In certain ways they are all together. They all sense now, implicitly, the race that they are in, the stakes. They don’t speak of it, but they all feel it, and whether they accept it personally or not—whether they have personal doubts or beliefs that supersede or intervene—no longer matters because it is the race, the struggle that everyone around them has accepted. It is unstated, but obvious. Too big to state. Too big to discuss. No longer philosophical, because it feels so real. So pressing, so everyday, undeniable.
The issue is now survival.
But more than that: what form survival takes.
For how many of them.
It’s a project of survival. The ultimate science project.
All these science-fair winners. All these brainiacs.
This is their final science fair. They need an A.
There are some odd effects, right off.
The fact that, suddenly, everyone is important. Everyone is suddenly aware of his or her own importance.
It too is unspoken. But Heller can feel it. And he knows he is not unique. Suddenly you matter. Your health, your strength, your reproductive potential. People begin to observe themselves. To care about cuts or infections. The cooks. The service people. They notice, feel, experience their value. My little life suddenly matters. Has exaggerated, outsize importance for our species. I am one of the chosen, the few. Simply by default? Or maybe by design? Why me? But why not me? And with this sudden individual importance that they sense, that they absorb—with either humility or grandiosity or awe—they naturally, incessantly question it. Are nervous about it. When resources get short, am I going to be cut out somehow? Is my secondary status going to make me expendable? Where do I stand in the pecking order? In the McMurdo lifeboat? They feel nervous, anxious.
Their heads are down. Noses to the grindstone. Ready to contribute, to do their part, to go the distance, for the social good.
But their minds are all over. Wandering frantically.
Fissures. Cracks. Not in the ice, which remains solid, opaque, unforgiving. But in the souls wandering on top of it—cut loose, in a new world, in an endgame that has no start and no finish. That is held still in time.
It is both ending and beginning.
It is both creation and destruction.
They are nothing.
They are everything.
It is a strange position to be in. As unprecedented as it is unpredictable.
No wonder there are fissures, cracks. Widening around them, beneath them, despite the solid ice.
51.
Polar T3 syndrome is a condition found in polar explorers, caused by a reduction in levels of the thyroid hormone T3. Its effects include forgetfulness, cognitive impairment and mood disturbances. It can exhibit itself in a fugue state known as the Antarctic stare.
Triiodothyronine, also known as T3 . . . affects almost every physiological process in the body, including . . . metabolism, body temperature, and heart rate.
Heller reads the Wikipedia entries again. He had printed a copy when he was first told about the syndrome, intending to do more research, but without the Internet, he’s had to live with what he has. Before they lost the Internet, he had managed to look further into the cognitive impairment described—which identified hallucinations, dream states, and other mental disturbances in documented cases of T3 syndrome.
And as far as the body’s physical changes caused by the endless night’s havoc with the hormone triiodothyronine? Well, it could be as tough to handle as it was tough to pronounce. The body’s systems could compensate for a while—that’s why it was a rare problem in Scandinavian countries and the subarctic. But you apparently get to a point in the endless night when the body cries uncle. It crashes in on itself, floods itself with problems. The body holds out and defends itself for as long as it can, then collapses in the ceaseless darkness.
And like all hormones, it’s different for different people. There’s no predicting who will be affected, who won’t be, and to what degree. Nothing to do with gender, body type, weight, overall fitness—no markers at all. And people tend to hide their own symptoms. Nobody likes to admit that they’re going crazy. Especially scientists. Especially those who pride themselves on their hardiness, their readiness for the Antarctic challenge.
The printed page now in front of him is one more indication of his own antiquity, he knows. His research: printed, handwritten, and tucked into manila folders in a three-ring binder. It’s how he began thirty years ago, and his methods haven’t changed.
