Dark Winter

by William Dietrich

  Lewis was skeptical. “A geezer like Moss? Boy, I don’t know. He was pretty regal. I can’t imagine him coming on to anybody.”

  “That’s what I thought. But then Bob had these files. I couldn’t read them because of the confidentiality but he showed me enough to suggest that some complaints had been filed...it was horrible! I didn’t know what to think! And then Mickey dies...”

  “Suicide.”

  “Yes.” She nodded miserably.

  “He was afraid of exposure.”

  “I think so. I think Norse is some kind of investigator.”

  “Except Bob Norse told me he thought it could be murder. Or at least that’s what NSF thinks, back in D.C. And for my own protection I’m sitting out here.”

  “Don’t you see? NSF wants a murder. Or an accident. Anything but a big sexual scandal like Tailhook that’s going to throw a wrench in their plans to get congressional money to rebuild this base. Reconstruction is going to cost a hundred million dollars and they can’t afford to have their star scientist exposed as a rogue after Clarence Thomas and Monica Lewinsky and all that. So Norse thinks you’re in danger, Jed. You’re not one of the fraternity. You’re just this oil guy down to make a few bucks over the winter. They might try to pin something on you, to cover for Mickey. Nothing to file in court, because that would just make matters worse. Just enough suspicion and rumor to muddy the waters. To make you the fall guy, send you away under a cloud. Doctor Bob is trying to help you. That’s why he encouraged me to come out here.”

  “What about Harrison Adams?”

  “His death is probably a coincidence, but who knows? Doctor Bob is as confused as we are.”

  “This is too crazy...”

  “Which is exactly why he’s here.”

  Lewis sighed, trying to think. Harrison Adams had been going through Moss’s computer. Had he learned too much? And if the deaths weren’t back-to-back accidents, or a suicide-accident, then who was responsible? The only one he could see with a stake in the future of base reconstruction was Rod Cameron, who might be angling for a promotion in the NSF bureaucracy. But would Cameron kill to cover up a scandal? It was too far-fetched. You needed someone truly loony, or someone desperate for that meteorite.

  He looked at her. “What do you think? Of me?”

  “My heart tells me you’re just unlucky - in the wrong place at the wrong time. My brain tells me not to trust anyone. But I’m here, aren’t I? Maybe all this is nothing. Moss decided to go exploring, slipped, and fell. Harrison got caught in a storm. It happens.”

  He smiled ruefully. “So you risk bringing me dinner.”

  She looked away. “I’m attracted to you too, Jed,” she said.

  The admission took him by as much surprise as his own.

  “It’s going to be a long winter. We both need a friend,” she amended.

  Her words filled him with longing. The tundra had been liberating but lonely when he walked away from his oil job. He was looking to belong. And now, suddenly, there was this woman.

  “Abby, I need to kiss you,” he decided.

  She looked at him wryly.

  “I’m going to go crazy if I can’t kiss you right now,” he insisted.

  “You are crazy. We’re all crazy. We just decided that.”

  “Yes. That’s why it’s all right to kiss you.”

  She considered it cautiously. “If we kiss, things change.”

  “Yes, like an enzyme. I want to change things with you. I know there’s that other guy but he’s not here and we are. He’s not in this and we are.”

  “Then what happens?”

  “I don’t know. I just know it’s important to do this now.”

  She looked at him: amused, impatient, uncertain. “I’m afraid I’ll like it.”

  He grinned. “I’m afraid you won’t.”

  She hesitated, as judicious as if reviewing a contract, reviewing her own instincts about him. Then she made up her mind. “Okay.”

  He knelt next to her and lifted his face to hers, suddenly struck by the green hazel of her eyes and the dark curl of her hair on each cheek. She coolly waited as he cupped the nape of her neck, bending her to him, but when his lips gently touched hers she shivered and closed her eyes. He came away and her lips parted slightly, revealing a glimpse of the pearl of her teeth. He kissed her again, more deeply this time, and she started to respond. Then she turned her head, sighing, and instead his lips brushed her cheek and ear and followed the curve of her neck to the the collar of her Thermax underwear...

