Sub-Zero

by Robert W. Walker

  “Help” “Yeah”

  “What sort of help?”

  “I need help investigating. There’s too much for one,” began Tim, waving his hands.

  “How much help you want?” “As much as I can get.” “Investigating?”

  “Right, investigating, like a real live reporter,” smirked Tim.

  “What can I do for you,” smiled the student, revealing a missing tooth.

  Tim tersely told the young man the whole story regarding Gordy, swearing him to secrecy. “I want you to get down to the archives and find out what this 2-1O-b is, and for God’s sake, keep the prints in a safe place. We may need them later.”

  “What do you think old Gordy was doing, going over these?” asked the kid.

  “Listen, if we can learn something about 1O-2-ABC or whatever it is, maybe we’ll both know, Jerry,” said Tim with a little sarcasm. “Look, I’ve got other avenues to follow. You’re a buddy for checking into this for me. I’ll try to meet you back here in an hour or so. Okay, Jerry?”

  “Sure, okay.” He smiled and pushed hair out of his eyes. “But since we’ll be working together when the story breaks, I want a by-line, and the name’s Gary, Gary Hornell.”

  11

  Mark’s office looked the same as the day Joanna Sommers had first seen it. It was spacious, the walls lined with dark wood paneling, bookshelves filled with thriving plants, books, and knick-knacks. The rich, brown furnishings conspired to make a person feel warm. The lights were kept low and the curtains always drawn. Mark’s semi-oval desk, a map of the world embedded in its surface by a thousand successive varnishings, made Joanna pause to think of their first meeting.

  She’d come to ask him to corroborate information she’d received from an unknown caller. A man with a hoarse, raspy voice who sounded incoherent much of the time. Yet, what he’d had to say sounded plausible.

  “I am a scientist,” the man kept interrupting himself over the receiver. “I know what I say is crazy to you. But I speak the truth!”

  The man’s voice was tinged with an accent she could not pinpoint. His story was as horrible as it was plausible. In essence, an organization of a highly secretive nature had caused the cataclysmic disturbances at the poles which resulted in the glacial conditions of the Northern hemisphere.

  “How, how?” she’d asked the phantom caller. “What methods were used?”

  “Radioactivity,” was the abrupt answer, and then, “Examine the Iceman.” Then the telephone clicked off.

  Joanna paid the call little attention until she received another. The voice was a little more hysterical this time, rising out of its whispering hoarseness to a high pitch several times. This time the mysterious caller sounded quite mad. He implied that Joanna was a part of the conspiracy. The caller knew she hadn’t done anything in regard to the previous call. Joanna wondered how.

  Joanna tried to get a name from the person on the other end. She asked him to meet her somewhere, swearing to keep everything secret. The caller hung up again.

  But the calls continued until she was nagged into investigating the U.S. Iceman Experiments in the North Atlantic, Pacific, and Polar regions. Iceman began as an experiment to rid North Atlantic shipping lanes of hazardous icebergs. Icebergs were snatched up by gigantic trawlers and pulled southward to coastal desert areas where they were moored. Warm sea air passing over them brought up moisture, creating cumulus clouds. These clouds traveled over the deserts, bringing rain to these areas. Iceman teams were always studying glaciers. Glacial modification experiments abounded. For a number of years, tundra areas in Siberia and Canada, as well as Alaska, were made productive, while permafrost layers dropped below the earth.

  There had never been any outcry against the Iceman Experiments for having used radiation-not even when the floods began at the turn of the century, burying Canada, Siberia, and parts of Asia and Alaska under icy waters. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, and property destroyed, while healthy glaciers and glacier lakes dotted the globe.

  Joanna went to Wertman in-the hope that he could fill in gaps that seemed to be missing. Did the U.S. and other Glacial Modification Projects around the world cause the cold of today? Were the Iceman Experiments using radioactive materials or nuclear blasters to reduce glaciers to manageable proportions, to get to fresh, untapped waters? It sounded outrageous and impossible. The Iceman was made up of the most eminent men of science.

