by Tom Harper
It occurred to me he must know Hagger’s password, too. No point asking him: I could imagine the delight he’d take in preaching the gospel of data protection all over again. I thought about rummaging through his desk – surely he’d keep it on file. But footsteps in the hall made me think better of it.
I went to my room and lay on my bunk, more to avoid the pain in my head than because I was tired. It was hard to believe I’d slept for three days. Without Kennedy’s sedative, my mind wouldn’t shut up. Graphs and numbers floated in front of my eyes, even when I closed them. All scientists have a stubborn streak: we have to put the jigsaw together. Louise used to say that on a bad day, we’re all borderline Asperger’s.
Thinking of Louise reminded me how much I missed Luke. I went back to the radio room and tried to Skype him.
‘He’s playing with a friend,’ Lorna said.
‘Is he OK?’
‘Not really. I promised you’d buy him a mountain bike when you get back.’
She asked me how I was, about the fall and the crash, but I didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t have anything to say. It’s hard to explain you’ve been in a plane crash that was a total non-event.
‘Don’t forget to post his letter,’ she said at the end. ‘He keeps asking about it.’
The air in the radio room was stale, and I hadn’t been outside (conscious) in three days. I dressed up in my ECW gear, zipped the letter in the inside pocket and headed for the door. On the way, I ran into Fridge. Apparently, high winds at Vitangelsk meant that Kennedy and Eastman couldn’t get back tonight.
‘Eastman said Doc got chased by a polar bear,’ Fridge told me. I laughed, then realised it was no joke.
‘I’d better take a rifle.’
I’d been desperate to leave the Platform. But as soon as I was outside, all I wanted was to scuttle back in again, like Plato’s prisoner who can’t stand the light outside of the cave. On the Platform, I could hide from the danger I felt around me. Out here, I was a butterfly on a card. Not forgetting the cold. I’d forgotten how bad it is: my eyes watered, my nose pinched tight. The pain in the back of my head spread all over.
My plan was to get on to the fjord and bury the letter, persuade myself that the current might carry it up to the North Pole one day. That’s what I could tell Luke, anyway. Under the snow, I barely noticed the shoreline, but I felt the change underfoot. Hard sea ice, scoured by the wind. Walking across it was like walking across a desert, so wide and flat it makes you dizzy. Mountains framed the fjord on either side, but straight ahead there was nothing except a shimmering line between sky-blue ice and ice-blue sky. And, at the join, a dark figure, a nomad on the horizon.
What if it’s him? screamed the danger signal in my head. I couldn’t tell who it was, no more detail than a Lowry man, but that didn’t get in the way of a good old-fashioned panic. Whoever pushed Hagger over the crevasse, whoever stole the notebooks, whoever hit me over the head and sabotaged the plane: what if it was him?
I almost ran back. Then I got a grip on myself. I shifted the rifle on my shoulder, angled so it was pointing almost ahead, and carried on.
It seemed to take for ever to reach him. Out there, you lose all sense of distance. He was standing very still, staring across to the far side of the fjord with a pair of binoculars. A neat round hole punctured the ice by his feet. Blood smeared the ice around it.
‘Fishing?’ I asked, pointing at the hole.
Ash turned abruptly. ‘It’s you,’ he said, as if I’d done something wrong. ‘I thought you were blotto.’
‘I’ve woken up.’
‘Hah.’ He turned back to his binoculars. I tried to follow his gaze. All I saw was snow.
‘Is there anything out there?’
‘Bear.’ Manners overtook him; he handed me the binoculars. ‘Just to the right of that big boulder.’
A shiver went through me as I put the binoculars to my eyes, though I still couldn’t see it. All the training, all the warnings and briefings, they’d never sunk in to the point I really believed they were real. Now it was out there, a few hundred yards away.
Ash guided my arm until I was pointing in the right direction. Even with the binoculars, I had to look hard to make out his features: the black nose, the legs with their awkward, lumbering gait.
‘It’s a big one,’ said Ash.
Whether the bear caught my scent, or a movement, or a glint from the binoculars, I don’t know. But he stopped, turned his head and stared straight at me. Another shiver. Suddenly, half a mile didn’t seem nearly far enough.
