Frozen Solid: A Novel

by James Tabor

  “Amen,” Merritt said.

  50

  THE MOUTH OF THE ENTRANCE SHAFT WAS A ROUND HOLE IN THE ice four feet in diameter. As Blaine had told her, it was hidden behind a maintenance shed a quarter mile from the station.

  Under the plywood cover, a six-by-six wooden post lay across the top of the hole, its ends resting in slots cut into the ice. Bolted to the six-by-six was a cable ladder with round metal rungs that dropped into darkness. Cavers and climbers had used similar ladders in the old days, before rappelling and vertical gear changed everything. Like those, the rungs on this ladder were only a foot wide. And slick.

  She glanced at the parka thermometer: seventy degrees below zero. There were no southern lights just now, only stars pitting the black sky. The cold was already seeping through her clothing, sneaking past thin spots of insulation. Tiny exposed places on her face burned. Fire and ice, she thought. At some point, they feel the same.

  She started down. It had been some time since she’d used a ladder like this. The metal rungs were icy, and she’d never had to descend one wearing seven layers of clothing. Worst of all were the huge bunny boots. The rungs were so narrow that she could place only the toes on them, which meant that she had to keep her calf muscles tensed to prevent her feet from slipping off. By the time she reached the bottom, both legs were jigging up and down in the spasms climbers called “sewing machine legs.”

  She stepped from the ladder onto the bottom of a rectangular corridor that, as she played her light beam around, reminded her of an abandoned mine shaft. The walls were sheets of thick plywood, now bulging in from the crushing pressure of ice and snow. The ceiling was more plywood, supported every four feet by massive vertical timbers and horizontal crossbeams. Even so, some of the crossbeams had cracked, and seams of ice showed through splits in the plywood sheets.

  Because no one had ever lived at the South Pole before 1957, no one had known what the weather would be like. The first crew constructed most of the original station underground, leaving five feet of ice on top. The walls and ceilings had been shored up, mine-style, with timbers. When the place had originally been built, everything must have been plumb and square. Now there was not a plumb line or square angle to be seen, giving the place a tilting, twisting fun-house look. It smelled of old wood and diesel oil and decay.

  Cave-in debris blocked half the passage to her left, so she went right, into an open corridor. After a hundred feet that led into a room that must have been the galley—red picnic tables with benches, sagging cabinets, sinks. On the tables sat bowls of cereal as they had been left half a century earlier, no mold growing here, empty beer cans and mugs, some with coffee frozen solid, overflowing ashtrays.

  Either they got out of this place in one hell of a hurry, she thought, or they didn’t bother to clean up after their last day. Probably the latter. She was about to continue through a door on the galley’s opposite side when a cracking noise stopped her. She remained absolutely still, not even breathing, listening. No more noises, but she knew that the entire complex was unstable. The beams and timbers were huge, two feet on a side, but a major shift in all that ice above could snap them like twigs. Not a place to linger.

  Thirty feet past the galley she came to a T intersection. Turned right, moved on carefully, the floor here littered with rusting cables, lumber, scrap metal. Came to what had been an entrance on her right, the frame all askew now, door hanging from one set of hinges. Painted in black:

  Capt. J. R. Lieder, USN

  C.O.

  South Pole, Antarctica, USA

  Like Columbus claiming everything he could see, and all he could not, for the queen, she thought. South Pole, Antarctica, USA. Different times. She wrenched the door back and shone her light into the room. Two gray metal file cabinets, an overturned chair, and a massive old metal desk like the one in Graeter’s office in the station.

  Fida lay on top of the desk, naked, curled into a fetal position. His eyes were open, dulled by the gray haze of death. One arm lay underneath him. The other was stretched straight out, fingers spread wide, as if trying to snatch something out of the air. Areas of his skin glistened: body moisture that had frozen and was reflecting her light. Sweat? From a struggle? So thin, she saw, skin over knobs and ridges of bone. His ECW gear, underclothing, and boots lay in a pile on the floor beside the desk.

