Dark Winter

by William Dietrich

  She nodded. “I think Rod went to Doctor Bob for advice. Tonight he’s called a meeting. And that’s why it’s not a good time to play Colombo, Jed. There’s too much tension on station and the winter’s started poorly. Things are coming to a head.”

  “About the meteorite?”

  “About water.”

  **********

  Amundsen-Scott station sat on an ocean of water, but it was frozen into ice that stayed a permanent sixty degrees below zero. Imported jet fuel ran a heater that melted a bulb of liquid water in the ice cap called a Rodriguez Well, but raising the temperature of the ice to the melting point and keeping it there was enormously costly. It took a gallon and a half of jet fuel to fly a gallon to the Pole.

  “Liquid water here costs more than gasoline at home,” Cameron told the assembly in the galley that night. “Every drop we consume represents energy we can’t use for heating or lights or to run our instruments. If we were on a nuclear submarine we could shower all day, but we’re not. And we’re using water faster than it’s budgeted.”

  “How much faster?” Carl Mendoza asked.

  “About fifty gallons a day.”

  Some of the others turned to look at Tyson, who was slouched in the shadows along a back wall. He looked determinedly bored.

  “Are you listening, Buck?” Cameron called to him.

  For a long minute the big man didn’t answer. Then: “What? Hard to hear you, Rod. Might need to wash my ears out tonight.”

  There was an uneasy silence in the room. Tyson looked huge, surly, mean. Everyone was waiting to see what Cameron would do. What Cameron could do.

  The station manager waited, letting the silence and uneasiness build. Finally he spoke. “The reason we’re using so much water is, of course, a mystery.” There was a murmur of surprise but Doctor Bob was watching Rod expectantly, nodding slightly. “The one thing we do know is that if we’re going to make it through the winter with a sufficient fuel reserve, we have to curb our excessive consumption.”

  “One person has to,” astronomer Harrison Adams muttered.

  “So,” Cameron continued blandly, “I’m being forced to announce a new rationing policy. Effective immediately, showers are being cut from two to one a week.”

  “What?” Geller shouted. The crowd erupted. Several turned to glare at Tyson. He had straightened in initial surprise but now was grinning sardonically, enjoying their outrage, seeming to feed off it.

  “That’s not fair!” Dana Andrews protested.

  “Rod, you can’t do that to the maintenance crew,” station carpenter Steve Calhoun objected. “We get dirty, man. We stink. Once a week is too long in between.”

  “And I’m not going to lose my privileges to accommodate that blowhard baboon!” Mickey Moss thundered, pointing at Tyson. “He’s a bully!”

  “Sticks and stones, man,” the mechanic mocked him.

  “I’m going to break you!” Moss shouted at Tyson. “Not just here but after, when you get home! Your performance is going to dog you the rest of your life!”

  “Fuck you, Mickey Mouse.”

  Cameron held up his hand. “This rationing is temporary until water consumption appears to be coming back into line with projections. I’m leaving it up to the rest of you to figure out how to make sure that comes about.”

  There was quiet again, everyone turning to look speculatively at Tyson. He looked back at them defiantly, saying nothing.

  “This is your fault,” Lena Jindrova finally hissed, standing up to look at the big man who topped her by a good foot. “You are the pig who is making the rest of us suffer.”

  “Fuck you, too, Lena.”

  “You are the pig like the old party bosses in Czechoslovakia, pulling everything to themselves, caring for no one.”

  “This whole water rationing crap is bullshit. We’ve got plenty of fuel. More than we can use.”

  “You’re wrong, Buck,” Cameron said quietly.

  “You are like a worm that cares only for itself,” Lena went on heatedly. She pointed to the galley serving counter, where a glass mason jar held a leaf of lettuce and the curled form of Hieronymous. “Our mascot has more heart than you. More soul.”

  Tyson scowled, the resentment in the room towards him so palpable it made the air they breathed like syrup. You could smell the sweat, the electric tension. In a moment Cameron had turned everyone against him. “That slug?” the mechanic growled ominously.

  “More brains, more work, more everything.”

