Ice Age

by Brian Freemantle

  Patricia Jefferies wasn’t a lifeless statue. She was someone he’d seen just thirty-six hours before, through a glass screen like the one separating them now, exhausted, confused but still obviously attractive – beautiful even – lustrously auburn-haired, smooth-skinned, interestingly firm-bodied.

  Just thirty-six hours ago. She wasn’t now.

  Now the hair wasn’t any longer lustrous or auburn. It was grey and so thin he could in places see her shined pink scalp and her face was already faintly filigreed by lines, as was the skin on her arms and hands, which were blackly corded with veins. She appeared smaller, shrunken, her knobbled spine visible through the fabric of her tunic. She didn’t hear them enter the observation room – Pelham had warned him of the deafness – and she didn’t look up from the paper over which she was bent low, laboriously writing, squinting at the words she was finding it so hard to fashion.

  ‘Dr Jefferies … Patricia …?’ said Pelham, beside him.

  She looked up, at last, and Spencer realized she couldn’t see them behind the glass. ‘I want to get this done while I can.’

  ‘I know … Thank you … How do you feel …?’ said Pelham, gently.

  ‘Tired. But I’m not going to stop … Jack? How’s Jack? Can I see Jack?’

  ‘The tests aren’t finished yet,’ avoided Pelham. ‘As soon as they are …’

  ‘Is he all right?’ the woman demanded. There was meant to be indignation, irritation, but it was too much of an effort.

  Pelham turned questioningly sideways. I waited for you, Spencer remembered. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? White House decisions, if it came to this. Blame-weaving bastard. Spencer nodded.

  Looking back to the window, Pelham said: ‘We think he’s OK.’

  Patricia’s sigh of relief was an effort, too. ‘That’s good. Very good. Can I speak to him, at least?’

  Another sideways look. Spencer nodded again, swallowing. There was acid in his throat, vomit, burning him.

  ‘I think so,’ promised Pelham.

  ‘Soon? I’d like it to be soon.’

  ‘I know. Of course.’

  Patricia turned back to her composition, as if the strain of looking up towards the glass was too much. ‘It’s almost all written down now … everything I can remember … everything that happened.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Pelham again, emptily.

  Patricia made a vague gesture over her own body. ‘Have you found anything? … what …?’

  ‘Not yet. Too soon …’ said Pelham, finally not bothering to seek approval.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll do everything … all the tests … but I’m not good with pain …’

  ‘There won’t be any pain, I promise.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Patricia was wheezing at having to speak so much.

  Spencer began to retreat, repelled and despising himself – which he never had before – for feeling repelled. He had not once taken his eyes off the bent old woman in front of him who had to use both hands to pick up and arrange the pen that had fallen from her fingers in order to write again.

  ‘I’ll go and see about Jack,’ promised Pelham, following the other man. Patricia Jefferies didn’t look up, not hearing him. The pen pushed slowly up and down.

  Spencer needed the support of the corridor wall, leaning his shoulders back against it, uncaring about the theatricality. ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘I warned you.’

  ‘Not enough. How long?’

  ‘She’s thirty-two. There’s clearly more internal than external deterioration; going through the menopause as she clearly has would have literally been a hormonal explosion. Who knows how long? Who knows anything! We’ve found nothing so far in blood, urine or faeces. Nothing to indicate poisoning.’

  ‘Stoddart is OK?’

  ‘We think so. It could be the gestation period is longer in some people than in others.’

  ‘What about those others?’

  ‘See for yourself,’ invited the installation director, almost impatiently, leading the way further along the viewing gallery corridor.

  James Olsen was also at the table, writing far more quickly than Patricia Jefferies. His head jerked up the moment he heard them. ‘He’s not my lawyer!’ the glaciologist said the moment he heard Spencer’s voice. ‘I said I wanted my lawyer, Jacobson. Who’s this?’

