The First Horseman

by John Case

  The captain shook his head. ‘No. Milton is expert on devil. Dante is expert on hell.’

  ‘So . . . what’s the point?’ Brian asked.

  ‘Simple point. But . . . maybe the young lady puts it better?’

  Annie felt ambushed, but there was nothing she could do: she’d opened her big, fat mouth, and now she was on stage. ‘Well . . . in the Inferno – which is the ninth circle of hell, which is the worst place – it’s a palace of ice. Not fire, but – the opposite, a place where it is always cold. Like here. My classics teacher,’ she said, feeling the blood rush to her face, ‘thought the idea – that hell was cold – was very old . . . a remnant of the Ice Age – when fire meant life, and death came from the cold.’

  The captain nodded. ‘I come to Spitsbergen three, four times a year, though never to Edgeoya,’ he said, pouring himself a second glass of cheap champagne. And every time, I think, “We have no business here.” The human beings are not meant to be here. No one is.’

  Mark laughed. ‘Well, let’s hope NOAA doesn’t find out, or we’ll all be out of a job.’

  ‘And I tell you,’ the captain continued, ‘when I have this feeling, I stay on my toes.’

  ‘And why is that, Captain?’ Doctor K looked genuinely curious.

  ‘Because – this is like an alarm in my blood. Like ice or water is going to punch ship around, maybe. And I feel this – strong – when we come to the settlements.’

  ‘Jeez, Captain, maybe you’re not the right guy for this kinda work,’ Brian joked, glancing slyly in Annie’s direction. ‘Maybe you should be on the Love Boat or something.’

  The captain looked puzzled for a moment, and then his face became solemn again. ‘This is hard place. Your miners found that out.’

  ‘They certainly did,’ Kicklighter said, ‘but it wasn’t the Arctic that killed them. It was a pathogen. And it would have killed them no matter where they were. They would have died in Paris, Oslo, anywhere. A lot of people did.’

  Mark turned to Doctor K. ‘You’re talking about the Spanish flu, right?’ Kicklighter nodded. ‘My great-grandfather died of it. And one of his brothers. My grandmother said they couldn’t do a thing.’

  ‘They didn’t even know what it was,’ Annie said. ‘They couldn’t see it under the microscope. And even if they could –’

  ‘They would have had a better chance with a lion at their throats than with this in their lungs,’ Kicklighter said.

  Brian leaned back in his chair. ‘Ooooh,’ he said. ‘Lions and tigers and bears – oh my!’

  Mark chuckled and Annie blushed. The professor blinked several times, rapidly, as if he’d lost the conversation’s thread. Finally, he offered a weak smile. ‘Indeed,’ he said.

  They were making fun of him, Annie thought, and by extension they were making fun of her as well. Not that it ever affected Doctor K. The professor was immune to ridicule, so secure in his own identity that he didn’t really care what other people thought. And now, having finished his dinner, he folded his napkin, scraped back his chair, and got to his feet. With a nod to the captain, he said, ‘Well . . . we have a big day tomorrow.’

  He was halfway out the door when he paused and, turning, reached into the pocket of his jacket. ‘I almost forgot,’ he said. ‘This came yesterday.’ Taking a sheet of paper from his pocket, he handed it to Annie. ‘I suppose it was the storm,’ he added. And then, with a little wave, he was gone.

  Annie unfolded the paper and glanced at the message:

  STRANDED ARCHANGEL.

  MEET HAMMERFEST. DALY

  ‘I guess the lion tamer needs his rest,’ Brian said.

  Annie’s face was suddenly warm. ‘You can laugh,’ she said, ‘but he’s the best in the world at what he does. And if you don’t think it takes courage, you don’t know anything about the pathogens he handles.’ She pushed the telex into her pocket.

  ‘Oh?’

  Her face was burning now, and she knew that the wine had gone to her head. ‘I just wouldn’t be so blasé,’ she said, ‘especially if you don’t know what you’re getting into.’

  ‘“Getting into”?’ Brian frowned, and Mark gave her a quizzical look.

