. You can’t imagine what it’s like after you’ve been here eight or nine months. Your mind shrivels up. Day after day, nothing changes. Old Pole is new, odd as that sounds. Different. Scary. You go down there to make sure you’re still alive.”

  “Even though you could get killed.”

  “That’s maybe the point, I think.”

  “How do you get down there? Through the Underground?”

  “Not anymore. There was a tunnel, but Graeter found out about it and had it blocked.”

  “So?”
<
br />   “There’s an equipment shed a quarter mile from the station. Off to the right, about a forty-five-degree angle from the main entrance. The shaft is behind, out of sight of the station. There’s a plywood cover and snow on top of that. Why do you want to know? Are you thinking of going down there?”

  She recoiled. “God, no. You couldn’t drag me down to a place like that. No way in hell. I was just curious. The way people talk …” Her stomach moved again, a feeling of viscous churning.

  Blaine heard it, said, “You’d better hurry. That stuff can be explosive.”

  “I learned that.” She stood. “We’re not done. Be here when I get back.”

  She pointed at his shirt. “That looks like blood.”

  She left him scrubbing the red spots furiously with a handful of napkins.

  42

  “WE NEED TO TALK TO GERRIN,” BLAINE SAID. HE HAD COME straight to Merritt’s office after being grilled by Hallie. She had called Doc and Guillotte, who were on their way.

  “The non-gov sat link they use is supposed to be secure. But every call is like a submarine’s periscope going up.”

  “She knows, goddamnit,” Blaine said.

  “She knows something. I’m not sure how much.”

  “She asked me straight out about Triage. You said she asked you, too.”

  “You fed her the story Gerrin gave and we all rehearsed. That was good. I pretended ignorance. She believed me. Do you think she believed you?”

  “Not really.” He hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe. Did you hear about Brank? It had to be goddamned Guillotte. The last thing we needed was another death.”

  “He has his uses, you have to admit.”

  “I’ve never liked Guillotte. There’s something wrong with him.”

  “He’s French,” Merritt said. “There’s something wrong with all of them.”

  “No. He’s a psychopath. There’s something wrong with all of them.”

  “Stop that,” Merritt said. “It makes you look like an old woman.”

  “What?”

  “Wringing your hands.”

  He looked down. “Didn’t realize I was doing it.”