  Pelham didn’t respond, leaving the reply to Spencer, who hesitated. Hysterically angry, Pelham had warned. Not so far advanced as the woman. Litigious, with a paper and pen before him. Spencer said: ‘Government.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ demanded the scientist, pen poised. What hair remained had kept its brownness, but it was only a narrow hedge around a completely shining bald pate. He seemed as shrunken as Patricia Jefferies but the arthritis was very advanced, lumping not just his hands but his wrists and even his left elbow, and Spencer was surprised the man appeared able to write as quickly as he had been doing when they’d entered. Olsen’s skin was very wrinkled and brown spotted where it was visible on his face, arms and throat, and he was turkey necked, a positive wattle flapping in his anger from chin to throat. Veins stood out blackly, like welts.

  ‘We’re doing all we can to help you,’ Spencer tried to avoid.

  ‘You’re going to help me!’ said the man. ‘I’ve got a wife, just 35, who’s going to be a widow. A daughter who hasn’t gone through high school yet. So, here’s how you’re going to help me. You’re going to get the lawyer I asked for, Jacobson …’ The accusing finger came up again, towards the window. ‘He’s got the number. I want Jacobson here, now, while I’m still able to set the case out that I’m going to bring against you, the government …’ Olsen had to stop, to recover himself. ‘… And Stoddart. Going to sue that son of a bitch. Wouldn’t leave them, like I told him. His fault – the government’s fault – that we travelled with those bodies back to McMurdo not even properly sealed against infection … then all the way here … infected me. I’ve been killed … murdered … you’re going to pay … pay millions … going to expose it all …’ He had to stop again.

  Legally there was probably an indefensible case, Spencer acknowledged professionally: minimal mitigation, whatever the terms and conditions of the glaciologist’s federal employment contract. The pages already torn from the pad upon which the man was writing were stacked almost as high as those that remained empty in front of him. Would the federal contract be covered by national emergency regulations? It hardly mattered that Olsen didn’t have his name. He was the government – representing the Executive – and his was the only name, the instantly recoverable, instantly identifiable name, on the visitors’ and security logs. Hopelessly – sure he could physically feel the contempt from Pelham next to him – Spencer said: ‘Everything’s being done to reverse this … stop it and reverse it …’

  Instead of a renewed tirade, which Spencer expected, the man beyond the window said: ‘And I want Harriet. Not in here. Don’t want her to catch it … Out there … I want to talk to my wife … say … say goodbye … Want that soon. Very soon … before –’ he waved his misshapen hands over his body similarly to how Patricia had, as if he was afraid to touch it – ‘before this gets any worse …’

  Spencer knew there wasn’t any legislation, covered by any statute book, that could be hidden behind. To deny this man – this justifiably outraged, pitiful, dying man – everything he asked was blatantly, constitutionally and morally illegal. Recognizing his cowardice, Spencer said: ‘We’re going now … going to talk to people …’

  ‘Not people!’ Olsen forced himself to shout after them. ‘Jacobson … Pelham’s got the number … Harriet …’

  In the outside corridor again Spencer was not at once able to talk, not leaning against the wall this time but with his hand outstretched towards it, head bowed, dragging the breath into himself like someone suddenly released after being held too long under water. ‘I don’t know …’ he started but then stragg
led to a halt.

  ‘None of us do,’ said Pelham, having had more time to adapt. Relentlessly he said: ‘There’s the pilot. And the doctor.’

  Chip Burke was in one of the easy chairs in front of the television, which was on, showing an old black and white movie. Spencer identified Bette Davis but wasn’t sure if the other actress was Joan Crawford. Pelham called the pilot’s name but Burke gave no response and initially Spencer thought the man was deaf, like Patricia, until he saw the way his head was slumped and realized Burke was asleep. The man came awake with a snuffled start when Pelham raised his voice, jerking his head around in frightened confusion until Pelham said: ‘It’s OK, Chip. You’re OK. It’s me, Walt. Remember we spoke a while ago?’

  Burke turned towards the sound of the voice, blinking, unfocused and only managed to get up from the chair on the third attempt. ‘Guess I do … help me again a little. Walt, you say …? What can I do for you, Walt?’

