Dark Winter

by William Dietrich

  “It was Jed!” Dana gasped. “I’ve seen him read that. We all have!”

  “From the library...” he objected.

  “Torn off and missing,” Pulaski said. He nodded at Dana. “So I checked Jed’s room. Couldn’t find a thing except...”

  “Yes?”

  “There were ashes in the soup can I’d given him to use as a chamber pot. He never bothered to give it back.”

  Lewis stood up, his head dizzy, dumbfounded by a combination of outrage and fear. He was being set up. “That’s a lie,” he choked. Everyone was looking at him. Even Abby looked confused.

  “I’ve bagged them for lab analysis in the spring,” Pulaski said, holding up a baggie. “Maybe they can tell if they came from the magazine stock. In the meantime...”

  “This is absurd, those ashes could have come from anywhere...”

  “I saw you reading it!” Dana yelled.

  “The magazine must have been stolen...”

  “See! This is what I am telling you!” Molotov shouted. “Lewis, Lewis, Lewis! Every time it is Jed Lewis!”

  “The hell it is!”

  “What do you propose we do, Alexi?” Norse asked quietly.

  “If there is only one Spryte, then I agree, I don’t want to give it to a murderer. If we cannot send Lewis away, then I do not want him wandering around,” the Russian announced. “We need to lock him up. I don’t trust him.”

  “Damn it, I’m being framed! That’s no proof!”

  “There is no proof of your innocence, either.”

  “Guilty until proven innocent, right Alexi?” Lewis said in disgust. “Like Tyson? Is that how you did it in the Gulag?”

  The Americans shifted uncomfortably.

  “Prove that you did not do it,” the Russian insisted. “Everyone saw you with Gabriella. No one saw her since.”

  “I did not cut up that magazine,” Lewis insisted. “Wouldn’t I hide it? Would I leave the ashes in my own damn room? Think, dammit!”

  “This is what we are doing, thinking about what has happened!”

  The silence was thick, a congealing presumption of guilt.

  “So we put him in the sauna,” Pulaski suddenly summed up. He’d thought this through. “Just to be safe. It’s our thickest box. We can put a cross beam outside the door. We keep him locked down until this is resolved. He’s right, it isn’t proof, but we can’t prove he didn’t do it either. Or anyone else. So I say safety is priority one. No more wandering around. No one leaves the dome. No one even goes down the archways to the generators or the fuel. We block up the entrances so no one can exit the dome and no one can enter. We search every inch of this aluminum beanie. We watch each other. We enter a state of siege.”

  “That sounds like a police state,” Mendoza said.

  “No, Carl. A state with police. A citizen militia. Us. So no one else has to die.”

  Mendoza frowned, considering it.

  “Another thing,” Pulaski said. “That means the science goes on hold.”

  “NSF isn’t going to like that,” Norse pointed out.

  “Fuck NSF. If they’re not getting their data, maybe they’ll figure out some way to resolve this thing. Send in an FBI agent. Get us the hell out of here. Something.”

  There was a murmur of approval. Enough was enough.

  “This is a radical decision to lock Lewis up,” Norse said. “To lock the rest of ourselves in. I think it has to be a group decision.”

  “What about our work?” Lewis protested. “I thought we were all down here for the research. What about Jim Sparco’s data? Global warming? We won’t get anything done with what you’re proposing!”

  “And I say no more victims,” Pulaski responded. “No more sacrificial sheep. This is a state of emergency until we can get out of here, get help, get something. If we block up the entrances no one can get us from outside. None of us can wander off to be picked off. We arm everybody. I train everybody. If a killer strikes I want it to be a fight. I want noise. I want screaming. I want the attacker so bloody punctured with wounds that there’s no question who did it. And then I want to fry him myself.” He looked at them fiercely.

  “It’s liable to feel a little claustrophobic,” Norse cautioned.

  “Winter’s already claustrophobic,” Pulaski said. “Better claustrophobic than dead.” Most of the others nodded. It was time to bar the door. It was time to pen Jed Lewis. The geologist looked around for support and saw none. Abby was looking morosely at the floor, outnumbered, alone, and confused by doubts.

