Dark Winter

by William Dietrich

  “He told me no one knew.”

  “People guess. There’s always a lot of buzz about everything, because there’s nothing else to do. The question is, why did you come all this way to see it?”

  “It’s more like I agreed to see it in return for getting to come all this way.”

  She hunched forward. “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Is it significant?”

  He stalled, wondering what to say. “Don’t I get seduced first?”

  “Sorry. Just twenty questions.”

  “You’re the worst spy I’ve ever seen.” He knew she was pumping him and that he should muster some annoyance, but he actually enjoyed the attention. “The fact is, he asked me to keep quiet about it. I’m not supposed to talk.”

  She nodded, her interest confirmed. “He wouldn’t bring you down here if it wasn’t important.”

  He smiled like a sphinx. “Women are so snoopy.”

  “Women listen.”

  “Sparco is a friend of Moss. Our astrophysicist wanted an opinion from a rockhound. I was unemployed. That’s all there is to it. I haven’t even done any tests yet.”

  “But what you saw is worth testing.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “If it’s the right kind of meteorite it could be big.”

  “For Mickey’s reputation.”

  “That’s not what I mean. You know that’s not what I mean.”

  “What?” She was too damn smart, and he liked smart women.

  “If it’s a meteorite, it could be worth a lot.”

  ******

  The wind came up as evening approached. When Lewis walked back to the dome from the Clean Air Facility he felt the first true bite of winter. The temperature still hovered at sixty below but a rising wind pushed the wind chill to minus one hundred. Dry snow undulated in ragged sheets across the ice, the flakes rasping at the fluttering nylon of his wind pants. They stung the bits of skin that were exposed, upper cheeks and temples. The wind made a low, moaning sound as it blew, a discomfiting change from the silence, and when he followed the fluttering route flags to the dome he found the big doors had been closed against the first drifts. He yanked open a smaller door to one side and went in, grateful to escape. Under the dome he could still hear the hoarse scratching of Antarctica trying to get inside. The blowing snow made it sound as if the aluminum was being sanded.

  Lewis didn’t see Norse at dinner and so went looking for him afterward, guessing the weight room attached to his berthing module. The psychologist was the kind of guy who would try to stay in shape. Norse wasn’t there but Harrison Adams said he’d just left, heading for the sauna. The astronomer was working out in faded trunks and gray, baggy T-shirt, grunting as he lifted with his white, stringy muscles. Adams was a sharply intellectual man, obsessed with the sky, and it was odd to see him like that. “Can you take a minute to spot me, Lewis?”

  Jed wasn’t anxious to. He found Adams prickly, the kind of scientist who did not suffer fools gladly and who thought everyone who wasn’t interested in what he was interested in was a fool. “I’m need to find Doctor Bob.”

  “He’ll cook for a while. Come on, spot me first. Tyson certainly won’t.”

  The big mechanic was lifting in a corner, an enormous weight across his back as his knees bent and straightened like thick hairy pistons, his lungs whooshing like a surfacing whale. He looked at them balefully, as if offended by their mere presence. For a man who claimed a crushing workload, he seemed to have plenty of time and energy to lift weights.

  “What do I have to do?” Lewis asked Adams.

  “Stand over me on the bench here, while I press. Just so I don’t pin myself.”

  “Why can’t Buck do it?”

  Tyson pushed himself erect, exhaling. “I’m busy.”

  “He’s always busy,” Adams said, moving to the bench. “Too busy to grade the trail to the Dark Sector. Too busy to fix the Spryte. Too busy to move the cargo for my scope repair before this wind came up. Too busy to give me any hope of meeting schedule.”

  “I’m not your fucking servant, Adams.” The weight clanged heavily down, Tyson’s arms dangling after it like an ape’s. “The world doesn’t revolve around you.”

  The astronomer lay down on the stained weight bench. “We’re not serving me, are we Mr. Tyson? We’re serving the research. We’re justifying the time and expense. The world does revolve around this Pole. Except too many of us have to wait on you.”