  “That’s enough.” She stood up.

  He remained kneeling, looking up at her. “No, it isn’t.”

  “I like you, Jed, but too much is going on. I’ve got a lot to think about.” Her eyes were darting around the room, betraying her confusion.

  “You think too much, you know.”

  “Let’s just leave it there, for now.”

  He stood as well, grinning, savoring his small triumph. He’d tasted her. She’d liked it. “I want to get to know you.”

  “Yes.” She said it in a tone that suggested she wasn’t at all sure that was a good idea. Yet she wanted to surrender, he was sure of it.

  “I’m tired of exile. I think I want to get back to the dome.”

  “Yes.”

  Suddenly he was excited. Isolation was preferable to being ostracized inside the dome. But Abby’s confession of attraction made everything different. Here at least was a friend. He’d work side by side with her. Talk to her. Endure the winter with her.

  “Go talk to Rod for me. Tell him to bring me in.”

  “I don’t know if Doctor Bob thinks that’s a good idea.”

  “To hell with Doctor Bob.”

  “He’s trying to protect you.”

  “Isolate me for his observations.” He’d seen Norse confer with Abby. Maybe the shrink wants to put the moves on Abby himself. His own exile was a convenience. “Screw Norse. I want to be with you.”

  “Well, then you talk to Cameron. It will be embarrassing if I do it.”

  “Yes. Absolutely. ” He felt energized. She was receptive to a partnership. He could talk the station manager into anything.

  “You’ll have to call him but he’s pretty stressed out.”

  “I will.”

  “Maybe in the morning. He’s a little more rested then.”

  “Good idea.”

  “People are still pretty edgy in the dome. Snapping at each other. It’s not going to be easy for you if you come back.”

  “I’ll be okay if I can get to talk to you.”

  “That’s all I’m promising.”

  “I know.”

  “Rod is pretty jumpy. Be patient.”

  “I will.”

  But when she left to do some maintenance work on the computers in Astronomy he decided he couldn’t wait. To hell with patience. To hell with tomorrow. He was sick of being isolated in Clean Air like some kind of germ. He went to the phone and called Cameron’s office. There was no answer, so he dialed the galley. Pulaski told him to try a radio. “Our station manager is making his rounds. Can’t it wait?”

  “No, it can’t.” Lewis hung up and picked up the radio. “Enzyme to Ice Pick. Over.”

  After a few tries Rod’s raspy, tired voice finally came on. “This is Cameron.”

  “This is Lewis. Where are you?” Anybody with a radio could listen in but he was too determined to care.

  “Checking the fuel arch.”

  “Rod, can we meet to talk?”

  There was a wary silence. Then: “I’m kind of busy.”

  “I’m going nuts in Clean Air.”

  “It’s for your own good, buddy.”

  “I’ve been talking with Abby. Let me come back to the dome. She can keep an eye on me. Lock me in my room at night if you have to.”

  He stalled. “I’ll talk about it to Doctor Bob.”

  “Doctor Bob has no authority here. You do. I’ve been exiled without charges. That’s unconstitutional, isn�
�t it?”

  More uncomfortable silence. “I don’t know. Nothing’s happened since you went out there.” The implication was plain.

  “Rod, I think it was suicide. Suicide and an accident. You can’t blame me and you can’t blame yourself.”

  “Things are kind of messy, Jed.”

  “You mean Tyson?”

  Cameron’s voice was cold. “Tyson’s a dead man. Don’t bring him up to me.”

  “Don’t blame me for him. Let me come over to talk. Let’s meet privately, you and me. To talk.”

  Another long silence. “I have to check out these tanks.”

  “I’ll find you there. We’ll talk in private.”

  “Enzyme...” Cameron sounded besieged, reluctant. “Listen. Stay in Clean Air. When I finish this inspection I’ll swing by and see how you’re doing, okay?”

  “Will you talk?”

