Devour

by L. A. Larkin

  A tall man in a yellow and black woolly hat, bushy beard and a creased face like a Shar Pei bursts into their conversation.

  ‘Professor Gary Matthews, aquatic biogeochemist,’ he says breathily, as if he’s been running. They shake hands.

  ‘Cambridge United?’ she says, nodding at his hat.

  ‘Well spotted,’ Matthews says, beaming. ‘So you’re from the Post? Read your articles. Very thought-provoking they are, too. Never imagined I’d find you in Antarctica, though. No tanks, no Taliban, no political coups—’

  ‘Yes, yes, Gary, another time perhaps?’ Heatherton interrupts. ‘This way.’

  Wolfe has to jog to keep up with Heatherton as he charges across the expanse of slick ice.

  He leans close and drops his voice. ‘Told everyone your science correspondent couldn’t make it, so you volunteered. You’ve always wanted to see Antarctica. A bit lame, but it’s all I could think of.’

  ‘I can work with that.’

  ‘We have two teams,’ says Heatherton, talking fast. ‘One, at the drill site, is led by George Beer, with Ed Ironside, plant engineer. Bruce Adeyemi stepped in while Trent was gone.’

  ‘Adeyemi is your electronics and software engineer, right?’

  ‘Correct.’

  They approach the container Heatherton left earlier.

  ‘Vitaly moves between the two teams, but right now we need him driving the drill, so he’s with me at the control centre. He manipulates the speed and direction of the drill through a joystick and by observing sensor readings on a computer.’

  Trying to keep pace with Heatherton, Wolfe stumbles and almost slips over. She steadies herself.

  ‘Put that out, for God’s sake!’ Heatherton snaps.

  Wolfe looks up to see a tall man with a wrestler’s neck and muscular torso, leaning against the container in grease-stained orange overalls. Dangling from the corner of his chapped lips is a cigarette. He gives Heatherton the kind of stare she’s seen Taliban prisoners give their American captors.

  ‘Boss, there is nothing flammable here.’ His Russian accent is pronounced. Vitaly Yushkov.

  Matthews flicks a worried look at Heatherton.

  ‘And the fuel bladders?’ says Heatherton, nodding towards grey rectangles the size and shape of waterbeds, some hundred metres away. ‘Now put it out.’

  The Russian’s sapphire blue eyes languidly move from Heatherton’s face to the fuel containers. Wolfe is near enough to smell the bitter, raw smoke, and guesses the brand he’s smoking: Belomorkanal. No filter, cheap, and a favourite of soldiers in the Russian Army. The brand was introduced to commemorate the construction of the White Sea - Baltic Canal, known as the Belomorkanal. She knows their distinctive aroma well from her time reporting on the Russian annexation of the Crimea.

  Yushkov slowly takes the cigarette from his mouth and pinches the burning end between his fingers. His hands are huge, like baseball gloves, and given his muscular arms, she suspects are very powerful. The cigarette is only half smoked so he pulls a packet from his overall breast pocket, opens it, places the remainder of the cigarette inside, and shoves it back in the pocket. It’s only then that Wolfe notices everyone is watching him.

  11

  The drill has been going non-stop for twenty-two hours as jets of scalding hot water force a twenty-inch-diameter circular hole deeper and deeper into the ice sheet. Wolfe has been seated on a plastic chair at the back of the operations room for four hours. Rather than bored, she is fascinated by their Herculean efforts and finds their excitement contagious. She has stretched her legs outside once, observing Yushkov having a brief smoke, despite Heatherton’s scowls. Yushkov’s closely cropped fair hair and stubble of a beard suggest he normally keeps both shaved. Perhaps a habit he picked up in the Russian Army, along with a taste for Belomorkanal cigarettes?

  Nobody has slept. Empty coffee mugs litter surfaces. The stale air is ripe with sweat.

  ‘Final approach,’ Yushkov says to Beer through two-way radio. ‘I’m slowing it right down. I don’t want to blast our way in.’

  In front of the seated Yushkov is a computer screen and his hand rests on a joystick. His concentration is intense. Because of the harsh conditions in the bore hole, there is no camera on the drill itself. Yushkov must infer what is happening almost three thousand metres below, using telemetry. One sensor counts the revolutions on the spool reeling out the drill hose; another measures the weight of the dangling hose, with minute changes indicating the resistance from obstructions; a third monitors pressure to detect if the water level in the hole rises or falls - evidence that the lake has been reached.

