The other woman smiled a little uncertainly. “Are you okay?”
Cass limped over to the treadmill. “Sorry, I was just watching you run. You make it look so easy.”
Anne wiped a hand across her forehead and smiled self-consciously. “Thanks. That’s a real compliment, coming from you. I know you’re a runner yourself.”
“I was.”
“What do you mean?”
Cass gestured at her foot. “I twisted my ankle down in the garage back in February. I’m still worried about putting all my weight on it.”
“That’s why you were beating the hell out of the punching bag. I wondered why I haven’t seen you on a treadmill.”
Cass hesitated. “It’s funny how you can spot another runner, isn’t it? I saw you take three strides and knew you’d run all your life.”
“It’s true.” Anne nodded. Her pace hadn’t slowed one bit and her words came easily.
“There are people who run, but they’re not runners . Do you know what I mean?”
“The ones who do this?” Anne lifted her knees almost to her chest and flapped her arms like a bird. They both broke out laughing at the pantomime of the world’s worst form.
“There’s someone who does this,” Cass said, throwing her elbows out and swinging her hips wide to imitate the run of the mysterious figure she’d seen the day she’d towed the Alpine back to the garage. “But I can’t remember who.”
“Like a model on a runway, but with the arms going, too.”
“Exactly!”
“It looks familiar.” The smile died on Anne’s face. “Oh. Sheryl Larkin used to . . . used to run like that. She was never very good, but she tried awfully hard. Is that who you mean?”
Anne’s words came together like the missing parts of a clock, confirming what Cass had known but hadn’t been able to articulate. A roaring sound flooded her ears. She could see the image of the fleeing figure and over it she superimposed the few times she’d seen Sheryl in the gym.
“Cass? Are you okay?” Anne stopped her treadmill and stared at her, alarmed.
“I’m okay,” Cass heard herself say. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
Cass realized she’d put out a hand and grabbed a nearby machine to steady herself. Anne looked like she was a second away from calling for a medic.
“No, I’m really okay. I just . . . you know, I was one of the ones who brought her in that night and I . . .” she babbled, trying to cover the confusion and anger her real thoughts had created. “I can’t believe I didn’t make the connection.”
Anne nodded. “It was a shock for everyone, but it must’ve been really bad for you.”
“It was. I . . . I think I’m going to go back to my berth and lie down for a while.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” Anne said, her face sympathetic. “Try to put it out of your mind. Sheryl’s death was just a terrible, tragic accident and it won’t happen again.”
She said a few more things in an attempt to comfort, but Cass didn’t hear any of them as she stumbled out of the gym and down the hall. Images of Sheryl alive—laughing and eating in the galley, nodding to her at a meeting—mingled with those of the body on the sled, frozen and unresponsive, then morphed, in turn, into the shadowy figure sprinting down the ice tunnel. Cass felt sick.
It won’t happen again . . . because it never happened at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“So what does it all mean? What should I do?”
There was a pause before the answer came across, crackling and hissing. “Are you really asking that of a child of Soviet-era dissenters who were sent to Siberia for asking too many questions?”
Lying on her side, cradling her parka’d head in the crook of her elbow, Cass smiled. It wasn’t all that funny, but any joke was welcome these days. “I’m asking you as a scientist and a friend.”
“A friend?”
“Well, yes,” Cass stammered.
“Oh. In that case, how could I resist?” Vox replied in a mocking tone. Cass couldn’t tell if the comment was sarcastic or self-deprecating. “But you should treat your friends better. You have missed our last two dates.”
“I’m sorry, Sasha,” she said, exasperated. He’d already chided her twice. “I don’t know about life at Orlova, but things are pretty crazy here. Even when you don’t think there’s a major conspiracy going on.”
“Call me Vox. I forgive you. But you owe me,” Vox said. “In any case, you have asked for my help with a problem. I will solve this for you, but let us treat this as an academic issue. First, what is your evidence?”
“I never saw her face or checked her body.”
“Next.”
“Our station doctor told me he had not been permitted to inspect the body.”
“Noted.”
“I saw a person fleeing the vehicle facility who had a very distinct running style. I couldn’t identify it at the time, but when I described it to someone else, they knew who it was immediately.”
“The day you saw the figure,” Vox said. “This was on the same day as the last flight back to McMurdo, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And your vehicle maintaining faculty has an external door, does it not?”
“Vehicle maintenance facility. Yes, it has two entrances. One is human-sized, one is big enough for the snowcats to pass through.”
“You said several of your station’s administrators were also there,” Vox continued. “This was your base manager, the security person, and your psychologist?”
“Yes.”
“If you lived in Moscow, I would say they were there to interrogate you,” he joked. “But you say they were gone by the time you came back to the garage?”
“Nowhere to be found. I’ve tried to ask them since that time what they were doing there, but they avoid answering me.”
“No news is good news, I think you say. But, I agree, it is weird. Is there anything else? You told me that your psychiatric officer had asked to see you, no?”
“That’s right. He wanted to do a psych evaluation.”
“Why would he do that?”