I was glad I’d remembered to bring a rifle, and said so. Ash shuddered as if I’d stepped on his grave. Having devoted his life to the bears, I suppose the thought of shooting one was abhorrent.
‘My first bear,’ I said.
‘You’re lucky. Don’t get many down here these days.’
I wasn’t surprised. I’d seen the pictures in the Guardian, bear cubs marooned on shrinking ice floes waiting to drown.
‘I wonder if there’ll be any left at all by the time my son grows up.’
‘That’s the paradox,’ said Ash. ‘Sea ice is melting faster than ever, earth’s boiling like a kettle, but here on Utgard the bears are thriving.’
‘I thought you said you don’t see them much any more.’
‘We don’t see them here – because they’ve all gone north. The seal population up in the north-west has exploded in the last couple of years. I haven’t seen them this healthy in twenty years. And where the seals go, the bears follow.’
‘Why would that be?’ I wondered aloud.
Ash shrugged. ‘My theory? There’s a current that comes down the west coast. I think that’s warming, so everything in the food chain, from krill to seals, is thriving. Eventually, it’ll kill them if they can’t adapt. But for the moment, they’re in clover.’
I thought of the micro-organisms teeming in the samples from Echo Bay. I thought of the neat row of red-ringed X’s flowing along the west coast on my map, until they stopped in Echo Bay.
‘We’re on the west coast,’ I pointed out. ‘Shouldn’t the current bring them here, too?’
With the toe of his boot, Ash scraped a rough egg shape in the snow. ‘That’s Utgard.’ He made a mark in the bottom, and another halfway up the left-hand side. ‘Zodiac. Echo Bay.’ Digging in his heel, he drew a line that started just above the top of the egg, ran along the left side as far as Echo Bay, then spun away at a right angle.
‘The Stokke current. It—’ He broke off as he realised I was laughing. I couldn’t help it. ‘What?’
‘Stokke’s a make of pram.’ I remembered the yummy mummies at the baby groups when Luke was small, swapping notes on their state-of-the-art baby kit. Space-age designs that looked nothing like Luke’s third-hand relic. I’d hung around on the fringes, the only father there, like the shy boy at a school disco.
‘This Stokke was a polar explorer. Anyway, the current brings cold water down from the far north. But at Echo Bay, it meets the very tail end of the Gulf Stream coming up from the south and gets deflected out west, towards Greenland. That’s why it doesn’t reach here.’
I stared at the diagram he’d drawn. It was crude, but I’d spent so long looking at the map in Hagger’s lab I could visualise it easily.
‘So this current goes past the Helbreensfjord.’
‘That’s right. In summer, ice from the Helbreen calves off and floats down to Echo Bay. Played havoc with the rig there last year, I heard.’
He took the binoculars back off me and scanned the horizon.
‘He’s gone. Let’s go in.’
We trudged back over the flat, frozen fjord. Across the ice, Zodiac looked a long way away, a Matchbox model dwarfed by the mountains.
Two Englishmen, even in a frozen wilderness at the end of the earth, will always end up talking about the weather.
‘Nice day,’ said Ash. And it was. White snow, blue sky and pure light crystallising everything.
�
�Hard to believe Eastman and Kennedy are trapped in Vitangelsk by the wind,’ I said.
Ash gave me a look. ‘I didn’t know they’d gone up there.’
He sounded unhappy about it.
‘They radioed in. Apparently, they found a bear.’
I couldn’t see his face, between the hood and the beard and the icicles hanging off his eyebrows, but he seemed to tighten up at the news.
‘A bear? At Vitangelsk?’
‘I thought you’d be interested.’
We carried on, two lone figures on a crystal plain. I glanced back one more time, in case the bear had decided to follow us, but of course I couldn’t see him.
When I got back to the Platform, I realised I’d forgotten to post Luke’s letter.
Forty
Anderson’s Journal – Thursday
Woken at 4 a.m. by footsteps in the corridor. I lay in bed, wishing there were locks on the doors. Wishing I’d borrowed one of the rifles from the rack. Being trapped at Zodiac with someone who might want to kill me is bad enough. The fact that he’s got full access to a well-stocked gun cabinet at the end of the hall terrifies me.