  Annie fumbled with her napkin. ‘That’s not what I meant,’ she said. ‘I meant, if you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ God, that sounded even worse. Flustered, she turned to the waiter, who was standing beside her with a pot of coffee, waiting to serve. ‘Please,’ she said, in a voice that was much too loud and bright.

  Brian kept his eyes on her. ‘I didn’t know we were getting “into” anything,’ he said.

  ‘We aren’t.’

  ‘I mean, I thought we were just moving some body bags around.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Annie replied, much too quickly. She took a couple of sips of coffee, noting how Mark and Brian exchanged glances. Then she folded her napkin and pushed her chair back. ‘I thought I’d take a look at the Northern Lights,’ she said, grabbing her parka.

  ‘Good idea,’ the captain remarked, and getting to his feet with a small bow, opened the door and held it for her.

  Annie’s heart was beating like a drum as she made her way down the corridor to the outside. Lying didn’t come easily to her. In fact, it almost never came at all. And when it did, she walked away, just as she was doing now.

  The truth was, the expedition was not without its risks. Though they’d taken every precaution imaginable, there was always a possibility, however remote, that the virus remained viable, and that somehow it would get loose. And if it did, everyone aboard the ship would be in danger. So, in that sense, they were ‘getting into’ something, though it was unlikely that anything would actually happen.

  Annie stood by the railing of the ship, her eyes fixed on the Northern Lights as they pulsed behind the horizon, a rippling curtain of green that rose toward the stars.

  She was having second thoughts. Though Doctor K’s name was first on the grant proposal, the expedition had been her idea. Admittedly, nothing could have been done without Doctor K’s endorsement. But without her, the expedition would never have been imagined.

  So if anything went wrong, and half the people on earth died . . . it would be her fault.

  Annie made an exasperated sound. There wasn’t a chance of the virus getting loose. Even if the Rex lost power and the generators failed in the Cold Room, the body-transfer cases were hermetically sealed; and the cadavers themselves would be wrapped in formalin-soaked sheets. Even if they hit an iceberg, and sank, the bodies wouldn’t go anywhere. Even if the fish didn’t get them, the Rex was smack in the midst of the Arctic gyre, a clockwise current that circled the North Pole: anything that went overboard would move around the top of the earth forever, and do so in water temperatures that were actually below freezing.

  So there really wasn’t anything to worry about. She knew that, and so did the foundation. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have changed their minds about the grant proposal.

  The real worry, then, was that the expedition would turn out to be a waste of time. Suppose the bodies were too close to the surface? Suppose they got back to Washington and there wasn’t enough virus to work with? She’d have wasted everyone’s time, and a whole lot of grant money.

  Her mind was at the races, and it stayed that way. Later that night, as she lay in her bunk with her eyes shut, trying to sleep, she found herself thinking of Frank Daly. In a way, Daly was her fault. In her enthusiasm, she’d encouraged him to come on the expedition, only to learn that Doctor K was aghast at the idea. She’d have rescinded the offer, but Doctor K wouldn’t hear of it: ‘It would just make him suspicious,’ he’d said. As if they’d had something to hide.

  And now, to have set sail without him, after he’d come so far – well, it was a disaster.

  Somehow, they’d make it up to him. She’d see to that. But in the meantime there was so much to be done.

  Rolling onto her side and pulling her pillow close to her cheek, she imagined the day that lay ahead of them. Sh
e’d climb out of bed at dawn, pull on her thermals and snowsuit, grab a cup of coffee from the mess, and help Doctor K organize the equipment. When that was done, she and the others would travel overland on Sno-Cats to the camp at Kopervik. The Snowmen thought the trip would take about an hour. Meanwhile, Brian and Doctor K would begin to move the gear by helicopter, ferrying it to the camp.

  And there was a lot of equipment – the Jamesway hut that would serve as their headquarters, a couple of field tents, two portable generators, three drums of diesel fuel. There were boxes of food and cooking equipment, rifles and ammunition to keep the bears at bay, masonry tools for digging. There were jack-hammers and shovels, a palette of body-transfer cases, ropes, and a trunk full of formalin-drenched sheets.

  If Doctor K was right, it would take about three days to excavate the coffins, assuming they weren’t buried any deeper than three feet.

