Dark Winter

by William Dietrich

  Wasn’t it?

  Maybe Doctor Bob’s problem was that he’d never been truly alone.

  Lewis felt alone now, the station still, the breeze mild. Yet when he listened for the whisper of his freezing breath he realized he was not. There was a distant whining noise of a moving machine and he gradually recognized it as a snowmobile. Tyson? Someone, at least, was out driving at the witching hour. He began walking in a broad loop around the dome, still puffing from the altitude, looking for the source of the noise. Finally he saw a speck in the distance, an orange dot on a black one, someone driving out onto the featureless plateau. He had no idea who the driver was: old or young, man or woman. Odd at this time, but then scientists kept odd schedules.

  Where was there to go?

  The sound seemed to connect them like a thread and his eye remained fixed on the receding traveler, because there was nothing else to see.

  Then the snowmobile slid out of view, as if entering a dip, and a few seconds later the noise grumbled away. Silence.

  Lewis waited a while for the pilgrim to reappear, but nothing happened.

  The plateau was empty.

  Finally he got too cold and bored and turned back inside, exhausted enough now for bed.

  WHAT CAME BEFORE

  I called him Fat Boy.

  Not to his face, of course, because by law and custom and administrative directive we were all so perfectly politically and sexually and racially and physically correct that we were unctuous as an undertaker: prissy, constipated and afraid. But in my mind he was Fat Boy, a lagging drogue of blubber, a leech, a handicap, a brake, an anchor, a limit, a curse.

  I honor people who achieve the ultimate of what they can be.

  I despise those who pretend to be what they can never be.

  Fat Boy could never be a mountain climber.

  Let me tell you about climbing. It is the most sublime of all human activities. First, because it is difficult. Second, because it is dangerous. Third, because it has a tangible goal and there can be no mistaking if that goal is reached or not: you summit, or you don’t. Everything else is bullshit.

  Fourth, because it is revealing. A mountain brings out the truth in a man. Or woman.

  And fifth, because it is beautiful.

  Our doomed little party started out at three minutes past midnight, the temperature fifteen degrees and the stars an orbiting city past the great dark silhouette of the Cascades volcano that was our goal. When the moon rose at three it turned the glacier into a bowl of milk and our route into a clean kind of heaven. It was early enough in the season that the crevasses were mostly filled with snow so we made good time. Fifteen college students, three instructors. Roped in three parties of six. The kids were quiet, in awe of the mountain, and I mostly just heard the clink of equipment and the rasp of nylon. It was good that way. The pant of their breath was like a team of horses. The plan was to summit an hour after dawn and then glissade back down before the rising spring sun turned the snow to mush. It was the last climb of the semester.

  I’d longed for Fat Boy to drop the class by now. He wasn’t just obese, he was weak. He wasn’t just weak, he was incompetent. He could never remember the knots, never keep track of his gear. And he wasn’t just incompetent, he was stupid. Twice he’d dropped off a route to catch his wheezing little breath, and once I’d had to go back down myself to find him. He hadn’t been apologetic, he’d been surly. I’d told him the sport wasn’t for him. He’d shown up the next class anyway. I should have shaken him, slapped him, shamed him into recognizing his own limitations. But we weren’t allowed to do that. And at that time I was still weak. I was still willing to believe that others, the morons in administration, might know what was best for me.

  The warning signs were there. Fat Boy was the last to climb out of his bag. Last to dress, last to eat, last to gather his equipment. He’d farted, stumbled, spilled. After three months of classes he still needed help with his crampons! Still needed help with his line! Almost put another student’s eye out with his damn ice ax! Whining, defensive, apologetic. In a realistic kind of world - a just one - his kind of genetic fluff would be combed away in an instant.

  But the world carries its cripples now, doesn’t it?