  She ran her light over the room’s ceiling. None of the crossbeams had split, but all had unsettling downward curves. Didn’t matter. She needed to get closer. She walked in, stood beside the body, started to look for wounds or signs of trauma. Saw nothing obvious at first, but then, peeking from beneath Fida’s head, a small, reddish-black circle. Blood? She bent to look.

  A sharp noise from the dark passageway behind her, then a sound like giant hands clapping, ice cracking, timbers shattering. One second of dead silence, and the ceiling collapsed. Her last thought was that it sounded like the avalanche on Denali just before it hit.

  51

  GERRIN PULLED INTO HIS GARAGE, WAITED FOR THE AUTOMATIC door to close, and sat. He turned on the dome light and angled the rearview mirror toward himself so that he could look into his own eyes. It had been a difficult couple of days. First the call from Barnard, later meeting with him. Then the call from Merritt. The videoconference with Kendall and Belleveau. Finally, the sat call back to Merritt. She wasn’t a problem. Merritt was a zealot, driven by resentment that had festered for years. He understood her: damned barren by pure chance, unable to fathom why others should not suffer the same fate, especially if her conscience could be salved by thinking some good thing might result.

  So the Pole’s women would fly like sparks to every corner of the world, and Triage would burn like wildfire through the globe’s breeding stock. Or, more properly, like smallpox. There would be the same exponential growth. And there would be pain, but at least it would visit all equally. He took comfort from the fact that Triage had no bias, made no choices, assumed nothing. Only a microbe, it would work just as effectively on the Upper East Side and Rodeo Drive as it would in Lagos and Dhaka and New Delhi.

  But did “work” mean sterilize or kill? If he had made the wrong call, millions—tens of millions, a thing barely conceivable—of women might die. He was a man of iron control, but now his mind flooded with red visions. Exsanguinated. Bled to death. Two women died that way, an awful thing to see and worse, no doubt, to suffer. He saw rivers of blood, streets awash in blood, lakes of blood, hosts of women drowning in blood, blood like rain, drenching the earth.

  And yet, and yet … What were the options? From the beginning, his scientific, rational, calculating brain had reduced it all to sets of probabilities, clean and simple, rows and columns of data, percentages, projections. Certain global catastrophe later or heroic action now. Heroic in the strictly medical sense: treatment sure to harm but employed as a last resort when no action at all meant sure death. Physicians did it routinely, millions of times every day all over the world. Amputating gangrenous limbs. Excising cancer-riddled eyes, noses, colons, lungs. Killing people slowly with toxic chemicals to keep tumors from killing them quickly.

  In the end, he did not really believe that Triage would kill millions of women. Could not believe it. They had planned too carefully, prepared too thoroughly, tested too rigorously. Triage was not designed to kill. Now, a place like Pole, that had been designed by nature to kill if any place on earth had. Surely something down in that otherworldly hell had caused those women’s deaths.

  So he had lied. He had lied to Barnard, over and over. He had lied to Kendall and Belleveau when he’d said he agreed with Kendall’s plan. And he had lied when he’d told Merritt that the three Triage leaders had chosen to go forward as planned, when in fact they had agreed to pursue Kendall’s suggested course. He felt remorse over lying to his fellow Triage leaders, but what choice had there been?

  In the mudroom, he took off his shoes and left them neatly aligned in one corner, unlocked the inner door, and stepped sock-footed onto the
hall’s thick green carpeting. A small thing, but one he had come to expect with pleasure. In the kitchen, he brewed tea and took a cup, thick with sugar, toward his leather recliner in the living room. He said, “Lights.” Said it again, more loudly. Nothing. Five thousand dollars for a voice-activated system, and this. It had worked that morning. He would have to check the security system later. He used the wall switch.

  Before he seated himself, someone knocked on the front door, and he answered. Two men. One he had never seen before, very big, with short, straw-colored hair and a remarkable face. “Good evening, Dr. Gerrin,” he said. Another man stepped from behind the first. It was Donald Barnard.

  “Hello,” Barnard said.

