Dark Winter

by William Dietrich

  “Fuckin’ A,” Geller said.

  “No way!” Linda Brown protested. “Wade.” Her tone was scolding. “We’re not executioners. We have no legal authority. We have no moral authority.”

  “We do when our lives are at stake,” the cook said quietly. There was no reply. Pulaski looked dangerous, the old soldier. “Sometimes its you or him. Kill or be killed.”

  “Whoa. Come on, people.” Norse raised his hands again, wearily. “Let’s not go off the deep end. Cueball, I understand your feelings but try to keep them in check.”

  “Just don’t go off by yourself,” Pulaski told the others with a growl. “Not until we find the bastard.”

  Norse nodded. “Okay. Good advice. Stay together. Stay alert. But before we go on a manhunt let me talk to NSF. It’s off-hours in D.C. now but I’ll call when I can. I’ll stress the dire nature of our situation again. Maybe they can find a break in the weather to somehow parachute an agent in here.”

  There was cautious hope.

  “Or maybe I can think of something else.”

  ******

  Tyson jerked awake in the dark and sat up, banging his head. He heard the sound of the grate to the cramped utility tunnel being removed and someone dropping down into his burrow. He brought an arm with a knife out of his sleeping bag and extended it toward the entry to his hideaway. If a mob came for him he was going down fighting, but he felt trapped. Hunted. Outnumbered. Doomed. “That you, Bob?”

  “It’s me.”

  The answer came as a relief. He’d left a note for Norse when the commotion started. The shrink had been the only one he’d been able to talk to in this zoo. The only one he trusted. Then he hid here, fearing for his life. The psychologist had whispered through the grate that he’d come after a station meeting. Now it was 2 a.m., he saw by the illuminated dial of his watch, and Doctor Bob had dropped down into the man-sized conduit for wires and pipes that ran from the garage all the way to the fuel arch. Most state personnel didn’t know the utility tube existed, and that was buying him time. Tyson was hoping he could camp; there until things cooled down.

  “What’s the verdict, Doctor?”

  Norse kept his voice low. “It’s not looking good.”

  No, it wouldn’t look good, would it? He’d never exactly been Mister Popularity with the grab-bag of nerds and cretins they’d assembled to endure this insanity, and Tyson could just imagine what kind of a fair hearing he’d get from them now. He’d told them all what he truly thought, never a great idea, and now it was payback time. One-on-one he could take any of them, but a group would hamstring him like wolves. Jimmy, you are well and truly fucked, he told himself. Should have practiced that shit-eating grin. “It hasn’t looked good since I left North Dakota,” he said aloud.

  Norse actually chuckled for a second. He switched on a small flashlight, providing them with illumination. “And how good could it have looked there?”

  “It’s better than its reputation. I had room, back home.”

  The psychologist nodded. “And that’s what you need now. Room.”

  “What are they gonna do to me, Doc?’

  “Nothing, if you’re not here.”

  The two were silent for a moment, Norse giving Tyson time for this statement to sink in. He was also wrestling with his next question. “Did you do it?” he finally asked point blank.

  “Hell no.” That was simple enough.

  The psychologist studied him, probably looking for twitches and ticks he’d been taught in shrink school that could reveal a liar. Well, let him look. As far as Tyson was concerned he was trapped in the looniest of loony bins, and Norse was the asylum’s Big Nurse. The psychologist’s professional opinion was worth about as much as the cheap tools they gave him that kept snapping in the cold. When he dropped the phony psyche bullshit, however, Norse wasn’t too bad. Kept in shape. Looked after himself.

  “You’re too obvious, aren’t you?” Norse finally said. “Too angry, too mouthy. So obvious that I don’t know if I believe it. It’s the kind of crime that seems blood simple. Too dumb. You’re not dumb, are you Tyson?”

  “Dumb enough to come down here.”

  Norse smiled. “That could be said about all of us.”

  “What’s going to happen to me, Doc?”

  “The ideal would be to ship you back. Let people sort this out in the States where emotions are a little less raw. The trouble is, I don’t think they’re going to get a plane down here. It’s cold and it’s getting colder. We’ve got at least six more months of isolation. You want to spend six months in this tunnel?”

