Ice Age

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘People who give up in the expectation of dying die quicker than those who believe they’ve got a chance,’ said Pelham. ‘I’m not expecting an overnight cure but there just might be something we could identify and block.’

  He’d been presumptious, Stoddart decided. ‘I think it would be a good idea if I was brought fully up to date with what medical findings there have been.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better to wait until the British and French contingent arrive, for everyone to hear at the same time …?’ The man allowed one of his predictable pauses. ‘Setting out what we’ve found so far won’t take long.’

  Within thirty minutes of settling into his assigned office, Jack Stoddart realized he would have been overwhelmed trying to assimilate medical evidence in addition to what else there already was to absorb.

  He picked up the logs from the Antarctic field station and started to leaf through them. The only thing that appeared out of the ordinary – and to which he was refusing to attach too much significance because he would appear once more to be mounting his favourite, ridden-to-exhaustion hobby horse – were the early references to the unexpected mildness at the beginning of the South Pole’s winter.

  Harry Armstrong’s team had been the first to occupy the newly built and now destroyed field station, forty miles east of the Amundsen-Scott base, and the initial indication, six weeks earlier, was predictably in the official log of Armstrong himself, like Stoddart a climatologist. It was, in fact, on the second day of their arrival, before any of the scientists had properly set up their experiments.

  Bikini weather Armstrong had noted, light heartedly. Then, more seriously, two days after that: Thawing, despite the onset of darkness, instead of freezing. The next mention, one day later, was in Jane Horrocks’s notebook. As the geologist in the party her job had been to take deep core bores, hopefully to retrieve samples dating from the Oligocene period from the permanent Antarctic ice sheet, and she’d already recorded surface softness far more extensive than she’d experienced anywhere around Amundsen-Scott or McMurdo. Making the job easier, she’d logged. Maybe possible to sink deeper than intended. There was, however, no record of her having done so. Her data log ended with her bore penetrating less than two metres, little more than a start.

  That was on the fifth day after their arrival: the day of the first mention of whatever it was that attacked them. Again it was in the log of Armstrong, the team leader. Bucky complaining of extreme tiredness. George too. Then: Have decided not to bother assembling satellite dish until the fatigue passes. Feeling it myself. The entry was followed, with fateful irony, by: Jane says we’re all getting old. There was another weather reference the day after: Literally the lull before the storm. Heavier than normal snows. Need to get the dish operating as soon as possible. Need help. Urgently need help.

  Jane unwell, like the rest of us, read the next entry. Weather closing in. Need to talk to Neilson at McMurdo.

  Which he had, Stoddart remembered. The first disjointedly relayed symptoms had been that day, baffling the resident physician. Armstrong wrote of lassitude and of forgetting the necessary field station routine and of arguments with George Bedall, the astrophysicist. The first mention of hair change was in the diary of the already balding Bedall: Everyone’s hair changing. Mine gone. This is ridiculous.

  All the handwriting was changing by now, scrawling and unsteady. Jessup wrote: We’re becoming old. Visibly. I’m having problems seeing. Harry can’t properly raise McMurdo. No one knows why it’s happening. Very frightened.

  On the day that Bedall had written of his growing blindness, Jane’s entry read: Too tired to eat. Do anything. Please let the weather lift: please God. There’s the baby. What about the baby?

  The reason for Jane Horrocks’s request to shorten her McMurdo tour, Stoddart guessed. Brownlow, the director of McMurdo and their boss, couldn’t have known: he wouldn’t have approved of Jane going on an arduous field mission if he had. And she clearly hadn’t told Patricia. What about her husband, Peter? Stoddart remembered. An air traffic controller, at Reagan airport. Would he have been told – would all the families have been told – as the result of Brownlow’s message to Washington?

