Frozen Solid: A Novel (27 page)

“We discussed the situation.”

“And?” Merritt asked. Before Gerrin could continue, there was a knock. “Who is it?” Merritt called.

“Hallie Leland. I need to talk to you. I tried your office, figured you would be here.” Merritt heard her try the locked door.

“Can this wait until the morning. I just got to sleep.”

“I think we should talk now.”

Merritt mouthed a silent curse, then whispered into the phone, “Make it quick. Someone’s at my door.”

Gerrin didn’t need much time for what he had to say.

She let Hallie in. “Are you catching something? You’re starting to
look like the rest of us,” Merritt said. She had thrown a robe over her red long johns.

“Maybe the dreaded Pole cold. I’ll be okay.” She explained how she had obtained material from the women in the morgue and was culturing it in her lab.

Merritt flushed. “You didn’t notify me.”

“I didn’t want to put you on the spot.”

“So you’re running standard biochemical screens?”

“Yes.” Hallie explained the tests she’d set up. “Can you think of anything I missed?”

“Microbiology isn’t my field. How soon will we have results?”

“Tomorrow is my best guess. Is the winterover flyout happening?”

“Not unless the temperature goes up by about twenty degrees.”

“Is that likely?”

“It’s a weird time of year here, very unstable atmospheric conditions. So it could happen. I’d say fifty-fifty.”

“But there’s something else. Two things, actually.”

“What?”

“Vishnu’s dead.”

Setting up the biochemical tests had not been complicated. They were the kinds of things she had first done as an undergraduate in the microbio labs. The procedure was exacting and required strict attention, though. It also required biosecurity gear—such as it was here at the South Pole. Hooded Tyvek suit, booties, mask. And, though she would be working in a biosecure “glove box” made of quarter-inch, high-impact acrylic plastic, she put on surgical gloves as well.

It had required almost two hours of delicate and tedious work: inoculating a series of oxidase test slides, Enterotubes, and Oxi/Ferm tubes, securing them in incubators. She had discarded her security gear in biohazard containers, then ventilated and sterilized the lab.

Before leaving, she had gone to the freezer to check on the Vishnu sample. It had not grown since her last viewing. In fact, it looked dull brown and mushy, like a rotten apple.

“What the hell?” she had said. “Gods aren’t supposed to die.”

“Same thing that happened before,” Merritt said. “You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“Done deal, then,” Merritt said, glancing at her sideways. “What a shame.”

“We have to get some more.”

Merritt looked up. “What?”

“I’ll dive again.”

“Is that a good idea? Not feeling well? And after what happened last time?”

Don’t dive sick:
it was one of the first contraindications beginners learned. But that was under normal circumstances. Hallie waved Merritt’s concern off.

“I’ve done worse. And this is too important. I’ll use one of the station’s dry suits, and we will leak-test the hell out of it first. Do you think we could get Guillotte down to the dive shed at around four?”

“You’re sure about this?”

“This thing could have unimaginable potential. You know what Emily and Fida learned. There’s nothing more we can do with the bacterial cultures right now.”

“You’re right. Okay, go do what you need to—eat, drink, rest, whatever. I’ll collect Guillotte, and we’ll meet you in the shed at four.”

“I’ll be there.” Hallie could see that Merritt assumed they were through. “There’s something else I need to talk to you about.”

Merritt’s eyes narrowed. Hallie could hear her thinking,
What now?

“It’s about Maynard Blaine.”

“Did that peabrain hit on you again?”

“No. But I made him tell me about Triage.”

Funny, Hallie thought. She looks like Blaine did when I told
him
. Merritt’s shock quickly changed to confusion. “About what?”

She recounted what she had learned from Blaine. “Did you know anything about this secret research he claimed to be doing?”

“Nothing.” Merritt was rubbing her hands as if trying to get something sticky off them. “NSF should
never
have done that without telling me. Damn them. Damn
him
. Blaine lied to my face.”

“Seems to have a knack. He lied to me, too,” Hallie said. “And probably to Emily.”

Merritt looked disgusted. “The bastard. I’ll try to sort this out. Maybe we’ll get comms back up. You can rest a bit. Sound good?”

“The rest part does,” Hallie said. “But there’s one more thing you need to know.”