  “I don’t want to spend six months in this whole fucking base. You know that. I’ve made no secret of it. I just want out.”

  “You and everyone else about now.”

  “That’s right. And I’m as scared as they are. I didn’t kill nobody. I’m being set up, maybe by that fingie Lewis. All the trouble started when he came. The only thing I do is say what I think. They crucify you in this world if you say what you think.”

  “Amen to that.”

  “It’s like we talked about, Doc. The importance of self-reliance. The fucking duty of self-reliance. Everyone pays lip service to this touchy-feely group shit but that’s only because they hope somebody like me will carry their load. Do the shit work. Until you won’t do it for them. Then they turn.”

  Norse betrayed nothing. “My concern is that you get a fair hearing.”

  “Well, I ain’t gonna get it here.”

  “I know.”

  “So what the fuck do I do now? They won’t listen to me. I can’t fight them all. I didn’t want their bullshit commune and now I’m the bad guy. It’s because I won’t play the game. It’s like that movie where the island kids go crazy. That ‘Lord’ thing, what was it?

  “Flies. Lord of the Flies.”

  “That’s what it feels like. Like I’m the only sane one. Is that crazy?”

  Norse grimaced. “It may be the only rational reaction to this base. My fear is that humans aren’t meant to be in a place like this. So cold. So bleak. It does things to them, physically and mentally. We evolved in Africa, for Christ’s sake. Coming here is an act of hubris. Greek hubris. The pride that goes before the fall. So I sympathize with where you’re coming from. I admire your insistence on being an individual.”

  Tyson nodded. “You gotta keep them away from me, Doc.”

  “I’ve been thinking about your situation,” Norse went on carefully. “We had a meeting and the mood was ugly. I calmed them down for a while but six, seven more months? I don’t know. I can’t hide you that long. I can’t keep the others functioning that long with you tucked away somewhere like a troll. A few of them want to try and execute you.”

  “Jesus H. Christ.” The mechanic was quietly frightened.

  “About your only hope would be another killing while you’re locked up, taking suspicion off you, but a killer would have to be insane to do that. Otherwise, it all points to Buck Tyson. The new totem of evil. Unfair, perhaps – I wouldn’t be in this hole with you if I thought you truly dangerous – but very human. So I’ve come to suggest a long-shot chance, one you once suggested to me when we were looking for Mickey.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Vostok.”

  “What?”

  “I think you should seek asylum. Go to another base, winter-over, and surrender to the American authorities in the spring. By that time the situation may have cleared up a bit, who knows? Otherwise it’s risk that something might trigger a mob mentality and you find yourself in Salem as Witch Number One. You get my meaning?”

  “Yeah, but holy shit, trying to get to Vostok…”

  “No airplane is going to get in here like a magic carpet. I told the others there’s a chance but there isn’t any, not really. You’re going to have to flee overland. The closest refuge is the Russian base. Seven hundred miles but it’s fairly flat going across the polar plateau. No glaciers, no mountains. Bad food, good vodka, and better company
than you’ll find here the rest of the winter. It’s a risk to try to reach it but I don’t know what else to offer. Obviously, I think the risk is even higher if you stay here.”

  “I can’t fucking believe this.”

  “My idea is you take a Spryte like you said. If anyone can do it alone, you can. You’ve trained for survival. You’re prepared to tough it out. And we can survive without one of the machines. Pull a sled loaded with fuel and food and take along a GPS to help you navigate. With minimal sleep and decent weather you could reach Vostok in several days. If you have to hunker down for a storm you can take enough along to survive for a few weeks. If the engine doesn’t break down, you can make it. And if it does...well, you’re our best mechanic, right?”

  “Me and Pika.”

  “Right. So we have Pika to keep things going here, and you keep your Spryte going out there.”

  Tyson considered. “But if I completely break down, I’m fucked. A couple hours at a hundred below...”

  “And you go to sleep.” The meaning was clear. There were worse ways to die.

