by Tom Harper
And Hagger had died here. A gruesome coincidence, I insisted, trying to shut up the superstitious voices in my head. Still terrifying.
‘Is that what Martin came for?’ she asked.
I looked around. Only my footprints.
‘Martin never came down here.’ That wasn’t quite accurate. ‘Not when he was alive.’
‘Anything else?’ She jerked her head towards the snowmobiles. ‘It’s a long drive back.’
I left the bones in their icy grave. And this time, I remembered to free the snowmobile tracks from the ice before I started the engine.
Nine
Anderson
Nobody enjoyed dinner that night. Hagger’s death made for a brittle mood. People shuffled food around their plates and didn’t make eye contact. Across the table, Fridge gnawed the meat off a chicken drumstick. I tried not to think about the bones in the crevasse.
Quam got the evening off to a bad start. As soon as the food was served, he stood up and tapped his glass with a fork. He had to wait, awkwardly, while the conversations grudgingly wound down.
‘I want to say a few words – since you’re all here.’ He wiped his mouth with his napkin. ‘Martin Hagger’s death is a tragedy. He was a great scientist, a respected colleague, and a good friend.’
That morning, he’d told me Hagger was a busted flush. Glancing around the table, I didn’t see much evidence of good friends. Most of them looked hostile – or just bored. I couldn’t tell if it was Hagger they didn’t care for, or Quam.
‘The important thing is, we don’t let this get in the way of what we’re all doing. The best tribute to Martin Hagger will be carrying on our valuable science here at Zodiac.’
I think I snorted out loud. Fridge, across the table, gave me a funny look. I could have told him that Quam had forbidden me from carrying on the valuable science that Hagger had been doing – but I refrained.
Quam pulled out a piece of paper. ‘I’d like to read a few words. I’m sure they’ll be familiar to most of you, but I think they capture something. By Captain Robert Scott.’
‘Penguin shagger,’ someone said.
Quam ran the paper between finger and thumb to smooth the crease.
‘“I do not regret this journey. We took risks, we knew we took them.”’ He coughed. It’s fair to say, he wasn’t a natural public speaker.
‘“Things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint.”’
‘Easy for you to say,’ muttered a voice behind me. But most of the room had settled into a respectful hush. Even on the Platform – heated, insulated, Internetted and well fed – we knew the line between life and death up there was fragile and transparent as a window pane.
Quam raised his glass. ‘To Martin Hagger. We’ll miss him.’
The rest of us shuffled to our feet and mumbled Hagger’s name. ‘We’ll miss him.’
‘And the grant money he brought in.’
Eastman’s voice cut through the toast, loud and meant to be heard. Quam’s face went bright red.
‘That’s in poor taste.’
‘It’s true, isn’t it?’
‘I won’t dignify—’
‘And it wasn’t just the grant money,’ piled in Fridge. ‘Hagger brought in all kinds of extra funding for you.’
‘If you’re insinuating …’
It was fascinating, watching the scientists tear into their base commander like a pack of wolves. Far more than just professional rivalry. I leaned back and watched the sport. The only person who ignored it completely was Annabel. She sat up, finishing-school straight, dismantling her chicken with small, precise cuts.
‘Let’s cut the bullshit,’ said Eastman. ‘We’re all sad Hagger’s dead. But hands up who actually liked the guy.’
It was obscene to play along – but I put up my hand. I owed Hagger that much. Down the table, I saw Greta’s and Jensen’s arms up too. Kennedy, Ashcliffe the polar-bear hunter and Quam followed suit more slowly, reluctant to get drawn in. Fridge’s and Eastman’s hands stayed down. Annabel kept eating.
Someone killed him. Even after our trip to the crevasse, I only half believed it. But that didn’t mean I trusted these people. Was it really possible? Three of them clearly had enough against Hagger they couldn’t even pretend to have liked him. But then if you’d killed him, you’d probably hide your motive a bit better. Or double-bluff. Or …
If I thought like that, I’d tie myself in knots until I doubted everything. Meanwhile, Quam was still standing. ‘I think an apology’s in order.’
