Out of the Ice (10 page)

He stared at me.

‘I’d know if they’d done anything, Travis. But someone did spike my drink. I couldn’t have got that drunk any other way.’

Travis leaned forward, surprised. ‘Have you ever had your drink spiked before?’

‘No, but I’ve read about it.’

He suddenly looked ten years older, and, like Georgia, furious. ‘Leave it with me.’ He stood abruptly. ‘I’m going to get to the bottom of this.’ He strode off.

‘What was that about?’ Kate sat down with another bowl of porridge.

‘I’m hoping Travis can find who the perpetrator was. That’s if it really wasn’t him, which I’m pretty sure . . .’ I scoped the room. ‘I need to speak to Jasper and the kid at the bar. See if they saw anything.’

Men stared as I walked past to where Jasper was sitting with other scientists. Without his squid costume, he was still easy to spot as he towered over everyone. His long blond hair was tied neatly in a pony tail, and his large glasses framed a face that was thin and kind. I called him away. He swore he hadn’t seen me after I’d sat down and he’d gone with Travis to the bar. His story fitted Travis’s like a glove. So either they were both telling the truth – or both lying.

I did a quick search for the skinny barman, Guy, but he wasn’t in the room. The whole time I tried to shake the feeling of being a victim. My anger raged. I’d been abused and it was awful not knowing who’d done it. I reassured myself that Kate would be with me from now on, and that it could have been much worse. Was it a warning? As difficult as it was, I resolved to not let it frighten me. But if they’d done it to me, had they done it to other women at Alliance before me?

At the supply store, Kate and I packed emergency gear and then went to the shed where Moose had a Hägglunds ready. He looked at me nervously, clearly having heard the gossip.

‘Moose, did you see who I left the party with the other night?’

‘I only dimly remember you coming in.’ He shrugged awkwardly. ‘I was a bit sozzled. Sorry.’ Moose didn’t make eye contact as he finished the obligatory paperwork. I hoped it was only because he was shy.

We headed off.

I still had the rusty knife in my bag.

6

I
concentrated hard as I drove through the crystal landscape, the ice sparkling, tinged with fluorescent blue. Neither of us spoke, but I could feel Kate’s excitement. She was about to meet new penguins, and for her that was about as good as it gets.

Fredelighavn came into view and the colours were intense and deceptive. The air was so clear it was distorting things, making the houses appear different shades.

I pulled up by the purple house, which now looked pink. Snow had fallen overnight here too, erasing my tracks – and any footprints I’d hoped to find from the man when he ran from the shed.

Kate hopped out as soon as we stopped moving, already rugged up. She grabbed her bag and put on skis. I strapped on my backpack, hung my bag across my body and within minutes we moved past the House of the Carvers that was creaking and snapping in the cold. Kate was up ahead, bound for the Adélie colony. I had other plans.

‘Wait up!’ I called, my voice booming, echoing fiercely. Kate stopped abruptly.

‘Sh. You’ll wake the dead,’ she said.

‘We need to make a detour. I have to get my skis from the blubber cookery first.’ Her face dropped but she didn’t argue. I led the way to the door, where Kate took off her skis and we both switched on our torches. As we shone them inside the building Kate winced as the rusty saws and knives were illuminated in the beam of light.

‘Instruments of torture,’ she muttered. I hadn’t told her I was carrying one.

I walked tentatively towards them, knowing that my skis must be near the saws. I could make out the outline of a missing knife and was glad that it was mine. In the dark it was hard to locate the skis, and for one moment I thought they’d gone. But then I found them, several metres from where I’d expected. I stood over them and looked around, calculating. The knives and saws were quite a distance away across the room. I was sure I hadn’t been in this spot. I left the skis and marched over to the huge rusted pressure cooker where I’d seen the red material.

‘Is this where they boiled the blubber?’ asked Kate and I jumped.

‘Hey, calm down, I’m right beside you,’ she said.

But my attention was elsewhere: the red material – the T-shirt or whatever it was – had disappeared. I walked around the vat, my throat tightening: it was definitely not there.

‘It’s gone,’ I said. ‘The material I saw. That man must have come back and taken it.’ I took photos with a flash, cursing myself for not doing this the other day.