It’s perfectly possible the killer suffers from the severest effects of T3. Are the effects severe enough to turn someone into a killer? To unleash a latent murderer? A chemically coaxed Mr. Hyde? It would make sense, in that there were no killings during the summer, during the light. This of course forgives nothing but could explain a lot. He imagines it isn’t quite like the loosening of impulses caused by alcohol or drugs that accompany so much crime, but more akin to a dream state that also suspends the controls of the conscious mind. And yet there’s such precision in the killer’s methodology, such care and meticulousness, could this go side by side with the temporary hallucination, the extended fugue of T3? But he returns to the fact that everyone’s thyroid is different, and that the syndrome is profound—and profoundly unexplored. Damn that NASA defunding.
The thyroid. Mysterious organ. Mysterious functioning. Even to doctors, apparently. Who are good at issuing hormones and pills to rebalance its functioning, to getting the numbers back into normal range, but still do not really understand the thyroid’s structure.
And the relation of the thyroid to that other mysterious organ, the brain? The relationship is ill understood. Nil understanding, as he has read between the lines.
And if he can find the killer, identify him or her, and prove the effects of T3 in the killer’s state of mind, would and should that be part of the decision about punishment and sentencing? In the old world of conventional justice, of prosecution and defense and attorneys and expert witnesses and a jury of peers, that would be a significant issue. But in this new world, is that all suspended? In this new world, he doesn’t know what they will do for justice. He doesn’t know if there is even a justice system intact. Who will determine punishment? How will they determine punishment? He originally told himself that isn’t his job. His job is finding the murderer. Other entities will take it from there. But he now knows that isn’t necessarily the case. He’s involved in the making of this new world. This temporary, stand-in world—until they know more. Or this inconceivably permanent new world—if they aren’t ever going to know any more. Both, at this moment, equally possible.
52.
He is summoned to Hobbes’s office.
Hobbes shuts the door behind him.
He doesn’t look at Heller as he says it:
“We need to talk about guns.”
In truth, Heller is not surprised. He hasn’t been aware of any; they are not part of daily life in a scientific community, a research facility. They are explicitly outlawed by the rules of the National Science Foundation, but Heller has had the vague sense that there might be firearms of some sort stowed here on the base somewhere. They’re clearly not part of any of the murders, not part of the killer’s MO with their forensic traceability, their ballistic signatures, their serial numbers. Any firearm at McMurdo—a sidearm for Hobbes as station manager, say—would have a recorded serial number and would be kept safely.
“There are four AR-15s and six semiautomatic Glocks.”
Heller can’t help smiling a little. “What the hell for?”
Hobbes looks at him uncharacteristically hard. “For exactly a situation like this.”
“Where are they?”
“Different unmarked lockers at different places around McMurdo.”
“A first line of defense in a Russian attack?” Heller teases.
“Yeah, something like that. One locker is actually behind you . . .” Hobbes points to the closet behind Heller. Heller t
urns and looks, a little startled—like someone snuck up on him from behind.
“Who’s got the key?”
“I do. As station manager. Simmons also has a key.”
“Any others?”
“A closet off the cafeteria.”
“Who’s got the keys to that one?”
Please. Don’t say Manafort.
“I’ve got those keys too. But look, these gun closets, if things got frantic, took a bad turn here, people with enough desperation and force could get into any of them.”
“Where’s the ammunition?”
Hobbs looks morose. “It’s in the lockers with the guns.”
Ready for an attack, thinks Heller cynically. Ready to defend themselves against . . . competing scientists?
“A lot of ammunition,” Hobbes admits, shifting uncomfortably. “And even though the lockers are unmarked, I can’t say for sure no one knows about them.”
“Well, the thing to do is remove the ammo,” says Heller. “Store it somewhere safe. Somewhere no one can get at it.”
“But then we don’t have the guns ready if we need them . . .”
“Need them for what?”
“You know for what. Don’t pretend you’re naive. I know you’re not.”
“You mean they’re not ready if you need them,” says Heller.
“Yes. Yes, that’s what I mean,” says Hobbes.
