Days of Night

by Jonathan Stone

  He thinks about what he’s dealing with. What to do next. It’s not so straightforward. It’s not so simple.

  If he tells Hobbes or anyone that their communication has been cleverly and purposefully cut off by Dolan and Pritchard, Dolan and Pritchard will simply deny it. It’s his word against theirs. His crazy theory versus their diligent-looking efforts, their jury-rigged Morse code machine and primitive ham radio and their scratchy recordings, their heroic round-the-clock exertions.

  If they don’t restore the communication, they will have until the weather warms enough to let the first plane and ship in—like every year.

  Another eight weeks or so. Another eight weeks in the dark, incommunicado.

  Obviously, the rest of the world has been trying to get in touch with them and knows McMurdo is having communications problems, presumes that they’re working on them, knows they have more than enough food and fuel for the season, that everyone will be back in touch as soon as the weather permits and the first plane and the first ship arrive. For years there was no winter communication with McMurdo. It’s a temporary return to the old days, that’s all . . .

  And suddenly he realizes:

  It’s much more than that.

  If Dolan and Pritchard can switch off communications, then they can switch it on at will.

  Switch it on as necessary, to tell the world: Comm problems here at McMurdo. No reason to worry, everything fine. Supplies excellent, as you know. We will continue to work on problems. Can solve! And either they made clear that they can only send and are assuming that their communications are being received or, it occurs to Heller, Dolan and Pritchard have been receiving confirmation communications back and simply not saying anything about them. Burying them.

  It isn’t much different from any other winter-over. The rest of the world is fine, McMurdo is fine, and as always, McMurdo, we’ll see you in the spring.

  For almost all of McMurdo, the world has ended.

  For Pritchard and Dolan, the “world” will end with the first plane or ship.

  Maybe sooner. Because the first visit, before a plane or ship, might be from the Russian or Argentine station.

  Hey, McMurdo let us know they’re having some communications equipment problems. Can you go see what’s going on over there? Make sure they’re okay? We’re pretty sure it’s just a communications issue that they haven’t been able to fix, but we haven’t heard anything from them lately. Can you send over some new equipment and some communications experts to give them a hand? Thanks so much.

  Will the residents of McMurdo inadvertently destroy themselves in the silence of the next eight weeks? The war of Hobbes and Manafort? Armed camps. Will they survive eight more weeks?

  Heller is still staggering. Still trying to process it. The flip of a little switch out there on the comm towers. Flipping a tiny switch or two and cutting off the world. Flipping a tiny switch or two and altering everyone’s perception of the world, of the future, of themselves. How did they think they could get away with it?

  Because they had gotten away with it. Had gotten away with murder, and it had only emboldened and empowered them—and then they saw, with Heller’s arrival, that they were going to be cornered, trapped, and their choices came down to something radical, unthinkable, unimaginable . . .

  And—Heller knows—because there are two of them. Because they look like a team. Teams are trusted. Partnerships are trusted. Long-standing partnerships, especially. Always teams of two in the silos, to set off nuclear devices, needing to turn the keys in unison. Maybe one person goes a little crazy, but not two together. (And yet, Manafort is showing that a whole continent can go crazy together, step by step, little by little.) He thinks of Paul again. Of their partnership. Partnerships are hollower than you might think.

  He pictures Pritchard and Dolan again, shuffling nervously in to the leadership in the wake of the communications blackout, both of them visibly uncomfortable and distraught. But their anxiety wasn’t really about the prospective “causes” of the communications outage. Their shuffling, their anxiety, were due to the immense lie they were about to perpetrate.

  So far, Heller only has the proof—the slim and circumstantial proof—of a misused Australian word. And Dolan may have “inadvertently” erased the recording already anyway. May have picked up on the mistake after Heller’s request to hear it again, and destroyed it. One misused noun. On only Heller’s say-so. Hardly proof of anything.

  And Pritchard may have already told Dolan about Heller’s visit. About looking at the snakes and the weird snake in the back. So Dolan may have already gotten rid of the brighter, smaller snake at the back of the terrarium.

