The Arctic Code

by Matthew J. Kirby

  Eleanor pulled her own mask off. Her mom had never mentioned a Dr. Marcus before, but finding out things her mom hadn’t told her was starting to feel like a common occurrence. Next to Eleanor, Luke pulled his mask off as well.

  “I can’t tell you how surprised we are to see you here,” Dr. Marcus said. “Your uncle has been terribly worried about you.”

  “You’ve talked to Uncle Jack?”

  “Not personally, no. But we sent some of our people to your house. When they discovered you were gone, your uncle tried telling them you might try to get up here. No one believed him or thought it possible.” She shook her head and held out her hands. “But here you are.”

  “Don’t underestimate this one,” Luke said, nodding toward Eleanor. “I learned that the hard way.”

  Dr. Marcus pursed her lips into a tight grin. “And you are?”

  “Luke Fournier. Eleanor stowed away on my plane.”

  “Fournier, yes, you brought in our latest shipment,” Dr. Marcus said. “Pleasure to meet you.” She turned her attention back to Eleanor. “Oh, my dear, we at the Global Energy Trust are so relieved to find you safe and sound. We’ve already made contact with your uncle to let him know.”

  “Thank you,” Eleanor said. “Can I talk to him?”

  “Soon. Once we reach our facility.” She shook her head and held out her hands again. “I’m still just so astonished you made it up here.”

  Eleanor didn’t know whether to take that as a compliment or an insult. “My mom would have done the same for me.”

  “Of that I’m sure,” Dr. Marcus said. “She speaks of you constantly, and with great affection.”

  Something about this woman felt a bit too polished. Like a buffed veneer, all for show. “I just want to find her,” Eleanor said.

  “As do we all,” Dr. Marcus said. “And we’re hopeful that you might have access to new information that will help us locate her.”

  Eleanor was pretty sure Dr. Marcus was talking about her Sync, which was in Eleanor’s pack right now, its presence acute, her mother’s warning loud in her memory.

  Show no one.

  Eleanor had left her home to save her mom, but also to prevent the G.E.T. from taking the Sync. And yet here she was, carrying the device onto a G.E.T. transport.

  No one could know she had brought the Sync with her.

  CHAPTER

  11

  THE TRANSPORT CHEWED ACROSS THE ICE SHEET, BUT NOT easily. The engines roared as if in competition with the storm, and the uneven surface of the ice jarred and banged Eleanor around in her seat. Through the few portholes lining the compartment, she glimpsed a world outside made blank. An absence of any color, object, or horizon. A nothing world. It felt like they were crossing an ocean, scrambling in their armored boat from one tiny island to another.

  Luke had leaned back, feet propped up on the seat opposite him, his eyes closed. Eleanor thought he might have dozed off. Dr. Marcus’s earlier effusion at Eleanor’s presence had settled into a mild delight, which she displayed through a permanent half smile that Eleanor still thought fake.

  “So what was my mom working on?” Eleanor asked.

  Dr. Marcus blinked but kept the smile in place. “Oh, just routine analysis. Nothing dangerous or risky, I assure you.”

  “That’s good,” Eleanor said, but then she frowned. That answer seemed calibrated to satisfy a question she hadn’t asked. Dr. Marcus hadn’t answered her real question. Eleanor had grown up around researchers and professors—they weren’t exactly known for their people skills. This woman seemed less like a scientist with each mile the transport ground underfoot.

  “Doctor of what?” Eleanor asked.

  “Pardon me?” Dr. Marcus asked.

  “What’s your PhD in?”

  The perma-smile broke. Just a crack. “Oh.” Dr. Marcus waved away the question. “That was ages ago.”

  Ages ago? No more than ten years, tops. And again, she hadn’t answered Eleanor’s question. “But what did you study?”

  Dr. Marcus cocked her head, her bob falling away from her cheek like a curtain. “International relations,” she said.

  So she wasn’t a scientist. She was in public relations. A diplomat. What was she doing in the Arctic?

  “Not much to relate to up here,” Luke said, eyes still closed. Apparently, he wasn’t asleep. “International or otherwise.”

