Ice Age

by Brian Freemantle

  Lebrun said: ‘Can you help me? I’ve caught it, haven’t I?’ He was wheezing and blew his nose heavily.

  ‘We’re trying,’ said the French scientific advisor.

  ‘Quickly,’ said Lebrun. ‘It’s got to be quick. This is how the others went …’ He disturbed the paper before him. ‘I’ve written it all down, here …’

  Dupuy turned to Pelham, who shrugged. Quietly again Dupuy said: ‘Progesterone?’

  ‘Being administered,’ said the American.

  ‘Give him more,’ insisted Dupuy. ‘On my authority. We’ll worry about side effects later. Just slow it down.’ Louder he said: ‘We’re going to give you something, a hormone.’

  ‘Quickly!’ repeated the man. He began to cry. ‘I don’t want to die. Stop it happening. Please stop it happening …’

  Now it was Dupuy who shrugged helplessly. ‘We’ll do all we can … are doing all we can. Everything … we’ll talk later …’ He was sweating, red-faced.

  ‘Don’t go! I don’t want to be left.’

  ‘I have to go, if we’re going to find out what it is … we’ll talk again. I’ll come back …’ The Frenchman hurried out into the linking corridor, not bothering to conceal the impression of his running away. Outside the observation gallery he stopped, breathing heavily. ‘Is that how they all are … how they go …?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Stoddart. How quickly – easily – he seemed personally to have adjusted.

  Dupuy shook his bowed head. More controlled Geraldine said: ‘I didn’t expect it to be like that … I should have done, I suppose, but I didn’t …’ She shook her head, too.

  ‘The other two seem to have been luckier,’ said Pelham, leading the way into the next observation chamber.

  Stripped from his protective suit and now in a sterile tunic, Darryl Matthews became a short, slim bodied man appearing much younger than his thirty-eight years … The most startling feature – and comparison to the Frenchman they’d just left – was a thick shock of deeply black, disordered hair. Like the Frenchman, Matthews was at the desk, writing, but came up sharply when Stoddart spoke.

  ‘I feel OK,’ said Matthews, without being asked. The accent was clipped New England.

  ‘You look it, too,’ said Stoddart.

  ‘How are the others?’

  ‘Lebrun’s not well.’

  ‘Shit! How about Hank?’

  ‘Seems all right. We haven’t spoken to him yet.’

  ‘You know what it is?’

  ‘Not yet. That’s why we need your help.’

  ‘I’m writing, like I was asked …’

  ‘… We need some specific answers, right away,’ broke off Stoddart. ‘You feel up to it?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘You’d been at Noatak five weeks; time enough to set up?’

  ‘We were set up. Working.’

  Stoddart breathed in, deeply, hopefully. ‘I’ve been through all the stuff that was brought back. There isn’t any experiment data … slides, anything like that …’

  ‘Shit!’ said Matthews again, more vehemently this time.

  ‘So we’re down to memory: your memory,’ said Stoddart. ‘Had you collected plant samples?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Stoddart was aware of the stir around him. ‘What?’

  ‘Usual stuff. Lichen, fox moss, boreal fossils—’

  ‘Stop!’ ordered Stoddart. ‘Boreal fossils might not be usual. We want this nice and slow, Darryl. Did you bring up anything, on any bore, that wasn’t usual: a plant, fossil, anything at all, that you hadn’t seen before? Anything that excited you?’

  Matthews gave the question time. ‘Not right off.’

  ‘Did you analyse everything you collected?’ asked Geraldine. Seeing the surprise through the glass, she added: ‘There are a few of us here. Geraldine, Geraldine Rothman, from England.’

  Matthews shook his head. ‘We hit lucky, like I think we said when we got here. Summer came all at once and I decided to take advantage of it: get as much up as I could in case the weather went against us.’

  ‘We’ll come to the weather in detail later,’ promised Stoddart. ‘But the ice was softer than you expected …?’

  ‘And the permafrost.’

  ‘You went into permafrost? Soil?’ Stoddart’s demand was a split second ahead of Geraldine’s, so that they were talking over each other at the end. Stoddart repeated: ‘You sunk a bore into soil?’