  For a while I thought we could pull him along okay, like a goat on the end of a wagon. Fleming, the other prof, knew how much I hated the kid and so put him on his rope, last in line, and managed to cajole rather than curse. The man had the patience of a saint. And for a while I could forget Fat Boy was with us. We topped the glacier, made Sullivan’s Saddle, and pushed on up the central cone, only half an hour behind schedule. The boy had blubbered a bit, nose dripping, pack awry, one mitten lost who the hell knew where, but he was keeping up with a frantic gasp and if we finally made the damn summit I think I’d have been almost ready to forgive him. My contempt wouldn’t fade, but my anger might.

  I was actually in a good mood that morning. I still had a life. The sky was pinking. The Cascades were turning from black to deep blue shadow, and we could see the glint of the cities along the Sound. The air was cold and so clean it washed you out, laundered your brain, and I could taste the top, we were so close. Clouds were building in the west, an approaching storm, but I thought we could beat them. I was ready to forgive Fat Boy anything, if we could just finish and be done.

  But then there was a shout and the party came to a jerking, unsteady halt, the students gasping gratefully for breath in the respite, confused calls running up and down the line.

  I unroped and side-stepped down the snow, trying to find out what the hell was the matter. Minutes ticking on. The sun approaching to the east. Overcast from the west. The summit waiting. We had a slight window. We had to summit and get down.

  Of course I knew what I’d find before I even got down to the last team. Fleming pointed in the light of the dimming moon and I followed the rope with my eye to where its end trailed on the snow like a dead snake, empty of anything.

  He’d spoiled it, of course, for all the others.

  He’d spoiled it for me.

  Fat Boy had unhooked himself and was gone.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Lewis sniffed Abby Dixon’s approach before he saw her. Not perfume. Her breath.

  His new instruments at Clean Air alerted him. So sensitive was the carbon dioxide sampler at detecting changes in the surrounding atmosphere that the tracking pen jumped from the contribution of her lungs. Other meters logged the dying sunlight, chlorofluorocarbons that could attack the Earth’s ozone layer, ozone itself, and water vapor. It was like gaining new senses. He’d come back inside after a brisk thirty minutes of collecting snow samples and was still warming up in front of his machines when she stamped her boots in the vestibule by the door.

  “Gearloose,” he greeted her.

  “Rockhead,” she replied cheerfully, pulling off her parka.

  “I’m thinking of a nickname a little less descriptive,” Lewis said. “Vaguely heroic, perhaps. Like Stormwatcher. Skywalker.”

  “It will never catch on.” She hung up her coat. “Too nice.”

  “Doesn’t anyone have a flattering nickname?”

  “Neutral is the best you can hope for.”

  “How did the tradition get started?”

  She plopped into a chair, shivering slightly as the tension of being in the cold outside was shed, her cheeks pink, her dark eyes bright. “I don’t know. The Navy, maybe. Or the parkas. When we’re outdoors it’s hard to tell who’s who: everyone looks like an orange traffic cone. So they came up with nametags except people didn’t like that - it felt like we were at a convention - so some put them upside down. Names seem part of the world we’ve left behind. So people got tagged for their occupations. And it evolved, in the perverse way things do around here. You have noticed how perverse this all is?”

  “Wade Pulaski told me it’s paradise.”

  She laughed. “Cueball would say that.”

  “That’s his nickname? He called this place Planet
Cueball. I thought he was referring to the terrain, not his head.”

  “Rod says he looks like Queegqueeg in Moby Dick. I’d go with Jesse Ventura, or an old Yul Brynner movie. He’s actually ex-military, which he doesn’t talk much about it except to hint he was into some extreme stuff. Apparently he didn’t fit into ordinary life very well so he came down here.”

  “Odd alternative.”

  “Better than winding up a mercenary in Angola. I guess you could say that about all of us.”

  “The South Pole saved you from Angola?”

  Abby smiled. “The South Pole saved me from being ordinary.”

  There was silence as he considered this. Of course.

  “It’s interesting I could detect your approach by your CO2,” Lewis finally said. He pointed to his sampler. “It’s like I have super powers down here.”