  ‘Copy that,’ says Beer, from the bore hole site. He sounds tired. In the background, the generators thrum.

  Seated next to Yushkov is thirty-three-year-old Dr Toby Sinclair, who, next to the large-framed engineer, looks like a boy. Sinclair is little over five foot four. According to her notes, he was a child prodigy, and is considered a genius in the field of environmental microbiology, probably the most brilliant mind in the camp. Sinclair has barely said a word to her or anyone since her arrival. His warm, clammy handshake and his avoidance of eye contact tell her he’s not good at social interaction. His cheeks are a web of broken blood vessels, his mouse-brown hair looks as if it hasn’t been brushed for a while, and his beard is long and unkempt. He is clearly not bothered about his appearance.

  ‘Stop!’ says Yushkov, peering at the depth reading. ‘We should have reached water. Pull up the nozzle, slowly. Then get the camera down there.’

  ‘Copy that.’

  ‘Shutting down is a race against time,’ Heatherton says for her benefit, as well as Harvey, who sits next to her. ‘It can cause clots of ice to form in the hose, which blocks the power of the water jet. It’s the mechanical equivalent of a blocked coronary artery.’

  Harvey is as thin as a whippet and wears thick glasses which, needless to say, are not very practical in a freezing environment. He stops tapping away at his laptop keyboard.

  ‘So we could see the lake any minute?’ Harvey asks.

  Heatherton nods.

  Even from inside the metal container, Wolfe hears the crane outside grinding as the hose is dragged out of the hole, and wound back around the giant spool.

  Dr Stacy Price, the senior sediment scientist, paces the room, flicking her thick bunch of wavy auburn hair on each turn, much like a beaver’s tail slapping water. Her weather-beaten face and leathery neck adds at least ten years to her thirty-five.

  ‘Hurry up,’ she mutters.

  As soon as the hose is out of the hole, Yushkov remote-controls a camera as it snakes down the white narrow tunnel of ice, illuminated by a single light. Apart from the hum of the machinery and the growling of the generator, it is as if everyone is holding their breath.

  ‘Almost there,’ says Yushkov.

  ‘Mike,’ calls Beer through the radio. ‘Get a move on. The diameter of the hole is shrinking already.’

  ‘Look!’ says Yushkov, drawing everyone’s attention to the monitor.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ says Heatherton.

  It’s clear from the camera feed that it lies on a floor of white. Of ice. The hole has dead-ended and it hasn’t reached the water yet.

  Sinclair tugs at his straggly beard and mumbles, ‘The lake’s got to be deeper than we think.’

  ‘Has to be,’ agrees Matthews.

  Yushkov shakes his head. ‘I think the sensor data is incorrect.’

  Heatherton voices Yushkov’s concern through his two-way radio to Adeyemi, who’s helping manhandle the hose outside.

  ‘No way,’ says Adeyemi. ‘I calibrated them myself.’ There’s a hint of a Nigerian accent.

  Yushkov points at the screen, his gravelly voice raised, a touch of irritation. ‘Bruce, I do not see water. I see ice. I think you must look at the sensors on the drill hose. We have not drilled deep enough. I go for a smoke. Then I will take a look at the drill hose with you.’

  ‘Not again,’ moa
ns Heatherton.

  ‘Give him a break,’ says Matthews into Heatherton’s ear. ‘The poor man’s been driving that drill for almost twenty-three hours.’

  Heatherton ignores the remark. ‘Bruce?’ he calls through the radio. ‘Double-check the sensors, will you?’

  ‘Okay, boss,’ he replies, sighing.

  Nine minutes later, Adeyemi enters the control room, followed by Yushkov.

  ‘My mistake,’ says Adeyemi, shaking his head. ‘A sensor wasn’t calibrated properly and has overestimated the length of hose fed into the hole. We’re at least thirty metres short of the lake. We need to keep going.’

  Minutes trickle past as the drill is lowered down the bore hole once again, driving deeper and deeper into the seemingly never-ending ice sheet.

  ‘Cable just went slack!’ yells Beer into his radio.

  ‘Stop drilling!’ shouts Heatherton.

  Wolfe’s heart has sped up. Everyone crowds around Yushkov to get a closer look at the monitor. She watches the camera as it’s lowered through the circular tunnel of white.

  ‘Twenty-five metres,’ Yushkov counts down.

  ‘Twenty metres.’

  ‘Fifteen . . .’

