Frozen Solid: A Novel (7 page)

“Not that kind.”

Blaine’s smirk faded, his shoulders sagged.

“Friends?”

He sighed. “A friend indeed leaves a man in need.” But he shook her outstretched hand, and once again she had to pull free. “Holly,” he said. “A thorn by any other name is just as sharp.”

“Hallie.”

“What’s your field?”

“Microbiology. What’s yours?”

“Genetic virology.”

She decided that a serious insult to speed his departure might not be wise on the morning of her first full day here. It was entirely possible
that he had killed Emily. Or knew who did. Be smart, be civil, try to learn something.

“What science are you doing down here, Maynard?”

“Do we have to talk shop?”

“I’m sure your friends would enjoy having you back.”

“Picornaviruses.”

“Mostly common cold pathogens.”

“Right.”

“Using human subjects?” she asked.

“Do I look like Josef Mengele? Mice.”

“What strain?”

He seemed surprised by the question. “Um, BALB/c. Why do you ask?”

“I work with mice, too, back in the world. I like to keep abreast of the matches between strains and applications.” In fact, she was very current on the optimal mice strains for picornavirus research because work conjoining those viruses and bacteria was hot right now. BALB/c was not one of them. Why in God’s name would anybody lie about such a thing? Maybe he wasn’t lying—just wrong. Or maybe those were the only mice he could get down here. Before she could ask, he said, “So you’ll be doing time with Fido.”

Curiosity overcame her dislike of talking about absent people. “Why do you say it like that?”

“Fido is one crispy critter.”

“As in burned out?”

“He hasn’t been playing with a full deck for some time. And Emily’s death knocked him for a loop.”

Whoa, she thought. I’m wasting a golden opportunity. “Since we’re friends now, can I ask you something?” she asked.

“I guess.”

“Do you know how Emily died?”

His face did that thing again. He lowered his voice. “Through the grapevine—overdose.” His voice became more distant, and he glanced back at his table.

So the killer’s ruse was working. Assuming this man wasn’t the killer, she thought.

“Wasn’t there an investigation?”

“You’re barking up the wrong Beaker.”

She had noted by then that his speech consisted largely of trite idioms. “What do you mean?”

“Merritt found the body.”

Before she could speak, he looked over her shoulder and said, “Uh-oh.”

She turned. A woman, eating alone several tables away, had jumped to her feet. Her eyes were wide, mouth open, face contorted. She screamed once, grabbed her belly, dropped to the floor.

A tall, thin man with the paper-white skin of an albino was sitting not far away. He wore dark glasses even in the dim galley. He moved quickly and knelt beside the woman, whose paroxysms reminded Hallie of childbirths she had witnessed.

“Who’s that?” Hallie asked Blaine.

“Doc. The station medical officer. Orson Morbell.”

The woman’s pain appeared to ease. Panting, she said, “I don’t know what happened. I was just sitting and all of a sudden …” She stared not at his face but overhead. Hallie looked up. Nothing but the burned-out Christmas lights.

“You lie still, Diana. I’m going to have people bring you down to the infirmary. It’s probably appendicitis.” Over his shoulder Doc said, to no one and everyone, “Call comms. Get the EMTs in here. Tell them we need a gurney.”

Hallie thought the woman was about forty. She had olive skin, black hair pulled back into a ponytail, and a Spanish accent. Her hands looked like Graeter’s, and a gold wedding band and engagement ring shone brightly against the reddened skin.

“It’s Diana Montalban,” Blaine said quietly. “She’s a biochemist. University of Madrid.”

“Look.” Loud whisper from somewhere to one side of Hallie.

Montalban wore a black sweatshirt, gray sweatpants, and running
shoes. Something was happening to her belly. It swelled as though inflating, rising above the waistband of her sweatpants, pushing them down. Hallie saw the ragged pink line of a C-section scar.

“What the hell is going on?” Someone else, not whispering now.

“Diana?” the doctor said. “What’s happening? Talk to me.”

She screamed, cutting him off. People started edging back, pointing.

“Somebody get a goddamned gurney!” the doctor shouted. “We need to bring her to the clinic.”

