Frozen Solid: A Novel (32 page)

He knew that the bladder, manufactured by a company called Aero Tec, wasn’t really made of rubber. Its core was multilayered Kevlar, the material that gave body armor its stopping power. That,
in turn, was coated with layers of industrial-grade polyurethane. Viewing a demonstration, Guillotte had seen technical advisers attack a water-filled bladder just like this one with axes and knives. They’d succeeded only in tiring themselves out.

He did not know, but strongly suspected, that the bladder was not designed to withstand magnesium flares burning at about three thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

There was no point in trying to run. Injured and encumbered by the boots, he would not be able to get far enough away to survive the explosion of two thousand gallons of gasoline. He looked at the station, still distant, unreachable by him or the blast. He looked up at the black dome filled with dead stars. The southern lights had vanished. He tried to recall when he had last seen the sun, but couldn’t remember.

Then it was as if he had fallen into it.

As soon as Hallie lofted the last flare, Graeter drove them back toward the station at full throttle. The ice was not smooth, like Bonneville’s salt flats, but corrugated with sastrugi. Traveling fifty miles per hour, Hallie had to use all her strength to stay aboard, but she figured Graeter had looked at the death options—fire or ice—and decided to take his chances with the latter.

The explosion’s roar was loud enough to be heard even over the engine’s scream. Neither of them turned around, so they didn’t see it begin as a tight, white ball that bloomed into roiling fire, black and red and orange and yellow, billowing outward in great whorls and blossoms, as though trying to burn up the darkness.

She did feel the heat on her back, like standing close to a huge bonfire. She glanced around then, understood that they were safe, tapped Graeter’s shoulder. He slowed, turned, stopped. It took some time for two thousand gallons of gasoline to explode, so there was still plenty to see. A fist of heat hit her chest and face, and the flames kept churning and rising, and she thought how strange it was to see ice on fire.

DOC WAS IN THE GALLEY WHEN THE BLADDER EXPLODED AND YELLOW
fire filled every window. The light was so bright that even with his glasses on he had to squeeze his eyes against the sudden pain. The blast wave rolled over the station a second later, and the whole structure wavered. The thick stilts, designed to protect against snow burial, allowed the energy surge to pass like wind flowing around a wing.

Doc didn’t know exactly what was happening, but given everything else that had transpired recently, he sensed threat deep in his gut. He turned away from the window and headed for his office.

HALLIE HALTED AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE LABORATORIES ON LEVEL
1 with Graeter, Lowry, and Grenier behind her. All four were wearing hooded white Tyvek suits, gloves, booties. Surgical masks were pulled down below their chins, ready for use.

“I don’t expect Blaine to fight,” Graeter said. “But I haven’t done this before, either, so …”

“I used to be a cop. Wanna know how we did it?” Grenier said.

“Goddamned right,” Graeter said.

“We go in, me and Lowry on one side, you and Doc Leland on the other. If the door opens in, the one closest to it works the knob and shoves. If it opens out, the one on the far side reaches across and swings it open and back. They have to step around it, but no avoiding that. Everybody’s flat against the wall this whole time. That’s in case anybody in there’s thinking about shooting his way out.”

“Here?” Graeter said. “Blaine? You really think so?”

“You wouldn’t believe what I seen comin’ through some doors, Mr. Graeter. Better safe than sorry.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah. Soon as he’s in sight, take him down. Don’t hesitate a second,
and don’t worry about hurtin’ him. Me and you will put him on his face, Mr. Graeter. Just grab an arm and kick his leg out from under him. I’ll be doing the same thing on the other side. Ben, you put a knee on his neck until we get the poly plastic cuffs on him. Sound okay?”

“Just like
Law and Order
,” the big scientist said.

“No,” Grenier said. “That’s bullshit. This is for real.” He looked at the others. “Ready?”

“One last thing,” Graeter said. “Hallie, don’t worry about Blaine. You secure the lab and everything in it—computers, instruments, God knows what else. Good?”

“Good.”

“Let’s roll,” Graeter said. They put their surgical masks in place. He went first, followed by Grenier, Lowry, and Hallie. They passed into the main laboratory corridor, walked almost its full length, and stopped at the outer door to Blaine’s lab. Graeter tried the door. It was locked. He used his master key, stepped to one side, opened the door.

Every laboratory had a small outer office with two desks, file cabinets, computers, and bookshelves. Lowry and Grenier squeezed against the wall to the left of the inner door, which opened outward, left to right. Hallie and Graeter did the same on the other side. Graeter tried the knob and it turned. He looked at Grenier with raised eyebrows. The other man nodded, reached across, turned the knob, and yanked the door open.

Graeter lunged forward. Hallie was right behind him. The hell with hanging back. She saw it an instant before he did.

“Stop!”

She grabbed his shoulders, hauled him out, and slammed the door shut.

Lowry and Grenier had caught their own glimpses. Neither a career in science nor one in law enforcement had prepared either for what they had seen, judging from the looks on their faces.

“Jesus Christ,” Grenier said. “What the hell happened to him?”

Blaine lay on the floor, faceup, to the left of the room-length lab
bench, six feet from the doorway. He was dressed, so only his head and hands were visible. The flesh they could see was shriveled and desiccated. His face, collapsed in on itself, resembled a giant raisin. The rest of him looked as though his bones had dissolved inside his body. His limbs and torso had shrunk, so that he appeared to be wearing clothes much too big for him. Tendrils of orange matter emerged from his ears, nostrils, mouth, and eye sockets. The stench was indescribable.

Instead of answering, Hallie rifled through the office until she found a roll of duct tape. She used it to seal the spaces between the door and jamb all the way around.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said.

