Icy Clutches

by Aaron Elkins

  "Well,” Tibbett explained, “now it seems he's writing a tell-all book about it. Tragedy on Ice."

  "Sounds like something starring Peggy Fleming,” Julie said under her breath. Tibbett guffawed immoderately, then turned it into a discreet cough.

  "Who are the others?” Gideon asked. “Why would he need an entourage?” Anything was better than Heibler clamps and lateral load-bearing stress.

  Tibbett peered at them again. “The gray-haired woman is Dr. Anna Henckel. She was Tremaine's assistant on the original survey. And the, ah, portly gentleman next to her is Dr. Walter Judd; he was on it too. The others—well, I don't have their names straight, but I understand they're relatives of the three people who were killed. Tremaine is using them all as resources, I gather."

  "M. Audley Tremaine,” Gideon mused after a moment. “I'd sure like to meet him."

  Julie stared at him. “Are you serious? The only time I remember you watching ‘Voyages’ was when it covered human evolution. You ranted and fidgeted through the whole thing. You were yelling at the television set. You called him a pompous charlatan, as I recall."

  Tibbett blinked and eyed Gideon with transparent respect.

  "That's because the man got everything so completely screwed up,” Gideon said. “In one hour he single-handedly managed to set popular understanding of evolution back ten years. Remember how he ‘traveled back in time’ and talked to those ‘Neanderthalers'? Those actors with fur pasted on them, grunting and squatting and hopping—hopping, for God's sake—all over the place, like big, hairy fleas?"

  "I remember,” Julie said. “You made your point very clearly at the time. Or at least very loudly. So then why do you want to meet him?"

  "Because of the work he did back in the fifties, before my time. Before he was M. Audley Tremaine, for that matter."

  "Come again?"

  "He used to go by his first name; Milton, or Morton..."

  "Melvin,” put in Tibbett. “Melvin A. Tremaine. I suppose it isn't dashing enough for him nowadays."

  "Right, Melvin A. Tremaine. He was a pioneer in the study of postglacial plant succession; very important stuff for physical anthropology. Some of the definitive work on late Pleistocene human skeletal dating was based on his research on vertical pollen distribution analysis."

  Julie nodded. Tibbett's eyes glazed slightly.

  "He and I are colleagues in a way,” Gideon said. “He was at U-Dub twenty or thirty years before I was."

  "U-Dub?” Tibbett echoed.

  "He's speaking native dialect,” explained Julie. “It means University of Washington."

  "I see,” said Tibbett, who obviously didn't.

  "U-Dub,” Julie said. “It's short for U.W."

  "Oh.” Tibbett searched visibly for something to talk about. He didn't want to go back to Heiblers either. “You know, next year is the thirtieth anniversary of the Tirku project, and the department is going to put up a memorial near the site of the avalanche.” His lips twitched their disapproval. “No possible connection to the publication of his book, of course,” he said tartly. “Well, tomorrow I have to accompany him and his party out to the site—as if I didn't have anything more important to do—where they'll choose the location for the plaque."

  He snorted. “Probably an idea dreamed up by his press agent. I know no one consulted me about it. The whole thing's ridiculous. It's not as if anyone ever goes in there, in any case, so who's going to see it? He's simply exploiting the majesty of the United States government to promote his book, that's what he's doing."

  Tibbett grumbled on in this vein for a while, not without Gideon's sympathy. Still, Tremaine's contribution to post-glacial plant succession was a real one, and Gideon's respect for the man as a scientist was high.

  He drained his coffee. “Do you think he'd mind if I went over and said hello?"

  But as Gideon put the cup down, Tremaine and his party began getting up. Tremaine nodded curtly to the others and headed for the exit, his limp quite marked. He was smaller than he appeared to be on television, perhaps five-nine. His path brought him within a few feet, and Gideon stood as he approached.

  "Dr. Tremaine? My name is Gideon Oliver. I'm a great admirer of your work—"

  He stopped, startled. The dessert menu card he'd absently continued to hold had been snatched from him by Tremaine. “Certainly,” the silver-haired television star said. “Delighted."

