Blood And Ice Part 17

"Darryl's convinced that he's got all the equipment and facilities he needs," Michael said, though he was given pause. Was he rus.h.i.+ng headlong into this? Inflicting damage to what could prove to be a truly miraculous discovery?

"It isn't just a question of removing them safely," Tina added. "That's easy. It's preserving them afterwards that's hard."

Wouldn't Darryl know what to do? And wasn't the whole Antarctic basically just a vast deep freeze? Even if the bodies were taken from the ice, couldn't they be kept sufficiently cold to keep them from deteriorating?

Whatever the answers to those questions were, right then he had work to do. The find wasn't just a boon to Eco-Travel-it was also the sort of thing that national magazine awards were made of. He had to pay attention and not muck it up. Before backing off, Joe Gillespie, his editor, had actually given him grief that he'd come back without any pictures from his tragic misadventure in the Cascades. Sometimes Michael suspected that the scoop was all that counted with Gillespie.

Once Michael had decided on the right cameras and equipment, he took a series of shots through the ice-first of the man, whose face was still largely concealed, then of the woman. Capturing the quality of the ice, without losing too much to the reflections and refractions, made the work extremely tricky, but Michael liked that. The good stuff was always the hardest to get. At his behest, Betty and Tina went back to work and he took a couple of dozen shots of them, as they shaved or cut away more of the ice, and one or two of Ollie, who'd waddled over to see if the ice shavings littering the ground were edible.

The wind was really picking up, and the sheet-metal fence, though firmly planted, was rattling so loudly it was hard to talk over it. Michael had to shout at Tina and Betty just to get them to move to the right or the left, into the light or out of a shadow, and he quickly sensed he was making them uncomfortable. The ice queens weren't the kind of people, he suspected, who relished publicity or having their pictures taken. "Just one more," he said to Betty, "with the hand drill about six inches higher." It was obscuring the face of Sleeping Beauty.

Betty obliged, holding the drill in place while Michael hastily adjusted a light that the wind had blown out of position. The full illumination was falling on the ice, and he moved closer to pick up as much detail in the shot as possible. Whether it was from the extra wattage, or the work that Betty had been doing all morning, the face of the woman came into fuller view than ever before. Michael could see the auburn hair caught beneath the rusted chain, the glimmer of a white pin, and the emerald gleam in her eyes. Her expression was the one he remembered from the second time he'd found her underwater, and he marveled that he could have thought it had changed. Funny, what tricks the memory could play on you. He ran off a couple of shots, but his own shadow was falling into the frame, and he had to lower his shoulder and move a few inches to one side. He focused another shot, and even as he did so, he could swear that something had changed again. He had a great eye for detail-his photography teachers had always remarked on it, and so did his editors-and he knew that something in the image was different. Something tiny, something ephemeral. But as he s.h.i.+fted position again, he saw it happen-he saw the pupils of her eyes contract.

He lowered the camera, then looked at the digital images he had just recorded. Back and forth, from one to the other. And though the change was infinitesimal, he could still swear it was there.

"Found you!" he heard Darryl call out, over the windy rattling of the metal fence. "You've got a call on the SAT phone-someone named Karen! They're holding it for you." Darryl took in the work that Betty and Tina had done on the ice block. "Wow! You've made a lot of progress."

Michael nodded, and said, "Leave everything just the way it is. I'm coming back."

"I don't think you should leave the lights on," Betty said.

She was right. Michael tucked his camera back inside his anorak, then, before heading for the administration module, flicked them off. The block of ice instantly went from a s.h.i.+mmering pillar to a somber monolith.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

December 11, 3 p.m.

"I'M SORRY," Karen was saying, "did I take you away from something important?"

"No, no, I always want to hear from you. You know that." But his heart was in his mouth every time that they did talk on the SAT phone. It was very unlikely she was bringing him good news. "What's up?"

With his foot, he pushed the door to the communications room closed, and hunkered forward on the armless computer chair.

"I just thought I'd let you know that Krissy's leaving the hospital, so you don't need to try calling there anymore."

