Dark Winter

by William Dietrich

  Norse was surprised. “A cop?”

  “I thought planes couldn’t get in here,” Lewis said. “If they can, I’m ready to go home.”

  “There’s an outside chance for at least an airdrop,” Cameron said. “They’ve done them in winter before We’ve definitely got an emergency here. Maybe they can just parachute somebody in. Somebody with a weapon and authority. Somebody who knows what to do.”

  “That might be overreacting, Rod,” Norse said.

  “Overreacting? With two dead bodies?”

  “Two accidents, until we learn otherwise. You put a cop in here and it becomes two victims. You define the problem in the worst possible light. You put your own stewardship in the worst possible light. And nobody will get any work done.”

  “Bullshit.” He pointed at Norse. “Maybe they’ll begin by investigating you.”

  The psychologist sighed. “I’d recommend it, actually, if you don’t want to spook everyone else and screw up the whole winter. Concentrate on me.”

  “Is that a confession?” He was sour.

  “Think about it. Suppose you get your G-man. He parachutes in and interrogates me. Or Lewis. Or Tyson. People are freaked out. A small group like this can turn on a person and makes his life miserable. I’ve read about it. I’ve seen it. And then you’ve got them under a cloud, preoccupying everyone, until spring. What are your going to do with them for the rest of the winter? How does anyone get any work done? I think we need to calm things down, not hype them up. And NSF is going to go ballistic if you turn an accident into a murder investigation. If you really need a fall guy, make it me. I’m not doing physical science. I’m not worried about what they might ask.”

  “I’m not looking for a fall guy! I’m looking to keep things under some kind of control! What do you suggest, Doctor Freud?”

  “Just that we all cool off for a day or two. That we don’t panic the bureaucrats in D.C. for a day or two. If one of us is a murderer…well, we’re not going anywhere. We chill, and separate, and wait.”

  “What does that mean?” Lewis asked.

  “Quarantine, Jed. There’s going to be a lot of gossip and speculation about this, it’s inevitable. Especially with you finding the body, after the e-mail to Mickey. I think you should stay out in Clean Air for a while longer, this time with a sleeping bag. We’ll bring you your meals. You can collect your data for Sparco and be...safe.”

  “Under house arrest,” Lewis clarified. “So everyone else feels safe.”

  “Temporarily. It’s for your own good.”

  “Doc, there’s not even a john out there.”

  “We’ll bring you a bucket. Just for a few days, until we sort things out.”

  “I can’t believe this. Is Tyson going to be quarantined?”

  “Buck quarantines himself. Everyone’s avoiding him like the plague anyway.”

  “Are you going to be quarantined?”

  “Oh no!” He smiled. “This is what I came down for.”

  “To watch us,” Cameron said bitterly. “Watch us go nuts.”

  “To watch the variable in the experiment once Jed is out of the way.” Norse smiled thinly. “Who had the mobility? Who had motive? I’m going to watch the habits and patterns and movements of Buck Tyson. And save your career by letting you solve this one yourself.”

  I MAKE MY DECISION

  When the shit hits the fan there’s no time to be polite to the weaklings. Fleming and Kressler has just killed themselves with their own reckless idiocy, Fat Boy had doomed himself by waddling off the rope against all orders, and the rest of the kids were sniffing and sniveling like a pack of whipped dogs. Somehow I had to find some spine in them if we were going to get out of this mess. I mostly felt contempt that they’d allowed themselves to be herded onto this ledge. That I’d allowed myself to be herded. And outrage that my life was at risk because of the incompetence and bad judgment of others.

  I didn’t deserve to die.

  Still, I bit back most of what I wanted to say. I needed two of them, the two best, to ascend the cliff with me so we could belay the rest of the sheep back off the dead-end ledge my colleagues had led them to. I needed the remainder to break out of their freeze-up panic. The wind was rising, the snow getting thicker, but if we moved quickly, moved NOW, we still might get up to the saddle and descend the glacier on the other side before we became totally lost in a whiteout.

  “They’re dead but you’re not!” I snapped at them about Fleming and Kressler. “Don’t think about them, think about yourself! If you’re going to survive this it’s going to have to come from inside YOU! I need fire in your bellies or you’re all going to DIE!”