  ‘A good six inches. That’s what I mean. I didn’t think I was going to get a chance like that again, so I went for it like a kid in a candy store.’

  Geraldine looked sideways to Stoddart. ‘We got any permafrost soil samples?’

  Stoddart shook his head, tight-lipped. William Perkins, the Noatak station head, had fucked up big time leaving so much behind to be destroyed.

  ‘Let’s slow things down again,’ urged Geraldine, talking to the man in the isolation room. ‘Are you absolutely sure there wasn’t a permafrost sample or specimen you hadn’t seen before?’

  Matthews shook his head. ‘I already told you I didn’t put anything under the microscope; just got it up, labelled it with a site number, date and time and stored it for later.’

  Geraldine cupped her face in her hands, eyes tight with frustration. ‘Stored how?’

  ‘Refrigerated at the temperature at which it was extracted!’ said the man, indignantly, ‘I do know how to maintain samples!’

  ‘I’m glad you do, Darryl,’ said the woman, encouragingly. ‘So you’ll know the answer to my next question. How many of those permafrost temperatures were above freezing, where whatever was in the bore might have thawed? There were some, weren’t there?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the paleobotanist, cautiously. ‘I don’t remember how many, exactly – it’ll be in my log, of course – but there were definitely some.’

  ‘Give us an estimate?’ asked Dupuy, coming into the exchange.

  Matthews hesitated at the new voice. ‘Four or five. Not more than that.’

  ‘So they weren’t refrigerated?’ pressed Stoddart.

  ‘Of course not!’ said Matthews, indignant again. ‘They wouldn’t have given a true reading if they had been, would they?’

  Instead of answering, Stoddart said: ‘So how were they stored?’

  ‘I had five specimen cases in which I could maintain a fixed temperature.’

  ‘So although they weren’t refrigerated they were enclosed?’ said Geraldine.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No outside ventilation at all?’ pressed Stoddart, with the advantage of having worked on a polar station.

  ‘Those above freezing had been exposed to outside air temperature: that’s what softened the permafrost. So that’s how they were maintained.’

  ‘What about filtration?’ asked Dupuy.

  Instead of answering, Matthews said: ‘You think this is where it came from? Something unlocked from the ground, by a thaw?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ admitted Stoddart. ‘It could be. So what’s the answer about filtration?’

  ‘No. There wouldn’t have been any point in cleansing the air, would there?’

  It might, conceivably, have saved a few lives, thought Stoddart. ‘Freak weather?’

  ‘I already told you that.’

  Stoddart didn’t like the belligerence. ‘You troubled much by bugs?’

  Matthews sniggered. ‘Funny you should ask. People got bitten to hell.’

  ‘Billington!’ remembered Stoddart, from what he’d read. ‘Joe Billington was the entomologist with you at Noatak. He say anything about the bugs being unusual? Any he hadn’t seen before?’

  Again the man didn’t answer directly. ‘Joe was the first to get ill. And to die.’

  There was another stir in the observation chamber. ‘Was he working with specimens … dissecting them, perhaps?’ asked Dupuy.

  Matthews shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  There was a collective sigh of disappointment.

  ‘Let’s get back to th
e question,’ said Stoddart. ‘Billington say anything to you about the bugs?’

  ‘Not that I can remember.’

  ‘What about from your permafrost samples?’ said Geraldine. ‘Did he find any fossils … atrophied insects … that he thought were unusual?’

  ‘I told you I hadn’t begun work on the soil samples. If I’d found any insects I’d have passed them over then. He wouldn’t have touched my stuff first, ahead of me.’

  ‘The live plants you collected?’ said Dupuy. ‘Any rot, degrading, in any of them?’

  ‘You want to help me with the point of that question?’ asked Matthews.

  ‘Bacteria or virus gestation,’ said Geraldine flatly.

  Stoddart detected the edge in her voice and found it easy to understand her irritation. He hoped Matthews didn’t pick it up. It wouldn’t help.

  ‘Definitely not,’ insisted the paleobotanist. ‘Everything I collected was undamaged.’

  ‘Surface stuff,’ prodded Stoddart gently. ‘But anything held in a bore – in a soil sample – wouldn’t have been undamaged, would it? It would have been crushed, distorted, under sedimentary pressure.’