She used tape to seal the outer door as well. Back in the corridor, the men stood staring at her, waiting for an explanation.

“Here’s what I think,” Hallie said. “I found the extremophile dead in my lab. I would bet that he did something that brought him into direct contact with it. The thing metabolizes carbon dioxide. It might consume carbon in any form. Our bodies are about twenty percent carbon. It could have colonized his and metabolized its carbon content. If we cut him open now, we might find him full of that orange biomatter.”

“I seen a lot on the street,” Grenier said. “But never nothin’ like that.”

“Bad things happen when you mess with a god,” Hallie said.

“
YOU REDECORATED,
”
HALLIE SAID
.

There was a chair in front of Graeter’s desk, and the walls looked different, cleaner. He glanced at his watch—his one watch. “There’s some time before flyout,” he said. “I need to make sure I understand what happened before you go. So many different pieces. Some I still don’t get. This report is going to be a real royal bitch.”

Saturday had passed without a weather window for flying. Today, Sunday, the temperature had risen to minus fifty-six and was supposed to stay in that range for eight hours. Between his administrative work and her sleeping, this was the first time they’d been able to spend time together. Graeter handed Hallie a mug of black coffee, poured from a brewer he had placed on a table that had appeared behind his desk. She sipped, grimaced.

“Navy coffee,” Graeter chuckled. “Cures all ills.”

“Probably melts spoons, too. How did it go with Doc?” she asked.

“The idea of life surrounded by psychopaths in a supermax where bright lights burn twenty-four/seven terrified him. He spilled a lot of beans, but here’s the gist: he, Merritt, Blaine, and Guillotte were working for an international group called Triage. From what I can
gather, these are not card-carrying members of the lunatic fringe. They’re legitimate scientists from around the world. We’ll probably never get all of them. But three guys were at the top. One was David Gerrin. Mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“It did to me. He’s director of the Office of Antarctic Programs at NSF, no less. You said Merritt told you what they were planning to do.”

“They wanted to ‘save the planet’—her term—using an engineered pathogen to sterilize millions of women without their knowledge or consent,” Hallie said. “The last group of female Polies flying out were going to be their disease vectors. Doc infected them here over the last week or so. Before winterover, they would fly out to countries all over the world. It would spread exponentially, like any cold virus. But the streptococcus bacteria had been engineered to seek and modify ovarian cells.”

“They could do that?”

“Sure. The genetic engineering would have been challenging, but definitely possible. Twenty years ago they were joining genes from flounders and tomatoes to keep them from freezing, after all. The science has come a long way since then.”

“And Emily Durant was killed because of what she learned about Triage from Blaine?” Graeter asked.

“Yes. On the video log she said that she had asked both Merritt and Doc if they knew anything about Triage. Blaine was already aware of what she knew. One would probably have been enough. Three sealed her fate.”

“Tell me again what got
you
here?”

“They couldn’t just haul in any old scientist. That might have looked suspicious, especially on such short notice. They needed a female from North America. The fact that I matched Em’s qualifications and could get here fast sealed the deal.”

“Fida was killed because they were afraid Emily had told him about Triage, too,” he said.

“Right.”

“That still leaves Lanahan and Montalban and Bacon.”

“Merritt said no one was supposed to die. I can believe that. But there are always unintended consequences. Did Doc give up the other two?”

“Ian Kendall is a Brit. Retired now, but worked with Crick, the DNA guy. Jean-Claude Belleveau is a doctor in New Delhi.”

“That’s incredible,” she said. “I mean, I believe you. But men like those doing something like this? I just can’t understand it.”

“You know as well as I do that things are going to hell here. And I don’t mean Pole.”

“Earth.”

“Right. There are an awful lot of people out there sick to death of governments fucking up or doing nothing.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

“So some capable people taking it on themselves—doesn’t surprise me that much. I would bet good money there are more out there.”

“It’s scary when you think how close they came.”

He picked up his mug, put it down again, looked at her. “Listen, I need to say this: if you hadn’t kept digging about Durant’s death, those infected women would probably have been on the plane out of here today.”

“You’d have figured things out and stopped them.”

“Maybe. I’d like to think so, anyway. But honestly, I’m not sure.”

She didn’t argue. Time would pass, and he would see the truth. Better to let him find it himself. But his mention of the women reminded her of something.

“I understand that the standard rapid strep test worked on this strain, so we know which women are carrying the infection. But I got busy packing and lost track after that. What’s the situation now?”

“The women have to stay at Pole until they’re not contagious. One month, minimum. That does mean they’ll be here for winterover. Not an easy thing, but no way to avoid it.”

“So are all those women going to end up sterile?”

“No. The bad news was that everybody got sick,” he said. “But the good news is that to test for the Krauss gene, you only need a
cheek swab. Seven out of thirty-six carried the gene. And as you already know, you were not one.”

“Just luck of the draw,” Hallie said. “But a close call.”

“Speaking of those, did you find out how they sabotaged your dry suit?”

“They didn’t. The suit’s knees were reinforced with carbon-fiber patches. I think that extremophile was metabolizing them.” She reflected for a moment. “Damned good thing Emily didn’t have that style suit, come to think of it.”

“Why didn’t it start metabolizing you? Like Blaine?”

“Nothing known can survive in pure argon gas.”

“So that thing won’t be saving the earth.”

“Afraid not.” She sipped coffee. “What happened to the picture on your wall?”

“She was living in my head rent-free. I moved her out.”

“How’s that feel?”

“Like cool water in a desert.”

“What about them?” The young sailors’ framed photos were no longer on his desk.