  She didn’t remember falling asleep, but she must have because, quite suddenly, it was morning. She was sitting in the chair next to her bunk, with a book in her lap – she remembered getting up in the middle of the night. There was a blanket over her knees and a light burning over her shoulder, but its illumination was entirely unnecessary: the cabin was suffused with daylight. Reflexively, she turned to the porthole and, seeing the sky, blinked twice, then scrambled to her feet like a six-year-old who’s overslept on Christmas morning. She took the quickest shower of her life, being careful to keep her hair dry, then pulled her thermals on and dove into her snowsuit. Moments later she was standing on deck, adjusting her goggles.

  ‘We’ve got problems, sleepyhead.’

  ‘What?’

  Brian brushed past her, hurrying toward the helicopter. ‘Problems,’ he said over his shoulder.

  ‘With what?’

  The physicist kept walking and, without turning, pointed wordlessly at the bridge. At first Annie didn’t understand, but then she saw it: the ship’s flag was standing at attention, snapping in the wind.

  Striding toward the helicopter, Brian put his arms out like wings and rolled from side to side. ‘Wind!’ he shouted.

  Annie’s heart sank. She didn’t know anything about helicopters. How much wind was too much?

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Mark said, coming over to her with a mug of coffee. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘I brought this for you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It’s going to get better, not worse.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked, holding the mug in both hands, then sipping.

  ‘I saw the weather report.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Brian’s a dramatist. He likes everyone to think he’s pulling their chestnuts out of the fire, even when the fire’s out.’

  ‘So the wind –’

  ‘Don’t worry about the wind.’

  An hour later they were on the ice, a caravan of bright red snowmobiles buzz-whining over the frozen ground, heading directly into the morning sun. There were two of them in each of the Sno-Cats, but the noise was overwhelming and conversation impossible. Annie didn’t mind. It was the greatest day of her life. A polar bear paced them for a mile or more, staying a hundred yards to the west, white on white, galloping. And then, quite suddenly, it was gone, vanishing like smoke from a burnt match.

  There was nothing to see. There was everything to see.

  Midway to Kopervik the ship’s helicopter passed slowly overhead, its rotors thumping the air. Annie waved, and for a moment it seemed to her as if the helicopter replied, yawing on its path to the abandoned settlement.

  Soon afterward, the snowmobiles found themselves in a field of crevasses, sinkholes, and pits that might easily have swallowed them whole. At Mark’s direction, they backtracked to the west and made a long detour to the north, avoiding the field.

  Finally, almost two hours after leaving the ship, the Sno-Cats growled into Kopervik.

  It was, as she’d known it would be, a ghost camp. And not much to look at. There was a dark gray, windowless wooden church with a small spire, a tidy row of cabins, and a clutch of oil drums. Linking everything together, and connecting it to a mine shaft at the side of a featureless white hill was a frozen track of churned-up tundra.

  Seeing it for the first time, Annie was thrilled by the bland emptiness of the camp, knowing the secrets it concealed. Getting to her feet, she cast her eyes around, and was surprised to see Brian’s helicopter sitting on the ice, waiting to be unloaded.

  Annie laughed. ‘Let’s get going,’ she said to the Snowmen, and gestured to the chopper. ‘We’ve got a lot to do!’

  The graveyard was at the back of the church, and, eager to see it, she almost bumped into Doctor K as he came around the side of the building.

  ‘Whoops!’ she said, laughing with surprise. ‘Sorry ’bout that! I was just –’ The look on his face stopped her in her tracks, and for a long moment she wasn’t even sure that he recognized her. Then: ‘Annie,’ he said, and reached out to take her by the arm.

  His unhappiness was so complete, it frightened her, and she drew back. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, not wanting to know.

  Doctor K started to say something, then turned away in frustration. ‘Something terrible has happened,’ he said.

  Annie’s stomach fluttered. ‘What?’

  Doctor K turned toward the graveyard, then nodded over her shoulder at the side of the church.

  Annie turned. For the first time, she saw that the dark gray, clapboard wall had been slathered in white paint. Graffiti? she thought. At this latitude? She blinked, nonplussed, and stepped away from the church to get a better look at the wall.