  For the next thirty minutes Stoddart did little more than sit and stare at the stacked dossiers, including those that had just been delivered from Alaska, unsure in what order to begin a master file for the scientists on their way to Fort Detrick as well as for Amanda O’Connell’s political group in Washington. Chronologically, he determined finally, at least totally to prepare himself. The master file could provide an abbreviated account, annotated for longer references from the mass of disordered material in front of him.

  He separated the already scanned, but incompletely remembered logs of the Antarctic field station and further subdivided them against the names of those who’d manned it, beginning with that of Harry Armstrong, its leader. It was a predictable recitation of the initial, early days’ occupation of a field station: allocation of living quarters and space within the building between the scientists for their individual working areas and the outside setting-up of equipment and testing facilities. The only thing that Stoddart did not expect was the failure, within those early days, to assemble and erect the satellite dish, which contravened established procedure. And the bikini weather reference, so quickly followed by the more seriously recorded fact that it should have been colder with the onset of winter. Eager to find more, Stoddart jumped pages for an outside temperature reading, which he couldn’t remember having seen as he picked through, and which was the most basic of operational requirements. Which hadn’t been completed. The listing stopped on the day panic began to grip the station, although it was neatly recorded for the days of the bikini and thawing references. They were higher than the seasonal norm, fluctuating between 24° to 27°F. Stoddart acknowledged that he obviously needed an empirical comparison – and that the limited statistics in front of him didn’t scientifically comprise it – but from memory he knew the temperature figures were showing it to have been at least five degrees warmer that the early seasonal norm.

  Stoddart searched just as anxiously for the necessary wind speed and strength, to equate the wind chill factor, expecting to find it low. Which it wasn’t. It was, if anything, slightly stronger – higher – than he expected, which made the thaw even more inexplicable. And for that reason it needed highlighting, not just as an unaccountable anomaly but as a suggestion for how the infection could have been transmitted, and not necessarily from the proximity of the affected station itself. Nowhere in Harry Armstrong’s notes was there any positive, professional climatic observation, which Stoddart conceded to be hardly surprising, so quickly did they fall victim to the senility strain; the man hadn’t had time properly to start working professionally.

  Determined upon absolute scientific objectivity, Stoddart moved on to what records had been established by Bucky Jessup, almost at once knowing a sweep of disappointment, although what the meteorologist had noted was more precise, more properly scientific, than Armstrong’s log. The very precision was the problem. Jessup had minutely recorded the installation of his wind speed and direction monitors, as well as the cloud, precipitation and moon duration sensors but nowhere was there any analysis, which again Stoddart conceded was probably impossible over so short a period, but which still might have helped.

  From the experimental agenda in the preparation of which he had participated at McMurdo, Stoddart knew Jane Horrocks and George Bedall had been expected to work jointly on their overlapping research. Jane’s principal geological project had been to sink ice cores as deeply as possible to retrieve oxygen isotopes for age comparison with similar core sinks in Greenland. During the McMurdo planning, they’d speculated the possibility of a ‘gold lode’ discovery of an interglacial volcanic ash layer that could have been chemically dated even to the last of the tectonic shifts when the Antarctic was just separating from the temperate land mass known as Gondwanaland, made up of what was now South America,
Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand. Stoddart had personally doubted a field station bore capable of penetrating the ice sheet that deeply, but hadn’t argued against the inclusion of a palaeobotanist. George Bedall’s remit had been to isolate any nothofagus fossils that would have been further proof of Antarctica’s land link with New Zealand – where the bushy nothofagus was still indigenous – during the Pliocene era.

  There was no record in either of their logs of a single core being sunk, but rereading Jane Horrocks’ notes, Stoddart appreciated for the first time that Jane had used technically improper but possibly vitally important words to describe the ice softness. More than once she’d called it frazil, which was a slush of ice crystals in the first stages of forming sea ice, when the water surface cooled to 28.8°F. And she’d twice referred to it being grease ice, thin plates of crystals that slip easily over each other in the early formation of pack ice. Both applied to comparatively warmer sea conditions, not the minus temperatures of the inland South Pole.