  More weeping and moaning. Jesus H. Christ. They were falling apart. Some of the kids were starting to shiver, a first warning of hypothermia, and we’d all lock up if we didn’t get moving. So I had to be realistic. When the shit hits the fan it’s no time to tell fairy tales. It’s triage time. Some were going to make it and some probably weren’t. Fat Boy was dead meat, as far as I was concerned. He’d blundered, and was about to pay for it big time. The strongest of the rest of us had a chance. Maybe.

  Women and children first is lunacy at a time like that, a sure invitation to disaster. I like girls as well as any man, but not at the end of a rope that’s holding me to a crumbling rock wall. So the first decision I made was that the females stayed behind. They were supposed to be better in cold anyway, right? Epidermal layer and all that. If they huddled maybe they’d last through the storm if I could get back with help. If, if. The storm was building and help was a long time off. Nobody was helicoptering in, nobody was climbing back up, not until this little snow spit was over. Bad luck, but there it was. So the bitches would have to wait and hope for the best. I was taking the strongest boys. If the bucks remembered what they’d learned, maybe a few of us could make it.

  Couldn’t tell them the grim facts, of course. Sometimes when you’re honest with yourself you still have to lie to the others. Especially if they still might survive and tell stories about you afterward. So I told them I was leading the strongest of us to the top of the cliff and that we’d try to belay anyone else who wanted to come up if we could, and if we couldn’t do that we were going to get help and they should all sit tight until we got back. Trust me! Hold on to each other and pray! We’re all going to get through this!

  Bullshit.

  I took the two I thought just might make it. I truly did. Chisel Chin was a big-balled sonofabitch wise-guy who had the endurance of any two of this classmates and was eyeing routes even as I tried to settle the rest of the herd. Carrot Top was jumpier and not as strong, but he was big and reasonably competent and hadn’t spaced out like Ponytail Boy, the third candidate I had in mind. That one had developed a thousand-yard stare like he’d already seen the Angelic choir coming for him, so I didn’t think I could rely on his presence of mind. Maybe if we could really rig a rope to help the others, Ponytail could be the first to try to follow. I shook him, telling him that. Meanwhile, however, I’d have to rely on the other two.

  We roped up, slipped on our packs, and readied ourselves to go back up the way we’d come down. What a moronic mess. Somebody asked about Fat Boy and I admit I was a little curt at that point, saying Fat Boy was just going to have to look after himself for awhile and if he gave them any grief, they could just roll lard ass over the edge. They stared wide-eyed at my moment of honesty, and actually shut up for half a minute. Gee, did I let a fart? What did they think was going to happen to Fat Boy? I loathed their innocence. I truly did.

  So. I’d start the first pitch, hammer in a piton, fix a rope, and let Chisel Chin come up to me. Then I’d go on, my partner braced so that if I fell the piton and Chisel Chin combined just might hold me in space. I might drop thirty feet before the rope brought me up taut, but that’s a hell of a lot better than three thousand. Then another piton, another point, Carrot Top coming on too, and we’d work our way up the cliff. Bing, bang, boom. Fleming and Kressler had taken
too much rope so we had to take all the remaining line from the others if we hoped to fashion a line all the way back up to the top. If we made it, great. If we didn’t, the others weren’t getting off that ledge anyway.

  Just before we started I faced away from the weeping group, looked out to the gray eternity swirling all around us, and fumbled under my coat. I was mindful of what had happened to Kressler and Fleming and was determined that it wasn’t going to happen to me. It wasn’t prophetic. I was counting on those two kids, sure. But if you’re going to survive in this jungle of ours you prepare for every contingency. You have to think ahead.

  So I took out a silver commando knife, slipped it out of its sheath, and tucked it into a strap near my neck where I could snatch it out easily. Just in case. Then I turned to the others and actually managed a reassuring grin.

  What a hero I was.