For a second, his spirits lifted-Kristin was going home?-but there was nothing jubilant in Karen's tone, so he asked, "Where is she going?"

"Home."

Now he was puzzled again. That was a good sign, wasn't it? "The doctors think she's improved enough to go home?"

"No, not really, but my dad does."

That sounded about right. Mr. Nelson was not one to let professionals get in the way.

"He thinks they're not doing enough for her-enough physical therapy enough cognitive stuff-and he's decided to hire all his own people and just have them come to the house, where he can monitor them."

"Who's going to run the car dealers.h.i.+ps?"

"Don't ask me. This is his big idea, and we're all just along for the ride."

That, too, sounded like the family dynamic; Kristin had been the only one who ever actively refused to go along. And though Michael did not doubt for one minute Mr. Nelson's love for his daughter, he also saw this as a way-a final, irrefutable way-for him to gain control over her again, entirely.

"When is this happening?"

"Tomorrow. But they've been making the arrangements-for hospital beds, ventilators, round-the-clock nurses-for the past week."

"So," Michael said, absentmindedly rubbing his left shoulder, "she's going to be back in her old room. That might be good for her."

"Actually, her old room is upstairs-I don't need to tell you that," she said, with a wry laugh, "and it's too hard to get everything up there. So we're converting the family room instead."

"Oh, right. That makes sense," he said, a burst of static suddenly interfering with the connection. He was trying to sort through it all-was this a good idea, or just a desperate one? Even with nurses coming and going at all hours, how could her parents and her sister really oversee her recovery?

A recovery that Michael had understood, from the doctors, to be impossible.

Lord knows he had tried to believe in it. For the whole of that long, cold night in the Cascades, and for much of the next day, he had forced himself to think only optimistically; he had willed himself to believe that she would wake up and come around again, just as soon as he got her back down the mountain. At daybreak, he'd crawled out of the sleeping bag he'd shared with her all night and rubbed as much feeling back into his own limbs as he could. He had a big purple bruise on his thigh, where he'd been lying on a carabiner, and his left shoulder still ached. He unwrapped another PowerBar and wolfed it down. As he looked up at the dawn sky, he could see a private plane buzzing by overhead. For the h.e.l.l of it, he waved his arms, shouted, and even blew his whistle, but the plane didn't bank its wings to signal that they'd seen him, much less return for another look. It disappeared to the west, and the only sounds remaining were the cries of birds and the rustling of the wind.

Kristin had not reacted in any way to the whistle or the shouts. He bent low over her, felt for her pulse and checked her breathing. It was low, but steady. He had two alternatives-he could wait where he was and hope that some other climbers would come by- or he could try to move her down the mountain on his own. He glanced again at the horizon. There were clouds coming in, and if they brought rain or fog, then n.o.body else would be climbing that day. No, he would just have to do it himself, with an elaborate system of ropes and jerry-rigged pulleys. He could lower Kristin maybe ten or fifteen yards at a time, then climb down, redo all the ropes, and try it again. If he could just make it down far enough, he might b.u.mp into some casual hikers, or even get close enough to Big Lake that the sounds of his emergency whistle would carry to some boater-provided, of course, that the wind was right.

He gathered up all the gear that hadn't fallen off the cliff, or spilled out of the backpack, and started making his plan. There was another ledge, no bigger than an ironing board, about twenty-five or thirty feet below, and he thought he could maneuver Kristin down onto it. He knew he had to be careful with her head and neck, but for the life of him he couldn't figure out a way to stabilize them; he had nothing firm to use. He would have to take his chances.

It took the better part of an hour to rig up a system and tie Kristin's limp body into it-and another hour just to get the two of them down onto the ledge. By then, Michael was soaked in sweat and covered with a thousand cuts and scratches. He sat on the ledge, one hand on Kristin's leg-if only she would show some sign of consciousness, if only she could talk to him for even a few seconds-while the other held his canteen. He drained the last few drops. A few pieces of rock, disturbed by their recent descent, crumbled down onto their precarious aerie.