  “Little Hiero?” The mechanic pushed himself away from the wall and made his way around the folding chairs where the others sat, his work boots ringing on the floor as he walked. He was supposed to have taken them off, as well, before entering the galley, and they left a trail of snow and grease. The others watched him warily, resentfully, none quite daring to interfere with whatever he chose to do next. He walked up to the counter and picked up the mason jar with the gastropod. “This slime sucker here?”

  “Don’t you touch him!” Lena warned.

  Tyson held the jar up to the light. “Oh yeah. I see what you mean. He’s cuter than any bitch in this room.”

  “Buck, put it down,” Cameron commanded. He now looked worried. Tyson’s open defiance hadn’t been planned.

  “Cool it Tyson.” Pulaski stood up too, muscles tensing.

  “I’m cool, Cueball.” Then the mechanic made a sudden violent swing of his arm and brought the jar down on the galley counter with a crack. The glass shattered and Lena screamed. The slug slid a short distance on the stainless steel, braked by its own slime. Tyson flecked a couple of pieces of glass off the animal and gingerly picked it up between two fingers, holding it up in front of the crowd.

  “Is this what you prefer to me, Lena?”

  “You put him down!” she cried.

  Norse had become rigid, his gaze flickering around the room, taking it all in.

  “Do you think I give a flying fuck what any of you think of me?” Tyson asked them, turning in a slow half-rotation to give everyone a clear view of the slug. “Do you think I give a diddly damn about any of you? We’re all down here for bucks and glory, man, and I don’t give a shit about the science, I don’t give a shit about the station, and I sure as hell don’t give a shit if the rest of you don’t get a single shower for the rest of the fucking winter. I don’t need you. I don’t want you. I sure as hell don’t like you. I ain’t afraid of you.” He held the slug closer to his face, scrutinizing it. “And this is what I think of this little fucker here.”

  He opened his mouth.

  “Buck, if you do that you’re bloody dead on station!” Dana Andrews cried.

  “Suck my dick, Dana.” He crammed the animal in.

  “No!” Lena shouted.

  “Jesus Christ,” Pulaski said in disgust. The crowd groaned.

  Tyson chewed twice, his look wildly defiant, and then swallowed, the gulp audible. There were flecks of slime on his beard. He deliberately belched.

  “Why in the name of God did you do that?” Cameron breathed, his look one of horror. He took a shaking step toward Tyson and Norse put a hand on the station manager’s arm.

  “Here’s another rule for you ass kissers,” Tyson said, wiping his mouth. “No pets in Antarctica.”

  Lena was in tears, looking at him in hatred. Pika regarded the mechanic in disbelief.

  “This your idea, Bob?” Tyson asked the psychologist. “Turn everyone against me? Well, surprise, surprise, they already were. So fuck you, too.”

  Norse, composing his expression into something opaque, didn’t answer.

  “I’m crazier than you thought, aren’t I?”

  “You’re setting yourself alone, Buck,” the psychologist warned quietly.

  “You’re right on that.” He waited for another challenge, his look amused, but none came. “Okay? We done here? Gotta hit the showers, man.”

  The silence was as thick and cold as the ice cap

  He left.

  Lewis could
hear the bubble of the juice dispenser in one corner.

  “One shower,” Cameron finally said shakily.

  That night, someone nailed a piece of burnt toast to Buck Tyson’s door.

  *******

  It was two nights later that Jed Lewis was roused from his bed once more, again in the early hours of the morning. Cameron burst into his room and flicked on the light.

  “What? What?”

  “Get up, we’re organizing a search.”

  “Now?”

  “Sooner than now. Get your ass in gear.” The station manager looked sick.

  “What’s going on? Is it the meteorite?”

  “Screw the meteorite. Now something’s really wrong.”

  “What, dammit?”

  “Mickey Moss is missing.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  This is what it’s like to be dead, Lewis thought to himself.

  The searchers had stopped on the polar plateau three miles from the dome, clambering gratefully down from the Spryte to take a break from the snow tractor’s ungainly lurch and guttural growl. It was a tiring vehicle to ride in, noisy and slow, with treads like a tank and a cramped, wedge-shaped orange cab. But it could also straddle small crevasses, snort its way up forty-degree slopes, and clamber over pack ice. If Mickey Moss was lost on the ice, the tractor should spot him.

