Dark Winter

by William Dietrich

  I found that out when everyone turned on me.

  I acquired another position and began to labor to document this point. I plowed into psychological and sociological research and combed through history. Cooperation comes only through coercion. It’s so obvious when you look at the literature! Everything else is a fraud. Progress is achieved by the natural selection of the superior individual, and it is individual vision that drives or destroys the group.

  No one would listen, of course. My realization collided with their comfortable dreams of group comfort. Social security! The American myth of democracy, teamwork, compromise. The whispers followed, the looks, the suspicions. I saw it everywhere: in the supermarket, at the bank, in my office. Everyone looking at me strangely, thinking the worst of my quite defensible actions, blaming me for having the courage to survive. I saw it!

  So. How to prove my point? How to demonstrate that I really had no choice?

  Imagine a small society in a harsh environment. Imagine one that could be kept in experimental isolation for eight long, dark months. Imagine applying sufficient stress that group solidarity is tested. Imagine forcing each individual to realize how completely alone they really are.

  The National Science Foundation ignored me, of course. They dismissed my carefully constructed application. They really had no clue as to the significance of the social experiment they had unwittingly constructed at the Pole. It was all astronomy and climatology to them, instruments and data. No vision of the future, no understanding of our grim evolutionary future in the cold blackness of space.

  So. Everyone ignored me. My papers went unpublished. My grant proposals were rejected. My every step dogged by ugly rumor. I was broke, desperate, humiliated.

  And then, destiny.

  Can you possibly imagine what an arrogant, boorish prick Robert Norse really was? I met him at a professional conference when he was boasting of his assignment to Antarctica. His assignment to the Pole, precisely the place where I wanted to go! He blathered on mindlessly, gloating, stuffed full of himself, not having even the merest pathetic clue of just how unfairly his own good fortune had erased my own. He was going to a place he didn’t begin to understand. And along the way, he was trekking in New Zealand.

  A few months later, I read about his disappearance.

  Do you believe in miracles? I’m a rational man, a man of science, and yet sometimes opportunity presents itself in so deliciously glorious a way that one can’t help wonder at the secret workings of the Universe. It occurred to me that if I could not compete with Robert Norse I had to become Robert Norse. I had to act decisively, just as I had on that cliff. And everything after that just...happened.

  I acted on the best plan I had at the time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “This is completely insane,” Lewis said.

  “Which is why it just might work in a place like this,” Abby replied.

  It was past midnight and most of the winter-overs were asleep with whatever dreams plagued them. Only Gage Perlin was making hourly rounds as the designated sentry of the witching hour watch. In preparation, Abby had raided Jerry Follet’s crate of atmospheric sampling equipment that was tucked against one wall of the dome, taking a small weather balloon and a gas canister. She’d spent the day filching and concealing a 150-foot length of sturdy rope, a lighter tether line half that length, a pack with a flashlight, two ice axes, and a coil of wire. Now she crouched behind the ruptured Comms building to fill the balloon while Lewis used first tape, then wire, and finally rope to bind the two ice ax prongs at right angles to each other. More tape fused the handles. The result was a crude approximation of a grappling hook. Tied to the climbing rope, it would be hoisted aloft by the balloon.

  “What if somebody sees us?” Lewis had worried.

  “They’re worn out. Besides, how much more locked up can we be than we already are?”

  In a grave, he thought, but didn’t say that. There was a new fierceness about Abby that he found exciting. Infectious. They weren’t even sure what they were fighting, but they were at least beginning to fight back.

  The pair peered around the corner and heard and saw nothing. “We have to do this quickly,” Lewis said. “Maybe twenty minutes before Gage comes through again.”

  They briskly walked across the snowy floor to the center of the dome, pulling the bobbing balloon behind them. The gasbag was tied to a tether line that in turn was fastened by a slipknot to the makeshift grappling hook. The climbing rope hung from the hook. Norse and Pulaski had sealed every entrance to the structure except the most obvious one: the opening at the top of the structure that Jed had seen on his first day, left permanently open like a smoke hole in a kiva to allow air circulation. Blowing snow sizzled on the outside of the aluminum shelter and helped mask what little noise the pair were making. Looked at from below it was like the eyepiece of a telescope, giving a glimpse of a few bright stars and the outside world.

  Lewis let the medicine-ball-sized balloon go, holding onto its light tether. It shot up faster than he expected and the climbing line writhed like a snake until Abby grabbed it and fed it through her fingers. Then the hook lifted off and the two lines uncoiled upward at a steady pace, dancing in the night.

  When the helium orb bumped against the icicles overhead a few broke off and fell, forcing the pair to duck. Fortunately the frozen spikes plunged noiselessly into the snow in the center of the dome instead of banging against the roof of the modules. They stuck out from the snow like knives.

  “Careful!” Abby hissed.

  “Help me pull it over.”