‘Are you sure you’re in the right spot?’ said Kate, shining her torch along the pressure cookers. ‘There are quite a few of these.’

I headed along them, walking around their huge circumferences, checking everywhere. No red material.

‘Someone’s been here,’ I said firmly. ‘Georgia’s going to have to talk to Connaught. Send a strong message that this place is off-limits.’

Kate stared at me, wide-eyed. ‘Can we go to the penguins?’

I retrieved my skis, taking more photos, and kept shining my torch around the blubber cookery. It was a haunted place, misery sitting like fog even when the day was clear. For a moment I saw the whales thrashing around in the sea, screaming in pain, crying like children, and imagined the sour smell of their blubber as it boiled in the vats that loomed above me. Their cries merged with the cry of Hamish – the cry I’d never heard, and tears sprang, hot and wet. I brushed them away as I forced myself to bring my feelings under control.

By the time I went outside, Kate had already put on her skis and was stomping up and down impatiently, trying to keep warm. The temperature was dropping by the minute. Even our breath was icing up.

I quickly strapped on my skis and we headed off. The harbour opened up before us, a dazzling blue. It looked more like Saint Tropez than Antarctica – if you ignored the scuttled ships sticking out like monster’s teeth, rusting eyesores in the pure water.

And to our right, further up the bay towards Alliance Point, was an extraordinary sight: thousands of Adélie penguins were dancing on the ice, little black and white bodies swaying from side to side as they hopped from foot to foot, their tiny wings thrust out, their beaks towards the sun. They were shrieking a deafening song of happiness. The wall of noise intensified as we approached. Kate was grinning from ear to ear.

‘Careful,’ I called but she’d forgotten all about me. She crouched down and undid her skis, then stood and drank in the sight of the dancing birds. When she walked towards them her tall, slender body started to sway as she fell into their rhythm.

I stayed behind and watched, curious to see how the penguins reacted today. I pulled out my camera and started to film, recording Kate’s path through the Adélies. The noise cracked my ears; I wished I’d brought earplugs.

I zoomed in on Kate as she moved freely among the Adélies, her agile steps so light she appeared to float. She was as one with them and they seemed to treat her as their own. No birds attacked.

After half an hour Kate came back, ecstatic. ‘They’re beautiful,’ she announced breathlessly. ‘Completely unused to humans.’

I frowned, unsure what to say. Perhaps I had a bad effect on the penguins, just like I had on most men at Alliance. But then the scientist in me kicked in.

‘Let’s go through the rookery,’ I said.

We headed up to the rocky slope where thousands more Adélies had gathered. I let Kate get ahead, again recording her movements. All went well – the penguins chattered around her, gathering stones, sitting on their nests. She fell into pace with the little be-suited birds and walked confidently among them. I was intrigued – maybe it really was just me they didn’t like – and I decided to wait ten minutes before I walked through. In that time all was normal with Kate and the rookery.

I switched off my camera, not wanting to do anything that might scare the penguins. The stench was overwhelming as I headed in. Penguins were hunched on their nests. They looked up and didn’t seem at all concerned by my presence. I kept going, wary from the recent attack. The birds went about their business, ignoring me as I headed for Kate. She turned happily and started to walk towards me. A few birds stopped and stared, and the rookery grew unnaturally quiet. And then the penguins rushed at us, pecking and squawking, chasing us away. Careful not to tread on nests, we retreated as fast as we could as the Adélies came forward fiercely, pecking at my gloved hands, attacking Kate’s legs.

We grabbed our skis, getting swarmed, and ran. As we reached the beach, the penguins crowded around us, attacking from all sides.

On the icy sand I slipped and twisted an ankle. Ignoring the pain, I raced towards the village. Kate was close behind. We ran up a street and the penguins stopped following, staying on the beach, where they marched up and down like sentries, crying loudly to each other, severely agitated.

‘What the hell was that?’ said Kate, wheezing, pulling off her ripped gloves. ‘I’m bleeding. They went right through.’ She lifted up her trouser leg, which was torn from the beaks, but Kate had been prepared with thick wads of clothing, and the penguins hadn’t been able to get through the padded material.

I inspected my hands and limbs, which were okay. I’d been prepared today too, and worn my thickest gloves and clothes. I put weight on my ankle, and it was fine. ‘Here, I’ve got disinfectant.’