The dark clouds were coming closer.

He looked down, at the tops of the pine trees and the waters of Big Lake, and he knew that this system would not work. It was taking too long, and he did not dare keep her out on the mountain for another night. He decided to go for broke. Shedding every ounce of unnecessary equipment, and stripping down to his climbing shorts and T-s.h.i.+rt, he strapped her to his back, with her arms dangling down at her sides, her crushed yellow helmet resting on his own shoulder, and started climbing down. Either he would make it to the bottom and carry her out of the forest below, or they would die together, falling out of the sky.

All the way down, he whispered to her. "Now, hang on," he'd say. "I've just got to find a toehold." Or "Don't let this worry you, but I think my shoulder is starting to separate again." Or "What would you say to a nice big steak at the Ponderosa? You're buying." Her head would loll around his shoulder, and sometimes he could feel her warm breath on his neck, but that was enough-he knew that she was with him, that she was alive, that he would get them out somehow. By late afternoon, the storm clouds had completely filled the sky, but they hadn't burst. There was only a faint mist in the air-its coolness actually felt good-and an occasional drop or two of rain. "Please, G.o.d, do me one favor-hold the rain till I get off this d.a.m.n mountain."

And G.o.d had kept his part of the bargain. Michael had made it across the slope at the foot of Mount Was.h.i.+ngton and into the shelter of the pine forest before all h.e.l.l broke loose. Thunder clapped and sheets of rain poured out of the sky. Briefly, he knelt on the wet earth, breathing in the rich scent of the pine needles, letting the rain wash over him. He had used it to wash the grime off Kristin's face, and wet her lips with it. Her eyelids quivered when the droplets fell on them. But otherwise, there was no sign of life.

He tried to pick her up again, but all his limbs were quivering with exhaustion and he could barely move. He didn't care. He pulled Kristin up into his arms and leaned back against the trunk of a tree, his face lifted toward the branches above, and lay there, for how long he never knew. When he stirred again, soaking wet and s.h.i.+vering, it was dark. The rain had stopped, and a full moon was out. He draped Kristin across his back once again, and staggered in the moonlight back toward the Big Lake parking lot, where he'd left his Jeep. When he broke out of the trees-filthy, wet, and bleeding, with an unconscious girl on his back-he saw two young guys in U. of Was.h.i.+ngton sweats.h.i.+rts, unloading a pickup truck. They watched him coming toward them as if he was a Sasquatch. "Help," he mumbled. "We need help."

And then, according to the two frat brothers, he had pa.s.sed out cold.

The moment Darryl had seen the two figures in the ice, he knew it was time for him to step in. Enough of the ice had been cut away- or melted away by Michael's lights-that he could actually see, when he crouched in front of the block, the pommel of a sword at the man's side. Its gold ta.s.sel was frozen in an upside-down position.

"You've done great work," he said again to Betty and Tina, "but let's get this inside my lab now and finish the job."

Michael had gone for the phone, but Betty and Tina acted as if they wanted to wait for his verdict. "Michael will be back in a few minutes. Let's talk about it then."

But Darryl was no fool, and he knew what was afoot. Give scientists-even glaciologists, why should they be any different?-a taste of something really extraordinary, and they'll never let go. So much of science was routine lab work, endless experiments, blind tests, statistical breakdowns, that when they found something groundbreaking, something that had come out of nowhere-and that, in addition, had the potential to make some headlines in the outside world-there was a natural reluctance to let go.

He had to work fast, and decisively. He scurried back toward the equipment sheds, where the snowmobiles and Sprytes and augers were kept, and rounded up Franklin and Lawson, who were already privy to the find. He brought them back with an industrial dolly, the ones they normally used to transport drums of diesel fuel, and while Betty complained that Darryl was moving too fast, and Tina fretted about the scientific integrity of the specimens, Darryl had his two recruits throw the tarp back over the substantially diminished ice block, then tip it back onto the dolly. Carting it around the corner, they pushed it up the ramp that led into the safe harbor of the marine biology lab.

