Ice Age

by Brian Freemantle

  Nine

  The transcript was absolute, even to the pauses and interjections, but they scarcely needed to follow the translation to understand the interception. Or, from the babbled, whimpering collapse of everyone towards the end, to picture the bizarre scene – hysteria muted to whispers by age and infirmity – there would have been inside the Siberian research station.

  There were three dated and timed tapes, the first four weeks earlier, the initial relevant remark precisely at 12.20 p.m. The beginning almost casual, filling in a scheduled contact:

  How are things generally?

  We’re all feeling tired.

  You’ve been working hard, getting ready for the summer season. What do you expect?

  I suppose you’re right. I didn’t imagine us all to be feeling the same, though … not like this.

  You worried about it?’

  It’s not right.

  You talked to Andrei Ivanovich about it?

  He said he expected it but much later. Months away. He wanted to bring some stay-awake medication … vitamins, things like that, but there weren’t any.

  Life was better for scientists under the old regime. Then you could have anything you wanted.

  Life was better for a lot of people under the old regime, not just scientists.

  Maybe you wouldn’t be so tired if you stopped screwing the natives up there.

  You seen what the natives up here look like!

  The next applicable transmission was 6 p.m. three days later:

  This is Andrei Ivanovich. I have three people ill with symptoms I can’t diagnose. I have taken blood, urine and faeces samples which I need analysed. Can you send a helicopter from Anadyr and then arrange the transfer to you, in Moscow?

  I will make enquiry, doctor.

  There seems to be a malaise throughout the station. I am affected myself for no proper reason: I haven’t been working as physically hard as everyone else setting up their experiments. I think this is urgent. Will you please make that clear, that I consider it urgent!

  The Moscow response came three hours later:

  I am sorry. The Institute has been told by the Ministry that there is no emergency transportation available. That you will have to wait for the next regular supply visit, for the collection.

  The next scheduled supply drop is two months away. I can’t wait that long. The station cannot properly operate with the people here in the condition that they are. Have you told them it’s urgent!

  Yes. The supply visit was the message I got back.

  You go back to them again … are these conversations being recorded?

  Yes.

  Take them the recording. Make them listen. I will demand an enquiry into whether you’ve done this … I want it done.

  The next transmission was on the second tape, two days later, timed at 9 a.m.:

  This is Andrei Ivanovich. Why hasn’t there been any response? Conditions here are worsening. There is hair discolouration I cannot account for. I have found evidence of Yuri Sergeevich developing a left eye cataract for which there is no medical record before we left Moscow less than a month ago, which is medically impossible. And two more, Valentina Valerivich and Oleg Vasilevich, are now confined to bed. I want personally to speak to someone from the Institute. Arrange that for me? Urgently. We are in an emergency situation here!

  The voice was breaking, becoming cracked, a different person on the next communication, at 4 p.m. the same day. This was fainter, unidentified:

  Andrei Ivanovich has fallen, outside the station … he thinks it’s his pelvis that is broken … we’re trying to lift him on to a sled but it’s difficult, with only three of us still strong enough … not strong enough … who’s there from the Institute …? I can relay messages … help … you must help … please help …

  There is no one here from the Institute. Where’s Gennardi Varlomovich? We need to speak to the team leader. Bring Gennardi Varlomovich to the radio

  Gennardi Varlomovich is unconscious … he’s still breathing but can’t be roused … get someone here, quickly … we’re dying …

  There was a gap of three days between the next dated and timed exchange and it was disjointed and discordant, like a recording device accidentally left on at a gathering – a meeting or a party – that the participants didn’t know about. There was no call sign or identification. The demands to know if the connection was to Moscow were faint and uncertain, people shouting from a distance. Or closer but weak-voiced, forcing themselves hopefully to make themselves heard.

  … Moscow …? Is that Moscow …? One voice, no name.

  … help us … please help us … A woman’s voice, no name.

  … they’re dead … Viktor [indecipherable] … A shot [indecipherable]. A third voice, male.

  This is Moscow. You are talking with Moscow. The Ministry have promised a helicopter but we have no time … no day … there will be people coming … leave your receiver channel on …

  Two hours later the woman’s voice, sounding fainter than before: Moscow … where’s Moscow … where’s the helicopter …?

  No notification yet.

  The following day there was no discernible exchange, just demands from Moscow: Research Station Eight? Research Station Eight? There will be a rescue team in three days … we need contact. Research Station Eight …?

  Movement, shuffling, once a cry – maybe a woman’s voice – but no words.