  “You can make a fight of it or you can cooperate,” Pulaski told him. “I’m not saying it’s you. I’m saying we won’t know it’s not you until we remove you as a variable in our little petri dish here. Like we tried to do at Clean Air.”

  “Except he goes in the storm when Harrison dies,” Molotov said. “Calls Rod when Cameron dies.”

  Slowly Jed sat down, dizzy with fear.

  “Another thing,” Geller said. “I say no more censorship. No more e-mail cancellation, no more radio silence. It’s time the world knows what’s going on down here, not just the bureaucrats at NSF. It’s time we screamed bloody murder.”

  “Damn right!” Dana said.

  “I understand what you’re saying.” Norse looked uneasy. “I know we need help. But before we get on the horn, hollering our heads off, let’s cool the jets a minute. We’ve got a new polar base planned. We’ve got a hundred million dollars riding on how these events are characterized in the media. If you guys get on the horn and start yelling for your mothers, it’s going to sound like Charles Manson.”

  “So?” Geller asked.

  “The whole polar program could be in jeopardy.”

  “And with our lives at stake, how many of us give a rat’s ass about the polar program right now, Doctor Bob?” Pulaski demanded.

  Norse waited, letting the question add weight. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “How many?”

  People shifted uncomfortably. “It’s survival, doctor,” Dana said quietly.

  “What do you propose to say to your friends? Who can help you? What good is it to contact them right now except to worry them needlessly?”

  “I’ll bet they’re worried already by not hearing from us,” Dana said.

  “I’m just suggesting we give NSF a chance to handle this.”

  “Screw that,” said Geller. “They should’ve parachuted an investigator in the minute Mickey disappeared. They’ve left us swinging in the wind. I say we tell the world what’s going on.”

  Norse’s eyes polled the room. They were against him on this one.

  “All right,” he surrendered. “Broadcast your panic. Destroy this station. Maybe that’s what the killer wants.”

  “We’re bottled up,” Pulaski said defensively. “We need release.”

  “You’re also professionals. I thought.”

  The two men looked at each other.

  “I can’t stop you,” Norse said. “I know that.”

  Pulaski hesitated. He was a cook, not a beaker. Norse had unconscious rank. Norse was looking at a bigger picture. “Okay, then how about this,” he said reluctantly, looking at the others. “We have leverage, people. Leverage! It’s like Doctor Bob says - we broadcast this in the right way and we can turn this station into a fiasco. Too unstable. End all funding for it. Close it up and send it packing. And that’s our stick with NSF! Let’s call them, and tell them what we’ve discussed, and give them twenty-hour hours to figure out a way to get us out of here. I don’t care if it’s the space shuttle or a dog sled, we deserve to go home. And if they can’t do that, then we talk about this to the world. The world! Let the chips fall where they may.”

  “Twenty-four hours isn’t much time,” Norse said.

  “They’ve had time, and done nothing.”

  The others nodded.

  Norse took an unhappy breath. “All right. Deal. Let me talk to them on the phone when the satellites come in view. I agree, they need to know how antsy we
all are. I’ll talk to them about Lewis, about Tyson, about everyone. Let me think of what I want to say and we should be ready to phone in...” he looked at his watch. “An hour, say.”

  “I want to hear what you tell them,” Geller said.

  “And I don’t want to talk as a committee. They’ll get a babble and things will be more confused than ever. Give me a chance, okay? A chance to save the winter. One day. Clyde Skinner will be helping and he can listen. Okay Clyde?” Skinner was their radioman.

  He nodded.

  “Meet me there in an hour to fire things up,” Norse said.

  It was enough. Everyone appeared to agree on this compromise.

  “Jed goes into the sauna, at least for the time being. And Cueball, why don’t you start figuring how to lock us in, like you said? Our world shrinks down to this dome. Spaceship Pulaski.” Norse looked at them and took a breath. The group was still under control. If nothing more happened, maybe they could make it.