  He wasn’t.

  There was nothing to see. Distant towers as fine as spider silk marked Scott-Amundsen base, its dome a bump on the horizon. In all other directions the whiteness was as empty as heaven and as frozen as hell. It was amazing how far they seemed from the station. The effect was strangely dream-like, Lewis feeling as detached as an astronaut cut from a lifeline. He didn’t like being out here, unprotected and cold.

  Moss’s body could have been covered by drifting snow, of course. But why would the astronomer walk out here? There was nothing to walk to: no hillock, no wrinkle, no vale, no stop. They’d gone first to the tiny solar observatory buried in the snow a mile from the dome, another metal box drowning in deepening snow. It housed a small telescope and computer where Mickey had said he’d hidden his meteorite. But there was no sign of the rock or Moss, not even tracks. Beyond that, all destination disappeared once you left the polar station. There was only the wind.

  “This is stupid,” Tyson said.

  The mechanic was their driver, pressed into reluctant service after the three hours that it took him to get the operable Spryte in running condition and warmed up. If Moss was out here he was already dead, Tyson had reasoned, and if he was dead they’d probably never find him. The blowing snow would bury him. So what was the point?

  “Do it anyway,” Cameron had said quietly. No one else had said a word. Tyson had hesitated and then shrugged and obliged.

  A disappearance was serious.

  Pulaski had been picked to accompany Tyson because of his military background. Lewis had volunteered because of his association with the whole mess. And Norse had come along on the theory he might guess where Moss had gone and could help manage the volatile Tyson.

  Cameron wouldn’t get on the same machine with the ostracized mechanic and so he was leading the others in a systematic search of the buildings. If Moss wasn’t there he had to be out here. By crackling radio, they were confirming he was neither.

  “Didn’t he go off by himself all the time anyway?” Lewis asked.

  “Just over to the Dark Side with his junk food,” Pulaski said. “You could phone him. Never went off like this before.”

  Snow skittered up to their knees, blowing so fast that any tracks were erased within minutes of being made.

  “So what’d they teach you about this in the Army?” Tyson asked Pulaski. It was an honest question, not a mocking one, and a tentative effort toward reopening some kind of communication with the group he’d scorned. Tyson had seen the piece of toast on his door and was quietly reconsidering his defiance. He was tired of the Pole but it was spooky how no one was talking to him. Maybe he’d gone too far. Besides, the mechanic respected the cook’s mysterious military past.

  Pulaski let a silence hang for a moment, just to let Buck know where he stood, and then answered. “Have clear objectives. Inform your superiors. Maintain communication. Prepare for the unexpected.” The cook squinted into the wind. “Doesn’t look like Mickey did any of that to me.”

  “Anybody ever vanish like this before?” Lewis asked.

  “The program’s been pretty safe, considering. I mean there’s been a lot of American deaths in Antarctica - more than fifty since World War II, if you count all the ship and plane injuries - but mostly industrial accidents. We’ve never lost a beaker at the Pole. And a guy as experienced as Mickey...it’s weird, man.”

  They shuddered in the wind. The uncomfortable orange cab was beginning to look good again.

  “So do we just keep driving around in circles?” Tyson demanded. “I’m about to go snow blind.”

  “I’m betting he’s not out here,” the cook agreed. “Unless he was suicidal or something. And this is a tough way to go. It’s like swimming out to sea - all of a sudden the station looks very far away and you turn back. Any sane man would do that.”

  “Was Mickey sane?” Lewis asked. Suddenly it seemed like a fair question, given the man’s long association with Amundsen-Scott.

  “This place was his life.”

  “And why would Big Rodent be suicidal?” Tyson added. He looked pointedly at Lewis. “The way I heard it, he was about to come into big money.”

  “Maybe that was the problem,” Norse said quietly.

  The others didn’t reply. Everyone on station was contemplating the coincidence of Moss vanishing shortly after the meteorite disappeared. Everyone, Jed was sure, was thinking about how his arrival had brought bad luck.