  Tyson took a breath. “Will the others let me do it?

  “I haven’t told them. We have to move now. Fait accompli. Their disappointment at losing a Spryte will be more than mitigated by their relief at losing you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m giving it to you straight, Buck.”

  The mechanic nodded glumly. “A mob or the plateau.”

  They waited, Tyson mulling it oveer. If he got a hole in the weather it should be possible. He had the skills to earn his way at Vostok…

  “Or we can go face the others in the galley now,” Norse said.

  The mechanic shook his head. Fuck those bastards. “They want it to be me. That’s the problem.”

  “You can rely on them or rely on yourself.”

  Tyson hesitated, gathering his courage. There was a certain hopelessness in his eyes, a realization of having made an irrevocable wrong turn. Then, fatalistically: “I’m out of here.”

  “It’s for the best, Buck. Best if you leave soon.”

  “Don’t worry about that. If I’m leaving I ain’t letting the screen door hit my butt on the way out.” He unzipped his bag. “You gonna help?”

  “I’ve taken the liberty of doing that.” Norse backed up, removed the grate, and crawled out. The mechanic followed him. “The Spryte is fueled, the sled loaded, you’re ready to go. It’s best to be well away before morning, just in case some self-righteous sheriff gets it in his head to chase after you with a snowmobile.”

  “Agreed.” Tyson looked at him curiously. “Why you helping me, Doc?”

  “I’ve found myself thrust into a curious position of responsibility. My profession is people, and I know what they’re capable of. You ever hear of the Swordfish?”

  Tyson shook his head.

  “It’s classified, but word gets around in professional circles. Nuke sub on a long, secret mission under the Arctic ice. There was a quarrel, a popular ensign was killed, and there wasn’t a chance to surface or return. They were sitting off a Russian base, for Christ’s sake. They did a quick court martial but there was no brig, just like here. You know what they did with the offender?”

  “Do I want to know?”

  “Loaded him into a torpedo tube and fired him out. He was kicking, screaming, pleading, crying, it didn’t matter. He’d made no friends and everyone was around the bend with tension anyway. There was hell to pay when they got back, of course, and a few careers ended. But at the time, ejecting him into the Arctic Ocean seemed the right thing to do. That’s what I’m worried about here. The right thing to do.”

  Tyson nodded dumbly.

  “I’m gambling on this one, Buck. Gambling on you. So punch on out of here and hope you make friends with the Russkies. Your boots and parka are in the shop.”

  Tyson looked at the Spryte, resignedly determined. “I’ll make it. What are you going to tell them?”

  “That I helped you go. If I get blamed for it, I’ll tell them you pulled a knife on me.”

  “Adding to my reputation.”

  “Until winter’s over and the truth comes out. I have to live here, too.”

  Tyson stepped up on the treads of the Spryte and looked back at Norse. “If I didn’t do it, who did, Doc?”

  “I’m not sure you didn’t do it. I’m just praying it doesn’t matter. Because with you gone and convicted in abstentia, any other murderer escapes suspicion. Which means he has good reason not to strike again.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Pika Taylor always woke first to check the generators and walk the archways, surveying their safety. Accordingly he was the first to discover the open garage door and the missing Spryte. So much snow had already blown into the entryway that he couldn’t close the bay and had to fetch help to shovel. His shouts woke the survivors.

  A group filed into the garage and gaped at the opening and the tread tracks going up its ramp as if it was as miraculous as Jesus’ tomb. The temperature in the vehicle shed had plunged, coating the workbenches and machinery with a flocking of frost. They worked rapidly to clear the drifting snow, melt a rim of ice, and shut the bay door again. Then they went outside.

  The darkness was deepening. The cloudless sky was beginning to spot with stars and the horizon had only the faintest of blushes, the blue there as eerie as the glow of Cherenkov radiation in a nuclear fuel rod pool. The snow glowed silver. There was no wind but it was bitterly cold. The tractor and sled tracks steered for the horizon as straight as the wake of an auto-pilot boat. The trail of the Spryte was a message as clear as ticker tape. It pointed toward Vostok Station. Their nemesis had fled.

