The Winter Over

by Iden, Matthew

  Elise Simon saw blinking lights everywhere and all the time. They forced their way into her thoughts, even when she wasn’t working, showing up in conversations and idle moments. They went along for the ride into the frustrating slide into sleep that so often didn’t come, and slipped into her dreams when it did. She wanted to scream sometimes, when her sleep-self—gently tipping into the soft, velvet bank of slumber—chose that moment to invent the lights of an imaginary emergency call on the inside of her lids, yanking her awake with her mouth dry and her heart pounding.

  Sometimes after waking in the absolute darkness of her berth, she would lie with her eyes oyster-wide and stare at the ceiling, sure she could see the square, gem-like greens and reds from her switchboard arrayed above her bed. Fascinated at what her mind conjured out of thin air, she would watch the imaginary calls come and go, and fill in the backstories of the people on the other end. What they needed and why. Who and where they lived. She pushed hard against reality, inventing benign calls for help, like cats up trees and requests for fire engines to make a big show at the Fourth of July parade.

  When her mind ran out of happy stories and her memory started replaying what she knew actually went on behind an emergency call, the horrific reality of experience, she knew it was time to get out of bed and get to work, no matter what time it was or how little she’d slept.

  This was one of those times. Elise rolled over and tapped her clock. She’d slept three hours and sixteen minutes. She groaned. A new record. Glancing to her left, she checked the small field radio she was required to keep next to her bed to cover emergencies during her off-hours. All clear; it hadn’t squawked, beeped, or buzzed. Congrats, you woke up all on your own . She kicked the blanket to the floor, slipped out of bed, and got dressed in the dark, trying not to think about the exhaustion that would set in later . . . or the mental fog that came along with it.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t matter how tired she was or would be. Communications was one of the few jobs at Shackleton that didn’t work toward a goal: she didn’t paint sheds, she didn’t record computer results, she didn’t fix busted pipes. Her job was to answer calls and patch through radio broadcasts for the same ten hours every day, day after day. She’d commiserated with Pete, who had a job like hers; it didn’t matter how hungover or tired you were, breakfast got served in the morning, lunch at noon, and dinner at night. Every day. Period.

  She nodded wordlessly at the few people she passed on her way to her work cube. The base was a twenty-four-hour operation, so there was always someone around, haunting the halls, but no one who was awake now was interested in chatting. A few, suffering from long-eye, stared right past her. She didn’t take it personally, since they weren’t really there. For all intents and purposes, they didn’t see her and wouldn’t unless she said something. That was fine with her, so she floated past them like a ghost on her way to the admin offices.

  Her prework ritual had boiled down to the same few motions: stop to grab a cup of coffee and fill her water bottle, tie her hair back to keep it from getting caught in the receiver’s earpiece, and slap the seat cushion where she’d be planted for the next four hours. Once the necessary items were out of the way, the coffee went on her right, the water bottle on the left, and her butt went in the chair. Ready, she faced front with a sigh.

  The dashboard was dark.

  Not a single light was on. For a split second, her memory and imagination imprinted a false set of blinking lights, but she squeezed her eyes shut and opened them. No lights.

  She punched several of the call buttons to no effect, then lifted the receiver. The familiar tone was there, but when she tapped the space bar on her computer’s keyboard and checked her screen for the network signal, a red “X” covered the familiar connection icon.

  Frowning, she pushed her chair back and crawled under her desk. A short stint at a corporate IT help desk had taught her to never be too proud to check the obvious: Was it plugged in? It was. And so was everything else. Dusting herself off, she rebooted the computer, turned the dashboard on and off, checked all her connections. Nothing changed.

  Elise sat for a moment, thinking things through, then picked up the receiver and called her own room. The line rang a half-dozen times before she disconnected. So, internal comms was up, external was down.

  She cleared her throat, picked up the receiver again, then dialed another internal number. It was answered on the second ring, the voice on the other end creaky but clear and awake.