  “We need to talk to you.” Bowman stepped through the doorway and walked straight toward Gerrin, who moved backward step for step, as if retreating from an advancing wall. “You know Dr. Barnard from BARDA,” Bowman said. “I work with another agency.”

  “It has been a very long day, I am afraid. This is not a good time.” He glanced at his watch. “But if you call my office tomorrow, you can—”

  “Have a seat on the couch.” Bowman had walked, and Gerrin had backed, through the entrance hall and into the living room.

  “It won’t take long,” Barnard said, following. He was surprised at how much traffic noise he was hearing. An older house, built even before the nearby Beltway.

  Gerrin seemed not to notice. He looked from one to the other and placed his cellphone on the coffee table in front of him.

  “Amazing devices,” he said. “Especially the voice activation. Someone is breaking into your house in the middle of the night? One word brings the police with sirens screaming. Very comforting.”

  “When it works,” Bowman said.

  Gerrin picked up the phone, put it down again. “No reception bars. How strange.”

  “Everything disappoints, sooner or later,” Bowman said. Earlier, he had explained to Barnard, “Some signal jamming, highly localized. Easy on, easy off.”

  “So,” Gerrin said, “how may I help you gentlemen?” His irritation had passed, and he seemed composed. Barnard thought, If a man like Bowman had just pushed into my home …

  “The South Pole,” Barnard said.

  “Which we discussed in my office.”

  “I have some more questions.”

  “Really? I thought we addressed your concerns well enough.”

  “We know that you lied to Dr. Barnard,” Bowman said. “We need to know why. And we need truthful answers. Lives may be at stake here.”

  Gerrin locked eyes with Bowman, and Barnard had to admire that. “Or what? You’ll spirit me away to some distant land for extreme rendition? Waterboarding and such?”

  “We wouldn’t need to spirit you far. Waterboarding is medieval and messy. This is the twenty-first century, Doctor. We’ve come a long way.” Bowman took a smartphone from his pocket, started a video, and handed it to Gerrin. After twenty seconds, the slender man turned pale. When he gave the phone back, his hand shook.

  “Emily Durant,” Bowman said. “Why did you ask for Hallie Leland to replace her?”

  “The government personnel system computer asked for her, actually. She had the specialized skills needed to finish an important project.” Gerrin looked from one man to the other. “You must have known that already. Why did you come to my home? Really, I mean. What is this about?”

  “Dr. Durant’s death may not have been accidental,” Bowman said.

  “How would you know? No one has seen the medical examiner’s report.”

  “We have. Tell us what you know about her death. The truth.”

  Gerrin sighed, set his cup on the table, leaned forward, elbows on knees. His composure had returned, which Barnard found very strange. “All right. I will appreciate your discretion here with what I am about to say. I was told—we are talking back-channel now—that drugs might have been involved.”

  “Why did you lie to me about that?” Barnard asked. “You said you didn’t know.”

  “Please consider my position. A stranger comes to your office asking for details about the death of a senior scientist in a facility for which you are responsible. There is no official report on this death yet, but you have unconfirmed information that could do huge damage to the dead person’s reputation, as well as to your organization. Not to mention your own career.”

  Barnard started to ask another question, but someone knocked on the front door. Gerrin looked at them, eyebrows raised.

  “Go ahead,” Bowman said.

  Gerrin left them and returned with a young man Barnard recognized at once. “Gentlemen, this is my assistant, Muhammed Kandohur Said. He kindly offered to look at a computer here that has been misbehaving. Muhammed is an exceptional young man. Graduated magna cum laude from MIT two years ago. He is from Karail, in my native country. Have you heard of it?”

  “No,” Barnard said.

  “Not surprising, really. Few Americans have. Muhammed, this is Dr. Barnard and, ah, his associate.”

  The young man, polite and diffident, shook hands with each in turn. To Gerrin he said, “My friend Hasim is dropping me off. We weren’t sure you would be home yet. Shall I tell him to go now? He will pick me up later.” To Bowman and Barnard, sheepishly: “I still do not have a license to drive.”