  His escape was received as deliverance. Their monster was gone. No longer did they have to fear him, hold him, or prepare the runway to export him. Their water crisis was solved in an instant. His blustering hunt for the meteorite became a bad dream. He left behind only the nervous disorientation that follows a nightmare and emotional tingle as barely contained panic gave way to mutual reassurance. They’d survived! They straddled the tracks in numb relief.

  That Norse must have had a role in Tyson’s disappearance was quickly assumed. Despite the excitement the psychologist didn’t emerge from his room to follow them out into the snow. It was as if he already knew what they’d find out there. Rising later, he admitted nothing, nor did anyone pronounce it. Still, he hadn’t talked to their bosses at the National Science Foundation and had gone to bed late the night before as if the problem was solved. Doctor Bob’s equanimity about the mechanic’s escape told the rest all they needed to know. He was calm, where Rod Cameron had visibly battled depression. Robert Norse was their rock.

  “I wonder if Tyson took the rock,” Geller said happily at a late breakfast, working through a celebratory stack of pancakes. “Maybe he found it. Maybe he’s the one who took it all along.”

  “Good riddance if he did,” Calhoun opined, forking a sausage.

  “Maybe he’ll hock it. Maybe we’ll meet him years from now on a beach in Hawaii, tanned and retired, still sipping mai tais from Mickey Moss’s meteorite. Maybe he’s smarter than any of us and got Doctor Bob to help send him to the Russians.”

  “So?”

  “So, it would be ironic if dumb old Buck got exactly what he wanted.”

  “If I survive this freezer and get back to a beach in Hawaii to see him, do you think I’ll give a flying fuck?”

  “Alexi,” Geller asked with his mouth full, “you think Vostok will take him?”

  The Russian shrugged. “Why not? He brings his own car, maybe even his own food - even his survival scraps will be better than theirs. They’ll radio: who he is? We’ll say a what, a...defector, just so they don’t fear him and send him back. He’ll work or he’ll starve at that base. It will be worse for him than jail here. And he’ll find some companions even scarier than he is. Only the hard core still survive at Vostok. The real Russians.” He grinned. “They chew leather, and pound nails with thei
r foreheads.”

  “The Brits up at Faraday wear leather, and paint their nails,” Dana said. “And their women are even kinkier.” She’d rediscovered her spirit as soon as she blearily woke to find Tyson gone.

  “I hear the Kiwis nail their women and leather their foreskins,” Geller remarked.

  “Well The Argentines at Esperanza...” Calhoun began.

  “Make fun of the Chileans at Bernardo O’Higgins who tell jokes about the Poles at Arctowski who long for the Chinese food at Zhongshan,” Norse interrupted, sliding into a seat with a cup of coffee. Norse had come into the galley quietly. “It’s a wonder any work gets done in Antarctica at all.”

  “We were just wishing Tyson the worst, Doctor Bob,” Geller explained. “We figured the Russians would give it to him.”

  “He’s given it to himself. The plateau at Vostok is a half-mile higher than the Pole. The world record low was set there - minus 128.6 degrees.” Norse said it as if the precision gave him pleasure. “And traveling seven hundred miles is like driving from Berlin to Moscow. He’ll be doing well to get there without losing his fingers and toes.”

  “He brought it on himself.”

  Norse sipped. “That’s the question, isn’t it? What was Buck’s choice? The central conundrum of psychology. How much of what we do is free will and how much is genes and conditioning? How responsible are we for our actions?”

  “One hundred fucking percent,” Pulaski said, bringing a bottle of syrup from the pantry to replace what Geller had depleted. “If you don’t believe that then society doesn’t work because nobody’s responsible for anything. Don’t give me any behavioralist song and dance. Tyson was a mean son of a bitch who scared everyone here and deserves every inch of frostbite he gets. The feds are going to have a lot to answer for by not having taken him back to begin with, when he started grousing. The Pole is no place for malcontents. Uncle Sam better hope Rod’s relatives don’t find a good lawyer.”

  “Lawyers. Now there’s a scary bunch,” said Geller.