The footsteps passed my room and headed towards the front door. Towards the gun rack. I heard the boot-room door squeak open – but not shut. He was trying not to wake anybody. Maybe he didn’t want to make himself unpopular.
I slipped out of my bunk and poked my head round the door. Moving suddenly, in case anyone was there.
The corridor was empty, the boot-room door shut.
I walked to the end of the corridor. Zodiac at 4 a.m.’s a ghostly place: full daylight leaching through the windows, but not a soul to be seen. As if the aliens came and abducted everyone except you. The only sound was a soft wind sighing through the aerials on the roof. It seemed to have risen since yesterday evening.
Just as I got to the boot room, the outer door closed with an unmistakable thud, and the click of the latch. I heard footsteps descending the metal stairs outside.
I checked the rack on the wall. All the guns were there.
The snarl of the engine broke the silence so suddenly I jumped. The sound of a cold snowmobile being pulled to life. Once, twice, and then the steady roar of the running engine.
I hurried through the boot room and opened the main door. The cold hit me like a concrete wall and made my eyes water. Through the tears, I saw a red brake light disappearing off towards the Lucia glacier, a dark figure hunched over the controls. With his back to me, wrapped up in the snowmobile suit and helmet, he could have been my twin brother and I wouldn’t have recognised him.
I retreated inside before the cold killed me, telling myself it was probably nothing. One of the students who’d drawn the short straw, checking some remote set of frozen instruments. I’d ask at breakfast and—
At the far end of the corridor, near the mess, a door opened. Someone stepped out, checking the corridor both ways as if he was crossing a road. No time for me to hide.
He approached. I tensed, full fight-or-flight mode, but it was only Quam. Not sure why I say ‘only’ – being base commander didn’t put him above suspicion.
‘Early to be up,’ he said, in the sort of too friendly voice headmasters use just before they reach for the cane.
‘I needed the loo.’
He nodded, and didn’t ask why I hadn’t used the toilet opposite my room.
‘Head OK?’
‘Better, thanks.’
‘Good.’
He seemed nervous, shifting on his feet, drumming his fingers in mid-air. Like a man with something on his mind. Maybe a guilty secret.
Suddenly, I really didn’t want to be alone in that long, long corridor with him. I stared at the rows of doors, willing someone to come out. I tried to step past him, muttering about getting back to bed. Quam shifted his weight a little, not so much as to be obvious, but enough to block my way.
‘You’ve got a son, it says on your file.’
‘Luke. He’s eight.’
‘You must miss him.’
I nodded, and balled my fists. Maybe it was paranoia, but I couldn’t get it out of my head he was making a threat.
Maybe not. ‘I’ve got two daughters,’ he said. ‘I don’t see them often.’
‘It’s a long way,’ I sympathised.
‘We come out here, we fight every day. Do you ever wonder if it’s worth it?’
‘It’s science, I suppose.’
‘You haven’t been here long.’ His chin jerked up; he looked at me as if he’d only just noticed me. ‘Still, you know what we have in common?’
‘Insomnia?’
‘This island’s trying to kill both of us.’
There’s not much I could say to that. ‘I’d better get some sleep.’
He shook his head, as if he’d been thinking about something quite different. ‘Of course.’
A gust of wind shook the Platform. Quam pressed his hand against the wall, bracing himself. ‘Wind’s getting up. There’s a storm coming.’
‘You’re blocking my way,’ I said politely.
Greta came to the lab after breakfast. She was carrying one of the heavy red ECW coats in her arms.
‘Going out?’
She unfolded it and held it up so I could see. On the left breast, above the Zodiac badge, she’d embroidered my name. For a woman who spends her life welding snowmobiles and shovelling snow, she does a surprisingly dainty stitch.
‘You shouldn’t have.’
‘Now we own you.’
I put it on. I stroked my fingertip over the corrugations of the thread. I suppose she did it for everyone; probably, it was just one more job ticked off on a list. But I felt ridiculously grateful, almost weepy. As if I belonged.