I treated the wounds on Kate’s hands; a few were deep. I wrapped a bandage around.

‘Someone’s
made
the Adélies that way,’ said Kate, furious.

‘The weird thing is they weren’t perturbed on the ice. They were completely normal and uninhibited there,’ I pointed out.

‘People have been in that rookery and done something awful. There’s no other explanation. And probably more than once. Those birds were defending their nests. Did you get any of that on film?’

‘No,’ I shook my head. ‘I didn’t want to disturb them. I’m sorry.’

‘I don’t want to go back and cause them more anguish. But tomorrow we’ll have to. It should be recorded.’ Kate’s eyes were dark with anger. ‘Whoever’s done this will pay.’

‘Travis and his mates came here to dive.’ I paused. ‘So perhaps we should too – see how that affects the Adélies.’

Kate exhaled with a puff of her cheeks. The sweat on her face was starting to freeze into solid lumps of droplets. She picked them off. ‘Do we have scuba gear?’

‘We’ll borrow Travis’s,’ I said. ‘I’ll get Georgia to approve the dive but we won’t tell Connaught. I don’t want that bastard knowing anything. That is, until he gets his marching orders. With what’s gone on here, he can’t be allowed to stay.’ I stopped. I’d had the same feeling when I’d discovered what the senior professors in my department had been doing. Fixing results of an experiment to match the data they needed to get a larger, more lucrative research grant. I’d stumbled across the doctored inputs accidentally when I’d stayed late one night finishing work on one of my own lab experiments. I’d gone home furious, and discussed everything with David, who’d been adamant that I not be a whistle-blower. In his line of work, detectives stuck together, and when you found out someone was doing the wrong thing you talked to them, or subtly dropped in a reference so they stopped of their own accord. To his mind, you never reported your colleagues.

I’d thought it over for a few days, nervous the professors might destroy evidence. What they were doing went against every ethical procedure. I couldn’t let it rest.

When I reported them all hell broke loose, but the Academy closed ranks. They were top scientists. They were investigated over a matter of months, found guilty of misconduct and rapped on the knuckles. Then everything went back to normal. Except I was ostracised, and David left me, calling me obsessed and stubborn, and someone he couldn’t spend his life with. It certainly wasn’t the first thing we’d disagreed on, just the worst – and the last.

‘Laura?’ Kate was tapping me on the arm. ‘Come back to me. I know you’re thinking about what happened to you with those professors. But we can’t be frightened. Anyway, Georgia will know what to do.’

‘We’ll assemble the evidence,’ I said. ‘We’ll be meticulous. By the time we’ve finished, Connaught will have nowhere to turn.’ I wished I felt as confident as I sounded. Deep down I knew that whatever we discovered could be ignored if people wanted to keep it hidden. But ultimately I was reporting to the Antarctic Council, and there’d certainly be some countries keen to hear the news. That is if the Australians were willing to unleash a political storm.

‘Shall we see the movie buffs now?’ asked Kate.

I wasn’t in a hurry to revisit the cinema.

‘We can just poke our heads in,’ she said. ‘It’s important to see if the seals go crazy like the Adélies. And we need to see the other Adélies in the shed too. Can we do that first?’

I led the way to the building full of old equipment, where the penguins were hunkered down on their nests. Kate stood in the doorway and took everything in.

‘I’d rather not disturb them,’ she said finally. She took photos without a flash, the penguins looking green in the light through the filthy windows.

‘So, let’s see what’s playing,’ said Kate. I reluctantly took her to the cinema, but when we shone our torches inside, we found the seals had gone.

‘They must be at sea,’ I said.

Kate stepped inside, sending a shaft of light over the empty seats, the stage and screen at the front, the projector at the back – the projector that looked different.

‘That’s odd.’ I walked up to it. ‘I swear this roll of film is fatter.’

‘Spool. It’s a spool of film, isn’t it? Although, come to think of it, it’s a reel,’ said Kate.

‘It’s changed, whatever you want to call it. This one’s bigger. There’s more of it.’

Kate joined me, hooking a length of film out of the projector. ‘Back in the way past, my dad was a projectionist for a film club,’ she said. ‘He used to thread these babies up.’ She shone her torch through the celluloid and frowned.