  Tremaine plucked a pen from the inside of his jacket, scrawled something across the card, thrust it back into Gideon's hand, and went on his way.

  Gideon stared at his back for a moment, then looked down at the card.

  "Happy voyages,” it said. “Best wishes, M. Audley Tremaine."

  * * * *

  As he did most mornings, Gideon awakened just before the alarm clock was due to go off. And as he did most mornings, he found himself nestled against Julie's back. He sighed, nuzzled her neck, and reached out to click off the alarm before it buzzed.

  Julie stirred and muttered into the pillow, “It can't be six o'clock already. It can't be."

  "I'm afraid it is."

  She groaned softly and turned herself into him, snuggling her chin into the hollow of his shoulder. For a while they lay quietly, pressed against each other, dozing and content. For Gideon, this was perhaps the best part of the day. Was he at heart such a pessimist that he should awaken each morning filled with gratitude, with relief, almost with amazement, at having her lying by his side?

  "I love you,” he said. He bent his head to kiss her hair.

  She murmured something, worked herself closer still, and fell asleep again, her breath warm and sweet against his chest.

  At 6:10 he disengaged himself, got shivering into his robe, and turned up the room's thermostat. He put up some coffee in the automatic coffee maker on its own little shelf over the sink and stood waiting for the water to boil, staring numbly at his wild-haired, unshaven reflection in the mirror. Morning coffee was his responsibility; that was one of several mutually agreeable arrangements they had worked out by trial and error. Cooking chores were evenly split, but Julie did the dinner dishes, in exchange for which Gideon hauled himself out of bed to make coffee every morning.

  It was a system that seemed eminently equitable in the evenings, but somehow less fair in the mornings, especially in a cold, burnt-rose Alaskan dawn when there had been no dinner dishes to do the evening before. Maybe a little renegotiation was in order. He scratched a sandpapery cheek and smiled at his reflection. What the hell, why not just admit that he enjoyed making coffee for her, carrying it to her, watching her stretch and come awake smiling?

  "Mmmm,” she called, “smells wonderful.” She yawned, shoved some pillows up against the headboard, and pushed herself partway up with her eyes still screwed shut. Julie was like a zombie in the morning, barely articulate and only marginally coherent until she'd had a cup of coffee or been awake for an hour. Whichever came first.

  He brought the pot and the cups to her on a tray, put them on the nightstand, and sat on the side of the bed. She had nodded off again, chin on her chest. He kissed her cheek, at the corner of her mouth. She mumbled something. He kissed the side of her throat. With her eyes still closed she murmured some more and lifted her arms to go around his neck.

  "Mmm,” she said again, while he continued nuzzling, “'zis serious?"

  "I'm afraid not,” he said. “You have to be dressed and out of here in twenty minutes.” He loosened her hold and poured coffee into the Styrofoam cups for both of them, then stuck hers in her hand, closing her fingers around it. “What's on your agenda anyway?"

  Julie took another swallow to gather strength for speaking. “Latest techniques in victim location. All-day field trip. You?” Complex sentences, or even complete ones, were not to be expected first thing in the morning.

  "Me? I'm not doing anything. I'll relax, that's all."

  Her eyes finally opened to regard him doubtfully. “You're going to spend an entire day doing nothing?"
<
br />   "Absolutely. With pleasure. I've gotten too goal-oriented, that's my problem. From now on I just take life as it comes."

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter 2

  * * * *

  Professor Tremaine was not altogether pleased with the way things were progressing. Oh, they had gone reasonably well during the introductory dinner the night before (Anna's characteristically vulgar comment aside), but now, at breakfast, he sensed an undercurrent of tension, of reserve. In the cases of Anna Henckel and Walter Judd he could guess at the reasons, ridiculous though they might be, but what did the others have to be touchy about? By the end of the week there would be cause enough, but why now? They had never met each other before. They were enjoying a quite luxurious stay at Glacier Bay at his expense, were they not? Well, perhaps not at his expense, but it amounted to the same thing, didn't it? If they didn't want to come, why were they there? Had anyone forced them?