  Every hour – reducing after three to thirty minutes, then quickly to fifteen – came the Moscow demand for contact with the promise of rescue although still not for three days. ‘Research Station Eight, Research Station Eight’ became an unanswered litany. There was only one final exchange on the third tape, dated the day – within an hour – of the initial alarm from the American station at Noatak:

  Moscow …? Moscow …? This is Viktor Porfirevich … there are only three of us left … we have … There was a very long, wheezed pause, with indecipherable talk in the background … We’ve managed to get the tender on to the snowtrack, for Valentina Valerivich … unwell … very unwell. Petr Viktorovich is blind. The weather … Another long break, an actual scream of either pain or frustration, then a male shout … the disease … have to get away from the disease … Polyarnik … we’re trying for Polyarnik … send rescue there … can’t wait …

  Viktor Porfirevich! Don’t leave the station! The helicopter is on its way. Just wait … don’t leave the station …

  … Can’t wait … too late … A sudden background noise, the woman’s cry again … waited too long … Polyarnik …

  Paul Spencer turned the machine off with a positive snap. There was the immediate silence that seemed the inevitable response to every new development. Spencer, who’d seized the opportunity to operate the playback to regain the centre stage he’d lost earlier in the day, said: ‘That’s it. All of it.’

  ‘Where’s the Russian station?’ demanded Partington.

  ‘A place called Iultin. It’s in the Chukotsky Khrebet region of Siberia, inside the Arctic Circle,’ replied Spencer.

  ‘How were we listening?’ persisted the President.

  Spencer hesitated. ‘Noatak.’

  ‘How far, in terms of miles, is Noatak from Iultin?’ came in Amanda.

  Spencer shrugged. ‘A thousand miles. Maybe less, in fact I think it could be less. Say seven hundred fifty.’

  ‘You think they monitored us, from Iultin?’ asked Amanda.

  ‘It’s possible,’ admitted Spencer.

  ‘If they did, they’ll know our people were infected, too,’ picked up Robin Turner. ‘You think it could be the same source of infection?’

  Amanda said: ‘It certainly sounds like the same cause. It’s a question for Stoddart’s team.’ Events were moving too fast for the sort of detailed consideration she intended – she’d only had the car ride back from Fort Detrick to reflect upon it – but the encounter with Jack Stoddart had unsettled her. Even taking into account the personal effect of Patricia J
efferies’s death, he’d been unnaturally subdued compared to the combative, coherent person she’d seen on TV confront – and usually out-argue – industry and political figures who tried to dismiss ozone depletion as unimportant. She hoped the obvious self-recrimination was quickly recoverable. With every passing day – every passing minute, it seemed – the chances of maintaining the insisted upon secrecy diminished.

  Stoddart had in the past been an insufferable political pain in the ass. He had cost scientific research in general, and in particular the environmental lobby of which he was the appointed messiah, a lot of withheld or withdrawn finance. But Amanda didn’t regard that as her current problem, despite carrying the administration’s scientific portfolio. Her current and possibly ongoing problem was going to be weathering the storm – a scale ten hurricane at least – that was going to break around them when everything became public. And when that happened the publicly known, publicly respected and usually publicly eloquent Jack Stoddart was going to be a very necessary publicly waving standard-bearer. Which, judging from that morning’s performance, he was far short of being. It was something that had to be corrected.

  ‘Left them there to die?’ demanded Partington, nodding to the tape player. ‘Moscow abandoned them, didn’t they? Nothing since then?’

  There was an awkward silence which Richard Morgan didn’t hurry to fill, as he would normally have done, leaving Spencer to stumble the reminder of what Partington had clearly forgotten. ‘Noatak was destroyed … burned … like the Antarctic. To prevent any spread, if the station was in some way the source, had caused, the outbreak.’

  If Partington was discomfited he didn’t show it. ‘Don’t we have any other way of hearing what’s going on there?’

  ‘Not ground source,’ said Spencer. ‘We could reposition a satellite.’

  ‘What Institute were they talking about?’

  ‘Their Scientific Institute,’ responded Amanda, at once. ‘Part of their Science Ministry.’

  Still addressing Spencer, the President said: ‘Can we hear what’s going on there?’

  Spencer said: ‘It’s one of the Moscow satellites we’ll have to move over Siberia but there are others, in geostationary orbit. I can use the time and dates on the tapes we’ve already got for references to run a transmission check on anything from the Institute.’

  ‘Do it. What about that background stuff we couldn’t properly hear?’

  ‘Already being enhanced, from the master tapes,’ promised Spencer. ‘We’ve already voice-printed. There were seven, in total. We’re going back, through everything recorded before, to pick up what identities we can.’

  ‘This elevates a problem that didn’t need to get any bigger,’ said the Secretary of State. ‘There’s no way we can open any dialogue with the Russians without their knowing we’re still spying on them.’

  ‘They know that anyway, just as we know they’re still spying on us,’ said Partington impatiently. ‘What’s the big deal?’

  ‘And Moscow will know we’ve evidence of the abandonment,’ said Spencer.

  ‘We can’t go on referring to all this without a code name,’ announced Partington. He snapped his fingers in feigned recollection. ‘What was that place – that valley or something like that – where it was perfect and people always stayed young, as long as they didn’t leave it?’

  ‘Shangri-La,’ provided Spencer obediently.

  ‘That’s what we’ll call it!’ declared Partington, thinking in future headlines. ‘The Shangri-La Strain.’