  Mark somehow knew she didn’t believe her own questions and she was ill at ease. She was clumsy. She phrased her questions badly. From the moment she entered his office Joanna lost all of her usual poise, reserve, and professionalism. How much was Mark’s dominance and how much was her own misgivings about the story, she could not say.

  Until Mark put her at ease, offering her a drink, she’d felt like a Junior Newswoman or high school girl.

  Mark quickly enumerated a list of contributing factors to the world’s weather conditions, hastening to add that the Iceman Experiments did indeed add to man’s molesting of his own environment; but he laughed at the radiation theory.

  “We would have been contaminating the fresh water we were after,” he chuckled easily. “On the other hand, radioactivity was and is still a part of the atmosphere. Fall-out was found in Polar Regions, but it can also be found in Indiana in the same quantities.”

  Joanna recalled laughing lightly at this and saying, “I don’t know if that’s a relief or not. I guess it is.”

  “A lot more damage has been done by Ocean Current Modification by African countries, South American countries, India, and Australia than the vast polar areas,” Wertman continued. “Building girders the size of the Great Wall of China below the sea to offset arid air currents and encourage ocean clouds to come onto continents has to take its toll elsewhere. I’m sure it’s the same list you’ve heard throughout your exhaustive investigations: stupendous commercial cloud seeding operations, attempts at de-fogging whole cities such as London, thermal heating of the ocean in areas to feed rain clouds, redirection of Ocean currents, the controversial underwater tunnels placed in the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans to carry away icebergs with less loss through melting, and the equally controversial opening of the straits between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. These, plus the increase in pollutants placed in the air by man, add up to a molested world.”

  Joanna had squelched the story. It had been done many times before. The US and other large governments were bearing the brunt of worldwide criticism on the subject. It was generally believed they were doing all they could to put an end to many of the irrational and controversial ideas to place the world’s weather at anyone’s disposal. All experimentations deemed hazardous or potentially dangerous to climatic conditions were ceased. The US Iceman teams alone had been given sanction to explore methods of correction to the world’s weather machine by the World Wide Weather Watch.

  She had squelched the story but not her attraction for Mark Wertman. Before she could leave, he had several questions for her and they dined that evening. It began as a whirlwind romance. Joanna hadn’t felt so young and girlish since high school. She loved it and she loved Mark for showing her that she still possessed feelings of unrestrained joy.

  She laughed out loud in the empty office at the thought. Feelings of unrestrained joy; she mulled the words over in her mind, taking each separately, then placing them in mad combinations: Unrestrained feelings of joy-joy unrestrained-feelings of joy-joy feelings!

  But she hadn’t been feeling any joy for some time now. She had seen so little of Mark and when she was around him, he was somewhere else in his head.

  Mark hadn’t been himself today. He was not himself the last time she saw him or the time before that. Something was troubling him. He was sharp, caustic with everyone. He was quick-biting like an aroused lion, his every nerve ending exposed. He seemed to be a robot, partially disassembled and feeling vulnerable with his wires and tubes showing-and pity the poor fool who reached out to touch him.

  She
was beginning to wonder if things would ever be the same between them. And she wondered if he’d been completely honest about US involvement in the Polar ice caps. Was it even remotely possible that spent nuclear energy was being stored below the ice caps? Her reporter’s mind envisioned it at quite possible now, now that what had always seemed science fiction was fact.

  She collapsed on Mark’s leather couch and suddenly realized how tired she was. She also felt dirty, her clothes clinging to her. She hadn’t slept in two days except for the brief snatches at her desk in the newsroom. She wondered if she shouldn’t get back to her desk now and get to work. It would rid her mind of Mark and the episode of the little man who’d tried to kill him. But when she stood up she planted her eyes firmly on the built-in ‘hot box’ unit to the right of Mark’s desk.