  Dr. Marcus folded her gloved hands on her lap. “The G.E.T. has numerous global interests, Mr. Fournier. Foreign nationals and dignitaries visit our facilities regularly. My job takes me from the equator to the North Pole.”

  Luke opened his eyes. “And which foreign dignitaries are up here right now?”

  “I’m afraid that’s confidential,” Dr. Marcus said.

  “Course it is.” He closed his eyes again.

  No one spoke for the next several miles. Their trek across the ice was taking longer than Eleanor expected. Her tailbone felt bruised by all the jolting, each bump a sharp pain, increasing her impatience. About an hour out of Barrow, a speaker crackled overhead.

  “Dr. Marcus, we’re approaching Polaris Station. ETA five minutes.”

  Dr. Marcus sat forward. “We should put our masks back on.”

  Polaris? That wasn’t the name of her mother’s research station.

  Five minutes later, the transport came to a halt. The driver emerged from the cockpit and came back through their compartment to the outer hatch.

  “Hope the ride wasn’t too rough,” he said, opening it.

  “No,” Eleanor lied, and ducked through.

  What she saw outside the transport stunned her. Polaris Station loomed in the midst of the storm, and it looked like something that belonged on the moon. Three silver pods, each a sphere as big as a house, perched a dozen feet high on six legs, with skeletal feet. Across the surfaces of the spheres, circular windows glowed with their interior light. Elevated tunnels connected the pods, while behind them, a drilling platform towered over the ice sheet, rising up like the black spires of a cathedral.

  This was nothing like the research station her mother had described.

  Dr. Marcus directed them toward a metal staircase and catwalk that climbed up to an air lock on the nearest pod. Eleanor took the ice-encrusted steps slowly, followed by Luke, then Dr. Marcus. Eleanor tried the outer door but found it locked. Apparently, they didn’t follow the Arctic Code out here.

  Dr. Marcus slipped past Eleanor and waved her wrist in front of a sensor, and the door opened with a hiss and a clang. They entered the air lock and removed their masks.

  “What do you think of Polaris Station?” Dr. Marcus asked, that perma-smile back in place.

  “It’s . . . pretty amazing,” Eleanor said.

  “We have employed the very latest innovations.” She made a sweeping game-show-host gesture with her hand. “The pods are equipped with hydraulic legs that lift them up above the rising snow, so they never get buried, and also allow them to relocate, if necessary. Each pod is autonomous and fully mobile. Polaris is able to be wherever we need it to be. And she has several even more impressive tricks up her sleeve.”

  This sounded like the kind of speech she might give to one of those visiting foreign dignitaries.

  “My mom worked here?” Eleanor asked.

  “We recently incorporated your mother’s old facility into Polaris Station. Not the structure, of course, which was woefully outdated, but the staff and the work they were doing.” She opened the inner door and extended her usher’s hand. “Shall we?”

  Eleanor’s unease grew. “Incorporated?” she asked, moving slowly toward the opening. This was not what she had expected.

  “Sure,” Luke said. “Incorporated. You know, the way I incorporated my breakfast.”

  “Speaking of which,” Dr. Marcus said, apparently choosing to ignore the barb in Luke’s comment, “are either of you hungry?”

  Eleanor had grown agitated with the guided tour and the hostess act. “Dr. Marcus,” she said, “t
he only thing I want is to find my mom.” She ducked through the door and entered an entirely white hallway. The floor, the ceiling, the walls. Farther ahead, the hallway seemed to open up into a central chamber, also white, where Eleanor glimpsed the base of a chromed spiral staircase.

  “Of course you do.” Dr. Marcus stepped through. “My apologies. Let’s proceed directly to the command module so we can brief you.” Her pace quickened down the hallway, for which Eleanor was grateful.

  They reached the chamber with the staircase, and Eleanor now saw that it corkscrewed straight up through the center of the sphere, all the way to the top, giving access to the levels above them. The three of them mounted the staircase, swinging around and around.

  “This level holds the laboratories,” Dr. Marcus said, with less enthusiasm than before, as they reached the first level up. Glass doors and walls encircled the staircase, and through them Eleanor saw banks of computers, monitors, and other equipment. They kept going up.

