Icebound

by Dean Koontz

  What he would most regret about dying was his mother’s grief. She was the best of the Doughertys, above the muck of politics, and she had experienced too much grief already. God knew, Brian had caused her more than a little of it with his—

  A flashlight beam found him in the darkness.

  “Are you ready to go?” Roger Breskin shouted.

  “Whenever you are.”

  Roger returned to the snowmobile.

  No sooner had Brian braced himself than the rope was drawn up, putting a new and more terrible strain on his aching shoulders. Battered by the wind, half dazed by pain, unable to stop thinking about the immense watery grave that lapped far below him, he slid along the face of the cliff as smoothly as George Lin had done five minutes ago. When he came to the brink, he was able to push and kick over the top without Roger’s help.

  He got up and took a few uncertain steps toward the snowmobile’s headlamps. His ankles and thighs were sore, but the pain would diminish with exercise. He had come through virtually unscathed. “Incredible,” he said. He began to untie the knots that held the harness together. “Incredible.”

  “What are you talking about?” Roger asked as he joined him.

  “Didn’t expect to make it.”

  “You didn’t trust me?”

  “It wasn’t that. I thought the rope would snap or the cliff crack apart or something.”

  “You’re going to die eventually,” Roger said, his deep voice almost theatrical in its effect. “But this wasn’t your place. It wasn’t the right time.”

  Brian was as amazed to hear Roger Breskin waxing philosophical as he had been to learn that the man knew fear.

  “If you’re not hurt, we’d better get moving.”

  Working his throbbing shoulders, Brian said, “What now?”

  Roger wiped his goggles. “Put the second snowmobile right side up and see if it still works.”

  “And then?”

  “Find the temporary camp. Join up with the others.”

  “What if the camp isn’t on this iceberg with us?”

  Roger didn’t hear the question. He had already turned away and started toward the toppled snowmobile.

  The cabin of the remaining snowmobile would seat only two men; therefore, Harry elected to ride behind in the open cargo trailer. Claude was willing to surrender his place, and Pete Johnson insisted on giving up his seat behind the handlebars, as though riding in the trailer were desirable, when in fact the exposure might prove deadly. Harry cut them short and pulled rank in order to obtain that worst of all positions for himself.

  The trailer contained the eighteen-inch-square hot plate and the steel barrel in which they’d melted snow to obtain water to fill the blasting holes. They tipped the barrel off the trailer and rolled it out of their way; the wind caught it and swept it off into the night, and in seconds the hollow clatter of its bounding progress faded into the cacophonous symphony of the storm. The hot plate was small, and because it might come in handy later, Claude found a place for it inside the cabin.

  Three or four inches of snow had accumulated in the trailer bed, drifting against the two-foot-high walls. Harry brushed it out with his hands.

  The wind gusted behind them, wailing like Apaches in a Western movie, rushed under the trailer and made it bounce lightly up and down on the ice.

  “I still think you should drive,” Pete argued when the gale subsided slightly.

  Harry was nearly finished cleaning the snow out of the trailer. “I drove my own buggy straight into an ice chasm—and you’d trust me with yours?”

  Pete shook his head. “Man, do you know what’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m cold and scared.”

  “Not that.”

  “Well, I have neglected clipping my toenails for weeks. But I don’t see how you could know.”

  “I mean what’s wrong inside your head.”

  “This isn’t an ideal time for psychoanalysis, Pete. Jeez, you Californians are obsessed with therapy.” Harry brushed the last of the snow out of the trailer. “I suppose you think I want to sleep with my mother—”

  “Harry—”

  “—or murder my father.”

  “Harry—”

  “Well, if that’s what you think, then I don’t see how we can just go on being friends.”

  “You’ve got a hero complex,” Pete said.

  “For insisting I ride in the trailer?”

  “Yeah. We should draw straws.”

  “This isn’t a democracy.”

  “It’s only fair.”

  “Let me get this straight—you’re demanding to ride in the back of the bus?”

