45.
“Should we try to get to the Russian station? Should we just try?” asks Bramlett, blinking, pushing her black glasses quizzically against her pale face. Her voice wavering. The anxious child, always lurking within the opaque career bureaucrat, now emerging.
The Russian question again. Their neighbors. Like checking on the neighbors after a storm.
“Eventually, Antoinette. As soon as humanly possible. We can’t make it there now, in this weather,” says Hobbes.
The wind and cold could freeze and burst vehicle fuel lines within a few miles. Getting to them would still have to wait. But they are the closest. Just a hundred miles away. They are evidence of life. And if they are there, and if they are okay, they are presumably having the same mirror conversations.
“Wouldn’t you think they’d try to get to us?”
“Yes. And if they’re more desperate . . . maybe they’ll try first.”
“If they’re there, presumably they’re dealing with the same problems.”
“And presumably they have the same questions about whether it’s safe to reach out to us. Whether we’re carriers, contaminated . . .”
“But maybe they’ve established communication. That would be a big difference.”
And presumably they have no serial killer stalking them. That would be a big difference too, thinks Heller.
Simmons is somber. “Look, eventually we’ll go to the Russians, or they’re going to come to us, but it could be when one or the other of us has run out of supplies and is throwing themselves on the mercy of the other. And whether it’s us or them, it could be an ugly confrontation, an ugly moment. So I’m just as happy not hearing from them, for now.”
“There could be an out-and-out battle over the last supplies . . . ,” says Stanford.
“Or maybe they aren’t going to let us in, or we aren’t going to let them in.”
“Nationalism, tribalism, for the sake of survival.”
“Survival for just a short time.”
A new cold war, thinks Heller. This time, literally.
Heller is thinking, as they all are, of the previous months’ news stories, of the escalating geopolitical tensions between the two countries, tightening, tightening, corkscrewing to a breaking point. Russia meddling in other countries’ elections, insinuating itself into other countries’ computer and electrical infrastructures, endowing its own nuclear program with new stealth and flexibility, its robust spying, its infiltration of other governments; it’s hardly a stretch to imagine their stockpiles of weaponized pathogens. Pathogens they meant to deploy narrowly and strategically, or pathogens that—like their Chernobyl—might have gotten quickly out of their control. His research into poisons reminded him that it takes only a thimbleful of certain toxins to instantly decimate billions.
Rolling their arsenals into place. Strike-first readiness. You could argue about whether it was a defensive response to the newly unstable, unpredictable US administration, or whether it was a long-awaited opportunity they were seizing. On Antarctica, as in outer space, the relationship between the two countries had always been cordial, collaborative, in the interest and advancement of science. Has all that now changed? Are there instructions to the Russian stations from their own government? Is it all returning to tribal? The research stations suddenly rendered medieval fortresses? Turning to the ancient strategies of starvation, invasion, plague?
“Look, we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” says Hobbes. “It’s communicating with them we have to explore first.”
“Maybe Pritchard and Dolan should focus on trying to reach them. Forget about the world to the north. Maybe there’s some other way with them? Some other kind of signal to rig?” says Bramlett.
“Let’s get them on that. Maybe they can figure something out. They jury-rigged a way to at least reach out to Australia and the Falklands, you’d think reaching the Russian station would be a piece of cake.”
Heller has no idea. Communications are a black box to him. Communication is taken for granted in the modern world, until it isn’t there.
It’s a mirror, in a way, the Russian station. A mirror of their own existence. And when there’s communications, you can look in the mirror, see and feel a friendly competition and camaraderie, in their own experiments, in their lifestyle, and these days an internationalism that makes them all somewhat the same, brings them all together. Like any mirror, it’s reassuring. Reassuringly reflective of each other, proof of each other, like a photograph.
But now, the mirror has gone temporarily black. Unlit. No reflection. In a strange way—like any mirror, he supposes—the absence of the mirror makes it harder to see what’s going on in their own world, at McMurdo.
And the thought they share silently: Is there a Russian station? Or has whatever befell the latitudes above them already found its way into the Russian station, and are Heller and the 155 around him all that’s left, for a few days or weeks or hours until the “event” finds its ceaseless, relentless way to them too? Heller pushes that black thought aside.
“They’ll rescue us, won’t they? When winter lifts enough, they’ll come rescue us, right?”
Hobbes looks at the young woman who has asked—Pam, a lab assistant in her first winter—and says, surprisingly harshly, “Who is this they, Pam? What they?”
An existential statement. Said with a harshness showing how Hobbes, upbeat and even-tempered and practical Hobbes, is nearing the end of his existential rope.
There is no they. There is only we. A few we, and that’s all.
46.
But amid this transforming, transformed existence, Heller can’t help himself:
He is thinking about poisons.
Is it a way of clinging to his identity? Focusing in, because loss of focus will mean loss of self?