  ‘That’s good, Mr President,’ praised Morgan hurriedly. ‘That’s very good indeed.’

  Jesus! thought Amanda, although she smiled and nodded in matching praise.

  The arrival from Alaska was another recreation of a sci-fi film set – Stoddart and Pelham in protective moon suits, like everyone else – except for the familiarity of the four sagging body bags. The three suited survivors were able to walk unaided into the isolation building, although each was flanked by attentive escorts. Stoddart couldn’t remember making the same journey. He stripped off in the director’s area, in which he’d been allocated an office, and followed Pelham along the viewing gallery corridor. The arrival room was at the very end, the three men already seated, still suited. Stoddart only had the vaguest recollection of having been in the same room himself, four – or was it five, six maybe? – days earlier. On the ledge in front of the observation window the identities – with their sciences and nationalities – were allocated against the numbered seats in which the three sat, which Stoddart found vaguely offensive, making them numerical experiments. The one American, Darryl Matthews, was a paleobotanist. Harold Norris, the Englishman, and Henri Lebrun, who was French, were both recorded as climatologists.

  ‘You’re in charge,’ prompted Pelham.

  ‘I …’ started Stoddart, but stopped, swept by his inadequacy. ‘I need your help … need to know what you want, medically … what to tell them …’

  The men on the other side of the glass straightened at Pelham’s voice, their heads coming up towards the window. Stoddart thought Lebrun’s reaction was slower than the other two. Pelham talked of their being quarantined for immediate medical examination and investigation for which they would be isolated each from the other. That would take at least twenty-four hours, after which they would be asked for their personal recollections which were needed in the most precise and intimate detail.

  ‘Please think about it, during the examinations. Talk to the doctors when things come to you … everything will be recorded automatically. We don’t care how much repetition there is. The importance is that nothing is missed.’

  ‘You don’t know what it is?’ challenged Matthews, at once. Even through the distortion of the headset his voice was strong.

  Pelham hesitated. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘So there’s no treatment?’ said Norris. His voice was weaker but Stoddart decided more from uncertainty that from affliction.

  ‘There will be antibiotics,’ said the installation director.

  The various cocktails that were experimented with upon Patricia, remembered Stoddart. He was recovering, annoyed at his difficulty a few minutes earlier.

  ‘Right away?’ pressed Norris.

  ‘There’ll need to be the preliminary examination …’ Pelham hesitated again. ‘Do any of you think you’re infected?’

  There were cowled head movements between the three. In scarcely accented English Lebrun said simply: ‘My hair is changing colour. And I’m losing it. That happened to the others. It means I’m dying.’

  ‘Antibiotics could halt it, until we make a positive diagnosis,’ said Pelham.

  Sure he was not visible through the separating glass, Stoddart looked sharply at the other man, who didn’t return the look. Wanting now to get into the exchange – sure that at least two of the men were physically capable of answering – Stoddart quickly identified himself but before he could ask his question Norris said: ‘The Jack Stoddart? You think warming’s to do with this?’

  ‘We haven’t even begun the assessment yet,’ said Stoddart. ‘But what about your data? Has it all been brought back?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Norris. ‘Bill Perkins was the team leader: died two days ago. I know he began assembling things but I don’t know what happened to it. It was panic in the end.’

  ‘What about your readings over the last month?’ pressed Stoddart, remembering Jane Horrocks’s notes of unexpected ice softness but not wanting to lead the other man. ‘Anything that surprised you?’

  ‘The warmth,’ said Norris, at once.

  ‘Did you bring your personal data back with you?’ asked Stoddart.

  ‘Some notebooks, maybe,’ said the man. ‘Most of the stuff was among what Perkins was assembling.’

  ‘Henri?’ coaxed Stoddart.

  The Frenchman’s head was slow coming up again. ‘What?’

  ‘Any of your experiments in the last month produce something you didn’t expect?’

&n
bsp; There was no immediate reply. Then Lebrun said: ‘It was the beginning of summer—’

  ‘Predictable temperatures, in your opinion?’ Stoddart interrupted, abandoning the determination not to lead and wanting to concentrate the Frenchman’s wandering mind.

  ‘At least three degrees warmer than it should have been, for the time of the season.’

  ‘Have you brought back your personal research with you? Or was it part of the main archive?’

  ‘Some. Not all. Some in the main archive …’

  Pelham made a positive move beside Stoddart and said, softly: ‘We need to get them into examination.’ To Stoddart’s nod of acceptance the scientist said more loudly: ‘Let’s get you into treatment now,’ and on cue overalled medics came in to lead the three away.

  As they made their way back along the corridor, Stoddart said: ‘There’s something obscene about that … like going to mental asylums a hundred years ago to look at the afflicted.’

  ‘It’s not the same,’ rejected Pelham, almost irritably. ‘It’s practical. Necessary.’

  ‘“Get you into treatment”?’ quoted Stoddard, questioningly. ‘“Antibiotics could halt it, until we make a positive diagnosis”?’