  Or was he imagining things? Might they be not touchy but star struck, now that they grasped that they would actually be working directly with him for the next few days? Sometimes he forgot the impact that meeting a celebrity had on ordinary people. Absurd, really—he was quite the same as anyone else—but there it was, and he supposed it was up to him to do something about it. The better their initial relations, the better things would go later.

  He pushed the remains of his buttered English muffin away, signaled for another cup of coffee, and got out his box of Dunhills. He lit up, sucked in a deep lungful of smoke, tucked a loose end of his paisley ascot into his shirt collar, and cleared his throat. “We have twenty minutes before we leave for Tirku Glacier,” he said, “and it occurs to me that there may still be some unanswered questions about just why we are here. If so, please feel free to ask them."

  He peered at them with warm sincerity and lifted his eyebrows to indicate that such questions were welcome. More than welcome.

  Gerald Pratt's lean, weathered hand went slowly up. Everything Gerald Pratt did went slowly. In that way he reminded Tremaine of Pratt's brother James, killed in the avalanche in 1960. Physically, too, the resemblance was there if you looked for it: the bony nose—broken and poorly mended in Gerald's case—the long face, the lantern jaw. Was this what James would have come to if he'd lived? James, too, had sometimes been maddeningly measured in speech and manner, but there had been a spark, an intensity, flickering beneath that quiet surface. This the dark, gaunt, torpid Gerald lacked utterly. But Gerald was in his fifties, of course. James, his younger brother by a year or two, had never reached thirty. Ah, well, Tremaine thought with the tinge of melancholy that often came with his first cigarette of the day, there was something to be said for dying young.

  He smiled tolerantly. “There's no need to raise our hands here, Mr. Pratt."

  Pratt lowered his hand. “I'm no scientist,” he said in the laconic, deliberate way that had already begun to grate on Tremaine's nerves. “Comes to that, I'm not much of a reader either. So...” His cheeks hollowed as he drew on his pipe. “So...” One cloud, two clouds, three clouds of nauseous, yellowish-brown smoke emerged in slow procession.

  Tremaine made a conscious effort to keep from tapping his foot with impatience. The tolerant smile began to congeal. “Yes...?"

  "So I'd appreciate it,” Pratt finally droned, “if you'd tell us just why we're here and what's expected of us. Sort of in a nutshell."

  "You didn't get a letter from Javelin Press?"

  "I saw it,” Pratt said. “Didn't make a whole lot of sense.” He ran a hand through lank, black, thinning hair.

  "Well, then, let me see if I can make it clearer.” In Pratt's case, Tremaine suspected, the problem was not awe, or touchiness either. The man was permanently out to lunch, that was all. “As you know, I am nearing the completion of a book on the Tirku botanical survey party of 1960. Until now I have never discussed those last fateful hours on the ice with complete candor. Now I think it's time to tell the story, the full human story, which no living person but myself knows. It is scheduled for publication in May of next year—1990 being the thirtieth anniversary of the expedition."

  He lifted his coffee and sipped. “The idea came to me that before I prepared my final draft it would be a good idea to review the material with people who might have some unique personal or scientific insights into it. Thus, some weeks ago, I asked my publisher about the possibility of gathering a small group together for that purpose. Javelin Press readily agreed, and here we are. As I mentioned last night, I will be reading the manuscript aloud over the next several days, and all of you will be free to make whatever comments or suggestions you care to, as I go along."

  "Mm,” Pratt said, sucking at his pipe and looking no less thoughtfully obtuse than he had before. He was wearing oil-stained orange coveralls. Yesterday, it had been oil-stained brown coveralls.

  "I have great confidence in the value of the contributions to come,” Professor Tremaine said. “Dr. Henckel here was the assistant director of the project, of course, and I'm sure she will have much to offer. The same applies to Dr. Judd, here on my right, who is the only other surviving member. You, Mr. Pratt, and Ms. Yount next to you, and Dr. Fisk there, as close relatives of the three young people who lost their lives, are in a position to provide many insights into their personalities and characters, of which I could hardly be aware."