  Heller knows what that extra snake at the back of the terrarium is doing there. He doesn’t know the details, but he knows the broad outline. It’s been liberated from the lab by Dolan. Maybe bred in the lab to increase its poisonousness. Its venom harvested. As Calloway said, it only takes being spread on the skin. Undetectable in this environment. Quick acting. Neurotoxic to an astonishing degree. After all, tiny doses of anthrax or botulinum or other customized chemical agents have the calculated capacity to kill a billion people in just hours. The kind of catastrophe McMurdo scientists have been so vividly imagining. It’s just as easy—easier—for Heller to imagine one person, a patch of skin, a valid neurotoxic experiment in the unique environment of low-temperature reaction, with its promise for pharmacology and anesthesiology, an experiment gone awry. Not controlled closely enough.

  And it occurs to him: McMurdo’s isolation, its thousand-mile perimeter of relative safety . . . wouldn’t it make sense that there are experiments going on here that can’t be done safely anywhere else? The private pharmaceutical companies, it was explained to him, contribute significantly to funding the station, and their competing projects are allowed to be “proprietary,” secret from one another. Hobbes never mentioned toxins or venom, maybe because it never even occurred to him, maybe because he didn’t even know, but maybe because “proprietary”—meaning secret—is part of the pharmaceutical companies’ operating agreements with McMurdo, so Hobbes is contractually prevented from discussing those experiments, and maybe there are several of these somewhat dangerous projects going on.

  The competitive, secretive nature of such experiments. He could see how competing groups would stay mum if a specimen or two went missing.

  Finding new treatments, new cures, but creating questionable by-products along the way.

  The good with the bad.

  Beauty and possibility, with danger and darkness.

  Antarctica in a nutshell, once again.

  This is what Calloway must have figured out. And this is what Dolan must have realized that Calloway had figured out.

  But just as big a mystery. And maybe, Heller thinks, a possible path, a possible solution lurking there . . .

  The relationship between Pritchard and Dolan.

  He’s taught me everything he knows, said Pritchard. He’s a genius. A Svengali? He saved your life. So it had seemed. But did he? Or was Dolan shaping that moment, as he has apparently shaped so many.

  He’s taught me everything he knows. Has he taught you incorrectly, Pritchard? On purpose? Provided you with knowledge that is actually ignorance, year after year? Used you as his tool, his toy? He’s a genius. Oh yes, definitely. But not merely the technical, radio-and-electronics genius you think. A different kind of genius. A deeper, more malign kind of genius.

  He saved your life. You think so, Pritchard? Like he has saved yours?

  Susceptibility to T3 is as variable as any other disease or propensity to disease. As variable as one thyroid to the next. Some people remain normal. Some have trouble. Some have extreme trouble. Pritchard’s headaches and absences. Does Pritchard suffer extremely? And isn’t that something that Dolan has come to know pretty well, after years of rooming with him? A T3 susceptibility that created an opportunity for Dolan? An opportunity every year of wintering-over. And perhaps an opportunity that he res
isted, and quelled within himself, burying it in his work, in his electronics expertise, until he couldn’t anymore. Until the murder of Lazo-Wasum.

  Or an opportunity that he was preparing, for years. Cultivating, carefully planning, enjoying all the preparation in some way. Until it was time to try it. Until the snake experiments had progressed far enough.

  An opportunity built for years. Until Pritchard is an instant, foolproof, complete alibi for everything. Because he doesn’t know any better. Because he’s been trained.

  And maybe there is an opportunity here. A little window. Because Pritchard has asked Heller not to say anything to Dolan about finding the snakes. A little window of communion with Pritchard?

  Heller wonders if he’s brought this on himself. If it is his presence alone, or the threat of his presence, by which Dolan (and Pritchard, cooperating with him, a dutiful, obedient, highly suggestible follower) hatched this unimaginable scheme.

  He can’t ask Dolan for the recordings. If he does, Dolan will know for certain there’s something telltale in them. Not knowing what exactly, he’ll know they reveal something, and destroy them.