“
LELAND TOOK BIOSAMPLES FROM THE BODIES IN THE MORGUE
. She’s culturing them in her lab now.”

Merritt had called the others to her office. Guillotte had not come yet, but Blaine and Doc were there.

“Oh God,” Doc said. “It feels like things are coming apart.”

“It feels like
you’re
coming apart,” Blaine said.

“If she gets viable colonies, and figures out what it is, we’re finished.” Doc put his face in his hands.

“That’s not the worst of it,” Merritt said. “She knows that Durant was killed.”

“What?”
the other two screeched in unison. “How could she know that?”

Merritt explained about the surveillance camera.

“God
damn
,” Blaine said. “Why would she have put a camera there?”

Merritt frowned at such a stupid question. “Simple. She felt afraid. Wanted to know if anybody came into her room while she wasn’t there.” Merritt looked directly at Blaine. “Thanks to you.”

“You fucking
idiot
,” Doc blurted. “This is all your fault.”

“It is very important to keep calm,” Merritt said.

“You didn’t put Triage in those women.” Doc’s chin was quivering.

“I am not going to sneak back into that lab again,” Blaine said. “They might have put a camera in there, too. Maybe Guillotte will do it, but I won’t.”

“I said to relax. You won’t have to.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s going to dive again.”

“Why would she do that?” Blaine asked. The answer dawned on him before Merritt replied. “That’s why you wanted me to kill the extremophile.”

“Insurance,” Merritt said. “Just in case.”

“What did you do?” Doc asked.

Blaine explained about the chlorine.

“It worked,” Merritt said. “She
insisted
on diving. I didn’t even have to bring it up.”

“Her last dive?” Blaine said.

“If Guillotte and I have anything to say about it.” Merritt nodded.

Doc frowned. “I’m not sure I like the diving accident. They could—”

“It’s perfect. Diving accidents happen all the time,” Merritt said. “And in a place like this …”

“That freezing, hypersaline water will preserve her body better than embalming. They’ll find—”

“Do you know how deep that thing is? Thousands of feet. They won’t find anything.”

“She works for an agency of the U.S. government,” Doc said. “There will be an investigation and—”

Merritt cut him off: “There is
always
an investigation. They never care what actually happened. It’s about covering asses. Making sure it was somebody else’s fault. This is
government
we’re talking about.”

“But are we really sure this is the best course? With three recent—”

“Even better.
We
write the accident report. Everybody was sick. Maybe it got her while she was underwater. She was tired and disoriented.
I counseled against diving. She insisted. All we know is that she never resurfaced.”

“Where is Guillotte?” Blaine asked.

“I told him to be here,” Merritt said. “You know how he is.”

“Did you talk to Gerrin?” Doc asked.

“Yes.”

“What did he say? About Triage, I mean?”

“They don’t think Triage had anything to do with the women’s deaths. We’re to go ahead as planned. So really, it’s finished. As soon as we get a weather window, those women fly out.”

“And the rest is history,” Blaine said.

“Amen,” Merritt said.

THE MOUTH OF THE ENTRANCE SHAFT WAS A ROUND HOLE IN THE
ice four feet in diameter. As Blaine had told her, it was hidden behind a maintenance shed a quarter mile from the station.

Under the plywood cover, a six-by-six wooden post lay across the top of the hole, its ends resting in slots cut into the ice. Bolted to the six-by-six was a cable ladder with round metal rungs that dropped into darkness. Cavers and climbers had used similar ladders in the old days, before rappelling and vertical gear changed everything. Like those, the rungs on this ladder were only a foot wide. And slick.

She glanced at the parka thermometer: seventy degrees below zero. There were no southern lights just now, only stars pitting the black sky. The cold was already seeping through her clothing, sneaking past thin spots of insulation. Tiny exposed places on her face burned. Fire and ice, she thought. At some point, they feel the same.

She started down. It had been some time since she’d used a ladder like this. The metal rungs were icy, and she’d never had to descend one wearing seven layers of clothing. Worst of all were the huge bunny boots. The rungs were so narrow that she could place only the toes on them, which meant that she had to keep her calf muscles
tensed to prevent her feet from slipping off. By the time she reached the bottom, both legs were jigging up and down in the spasms climbers called “sewing machine legs.”