  We started back up.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Flat gray clouds spoiled the final exit of the sun. There was a week of overcast, as dark and featureless as a pot lid, and when it blew away the lingering orb was finally gone and the long polar night had begun. The sky was still dusk blue. A couple of stars popped out, tiny and cold, the first outriders of the glory to come. Instead of seeming foreboding the approaching dark heralded a kind of peace to Lewis. The sun’s scheduled disappearance meant it would reappear on schedule too, and when that happened he would be near release from the Pole. Meanwhile, the ground had lost shadow and definition and the boundary between snow and sky became even more indistinct.

  At first he didn’t mind his isolation in the Clean Air quadrant. It spared him the necessity of even pretending to look for a killer or meteorite. He didn’t have to act some kind of normal relationship with a group of people half-suspicious that he might be a murderer at worst and a bad-luck enzyme at best. Solitary, he called it, except that each day he had four hours in which orbiting satellites lifted high enough above the polar horizon to allow access to the Internet. Lewis monitored world news that seemed increasingly remote and kept his mentor Sparco updated on the weather measurements. He found himself intrigued by the accumulating data points of temperature, wind, snow, carbon dioxide and ozone. Graphing the readings were like painstakingly sculpting a work of art. When winds were calm he watched from the windows as Gerald Follett launched his atmospheric balloons, enjoying observing the quiet routine of inflation, rigging, and recording. Sometimes Jed helped. Follett was a geek, but he was a competent geek. There was a purity to the science, and a purity to the dry cold outside that Jed found bracing. Meteorology itself was a constant dance of interwoven factors, like the twisted glass of a kaleidoscope suggesting different global futures.

  He’d found a better purpose.

  His exile also spared him fevered group speculation on the deaths of Moss and Adams. No theories, no rumors, no jokes. It made him calmer. People were complicated but science was not. The universe was designed to be understood. Only humans were an enigma.

  Yet when his tasks were completed he was increasingly lonely as well. They brought him a mattress, a bucket, and food as if he was a leper. His dilemma was that days went by without mishap, according to Cameron. There were no disappearances, no discoveries, and no confessions, and thus nothing to turn suspicion away from him. Lewis comes, and trouble descends. Lewis is banished, and normalcy returns. No G-man parachuted in, no conclusions were drawn.

  A week drifted by, empty of real news.

  Then Abby came, the first time he’d seen her since Adams’s death.

  Once more he detected her breath before he noticed her approach. A spike in his carbon measurements that he dully noted in the log. He stepped to a window and watched her walk the flag line, following a path of snow clumpy enough that she occasionally stumbled, a heavy daypack adding to her clumsiness in the dusk. He’d learned to recognize her from a distance: her quick, straightforward walk, the rather tight swing of her arms, her habit of sometimes tucking them around her torso as if to warm herself, bowing her head in thought like a bird at roost - and then popping upright suddenly to peer around like a startled dove. It was funny how much you could tell from posture and movement. Everyone looked alike in their orange parkas and black bib pants and yet they didn’t. A tilt of head, a curve of back, an angle of foot: stances as individualistic as fingerprints.

  She clanged up the stairs, stamped snow loose in the vestibule, and came inside, swinging the backpack onto the floor with a soft thud. “More food, Enzyme.”

  Lewis grimaced. He was getting tired of hot plate leftovers. “Bread and water?”

  “Meatloaf and macaroni. A little junk food as well, for morale. Chemical preservatives disguised as cake, salt disguised as chips, sugar dusted with a little flour. Cueball promised he won’t put in enough to poison you.”

  “Not without a group vote, at least.” He meant it as a joke, but it came out sounding sour. “I’m sure everyone misses me.”

  “Forgotten you, actually. She shed her coat. “Too many troubles.”

  Trouble? He found himself shamelessly eager for gossip. “A suspect unmasked?”

  “Just a lot of bad feeling. It’s turning into a pretty grim winter.”

  “Rod told me nothing’s happening.”

