“Forgive me if I don’t feel sorry for you.”
“I’m not asking you to. I’m saying that I understand my role here and I’m comfortable with it.”
She shook her head to clear it. “Dr. Keene, why am I here? I get it. I have a spotty psych profile. But I cleared every hurdle the recruitment team at TransAnt could throw at me and passed. I was asked by the station manager to help bring in a poor woman who’d died in the cold, yet I haven’t broken down into a puddle or locked myself in my berth. What’s the problem?”
Keene held up a placating hand. “It’s precautionary, Cass. Nothing more. Your behavior at the station has been completely normal and, you’re right, you’ve handled the situation with Sheryl in stride. As well, or better, in fact, as almost anyone on base. My only goal in talking to you today is to see if your . . . history and Sheryl’s death, taken together, formed a third, synergistic, problem.”
“Would her death be a trigger for me, you mean?”
“In short, yes.”
“And?”
He closed her folder and tossed it back on the stack in the corner. “I don’t see that it has been or will be. I’ll be frank; your personal history and FFI profile concerned me before you even landed at Shackleton. But I simply see a skilled and dedicated woman doing her job in an exceptional environment under stressful conditions. Even your occasional verbal barbs are what would be considered a normal level of aggravation and aggression at being subjected to a psychological interrogation. As far as I’m concerned, you’re fine.”
Her hands relaxed, gently unfolding on her lap. She managed to keep from sighing with relief.
“However,” he continued and the knot in her chest clenched again, “these are early days. We aren’t even technically in the winter-over period. As you say”—he smiled—“you’ve read the literature. You know that the stressors that form the staple of the winter-over experience don’t even begin to occur until later in the season, perhaps not even until midwinter.”
“There’s still plenty of time to go crazy, in other words.”
“Something like that. So, I want you to come to me if you exhibit any kind of somatic issues. Things like sleep disturbance, poor appetite, constipation, fatigue, that kind of thing. They may seem like minor medical issues—and more in Dr. Ayres’s bailiwick—but they can also be the precursors of profound psychological disturbance. Unfortunately, they’re so incremental that they often go unaddressed until it’s too late.”
She nodded, but Keene waited her out until she said, “I’ll do that.”
“Good.” He clapped his hands together and rubbed them like he was attempting to warm them. “Well, I hope this hasn’t been too much of a burden.”
“No, it’s fine,” Cass lied. The meeting was over and she was obviously free to go, but she hesitated, left with the feeling that she hadn’t defended herself very well. Keene raised his eyebrows, but she had nothing, really, to say. She got to her feet and turned to leave.
“Cass?”
She turned back.
“Historically, the people who weather crises the best are those who adjust their expectations to fit the reality of the situation.” He paused and his eyes flicked over her face. “And life at the South Pole is nothing more than a potential disaster held temporarily at bay. Isn’t it?”
CHAPTER NINE
Keene sat at his desk long after Jennings had left, listening to the bubbles rising in the aquarium and doodling ever-widening circles on a notepad.
He’d like to believe that the girl wasn’t who he’d thought she was. He’d run her through a series of confrontational and ambiguous questions prepared in advance and she’d responded to all of them as obtusely as one could expect from someone completely out of the loop. She’d looked like a duck and quacked like a duck, so he very much wanted to believe she was a duck. But—and he couldn’t shake the but —a well-prepared graduate psychology student who’d taken a turn in a summer theater could’ve done as well.
Keene knew he was a first-rate psychologist, but he was also a realist; psychology wasn’t mind reading and for every victory his field had made in behavioral prediction, it had accumulated a thousand failures, especially in the perilous field of individual predictive analysis. Groups were relatively easy to manipulate. Assess the synergies, conduct a few probing questions to test the water, and it was likely you could prod a mob into doing just about anything you wanted it to do. But put your figurative thumb on a single individual and it was like pressing down on a watermelon seed. They could go shooting off anywhere.
He grunted and put the pen down next to the pad with intentional precision, resisting the urge to throw it across the room. One individual’s behavior he could definitely predict was his own, and what he saw in his immediate future wasn’t good. He would stew and steam over all of the possible contingencies and tangents until he’d worked himself into knots. None of it was constructive; on the contrary, it was psychologically destructive. If he wasn’t careful, Shackleton’s station psychologist would be halfway to barking mad by midwinter. Not good.
He sighed and stood. Tanto monta, monta tanto . He could sit in his office for the next week and try to unravel the tangle of his suspicions, or he could just go and get the answer from Hanratty. And since he didn’t have any more information after the interview with Jennings, he might as well go beard the lion in his den. If the station manager didn’t like what he had to say, he could send him home. A disappointing end to his Antarctica career, perhaps, but he wasn’t going to be played for a fool.
He pushed through the door of his office and went out to the hall, turning right to head for the administrative offices. On the way, he passed four or five of the scientists and staffers. A few gave him the standard Polie nod in greeting—eyes sliding off to one side, a flat-lipped bob of the head, a lengthening of the stride to discourage conversation—but most of the expressions he received were universally flat and blank. No one cozied up to the guy who held everyone’s mental and emotional secrets.