Like a lot of Americans, Eastman had a naturally theatrical presence. He looked around the table and gave a small bow. ‘I’m sorry if I embarrassed your British, uh, sensibilities.’ Heavy with sarcasm. ‘But let’s not pretend this was something it’s not. He’s not a martyr to science. He died; it was an accident. Move on.’
‘If it was an accident,’ I said. I thought nobody heard me.
Eastman checked his watch. ‘Isn’t it time to get the mag reading?’
The others suddenly took a keen interest in their half-empty plates. I was too slow; I caught his eye.
‘Anderson’s the rookie – he should go.’
‘He’s going home tomorrow,’ Quam pointed out.
‘Then this is his only chance.’
I wasn’t going to be haggled over. I stood. ‘What do I have to do?’
‘There’s a logbook in the mag hut. Write down the number on the readout, and the time. Wait ten minutes, do it again. That’s it.’
I was glad to get out, even with all the fiddle of layering up again. I took a gun from the rack by the door – already second nature – and clomped down the steel steps. The cold air pinched my nose dry; my eyes watered. I’d forgotten my neck-warmer, and by the time I was halfway across the base my chin stung as if I had lockjaw. That was the thing with Zodiac. No slack.
I stopped at the flag line, where the ring that surrounded the magnetometer hut met the base perimeter. A sign warned me, NO METAL OBJECTS BEYOND THIS POINT.
I didn’t see anywhere to put the gun. After a moment’s thought, I laid it down on the snow. Strange to say, I felt incomplete without it, like taking off a wedding ring. Walking across the circle of snow to the hut, the immensity of my surroundings pressed in on me. Twilight had fallen; a few stars were bright enough to show in the sky. I checked the shadows for signs of danger, ready to run back for the gun if I saw anything that looked like a bear.
The hut was a simple, one-room wooden cabin, almost colder than the air outside. A wooden table stood in the centre, two grey boxes on top of it like outmoded stereo components. The logbook lay beside them, a battered exercise book with a pencil hanging off it on a piece of string.
I wiped a layer of frost off the readout and studied it. A thin digital line scribbled up and down the screen, recording infinitesimal oscillations in something I couldn’t even imagine. I looked for an obvious number to write down, and didn’t see it.
In the chill quiet, the steps in the snow sounded as loud as bubblegum popping. I looked at the door; I listened. The steps came closer. Two legs, or four?
There was no lock on the hut, and my gun was back at the flag line. Could a polar bear open a door? Could he fit through? I’d thought the bear warnings were just talk, a fairy tale to frighten new arrivals. But human beings are uniquely bad at judging risk. The longer something doesn’t happen, the more confident we become it won’t. We don’t see the sand running out of the glass.
The door swung in. I almost whimpered with relief when I saw it was Dr Kennedy, bundled up in a snowmobile suit and a loud tartan scarf.
‘I hope I didn’t scare you.’
‘Were you worried I’d screw up the measurements?’
Kennedy shut the door and tipped back his hood. ‘I wanted a word in private. About Hagger.’
‘OK.’
‘I probably shouldn’t tell you this …’ Kennedy rummaged in his suit and produced a bottle. He offered it to me.
‘Medicinal supplies.’
I took a slug and gave it back.
‘Jameson’s,’ said Kennedy. ‘Just the thing.’
‘What did you want to tell me about Martin?’
He screwed the cap back on the bottle. ‘You know he overwintered here?’
I didn’t. Overwintering was a hard assignment, a job for grad students or people who couldn’t get any other foot on the ladder. Darkness, solitude and endless instrument readings. I’d applied for it twice.
‘Why?’
‘To get some work done. There were experiments that hadn’t gone the right way, he wanted time to sort it out.’ He fiddled with the bottle. ‘He was quite down about it, poor fellow.’
‘Four months of night would do that to anyone.’
The cap came off. Kennedy offered me the bottle again. ‘Not just in the usual way. He came to see me. As a patient, I mean.’
‘He was depressed?’