"Now what?" Franklin said, looking around at the cluttered s.p.a.ce, packed with hissing oxygen tubes, clattering instruments, and tanks filled with alien creatures bathed in lavender light.

"I want it in there," Darryl said, stepping to the large aquarium tank. Earlier, he had removed the subdividers, emptied out the old water, scrubbed the tank from top to bottom, and refilled it with fresh seawater. It was now one large tub. He'd taken the resident cod out to a hole in the ice and slipped them through. If they were still part of someone else's experiment, then they should have been so labeled. Through the ice cover, he could dimly make them out as they slithered away-along with a darker form, swiftly approaching. No doubt a leopard seal who had suddenly spotted his lunch buffet. Life in the Antarctic was a precarious business.

Franklin moved the dolly to the lip of the tank, and Lawson stepped into the water; wearing his trademark kerchief on his head, he looked a bit like a buccaneer about to wade out to his prize.

"You know the water displacement's gonna wet your floor, right?" Franklin said, and Darryl replied, "That's why we've got the floor drains. Go ahead."

With Lawson bracing it from inside the pool, and Darryl helping Franklin to tilt it forward gently, the ice block slowly made its way over the rim of the pool, then, as Lawson jumped back, it completed its descent, splas.h.i.+ng into the water and sending, as Franklin had predicted, a wave of temperate salt water slos.h.i.+ng onto the floor and over the tops of their boots. As the tarp drifted free, the ice seemed to float and settle for a few minutes, with the two figures lying back to back, before the ripples in the tank subsided and the block became still.

His prize, at last.

Franklin took a long look at it, then said, "I wouldn't want to work in here alone with that."

Lawson, stepping out of the tank drenched, looked like he felt the same way.

But Darryl wasn't bothered in the slightest. His eyes were riveted on the slab of ice, which now rested, horizontally, in the pool; the seawater rose enough to cover nearly all of it. If his calculations, based on the thickness of the ice and the temperature gradient in the aquarium, were correct-and his calculations generally were- the bodies would float entirely free in just a few days. Cool, but still intact and well composed.

Once Franklin and Lawson had gone, he closed up shop. There wasn't much he could do in there immediately; the most important thing was to go out and check some of his underwater nets and traps, and see what fresh examples of the antifreeze fish-as the marine biology crowd referred to them-they might yield. You never knew when, or how, the additional specimens might come in handy.

Before leaving, he turned off the overhead fluorescents, but the lab still glowed in the lights from the tank and the aquarium, radiating a pale purple that pervaded the steel-and-concrete s.p.a.ce, and only failed to reach into the farthest and darkest corners. He pulled on his coat and gloves and hat-G.o.d, it got to be a nuisance after a while, all this dressing and undressing-and opened the door to a blast of freezing wind. Closing it firmly behind him, he tromped down the icy ramp and off toward the sh.o.r.e.

Inside the lab, the various denizens of the tanks, ranged all along the walls and shelves, went on about their quiet, confined, and ultimately doomed lives. The sea spiders stood up on their spindly hind legs and used several others to probe the gla.s.s. The worms moved through the water, spooling and unspooling like ivory ribbons. The starfish spread themselves flat, suctioning themselves to the walls of their prison. The big-mouthed, nacreous ice fish swam in endless tight circles. The hoses burbled, the s.p.a.ce heaters hummed, the wind howled around the outside of the module.

And the slab of ice in the aquarium slowly, imperceptibly, melted. Little by little, the cool water circulating in the tank eroded the thickness of the ancient ice. Occasionally, there was a crackling sound, as the seawater found a minuscule fissure and rushed to fill it. Tiny, almost invisible striations appeared here and there, like scratches on a mirror. Air bubbles surfaced and popped. The black PVC pipes that brought the freshwater into the tank and removed the same amount of water that had now been cooled by the melting ice kept the temperature at a steady thirty-nine degrees. In a day or two, the ice would become thin enough to see through clearly, thin enough to let in the faint purple glow of the lab ... so thin the block might begin to split and crumble.

