‘
Oh merci, merci
,’ Laure sobbed.
Alice jumped on a chair. She chopped a bigger hole in the glass and then padded the jagged shards with the nearest clothes that came to hand. Now that they were about to escape the smoke and the flames, she was already aware of the intense cold waiting outside. ‘Throw everything out. Anything warm.’
A cascade of blankets and clothes and towels rained
down on the snow, followed by a shower of boots and shoes.
‘
Vite, vite
,’ Laure gabbled.
There was no time to rescue anything else. They perched on the chair together, and Alice held on to Laure’s shoulders as she squirmed over the padded glass and dropped the few feet to the ground. It was lucky that the rocks were blanketed with thick snow. Alice swung her legs over the padding and launched herself forward. She felt a sharp scrape along her arm as she fell and a jarring crack as she hit the ground. Laure put an arm round what had once been her waist and helped her to her feet. Above their heads, dense billows of black smoke poured out of their bunk-room window. Louder than the wind, they could hear the greedy crackling of flames.
Already shivering, they picked up boots and pulled them on over their snowy socks, then fought their way into as many layers of clothing as they could pile on. Alice had no gloves and when she glanced down at her fingers she saw that there were black tributaries of blood running down her left wrist. She enveloped her hands within her sleeves and ran in Laure’s wake round the corner of the hut.
Flames were dancing out of the hut door and as they stopped in their tracks to gaze in horror, the front windows blew out in the heat. A corner of the roof curled up like a stale sandwich and a fat column of fire escaped and leaped towards the sky. Sparks showered down around them and they had to stumble backwards as red diamonds of flame spat and died at their feet.
There were other figures, stumbling through the snow and waving their arms. Their shouts were swallowed by the roar of the fire.
Alice counted. Four…five. Where were the others?
Black smoke clouds were driven low over the base, fanned
by the stiff wind. Flames roared out of the eyes and mouth of the hut, horizontal tongues licking towards the wooden walls of Margaret Mather House.
Only five of the men. Even with their hoods up the shapes and sizes of all her companions were so familiar to Alice that she didn’t even have to think, she knew at once that it was Richard and Rooker who were missing.
She turned in a full circle. ‘Rook?’ she screamed.
No one could hear. Russell plunged past her with Phil at his shoulder. A glance flashed backwards showed her that a flower of fire was blooming round the nearest window of the lab hut. Laure was dragging on her arm, trying to pull her back, but she broke free and ran forward. The narrow neck of ground between the two huts was engulfed by a wall of flame as the dry wood of the second structure caught in several places. There was no question of passing that way. She ran counter-clockwise, back in the direction she and Laure had come, to circumnavigate the inferno of the main hut. On the far side, furthest from the point where the blaze must have started, was the window of the scientists’ bunk room. Smoke poured out but she couldn’t see any flames. Alice ran forward and jumped to the nearest rocks. There were two heads at the window, still inside the hut but at least they were there.
‘Rooker,’ she yelled. ‘Get out.’
It looked as if they were fighting. Richard’s arms were raised, Rooker’s were locked round him. They lurched and banged against the interior walls.
Alice lunged forward and hoisted herself so that she was leaning into the room through the broken window with her legs dangling. The wood of the sill felt hot under her hands. ‘Climb out,’ she screamed.
Rook was dragging Richard towards the window and the clearer air but Richard was pulling away. His head was
down and he writhed like an animal being dragged to slaughter.
‘
Richard
.’
Somehow, through the din, the sound of her voice registered on him. He swung his head in her direction and she saw the whites of his eyes, shocking in his smoke-blackened face.
The door of the bunk room dissolved in a blast of heat. A pall of smoke swept at them with a rectangle of fire at its heart. Richard gave a rending cry but he could only retreat from the blistering heat. The two men flung themselves at the window, their arms up to shield their faces. Alice dropped to the ground and as she rolled aside Richard thudded down, pushed out of the window by Rooker. An instant later Rooker himself landed beside them. Richard hauled himself to his hands and knees and hung his head, panting like a dog.