  Matthews gave an embarrassed half shrug. ‘Core samples, sure. That goes without saying.’

  ‘Nothing can go without saying, with what we’re trying to do,’ said Stoddart firmly. ‘Let’s get this absolutely straight, Darryl. You brought up unfrozen samples which you stored in specimen boxes with unfiltered ventilation? And there was a lot of bug infestation?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the American.

  ‘But you didn’t get the chance to fix your samples … decide if there was anything unusual or let Billington look at any bugs that might have been trapped?’

  ‘That’s about it,’ agreed the now subdued man.

  ‘What about dating?’ persisted Stoddart. ‘Were there any oxygen isotope readings, to give us a guide what age you were boring into … getting samples from …?’

  ‘There would have been, obviously,’ said Matthews. ‘I don’t know what they were … what happened to them …’

  They didn’t have a data base, Stoddart decided. Not from Antarctica or from Noatak. Which was completely understandable to someone like himself, who’d worked research stations and knew that things were never established by the rules and how those rules were bent – ignored – to fit local circumstances, like gathering in everything you could in a freak break in the weather. But no one outside would understand it: conceive how scientists supposedly working within strict scientific rules could have failed to be able to provide a single answer to however many questions were going to need to be answered.

  Doggedly Geraldine said: ‘You absolutely sure that Billington, your entomologist, didn’t find any insect he wasn’t expecting?’

  ‘We weren’t close; not friends!’ said the patient, exasperated. ‘He probably wouldn’t have mentioned it, even if he’d found anything.’

  Protectively Pelham said: ‘We’ve had this guy on the rack for quite a while. I think it’s time we gave him a break. There’s still the Englishman.’

  Harold Norris wasn’t at the table, although handwritten papers were, neatly stacked, awaiting collection. He was in one of the easy chairs, his head back against the rest, eyes closed. The pose stretched his face and neck backwards, straightening out any lines there might have been although there were no traces that Stoddart could see. The man’s hair was blond, which made it difficult to isolate any discolouration, but it was still very full. There appeared no obvious height or weight loss, either: even seated, bodily relaxed, Harold Norris was very obviously the big, heavy man of his medical records, well over six feet and easily the 196 pounds he’d been weighed at, before going to Alaska.

  He came awake as soon as Stoddart spoke, with no momentary, unaccustomed surprise at his surroundings and there was immediate recognition of Stoddart’s name.

  At once the man said: ‘I know I haven’t got it, but Henri has, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Stoddart.

  ‘You think you can save him?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  The English climatologist was so prepared that Stoddart quickly became convinced the man had used the already completed written account as a rehearsal: every response was succinct and factual, an opinion only offered when asked for. Although all his recorded data had been left behind and destroyed, Norris appeared to have perfect recall of the majority of his readings – specifically isolating those he couldn’t to avoid any misunderstanding or confusion – and insisted that with the exception of just two of the thirty-eight days they had been at Noatak, the temperatures, unaffected by any wind chill factor, had been between eight to ten degrees higher than any early seasonal average he could remember. ‘I even imagined I was going to get a paper published in Nature or Science; actually thought of trying to reach you personally on email, to talk it through with you.’ He’d measured the calcification of permafrost and tundra five degrees higher than any he could previously recall and believed the unexpected warmth had given them the infestation problem. ‘Flying things everywhere,’ he said in answer to a question from Dupuy, ‘but nothing, as far as I know, that hadn’t been seen before: mosquito, midges, things like that.’ Despite the warmth, Norris was sure nothing had been allowed to rot or degrade around the Noatak station to provide a breeding ground for bacteria. Again in answer to a question from Dupuy, the man was also sure no one had an infected injury or wound which might have produced bacteria.

  ‘I don’t know if it’ll help, but I’m diabetic: maybe insulin’s a preventative.’

  ‘Something that needs to be recorded,’ agreed Pelham. His pager sounded as he spoke. Looking up from its window he said: ‘The science ministers are here.’