  Perhaps Mark was right, she told herself now. Maybe the best thing she could do for herself would be a stint in the ‘hot box,’ properly called an Environ, or Enviro-box,

  She felt tired and dirty. The Tropical Rain setting was what she needed. The Enviro-box built into the wall of Mark’s office was a deluxe Baja model. It could deliver sun, soothing breezes, or rainforest conditions and all Joanna had to do was lie back and enjoy. The Baja was large enough for three people! Mark had another in his bedroom. It was there they’d first made love, under the gentle spray of water-misting her, steaming her, raining down rhythmically with the hot rays of the sun lamps. It was the first time she’d gotten a tan and made love all at once!

  After the revitalizing rains, the Baja sent hot air currents shooting over her body, blow-drying the skin.

  Joanna said aloud, “But it never snows on you.” She began stripping away her clothes. Her skirt and blouse seemed to cling to her. She longed for the Baja machine as never before. The thought disturbed her a little when suddenly she realized her own feelings. She’d always characterized Enviro-boxes as machines, mostly plumbing equipment, like some fantastic bathtub. Although beautiful, lined with teakwood and smoked- glass window, and having the capacity to close out the real world, the box could not be allowed to replace reality.

  But looking through the smoked glass, seeing the exotic flowers, the exotic fish in the aquarium, the green, living plants all around the cypress deck, Joanna could hardly wait to get inside. She stood naked, arranging her clothing over the couch. She was shivering a little. The office was very cold, she thought. At the door of the Environ, she hesitated only a moment, wondering if she should open the little panel to find a bathing suit. Instead, she pulled open the Enviro door and climbed in as she was.

  Inside, Joanna nestled down on the cypress deck and fondled the controls over her right shoulder. She had the option of selecting all five settings, or environments, or any combination. She decided to skip the devilishly hot Baja sun setting and go directly to the Tropics and the rainforest. She loved the hot spray. It made her feel like a lazy, sleeping lizard, or a rubber tree-her only ambition to sense the fingers of the rain coming from the twenty-four karat gold spray heads on the ceiling. The next setting she preferred was called ‘Jungle Steam,’ which gave her complete privacy.

  Over Joanna’s left shoulder was a discreet panel which housed all the bare necessities, such as sun tan lotion, dark glasses, towels, and bathing caps. Joanna grabbed a pair of dark glasses. The rains began at the flick of the switch on the controls. She took a moment to stare at the other settings: Warm Ambience, Chinook Winds, and Spring Showers. Each setting was twenty-nine minutes. She wanted to dry off with the roaring, sudden Chinook Winds, which fell somewhere between a gentle breeze and a hurricane.

  12

  Tim was nagged by the question of Security Chief Gordon’s time in the employ of Fieldcrest. Just how long had Gordy been here, and what had been his background before coming to the FBC job? A lot of security guys were retired cops. Some were just guys who’d answered an advertisement in a newspaper.

  But for now, Tim decided to locate Mark Wertman and Joanna. He’d been somewhat angry when he arrived at the Lower Level and found them gone. One of them could have been there. They knew he was returning.

  He guessed they were at Wertman’s newsroom. He waited as the lights on the elevator moved steadily upwards. When the doors opened on the wall maps of the weather room, Tim found the floor nearly deserted. But he did hear Wertman’s voice. He shouted at someone, there was silence. Then he shouted again.

  “I don’t give a damn what trouble it is! l don’t care how you do it, Kennelly, just get someone over here. If you haven’t anyone else, then I’ll expect to see you, and if I don’t see you, I’ll see you don’t have a job!”

  Tim shook his head at this. The only Kennelly he knew was the Chief of Police of Chicago. Could Wertman be talking like this to the Chief of Police? But how?

  Crocker didn’t like getting information this way. He preferred direct confrontation to eavesdropping, or forms, of wire-tapping. He walked into Wertman’s large weather room and waved at him. Wertman looked a little white and stammered into the telephone.