  Pete shook his head, tried to look serious, but couldn’t repress his smile. “Honky fool.”

  “And proud of it.”

  Harry turned his back squarely to the wind and pulled on the drawstring at his chin, loosening his hood. He reached inside the neck of his coat and got hold of the thick woolen snow mask that had been folded against his throat. He tugged it over his mouth and nose; now not even a fraction of his face was exposed. What the mask did not cover, the hood and the goggles concealed. He drew the hood tight once more and knotted the drawstring. Through the mask, he said, “Pete, you’re too damned big to ride in the cargo trailer.”

  “You’re not exactly a dwarf yourself.”

  “But I’m small enough to curl up on my side and get down out of the worst of the wind. You’d have to sit up. It’s the only way you’d fit. And sitting up, you’d freeze to death.”

  “Okay, okay. You’re determined to play hero. Just remember—no medals are given at the end of this campaign.”

  “Who needs medals?” Harry climbed into the cargo trailer and sat in the middle. “I’m after sainthood.”

  Johnson leaned toward him. “You think you can get into heaven with a wife who knows more dirty jokes than all the men in the Edgeway group combined?”

  “Isn’t it obvious, Pete?”

  “What?”

  “God has a sense of humor.”

  Pete scanned the storm-whipped icecap and said, “Yeah. A real dark sense of humor.” He returned to the cabin door, glanced back, and with considerable affection again said, “Honky fool.” Then he got behind the handlebars and closed the door.

  Harry took a last look at that portion of the icefield revealed by the backwash of the snowmobile’s headlamps. He did not often think in metaphors, but something about the top-of-the-world gloom, some quality of the landscape, required metaphors. Perhaps the nearly incomprehensible hostility of the cruel land could only be properly grasped in metaphorical terms that made it less alien, less frightening. The icefield was a crouching dragon of monstrous dimensions. The smooth, deep darkness was the dragon’s gaping mouth. The awful wind was its scream of rage. And the snow, whistling by so thickly now that he had trouble seeing even twenty feet, was the beast’s spittle or perhaps foam dripping from its jaws. If it chose to do so, it could gobble them up and leave no trace.

  The snowmobile began to move.

  Turning away from the dragon, Harry lay on his left side. He drew his knees toward his chest, kept his head tucked down, and folded his hands under his chin. That was all the protection he could give himself.

  Conditions in the trailer were even worse than he had expected—and he had expected them to be nothing short of intolerable. The suspension system was primitive at best, and every irregularity of the icecap was instantly transmitted through the skis and wheels to the cargo bed. He bounced and slid from one side of the narrow space to the other. Even his heavy clothing could not fully cushion him from the cruelest shocks, and the ribs on his right side soon reverberated with soft pain. The wind roared at him from every direction; blasts of frigid air searched busily and relentlessly for a chink in his arctic armor.

  Aware that dwelling on his condition would only make it seem much worse, he guided his thoughts into other channels. He closed his eyes and conjured a vivid picture of Rita. But in order not to thin
k of her as she might be—cold, frightened, miserable, injured, or even dead—he cast his mind back in time, back to the day they had first met. The second Friday of May. Nearly nine years ago. In Paris…

  He had been attending a four-day conference of scientists who had participated in the previous United Nations Geophysical Year. From all over the world, three hundred men and women of different disciplines had met in Paris for seminars, lectures, and intense discussions paid for by a special UNGY fund.

  At three o’clock Friday afternoon, Harry addressed a handful of geophysicists and meteorologists who were interested in his Arctic studies. He spoke for half an hour in a small room off the hotel mezzanine. When he had made his final point, he put away his notes and suggested they switch to a question-and-answer format.