  “I’ll do my best to end this thing,” he promised.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The explosion was so muffled that it first it was more puzzling than alarming, sounding like a flat, mysterious whump. Then the alarm began ringing. Fire! It was the one deadly threat they constantly drilled for: In the dry air of the Pole, combustibles could flash into fire like gasoline, and liquid water to douse them was in short supply. Reaction was instantaneous and automatic. This was no over-cooked pig, it was the real thing! Not bothering to dress, they crashed out the galley door and sprinted for assigned extinguishers and hoses. There was a haze in the air of the dome.

  “Where’s it coming from?” Pulaski yelled.

  Smoke was drifting out of one end of Comms, they saw, its aluminum wall bulging like a blister. The radio room! Pulaski waved their dead run to a halt and felt the outside of the metal module for heat before cautiously opening a door. A gust of smoky gases rolled out, stinking and ominous. From inside came an agonized screaming.

  “Christ,” the cook muttered, shining a flashlight into the murk. “What more can happen? Was Doctor Bob in there?”

  Everyone looked around. Norse was nowhere to be seen.

  Gina Brindisi had the presence of mind to run around the end of the building to a crack where the building had split like a swollen can, spraying fire retardant through the hole into the communications center. Pulaski, Geller and Calhoun donned fire masks and pushed into the corridor, squirting halon and hunting for survivors. The screaming was horrible. When they reached the radio room it was dark and smoky, illuminated by spurts of sparks. Puffs of halon made the last orange flames snuff out. Their flashlights and head lamps swept the wreckage with their beams. Pulaski dropped to the floor, groping for Norse, and touched a body. The wounded man was writhing in agony with his hands over his face, his skin burned off from an explosion of acid. The cook gripped the man and leaned close, peering through his mask. It was Clyde Skinner, their radioman.

  “I’m blinded!”

  “What happened, what happened!” Pulaski kept shouting the question through his mask but it was obvious Skinner was in no condition to answer. What breath he could suck in was used to scream.

  “Oh my God, I can’t see!”

  The communications center was destroyed. Its bank of lead batteries had exploded, shattering the equipment and spraying the room with acid. The explosion had caught Skinner full force, dissolving his face. It was almost unlucky he was alive.

  Nancy Hodge pushed into the room, took in the wreckage at a glance, and knelt beside Skinner. She looked sickened. “Where the hell is Bob?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Well help me get Skinner him to sick bay! We’ve got to wash him!”

  The trio of men lifted the radioman and carried him out to the cold and clear air of the dome. Someone came at them with a bucket to douse Skinner and wash the acid, but Hodge stopped it. “It will just freeze on his face.”

  “I’m blind! Oh, how it hurts!”

  “He’ll be begging for more morphine than we have,” Hodge said. “More relief than we can give him. Go on, get him into sick bay!”

  Skinner’s screams faded like a disappearing train as they carried him off.

  “Now I’m really getting pissed,” Pulaski muttered, glowering for a culprit and finding none. Lewis was already locked up. “Really, really pissed.”

  “You can’t blamed Jed for this one,” Abby told him.

  “Really? Let’s figure out what happened first.”

  “We found Doctor Bob!” someone shouted.

  Norse was sitting on the floor of Cameron’s old office next to Comms, looking dazed and coughing in the lingering smoke. He appeared to have been knocked unconscious in the blast. Furniture was awry, papers on the floor like snow. “I was getting ready to make the call!” he choked. “What the hell happened?”

  “The worst, near as I can tell,” Pulaski told him.

  “Clyde said he had to crank up the radios!”

  “He cranked them up all right.”

  They lifted the psychologist to his feet, Norse blinking from the concussion of the blast. Losing him would cut them from their last anchor. They led him back into the radio room, where everything stank of burnt plastic and rubber. At a glance it was apparent their normal connection to the outside world had been wiped out. “I don’t understand what happened,” Norse muttered.

  “The batteries blew up,” said Charles Longfellow, their electrician.

  “Yes, but why?”