“To see if I’d gone crazy.”
“Did you pass?”
“Pashol na khui .”
Vox burst out laughing. “So someone knows how to use the Internet! Very good. Remind me what this psychologist said about you.”
Cass rolled onto her back; her arm was falling asleep. “I thought that he’d brought me in to make sure I wasn’t traumatized by the accident, but his questions were strange.”
“How so?”
“He seemed to want to steer the conversation toward things I didn’t even understand.” Cass groped for words. Even months later, Keene’s interview made no sense. “He seemed to think I had something to do with Sheryl’s death. He asked about my ‘role,’ then seemed disappointed, maybe even worried, when I didn’t have the answer he was expecting.”
“I am going to assume that a psychologist acting unstable is an unusual situation in America,” Vox said. “In Russia, they are the very first to go around the corner.”
“Bend. Go around the bend.”
“Whatever. Do you have anything else for me to consider, Miss Jennings?”
“Only that the base manager and head of security seemed to take Sheryl’s death pretty lightly. They made a few announcements and asked a few questions, but it’s been a closed subject since it happened.”
“But you have a theory?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what it is. I will test it using the undisputed rigors of the scientific method.”
“I don’t think Sheryl died,” Cass said. “I think her death was faked.”
Silence greeted her statement. It stretched on for so long that Cass asked, “Vox? You still there?”
“Blaze, I must apologize. This whole time, I didn’t think you were paranoid enough to survive in Russia. I was wrong.”
“Don’t joke, Vox. I’m s
erious.”
She imagined him taking stock on the other end. “All right. Tell me your thesis.”
“I think the body they sent out there was just a frozen . . . mannequin or something. Wrap a side of beef or a crash test dummy in enough layers of Gore-Tex and let it freeze for a few hours, and it would seem like a dead body. Especially if they didn’t get a chance to see the face or check for an injury.”
“Where is this woman now?”
Cass swallowed. “I think they were trying to sneak her on board the last flight when I found them in my garage. Sikes and his people had no idea what she looked like; she would’ve been just another face to them. But that’s why Hanratty and the others were so shocked when I showed up and why she ran—she was probably minutes away from getting on board that plane. They must’ve found another way to sneak her on board later.”
There was no sound on the other end. Cass continued.
“Then, Keene interviews me, but shows no sympathy or compassion. Instead, it’s as if he thought I knew something, was part of something. Like I was part of a conspiracy or a plan. Say, like faking a crew member’s death.”
“But if he knows what is going on, why would he ask those questions?”
“Vox, hold on.” Cass, lying on her back with an earpiece in one ear and three layers of clothing around her head, could barely hear the wind rushing outside. But she felt, rather than heard, something—a thud, a bang, something—come through the floor, nearly stopping her heart. Moving slowly, she rolled onto her belly, pushed herself to her hands and knees awkwardly, and crawled to the hatch that led down to the ice tunnels.
There it was again. Softer now, barely felt through the floor, but noticeable. Pulse pounding, she got a flashlight ready in her right hand, then yanked the hatch open with her left. Cold air wafted upward, hitting her in the face. The beam shone down the tube, illuminating the white ice riming the metal walls and rungs.
Nothing.
Ignoring the shock of cold, Cass ripped away her parka and hood so she could listen to the empty space, hoping the tube would act like an amplifier.
Was there a scratching, scuffing sound? Or was it the fabric of her parka? Her mouth was dry and her pulse pounded in her temples as she strained to hear.
Nothing.
After a moment, she heard Vox’s tinny voice calling over the earpiece. Reluctantly, she lowered the hatch over the tube and crawled back to her shortwave, but kept her flashlight on. She screwed the earpiece back in.
“I’m here.”
“Good. I thought they’d kidnapped you and were performing mind-control experiments.”
“The first one, no,” she said. “The second one, we’re still trying to decide. Anyway, what were you asking?”
“Why would your psychologist ask you those questions if he already knew what was going on?”
Cass pulled the drawstring of her hood tighter. It was cold . “I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t in on the entire plan to begin with and was hoping to learn more? Like I said, when I didn’t give him the answers he wanted, he seemed worried. Or scared.”
“Which leads us back to the big question. Why would your superiors fake a crew member’s death?”
“Right.”
“In my country, when such deceit is used, it is to observe how you would have acted had such an event happened.”
“A test,” Cass said, slowly, thinking aloud.
“Yes. Now, what would they be trying to test? Your loyalty?”
“No. You’re still thinking like the KGB is after you. There’s no cult of personality at a research base. Not one that matters, at least.”
“What, then?”
“Maybe they wanted to rattle everyone, see how they reacted to a terrible event. Like one of their own dying right before the doors close for the winter.”
“Surviving a winter here isn’t enough?”
“Hundreds, maybe thousands of people have wintered over and survived more or less intact,” she said. “A series of short, sharp shocks might send different people around the . . . corner in different ways. Ways you could study or report on.”
“How did the woman Sheryl’s death—or fake death—affect you?”