  “Yes.” It was a sigh. “We’ll talk.”

  “Talk about changing things?”

  “We’ll talk.”

  It was enough. “Roger that.” He put down the radio, impatient and hopeful. Maybe with Abby Dixon he could find a way to live in this place.

  I CHOOSE SURVIVAL

  Every once in a while you arrive at a point in life in which you can’t afford to make a mistake. Might be a job. Might be a romance. Might be a gamble or the way you choose to answer with a gun pointed to your head. Might be an icy road and oncoming headlights and that drink you had that was one too many. You can’t know when or how it’s going to come. But when it does, you have to get things right.

  If you don’t you’re dead, figuratively and literally.

  My climbing companions didn’t get it right.

  For the first two hundred feet I was optimistic. It was difficult climbing but not impossible, even for relative amateurs. There were cracks and toe-holds and chimneys enough to squirt our way upward, though the rocks we dislodged banged down and set off a fresh round of squeals and shouts from the kids below. Crash! Sorry about that. Hey, we were making it, inching back up, getting to a point where maybe everyone but Fat Boy could climb back out of Purgatory, Chisel Chin and Carrot Top straining up to each piton, breathing hard, eyes wide, limbs trembling, yes - but making it. Our lives were at stake. The two kids were doing what they had to do.

  I was feeling good about saving them. I was pulling us out of the swamp.

  To understand my choice you have to picture how piss-poor miserable it was on Wallace Wall. At first the light had strengthened as the sun rose but then the storm blotted out any sight of Old Sol and then the morning grew dim and murky. Snow was blowing horizontally, turning the rock slippery, and small puffs of snow broke off from the cornice at the top of the wall and rained down on us, each of us tensing in case the drizzle heralded a larger avalanche. The gusts were up to forty mph, I learned later, and the wind chill well below zero. Our mittens were off to allow us to grip but the rock was shredding our glove liners and our fingers were turning numb and bloody. The wall angle wasn’t vertical but almost so, and it was a strain to stay glued. The farther we ascended, the more anxious I became. I could imagine the fear the other two kids were feeling, the exposure, the helplessness. I kept remembering Kressler and Fleming pinwheeling off that that cliff.

  It was Chisel Chin who made the mistake. A foothold broke when he’d violated the first rule of climbing, which is to keep at least three of his four limbs in contact with the mountain at any one time. He was impatient and had both a foot and a hand reaching for fresh holds when the rock broke under his other foot and both legs were suddenly churning in empty space. He hung for a moment on one exhausted arm, kicking in the air for substitute footholds he’d failed to locate first - I’d warned him! - and then with a grunt he dropped, all this happening in the flash of a second. I had time to jam one forearm in a crack, almost breaking it, and braced against the shock. He fell to the limit of his rope, yelling, and it cinched on my waist so hard that I felt like I was being crushed against a wall by a car bumper, the impact expelling my breath and igniting my adrenaline.

  With an experienced team we probably would have recovered. If Chisel Chin had a few seconds to dangle in space until he forced down his panic and found fresh purchase he could have taken the pressure off the line, we could have stabilized, and after a minute’s shaky breathing we could have started up again. But when he dropped past Carrot Top the second boy jerked in surprise and panicked, coming off the Wall for no reason at all, his wits gone in a blaze of surprise. He dropped heavily, wrenching at me, and hung like a cow, both of them swinging and screaming and sawing on me with the weight of four hundred pounds.

  “Grab something you fuckers! Get the weight off me!” My own panic erupted and all I could see was that picture of Kressler and Fleming, tumbling lazily through empty gray air. The two kids were going to pull me off with them and we’d spend the last moments of our existence watching each other’s sick dread as the glacier rushed up at us.

  Or we could act.

  “Grab, grab! I’m coming off the cliff!”

  They kicked and twirled like the condemned.

  When that life moment of split decision comes you don’t think but you react, and you react with instincts formed by all the thinking you’ve done before. I’m a strong man, but not strong enough to handle two heavily weighted climbers swinging across the face of a cliff, arms and legs flailing, rock peeling off, everyone roaring and cursing together. I can carry myself, but not the rest of the world with me.