  “Screw you.” Tyson stretched. “Shoulda let me go home when I had the chance, if you don’t like me. Tell Cameron to back off on the other stuff he wants me to do if you’re so anxious for my help.”

  “You use too much water, too. You ignore the rationing. People resent it.”

  “Let them drink beer.”

  “Let them shower in beer.”

  Adams gripped the bar of the weights. “At the end of the winter, Buck, there’s going to be a review for bonuses and recommendations and future employment.”

  Tyson took two twenty-five-pound weights and began hoisting them like a crane. “Is that a threat, Harry?” He knew Adams hated the common nickname.

  Adams began lifting too, grunting. “Simply a reminder of how things are,” he gasped.

  “I’m thinking of how things ought to be.”

  Adams was growing red from the exertion. “Maybe you ought to think about where you are right now, Buck. Your future. Your lack of it.” His arms were shaking with the final lift.

  “Maybe I am thinking about my future. Maybe I’m not the moron you think I am. Maybe errand boy here is starting to think for himself.”

  The astronomer gasped and put the weight to rest, sitting up. He was sweating, angry at this recalcitrance. “You can’t go through the winter like this, Buck. You can’t sulk for eight damnable months. You’ve got to get along.”

  “Oh yeah? And who says?” Tyson racked his weights with a thud. “Who says I have to get along with anybody? The truth is, Adams, you need me but I don’t need you for a single fucking thing. I could care less about the sky. I could care less about you, or the fingie there, or Cameron, or any other moron stupid enough to like it down here. I do my job, mind my own business, and count the days until I get out. And if people were honest about it, everyone else does that too.”

  “No they don’t.”

  ‘Like all you beakers are best buddies? You know Moss beat out Mendoza for some of that discretionary grant money. You know you’re in a race with all of them to get papers featured in Science or Nature. You know the competition is about as collegial as a convention of Mafia dons. And you know that all you want from me is a broad back and compliant brain. Two weeks after the winter is over you won’t remember who I am.”

  “Dammit, that’s not true. This is the one time in your life to contribute to....”

  “So you can take that bonus of yours and cram it up your ass. Because down here I don’t have to take no shit from nobody.” The big man walked out.

  Adams shook his head in frustration, looking after him. “Now there’s a project for Doctor Bob,” he muttered to Lewis.

  “Doctor Bob might think Tyson has a legitimate point of view.”

  Adams snorted. “Shrinks think everything is a legitimate point of view.”

  Lewis went to the sauna. Cameron had told him the cedar box was both a morale booster and a safety feature, adept at warming people up after too much exposure outside. It was also supposed to relax them, bringing them together in communal contemplation. It worked well enough to be heavily used.

  Lewis shed his clothes, wrapped a towel around his middle, and stepped into the red-lit dimness inside. He recognized Norse’s muscled form and Mohawk crewcut through a veil of hissing steam, and sat down on a cedar bench. The psychologist lazily raised a hand.

  “We were just talking about you,” Lewis greeted.

  “In flattering terms, I hope.”

  “About putting Buck Tyson on the couch. Making him into
Mr. Rogers.”

  Norse smiled. “As if therapists could make anyone into anything. The best they can do, I’m afraid, is help people come to grips with who they are.”

  “I think Buck’s already come to grips with himself as a self-centered, shower-hogging, anti-social, dysfunctional, butt-ugly son of a bitch.”

  “So good for him.” Norse threw some water on the sauna rocks, releasing a hiss of steam. The psychologist leaned back, uncharacteristically quite.

  “Who am I, Doc?”

  For a minute he thought Norse wasn’t going to answer. Then: “That’s what I’m working on, remember?”

  “I talked to your spy today.”

  “Spy?”

  “Abby came out to poke into my past. Said she was working for you.”

  “Oh, yes.” He sounded unembarrassed. “She’s already reported back.”

  “And?”