And then the ice would have to relinquish, however grudgingly, everything it still held captive.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

December 13, 12:10 p.m.

RIDING IN A DOGSLED was actually much more comfortable than Michael would have imagined. The cargo sh.e.l.l of the sled was a hard, molded polymer plastic, much like a kayak, but you rode a few inches above its bottom, cradled in a sort of hammock. Even when the dogs ran over a rough patch in the ice, or hit a b.u.mp, you were cus.h.i.+oned by all the cold-weather gear you had on. The snow and ice whizzed past on either side, as Danzig, standing straight on the runners behind Michael's head, shouted encouragement to the dogs-the last dogs, as Michael had learned from Murphy back at the base, in the entire Antarctic.

"Dogs have been banned," Murphy'd explained. "They were pa.s.sing on distemper to the seals. This is the last team still in operation, and the only way we could grandfather them in was by claiming they were part of a long-term study." He'd rolled his eyes. "You have no idea of the paperwork, but Danzig wouldn't let it go. They're the last dogs at the South Pole, and Danzig's the last of the mushers."

Even from his less-than-ideal vantage point, Michael could see how perfectly the pack ran together, pulling at the harness, following Kodiak's lead. He was amazed at the speed and the power they could muster. At times, they just seemed a blur of gray-and-white fur, bobbing and heaving like the painted horses on a carousel, and the sled seemed to soar behind them. Even without Danzig's occasional cry of "Haw!" for left, or "Gee!" for right, the dogs knew exactly where they were going-they were heading for the old Norwegian whaling station, about three miles down the coast; Danzig made this their regular exercise run. He had suggested Michael might want to come along-"while your Sleeping Beauty melts"-to photograph the abandoned outpost. Michael had decided to take him up on the offer. He'd visited the marine biology lab earlier in the day, but there was nothing much new to photograph, and Darryl had a.s.sured him it would be another day or two before any big change occurred.

"Better safe than sorry," Darryl had said of the slow process, and Michael agreed.

But watching ice melt, he'd discovered, was about as interesting as watching gra.s.s grow.

The last time Michael had tried to make this trip to Stromviken, he'd been drowned in a thick fog that made taking photos impossible. Today, in contrast, it was bitterly cold-twenty-five below zero-but clear. And the light-the constant, unyielding light-gave the air a strange, pellucid quality. Things that were far away could look much closer than they were, and up close things could look like they were almost under a magnifying gla.s.s. The Antarctic air and light made taking pictures-crisp, clear, and properly exposed pictures-even more of an intellectual challenge than ever.

Michael's arms were folded over his chest, with his camera nestled under his parka.

"How do you like it?" Danzig shouted, leaning down toward him, his walrus-tooth necklace brus.h.i.+ng the top of Michael's hood.

"Sure beats the bus!"

Danzig patted him on the shoulder and leaned back again. He could never show off his dogs enough.

But it was difficult for Michael to see much, especially straight ahead, so the first intimation he had of the old whaling station was off to his right-the rusting hulk of a Norwegian steamboat, beached on the rocky sh.o.r.eline. The pier beside it had long since collapsed, crushed by the ebb and flow of the ice. At its bow, pointing inland rather than out to sea, was the harpoon gun-a Norwegian invention-which had once fired a lacerating spear about six feet long, and loaded, in later years, with explosives. The fleeing whale, hit between the shoulder blades if the gunner was good, would dive for cover, only to have the bomb detonate inside it, ripping apart its heart and lungs.

That was if the creature was lucky. If the gunner was off, or the strike wasn't lethal, the battle could go on for hours, as the whale breached, bleeding and spouting, and more harpoons were launched. A ma.s.sive winch, pulling on the cables, provided a further drag, and as the animal-first humpbacks, then right whales, and finally, as even those began to disappear, the more difficult to catch rorquals-grew weaker, it was gradually reeled in, like a shark, until it could be gaffed with sharpened hooks and stabbed to death at will.