  “Living quarters are found on this level,” she said. A ring of smooth, white pocket doors surrounded the staircase, each equipped with a sensor like the one that had admitted them into the pod. A few of the doors had curled newspaper clippings and Far Side cartoons taped to them. One door bore the obligatory Einstein-sticking-out-his-tongue photo, while another had a sign that simply said YOU’RE HOT.

  “Where is everybody?” Luke asked.

  That was a good question. Where were all the researchers and workers the Polaris Station had incorporated?

  “The command module,” Dr. Marcus said. “On the next level, you’ll find the kitchen, showers, and recreational space. Above that, on the top level, you’ll find the communications systems, along with the various atmospheric sensors, radars, and satellite dishes.”

  They left the spiral staircase at the kitchen, a cramped area made entirely of stainless steel. Dr. Marcus led them through an adjacent dining area and brought them to one of the elevated tunnels that connected the pods to one another. It looked to be about twenty or thirty feet long, and smaller in diameter than it had appeared from the ground outside.

  “I hope you don’t mind crawling,” Dr. Marcus said. “The command module is in the next pod.”

  Luke shrugged. “I’ve been in tighter spots.”

  Eleanor climbed headfirst into the tunnel, moving along a rubber track on her hands and knees. The tunnel’s shell seemed thinner than that of the sphere—Eleanor could once again hear the wind shrieking on all sides.

  When she reached the end, she realized quickly there wouldn’t be a graceful way to exit the tunnel. She ended up just kind of slithering out of it to the ground. Luke followed in much the same way, but Dr. Marcus took the extra effort to turn herself around inside the tunnel, with little grunts, and emerge feetfirst.

  “This way,” she said, smoothing her hair. She led them through a near mirror image of the pod from which they’d just come, except when they reached the laboratory level, they found it replaced by a command center.

  Giant screens paneled the walls, displaying maps, charts, and satellite images, while near them, a few whiteboards crawled with indecipherable scientist handwriting. Around the staircase, a dozen or so men and women sat at several rows of computer terminals in fixed swivel chairs. Beyond them, a man stood with his back to Eleanor, staring at one of the maps.

  Dr. Marcus called to him. “Sir?”

  He turned around, and Eleanor stopped. She’d seen this man hundreds of times. But only once in person.

  “Dr. Skinner?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “You must be the intrepid Eleanor Perry.”

  His voice sounded exactly the same as in the interviews and press conferences he gave on the news, deep and soothing. In many ways, the voice of the Freeze. He stepped toward them, hand outstretched.

  “It is a delight to meet you, Miss Perry. And Mr. Fournier, I don’t think I’ve yet had the privilege of thanking you in person for your efforts on behalf of the company.”

  “Well, I appreciate the work,” Luke said. “There’s been a lot of it recently.”

  Eleanor hadn’t quite brought her thoughts around to the reality of this. Dr. Skinner? Here in this remote outpost at the top of the world? This was the man who had discovered the coming ice age. His presence did explain why Dr. Marcus the Diplomat was there, but what was the CEO of the G.E.T., one of the most powerful men on the planet, doing there in the first place? Eleanor’s first thought was that he might be there for her mom, but the G.E.T. had thousands of employees around the world; why would—

  “Has Dr. Marcus given you the tour?” Dr. Skinner asked. “What do you think of the place?”

  “Mighty impressive,” Luke said, looking around and nodding.

  Dr. Skinner leaned in with a conspiratorial smirk. “If you ask me, they leaned a bit heavily on the space-colony school of design.”

  Eleanor couldn’t help smiling to hear Dr. Skinner echo her own first impression at seeing the station.

  Luke actually chuckled, too. “You might say that.”

  “But enough pleasantries,” Dr. Skinner said. “You are here for your mother, and that’s probably the only thing you care about right now.”

  “Yes,” Eleanor said, grateful that he understood what Dr. Marcus hadn’t.

  “Well, as you can see,” Dr. Skinner said, “we’re doing everything we can to locate her and Dr. Powers.”

  “Dr. Powers?” Eleanor asked.