  The closest proof of anything is the poisonous snake under Pritchard’s bunk. But even there, Pritchard, the self-admitted secret herpetologist, is the one who will be blamed. Dolan can shrug, say he knows nothing about snakes or venom.

  Both could easily be gone already, in the wake of Heller’s visit to the Comm Cave—the recording erased, the off-color snake gone from the terrarium. Even if he half believes Heller’s crazy-sounding tale of a faked recording and a poisonous snake, Hobbes would never take action on such flimsy evidence. Hobbes is a scientist; Hobbes abides by the rules; Hobbes will require more substantial proof. And if Hobbes were to act summarily, without further evidence, Manafort would act summarily against him.

  And most of all—Hobbes is no longer in control. Hobbes’s system—the system he represents—is no longer trusted, dominant, reliable. Do evidence, due process, proof even matter in this environment where all bets are off? Where everything is up for grabs? Dolan, trying to protect himself by temporarily shutting down outside communication, has created another world that even he could not have foreseen. But one that works to his direct advantage. A psychopath’s wet dream.

  And if Heller simply confronts Dolan, couldn’t that make it worse? Couldn’t the murder rate go up exponentially, for a sick pathology like Dolan’s to know that Heller is onto him, that his time is running out?

  Heller is running out of options.

  He finds himself weighing a very strange one that would never have occurred to him, but—in their increasingly unmoored present, their current situation—it seems surprisingly viable.

  Tell Dolan the truth.

  A convincing, motivating version of it, anyway.

  You’ve done such a good job, Dolan, you’ll never be convicted. No one will ever believe me.

  There’s no adequate justice system in place here, even if your crimes could be proven, which they can’t. The autopsies show nothing, and the radio and herpetology evidence is circumstantial at best, if you haven’t destroyed it already, and it could all be Pritchard anyway. You’re safe, Dolan. Maybe that’s something you already know, but as a law officer, I can confirm it for you. You’re safe, you bastard. You’re safe.

  And you’re going to be a lot safer, if you restore the comm towers. Because if you don’t, I’ll kill you myself, right now—knife, strangulation, suffocation, make it look like an accident. Nothing to it for a cop like me, believe me, and in our cutoff isolation, it’ll be easier than ever to pull off, so don’t choose that, Dolan. You’re way safer, safe from me at least, by restoring the comm towers.

  Make him fix the comm towers.

  Heller has the sense they will repair easily. A few switches flipped. No one would know what the problem had originally even been. Dolan can even look like a hero. More heroism for the guy who saved Heller out there.

  Of course, repairing the towers, without telling Hobbes or anyone else, involves going back into the cold.

  Going back into the cold with Dolan, again. A psychopath. A murderer. A maniac.

  The comm towers where Heller still doesn’t know for sure what occurred the first time.

  Maybe Pritchard—T3-suffering Pritchard—comes with them. Heller has to think about that. Where do Pritchard’s loyalties lie? How much has he been programmed? How much free will and moral judgment does he have left? Has he in fact been a silent, helpful partner in the murders, at Dolan’s beck and call? Heller doesn’t know.

  But Heller does know he saw a clue—the infantile, trembling, childish Pritchard. He taught me everything I know, says Pritchard. And Heller now has a sense of how deeply true that might be.

  It’s still confusing, still a dilemma.

  The faster he can get communication restored, the faster the escalating Manafort-Hobbes conflict can neutralize, melt away.

  But the faster he can get communication restored, the more quickly it might force Dolan to act again. His opportunity running out. Forcing him, encouraging him to go out with a blaze of glory? Cornered, trapped, with no other choice? Backed into a corner at the bottom of the world?

  It’s another “Catch,” isn’t it? Another “Catch” in a situation that’s piling them on.

  70.

  McMurdo, a scientific community, has no jail or holding cell.

  The closest thing is a sturdy locking room off the infirmary. (For those whose T3 symptoms are severe enough to risk harm to themselves or others.)