  So I reached for my knife.

  If I’d fallen every kid in that class was dead. I knew that. I was their only hope in the world. The choice wasn’t really about my survival, but theirs. Yet I had to think for myself, too. Think of myself.

  I really did it for them.

  I reached with my knife and slashed at the climbing line, even as I felt my other forearm being dragged out of its crack.

  In memory there may have been just a moment’s slackening of tension as one or both of the boys briefly grabbed back onto the rock. It was a confused experience and I’ll never know for sure. Don’t you think I’ve wondered, in the dark sweats of the night? But it was too late because I was already cutting, desperate to get free of them, and finally the rope parted and I slapped back against the cliff, making a woof, and then below me I heard long, terrified screaming.

  I knew better than to look down.

  From the ledge below there were more shouts, cries, wailing, terror as the student’s two companions flashed past them. I ignored it all. That part was past me now, and there was nothing I could do. The surviving kids called to me like a wounded man calls for his mother and I ignored them, knowing that there was no second chance, that destiny had made its irrevocable turn. Instead I waited a couple minutes to catch my breath, my sweat freezing on my collar and hair. I still had presence of mind. I took the end of the cut rope and rubbed it against the rough igneous rock for the longest time, almost frantic, until I had frayed it into ragged string. I reached with my knife and put it into a deep crevice on Wallace Wall where it will never be found, I hope.

  Then I resumed climbing.

  What else could I do?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Dana Andrews shivered, and it wasn’t just from cold. The shadowy fuel arch gave her the creeps. Accordingly, she started down the shadowy steel-roofed tunnel that held the station’s petroleum supply with weary reluctance. Where the bloody hell was Rod Cameron?

  Since coming upon the stiff, reaching hand of Harrison Adams, Dana had become more and more of a dome slug, clinging to the light and warmth of the galley and berthing floors like a child retreating to a bedroom. The winter was not beginning at all like she’d hoped. Thanks to Mickey’s meteorite the station team seemed rent by suspicions and rivalries and two deaths and the bizarre behavior of Mr. Buck Tyson had smashed through the serenity she had sought like a bus through a window. In reaction, Dana spent what time she could under the grow lights in the station greenhouse, helping Len
a tend the hydroponic plants and trying to fight her own impending depression. God, it was claustrophobic here! Her work on polar atmospheric circulation was lagging to the point she might not gain the tenure at the University of Auckland that she’d hoped to achieve by wintering at the Pole. She needed Tyson to help her sled and service her instruments pronto, but it was impossible to get the mechanic to do anything unless he was ridden by Cameron, and the station manager had avoided Buck since the two had almost come to blows two days before in the galley. It was an ugly situation. Rod oscillated between bursts of annoying spunk, in which he’d radiate false optimism in a pathetic attempt to rally the troops, and a private gloom so profound he was becoming reclusive. Half the time he hid himself in his office and the other half he set off on pointless inspection tours of the tiny world of the dome. Then it would be up to the winter-overs to find him so they could get some work done.

  Like now.

  The crazy Americans were wrecking her work! Wrecking her future! It was hard being a woman in science and she needed some good data, a solid discovery, to establish herself. Some stroke of dumb luck like Mickey’s rock. Some commitment to the science. She needed logistical help and she needed to talk to the station manager alone. Have it out with him. Get him to snap out of it.

  Their cook, who served as unofficial recording secretary of the comings and goings at the base, had told her that Rod was checking the fuel that supplied the station. The generators suckled off 400,000 gallons of imported fuel kept in a chain of tanks in the arch behind Nancy Hodge’s BioMed. The heat was as precious as oxygen. Periodically Rod or Pika walked the tunnel to check the integrity of the valves and pipes as carefully as the hull of a boat. The fuel arch represented survival, but it also served as an excuse for Cameron to disappear. He’d taken to inspecting it more than necessary.