  “Jack?” she said. “It’s Elise. We’ve got a problem.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “So the test continues?”

  “Tests,” Cass corrected, trying to get comfortable and not really succeeding. It was a challenge to talk on a radio on one’s side while simultaneously hovering over the hatch to watch for eavesdroppers, all in subzero temperatures and wearing the equivalent of a spacesuit. Comfort wasn’t really in the cards. “Yesterday, the furnaces for the station shut down, so we lost heat for almost an hour. Just as people calmed down, the electricity went out.”

  “Both were restored?” Vox asked.

  “Yes, but not before there was a panic. Some people were hurt.”

  “You have no backup systems? Redundant generators and so on?”

  “Hanratty claims the backup was down as well. But just before the crew became hysterical, both were magically restored. Everyone started to relax and we all went back to our routines.” Cass shuddered. “Then, this morning, all communications went offline. Everything. Shortwave, satcom, you name it. Complete radio silence.”

  “How is the crew taking it?”

  “They’re on the verge of a collective nervous breakdown. Hanratty called for an all-hands meeting later today to explain what’s going on.”

  “This is, how do you say, bullshit.”

  “Yes,” Cass said as she rolled onto her belly and peered down the hatch. Nothing. Just the dim, white slice of ground below. “It’s all just the latest in one of Hanratty’s idiotic tests.”

  “No one is questioning your manager about this?”

  “They think he’s incompetent, not manipulative. I’ve privately asked a few people if they think he’s been doing these things to us intentionally, but no one wants to hear it.”

  “It is more comforting to think your superior is stupid than evil,” Vox said. “It is a popular Russian attitude.”

  “It scares me, though. If no one is willing to see what’s in front of their faces, then he can get away with anything he wants. It won’t be long before people disappearing is considered normal.”

  “It seems so.” He paused. “If something bad should . . . happen to you, do you want me to reach out to your colleagues at McMurdo?”

  Cass considered. She knew it was a risky proposition, and she was touched he’d offered. Although he could probably make contact anonymously, of a sort—McMurdo would know it was someone from Orlova who had reached out—he couldn’t be sure of the reception he’d get. He would, after all, be attempting to convince an American authority that one of its base administrators was insane and guilty of running mind-control experiments on his own crew, with no other proof than the word of a Shackleton mechanic with a spotty emotional and psychological history.

  And that was just on the American side. If word eventually got back to his superiors that he’d been maintaining clandestine radio contact with an American crew member and had radioed the main American base, he’d probably be reprimanded, at best. The Cold War was long over, but the relations between America and Russia weren’t exactly chummy. Vox might be punished for just trying to help.

  And what if she was simply, catastrophically, wrong? Maybe everything she’d surmised and assumed had a more reasonable explanation. Talk about proof. Where was hers that Hanratty and his cronies had cut the communications on purpose? You’ve had a history with making assumptions before. Or had you forgotten? The thought was bitter.

  “No. Thanks, Sasha,” she said reluctantly. �
�I’m going to give Hanratty enough rope to hang himself on this. And, who knows, maybe this time it really is an accident. We’d both be risking too much to be wrong.”

  “Please, call me Vox,” he said. “You are afraid of being mistaken. Why?”

  “Vox, I . . .” she began and choked. How do I explain? “I’ve been wrong, very wrong, about some things in my past. Important things.”

  “Who hasn’t?” he said lightly.

  “It’s not something I’m willing to take a chance on.”

  “Tell me. I will listen to you.”

  She was quiet a long, long time. Memories rose to the surface of her mind and she groaned out loud. I don’t want to remember .

  The voice from the tunnel came back into her head. Face it. Remember .

  “Cass.” Across the airwaves, the sound of his voice was metallic and toneless, but the concern it carried was unmistakable. “What happened?”