  ‘ . . . ten . . . five.’

  The image on the monitor darkens to a murky brown.

  ‘What’s that?’ says Matthews, pointing.

  The picture blurs as the camera shakes.

  ‘Keep the camera still,’ says Heatherton.

  ‘We must wait for it to stop swinging,’ Yushkov says.

  The fuzziness clears. The camera’s light pierces the blackness to reveal murky water, the colour of black tea.

  ‘My God!’ exhales Sinclair.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’ says Price.

  ‘Keep going,’ says Heatherton, wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. ‘But very slowly.’

  In the narrow cone of light they see tiny particles, stirred up by the camera, like loose tea leaves swirling around. Suddenly, the camera shakes violently, and everything goes black. There’s a collective sharp intake of breath.

  ‘What just happened?’ asks Price, her voice tight with panic.

  ‘Vitaly?’ asks Heatherton.

  Before Yushkov can do anything, the camera jolts back into life. It lies on its side, the lens gazing across a muddy floor, strewn with tiny bits of rock.

  Silence. Wolfe looks to Heatherton, desperate for confirmation.

  ‘My God! We’ve done it,’ he breathes, white-faced with shock. Then he remembers the men outside and uses the radio. ‘Lock everything down, guys, and come and take a look. We’ve breached Lake Ellsworth! We’ve found it!’

  Both teams erupt into loud cheers and whoops of joy. The control room crew is high-fiving, hugging and laughing. Matthews slaps Yushkov on the back.

  ‘Well done, mate. Top work.’

  A snow-covered Rundle bursts through the door first and launches himself at Yushkov, almost toppling him from his chair. Beer, his blond beard caked in ice, drags down his fur-lined hood and shakes the snow off his back like a bear just out of hibernation. Matthews steps aside so Beer can get near to the monitor.

  ‘Thank Christ!’ Beer says, leaning on the console, clearly exhausted. He wipes his face roughly with his gloved hands. There are tears in his eyes. ‘We finally found you.’ He taps the screen. ‘You little beauty!’

  Wolfe finds herself laughing, enjoying their moment of victory.

  ‘We’re making history,’ says Price, mesmerised by the camera feed. ‘It’s liquid. It really is liquid.’

  Ironside, whose facial features remind her of Bill Clinton when he left the White House - relaxed affable smile, short grey hair, bulbous nose - whistles through his teeth. ‘Lucky we had that extra bit of hose. We were this close to falling short.’ He holds his hands shoulder width apart.

  ‘And I was that close to freezing my bollocks off!’ Blond-haired Beer laughs heartily, head thrown back.

  ‘Okay, everyone,’ calls Heatherton, clapping his hands together, trying to get attention above the chatter. Harvey is recording his speech on a tripod-mounted video camera. ‘This is a momentous achievement. We have reached Lake Ellsworth! We are the first people to lay eyes on it.’ Cheers erupt. ‘We have a lot still to discover, but we know one thing for sure; it’s liquid, which means—’

  Price yells out, ‘There could be life!’ and punches the air.

  Heatherton momentarily loses his smile at the interruption, but regains it quickly, looking straight at Harvey’s video recorder. ‘Congratulations to all of you here and everyone at British Antarctic Survey who have worked tirelessly to make this dream a reality. I’m very proud of all of you.’

  Wolfe snaps a few photos, but through her camera lens she’s zooming in on the faces of his team, watching their reactions. If Heatherton is right about sabotage, then someone in this freezing-cold shipping container has failed in their mission. Someone should look disappointed, or at least worried. Harvey nods incessantly, like one of those nodding toy dogs you see on car dashboards, leaving the video camera to run on its tripod as he shakes everyone’s hands. Beer can’t stop grinning, hugging anyone he can grab. Price fidgets, eager to get moving on the sediment collection. She starts wriggling into a white Tyvek all-in-one protective suit. Sinclair’s eyes are glued to the screen, his mouth slightly open, gawping, in a world of his own. Matthews slaps Ironside on the back, who then gives Matthews a jovial shove, laughing like kids in the playground. Adeyemi laughs, as if at some private joke. Rundle mumbles ‘Fuck me!’ several times, as if he can’t believe his own eyes. Yushkov has swivelled round to face Heatherton, so has his back to the monitor. His arms are folded, his expression like a poker player’s, giving nothing away. But Wolfe thinks she detects a hint of amusement in the slight upturn of his lips and the outer edges of his eyes.