Rooker was already on his feet. ‘Move,’ he ordered.
They were up and running, all three of them, out into the snow away from the fire. Flames forked through the window from which they had just escaped. There was an indrawn breath, an instant of silence when the air pressure seemed to lessen and the world hung motionless. Then there was an explosion that hurt their ears. The entire long side of the main hut blew out. For a second or two the familiar outlines of the interior – the metal-topped kitchen table, the wall cupboards, the door frames – stood out against the molten orange like shadows in a developing photograph. Then the fire wiped them out. The hut and everything in it was finished.
Richard and Rooker and Alice stopped running. They halted in the calf-deep snow and watched as the last roof supports frayed and collapsed inwards.
Richard gave another cry. ‘The gastropod,’ he said.
Alice licked her lips but her throat was heat-parched and sore with shouting, and she couldn’t speak. A fossil? A
fossil
didn’t matter.
She turned to Rook. He didn’t move. His eyes were starting and his lips were drawn back from his teeth. He looked as if he was seeing a ghost.
The lab hut was properly on fire now too. Three figures were darting around it, aiming the jets of fire extinguishers at the blaze. Slowly, Rooker collected himself. He dragged a black hand over his sooty face and began to walk. He took long, unsteady strides, as if he were wading through water, towards the second fire. Alice moved to follow him but Richard dragged at her arm.
‘It was in my locker,’ he groaned. ‘In
there
.’
Alice found her voice. ‘I don’t care. I care about…living things.’
She brushed off his hand and stumbled after Rook. But in the fear and heat and confusion, the crazy essence of this exchange shone at her like a blade of white light. It was people who were important, these dark stumbling victims of the fire and the others she loved who were asleep at home. Science didn’t matter. History didn’t matter. For all she cared, knowledge could vanish into swirling oblivion to save just
one
familiar and beloved face.
Suddenly she thought of Peter. She could remember him saying almost the same thing to her when they first met. ‘What would you rather have, love or the theory of relativity? The human gene code mapped or one life saved that’s precious to you?’ Shocked by his lack of gravitas, she had claimed science every time. As he had known she would.
Breath snagged in her burning chest and something close to a sob rose in her throat. The white light went out as suddenly as it had come on. Alice shook her head and struggled through the snow to where the others were huddling
upwind of the lab hut. Laure held out her arms and they clung to each other for comfort. For the first time in weeks Alice didn’t try to hold her body apart. They were all together in this, whatever came; keeping her secret wasn’t important any longer.
The extinguishers had temporarily contained the blaze, but the wind and the tinder dryness of the wooden construction were against them. Sparks flew and were fanned into little red blossoms that darted petals of flame. They needed water, but for all the snow and ice that surrounded them there was none to be had. Niki broke away from the group. He ran to the rear of the lab hut and smashed the back window, then hauled himself inside. Everyone knew that he was going for the radio equipment. Without radio contact they were truly stranded. Phil darted after him.
‘The pipeline,’ Russell shouted.
The base water supply came via insulated piping from an as-yet unfrozen glacier lake high up the hill behind the huts. Russell and Rooker immediately began ransacking the generator hut for anything that would hold water while Arturo and Valentin dug frantically in the snow to uncover the buried piping. Richard fell to his knees beside them and hauled with his bare hands at loose rocks. The flames from the huts lit up the snow with lurid splashes of orange and crimson, and the smoky shadows of the diggers stretched away into the darkness.
The piping was disinterred and taken apart, and water trickled out. Seconds later they had formed a chain. Buckets and jerrycans and old paint tins were filled and thrust from hand to hand. Spilled water soaked their arms and feet, and froze in the wind. Their clothes turned stiff and their hands were numb. The volume of water reaching the eager flames was pitifully small. Each bucketful doused the flicker for an
instant, then the flames re-emerged there and elsewhere, always bigger and greedier.
They worked like machines. Nobody spoke. In a pall of smoke Niki and Phil dragged and hauled metal boxes with trailing festoons of flex from the broken window and ran with them to the safety of the generator hut.