  “Maybe Mickey has fled or left or escaped the station on purpose, going somewhere else,” Norse suggested.

  Pulaski barked a laugh. “Where!” He gestured at the blank plateau. “There’s no place to go to, Doc.”

  “Except Vostok,” Tyson muttered.

  “Where?” Norse asked the mechanic. He turned to look at him.

  “The closest Russian base,” Tyson explained with a mumble. “It’s across the plateau, which means it’s basically flat. No glaciers, no crevasses. Nobody in their right mind would want to go there but it’s the one place you could actually drive to. People have joked about it.”

  The psychologist was interested. “You think Moss could have gone there?”

  “No. It’s seven hundred dick-shriveling miles. You’d need a vehicle, extra fuel, and I’m the guy in charge of the motor pool. Mickey didn’t check anything out.”

  “Is it hard to drive a Spryte?”

  Tyson looked at the psychologist dubiously. “It ain’t hard on your brain. It’s hard on your butt. But I’m telling you, we ain’t missing a Spryte.”

  “But someone could do it?”

  Tyson contemplated the Spryte. “With that piece of shit? Maybe. You’d have to want to get there very, very bad to risk it. But it could be done, if you were lucky.”

  “But Moss didn’t do it,” Pulaski clarified.

  The mechanic nodded. “No way. Dollars to donuts he’s within five miles of where we’re standing. And frozen stiffer than the poker that’s up Rod Cameron’s ass.”

  ********

  The station manager called another meeting in the galley that night. Lewis came last and sat in the back, depressed by the mood of bad feeling. Abby glanced his way and then turned her head, looking troubled. He’d said hello to her earlier, hoping she’d warmed, but she’d flitted by him in distraction, not wanting to talk. “It’s not you, it’s Mickey,” she had muttered. Something about Moss’s disappearance had hit her hard.

  Norse sat to one side of the room near the serving counter, again scanning the crowd. They needed a shrink now, didn’t they? Yet the psychologist looked somber, no doubt remembering Tyson’s blow-up at the last meeting. Lewis bet that slug eating hadn�
��t been in his script. Now Lewis watched Norse catch Abby’s eye once and give her a look of reassurance as if to say, “I understand.” Had their psychologist become her confessor? Lewis found the idea irked him.

  His own mood was gloomy. He’d come to the Pole for a fresh start and instead his counseling on the meteorite had dragged him into the middle of a serious crisis. You can’t quit down here, Cameron had told him.

  Well, hell.

  The station manager got up from his chair and stiffly faced the group. His movement left two chairs empty, Lewis noticed. Pulaski without thinking had set out twenty-six and Mickey’s was conspicuously empty. Everyone eyed the extra seat uneasily. It was an accusation, a plea, a warning.

  Cameron looked haggard. He hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours and the e-mailed heat he was getting from Washington, D.C., was enough to set his terminal on fire. First he’d had to tattle on Tyson instead of simply fixing the problem himself. Now the possible death of Michael M. Moss would be shocking to the Polar establishment. Moss was Mister South Pole. Worse, the people on station were family and now he’d somehow lost one of them. Cameron had likely failed in the most fundamental way: at keeping them all alive. He was in no mood to forgive himself. At the sight of his drawn face, the group’s anxious chatter died away.

  “I’m not very religious,” the station manager began, his voice hoarse. He stopped, looking confused. Pulaski got up and poured Cameron a glass of water, handing it to him with the gravity of communion. The station manager drank, and the simple act seemed to steady him. He tried again.

  “I’m not very religious, but I’d like to start this meeting with a prayer - not mine but our own prayers, each of us individually, from our own hearts. I don’t know where Mickey is but let’s acknowledge the central truth - that whatever our relationship to him, he was - is - the soul of this station. So I’d like a minute of silence to pray for his soul, which I hope is alive and which I fear is somehow, inexplicably, dead. At least none of us have seen hide nor hair of him for more than twenty-four hours. We’ve looked and looked and are going to keep on looking, but right now I think we need the help of a higher power. So, for just a minute, please, send our sonofabitch Old Antarctic Explorer your best thoughts.”