‘Clinically. Mirtazapine helped, but he was very low. Of course, he’s not the first person Zodiac’s brought down. Fridge says most people have to be half mad to come here in the first place. As I say, I probably shouldn’t tell you this. Patient confidentiality. Not that that applies, any more.’
‘And you think …’ I struggled to say the word aloud. ‘Suicide?’
Kennedy nodded. ‘Sad.’
‘Did it seem especially bad these last few days?’
‘That’s a funny thing. The day before he died was the happiest I’d seen him in months. Very excited. But that might have been a sign. You know how it goes with depression, up and down. The higher you go, the further you fall.’
Automatically, he offered me the bottle again. Automatically, I took it. I could feel the whiskey softening my thinking, lowering my defences.
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘What you said at supper, about it not being an accident. I thought you’d guessed.’
I took it he hadn’t heard Greta’s theory. I didn’t put it to him. I didn’t want to be the next one getting happy pills on his couch.
‘The point is, we don’t want it taken the wrong way. You know there’s a lot of pressure on Zodiac’s funding. Some people think the reason we were packed off to the South Polar people was so they can shut us down.’
‘Is that Quam’s agenda?’
‘No.’ Emphatic. ‘Quam’s in charge of Zodiac, he wants to see it do well. If it goes, he’ll be out of a job with the rest of us. But he’s under a lot of pressure from Norwich.’
‘What’s that got to do with Hagger?’
‘Quam’s worried there’ll be a witch hunt. It’s no secret he made mistakes. He should never have let Hagger go out on his own – especially in the condition he was in. But if they use that as an excuse to shut down Zodiac, it’s a travesty.’
He put the bottle back in his pocket. I think it was empty.
‘They’ll debrief you when you go home tomorrow. You’ll have first bite. What you say becomes the first draft of history.’
‘You want me to tell them Hagger committed suicide?’
‘It’s the truth. Almost certainly.’
He’d said what he had to say. He pulled up his hood and opened the door, then remembered something. He came back to the table.
‘Don’t forget to take the mag readings.’ He tapped a dial to the right of the main readout. ‘It’s that one you want.’
I wrote down the numbers. Wait ten minutes, do it again, Eastman had said. I waited and shivered. The glow from the whiskey had worn off; I could feel the heat escaping through my pores. I tried a few jumping jacks, but worried I’d knock the instruments off the table.
I stared at the columns of numbers in the book and wondered if anyone ever did anything with them, or if they just accumulated. Everyone took turns: you could read the rota like the strata of an ice core in the different handwriting, the initials scrawled in the margins beside the observations. As much a record of human presence as of the vagaries of the magnetosphere.
MH. Martin Hagger. He’d stood in this frigid hut just like me, swinging his arms to keep warm, watching the clock count ten slow minutes before he could go back inside. He’d probably stood in the exact same spot.
For the first time, I really felt his loss. More than carrying his body, or clearing out his lab, the simple act of occupying the same space, only time between us, brought me closer to him than I’d been in years.
Why did you fall? I asked him.
I liked Kennedy; I wanted to believe him. I didn’t like Quam, but at a stretch I’d have taken his polar-bear theory. I’m a scientist. At science school, as Greta would put it, you’re taught the simplest explanation is the best. Occam’s razor.
But you can’t change the data. Whatever pressure Hagger had been under, whatever black cloud, I didn’t think he’d roped himself up in that harness just to throw himself in. And Greta had convinced me the polar-bear theory didn’t hold up.
What happened to the notebooks?
Why did he have his gun out?
Why did he bring me here?
Questions chased around my head like snow devils blown by the wind, and in the end it all came back to the same place. In twenty-four hours I’d be in the slush and drizzle at Heathrow, and Utgard would be a bad dream. I’d tell the bureaucrats that Hagger’s suicide was an unavoidable tragedy. Perhaps Quam would write me a reference.
Ten minutes were up. I wrote down the number, noted the time and signed my initials. One more layer accumulated in this freezing room.