  Hobbes, Stanford, and Bramlett have demanded that William Pike, Cohen’s murderer, be kept there until they figure out what to do with him.

  Which Pike is willing to do. Remorseful, confused, shocked by his own impulses, his own actions, Heller can see. Keeping a constant eye on him is partly a suicide watch.

  But Manafort does not agree.

  He bursts in on a conference-room meeting, energized, surrounded by a sense of his own growing power.

  “Why should Pike be held like that?”

  “Because he killed a scientist in cold blood.”

  “But we don’t know what happened,” says Manafort.

  “He told us what happened,” says Hobbes. “An argument escalated.”

  “He was being taunted,” says Manafort. “His beliefs were being ridiculed. He had to do something.”

  In another setting, another context, Manafort’s statement would be simply outrageous. Crazy. You can’t kill someone over words. Over beliefs. But Heller senses that Manafort might have burst in, might be saying this to demonstrate something to Hobbes. To all of them. To show them how it is no longer crazy. To show them that this is the new world they are living in. The new logic, at Manafort’s command. To show how instantly, how thoroughly the world is changing before their eyes. Not the world-in-question to the north of them. The world of McMurdo.

  “You don’t kill someone over beliefs!” says Hobbes. And Heller hears, senses, the answer even before Manafort says it.

  “Yes, you do. All the time. That’s what we’ve always done. That’s what every war on our planet has been about.”

  “But . . . we have laws.”

  “Who says what laws we have? Maybe the laws are changing. Changing because we are changing.” Chin, chest, thrust forward, defiantly.

  And the unspoken issue rises between them again. That there are no laws. That there is no precedent. That the mainland was going to deal with all these issues, once Heller found the killer or killers and solved the case. But now they are on their own—or so Hobbes and Manafort think, at this charged moment.

  And if Heller suddenly tries to interject—if he suddenly says, No, the comm towers have been disabled, and can be reenabled, who’s going to believe him? Dolan and Prichard, the communications experts, will laugh. They’ll chalk it up to Heller’s inexperience with his own T3. Taking the common-enough form of paranoia and mild mania. His inability to control it. His understandable inability to handl
e the changed circumstance. The enormous unprecedented stress of it, for all of them. The horrifying fate of Heller’s special friend, Trish Wong. Affecting his mind. Affecting his judgment. Not to mention the dizziness and the serious fall Heller experienced in the cold a week ago. Further evidence of his struggle in this environment. After his fall, apparently still not thinking straight. The world to our north collapsing is the result of a trick from our radio experts? The world disappearing can be rectified—brought back to life—with the flip of a switch? Welcome to T3, Mr. Heller. Welcome to T3.

  “We might as well have Pike contributing,” says Manafort—as if reasonably. But in fact, challenging. “Helping out. Until we agree with each other on what to do. How to handle this. I mean, he’s not going anywhere.”

  But really, turning Pike into a hero for Manafort’s growing contingent, thinks Heller. To be celebrated. No consequences. A first example of no consequences. A precedent, he realizes. A symbolic victory for Manafort. And a kind of carte blanche for Dolan. Holy Christ.

  The rules and presumptions are changing. For Pike, for Dolan, for Manafort, for all of them.

  But they are changing for the lone law officer too.

  Because a whole other solution occurs to Heller. An option unprecedented in the annals of Heller’s career, in the annals of his thinking and his outlook.

  The option:

  To not say anything.

  Leave the communications down. Leave them disconnected.

  Giving him the chance to exercise his own brand of vigilante justice. Or just threaten Dolan with it.

  Frontier justice. When you have to create the justice yourself, because there’s no other way to do it. Make the judgments yourself. Prosecutor, judge, and jury. Efficient, shorthanded, shorthand law.

  A scenario that becomes more real when he is summoned to Hobbes’s office.

  “The system is breaking down,” says Hobbes, glumly. “I pretend it’s not, I say it’s not publicly, I project confidence, but I know . . . I’m not blind . . . the system is breaking down. I feel at fault on that.”