  Spencer had been warned about the dementia – severe Alzheimer’s, Pelham had diagnosed – but was as unprepared as he had been with the other two. Burke hadn’t lost any hair, but it was as white as that on the bodies found at the field station. He was whitely unshaven, too, and there was a dark stain on the front of his tunic trousers, where he’d wet himself. His face was more lined than either of the other two, etched like a collapsing balloon the day after a party.

  ‘You managed to write anything for me, Chip?’

  The man sniggered but didn’t reply.

  ‘You remember I asked you to write down for me what happened?’

  ‘What happened?’ It was a question, not a rhetorical answer.

  ‘You don’t remember, Chip?’

  ‘Can’t say I can call it to mind. Like to help though, if I could. Tell me again what it is you want.’

  ‘You remember a few days ago? Flying a plane in Antarctica? Something happening there …?’

  The man’s already creased face creased further. ‘Cold. Cold as hell.’

  ‘That’s it,’ encouraged Pelham. ‘You call anything else to mind?’

  Burke’s face remained grimaced with effort. ‘Maybe in a little while … maybe a little while to think …’

  ‘You do that, Chip,’ soothed Pelham. ‘You sit back again. Think for a while …’ In the outside linking corridor the man said: ‘At least he doesn’t know. Won’t know.’

  ‘I don’t need to see …’ began Spencer, but stopped at the expression on Pelham’s face.

  Morris Neilson’s room was not immediately adjacent to the rest. The doctor was in what was obviously an infirmary section further along in a single medical isolation ward. The man was white-haired, white-faced, eyes closed and tethered to tubes and monitors that snaked above and below the bed coverings, green indicator lights struggling unevenly across black screens.

  Pelham said: ‘He was the oldest of the rescue party, forty-one. He’ll be the first to die.’

  Spencer shook his head, with nothing to say.

  Pelham said: ‘The last words he uttered were to ask to speak to his wife.’

  Spencer had nothing to say to that, either. Instead he said: ‘Can you help any of them?’ He felt lost, inadequate, another rare sensation.

  ‘No,’ said the director, brutally. ‘They’re all going to die and there’s nothing we can do to stop it … to save them …’

  ‘I need to talk to the White House.’

  ‘What about Olsen? The lawyer? And Olsen’s wife?’ persisted the director.

  ‘Wait until I’ve spoken to people in Washington.’

  ‘Patricia?’

  ‘You say there was a personal relationship?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘You think Stoddart’s up to seeing her like that?’

  ‘He’ll probably prefer it while she’s alive to when she’s dead.’

  Spencer winced at the new brutality. ‘Let him see her.’

  Stoddart wasn’t any better prepared than Spencer had been, although Walter Pelham spent far more time trying to warn him, actually – by the end – showing him one of the freeze frames of Patricia from the monitoring camera and offering to come with him into the observation deck. Stoddart’s gasp came out as a whimper, too soft for her to hear, and his eyes fogged. He said: ‘Patricia,’ but his voice was too weak, broken, and he coughed and called her name again, louder.

  She squinted up and said: ‘Jack? Is that you?’ and leaned forward and smiled. There was a gap, to the left of her mouth, where she’d lost at least two teeth.

  ‘It’s me,’ he said, needing to cough again.

  ‘Will you just look at me?’ she said. ‘Not a pretty sight, eh?’

  She was trying to make a joke of it: trying to make it easy for him! What could he say? Do? He said: ‘How you feeling?’ and loathed the emptiness.

  ‘Pretty shitty. Beats flu every time.’

  ‘I’m coming in!’ Stoddart declared.

  ‘No! You can’t …’

  ‘One of their suits …’ said Stoddart, already backing out of the room. Pelham was directly outside. ‘I want …’

  ‘I heard. I don’t think it’s a good idea.’

  ‘I’ll wear the sort of thing the doctor wore. There won’t be any risk. I’m not talking to her as if she’s in some sort of goldfish bowl, an exhibit. It’s not up for discussion.’

  ‘It won’t be much better …’

  ‘I said it wasn’t up for discussion.’ Hadn’t he told Olsen that, surrounded by dead bodies in the field station?