  “They were probably charging. You told us to pull the plug on this place during the communications blackout and the batteries ran down. Clyde had to bring them up again. Charging always creates hydrogen and oxygen gases, which is what blew up the Hindenburg. Normally it vents off okay but a spark or a match...”

  “Clyde didn’t smoke.”

  “No, something else...” Longfellow was leaning over the wrecked radios and computers, looking for a clue. “There, maybe.”

  They looked. Two crossing wires, now blackened and bubbled, had frayed down to metal. “When Clyde flipped the radios on, the current could have caused a short,” the electrician pointed. “If the gases weren’t venting, then...bang. But I thought the battery compartment had a vent.”

  They went outside. A sheet of plywood had been shot outward by the explosion. Longfellow kicked it. “This could have been leaning up against the hole,” he pointed. “Blocking it.”

  “Deliberately?” Norse asked.

  The electrician just looked at him.

  “And the wires. Don’t you check them?”

  “Twice a year,” Longfellow said. “At the beginning and end of summer season. They were fine. There’s no reason for them to be abraded like that.”

  “So what happened?”

  He looked at the ruptured building. “Someone wanted this to happen. The bastard didn’t just destroy our radios, he shorted out the linkages to the machines and radios on the rest of the station. This place was a hub. Now we’re deaf and dumb.”

  “But why?”

  “Someone planned this before Clyde ever threw a switch to recharge the batteries. Someone wanted to destroy our communications. Someone doesn’t want us talking about Jed Lewis.”

  *******

  They were panicked now, their vulnerability to accident or sabotage made clear. No one slept for the next twenty-two hours as they fortified their enclosure from a threat they didn’t understand. There was no sun anyway, no natural clock, and no place to escape to. Only a suffocating paranoia that seemed to settle on the dome with the weight of the polar night. Pulaski had become transformed by the explosion, a metamorphosis that shed the cook and returned the old soldier. He was Crockett at the Alamo, girding for battle. The garage was ransacked for metal, wood, welding torches, and tools. Brackets were welded in a shower of sparks and beams were placed against the bay doors. Latches were fashioned for the smallest doors and fastened with wire, cutters issued to sentries. Their greatest points of vulnerabilit
y were the fuel tanks and the generators, and so the fuel arch behind BioMed and the opposite arch leading to Pika Taylor’s machines were walled up completely. A frame was built across both sections of tunnel, and sheets of plywood and metal were nailed across it to prevent any kind of access at all.

  “I still know how to get in,” Pika said quietly. “No one else has to know. No one else has to get to my machines.” He looked from face to face, a slight grin as he regarded them. “You kill me, you die.”

  The work went in shifts, one group hammering and welding while another warmed up in the galley and gulped down coffee to stay awake. No one was sleeping until they were certain Antarctica was walled off: that Buck Tyson or some malevolent ghost wasn’t somehow sneaking into the dome to wreak murder and sabotage, revenge and psychic terror. That some traitor in their midst was not plotting a final catastrophe. The rest of the station was to be abandoned for the time being, the Dark Sector and Clean Air left to slumber in the snow. “We’re a turtle,” Pulaski explained. “We’re drawing into our shell.”

  The cook insisted that everyone, without exception, be armed. Tyson’s old locker was broken into and the knives he’d made were distributed to whoever didn’t have one. The recipients regarded them a little dubiously.

  Amundsen-Scott Base, the blade of one read, the legend bracketed by penguins. There wasn’t a penguin within eight hundred miles.

  “What is we start going after each other with these things?” Gina protested. Like everyone else, she was so cold and sore she could hardly move. The frenzy of getting the dome sealed was holding off their terror but they were also close to a breaking point. Losing Comms had wrung them out. The damage to their communications would take days to repair, especially with Skinner blinded and Abby morose.

  “I am a little concerned about arming people to the teeth,” Norse admitted. He’d deferred to Pulaski’s military expertise in locking up the dome but seemed uneasy with the cook’s new martial authority. It had eclipsed his own. “Tempers are short. People are jumpy.”