Dark Winter

by William Dietrich

  The helicopter report came in an hour later.

  Avalanches were still spilling down Wallace Wall, rinsing it clean. The pilots orbited the area for miles in all directions.

  The ledge was empty. Fat Boy and all the others were gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The winter-overs gathered in the galley like a convocation of the damned, their faces revealing the underbelly of the human psyche. Dread. Anger. Suspicion. Depression. Their illusions about escape had been buried with Gabriella’s body, her snowy grave marked by another bleak cross of black plastic pipe. It was months before the winter was over and, already, everyone looked like toast. Several staff members had come in carrying makeshift weapons: lengths of pipe, knives, an improbable hickory-handled hatchet brought down for some long-forgotten purpose. Pulaski arrived with a six-foot length of galvanized water pipe that he’d sawed off at a sharp angle to make the point of a spear. In a society with no guarantee of safety, people were arming themselves as best they could.

  Robert Norse had looked the night before like a faith-shaken priest, his shell of infectious confidence cracked by the discovery of Gabriella’s body. The news of her death left him haggard, his eyes sunken, and he’d refused to help take down the forlorn corpse. “I can’t deal with the rest if I have to do that,” he’d said, his voice hollow at the news of her death. “I have to function. One of us has to function.” So the dead woman had been laid to rest by a handful of the others with no ceremony, her cross the fourth in a row, the gravediggers chilled and spooked and anxious to finish the task and get back inside to the light and warmth of the dome. Whoever had hanged Gabriella might be lurking somewhere out there in the dark of the plateau, waiting to pick the next one off.

  By the following day, however, Norse had collected himself. The disquieting breach in his calm had been repaired. In fact he seemed newly confident, newly knowledgeable, and he came around the tables and told them all to stay after supper. It was important that they all talk, he said. Important that they use this to grow stronger. Important that he find strength to feed theirs. So they stayed.

  When he rose up to speak, it was so quiet they could hear the drone of the ventilation and the burble of the drink dispenser. Their ranks were visibly thinner. It was awful, how small their gathering looked.

  “I’m afraid I have some more disturbing news,” Norse began.

  You could hear the sound of their breathing.

  “I’ve radioed the Russian base at Vostok. There’s no sign of Buck Tyson. He never arrived. We have no idea where he is.”

  There was a long, despairing quiet.

  “Don’t we?” Geller asked.

  Dana Andrews gave a low moan.

  “We can’t assume anything.” Norse looked at them soberly. “Anything. We don’t know it’s Buck. And somehow, until we come through this, we’ve got to combat panic. Panic will kill us faster than anything. Distrust will kill us. Paranoia will kill us. I think we’re going to have to reach inside ourselves and find the core of what’s there. This is a test - a test of what we’re made of.”

  “Cut the psychobabble, Doc,” Geller replied. “I’m panicked and distrustful and paranoid as hell. I’m freakin’ ready to jump out of my skin, and I’m freakin’ ready to call it quits for this winter. I didn’t sign on for the Chainsaw Massacre. I want to get out of here before that North Dakota madman annihilates us all.”

  There was a buzz of assent. If there’d been anywhere to run to, they’d have bolted.

  Geller’s complaint focused the psychologist. He straightened a little, drawing strength from the challenge. “You cut the fantasy, George. We’re not going home. We can’t go home. This is home, for six or seven more months. You know that.”

  “So we just go about our little data collection duties, waiting for Tyson to pick us off one by one?” Mendoza asked. Since the discovery of Gabriella’s body he’d refused to hike out to the Dark Sector to continue his research. The other studies were also on hold. The plants in the greenhouse were yellowing, Lena too morose to tend to them. Their routine was breaking down.

  “Why are you so sure it’s Tyson?” Norse replied.

  That startled them. They looked at the psychologist uneasily.

  “I was never certain myself. I sent him away for his own safety as well as ours. He could still be traveling. His radio could be broken. He could have gotten lost and died. But coming back here, to prey on us, seems particularly risky. Where’s his Spryte? Where is he surviving? Does Tyson really makes sense?”