  Stoddart was curious that Amanda O’Connell hadn’t travelled down from Washington but supposed there was no practical reason, after her previous visit, just as there was no point in his immediately returning to the isolation wing with the ministers and their scientific advisors: this was political, a duty presence, and he certainly had no need to be part of it. He’d expected Paul Spencer to go with them but quickly recognized the opportunity when the White House liaison aide made no move to follow the newly arrived group.

  At once Spencer said: ‘Anything I need to be told as we’re by ourselves?’

  Stoddart frowned. ‘We’ve only just started. I’ve been through the stuff the rescue group wrote, separating personal stuff to the families that doesn’t fit here.’

  ‘Needs to be done, I guess.’ Spencer’s decision not to see the Alaskan survivors was more a personal protest for his own self-satisfaction than a reluctance to confront a possible horror he didn’t want or need to look at again. The way he’d planned it, he was always going to be at the very centre of things, Mr Indispensable, not Mr Hey-You who worked the photo-slide machine and prepared the papers and acted as a tour guide to foreign ministers with delusions of grandeur who looked right through him most of the time and who appeared affronted at his temerity in expecting to talk to them as equals on the way to Fort Detrick. Which was very much Amanda O’Connell’s attitude, too. Snooty bitch, making it seem an afterthought, which it probably had been, telling him dismissively she was staying behind (‘the place I need to be’) for the president’s conversation with Moscow. Which was where he should be as well, Spencer knew; needed to be as much as her. In the Oval Office, listening to what was being said, being planned. That’s where Richard Morgan would be, hearing it all, knowing it all.

  ‘What’s new from your end?’

  ‘The Russian situation makes it a whole new ball game.’

  ‘What’s happening there?’

  ‘The President’s making some sort of approach today.’

  ‘You tell Amanda I’d like to hear from her as soon as there’s anything, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ said Spencer, tightly.

  ‘I also need to talk to her about this personal stuff.’

  ‘What sort of stuff?’ deman
ded Spencer alertly.

  ‘Farewell messages, mostly.’ He paused. ‘James Olsen left some legal instructions.’

  ‘Guess you’d better let me have it all; I can show Amanda.’

  ‘What are you going to do about relatives?’

  ‘It’s a security problem.’

  ‘The relatives have a right to know, for Christ’s sake,’ insisted Stoddart. ‘I’ve got to talk to Patricia Jefferies’s brother; should have done it already …’

  ‘Take pause here, Jack. I hear what you’re saying but we don’t want any scare stories leaking out, half-cocked—’

  ‘Half-cocked scare stories! Are you serious?’

  ‘Jack! There’s been a decision made.’

  ‘Decision made by whom?’ seized Stoddart.

  ‘I’m giving you the White House thinking. That’s what I’m supposed to do, remember? The lid’s to be kept on, until we decide otherwise.’

  ‘Do me a favour,’ said Stoddart. ‘Tell Amanda I need to talk to her about this. That I want to do it today, before calling Patricia’s kid brother.’

  ‘The Americans say it was a freak interception, picked up by one of their civilian aircraft; they’re making a tape available to the ambassador in Washington,’ said the Russian president. ‘It’s a lie, of course.’

  ‘What about the illness?’ asked Gregori Lyalin, the Russian science minister.

  ‘They don’t know what it is,’ said Ilya Savich. ‘But international groups are already assembled: political and scientific. We need to be part of it. It’s important and I don’t mean medically.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We need American support for our IMF and World Bank application,’ disclosed Savich. ‘We’ll co-operate totally on this. Make sure you choose the best and most appropriate scientist. Politically I’m putting every reliance on you.’

  Thirteen

  Gregori Lyalin knew he only had one choice although he privately wished there had been an alternative. Raisa Ivanova Orlov was not simply his principal advisor at the Institute. She was an actively working research scientist so internationally respected for her work in virology that the previous year she had been confidently expected – predominantly by herself – to win the Nobel prize for medicine for which she’d been nominated. Had she done so at the age of thirty-nine she would have been its youngest ever recipient. That it had been awarded instead to a black American, whose discovery and sequencing of three genes responsible for prostate cancer had been derided by her advocates and personally denounced by Raisa, was proof not just of American pharmacological domination, but of pandering to Western ethnic political correctness. It hadn’t helped the Russian protests that the American treatment had proved to be ninety-three per cent successful.