  “Said you were ‘desperate.’ I think that was the word. It’s in my notes.” His tone was amused.

  “Is that description accurate, do you think?”

  “I suppose it is,” the psychologist said. “Of everyone. What’s the phrase? Lives of quiet desperation?”

  They were quiet again. Then: “What the hell are you really doing down here, Doc?”

  “I already told you.”

  “Trying to get into our brains is just going to piss people off.”

  “I’m not trying to do that.”

  “It’s one thing to trade life stories. It’s another to be pinned like a bug to a wall for some shrink’s research project. I don’t care for it, and I don’t think anyone else is going to either. I know you’ve got your job to do, but nobody asked for a psychologist and it’s going to be a long winter. I’m just saying this kind of head collecting isn’t going to make you popular.”

  Norse turned and looked at Lewis directly for the first time, his features indistinct in the shadows. He seemed to be considering what to say. “Questions bother you, don’t they?” he finally tried.

  “I just don’t think I have to explain myself.”

  “Nor do I.” Bob thought. “Okay, look. First of all, I’m not a psychiatrist, I’m a psychologist. I’m an observer, not a therapist. I don’t change people, I only study them. But your point is well taken. I’ve got not only the most unpopular job, I’ve got the most difficult one. So, do you know why I’m really here?”

  “That’s what I’m asking.”

  “Because we’re about to leave this planet, Jed.” He waited for a reaction.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Childhood’s end, as Arthur C. Clarke would say. Space travel is inevitable. Maybe we’ll eventually find some new Eden, or be able to build one way out there, but the first voyages are going to be in conditions like we have at the Pole: hostile, crowded, uncomfortable. A ship of strangers. Maybe a ship of fools. Who is going to go out there? Why? Can they function when they do?”

  “This place does.”

  “Which is exactly why I’m here. You think your job is important, and it is. All the jobs down here are important. But of equal importance is the mere fact of your existence: that you’re here at all, surviving, cooperating, feuding, an unwitting guinea pig at the beginning of the next era. The Pole is at the edge of space: cold, dry, clear, deadly. It doesn’t even have normal time. Can we adapt to that? We have to, somehow. Earth isn’t going to last forever. The National Science Foundation and NASA are as interested in our simple existence as in our research product. Uncomfortable result: me.”

  “I don’t want to be written up as some misfit.”

  Norse laughed. “Misfit! I wish it were that simple.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that misfit is a cop-out word: everyone fits, but each in their own way, from admiral to hermit.”

  “But you called us guinea pigs, right? Rats in your maze?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to explain,” Norse said. “I’m not allowed to build a maze. Not as an observational psychologist. Sociologist. It’s bad enough I’m here at all, an observer who changes things slightly by the simple act of observing. Manipulating events would discredit my entire study. It would ruin my winter. No, my issue is different. What drives people to places like this is one of the greatest mysteries of human history. Why did we ever leave Africa? Why do we risk at all? Do you know that when Shackleton came down to Antarctica just before the First World War to drag his men through several circles of Hell, his advertisement to attract fifty-six recruits promised only low pay, abysmal conditions, hardship and danger? And do you know how many applicants he attracted?”

  “Plenty, I’ll bet.”

  “Five thousand.”

  Lewis didn’t want to admit his surprise. “Humans like adventure. They get bored.”

  “Adventure. Change. Escape. And yet when they get to a place like this they get all the visual stimulation of a cement wall. I mean, come on! It’s Amundsen-Scott base that’s pinning us like bugs to a wall. We’re a little island, with tedious routine. The very people who most want to come to the Pole may be the least qualified to co-exist here. At least that’s one theory. Do we need commandos in space? Or accountants? That’s the question. I’m in the prediction business, like you. You’re trying to forecast the climate, and I’m trying to forecast human nature. We both look at past patterns to do it.”

  “You’re going to list twenty-six rational reasons for being here?”