How did it affect me? Good question. Should I say picking her legs up reminded me of watching the first responders carrying bodies out of a tunnel? Or that I couldn’t see past the ruse of Taylor not allowing me to lift her ski mask because I knew it would bring back all the faces of the people who’d been suffocated after the mooring collapsed?
A particular, caustic burn caught at her throat, a clutching of the muscles there. The imagined feel of Sheryl’s wooden body—to hell if it hadn’t been real, the emotions it dredged up were —mixed with the memories of a subway tunnel, an engineering failure, a knot of people trapped in the urban equivalent of a miners’ cave-in.
“Blaze? Are you there? Cass?”
She cleared her throat. “I’m here.”
“How did Sheryl’s death affect you?”
“Why do you want to know?” It came out as a harsh accusation. She hoped the radio’s white noise took some of the edge off. But she had the wild, unreasoning thought that maybe Vox was involved somehow and was baiting her, asking her to confide in him.
Vox continued, oblivious. “Because their reaction to your reaction might tell us something. Nobody does nothing in a case like this. Is not possible.”
“What do you mean?”
“Most base administrators, even Russian ones, would offer you some kind of support after the death of a colleague, yes? The compassionate ones would offer sympathy, while even the most heartless would want to know when you could get back to work. But saying nothing, doing nothing? Then you are being studied.”
The simple sentence made her mouth go dry. “So what should I do? What’s coming next?”
“You’re an engineer,” he said, the distance and static making his voice robotic and impersonal. “Suppose you have a mysterious substance whose tensile strength is unknown. How do you find out how strong it is?”
“A stress test,” Cass said automatically.
“And what happens if the test doesn’t break the subject?”
A hollow feeling opened up in her chest, like a rock falling down an unplumbed well. “You keep trying until it does.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Alone, Leroy sat at one of the galley tables facing the outer wall and talked to the wind.
People passed him, trays or cups in hand, sitting or conversing within arm’s reach. No one spoke to him. Had they, he would not have heard them.
But no one did. Behavior thought of as strange back in February was taken for granted in May. Most of Shackleton’s crew had started to fade in and out, victims of the lack of light and mental stimulation. T3. The Antarctic stare. Long-eye. Whatever you called it, people recognized it and appreciated the right of others to indulge.
Hours slipped by. Someone asked Leroy to move slightly so he could wipe the table down. He lifted his arms, then put them back down on the tabletop without blinking or recognizing who had made the request. Gale-force winds on the other side of the wall surged and faded, ripping across the face of the station. They’d long since passed into winter’s full darkness and almost nothing could be seen out of any of the galley’s windows; only rarely did a gust throw snow so violently against the glass that it could be seen.
Leroy’s lips moved as he answered the wind. He did so without a sound except for an occasional whimper. From time to time, a shudder would ripple through him from the skin on the back of his head down to the muscles in the small of his back, but he was otherwise motionless.
Throughout his vigil, the wind was constant, thrashing against the walls of the station then subsiding to a low hiss. Only once did it build into such a towering wave that it seemed to actually shake the building. The few people left in the galley glanced up, then went back to their conversations, relegating the wind to nothing more than background noise.
; But Leroy, rigid in his seat, listened to the keening wind with wide eyes. When it finally tapered off, he let out a long, low groan, then rose unsteadily to his feet. He stumbled over to the buffet and grabbed handfuls of crackers and dry goods before tottering out of the galley. He proceeded directly to his berth, where he threw the food in a sack, gathered a few essential things, then headed to the Beer Can and followed the stairs down, deep into the dark.
PART IV
JUNE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Ron Ayres frowned at his laptop. According to his records, Leroy Buskins hadn’t refilled his bimonthly prescriptions in more than three weeks.
What was he on, again? Ron clicked through several screens, having trouble even remembering much about the man. Leroy was one of those quiet, self-effacing types who, despite his size, had seemed to be perpetually in a corner, even if he was sitting in the middle of a room.
Oh, hell. That’s right . Amoxapine and iloperidone. How’d he forgotten that ? His frown deepened and he flicked through several more screens. The automatic e-mail alert he should’ve received when Leroy was three days delinquent had been turned off.
Without taking his eyes from his laptop, he called to the front room. “Beth?”
Beth Muñez, the station’s nurse, poked her head around the corner, eyebrows raised.
Ron tapped his screen with a fingernail. “You haven’t been making any changes in the pharma software, have you?”
“No, of course not. Why?”
“Leroy Buskins is way overdue for a pickup, but his alert’s been toggled off.”
She came fully into the room to look over his shoulder. “Wasn’t me. Now that I think of it, though, it has been a while since he’s come in. What’s he taking again?”
Ron pointed at the screen. “Something he shouldn’t be missing.”
She grunted. “Not good.”
“Definitely suboptimal.” He pushed his chair back. “Hold down the fort for me, will you? I’m going to check up on him.”
Ron left the tiny medical complex, rubbing his face to try to smooth out the grimace that was gathering there; no one liked to see a worried doctor walking the halls. But he was worried. When one of your charges was missing his dose of psychotropic drugs to stay on balance, you ought to be.
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