“Well, then you’ve got a little dilemma, don’t you?” says Heller. “If you want to leave the ammunition there for you, then you need to leave it there for someone else.” You can’t have it both ways, Manny.
Hobbes takes his point. “So when, and how, do we separate the ammo so no one sees, so no one gets wind of what’s in there? It would have to be done in secret . . . and I don’t feel comfortable about that . . .”
“Practically or morally?” says Heller, pointedly.
“Come on, Joe, you know me by now. You know I’m just trying to stay one step ahead of events here.”
One step ahead of events—to control them or prevent them?
One step ahead of events—meaning, ahead of a catastrophic breakdown? That could come in a moment or in slow motion, step by stealthy step, barely recognizable?
A breakdown where it is the have-guns versus the have-not. The have-food versus the have-not. The have-shelter versus the have-not.
“Preparing for the worst,” observes Heller. “I’m not sure that’s the spirit of leadership that would rally me behind you, Manny.”
“I’m the station manager. I’m leading in title only,” says Hobbes. “Let’s be honest. It’s something we’ve all noticed.” Hobbes shifts heavily in his chair, the weight of the last days, the last weeks, falling on him. “We’re sliding into the system of hierarchy, of authority. Everyone seems to be accepting it temporarily. But if . . . if these conditions are permanent, we’re going to have to go with some other arrangement. Something everyone else buys into.”
“Which isn’t necessarily democracy, Manny. You realize that, right?”
“Well, that’s the system people know.”
“But it’s not the only system. And it’s not the simplest system.”
“What are you saying? That some kind of totalitarian system, some authoritarian or autocratic system will make more sense?”
“I’m saying that might be what happens. Seems quite possible to happen. Given the tensions, given the conditions. Scarcity, anxiety, worries about survival—those are the breeding conditions for totalitarianism, not democracy.”
Manny Hobbes is silent. Brooding. “All the more reason to have the guns and ammo standing by, I guess,” he says.
“You mean, standing by for you.”
“Yes, standing by for me.” Hobbes tilts his head at Heller. “Look, maybe I am the right leader. Maybe I’m their best chance. Or as good a chance as anyone.”
“You see what I mean?” says Heller, with a wry smile. “Maybe a totalitarian system is the right way to go here. With a benign dictator, a benign presence, like Manny Hobbes.”
Heresy and reason, intersecting, dancing with each other, Heller notices. It is a new world.
Heller is heading for the door when Hobbes continues, more quietly, half to himself. “You know, Joe,” says Hobbes, “when I imagined Antarctica’s long-term fate, as a scientist, it was a tale of global warming. Our destruction of the planet through melting poles and sea rise and the associated natural catastrophes that got triggered, and in a hundred years, the balmy, temperate green paradise of Antarctica being all that’s left of mankind. Our last, best hope. A place for a new start. You and I wouldn’t be around to see it, of course, but our descendants would. And they’d inhabit a new Eden. A chastened Eden, where we’d have to be a lot more careful this time with the tree of knowledge, but where we’d learned our lessons, learned them the hard way, mankind paying a heavy price, but we would now do much better. The consequences of global warming. That made sense. But my typical scientist’s vision has been challenged, and it may never have its green, temperate moment as paradise. We’ve managed to turn my long-term dream of an Antarctic paradise into a short-term nightmare. Global warming is too slow a way for us to kill ourselves. Too extended and inefficient. We’ve come up with something quicker, infinitely more lethal. Leave it to man, huh? Leave it to man.”
53.
He had agreed to Trish Wong’s funeral. Thinking it might draw out the killer somehow. And recognizing how it symbolized taking on the responsibilities for their own world.
Passing the cafeteria the next morning, between meals, he happens to see it.
A prayer meeting—fifteen people gathered around. Arms and shoulders linked, in spiritual support, in spiritual solidarity. Praying vocally.
A prayer meeting—and, at its center, leading it—Manafort.