Outside, my eyes struggled to adjust. Hemmed in by mountains, the twilight was darker here than it had been up on the ice dome. The red eyes on the radio masts blinked their warnings. Slivers of yellow light showed behind the gaps in the blinds on the Platform. I’d read some experiments that had been done here in winter, measuring exposure to artificial light. Apparently, there wasn’t even enough to convince the body’s clock to wake up.
I hurried back towards the flag line. Then stopped. Above the drone of the generator, I’d heard the snap of the snow crust cracking underfoot.
‘Who’s there?’ I called.
No answer.
‘Dr Kennedy?’
I couldn’t tell where the sound had come from. I couldn’t see anything. In the jumble of rocks and buildings there were plenty of places to hide.
I started running, back to where I’d left the gun. I reached the flag line – but the gun wasn’t there. Had I missed it? I’d followed my footprints.
A few yards away, a figure reared up from behind a cache of oil drums. Something flew out of the gloom – I barely saw it – and hit me bang in the face. I screamed and dropped to the ground.
Wet snow trickled down my nose and on to my lips. Eastman advanced from behind the barrels, one arm cocked back holding a snowball. He grinned, and pitched it at me like a baseball. I tried to roll out of the way but it smacked me on my ear.
‘Gotcha.’
Ten
Anderson
I overslept. No one came to wake me, and the light creeping round the wardrobe wasn’t enough to break into my dreams. When I did open my eyes, and found my watch, I stared at the dial almost incapable of understanding time. I’d missed breakfast. If I wasn’t quick, I’d miss the plane.
I threw my clothes into the bag. There wasn’t much to pack. I’d just about finished when there was a rap at the door.
‘Plane’s cancelled,’ said Quam. ‘Bad weather.’
I peered at the crack around the window. The sun was shining; I couldn’t hear any wind.
‘At the other end,’ he elaborated. ‘You live to fight another day.’
I gave up on packing and padded along the corridor to the galley. Danny the cook was there, elbow-deep in washing-up.
‘Any chance of some breakfast?’
He heated oil in a pan, and soon the galley was filled with the smell of bacon and eggs. He was a big man, with the sort of gentleness that comes from total confidence in your own strength.
The sort of gentleness that could turn ferocious in the wrong circumstances. I never saw him wear more than a T-shirt; I don’t think he ever left the building.
He handed me the plate, and a steaming mug of coffee. Mid-morning, the mess was empty; I’d have felt ridiculous sitting there on my own. I gestured to the island in the middle of the galley.
‘Do you mind if I …?’
‘Pull up a pew.’
I tucked into my breakfast while he started on the washing-up. The food tasted like heaven. As he pottered around the kitchen, I remembered what Quam had said. Danny knows all the gossip.
‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘At dinner last night – when Eastman was making a scene. There were three of them who didn’t put their hands up. Eastman, Fridge and Annabel Kobayashi.’
‘Yeah.’
‘What did they have against him?’
Danny took an enormous pot out of the sink and rubbed it with a dishcloth. ‘Fridge and Hagger, they used to be good mates, but then it went wrong. They had some bust-ups. Slanging matches you could hear through the whole station.’
‘What about?’
‘Science stuff. Fridge thought Hagger had nicked some of his work.’
I found that hard to believe. Fridge was an atmospheric scientist, nothing to do with microbiology.
‘As for Eastman,’ Danny continued, ‘well, that’s easy enough. You know he’s CIA.’
I almost laughed – but that would have been a mistake. Danny was deadly serious. ‘How do you know?’
‘In the kitchen all day – you hear things. All those aerials and satellites – says he’s working on astronomy or something, but that’s just cover, innit.’
‘Is it?’
‘They pay three million pounds a year for this dump. You think anyone spends that on polar bears? Look at the map. When Russia launches its nukes, they’re coming straight over our heads on their way to the States. This whole place, it’s one big spook station.’
‘Like an early-warning station?’
‘That’s right. So that when it all kicks off, they’re ready. The old mining tunnels up in the north? They’re kitting them out as some sort of bunker. When the ice caps melt and sea levels rise, this is where they’ll hole up.’