  “By the end of the winter you’ll wonder if the instruments are an extension of you or if you’re an extension of your instruments.”

  The observation seemed to echo what Norse had said about machines. Had he made the same ramblings to her? “To what do I owe this visit?”

  “The official reason is that I wanted to check to make sure the Mac is performing okay.”

  “Wow. Every computer technician I’ve ever spoken to - after forty-five minutes on hold with excruciating music - wanted to get off the line as rapidly as possible. None ever called back to see if things actually worked.”

  She smiled. “You’re in paradise, like Cueball said.”

  “And what’s the unofficial reason you’ve come for a breath of Clean Air?”

  “I wanted to check how you’re getting along. It isn’t easy being the fingie and everyone’s curious about you. So...”

  “Curious?”

  She looked at him wryly. “It’s unusual to come down on the last plane like you did. And you’re a geologist, not a meteorologist, which is kind of odd. And you quit some oil company, apparently. And...”

  “You came for the gossip.”

  “I came for the truth. It’s a small town, Jed. People talk. Speculate. If they don’t know about a person, things just get made up.”

  “Ah. So they send a comely lass to worm my secrets out of me. A spy. A temptress. A...”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Please.”

  “But it’s more than your undeniable fascination with me.” Lewis grinned disarmingly. He was enjoying this. “You’re an emissary of espionage. You were elected. Someone sent you.”

  She looked sheepish. “It’s that obvious?”

  “I’m just used to being ignored by women.”

  “I doubt that.” She shrugged. “Actually, Doctor Bob suggested I visit. He said he’s trying to write up a sociological profile of the base: who we are, why we’re here. Then he’ll track our attitudes over the winter. At the end...”

  “We’re all toast.”

  “Yes.”

  “The good doctor already asked me to explain myself, you know,” Lewis said.

  “He told me that,” she admitted.

  “And?”

  “He said men will tell things to women they won’t tell to men.”

  Lewis smiled as he looked at her, her neck high, ears as fine as shell, eyes large and guileless. He could guess why Norse had recruited this assistant - she would attract every man on base - and wasn’t surprised she’d agreed to be recruited. It was indeed a small town. People would make fast friendships, and they’d rupture even faster. He’d noticed the undercurrent of flirting almost immediately. What was it Cameron had said about women? We’re more civilized now. Well, maybe.

  “For a spy, you’re pretty blunt. You might want to work on that.”

  “The truth is, I’m not very good at the whole human interaction thing.”

  “Who is?”

  “I guess that’s what Doctor Bob wants to know.”

  “So, do you want me on a couch?” he asked. “Should I blame it all on my parents? My unhappy childhood?”

  “Did you have an unhappy childhood?’

  “Dismayingly, no. Middle class, middle brow, middle life.”

  “Me neither. Wealthy parents, but nice, too. It’s so annoying.”

  They watched each other for a moment, smiling slightly.

  “Damn,” Lewis finally said. “I don’t know what Doctor Bob is going to find to do all winter.”

  “Well,” she said, “you’re not entirely normal. We’re all wondering what a geologist is doing on an ice cap.”

  “Ah. Jim Sparco was desperate for a replacement. He’s studying oscillations in polar climates spaced over decades and my predecessor took sick. Reading the thermometer is not that hard a job.”

  “And what did your family say?”

  “My folks are dead, actually. Accident.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It happened after I left home, quite a while ago. They’re dead. Anyway, I was pretty much alone. Jobs gone. Friends fleeting. No warm and fuzzy relationships.”

  “No significant other?”

  He took her curiosity as a good sign. “I never stayed in one place, so girls didn’t stay, either. There wasn’t a lot holding me.”

  “Still,” she persisted, “it’s hard to find people to come down here sometimes, especially at the last minute.”

  “Yes. I was desperate, too.”

  She looked at him with honest curiosity. “What happened?”