This particular whaling station had operated, off and on, since the 1890s, until finally closing down in 1958 and leaving everything, from locomotives to firewood, behind. Supplies that were worth bringing in were too difficult and costly to bother taking out again. Not that the Norwegians even then had entirely given up whaling; like j.a.pan and Iceland, they continued to a.s.sert their customary prerogative to hunt whales, and when this was mentioned in pa.s.sing over dinner one night in the commons, Charlotte had thrown down her fork in disgust and said, "That's it-I'm getting rid of every Norwegian thing I own." Darryl had asked her what that would entail and on reflection she said, "I guess I'll have to throw out this reindeer sweater."

"Don't be too hasty," Michael said, plucking out the label and laughing. "See? It's made in China."

Charlotte had breathed a sigh of relief. "It is awfully warm."

As the dogs pulled the sled up a slight, icy rise, Michael got his first crystal-clear look at the camp, which, hard as it was to believe, was even drearier than Point Adelie. From the jetty where the boats pulled in with their catch-sometimes as many as twenty at a time, often pumped up with air to keep the carca.s.ses afloat- wide ramps led to a crazy quilt of half-buried railroad tracks; a locomotive, gone black and red with rust, hauled the dead or dying whales to the flensing pan. That was the broad yard where the whalers took out their sharpened flensing knives and began to slice the blubber and tongues away in great, b.l.o.o.d.y strips. The tongues especially, huge and ridged with muscles, contained hundreds of gallons of oil.

It was there, now, that Danzig called out to the dogs, while pulling back on the reins; as he nimbly dismounted from the runners, the sled ground to a halt. The sudden cessation of the whoos.h.i.+ng of the blades left what seemed a curious silence, until Michael listened again and heard the polar wind rattling the corrugated steel walls of the storehouses and moaning through the timbers of the wood-and-brick structures that had long preceded the metal ones. He clambered out of his berth in the sled, with Danzig giving him a hand, and stood up on the frozen mud of the yard. On all sides, and up the hill, he was surrounded by ramshackle buildings of obscure purpose, and he thought, not surprisingly, of a ghost town he had once photographed in the Southwest.

But this felt worse somehow. This felt like a killing ground, and he knew that the tundra he was standing on had once been ankle deep in blood and guts. The blackened rails rose, like a roller-coaster track, straight into the dilapidated building a few hundred yards up the hill; mechanized carts had carried the desirable parts of the whale into the processing facilities, while the rest of the bones and offal had been shunted off to the guano pits and the reeking sh.o.r.eline, where clouds of birds, shrieking with delight, had descended upon the still-steaming piles.

As Michael fumbled to collect his tripod and waterproof equipment bag-it was too cold to take off his gloves for more than a few seconds-Danzig set the snow hook, like the emergency brake on a car, to keep the dogs from dragging away the sled. Then, for extra security, he tied the snub line to an iron skip wagon, missing two wheels and upturned on the frozen earth. Kodiak, watching him closely with his marble-blue eyes, sat back on his haunches, waiting.

"I'm going to give them their snack now," Danzig said. "This is their favorite part of the trip."

A couple of the wheel dogs, the ones who ran closest to the sled, pranced in place, already licking their chops as Danzig pulled a stiff burlap sack from the handlebars.

"I'll pa.s.s," Michael said, as Danzig took out several knotted ropes of beef jerky.

Danzig laughed and said, "Don't say I didn't offer."

Picking his way across the rusted tracks and over the icy, wind-scoured earth, accompanied only by the yips of the pack and the cawing of some skuas-drawn no doubt by the dogs and the jerky-Michael thought that this might well be the most desolate place he had ever seen.

The ice block slowly continued to disintegrate in the tank, until small chunks were breaking off, much sooner than might have been expected ... almost as if something inside the block were exerting pressure from within. One jagged piece, the size of a baseball, broke off the bottom of the block, just below the spot where the toe of the man's boot could now be seen, and floated free. It drifted on the water, until it got closer to the PVC pipe that was draining the water from the tank and keeping it level; there, it was sucked into the mouth of the hose, where it stubbornly lodged.