  Wolfe tunes back in to Heatherton’s speech. ‘ . . . But we must keep going. The bore hole is already refreezing and will reduce its diameter by point six centimetres each hour, so we need to get the water-sampling probe down there right now. We aim to capture fifty millilitre samples from various depths in the lake. Then we’ll send down the corer to recover sediment from the lake floor. I know everyone’s tired and cold, but in a few more hours we’ll have the samples and know if we have found ancient life forms or not.’ Heatherton receives supportive nods. ‘Gary is in charge of the probe, Stacy leads on the corer. Any questions? No? Okay, let’s go to it.’

  Matthews and Sinclair hurry to join Price, changing into Tyvek suits with hoods, sterile latex gloves and face masks, worn to minimise the possibility they will contaminate the samples with dust, skin, hair and even germs.

  The team disperses, as they prepare for stage two. Initially, Wolfe joins Matthews and Rundle at the bore hole as they guide the water sampling probe into the hole in the ice. It looks like a steel bicycle pump with a glass cylinder. Then she goes back to the control centre to watch through the camera-feed the delicate process of taking a fifty-millilitre sample at the lake’s surface, using computer controls. The surface sample appears grainy but a lighter colour than the opaque water near the lake’s floor. The very first sample rises through the ice tunnel. Wolfe has butterflies in her stomach.

  ‘Steady,’ says Heatherton to Matthews, also in a Tyvek body suit. ‘I’m going outside,’ Heatherton adds, pulling up the hood. ‘I want to see it come to the surface. Charles, will you film this?’

  Harvey follows Heatherton out of the control room, as does Wolfe. Adeyemi is at the control console. There is no sign of Yushkov. She asks Adeyemi where Yushkov has gone.

  ‘Probably getting something to eat,’ he replies, uninterested.

  Wolfe joins the small crowd at the drill site and watches the bottle rise into view, the liquid a weak transparent brown. If they had been watching the dead rise from their graves, they couldn’t have been more transfixed.

  ‘This water hasn’t seen daylight for millions of years,’ says Heatherton as the bottle
hangs suspended a metre off the ice surface.

  Matthews, face and hands covered, carefully removes the bottle from the probe. Sinclair leans in, legs bent, as if ready to catch it should it fall. Matthews carries it to the laboratory in a sterile protective pouch, a silent following close behind.

  ‘We’ll take a quick look at this one, then get on with collecting others,’ Heatherton explains.

  They enter a second shipping container decked out like a biohazard laboratory. Nobody can enter without protective booties or face masks. At least this space is heated. Under the bright strip lighting the lake water looks a very pale honey colour. It is decanted into a clear test tube, then placed in a brace, and Matthews dips a salinity meter into the water.

  ‘Fresh water.’

  Next he uses an electrode. A number flashes on an LCD.

  ‘It conducts electricity strongly, evidence this sample is laden with mineral salts that could serve as food for microbes.’

  Matthews uses a pipette to deposit a water drop on a slide, which he places under a microscope. He zooms in. Despite the cold, sweat trickles down his temples and he has to ask Price to wipe it away.

  ‘What the hell?’ says Matthews, readjusting the microscope.

  ‘What do you see?’ asks the normally taciturn Sinclair.

  ‘Take a look.’

  Sinclair peers through the microscope and gasps, pulling his head back suddenly, as if he’s been stung. ‘Good God!’

  The suspense is too much for Heatherton. Sinclair steps aside. Heatherton takes one long look, then jolts his head up.

  ‘Never seen anything like it.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asks Wolfe.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’

  ‘Well, what do you see?’ she persists.

  ‘It’s teeming with life.’

  12

  Inside the lab it is quiet but, when the door is opened, bursts of laughter from the rowdy celebrations in the mess tent reach Stacy Price and Toby Sinclair, who are still working in their protective gear. Even though their rudimentary analysis of the lake’s samples is complete, neither can tear their eyes away from the microscopes. The lab is basic - microscopes, autoclaves, computers, Petri dishes. The focus is on preventing contamination of the samples, rather than protecting the scientists from contamination, which Wolfe finds unnerving, given they are handling a life form never before seen. Having been to a Biosafety Level 4 research facility when she was reporting on a new, deadly strain of avian flu, the Tyvek suits and masks don’t seem adequate protection. Wolfe tries asking Sinclair a question, but he either doesn’t hear or will not be distracted. She tries the sediment scientist instead.