  He paused to remember. What had happened? The tumult of emotions he’d experienced was only slowly being sifted by his mind into a coherent story. “I went into geology because I liked explanations,” he finally said. “Rocks were a puzzle out of the past, a trip back in time. They were also stationary and organized and understandable, compared to people. I liked mountain climbing, so it meshed with my hobby. But to make a living in geology I had to concentrate on one kind of puzzle: where oil is hidden. That was fine for a while. Exciting, even. Texas, the Gulf, Arabia. But then I wound up on the North Slope of Alaska, puzzling in a place we weren’t really supposed to be, just in case Congress changes its mind someday about opening up the wildlife refuges to drilling. We were pretending to be backpacking tourists, but we were setting off shock waves to probe for oil.”

  “And you began to question what you were doing.”

  “No...” he said slowly. “It was like there was never any question, and then suddenly there was no question about quitting. The tundra did that to me.”

  She waited for him to explain.

  “It’s a place something like this one. Not snow-covered, not in summer, but treeless and stark with this low, everlasting light that seems to reach inside you. And yet it took me a month before I really noticed that. My mind was underground, and my eyes didn’t notice the tundra around me. Finally there was a rain storm late one afternoon, dark and furious, driving us into camp, and then rainbows, and finally a plume, like smoke, curling over one ridge under that prism of light. At first I thought it was a fire, but how could a fire burn in a place that damp? Then I realized it was caribou. It was a drift of brown life in a place so empty that suddenly it hit me like adrenaline. All my senses suddenly came awake. Do you know the feeling?”

  She nodded, cautiously. “Maybe. Like falling in love?”

  The analogy hadn’t occurred to him, and he cocked his head. “Maybe. Anyway, what I was seeing was the Porcupine River herd. I’d seen animals, of course, but never animals in numbers like you see numbers of people - never animals to make you question everything you thought you knew about whose world this truly is. They came over a ridge and down to the Atigun River. I stood there in that light watching them for hours, drifting across the tundra. And that was it. People told me my dinner was getting cold, but I ignored them, and then that I would get cold if I stood out there all night, but I ignored that too. It wasn’t even night, of course, the sun never fully set. I didn’t feel the cold at all. Everything just got rosy, and soft. Finally, when everyone else was asleep, I pulled together some gear and started walking
after the herd. I left a note so they wouldn’t worry about me.”

  “What did it say?” she asked. She was looking at him appraisingly, finding herself liking a man who could be affected so profoundly by caribou.

  His smile was wry. “I quit.”

  “I’m sure that did reassure them.”

  “One of the things I realized is that I didn’t truly know a single person in that camp. Had never thought deeply about what I was doing.”

  “Nothing to hold you, like you said.”

  “Nothing to care about. Nothing to be proud of. So I walked two days before I hit the Haul Road that runs from Fairbanks up to Prudhoe Bay. It was the loneliest two days I’ve ever had, and two of the best. Some scientists came by in a Bronco and gave me a ride. I stayed at an ecological research camp at a place called Toolik Lake and that’s where I met Jim Sparco. He was doing climate measurements in the Arctic and he’s one of those rare omnivores interested in all kinds of science. We hit it off, talking about weather, geology. Climate and oceans come from rocks, you know. Volcanoes run the planet. We stayed in touch while I bummed around Idaho. I was running out of money, deciding what to do next, when I got a package from Sparco’s lab in Boulder. It had a T-shirt inside that read, ‘Ski the South Pole. Two miles of base, half an inch of powder.’ Plus his telephone number. I called and the rest, as they say, is history.”

  “He sent it to a geologist.”

  “Yes, because he knew me.”

  “And because of Mickey’s rock.”

  He was surprised. “How’d you know about that?”

  “I told you there’s no secrets here. It’s a small place. Mickey went weird at the drill site one day last fall, evasive, and people have wondered ever since if he found something unusual. He seemed quietly excited for a guy whose project is over budget and behind schedule. Then a geologist? It’s not hard to put two and two together. What else could he find in the ice but a meteorite?”