The woman’s hands were clamped over her belly, covering the scar. She began to writhe. As Hallie watched, blood started seeping through her fingers, then flowed freely. The doctor put his hands over Montalban’s, applying hard direct pressure. Someone offered a folded-up lab coat, which Morbell grabbed. He pushed Montalban’s hands away, and in the split second before he applied the makeshift compress, Hallie could see blood pulsing from where the healed incision had reopened into a gaping red slash. The sweet stink of blood filled the cafeteria.

Three EMTs arrived this time, one carrying medical kits, the other two pushing a wheeled stretcher. Blood had pooled all around the woman’s torso, soaking the doctor’s legs and hands.

“Everyone clear this area NOW!” Graeter yelled, behind Hallie. She hadn’t heard him arrive. The doctor was telling the responders to prep an IV coagulant while he kept the sopping lab coat pressed in place. Hallie and Blaine joined the flow of people heading for the galley exits. She heard Graeter key his radio and say, “Get the biohazard team to the galley. Yes. That’s right.
Again
, goddamnit.”

HALLIE ARRIVED LATE FOR HER MEETING WITH THE STATION’S CHIEF
scientist, but Agnes Merritt seemed not to mind. Before Hallie even sat, the older woman blurted, “Did you hear what happened in the galley?”

“I was there. Yesterday and today both.”

Merritt shook her head. “What an awful introduction to Pole, Dr. Leland. I can’t imagine how I’d feel in your shoes.”

“Thank you. Please call me Hallie.”

“Good deal. I’m Agnes. Aggie to my friends, which is just about everybody.”

Merritt’s office was slightly bigger than Graeter’s, and she had two folding chairs for visitors. A coffeemaker sat on a small table in one corner. Merritt filled mugs and handed one to Hallie. Then she passed a plate of chocolate chip cookies.

Hallie had left most of her breakfast back in the galley. She nibbled one cookie, then gobbled another. “These are great.”

“Grandma’s recipe. I love to bake. Sneak into the galley during off-hours.”

Unlike Graeter’s office, Merritt’s was adorned with framed pictures.
One wall was all Antarctic shots: Merritt boarding a C-130 at McMurdo, standing in her Big Red parka beside the station’s “barber pole” ceremonial marker, hoisting a champagne glass in honor of some holiday or memorable occasion. The other wall’s pictures were from back in the world. Most of them were grip-and-grins, Merritt receiving or holding awards and certificates. A typical bureaucrat’s wall, Hallie noted, except that there were no family pictures.

Merritt looked to be in her late forties. She wore comfort-cut jeans that stretched tight across her wide rump and a black turtleneck with a red fleece pullover on top of that. She had a round face red from high blood pressure or windburn or both, a red-veined snub nose, and a small, moist mouth that formed circles around words, as though she were blowing bubbles when she spoke. “So tell me what happened.”

Hallie did, and then everything slipped out of focus. She realized that Merritt was speaking. “I’m sorry. What?”

“Dear, you just zoned right out.”

“God. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry. Pole’s tough.” She patted Hallie’s knee.

“Agnes … Aggie, two deaths like this, so close together. That has to be unusual, even for the Pole.”

“I thought so, too. But have you ever heard of dehiscence?”

“No.”

“Me, neither, until Doc called. Part of Harriet’s esophagus was removed last year. Some kind of precancerous condition. They severed and reconnected some major veins and arteries.”

“You’re saying they ruptured?”

“Doc thinks so. When surgical scars reopen, it’s called dehiscence.”

“Why now, though?”

“Goodness, why not? Altitude. Extreme temperature fluctuations. Radiation. Stress. Bad food. Hard work. On and on.”

“I never heard of something like that.”

“How many folks do you know who’ve had esophagectomies?”

“What about Diana Montalban?”

“You mentioned a C-section scar. Could have been the same thing, Doc said.”

That seemed like too much coincidence to Hallie. At the same time, it wasn’t hard to understand why Merritt would want to rationalize the deaths. Minimize threats beyond your control. Unknown is always more frightening than known. And as chief scientist, Merritt would have a vested interest in showing that on her watch, deaths were caused by problems the victims brought with them, rather than any they’d encountered here.

Or maybe the deaths were connected in some way to Emily’s, and Merritt knew about all of it. Since Hallie had arrived in the chief scientist’s office, the question had been blinking in her mind.
Should I tell her?