  During the second half of the meeting, he was surprised and enchanted by a young and beautiful woman who asked more intelligent, incisive questions than any of the twenty eminent gray heads in the room. She looked as though she might be half Irish and half Italian. Her amber-olive skin seemed to radiate heat. Wide mouth, ripe lips: very Italian. But the Irish was in her mouth too, for she had a curious, lopsided smile that gave her an elfin quality. Her eyes were Irish green, clear—but almond shaped. Long, lustrous auburn hair. In a group that opted for tweeds, sensible spring suits, and plain dresses, she was a standout in tan corduroy jeans and a dark-blue sweater that accentuated her exciting figure. But it was her mind—quick, inquisitive, well informed, well trained—that most engaged Harry. Later he realized that he’d more than likely snubbed others in the audience by spending so much time with her.

  When the meeting broke up, he reached her before she left the room. “I wanted to thank you for making this a more interesting session than it might otherwise have been, but I don’t even know your name.”

  She smiled crookedly. “Rita Marzano.”

  “Marzano. I thought you looked half Italian, half Irish.”

  “Half English, actually.” Her smile developed into a full, lopsided grin. “My father was Italian, but I was raised in London.”

  “Marzano…that’s familiar. Yes, of course, you’ve written a book, haven’t you? The title…”

  “Changing Tomorrow.”

  Changing Tomorrow was popularized science, a study of mankind’s future projected from current discoveries in genetics, biochemistry, and physics. It had been published in the United States and was on some best-seller lists.

  “Have you read it?” she asked.

  “No,” he admitted.

  “My British publisher shipped four hundred copies to the convention. They’re on sale in the news corner off the lobby.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m scheduled for an autograph session now. If you’d like a signed copy, I won’t make you wait in line.”

  That night he was unable to put the book down until he turned the last page at three o’clock in the morning. He was fascinated by her methods—her way of ordering facts, her unconventional but logical approaches to problems—because they were startlingly like his own thought processes. He felt almost as though he had been reading his own book.

  He slept through the Saturday morning lectures and spent most of the afternoon looking for Rita. He couldn’t find her. When he wasn’t looking for her, he was thinking about her. As he showered and dressed for the evening’s gala affair, he realized he couldn’t recall a word spoken in the one lecture to which he had gone.

  For the first time in his life, Harry Carpenter had begun to wonder what life was like for a settled man sharing a future with one woman. He was what many women would call “a good catch”: five-eleven, a hundred sixty pounds, pleasant-looking if not handsome, with gray eyes and aristocratic features. But he had never wanted to be anyone’s catch. He’d always wanted a woman who was his equal, who neither clung nor dominated, a woman with whom he could share his work and hopes and ideas, from whom he could get feedback that interested him. He thought perhaps he had found her.

  But he didn’t know what to do about it. At thirty-three, with eight years of university education behind him, he had spent far too many hours in academic pursuits and too few learning the rituals of courtship.

  The program for the evening included a film study of the major UNGY projects, a banquet, and a floor show, followed by dancing to a twelve-piece band. Ordinarily, he would have gone only to the film, if that. But there was a good chance that he’d see Rita Marzano at one of the social functions.

  She was last in line at the hotel’s exhibition hall, where the film was to be shown. She seemed to be alone, and she smiled crookedly when she saw him.

  With a candor that he could not control and a blush that he hoped she didn’t notice, he said, “I’ve been looking for you all day.”

  “I got bored and went shopping. Do you like my new dress?”

  The dress couldn’t enhance her beauty, but it complemented all that nature had given her. It was floor-length, long-sleeved, green with beige buttons. Her eyes picked up the shade of the dress while her auburn hair seemed brighter by contrast. The neckline revealed a décolletage uncommon at the dry conferences of scientists, and the clinging, silky fabric vaguely outlined her nipples. With little effort she could have entranced him as quickly as a flute entrances a cobra.

  “I like it,” he said, trying not to stare.

  “Why were you looking for me all day?”

  “Well, of course, the book. I’d like to talk about it if you have a free minute.”

  “Minute?”

  “Or an hour.”

  “Or an evening?”

  Damn if he wasn’t blushing again. He felt like an Indiana farm boy. “Well…”

  She looked along the exhibition-hall line, turned to Harry again, and grinned. “If we skip out on this, we’ll have all evening to talk.”