At first it seemed that the fire was steadily gaining on them. The front wall of the hut was a mass of flames and Margaret’s brass name plaque fell inwards and vanished as its section of wooden planking collapsed. The lab room was full of curling smoke, and the reek of flaring chemicals and melting plastic made them choke and gag. Then slowly it became apparent that they were holding their own. There were no more little tongues of fresh flame and the hissing smoke turned black. Alice looked round once from the water chain and realised that they were only winning the battle because the wind had dropped.
‘Keep at it,’ Rooker yelled back up the line.
They worked grimly for another half-hour. Without the wind blowing sparks and fingers of fire across from the main hut, it seemed that the shell and the back half of the lab hut were safe. The procession of brimming receptacles going one way and the empty ones passing back slowed, then came to a halt. They stood in silence, soaked and shivering, and looked around them.
The wreckage of the main hut was still burning, but with a less ferocious appetite. The snow all around it was blackened, littered with charred embers and the belongings that had been salvaged and thrown clear of the blaze. Margaret Mather House loomed in a wreath of smoke, half destroyed. A few snowflakes lazily descended.
Richard stood with an empty bucket hanging in one hand. Niki trudged past him with the radio-room manuals clasped in his arms. Alice searched for Rook. He was staring into
the smouldering core of the old hut with horror in his eyes. A stab of cold prompted her to look down at her hands. They were stiff white claws and the left one was caked with black dried blood. As she gazed at it a dribble of fresh blood ran down from her sleeve.
The others stood in exhausted silence too, gazing at the devastation.
The blood dripped from Alice’s fingertips and pocked the snow. ‘We should try to get under cover,’ she said. The thinness of her voice and the inadequacy of the suggestion surprised her, but still everyone started moving obediently.
They gathered up the scattered clothing and equipment salvaged from the two huts, and carried armfuls up to the generator hut. It was plain that there wasn’t going to be enough room for everyone because the field supplies and camp equipment were also stored there. The only other intact structure was the new skidoo shelter, so Phil drove the skidoos out and they ducked inside. They squeezed together in a double row and sank down with their backs to the sloping walls. Russell lit a tilley lamp and suspended it from the roof. It shone on blackened faces, frozen or soaking ruined clothing, feet in a mixture of boots and shoes and even hut slippers. They huddled together, shivering, waiting to see if Richard would assume the leadership.
Richard raised his head. He said in a flat voice, ‘Niki? Can we make radio contact?’
‘I don’t yet know. I must have daylight.’
The antennae that had cross-hatched the sky were lying in a tangle over the ruins.
Richard continued his muttering. ‘Making contact with Santa Ana is the first priority. Until then, shelter, warmth, hot drinks, food.’
‘There’s the field supplies and Primus stoves,’ Russell offered.
‘All right. Yes. We’ll use those. And we’ll wait until daylight.’
It was as if, Alice thought, just as if none of this night’s events had come as a surprise to him.
Dismay rushed down her spine.
It must have been Richard who had started the fire, accidentally or otherwise.
He had been lighting candles again, trying with his distorted logic to conserve fuel. What was Richard Shoesmith thinking? That this was what Antarctica did – it drove you to the edge of the ability to survive and then cruelly tipped you over?
Gregory Shoesmith had survived, just. Captain Scott and his companions had not. Was there some streak of fatalism buried in Richard that had drawn him to the point of disaster, so they now found themselves crouched in a tin shed, without heat or fresh food, without radio contact, with the frozen sea trapping them and winter closing in?
Perhaps Richard’s present blank resignation was born out of some conviction – possibly intention – that this is exactly what
would
happen, even to twenty-first-century scientists who had the support and backing of one of the world’s media moguls. Was this the catastrophe that he thought he owed to his history?
Anger surged through Alice. It heated up her blood and brought sensation stinging and burning back to her frozen fingertips. It might be Richard’s history but it wasn’t hers and it wasn’t going to touch her.
Never
.
‘Why are we just
sitting
here? We’ve got gas and food.’ She began to scramble to her feet.