Gradually, the water in the tank, replenished by the other pipe, rose, but as it did, it ran up into the topmost fissures and invisible brine channels, like blood rus.h.i.+ng to fill untraceable veins and capillaries. An ear, put to the ice, would have heard a sound like static, as the ice crackled and crumbled ... and a sound, too, of something else. Of scratching. Like nails on gla.s.s.

The beach at Stromviken was not like any other Michael had ever surveyed. It was a ma.s.sive boneyard, covered with gigantic skulls and spines and gaping jaws, all bleached to a dull white by the punis.h.i.+ng wind and the austral sun. Some were the remains of whales that had been slaughtered at Stromviken, others were the residue of whales that had been butchered at sea by so-called factory s.h.i.+ps, their carca.s.ses thrown back into the ocean and eventually washed up here. Lying among the bones and rocks, sunning themselves in the cold glare, was a handful of elephant seals, who paid no attention to the man in the bulky parka and green goggles, pointing the camera in their direction ... just as they had paid no attention to the men who had come there years before, who had then gone about slaughtering them as indiscriminately as the whales.

But unlike the whales, the elephant seals, with their trunklike noses and brown bloodshot eyes, had been easy to catch and kill. On land, they were clumsy and moved slowly. Sealers had only to walk right up to them, punch them on the nose, and when the animals reared back on their flippers in surprise, thrust a lance several times through their heart. Sometimes it would take the better part of an hour for the animal to bleed out, but once the bulls were rounded up and killed, the sealers could move on methodically to slaughtering the cows, still protecting their young, and then, if they weren't too small to bother with, the cubs. The skinning was the hard part; it took four or five men to properly flay a fully grown elephant seal, then to separate the thick yellow blubber from the flesh beneath. Most of the seals, hunted nearly to extinction, yielded one or two barrels of oil apiece when the boiling was done.

Although Michael knew they posed no threat to him, he approached them warily, not wanting to cause any undue disturbance. He wanted shots of the seals at leisure, not in alarm, and besides that, the creatures did smell pretty awful. The main bull, distinguishable only because of his enormous size, was molting, his shed hair and skin spread around him like a fouled carpet, and the cows, belching loudly, weren't much better. He stepped up onto a low-lying ventifact-a stone carved into a strange shape, almost like a top hat in this case, by centuries of wind-and framed his first shot. But it was hard enough to stand erect in the unceasing wind without trying to hold a camera steady; he would have to set up a tripod and do it the right way.

As he dug around in his bag, the bull seal roared, and Michael could smell its breath, reeking of dead fish. "Jesus, have you ever heard of mouthwash?" Michael said, as he set the tripod down on a relatively level patch of the rocky beach.

Water from the aquarium began to seep over the edge of the tank and drip onto the concrete floor, where it ran in rivulets toward the floor drains. The marine biology lab, like all the modules, was raised above the ground on cinder blocks, and the water simply coursed down some steel funnels and out onto the icy land below.

The block of ice was now no thicker than a deck of cards in some places, its prisoners obscurely visible within. The first spot entirely to give way was at the bottom, where the chunk had fallen off and blocked the PVC pipe. The toe of a black leather boot protruded from it now, glistening like onyx.

The melting continued, and a crevice appeared right down the center of the block; the bodies locked inside were like the flaw in a diamond, a strange imperfection in a giant crystal ... and when the crevice widened and suddenly split, it was as if the ice itself were rejecting them. The halves of the ice block fell away on either side, and the seawater washed over the bodies of the soldier and the girl like a baptism. They were exposed to the air, bathed in the lavender light of the lab, and for several seconds they simply lay still, side by side, bobbing on the ice.

The flaking chain yoked around their throats and shoulders held them together until, corroded by the centuries of ice and salt.w.a.ter, it disintegrated and slipped to the bottom of the tank.

Sinclair was the first to draw a breath. Half air and half water, it made him cough.

Then Eleanor coughed, too, and an uncontrollable s.h.i.+ver ran the length of her body.