  “I was part of an inspection team in . . . no, I won’t tell you where. I don’t want you to look it up. We were contracted to do inspections of a subway tunnel renovation. Mundane, boring, everyday stuff.” Starting was easier than she thought it would be, which wasn’t the same thing as easy. With each word, a band around her chest tightened until she felt she couldn’t breathe. “But we were brought in with only weeks left on the project, not nearly enough time to do the job right. We should’ve rejected the work, but the department was proud of our track record of saying yes and making good on that promise, so we took it.”

  She was quiet for a moment. They’d known they were being rushed, that they had almost no margin for error. But that’s how good they were. How good they thought they were. How good she thought she was.

  “I won’t bore you with the details. The outcome was clear enough. We cut corners and raced through checklists. One of the structures failed while in use. People died. Others were injured. I watched it on the news, knowing the entire time why it had happened. And who was responsible.”

  Vox was silent.

  “I . . . the tunnel suffered from a series of cascading failures, that much any engineer could’ve told you. But I knew, and I suspect my team knew, that it was my work that started it all. Nobody on the team was blameless, but I was the first link in the chain that broke. The rest came after. And it was the whole that killed those people.”

  “Were you . . . arrested?”

  “No, nothing so dramatic,” she said. A sour taste filled her mouth. If there had actually been consequences, some defining moment of punishment, would she have been able to leave it behind? “The company’s insurance coverage paid the survivors and their families and the mayor threatened criminal action, but it was all bluster, forgotten a few weeks later. None of us even lost our jobs. But I quit anyway. I knew what I’d done and I couldn’t work with people who knew it, too.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I bounced around, taking odd jobs in stranger and stranger places. Oil rigs, mining ops, lumber camps. Trying not to put myself in a position to hurt people with my mistakes. But, eventually, each job petered out and it was clear just how trivial the work was, leaving me feeling worse than before. I needed another big job with bigger stakes, to show myself I could pull through. With my track record, no one would hire me for a large contract, but then I thought maybe they had trouble finding people crazy enough to go to Antarctica. So here I am. Hoping I can find myself without hurting anyone.”

  The last was said in a whisper. A long moment passed before Vox’s voice cut through the silvery hiss.

  “You are very brave to tell me this, vozlyublennaya . That you feel so bad so many years later confirms for me something I already knew—that you are a good person. That you are intelligent, thoughtful, and care about the people around you. You do not have to fear being wrong when you know this is the truth.”

  The simple words pierced Cass, but rather than her emotions translating into tears, she felt suddenly lighter and more lucid than before. The muscles in her throat relaxed. “Thank you, Vox. Those words mean more than you’ll ever know.”

  “Good, I am glad. I was afraid you would cry. I never know what to do when women cry. I try to tell jokes, but I only know two and they are both about physics. And are in Russian. And not very funny.”

  She laughed, her voice shaky. “You’ll have to tell me them sometime.”

  “You promise to laugh?”

  “I promise.” She peeked down the hatchway and froze, thinking she’d seen a shadow slide through her field of vision. But there was nothing. “Thank you for offering to call McMurdo. But don’t do anything yet. If they don’t hear from us soon, they’ll send their own people out eventually.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Yes. But let’s keep our next date. If anything strange happens—stranger than what’s already occurred—I want to be able to get in touch with you.”

  “Is not good enough, Blaze. We should stay in touch more often. If something happens to you, that is too much time to have passed. I will check every third day, yes? I will run up and down channels, to make sure you can reach me.”

  “That takes time, Vox. Won’t you get in trouble?”

  “My time is now my own,” Vox said. “Comrade Konstantinov is confined to his quarters after slipping in the dining hall and breaking his leg.”

  “What happened?”

  “He made the cook file a report that said the floor had not been cleaned properly, but we all know he tried to drink all the vodka on base in a night. Some stereotypes are true, you know. Besides, I would do it anyway just to feel a glow twice in my heart. Once for defying that pig of a man and again because I know I am keeping you safe.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. “Thank you, Vox.”