  Raising her eyes, she saw that the crude slashes of white came together to form a single image, a primitive drawing that reminded her of Picasso’s Guernica.

  ‘It’s a horse,’ she said, pronouncing the obvious even as she frowned to see the animal’s wild eyes, its bared teeth and flared nostrils.

  Kicklighter nodded.

  For a moment neither of them said anything. ‘Someone’s been here,’ Annie said. ‘Haven’t they?’

  Doctor K’s shoulders slumped. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Someone’s been here.’

  9

  HAMMERFEST, NORWAY

  MARCH 27, 1998

  ALTHOUGH THE FLYING time was only three and a half hours, it took Frank Daly more than a day and a half to make the trip from Archangel to Hammerfest. Except for the first leg to Murmansk, neither of the connecting flights ran on a daily basis. Murmansk to Tromso was a Tuesday-Friday run, but Tromso-Hammerfest was possible only on the weekend.

  But it didn’t matter. He had plenty of time to spare: the Rex Mundi wouldn’t arrive in port for at least two days, by which time he’d be all settled in. Whatever else might happen (and even now a new storm was shouldering its way across the North Atlantic), he would not miss the boat a second time.

  And neither would he miss the Chernomorskaya. By comparison, even the airport lounge in Murmansk had been an improvement. Though he’d spent nearly an entire day slumped in a hard plastic chair, buffeted by incomprehensible announcements, he’d been warm. And that was more than he could say for the days he’d spent in Archangel.

  It was with a sense of elation, then, that he finally laid eyes on his destination, Hammerfest, as the Norsk Transport jet dropped through the clouds. From the air the town looked tidy and pristine, a collection of neat little buildings crouched at the edge of a flat gray sea. As the plane banked he could see that the harbor, fringed with small buildings, lay in the lee of a towering cliff, and that several ships were tethered to the docks. Three long wharves jutted out to sea, where trawlers and pleasure boats bobbed at their moorings.

  From the air, at least, the town reminded Frank of his mother’s Christmas village, an expanding collection of ceramic buildings, trees, and figurines lovingly arranged each year atop an expanse of immaculate cotton snow. No one – neither favorite nieces nor visiting cousins – was ever allowed to touch the village or any of its inhabitants. The tiny windows o
f each house and store twinkled with light; the mirrored surface of the pond was always shiny and unmarred. Places had been established for each figure and never varied – every year, the same characters sang Christmas carols in front of the same house, while a tall man with an armful of presents hurried up the walk to the pluperfect Georgian town house.

  His mother dusted the houses daily, and even as a child, Frank came to understand that for her the village was a parallel universe. Instead of her life in a pinched duplex, barely a mile downwind from a refinery, his mother imagined herself in one of these tidy little buildings, baking cookies.

  The village, then, was an ideal and ordered world where the snow was always white, and no one called on Saturdays to ask about the mortgage payment. It was the kind of town, a Christmas town, where dads came home with flowers, and no one ever drank too much or cheated on his wife.

  Daly shifted uncomfortably in his seat as the village rose toward the plane. He didn’t like to be reminded of his childhood. And, anyway, his mother was dead now, and the Christmas village stored away in Aunt Della’s attic. It amazed him how his mother’s sisters had descended on the house after her death. They’d handled all the arrangements when ‘Frank Senior’ couldn’t be found. (And no wonder: he’d been shacked up with a dancer all the way over in Breezewood – how was he to know his wife was dead?) And then, when Himself had shown up for the funeral, stunned as much by guilt as grief, he’d been gripped by a sudden, and very uncharacteristic, generosity. ‘Here,’ he’d said, dispersing his wife’s possessions, ‘Dottie would want you to have this – me and Frank Junior, what are we going to do with a Christmas village?’

  Later his father reverted to form, bitterly accusing ‘the weird sisters’ of looting ‘Dottie’s worldly goods.’ Predictably, his mother’s ‘collectibles,’ which everyone had always called ‘that junk in the basement,’ skyrocketed in value – but by then they were gone. ‘Divvied up,’ as Frank Senior liked to say.