She stepped from the ladder onto the bottom of a rectangular corridor that, as she played her light beam around, reminded her of an abandoned mine shaft. The walls were sheets of thick plywood, now bulging in from the crushing pressure of ice and snow. The ceiling was more plywood, supported every four feet by massive vertical timbers and horizontal crossbeams. Even so, some of the crossbeams had cracked, and seams of ice showed through splits in the plywood sheets.

Because no one had ever lived at the South Pole before 1957, no one had known what the weather would be like. The first crew constructed most of the original station underground, leaving five feet of ice on top. The walls and ceilings had been shored up, mine-style, with timbers. When the place had originally been built, everything must have been plumb and square. Now there was not a plumb line or square angle to be seen, giving the place a tilting, twisting fun-house look. It smelled of old wood and diesel oil and decay.

Cave-in debris blocked half the passage to her left, so she went right, into an open corridor. After a hundred feet that led into a room that must have been the galley—red picnic tables with benches, sagging cabinets, sinks. On the tables sat bowls of cereal as they had been left half a century earlier, no mold growing here, empty beer cans and mugs, some with coffee frozen solid, overflowing ashtrays.

Either they got out of this place in one hell of a hurry, she thought, or they didn’t bother to clean up after their last day. Probably the latter. She was about to continue through a door on the galley’s opposite side when a cracking noise stopped her. She remained absolutely still, not even breathing, listening. No more noises, but she knew that the entire complex was unstable. The beams and timbers were huge, two feet on a side, but a major shift in all that ice above could snap them like twigs. Not a place to linger.

Thirty feet past the galley she came to a T intersection. Turned right, moved on carefully, the floor here littered with rusting cables,
lumber, scrap metal. Came to what had been an entrance on her right, the frame all askew now, door hanging from one set of hinges. Painted in black:

Like Columbus claiming everything he could see, and all he could not, for the queen, she thought. South Pole, Antarctica, USA. Different times. She wrenched the door back and shone her light into the room. Two gray metal file cabinets, an overturned chair, and a massive old metal desk like the one in Graeter’s office in the station.

Fida lay on top of the desk, naked, curled into a fetal position. His eyes were open, dulled by the gray haze of death. One arm lay underneath him. The other was stretched straight out, fingers spread wide, as if trying to snatch something out of the air. Areas of his skin glistened: body moisture that had frozen and was reflecting her light. Sweat? From a struggle? So thin, she saw, skin over knobs and ridges of bone. His ECW gear, underclothing, and boots lay in a pile on the floor beside the desk.

She ran her light over the room’s ceiling. None of the crossbeams had split, but all had unsettling downward curves. Didn’t matter. She needed to get closer. She walked in, stood beside the body, started to look for wounds or signs of trauma. Saw nothing obvious at first, but then, peeking from beneath Fida’s head, a small, reddish-black circle. Blood? She bent to look.

A sharp noise from the dark passageway behind her, then a sound like giant hands clapping, ice cracking, timbers shattering. One second of dead silence, and the ceiling collapsed. Her last thought was that it sounded like the avalanche on Denali just before it hit.

GERRIN PULLED INTO HIS GARAGE, WAITED FOR THE AUTOMATIC
door to close, and sat. He turned on the dome light and angled the rearview mirror toward himself so that he could look into his own eyes. It had been a difficult couple of days. First the call from Barnard, later meeting with him. Then the call from Merritt. The videoconference with Kendall and Belleveau. Finally, the sat call back to Merritt. She wasn’t a problem. Merritt was a zealot, driven by resentment that had festered for years. He understood her: damned barren by pure chance, unable to fathom why others should not suffer the same fate, especially if her conscience could be salved by thinking some good thing might result.

So the Pole’s women would fly like sparks to every corner of the world, and Triage would burn like wildfire through the globe’s breeding stock. Or, more properly, like smallpox. There would be the same exponential growth. And there would be pain, but at least it would visit all equally. He took comfort from the fact that Triage had no bias, made no choices, assumed nothing. Only a microbe, it would work just as effectively on the Upper East Side and Rodeo Drive as it would in Lagos and Dhaka and New Delhi.