But if it is poisoning (and if you can’t detect it, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is, but probably means it is—the lack of any other kind of evidence points strongly to it), then as Heller has speculated from the first, given the available exotic chemicals for the wide range of experiments, it is very possibly a new poison, a particular chemical combination that forensic databases have no previous familiarity with. And Heller is willing to speculate that the new combination of ingredients—opaque, undetectable—might enjoy an effectiveness that has to do with the extremes here. The temperature extremes, yes, but even more so, he thinks vaguely, the thyroid stresses and changes, another possible secret advantage to this particular designer poison.
Logic and circumstance say it’s something new. Something not only new but new and perhaps “tested” here.
He needs the Internet to further explore poisons and temperature extremes, either himself or with the help of a couple of the chemists and biologists here.
But, of course, there is no Internet. An enormous advantage to the killer, who may have made extensive use of Internet data to get to his lethal formula, by a path that Heller and others could pick up and follow. But not anymore. Now the digital drawbridge has been closed, there is no way to follow the perpetrator into the deep recesses of the castle. What a lucky break for a killer.
So to get closer to the truth, he has to fall back on old-fashioned police work. In the proxy “small town” of McMurdo Station, he has to be a small-town cop again. Interviews. Gumshoe instinct.
Like Pritchard and Dolan, falling back on old methods. Having to start over. Rummaging around in the toolbox, looking for old, cast-off pieces and ways of doing things, dusting them off, going back to them. He needs to do the same.
Amid this transforming, transformed existence, still thinking about poisons.
Unlike all the disconsolate readers of locked-room mysteries, botany texts, the DSM, unlike all the disrupted, distraught scientists, he’s unwilling to abandon his winter-over project.
Maybe they did pick the right subcontractor.
47.
“I think we need to have a funeral for Trish Wong,” says Hobbes.
He
ller knew this was coming. The subject has been held in suspension, in light of everything else imploding around them. And, he has thought, in light of her special relationship with Heller, which may have been speculated about, been leaked out by now—nobody has wanted to bring up the prospect of a funeral with him.
“She was well loved here,” says Hobbes. “And we have to accept the possibility that we may not be going back, so there’s no reason to wait with it.”
No indication, in Hobbes’s words or expression, of knowing about Heller and Trish’s relationship.
A funeral for Trish Wong.
Using death to symbolize life going on.
Or is her death—her funeral—a symbol, a harbinger of what is still to come?
Trish as symbol, as stand-in for them all.
It will be McMurdo’s first funeral. Though not Antarctica’s, of course. A history of death goes hand in hand with exploration of the forbidding, inhospitable continent, and makeshift funerals to accompany and acknowledge those deaths. Shackleton had always memorialized each man lost. In that old, proper English explorer tradition, he gave them each their sermon, their send-off, their due, even when the body could not be suitably prepared for the next world. Sandy Lazo-Wasum’s remains, of course, were sent home—to family, friends, a proper graveyard.
“But her parents can’t even be notified right now. Her siblings. I think it’s premature,” says Heller.
If there are parents. If there are siblings. No one says it. Everyone thinks it.
“I think it’s a way of accepting it. Of symbolizing that we are on our own here. Her funeral could serve a larger purpose for us. Show acceptance, moving on, show that we must build a life and community for ourselves here, with all its attendant tasks and traditions—death, birth . . . ,” Hobbes adds. “It’s a way of saying that our life is now here.”
Memorializing and acknowledging death, to symbolize life. It seems paradoxical, and yet that’s what all funerals are actually doing.
“It’s so strange to do,” says Heller.
“It’s too strange not to,” says Hobbes.
The morning of Trish Wong’s funeral, Heller bundles up in preparation, as they all do. No one has a suit or a dress in Antarctica, not even the top administrators; nonessential clothing takes up too much space.
There are no flowers, of course. Some plastic ones here and there on the base, all deemed too tacky, thank God, for this occasion. But someone has fashioned a simple lapel pin with her name and her ID photo, with an image of a single orchid, and has run off several dozen copies of it, and as they all gather in the cafeteria, they’re united in wearing their simple Trish lapel pins and in their shuffling, respectful silence.
The ceremony is in the cafeteria.
The cremation will be outside. Extremely brief. Fifty-below temperatures dictate and guarantee that. There is no burying a body in ice. They debated keeping the body frozen somewhere, waiting until the spring thaw and burying her then, but that seemed gruesome and open ended. The idea of a funeral is acceptance. Sending the spirit to its next home. Letting—helping—a community move on.
“I guess Calloway should still do an autopsy,” Hobbes says to Heller uncomfortably. “As much as he’s able to, anyway.”
Heller shrugs. They both know how limited it will be. That it won’t show anything new. An exercise in frustration.
Heller wonders how much everyone recognizes another subtext here: That this funeral is a precedent. A precedent for how they will deal with further death, from here on.
That death will no longer be a matter for the mainland. A matter to be shipped out, to be banished from their previously magical and suspended existence. It’s now real and now theirs. A practical matter, like nutrition, like food, like safety.