The funeral has inadvertently created a star. Stepping from the shadows of food services—volunteering to handle the prayer. A simple charitable, good-willed act? Or a calculated way to step onto center stage?
He notices the linked arms and shoulders. It’s not a conventional Christian ritual. It’s a stance, a formation, conceived here. And practiced enough, for long enough that they are doing it comfortably, naturally, expectedly with one another.
How long has this been going on?
A little bit of a football huddle, he notices—as if excluding, shutting out the world outside. As if planning their next play. Their next drive down the field.
He’s surprised to see it in a scientific community. Where science, research, observable phenomena are the ethic. The standard. He is surprised, but he certainly understands the turn to faith, defaulting to faith under the current extraordinary stresses and circumstances. And these are kitchen workers, lab assistants, administrative assistants.
For now.
He understands the impulse, of course. Has always understood it, even sitting at the back of the Shaftsbury Congregational Church as an eleven-year-old. People’s perfectly understandable need to believe that life, or the soul, or something, goes on after physical mortality. That we—or if not we, somebody, something of us, something human—continues in some form.
But he also understands how this belief is suddenly more acute. Suddenly more present on and in the surface of things. Suddenly more pressing. Because they are facing nothing. An immense, overwhelming, and actual nothing. They are surrounded, to begin with, by the natural nothing of Antarctica, stretching out around them visibly, nearly infinitely. And they used to have their digital web of connection to friends and family, to knowledge itself, to all of humankind, which let them tolerate, defy, or smile comfortably and even affectionately at the white infinity around them. But with no connection, knowledge cut off, the rest of humankind suddenly, apparently, inexplicably extinguished, through some still-unimaginable event (and the “unimaginable” aspect of it is part of its power, the incomprehensibility of it lets the “event” work its dark magic even better), with only each person next to them as an unsubtle, co
nstant human reminder of the end of humanity, he understands the resurrected need to seize upon something more, something beyond. The end looms up close. The end is all around them. Endless darkness, endless ice, endless night—hell, literally. Ah, so this is what they meant. It’s like a dark prophecy come true.
But Heller also recognizes the prayer meeting immediately for what else it is—another power base.
I’ve got the food.
A shiver goes through him.
He purposely passes through the cafeteria the next morning, at about the same time. He carefully counts, to compare.
It’s twenty-five people now.
54.
“Any more from Pritchard and Dolan?” Hobbes asks.
“Their last contact was the Australian farmer, and that mountain ranger before that. Nothing since then,” says Simmons.
“But they’re still trying?”
“Every minute, every day.”
“Check on them, Joe. See how they’re doing.”
Heller goes to see Pritchard and Dolan again in the Comm Cave, the makeshift-looking roomful of equipment where, even before their current round-the-clock duties, Dolan and Pritchard could pretty much always be found together. They’ve been occupying the Cave intensely, of course, with little break, for the past several days. But right now only Dolan is there, at his seat, looking at dials, adjusting knobs, surveying the controls from above almost haughtily, like a commander inspecting his troops.
“Where’s Pritchard?”
Dolan looks at Heller. Is silent, downcast. As if trying to solicit sympathy from Heller even before he speaks. Trying to prepare Heller for a little-known fact, as it turns out. “He has a tough time with T3.”
“He does?”
Dolan shrugs. “Nothing new. Every year. We’ve both come to expect it.”
They share a double, Pritchard and Dolan. They have for years. It’s an extension of the Comm Cave—geographically, functionally, spiritually—and you’d be hard-pressed to say where the office ends and the sleeping quarters begin. Classic wooden radios, eccentric old equipment, a tangle of boxes and wires and electronics that they’ve somehow gotten clearance for by their seniority and smiles and the goodwill they’ve built up over the years. There are several snickering nicknames for their lair. But there’s general agreement that they are the best of friends. Pritch and Doley. As Pritchard says—boasts, in fact—Dolan has taught him everything he knows. To which Dolan shrugs, smiles—wanting you to know that “everything he knows” is a slight exaggeration.
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