  The group looked at each other.

  “Who then?” Hiro Sakura asked.

  “My bet is Lewis,” Alexi Molotov spoke up.

  Abby started.

  “Goddammit,” Lewis groaned. Yet when he looked around the room for support, everyone but Abby shifted uneasily. Pulaski was staring resolutely away, the butt of his new spear on the floor. Lewis had a sense of foreboding. Something wasn’t right.

  “Lewis,” Molotov insisted. “Who just happens to find all the dead. Who can never account for his whereabouts. Who started all this when he came down here. Who was going to meet Rod when our station manager was knifed. Who has some kind of falling out with poor Gabriella. Who knows everything about this mysterious meteorite.”

  “If I was the killer would I lead the way to my own victims?” Lewis retorted.

  “Yes, because you know where they are!”

  “I didn’t find Cameron! Dana did! And I’m tired of being suspected just because I’m the newest! Suspect Doctor Bob! He’s almost as new as I am!”

  Alexi shrugged. “He didn’t come for the meteorite.”

  “That doesn’t make me a killer!”

  “Maybe you are innocent. But you do not belong here, because you do not really fit. A geologist doing weather, it is absurd! You are not even a real scientist, you are an oil man. A prospector. A fortune seeker. You should go, go find Tyson, go to Vostok, go and try to get to McMurdo. Just get out of here before our little group shrinks down to nothing.” He glanced around. “Do you realize we have lost five people?”

  “Hold up here. Let’s not run ahead too fast,” Norse cautioned. “No more Sprytes, no more disappearances. We need to consider things slowly, rationally. Was Jed the one who led us to Gabriella’s body?” He put the question to Abby.

  She looked uneasy. “I found it. I was going to the attic to find some stuff to distract us and Jed didn’t...” She looked doubtful, remembering his lack of interest in going up the ladder.

  “Did Lewis pick the KitKat Club to meet?” Dana asked.

  “No,” Abby said, looking at Norse. “Bob did.”

  “That’s right,” Norse agreed. “I suggested to Jed and Abby separately that they out there. I was trying to bring them back together. I wanted to give them a chance to talk on neutral ground.’

  Lewis was grateful for the candor.

  “So it wasn’t Jed’s choice to go there at all,” Dana clarified.

  “Which means he could be the killer!” Geller reassessed wildly. “He put the body there before Bob suggested he go there!”

  “George…” Norse began wearily.

  “Jed didn’t kill Gabriella,” Abby insisted. “I’m certain. He’s incapable of murdering anyone.”

  “How do you know that?” Molotov replied. “Are you listening to your head? Or your heart?”

  “I saw how shocked he was when we found the body.”

  “Maybe you remember good acting.”

  “What about that sign?” Geller interrupted. “That sign around her neck. You know what I want. What does that mean?”

  “It means somebody’s got the million-dollar rock and should put it out where Tyson, or Lewis, or whoever, can get it and leave us alone,” Mendoza said.

  “It means somebody in this room can end this!” cried Dana. She jumped up, looking at them wildly. “You know who you are. Who is it then? Who knows what he wants? For the love of God, let’s stop this insanity and give it to him!” />
  “Maybe it’s you, Dana,” said Steve Calhoun, just to quiet her down.

  “And maybe it’s you, Steve!”

  A babble of voices erupted, angry and afraid. People began pointing.

  Norse watched them evenly and Lewis wondered what he was thinking, his little laboratory of rats. It was Norse who directed them to the attic And yet Norse had made no secret of it and seemed more disturbed than anyone, more surprised than anyone…Where was he going with this meeting?

  What was Robert Norse really down here for?

  The psychologist held up his hand until the group quieted. “Science, people,” he suggested. “Our enemy is unfounded fear and suspicion, and our ally is science. Science! Just like it’s been for our kind since the ancient Greeks. Rationality, right? Isn’t that what you represent? So, we’re going to be rational. We’re going to beat this with rationality.”

  “Doc, this whole situation is completely irrational,” Geller said. “That’s why we’re freaking out. We can’t rationalize it.”