Ironically, aside from a few exceptional cases, he rarely had cause to read any histories or, frankly, give two whits about them. On the other hand, he couldn’t forget what he already knew, and he couldn’t help but do a quick analysis of a few of those he passed in the halls.
“Dr. Keene,” Biddi said as they passed each other at the entrance to the B2 wing.
“Biddi,” he said, nodding, then did a double take, but she was already past him and heading down the hall. For a split second, he was sure she’d stuck her tongue out at him.
Frowning, he continued down the corridor. Hanratty’s office was past the labs on the second floor of the B3 wing, the administrative heart of the station. Communications, base management offices, and the station’s only conference room took up most of the wing.
He opened the door to the admin suite, nodding to Elise Simon, the station’s only comms specialist, who had looked up from her console as he walked in. She turned away, ignoring him, and he smiled thinly at the back of her head. Elise had not reacted well at their first encounter when he’d suggested—after she’d admitted to insomnia and latent hallucinations about her work—that she apply for a less stressful position at McMurdo.
“Is Hanratty in, Elise?” he asked unnecessarily.
“His office is in front of you,” Elise said without bothering to turn around.
His smile widened and he pushed through the steel door to the admin office. He nodded to Deb as she glanced up from her screen and got a cautious nod in return. He’d been careful to avoid pushing Deb’s buttons, either in their initial meeting or since. The deputy director was one of the few people at the station with enough clout to make the next nine months hell for him, not to mention taint future assignments if she wished. Granted, he could do the same to her.
“Do you know if Hanratty is free, Deb?”
She tapped a pen against her teeth. “I think so. He’s probably just making sure the Herc is on time for takeoff tomorrow. All rou
tine stuff, though, so he’s probably got time.”
Keene thanked her, then reached out and rapped on Hanratty’s door, two short, sharp knocks.
The answer was muffled by the door. “Come.”
The manager’s office, tiny by stateside standards, was vast compared to any other private space at Shackleton. Behind the desk, however, was what distinguished this room from almost any other on base—a wide picture window that was a thermal engineer’s nightmare. The heat loss probably ran in the thousands of dollars per season, but the extravagance had been deemed necessary to both draw and reward the kind of administrative talent that would run a base at the bottom of the world. The window had a broad view of the skiway, revealing the snowplows and blowers that were busy clearing the runway. Keene watched for a moment as the machines groomed the snow in precise lines.
Oblivious to the view, Hanratty was seated at his desk with his back to the window, frowning at something he saw on one of his three monitors. One hand was on a mouse, the other holding the receiver of an antiquated phone handset. He was dressed in a blue short-sleeved button-down with the TransAnt five-pointed logo emblazoned on the breast. The man was never cold; Keene had seen him stand outside for twenty minutes in the same outfit.
Hanratty’s eyes flicked toward him, then back to the screen. “What can I do for you, Gerald?”
“I need a minute, Jack.” Keene moved one of the guest chairs closer to the desk.
“Not a good time.”
“It rarely is.” He sank into the chair, crossed his legs, folded his hands, and waited.
Hanratty spared him an irritated glance. “I’m trying to make sure the last flight of the season gets off the ground in one piece. It’s bad form to slam a US senator into the firn on his way out.”
“The pilots have a lot more to do with that than you. It’s what they’re paid for, after all. Why don’t you let them do their job and relax for once?”
Hanratty’s already austere face tightened even further, but he took another minute to finish what he was doing, then turned his full attention on Keene. “All right, Dr. Keene. What can I do for you?”
“I just had an interesting conversation with our sanitation engineer extraordinaire.”
“Jennings? Or Newell?”
“Jennings.”
Hanratty showed mild surprise. “Did she ask to see you?”
“No, you did.”
Hanratty frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“I sent word to Jennings that you required her to see me.”
Hanratty folded his hands together, rested them on his desktop. Keene could see he had the man’s full attention now. “And why would you do that?”
“I don’t have the authority to require a staff member to undergo a psych eval unless they pose an immediate threat to the base or other crew. So, at best, all I could do was send her a politely worded request to chat, something she might’ve agreed to, or might not have. I wanted to guarantee that she would show up. And in the right frame of mind.”
“Which was?”
“Cooperative.”
“And you used my authority to do so.”
“Correct.”
Keene watched Hanratty’s mental struggle play out on his face. The muscles of his jaw rippled up the side of his head. The man had a famous temper, but he was also sharp enough to know that his base psychologist wasn’t here simply to push his buttons or indulge in an ego trip.
Hanratty got himself under control. “You’ll explain.”
Keene steepled the tips of his fingers together. “You subjected Jennings to quite a trauma yesterday with no warning and no subsequent emotional support. It was all the more extraordinary considering her past.”
Hanratty shrugged. “She wasn’t closer to Sheryl than anyone else on base, so I don’t see how she was put in any more of an untenable emotional position than, say, Taylor or myself. I supposed I could’ve checked up on her today, but the reality down here is that that’s not always going to happen. I assumed she’d been cleared by the stateside psych team. Was I wrong?”
“No,” Keene said slowly, “but the question is, cleared for what?”