  “Believe me, it is my pleasure,” he said, then sobered. “Cass, be careful. Maybe you think you are wrong about this experiment. Perhaps you do not trust your own judgment. But, remember, there is always the chance that you are right. If so, you are only halfway through the winter. There are more dangers to come.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “Bad luck is one thing,” Deb said, both palms pressed to the side of her head, as if holding in the contents. “But this is ridiculous. Jack, what is going on?”

  “Deb, we’ve got problems, there’s no doubt. And they’ve all decided to roost at once, or nearly at once. But that doesn’t mean—”

  “Bullshit. I’ve seen winters that were worked on a long leash and other crews that had their problems, but this is insane. No one has this kind of bad luck. This is intentional. This is sabotage.”

  “Is that all you’re saying, Deb?”

  She glanced to her left at Keene, but the psychologist kept his gaze trained on the manager. Her face paled, but remained resolute. “You know something. I don’t think you’re part of it, but you know something you’re not telling us. So, here’s your chance. Tell us.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or, as deputy manager, I’ll take the steps necessary to set this straight.”

  A moment of thick tension held the room still. Hanratty sat motionless. Ayres stood near the door, ramrod straight and frowning. Taylor’s eyes flitted back and forth between him and Deb. Keene had dropped his gaze and was staring at his hands.

  Just when it seemed to break the room, the strain went out of Hanratty’s face as if a valve had been released. “That won’t be necessary. You all deserve an explanation. Hell, I deserve an explanation.”

  He looked at each of them enigmatically, as though waiting for one of them to speak. When no one did, he came around his desk and sat on the front of it, propping himself up with his hands gripping the edge.

  “Historically, the purpose of the South Pole station has been to further scientific study in such a way as to benefit mankind, and the fields most often expected to deliver those benefits have been a blend of applied and hard disciplines. Astrophysics. Biology. Geology. Science with numbers and tests, theories and results.”

  H
e cleared his throat. The room was very quiet. “Life in Antarctica, however, has always had ancillary benefits in medicine, psychology, and sociology. How are bodies and minds changed by three or four or nine months on the ice? They were never distinct or primary fields of study, but it’s impossible to ignore how the isolation and extreme conditions of Antarctica affect the most interesting subject of all: us.”

  Hanratty glanced around the room. Taylor watched Deb and Ayres, unsure how they were going to react and ready for anything. Keene, of course, had already figured it out for himself. The faces of the deputy manager and the base’s doctor were the blank, noncommittal expressions of those experienced in receiving bad news and saving their assessment and recriminations until later.

  “When TransAnt took over operations here,” Hanratty continued, “they saw an opportunity to remedy that lack of study. Why waste what was already happening, they argued. The science could continue as it always had—no loss there. But science, with just a few tweaks, could double its money by taking advantage of a ready-made lab, specially built to test theories in psychology and sociology.”

  “We’re part of someone’s goddamned clinical trial?” Ayres asked in disbelief, his jaw muscles bunched and released.

  “You specifically? No.” Hanratty’s voice was even. Keene stirred, but said nothing. “Others on the base? Yes.”

  “You’re . . . TransAnt’s really experimenting on personnel?” Deb asked. When Hanratty nodded, she sat back, unbelieving. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe that you’d take part in it.”

  “Their reasons make sense once you hear the entire premise. I believe the end result is worth the methods they use.”

  Ayres, shaking his head, asked, “What’s the point? What are they looking for? What do they hope to learn?”

  Hanratty shifted his eyes. “Keene?”

  “Salutogenesis.” When his statement was returned with blank stares, the psychologist smiled and repeated, “Salutogenesis. The theory that some of us have it in our DNA to bring out a dormant . . . superman, for lack of a better term, when we are pushed to our physical or emotional limits. The theory was forwarded after studies of certain Holocaust survivors showed that a surprising number of them had not only made it through the worst mental and spiritual trial imaginable, they’d achieved a level of emotional and psychological growth that, frankly, shouldn’t have occurred.”