  “Can’t we?” Norse asked softly. “That’s the issue of our winter, isn’t it? Can rationality handle the irrational?”

  Lewis looked curiously at the psychologist. Wasn’t this the issue he’d mused about over beers in the bar when they first met? Hadn’t Norse been anti-science? What did the man truly believe? Good acting, Molotov had suggested. Yet what motive did Norse have? What motive did anyone have? How was Gabriella a threat to anyone? Geller was right. It was all irrational.

  “Let’s play scientific method,” Norse said. “Let’s play by the rules that drive this whole place.”

  “Bob...” Nancy Hodge groaned.

  “Hypothesis and experiment, right? Logical progression. And maybe at the end a workable theory that we all agree on, one that lets us decide what action to take. Are you with me? Can we do that?”

  The others looked at him uncertainly. Except Pulaski. He was nodding.

  “So. What are the possibilities to explain what’s going on down here?”

  They hesitated like a classroom. “Lunacy,” Geller finally mumbled.

  “Greed,” Mendoza added.

  “Some kind of weird vendetta,” Dana said. “Terrorism, sort of.”

  Norse nodded. “Good. Very good. Logic people, logic. Let’s consider the body. Gabriella is found dead, hanged. Suicide?”

  “Not from that height,” Mendoza said. “No chair to stand on. And why naked? She was probably dead before she was strung up. I say murder. Maybe rape and murder.”

  “Nancy?” Hodge had inspected the body.

  “No semen. She was bruised, scratched. Maybe an attempted rape. I say she went out with a fight.” The crowd murmured.

  Norse nodded. “Any chance of making an I.D. with clues? Hair? Blood?”

  “Not with the instruments I have down here.”

  The psychologist nodded again, taking a breath. “Okay, suspects. Possibility one: Tyson somehow came back and did it, for reasons unknown.”

  “Because he’s bloody Jack the Ripper of Amundsen-Scott base!” Dana said.

  “Possibility two: Tyson didn’t come back and we have a different killer.”

  Several people looked at Lewis. He shifted in disgust.

  “Who?” Hiro prompted. He was a scientist. He liked this step by step.

  “It could be a single killer is responsible for all the deaths: either Tyson, or Tyson was never responsible in the first place and we exiled the wrong man. Alternately, it could be we have a second killer, a copycat killer. It could be the deaths are some weird mix of murder, accident and suicide.”

  “They don’t seem linked,” Geller said. “That’s why I say it’s a fruitcake.”

  “And which one of us is that, George?” Mendoza asked it lightly.

  “I’d say we’re all a little balmy,” the maintenance man muttered. “Just for being here.” There was nervous laughter of agreement.

  Norse nodded again. “Other possibilities? What are they, people? Come on, hypothesis.”

  “Jealous lover,” Linda Brown said softly. “She slept around too much. Someone finally got mad.” The idea seemed to give her a certain satisfaction. Nobody was sleeping with Linda Brown.

  “Okay. So, we consider who slept with her.”

  “Who didn’t?” Calhoun cracked.

  “I’ll bet you didn’t, you horse-faced nail pounder,” Gage Perlin said.

  “You’n me, Gage, we’re the only ones homely enough to be left out! Every other male is suspect!” Calhoun laughed.

  The other men said nothing, not wanting to admit or deny a relationship.

  “What else?” Norse said.

  “Someone trying to sabotage the base,” Lewis spoke up. “A foreign agent.” He looked at Alexi. Take that, Russian finger-pointer. “Maybe Mickey or somebody stumbled on something strategic.”

  “Someone chasing the meteorite for something other than money,” Lena Jindrova suggested. “Maybe it has evidence of Martian life in it. Something philosophical. Theological.”

  “Hmmm, interesting,” Norse said. “Dana, you read the Bible. Does life on another planet threaten your view of our world?”

  “My beliefs are compatible with science. And I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “The government playing with our heads,” the post-doc Gina Brindisi suggested. She pointed at the psychologist. “They sent you down here to watch us all go nuts.”