  “That’s because he doesn’t know what to do. Tyson has gone nuts. He thinks everyone’s against him, which we are. One shower stinks. Yet he won’t back down. He’s announced that since no one appreciates his contribution to our little society, he’s going to find the meteorite and make himself rich, and to hell with anybody else. So he’s stomping around, ignoring his job, and even threatening to wig out of here on a Spryte or something – fixing those is the one thing he’ll work on. Cameron blew up at him in the galley and said he’s pulling Buck’s bonus, as if he had any chance of getting it anyway, so then they almost got into a fistfight. It scared everybody. Geller fantasizes about putting out a contract on the guy, Pulaski is about to call Buck out, the beakers are bitching about not getting enough work done, and Bob is writing it all up like we’re a bunch of lunatics. Which maybe we are. We’re toasting at record speed.”

  “Jesus.” Tyson was being pushed toward an explosion. Maybe Norse’s plan of removing Lewis from the center of things was working after all: Bad feeling couldn’t be blamed on him. Yet the tension sounded risky. “So you came to visit the only sane man on station?”

  She looked at him warily. “Just to deliver groceries.”

  “Even though I might be dangerous. The mysterious fingie. The enzyme.” Impulsively, he took a step toward her to see what she’d do.

  “Doctor Bob actually suggested I deliver the food this time. Said it’s good for you to see other people. And he said that...” She stopped, suddenly flustered.

  “And what?”

  “Nothing.” She looked away.

  “What?”

  “He said we mesh well together.”

  He took another step. “I thought I made people nervous, Abby?”

  She’d stiffened, he noticed, not as sure of him as she pretended. “Not me. I’m not afraid of you, Jed.”

  Another step, very close now. “If so, you’re the only one.”

  “Stop it. I’m trying to trust. Don’t put everything to the test.”

  He stopped, feeling foolish. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t joke around. It’s just that the whole situation is so...absurd. This place, this paranoia...”

  “People are spooked. I’m spooked. We all just want to go home.”

  “And yet we can’t.”

  “Yes.” She slumped in a chair. “Stuck with each other.” She squinted at him, slightly annoyed at his advance. Her lips were full, her neck high. Her hands were small, good for working with electronics. She was prettier than he remembered. He realized that he missed her.

  “I like you, Abby.” The bold confession surprised him, and he was pleased at his own sudden boldness. “I like you a lot. I’m attracted to you. And I’m lonely. I’m glad you came out here.”


  She smiled wanly. “Don’t take an ax to me and make me regret it.”

  “You trusted me enough to come out here, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “And I have to trust you, right?”

  She looked wary. “I guess.”

  He sat in a chair opposite her. “If we’re going to trust each other, we have to talk, I think. Too much has happened. You have to tell me about that photograph in Mickey’s pocket.”

  She squirmed. “I don’t know about that picture.”

  “But you know something, right? I saw it upset you. Abby, I’m a damned murder suspect. I’m in exile. I need help. What in the hell is going on?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked away. “It’s just a photo from my personnel file. I checked and it’s missing from the stuff NSF sent down.”

  “Mickey lifted it?”

  “That’s not what he said. Mickey brought it to me that night not long after the meteorite was stolen. He said he found it in Doctor Bob’s room when you searched each other, that there was a wall panel with screws missing and it had been tucked in a slit there. He said that he didn’t trust Norse, that he didn’t like shrinks. He wanted to know what my photograph was doing there. He said if I was having a problem with Bob, he had authority enough to help me. He said he was prepared to be my friend.”

  “Jesus. Doctor Bob?”

  “That’s what I thought. So...” she faltered a moment, summoning courage. “So I went to Norse and told him I had some personal problems I wanted help with and needed to talk to him privately in his room. And then I went there, blabbering away, looking at the walls, and I didn’t see anything like what Doctor Moss described. No screws missing, no gap in the panels. So I told Bob what Mickey had showed me and he suddenly got very concerned and agitated and warned me to stay away from the astronomer at all costs. I was just dumbfounded but he said there’d been past complaints from young women on the base about Moss coming on to them and worse, this old guy bullying and pawing them because of his power on station. That he invented excuses to get close to them; that he even researched the next group coming down, picking out the pretty ones. And that one reason Norse was sent down here was to check out those rumors. And that Moss probably suspected that and didn’t like him because of it, and that possibly this whole meteorite thing was an attempt to distract attention.” She said it in a rush.