  “Yes, another of our top geologists. He and your mother had set out on the ice when we lost contact with them, and we found they hadn’t logged their destination. Ordinarily, we would have people out on the ice searching right now, but during the storm, we’re having to work remotely, using every resource the company has at its disposal.” He indicated the men and women sitting at the computers. “Satellites, radar, thermal imaging. Our team here is scouring the available data, looking for any clue.”

  “Thank you.” Eleanor took a deep breath. All these people were trying to find her mom. But they were G.E.T. scientists. Eleanor had planned to somehow use the information on her Sync to find her mom, but had no idea how she could do so now without revealing it.

  Dr. Skinner cleared his throat. “On the subject of data and clues, Miss Perry, I believe you are in possession of the twin to your mother’s Sync?”

  Eleanor’s body went rigid within her polar gear. “I was.”

  “Was?” Dr. Skinner said.

  “I . . . left my Sync in Phoenix.”

  “Really?” He turned to Dr. Marcus.

  She shook her head, her hair swinging like tassels. “Her uncle couldn’t find it at the house.”

  “I hid it,” Eleanor said. “I didn’t want anyone taking it.”

  “That’s understandable,” Dr. Skinner said. “It’s the only connection you have with your mother. Isn’t that right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “But it may also contain data that could help us locate her. When was the last time she contacted you?”

  “Um . . .” Eleanor decided to omit the later, secret messages. “It was three nights ago.”

  “Three nights.” Dr. Skinner nodded. “Let’s see, that would have been the night before she and Dr. Powers left on their expedition. We lost contact with them the next day, their first out on the ice. What did she say to you?”

  “Just normal mom stuff,” Eleanor said.

  “Have you found anything?” Luke asked. “Any sign of them?”

  Dr. Skinner nodded. “Yesterday, we located the site of a camp they had made. But what we found was . . . perplexing.”

  “What was it?” Eleanor asked.

  “The camp was empty but undisturbed. It appeared that your mother and Dr. Powers abandoned the site in a matter of moments. Dr. Powers had quit a log entry midsentence. They left their tent behind, along with their food and much of their gear.”

  “In this storm?” Luke said. “But that’s suici—” He shut his mouth without finishing the word, but the seed had already
been planted. An aggressive dread quickly took root in Eleanor, a growth of suffocating questions and doubts.

  Without a tent, food, and gear, how could her mom have possibly survived on the ice sheet the last few days? Or in this storm? Why had she abandoned her camp?

  What could possibly have made her that desperate?

  CHAPTER

  12

  “MISS PERRY,” DR. SKINNER SAID, “WHERE DID YOU hide the Sync?”

  Eleanor glanced up to find everyone looking at her. She’d become lost in her fears. “Sorry, Dr. Skinner, what was that?”

  Dr. Skinner closed his eyes. “I know how upsetting this must all be. Especially after the ordeal I imagine you went through getting here. But I need you to think, all right? Every moment counts.”

  “Okay,” Eleanor said.

  “Good girl.” Dr. Skinner smiled. “You said you hid your Sync. I need you to tell me where it is.”

  “It’s . . .” Eleanor had started to sweat inside her polar gear. She had to bluff something. If she didn’t give a convincing answer, they’d know she was lying, and they might even figure out that she had the Sync with her. “It’s at my school.”

  Dr. Skinner frowned. “What, in your locker?”

  “No. I didn’t want anyone to find it, so I hid it where they’re doing the construction.”

  A flash of irritation, and perhaps even anger, crossed Dr. Skinner’s eyes. “Your Sync is hidden at a construction site?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where, exactly?” Dr. Skinner asked.

  Dr. Marcus had pulled out a small notepad, her pen poised to write.

  “There’s an air duct near a fire hose,” Eleanor said. Off to her side, she heard the scratch of Dr. Marcus’s pen. “I pulled off the grate and stuck the Sync inside.”

  “Thank you, Miss Perry.” Dr. Skinner gave a quick nod to Dr. Marcus, who nodded back and left the command module. Dr. Skinner patted the side of Eleanor’s shoulder. “We’ll have someone retrieve that shortly. And as soon as we can, we’ll return it to you. I know how important it must be to you.”