  ‘I’ll need something … a medical disclaimer …’

  ‘We’re being recorded, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I am demanding to go into the isolation chamber occupied by Patricia Jefferies,’ said Stoddart, at dictation speed. ‘I do so at my own risk, having been warned against it by Dr Pelham and exonerate Fort Detrick from any legal liability. There! Satisfied?’

  Pelham shrugged and turned to lead the way out of the corridor and down a flight of stairs, taking them to the level of the isolation suites. At one end of the new connecting corridor there was a hi-tech, medical replica of a sports stadium locker room, except here everything was sterilizable steel and there was the constant loud hum of extractor fans. Each locker held the sort of vizored protective all-in-ones the woman doctor had worn to examine him. There were individual oxygen packs to fit inside each outfit. Pelham showed Stoddart the sterilizing shower cubicles outside Patricia’s suite he was to use, still suited, as soon as he left and the incinerator chute down which to put the protection – using long-handled grips to avoid touching the outside of the fabric even though it would supposedly be decontaminated – immediately afterwards. There was a row of shower stalls at the far end of the locker room he was to use at once after disposing of the suit, making sure he washed every part of his body with the disinfecting liquid each stall contained.

  ‘It’ll sting,’ the man warned. ‘You know the rooms are wired. You get into any trouble – sometimes people who aren’t used to these suits get claustrophobic panic attacks – just call and we’ll come in and get you out. Whatever you do, don’t try to take off your suit, OK?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Stoddart impatiently, reaching into a locker.

  ‘I haven’t finished,’ stopped the director. ‘The entry is double-doored, with an air lock sterilization chamber inbetween. The asepsisitication won’t operate without both doors being secured. It works automatically. There are stopgo indicators set in both doors. They’re pressure locked on red, open at green.’

  Stoddart realized his hands were shaking when he fitted the oxygen pack into his suit and didn’t care if the intently watching Pelham saw it too. It was very cold through the thin cotton of the hospital-type tunic he still wore and he shivered when the outer covering came into contact with his skin. There was no claustrophobia although there was only limited sideways vision through the face mask. The locking devices on the air-sealed doors operated as Pelham had said they would. Patricia was standing di
rectly beyond the inner door, waiting. From outside Patricia’s hospital tunic hadn’t been noticeably too big. Standing as she was before him now it swamped her: she looked like a child wearing grown-ups’ clothing except she’d gone beyond being grown-up. Grown old, he corrected himself.

  Patricia half held out her arms, to be embraced, then let them fall. ‘I guess we can’t.’

  ‘You sure?’ She looked so frail and shrunken! He went forward and put his enclosed arms totally around her. Even through the thickness of his protection he could feel how thin she was. Her backbone was ridged, bowed near her shoulders.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m sure. It won’t work.’

  Stoddart stood back, not knowing what to do or say. She was still trying to joke, keep everything light.

  ‘We’d better –’ she made another half gesture, looking around the sterile room – ‘sit down. I need to sit down.’

  She did so, in one of the easy chairs. Stoddart lowered himself awkwardly into the one facing her, feeling encumbered for the first time. Whatever the suit was made of felt rough, unfinished inside, against his skin. ‘Is it just tiredness? Or do you hurt …?’ Why was he testing her? He wasn’t a doctor!

  She looked towards the table, where the sheets of paper were spread out. He saw there were more on the bureau. She said: ‘I’ve been trying to get it all down, while I can … working quite hard.’

  ‘I’m doing the same,’ he told her. Eight pages, he remembered. From the look of it she had written three times as much.

  ‘I’ve told Professor Pelham to use me. For whatever they want to do … experiment with. Just as long as there’s no pain.’

  ‘You’re very brave.’ Momentarily his eyes misted, and his chest heaved where he suppressed a sob.

  She saw the judder and said: ‘You all right? What’s the matter!’

  ‘Nothing! I’m OK!’ he said hurriedly, not wanting the panicked arrival of a rescue team.

  ‘I don’t feel brave. It seemed the obvious thing to do. It might be important, to have someone who’s dying from whatever it is.’