  He paused for a beat, as they liked to say in television. “I need hardly add that all of your contributions will be gratefully acknowledged in the book."

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Anna Henckel stiffen at that. He was right, then. Still nursing that ancient and absurd grudge, was she? Well, he'd forgotten it long ago. Not that her savagely vindictive letters to the Journal of Systematic Botany wouldn't rankle even now, if he let them. And what about that virulent and unjustified attack on him at the 1969 American Society of Plant Taxonomists congress in Phoenix? If anyone had the right to a grudge, he did. Fortunately, that wasn't the kind of person he was. As far as he was concerned, bygones were bygones. Water under the bridge.

  He smiled again at Pratt. “Does that clarify things, Mr. Pratt?"

  "I suppose so,” Pratt said with a shrug. He poked with a finger at his thin, dark mustache. “Tell the truth, though, I don't really see what I can add."

  There Tremaine agreed with him. He didn't see what any of them could add—for what he'd told Pratt hadn't been quite true. This gathering hadn't been his idea at all. It had come from Javelin Press; from their attorney. Javelin had been on the losing end of an invasion-of-privacy settlement not long before, and they were still skittish. The best way to avoid problems, the attorney had said, was to “co-opt potential adversaries by involving them in the developmental process.” If they chose not to participate, they would be asked to sign a statement so indicating. But they had chosen to participate.

  At first Tremaine had thought it was a terrible idea, but as time passed he began to see some value in it. There were going to be some unsettling revelations in his book, and no doubt some—probably all—of these people were going to be upset. Better to deal with that before the book came out, rather than after. It might make for some unpleasant moments this week, but he could deal with that. He was no stranger to confrontation.

  "Be glad to do what I can to help, though,” Pratt said around the stem of his pipe. Laconic he might be, but the man had a way of mumbling on. And on.

  "Thank you.” Tremaine's crisp nod was meant to terminate the exchange.

  "And whose idea was it to meet here, of all places?” Anna Henckel asked tartly. “Also yours, Melvin? To add a touch of sentiment?"

  Anna was baiting him, of course. Aside from her sarcastic tone, she knew very well that he'd dropped the unfortunate “Melvin” when he'd begun to host “Voyages.” Well, she had been a mean-spirited woman twenty-some years ago. Had he really expected her to change? She certainly hadn't changed much physically. At sixty, she was as boxy, stone faced, and stern as ever; blankly impassive, magisterial,
humorless, detached. Even that chopped-off, battleship-gray hair (a few decades ago it had been battleship dun) seemed like a self-righteous reprimand to his own carefully groomed white mane.

  And yet hadn't there been a time, so long ago that it was hardly credible now, when he had seen her in a different light? When her now-guttural speech had been husky and soft, her thick body narrow-waisted and lush? When he had actually believed—briefly, to be sure—that the young and exotic Anna Henckel, with her camellia-petal skin, might be the woman he...With an imperceptible shake of his head he dismissed the repellent thought. Well, at least he had made it through that demented phase without blurting out some mortifying amatory declaration to her.

  "Yes, also my idea,” he said benignly. As always, the sound of his own rich, confident baritone pleased and soothed him. “It seemed to me it would be fitting."

  That much was true. He had suggested Glacier Bay as the logical meeting place without giving it much thought. And now he was quite pleased that he had. The idea was already producing dividends. That toast last night was going to make a fine opening scene for the book (sans Anna's muttered contribution, naturally). And now, happily, they would be leaving in a few minutes to choose a place for the memorial plaque. And that little excursion would surely furnish the material for a splendidly poignant final chapter for his book. It would provide a needed sense of completion, of a circle come closed. Or would it do better as an epilogue? More sense of closure that way...

  Dwarfed by the ghostly white immensity of Tirku Glacier, we stood silent and bareheaded in the wan sunlight. Or would mist be more evocative? Yes, make that mist. Who was going to remember? We were there to pay tribute to Jocelyn Yount, Steven Fisk, and James Pratt, whose remains were forever locked in the great ice flow, but my thoughts were—