  “Aren’t you interested in the film?”

  “No. Besides, dinner will be awful. The floor show will be too conventional. And the dance band will be out of tune.”

  “Dinner together?”

  “That would be lovely.”

  “Drinks first at Deux Magots?”

  “Marvelous.”

  “Lapérouse for dinner?”

  She frowned. “That’s pretty expensive. You needn’t take me first class. I’m as happy with beer as with champagne.”

  “This is a special occasion. For me if not for you.”

  Dinner was perfect. Paris offered no more romantic atmosphere than that in the upstairs room at Lapérouse. The low ceiling and the murals on the crack-webbed walls made the restaurant warm and cozy. From their table they had a view of the night-clad city, and below them lay the light-stained, oily river like a storybook giant’s discarded black silk scarf. They ate flawless oie rôtie aux pruneaux, and for dessert there were tiny tender strawberries in a perfect zabaglione. Throughout the meal, they unraveled an endless skein of conversation, immediately as comfortable as friends who had been dining together for a decade. Halfway through the roast goose, Harry realized that they had not yet discussed her book but had rambled on about art, literature, music, cooking, and much more, without once finding themselves at a loss for words. When he finished his cognac, he was reluctant to let the night end so soon.

  She shared that reluctance. “We’ve been Frenchmen for dinner. Now let’s be tourists.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  The Crazy Horse Saloon was an all-out assault on the senses. The customers were Americans, Germans, Swedes, Italians, Japanese, Arabs, British, Greeks, even a few Frenchmen, and their conversations intertwined to produce a noisy babble frequently punctuated with laughter. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, perfume, and whiskey. When the band played, it generated enough sound to shatter crystal. The few times Harry wanted to speak to Rita, he was forced to scream, although they were just two feet apart, on opposite sides of a minuscule cocktail table.

  The stage show made him forget the noise and smoke. The girls were gorgeous. Long legs. Full, high-set breasts. T
iny waists. Galvanizing faces. More variety than the eye could take in. More beauty than the mind could easily comprehend or the heart appreciate. Dozens of girls, most bare-breasted. All manner of costumes, most skimpy: leather straps, chains, furs, boots, jeweled dog collars, feathers, silk scarves. Their eyes were heavily mascaraed, and some wore sequined designs on their faces and bodies.

  Rita said, “After an hour, this gets to be a bore. Shall we go?” Outside, she said, “We haven’t talked about my book, and that’s really what you wanted to do. Tell you what. We’ll walk to the Hotel George V, have some champagne, and talk.”

  He was somewhat confused. She seemed to be sending conflicting signals. Hadn’t they gone to the Crazy Horse to be turned on? Hadn’t she expected him to make a pass afterward? And now she was ready to talk books?

  As they crossed the lobby of the George V and boarded the elevator, he said, “Do they have a rooftop restaurant here?”

  “I don’t know. We’re going to my room.”

  His confusion deepened. “You’re not staying at the convention hotel? I know it’s dull, but this is terribly expensive.”

  “I’ve made a tidy sum from Changing Tomorrow. I’m splurging, for once. I have a small suite overlooking the gardens.”

  In her room a bottle of champagne stood beside her bed in a silver bucket full of crushed ice.

  She pointed to the bottle. “Moët. Open it, please?”

  He took it out of the bucket—and saw her wince.

  “The sound of the ice,” she said.

  “What about it?”

  She hesitated. “Puts my teeth on edge. Like fingernails screeching against a blackboard.”

  By then he was so attuned to her that he knew she wasn’t telling him the truth, that she had winced because the rattle of the ice had reminded her of something unpleasant. For a moment her eyes were faraway, deep in a memory that furrowed her brow.

  “The ice is hardly melted,” he said. “When did you order this?”

  Shedding the troubling memory, she focused on him and grinned again. “When I went to the ladies’ room at Lapérouse.”

  Incredulous, he said “You’re seducing me!”