Cremation is the logical choice, and the only choice right now. No one knows anything about any religious affiliation of Trish or her family. “California scientist” would be most accurate and telling. The Wongs—scientists, doctors, researchers, lawyers, professors—hadn’t been in a church in three generations, Heller would guess. Trish was a naturalist, they all know. Cared deeply about the planet and its survival, so cremation seems right. Not to take up ground space, and it doesn’t matter, because they can’t bury the body anyway because the continent is ice, not ground.
The morning is even colder than usual.
Heller knows he is on display. Everyone at McMurdo knew of the working relationship. Everyone knew she was assigned to the investigation―and she was teased, in fact, because she was such an upbeat, positive California girl, and people were secretly amused or horrified that she’d been given this administrative task, although people understood the rationale too: her careful, meticulous researcher personality, her trustworthiness. Some were undoubtedly amused, he’s sure, by this crusty, humorless, colorless, white Vermonter and this bubbly, petite, brown Asian Californian working together. What Heller doesn’t know is how many people, if any, knew of the affair. And, specifically, whether the killer did.
So he doesn’t know how much he is on display, and to whom.
He holds a vague wish for some clue to emerge, when they’re all gathered here like this. The whole base is here, of course, to pay respects. And the killer is here among them. As they all know.
It makes a somber occasion even more so.
The cafeteria chairs and tables are cleared away. They expect everyone. And Heller of course will want to know—will look to see—if anyone is missing. He’s enlisted Bramlett and Simmons to help him on that. He can’t literally take attendance but wants to know if anyone’s not there.
They had all assumed at first that there was no one of any religious authority in this scientific and agnostic community, but they were wrong. In the preparation for the funeral, Robert Manafort came forward. The food services chef Hobbes had raved about. It turns out he was previously a minister in a church near Coeur d’Alene, Idaho—The Life Hereafter Christian Guardians. A small sect that exists in only a few North Idaho towns, Manafort says. A sect that Heller has never heard of. Manafort has volunteered to lead the ceremony, if they want him to. If they are comfortable with that.
“Do you know what to do?” Hobbes asks.
“My father was a minister. My grandfather was the minister who founded the sect. I grew up attending funerals. Helping him with the details. Unfortunately”—a little smile—“I know exactly what to do.”
Heller gets the sense that Manafort is here in Antarctica, perhaps in part, to get as far away from that upbringing as possible. A sense he gets from more than a few people who winter over in Antarctica.
And Manafort does know what to do. In fact, recites several prayers by heart. Admits he probably knows hundreds. “Still echoing in my head,” he jokes to them. They hand him a Bible. He never opens it. Doesn’t need to.
He supervises the construction of the coffin, the bier, and the pyre, shows how and where to add accelerant to make the cremation pyre most efficient.
“But your congregation in Idaho didn’t cremate its people, did they?”
“No, everyone is buried. But I know about accelerants independently. My dad was the minister, like I said, but we were both volunteer firemen north of Coeur d’Alene. Small towns—you have to do a little of everything. A lot of everything.” Manafort smiles.
Manafort seems to grow into the role, into his authority at the funeral. There’s something noticeable about it, thinks Heller. Out of the ordinary. Either a good thing, Heller thinks, an ordinary cook rising to the occasion. Or something more troubling—manipulating, seizing an opportunity.
The coffin sits in the middle of the cafeteria. The mourners have gathered some plants under grow lights around the base—not part of official botanical experiments—surrounding the coffin with them.
They find some photos on Trish’s cell phone. Blow them up on the printer. Cut them into frames. Prop them around her coffin. Smiling on a beach somewhere. A picture with a sister and brother, judging by fami
ly resemblance, at the Statue of Liberty. Some happy moments, here and there. Snapshots from a life snapped and snuffed. No one knows for sure who the people are, where they were, what the pictures meant to her. There are no relatives here in Antarctica, of course. No long-term friends, no schoolmates. The pictures have no meaning for anyone in the room. They have meaning only for the person in the coffin. And their meaning here is only in that an effort has been made. A normalizing effort to grieve, to acknowledge, and to move on.
Manafort quotes Ecclesiastes. Deuteronomy. Heller hears him suppressing an impulse for grandiloquence. For a little fire and brimstone. For backcountry preaching.
Heads are bowed. There are tears. Heller has never heard such a silence in the normally boisterous and bustling cafeteria.
The tears flow now. And he knows that the grieving is not just for Trish but for all of them. A moment of gathering, a sanctioned moment of release, of grief. A need unleashed.
Heller feels eyes on him.
Trish’s best friend at McMurdo, Pam, the research assistant, goes up to speak, stands next to the coffin, unable to look at it, Heller can see, trying to compose herself, but in the end she is too distraught and simply shakes her head, weeping, shoulders heaving, goes back to the crowd, never uttering a word. Allan Harkavy, a scientist Trish worked with, plays an instrumental of his own composition on the acoustic guitar.
And then a moment they have all waited for. Hobbes stepping to the front of the room.
He first says what is expected about Trish. All the right things. About who she was, her energy, her kindness, her absence. And then the part they have waited for. That they have gathered for, whether they understood it or not.
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