There was something else. With each new encounter, it was getting harder
not
to tell. The secret wanted out. More properly, something in her wanted it released. It felt like a tumor, ugly, foreign, and dangerous. A friend with cancer had told her, “Once you know that thing is in there, you just want it
out
.” Hallie understood that much better now.

“I’m so glad you’re here.” Merritt brought her back. “Fido will be overjoyed. He’s just been, oh, what’s the word … distraught since Emily’s death.”

“I hope I can help,” she said. “I was sent in a huge rush. Emily and he were researching an extremophile found in a subglacial lake, or so I was told. I didn’t know there were any lakes at the Pole.”

“There weren’t supposed to be. It was a huge surprise. Russians found the closest one hundreds of miles away, called Vostok. Bigger than Lake Ontario. Ours is tiny by comparison—about a thousand feet in diameter.”

“How deep?”

“Two miles, give or take.”

Hallie thought she might not have heard right. “Two
miles
?”

“Yes.”

“And Emily was diving this lake, right?”

“It’s called a cryopeg. Yes, she was. Poor Emily.” Merritt looked
away for a few moments, appeared to compose herself. “She found the extremophile colony only a hundred feet down and retrieved a biosample. They had it in the lab, but it went moribund in three days.”

“So that’s the reason you needed another ice diver.”

“Not
just
a diver. One who knew extremophiles and could function in the Pole environment.
And
who could get here fast, because of winterover. If we can’t take more biomatter out of the cryopeg in the next few days, it’ll be nine months before we can put anyone down there again. Who knows what will be left, now that we’ve breached the ice capsule?”

“What makes this thing so special?”

“I’m just a garden-variety epidemiologist, Hallie. Fido can explain it better. When were you thinking of diving?”

“That depends. Is there a recompression chamber here?”

“Oh dear, no. There was never any need for one until now.”

“Not good. The water is twenty-two degrees, right?”

Merritt nodded.

“That’s brutal. Did Emily mark a route?”

“Yes.”

“How much ice do you have to pass through to reach the water?”

“It’s a thirty-foot shaft, flooded to surface level.”

“This is going to be very dangerous. Without a recompression chamber, there’s no margin for error. I’m tired, dehydrated, feeling the altitude. It’s all a recipe for decompression sickness.”

“The bends.”

“Yes. Let’s shoot for later this afternoon. Might even need to wait until tomorrow.”

“Oh, either will be fine. Need you healthy, after all.” Merritt seemed not at all disappointed by the possible delay, which surprised Hallie, given the urgency to get her down here. Then Merritt asked, “Have you seen Doc yet?”

“No.”

Merritt sat back, her smile fading for the first time. “Please do that
as soon as possible.” Also for the first time, she sounded more like a boss than a kindly aunt.

“I’m not sick. A cold, maybe, but nothing serious,” Hallie said.

“It’s not about being sick. It’s to start your Pole medical file.”

“My medical file should have been sent down.”

“Might have been.”

“Then why—?”

“Studying people at Pole is critical. In a way, the biggest experiment here is us. So everybody gets an incoming physical. Creates a research baseline.”

“I’m leaving in four days, though. Why bother?”

Merritt shrugged. “The rules come down from on high, and we follow them. Would appreciate your doing the same.”

“All right.”

Merritt looked ready to finish, but Hallie was not. “Can we talk about Emily? Graeter said you knew the details of her death.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Nothing. He told me to see you. Not very nicely, either.”

She nodded. “Graeter went through some bad times. He wasn’t in such good shape when he came down here. And he’s been at Pole way too long, poor man.” Merritt sipped her coffee.

“What happened?”

“He was the executive officer on a nuclear sub. The
Jimmy Carter
. An accident in the reactor area killed three sailors. May not have been his fault, but the captain had better connections up the chain. Graeter got the blame, and his career was over. Then his wife left him for another man—the same captain who had tossed him under the bus. Can you believe it?”

“Did he tell you all that?”

“God, no. You met him. The man talks like every word costs ten dollars. No, that information came from other sources.” She looked at her hands, then back at Hallie. “I’m going to share something gal to gal: be careful with Graeter.”

“Careful how?”

“The man is a sad case, but he has problems.”

“Other than disliking women, you mean?”