  “Please, Herb, we need you over here.”

  “How’s he going to get into the building?” asked Tim loudly. “Does he have a helicopter?”

  “Herb,” shouted Wertman into the telephone, “you find a way.”

  “Let me talk to him. I think I know a way,” said Tim. Wertman looked surprised but he handed the phone over to Crocker. Herb Kennelly thought he was still talking to Wertman when Crocker put the earphone to his head.

  “Who the hell is that, Mark?”

  “I’m Crocker, with the Daily. I think I know a way in from the lower level.”

  “Oh, yeah? If I could get down to ours and out, I bet it wouldn’t be too tough getting over there. I’d have to walk, maybe.”

  “There’s a door, near the parking for the underground, east side of the building,” Crocker said matter-of-factly.

  Crocker heard a click and thought for a moment that Kennelly had hung up and rushed off. But there was no dial tone.

  “Hey, you still there, Crocker?” asked Kennelly. “Yeah,” answered Crocker.

  “Who the hell is on this line?” shouted Kennelly. “One thing I hate, it’s somebody listening in on my conversations.”

  “N 0 one else on the line, Chief,” said Tim.

  “Someone was,” he answered.

  “There’s a thousand phones in this building. It could have been a mistaken connection,” Tim began. But what he was saying brought a crystal clear recollection of Marie’s switchboard room, empty, left in disarray. Where was Marie, he asked himself again.

  “Maybe you’re right,” began Kennelly. “With Wertman and this whole damn thing, I’ve come unscrewed before.”

  Herb Kennelly obviously thought that Tim knew what he was talking about, that he and Wertman were somehow together on this ‘whole damn thing.’ Tim answered as casually as he could, “Yeah, I know what you mean, Chief. But I wouldn’t take any chances if I were you. Be careful on that lower level, that’s where they got Gordy.”

  “Geez, I can’t believe it-Gordy. He must’ve got careless is all I can think,” answered Kennelly. “Try to get there as soon as I can.”

  Kennelly hung up. Crocker stared for some time into Wertman’s eyes. “You two good friends?”

  “The Chief and me? Sure. Went to night school together,” said Wertman solicitously. “Hey, what happened to your hands, Crocker?”

  “Burned them on some ice, nothing really, just stupid I guess. Hey, where’s Joanna, anyway?” asked Tim, trying to smile. Wertman indicated his inner office with ajerk of the head, saying nothing. He turned to his wall maps.

  Tim knocked at the door with a Quick rap, making absolutely no noise with his hands in bandages. Wertman had noticed his hands but seemed too preoccupied to ask anything.

  He peeked into the dark interior of Wertman’s office and saw Joanna’s clothes lying over the back of the black leather couch. He saw that the Enviro-box lights were on and that the window was covered with stea
m. A humming noise came from the Environ. It was an expensive model. Tim had only seen one that was comparable in his life. It belonged to Fieldcrest in the Penthouse which could only be reached by private elevator.

  Tim’s heart raced at seeing Joanna’s clothes strewn about the room. He was amazed at Wertman’s casualness with Joanna, allowing him to walk in like this. The man’s mind must be a million miles from here, he thought. Since Tim was not a man to pass up opportunities, he went directly to the hot box and flicked on the tiny communicator switch.

  “Hey,” he said softly, “want any company in there? I could use some revitalization along about now.” There was no response from inside. It was as though no one was inside.

  “Hey, it’s me, Tim. Come on out.”

  Still no response. Tim had heard of people who’d suffered euphoric, trancelike comas induced by the fantastically effective environmental control machines. It was easy to imagine yourself to be a dull, lazy crocodile in the Amazons when those tropical sprays hit you and that hot sun beat down. He’d read where some doctors said the Environ-induced coma was like a permanently “happy” existence, if brain wave patterns meant anything.