  Stoddart pushed away the raw data from the Antarctic station and the master file notes he’d made, letting his impression form. Lax routine from Harry Armstrong, which had prevented more accurate and complete medical questioning, although they could still not have been rescued any earlier than they had been. Insufficient science – insufficient time to provide more – from anyone. Which left only the inexplicable – but still insufficient – references to unseasonal climatic conditions. Which certainly hadn’t existed by the time they’d managed to get in from McMurdo. But from the viewing gallery conversation with the two trained climatologists from Alaska, appeared to have been mirrored in the Arctic Circle.

  It was automatic for Stoddart to move on to the recollections of those who’d flown in with him, although having retrieved them from the waiting pile he stopped, unwilling to go on.

  That’s what you had to do. The right thing. For the research to start. Who’d said that? For a moment Stoddart’s mind blanked. Amanda O’Connell, he remembered. Easy, glib reassurances, empty politician’s reassurances saying he couldn’t have known and that the deaths couldn’t have been prevented either. Patricia hadn’t blamed him, though. Not once, not even when she’d been dying. Or had she? Had she written what she couldn’t bring herself to say?

  Stoddart sorted the dossiers, finding hers. The writing was hurried from the beginning in her urgency to get everything down, the pen often not lifted from the page so that the words were looped together. But everything – on the initial pages at least – was legible. And she’d written as the scientist – the virologist – that she was. She’d suggested that the senility was caused by an unknown virus trapped within the ice but somehow released by an experiment or even by the sinking of the piles upon which the station had been built to lift it free of its ice foundation A wild hypothesis, though Stoddart, but then what else was there, apart from wild hypotheses! Patricia’s account, the writing beginning to fade from precision into unevenness, nevertheless led seamlessly into the scene upon their arrival at the field station. Her observations remained scientifically precise – each of the South Pole victims described in as much detail as Patricia had felt able to note for a medical opinion – and it was not until the seventh page of her account that Patricia reached the decision to bring the bodies out with them. Which she recorded as being her insistence. Had she really believed that, in her dying days? It wasn’t his recollection. Stoddart’s memory was of her supporting his demands that the bodies be evacuated, not of her initiating the decision as she’d recorded here. It was essential that autopsies be conducted as soon as possible to isolate the cause of the infection, which I repeat, I believe to be viral. His near abandonment followed chronologically – dispassionately – in the narrative. Before team leader Stoddart returned with the station data, James Olsen demanded take-off, insisting he had seen Stoddart fall and remain lying just outside the station, an obvious victim of the infection. Olsen was supported by everyone else. My objection was ignored. Olsen stated ‘He’s dead. Dying. If we stay we’ll all die.’ The pilot reported the aircraft in danger of being stranded, through icing, and commenced take-off. I made it clear I would demand an enquiry upon return to McMurdo. Dr Neilson, who until now had remained silent, supported me, claiming to be able to see team leader Stoddart. The plane turned for take-off. I claimed to be able to see team leader Stoddart too, which I could not, initially, because of the severity of the blizzard which unexpectedly lifted. The pilot, Burke, said he could see Stoddart, too, and stopped the aircraft. Stoddart, in an advanced state of collapse, was brought aboard, with the documentation he had retrieved. I consider an enquiry should still be held and wish this statement to be included as a deposition if it is not possible for me to record a separate account, under oath. So close, thought Stoddart: so hair’s breadth close to his being left to die made all the more overwhelming – if that were possible – by the paradox of his being the only one to survive.

  Patricia’s handwriting, already uneven – the looped joins becoming more prevalent – began to degenerate almost immediately afterwards. She’d begun omitting conjunctions and prepositions, too, so that before it became virtually unreadable it was just primary word notes, although still comprehensible. Nowhere was there any recrimination or accusation of his having caused her death.