  “Yes, go and do that,” Gerrin said. “Then we will look at the computer. My friends here were just leaving.”

  “What did you think?” Bowman asked, when they had driven a few blocks.

  “I thought about how much effort it took to keep from wrapping my hands around his neck and squeezing some truth out of the bastard,” Barnard said. He shook his head. “Haven’t wanted to do that for a long time, Wil.”

  52

  WHEN SHE HEARD THE CRACKING SOUND, HALLIE DOVE UNDER THE desk and crouched in the kneehole, an instinct-driven reaction, too fast for conscious thought. She huddled and prayed that the massive desk was as strong as it looked.

  This collapse took much less time than the avalanche—not more than three seconds, ending with a huge whoomp. She didn’t move, wanting to make sure the cave-in had stabilized. She was unhurt and breathing but would exhaust the air in her little cave quickly. When the carbon dioxide load became too great, she would fall unconscious and then suffocate.

  She had the headlamp and two handheld lights. Her cellphone, which would be useless. An energy bar. Matches. The Leatherman multitool. Light would not be the problem. Nor food and water. She would live or die by air.

  She guessed her hole to be about two feet high, three feet wide and deep. She had waited out mountain storms in snow caves not a whole lot bigger, and worked through cave passages a good deal smaller. Here, she was crouched on her knees, bent over sideways in the hole, perpendicular to the way she wanted to go.

  She pulled off her mittens, found her Leatherman tool, and formed it into a pair of pliers with tapered jaws.

  You have to breathe easy, she told herself. Don’t overexert. This will take time.

  With her mittens back on, she jabbed the pliers’ point into the wall of frozen material blocking the front of the kneehole. It was not as compacted as concrete-hard avalanche debris. The snow above Old Pole had never slid and melted. It had compressed, yes, but that was different. When she jabbed the pliers in and pulled, fist-sized chunks popped out.

  Trying to tunnel up was out of the question. Her only hope was to work her way horizontally toward the room’s doorway. The room’s ceiling beams were long and could support less weight than those in the narrow hall. Maybe the collapse had been limited to this one office.

  She kept her breathing as shallow as possible, but soon she started to feel oxygen hunger, a constant, low burning in her chest coupled with an urge in her brain to suck in a huge, deep breath. Bothersome, but something she could control. She did know that at some point the rising carbon dioxide level in her blood would trip an autonomic response. Then she would gasp involuntarily. For a few seconds she would fee
l relief, but then the urge to breathe would again become irresistible. The cycle would repeat itself over and over until, by exhausting the oxygen in her space, it would kill her.

  She kept digging, lying on her belly, shoving icy debris back behind her as it accumulated in front of her face. Halfway out of the kneehole, she stopped and hollowed out a space in front of the desk’s lower drawer. She was gambling, and it was taking extra time and air, but it might be worth it. When she had a space big enough to open the drawer halfway, she pulled it out. Inside were four sturdy metal dividers, more common back in the days when files still meant only paper. They were rigid steel the size and shape of a file drawer’s interior. Little arms on their sides ran along horizontal tracks in the drawers. There was some proper way to get them out, which Hallie didn’t recall or maybe never knew. She grabbed one with both hands, wrenched it around, and it popped free. It would become her shovel. She could move ten times as much ice and snow with each stroke as she had been chipping out with the pliers.

  She didn’t need a large tunnel, just the size of a manhole cover, big enough to wriggle through and to push debris back behind her. There was always the possibility that the tunnel might collapse, but she could do nothing about that. After a minute, digging with her “shovel,” she had advanced another foot. The distance from the desk to the room’s doorway was about eight feet, if she remembered correctly. So, roughly eight more minutes of digging. Call it ten. She was unhurt, had the tool and the energy and the will. Whether she had the air remained to be seen.

  After five minutes, she was panting and her head hurt, signs that the oxygen level in her tunnel was dangerously low. When her vision started to gray, she would be close to passing out. Her arms and back and neck muscles were burning, but she had to keep chopping and clearing, extending the tunnel, inching forward, doing it over again and again.