  “What’s rational? Wasn’t that our discussion at the bar? When the First World War finally started, with Shackleton’s ship trapped and sinking in the ice, the Germans launched a massive attack through Belgium toward France. They did so even though they knew, mathematically, that their attack couldn’t succeed. Their own planners had calculated they could not move enough troops on Belgium’s dirt roads in the time available to beat the French once they got there. The whole idea was doomed. But they did it anyway, producing a monstrous four-year stalemate that slaughtered millions, and do you know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was the best plan they had at the time.” The psychologist waited, watching Lewis. Did Norse believe a thing he was saying, or was this a calculated game to elicit reaction? He tossed another cup of water on the hot stones, obscuring himself with steam. “That’s human motivation for you. The best plan we have given our tangled past, messy emotions, confused logic and vain hopes. My issue is, is that good enough? Can we rely on each other, becoming stronger than the sum of our parts? Or does it all fall apart somewhere on the way to Pluto?”

  Lewis thought back to the argument in the weight room. “Your conclusion?”

  “Would be premature. That’s why I’m spending the winter. But corporate and government America worships groups. Teamwork. The committee. Modern historians have abandoned the importance of the leader, the individual, and embraced economics and sociology. One of my questions is whether that worship is appropriate in extreme circumstances. When does a team become a herd, and then a mob? How important is the individual and self-reliance? Can a single person, like yourself, or Buck Tyson, change the chemistry of an entire community? Were Pericles and Caesar and Napoleon and Lincoln the product of their times, or the creators?”

  “How the hell are you going to tell that down here?”

  “By watching what happens to us, when the first tests come.”

  ******

  Lewis was acclimating to the Pole. His first nights in his “Ice Room” hadn’t frozen him to the wall as he’d joked, but they’d been uncomfortably restless as his body adjusted to the dryness and altitude. His dreams were turbulent and he’d jerk awake suddenly, gasping for air, alternately parched or prodded by a full bladder. Yet slowly his breathing and pulse slowed. He found himself regularly using lotion on his hands and face for the first time in his life, fighting the dryness. Pulaski told him to smear his nostrils with Vaseline before venturing outdoors to protect the lining of his nose, and he began to associate the smell with the snow.
Inside the dome he noticed the rarity of smell. When he took one of the last fresh oranges from the galley to the computer lab and peeled it, the Japanese astronomer, Hiro Sakura, and the medic, Nancy Hodge, came to watch like moths drawn to a flame. Each strip of skin released a puff of scent, intoxicating and tropical. He dutifully offered each onlooker a section of fruit, juicy and elastic. Together they bit and sucked with wistful glee. Ambrosia.

  Abby was becoming a friend. He told her about the drift of the continents, and how Antarctica had once had forests and dinosaurs. She talked about the history of communication, and how the Internet was like a melding of brains, an accelerator of thought, as potentially revolutionary as the printing press. How machines might outsmart them all.

  Once she took him to the garage and they checked out a snowmobile, Abby demonstrating how to use it on a runway that was beginning to drift. In the coming dark it would be too cold to use them. They skittered around the Quonset huts of summer camp, her arms around his waist, shouting directions into his hood, the air cutting so fiercely that they had to give it up after half an hour.

  His “nights” had turned deep and dreamless, his body sapped each evening by the toll of cold. He set an alarm to keep on schedule and when it went off he’d jerk awake disoriented and groggy. The sky didn’t help him tell time.

  When his door slammed open in the middle of the night then, lights blazing on, his shock and confusion was profound. He jerked in his blankets, panicked at the chance of fire, and then before he could collect himself Cameron and Moss were crowded into his room, jostling his bed, rifling his things.

  Lewis sat up in his underwear, dumbfounded. Norse was there too, he realized, hovering just outside the door.

  “What the hell?”

  Moss was pawing through his duffel in frustration, and Cameron leaned over his bed, pinning him in place. “Relax, Lewis. We’re here to help.”

  “What?” His heart was hammering in confusion.

  “The quickest way to remove suspicion is to do a search. Mickey insisted.”