  Nor was there in the much shorter and more quickly illegible statement of Dr Morris Neilson. Like Patricia, Neilson had attempted to keep his declaration as unemotionally – and medically – factual as possible, in which he’d only partially succeeded. The emotion came towards the end, in what amounted to a farewell letter to his wife, Barbara, which Stoddart stopped reading, embarrassed. I want to speak to my wife, Stoddart recalled. What about all the relatives? He’d promised Patricia he’d speak to her brother, John. In San Antonio. The fuller address would be in her personnel file. He jotted a reminder on his master file pad and separated the doctor’s letter from the man’s Antarctica account. It needed to go to the man’s wife. The American address would also be in Neilson’s file.

  James Olsen had made no attempt to write a coherent statement. It was entirely a personal accusation – a diatribe – against Stoddart personally for insisting on removing the bodies. Twice Olsen used the word murderer and had attempted quasi-legal phrases insisting his wife instruct a lawyer named Jacobson to sue Stoddart, by name, as well as the US government, which he accused of imprisonment and refusal to allow him his constitutional rights.

  Stoddart was shocked, needing to read twice what Olsen had recorded to fully absorb it, all his guilt and self-doubt flooding back. Although not necessarily coherent, the argument about whether or not to leave the bodies was factual enough, even to him invoking his authority as group leader. It had been his decision, conceded Stoddart. It didn’t matter that Patricia and to a lesser extent the doctor had supported him. He was responsible and if he was responsible then he supposed that legally he was liable. For what, he asked himself. Millions, probably. He doubted his government contract to work at McMurdo carried any sort of personal liability insurance and he certainly didn’t have any policies to cover the situation. Financially – as well as professionally, perhaps – he would be wiped out. Destroyed, with no defence.

  Olsen had been kept in isolation, here at Fort Detrick. The man might verbally have made the accusations, leaving them on the automatically registering tapes, but there was the possibility that the four pages at which he was now staring down were the only formal complaint. And that hadn’t been witnessed or notorized by anyone. There was the Antarctic data he’d already read and now that from Alaska. And the survivors from there would be asked to write their recollections. By the time the senility disease was identified there would be a mountain – several mountains – of paperwork. It would be very easy to lose these four pages: remove them from the record. It had been the right – the proper – decision to bring the bodies back and destroy the station, particularly now that the disease had spread to the other Pole. Had he not done what he
did, it could have infected Amundsen-Scott and even McMurdo, killed dozens more. Hundreds, thousands. Which it still might – could – having broken out virtually 13,000 miles from its first appearance. Every justification – unarguable justification – for bringing the victims out, enabling the medical and scientific investigation to begin, even though from what Pelham had just told him it didn’t appear so far to have resulted in any findings. Pelham would swear to that: Walter Pelham, director of the Fort Detrick microbiological research establishment, the man who would be named – accused – in any imprisonment litigation. So easy, Stoddart thought again: so absurdly, justifiably, arguably easy to erase the problem.

  James Olsen had a wife to whom he’d issued his dying orders, so anxiously that there had been no words of love or affection, as there had been in what Neilson had written. But did Olsen have children? Did Neilson? Or the pilot, Chip Burke, whose Alzheimer’s had been so bad and so quickly developing that nothing he had written made any contribution?

  Stoddart was engulfed, almost literally, by a tidal wave of embarrassment and near guilt. What the fuck was he thinking about? Contemplating? Men – husbands and maybe fathers – had died, children, possibly, orphaned. Carefully, particularly, Stoddart neatly re-established James Olsen’s complete, accusational dossier, finding it difficult to believe that he could ever have allowed himself to dispose of it. The only separation Stoddart allowed himself was that between what he considered personal and should go to the families and what he believed contributed to the investigation, which had been the purpose of the accounts in the first place.

  Stoddart was reaching out for the first of the Alaska station details when his telephone rang, startling him because it seemed a lifetime ago since he’d heard the sound of a ringing telephone.

  Amanda O’Connell said: ‘We’ve got intelligence that it’s affected a Russian research station in Siberia.’