  Norse shrugged to concede the point. “It’s true I’m in shrink nirvana. As George said, we’re all balmy and getting nuttier by the minute.” Uneasy laughter again. “But at this point I’d rather have you sane.”

  “Maybe they’re faking everything,” spoke up Gerald Follet. “It’s a hoax. They want us to panic, like that radio broadcast of ‘War of the Worlds.’”

  “Except the bodies are real,” Geller said glumly. “Take a walk out to Boot Hill if you don’t believe that.”

  “Opportunity,” Abby suddenly said. “You’ve got a score to settle and people are dropping like flies. What better time to murder? It’s lost in the crowd.”

  “That’s good,” Norse nodded. “I like that one. It could be any of us, taking revenge on anyone.” He scanned their faces. People were looking more confused than ever. More wary and suspicious than ever. Lewis didn’t like the way the meeting was going. How was this a help?

  “What good are these ideas if they’re not testable?” Hiro interrupted as if reading Jed’s mind. “We can speculate our way into the grave.”

  “Good question. Ideas?”

  “Somehow figure out who really boinked Gabriella,” Geller suggested. “Who was lover enough to care, to be jealous.”

  “Oh, please,” Dana groaned.

  “No, really. To eliminate some of us.”

  “That doesn’t eliminate anybody,” Mendoza said with exasperation. “Maybe it was someone she wouldn’t sleep with. Maybe it was a jealous woman. Maybe it had nothing to do with her love life.”

  “Well, then eliminate people who couldn’t have been around the victims. Make a spreadsheet of our whereabouts.”

  “So where were you, George, when these deaths occurred?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Mendoza threw up his hands in exasperation.

  “What about your files?” Abby asked the psychogist quietly. “Don’t you have basic information on all of us? Didn’t Rod? Doesn’t Nancy? Don’t you have suspicions?”

  Norse opened his mouth as if to speak and then stopped a moment, as if considering the idea for the first time. “Not from the files. You all left the box next to ‘Are you a murderer’ blank on your application forms. Making someone a murderer on the basis of a psychological screening test is a little reckless, don’t you think?” There was a slight edge to his voice as he replied to her, this woman who’d turned him down.

  Abby looked unsatisfied. He hadn’t denied having a suspicion.

  “I don’t see that this discussion is getting us anywhere,” Molotov complained. “I
have my suspicion, which I have voiced.” He looked again at Lewis. “But unless someone wants to confess we are no closer than before. It is a nice try, Doctor Bob, but you cannot rationalize what makes no sense.”

  “You can’t rationalize without information,” Norse corrected. Now he looked directly at Lewis. Suddenly he was the teacher, a lesson about to become apparent. “I’ve led you through this speculative exercise to demonstrate the dangers of jumping to conclusions, but I’ve also done a little investigation of my own. Everything we know is circumstantial, but in our desperate situation maybe that has to be enough. Wade?”

  Pulaski stood up. He had positioned himself between Lewis and the door. The cook stood with his legs apart, as if bracing for attack. “You all know what good little recyclers we are,” the cook began. There were smiles and a few titters. They were supposed to separate all trash into labeled containers in the cold of the dome. Miscreants who dropped things into the wrong bin brought a regular outburst from Linda Brown, who was in charge of the recycling program. She’d threatened to kill one or two. Hyperbole, of course, but the bins had been one more source of casual tension. “We have no incinerator at the Pole. We have no dump. Everything that flies into the Pole eventually flies out of it. Every bit of garbage we’ve generated this winter is still here.”

  He paused. They were quiet, waiting.

  “The sign around Gabriella’s neck was made from letters cut from a magazine. So I looked in the paper bin and what I found at the bottom was this.” He held up a copy of a popular science and environmental journal. “It has an article on meteorites.” He flipped it open, showing ragged pages. “And a lot of letters cut out from the middle.”

  Norse was looking at Lewis soberly. “And where’s the cover, Wade?” he asked the cook. “Where’s the address label that will tell us whose magazine it was?”