“To handle the emotional and mental adversity of a winter-over, obviously.”
“And the death of a colleague?”
The station manager shrugged. “If necessary. It wasn’t exactly listed in the season’s work agenda.”
“Is that all?”
“Christ, Gerald. Spit it out. What are you asking?”
Keene paused. “Jack, I’ve looked at Jennings’s records. I’ve interviewed her. I called the head of the psych eval team back in Colorado Springs. I reached out to her therapist at home and stopped just short of ringing up her family doctor.”
“Yes?”
“They all agree, she’s a hot mess.”
“None of us are perfect—”
Keene interrupted. “Psychologically speaking, there’s no way in hell Cassandra Jennings is fit for work in Antarctica, never mind Shackleton, never mind a nine-month night at the South Pole.”
Hanratty said nothing.
Keene leaned forward. “She’s not the only one, Jack. The winter-over crew always has a few oddballs in it, which is perfectly fine and understandable. Personality diversity is one of the basic tenets of group success in a confined environment. But there are a dozen people on staff right now who I wouldn’t trust to make it through a rainy weekend at the shore without cracking up, never mind a winter-over at the South Pole.”
Hanratty cleared his throat. “What’s your point?”
“My point is—considering the rigorous standards that every South Pole crew has been subjected to in the past—this can’t be a mistake. Someone at some point knew exactly what Jennings and the other crew members were like and instead of selecting them out , they put them in .” Keene stood and put his hands on the edge of Hanratty’s desk. “Jack, what the fuck is going on?”
CHAPTER TEN
Cass shot a look over her shoulder as she walked, her boots squeaking on the compacted snow of the tunnel floor. Still stinging from her meeting with Keene, replaying the odd and humiliating exchanges in her head, she hadn’t paid attention as she’d clomped down the steps of the Beer Can and into the arches. But the chance that anyone was following her was unlikely in the extreme; deep in the service tunnels, in the middle of the workday, no one was simply wandering around in the sixty-below, wondering if the station’s mechanic was goofing off. And since the VMF was accessed via the tunnels, she was one of only a handful of people who had business under the base, anyway. If she ran into anyone, she was simply on her way to work.
Had there been anyone there, however, they might’ve gotten suspicious when, instead of continuing straight to the base’s garage, she took a sharp turn at the conduit intersection, pulled out a flashlight, and headed straight for the ice tunnels that she’d discouraged a certain senator and his tour group from exploring.
She yanked at the plywood door, stuck after being squeezed and compressed over the years by the sinking ice, stepped through, and closed it behind her gently, then fumbled in the darkness for the switch embedded in the wall. The tunnel flooded with a sterile light. White bouquets of icy peonies and crystalline scales clung to every non-natural surface: off the bulb cages of the lights, along the metal framework, even to the insulated pipes. She stood perfectly still and listened. It was so cold that she had to breathe, painfully, through her mouth or the sound of air passing through her nose would cover the noise of anyone moving in the tunnel. Although the majority of sounds were swallowed by the crushing ice, most people made small sounds along the way simply to keep themselves company.
But those were no guarantees—she’d also come across people in the tunnels before who hadn’t wanted anyone to know they were there. At least she could invent an excuse about conduit inspections. It was a little harder for two amorous meteorologists to come up with a good reason for rolling around in an ice tunnel in the dark. She
continued moving. The sleeves of her parka, when they rubbed against the walls, made a noise like a dishrag being torn in two.
Maybe it was her introverted nature, but the ice tunnels were one of the first things she’d set out to explore when she’d finally made it to Shackleton. The thought that there was an entire subterranean complex below the world’s most exclusive research facility gave her a thrill. The small secrets that had been hidden in the tunnels—the shrines, the doors to nowhere, the buried equipment—only added to the mystique.
One of those secrets was coming up at the tunnel’s first turn, and she forced herself to stare straight at the wall as she rounded the bend. It was the first shrine and the one everyone who ever made it into the tunnels knew about.
Jerry.
Sitting in a square niche was the crude bust of a man, his mouth open in a frozen scream. It was made both more horrible and more comical by the fact that—while the eyes were clearly flange gaskets, and the mouth was the end of a vacuum hose—the entire sculpture was made of something . . . brown. Cass had heard theories that it was old cheese, or snow mixed with axle grease, or even leftovers from the latrine, but since almost nothing smelled down here and no one had had the brass to . . . well, taste Jerry, the composition of one of the station’s most famous shrines remained a mystery. He was worth a laugh in the light once you knew about him, but of course no one warned the fingies, and the screams of first-time fuel techs rounding the corner were sometimes heard as far away as Shackleton’s galley.
The tunnels went on for hundreds of yards, peeling off from the main artery at various points toward old storage rooms, sewer bulbs, and dead ends. The tunnel was perfectly, almost eerily, rectangular, with only slight deviations and scallop-shaped patterns on the surface of the ice to show where the hydraulic tunneler—built specifically for the purpose—had shaved and carved out the shaft more than twenty years before. A very few tunnels, rough-hewn and rounded at the top like the entrance to a medieval chapel, were handmade, and sure as shit not on any station schematic.
The Winter Over Page 7