‘I might not be around long enough to make use of it.’
She didn’t comment one way or the other.
Wearing that coat indoors, I’d already started to sweat. I stuck my hands in the pockets. Deep and padded, but I felt something hard at the bottom. I pulled it out. A teddy bear in a grubby I ♥ NY T-shirt, with a ring in its head and a key.
‘You found it. By the crevasse,’ she reminded me.
‘Did I find out what it opens?’
‘There aren’t any locks on Utgard.’
The conversation came back. Me: It must have fallen out of Martin’s pocket.
And Greta, pointing to the footprints that had chased Hagger to the brink. Or maybe his.
I put it on the bench to think about.
Later
Eastman and Kennedy are back from Vitangelsk. After being in a coma for two days, it’s good to have a doctor around. Both of them dropped in to see me, either side of a rather contentious staff meeting.
Kennedy came first. I was already up and poking around the lab. He asked how I was, though I could as easily have asked him. He looked terrible. Raccoon rings round his eyes, hair askew (not that any of us looked like much), and his face that shade of grey T-shirts go when they’ve been through the wash too often.
‘Rough night?’ I asked as he shone a torch in my eyes. ‘The bear must have been quite a shock.’
He almost took my eye out with the torch. ‘The bear?’ he repeated, as if it was something I wasn’t supposed to know.
‘I heard you had a close encounter with a polar bear yesterday.’
‘That.’ He nodded, as if he’d only just remembered. I wouldn’t have thought it was the sort of thing you forgot so quickly. ‘Yes.’
He made me stand on one leg, touch my toes, count backwards from thirteen.
‘Keeping busy?’ he said, pointing to the map I’d left out on the table.
‘Trying to tidy up some of Hagger’s loose ends.’ He’d seen the cluster of X’s at Echo Bay; there was no point trying to hide it.
‘I thought Anderson’s last assistant might be able to fill me in. Kevin Maart.’
‘K-Mart.’ Kennedy chuckled. ‘South African, mad as pants. He used to wander around the Platform in his flip-flops. Hated th
e cold.’
‘I heard he left because of a wisdom tooth.’
Kennedy fiddled with a pen. ‘That’s right.’
‘Quam won’t give me his email address. I thought maybe you might have contact information. For emergencies, or whatever.’ I gave him a smile, to show I didn’t mean to impose. Kennedy didn’t return it.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said. And left quickly.
I went back to the map and pencilled in a line that charted the current Ash had told me about. Where the current flowed on the west coast, between the Helbreensfjord and Echo Bay, the whole food chain was exploding, Ash said. But these little creatures, Gelidibacter incognita, were localised in Echo Bay.
I flipped through the notebook until I found a graph labelled ‘Propagation rates – Echo Bay’. It wasn’t hard to interpret: it swung up like a ski jump. Whatever was propagating, they were breeding like rabbits. I assumed it was the micro-organisms I’d seen under the microscope.
But the bugs weren’t in the upstream samples. That meant they weren’t floating down from anywhere: they were growing in Echo Bay.
Why?
Not my question: Hagger’s. Scrawled under the chart, heavily underscored.
I tried to think logically about what Hagger would have done. I stared at the graph. The time series across the bottom was measured in hours – terrifyingly fast.
I flipped over the page. On the back were two more graphs. One was a copy of the previous page, the vertiginous swoop up as the bugs replicated like crazy. But underneath, a second graph on the same scale painted a different picture: just a flat line across the page tapering towards zero.
Sometimes they thrived, sometimes they died.
The two charts were labelled X-positive and X-negative.
What is X?
Again, Hagger’s question. I didn’t know either. It must have something to do with the red and green dots on the samples.
I found two clean beakers and set them up on the bench. One, I filled with 100ml of water, a red sample from the Helbreensfjord. The other, I filled with the same amount of water from a green Zodiac sample.
After a moment’s thought, I found a third beaker and filled it with tap water, as a control. I sterilised a pipette and took three 10ml extracts from one of the Echo Bay samples. I squirted them out, one for each beaker, and stirred them up.