  They gingerly tugged on the lines to lower the balloon slightly and bring it under the hole. Then they let rope out again and the orb popped free. Once the gas bag was above the crest of the dome, the wind took it like a fish on a hook, the ropes yanked taut. When their grappling hook was carried to the lee side of the opening they hauled sharply down, letting the ice axes wedge against the outside of the roof. As she threw her weight against it the aluminum bent slightly, snugging the ax heads tightly against the rim. Lewis jerked on the tether to free the slip knot. The balloon lurched and soared upward into the night, the tether swimming up and out of sight. Remaining were the hook and its climbing rope, hanging downward from the vent hole. Lewis sighted up the line’s length, trying to judge its bite on the roof. It just might hold.

  He gave her a kiss of partnership. “I’ll be back before Pika wakess up to check the generators.”

  “Just get up the rope first.”

  Scaling a rope five stories high by grip alone would be quick but required considerable strength and risked a bad fall. Jed instead used a trick he’d learned years ago while mountaineering. Two loops resembling hangman’s nooses and called Prusik loops were tied with light line and hung on the main rope with slip knots so that could be pulled up or down the main line. He slid one two feet above the snow and slipped his boot into its loop. As he put his weight on it, stepping up off the snow, the slip knot tightened and friction held the loop firmly in place, giving him his first short ascent. He pirouetted slowly as he held on, watching the rope twist under the grappling hook and making sure it wouldn’t twist off. “Hold the bottom to help keep me steady,” he instructed Abby. Then, balancing on the loop, he stooped and caught the second Prusik loop with his glove. He slid it two feet higher than the first and put his other boot into that. Again, the knot tightened. He wiggled his first boot out of the first knot, loosening its grip, slid it just under the knot he was standing on, and transferred his weight yet again. By keeping his weight on one loop at a time, he could slide the knots steadily up the rope and keep climbing.

  “I think this is going to work,” he said, already breathing heavily from the exertion.

  “What if Gage comes?” Abby asked.

  “Seduce him.”

  The first twenty feet were easy enough. It helped that Abby steadied the rope. Once he got high enough that a fall might seriously hurt, however, his worry about the securi
ty of the hook increased. He looked upward, trying to see what was happening in the gloom, but could tell nothing. What if the whole contraption unraveled?

  Then this damnable winter will be over, he told himself.

  He climbed higher. As he ascended he began to feel a slight breeze from the chilly opening and the stars seemed brighter. Progress! It was like climbing to the mouth of a well. Up, up, up. He was panting from the exertion and awkward in his winter clothes, but he’d need them once he was outside. Abby had become very small below. The roofs of the housing modules formed a geometric pattern, their tops dusted with snow.

  He paused for breath again, braced on one trembling leg, glancing around below to make sure no one was watching. Gage would probably wander around again in about ten minutes. Even with Abby holding on below the rope twisted slowly, rotating him slowly first one way, then another. It was too bad in a way the others weren’t awake: he was putting on quite a show, a damned circus.

  Then he felt an ominous jerk, the rope vibrating. The hook was shifting! He froze, waiting with dread for it to slide free. But the movement stopped and he was still hanging in space, sweating, his body tense, the rope trembling like a plucked string. So much for stopping! He began hauling himself upward again as fast as he could manage.

  His glove touched the taped ax shafts and he could hear the low moan of the wind across the top of the dome. He slipped the top loop as high as it would go, put out one hand and grasped the rim. An aluminum tube ran around the four-foot wide opening, so slick and cold it was hard to hang onto. He awkwardly leveraged his head outside and a blast of Antarctic wind hit him like a slap. As claustrophobically cold as it was inside the aluminum dome, the wind chill outside was twice as bad. Once more its power sucked his breath away. Yet that way promised release. If he could just lever himself up a few more feet...

  He leaned against the rim and began twisting his boot, trying to work it out of the final loop. The damn thing worked like a snare. He came loose awkwardly, catching his boot tip on the line and tangling himself. He grunted in fear as his legs and weight abruptly dropped free, his body snapping straight as he clung to the rim with his gloves. For a moment he desperately swayed back and forth like a pendulum, with the hard white floor five stories below. Abby’s upturned face was a white oval, the hook somewhere behind him. Dammit! He dangled a moment, collecting his wits, and then, his muscles straining, Lewis worked his way hand over hand around the trim to the grappling hook, grabbed it, and got his feet wrapped around the main climbing rope again, sliding the Prusik loops down out of the way. He pushed upward with his legs, shoving himself back up into the wind and the darkness outside the dome, and worked high enough that a final desperate lunge let him belly-flop onto the dome’s slick roof. It took a second to catch his breath. Then he squirmed around to a sitting position and looked down through the hole.

  Abby was gesturing wildly. Perlin must be coming! She’d already tied the end of the rope to his pack of supplies. The rope was deliberately more than twice the length needed to reach the top of the dome and he pulled the slack up quickly. Finally he could jerk the pack off the snow and hauled frantically, while Abby ducked behind Comms. And here came the plumber, cold and hunched, walking again with a crude spear made from a knife lashed onto a sawed-off mop handle, ambling across the point where they’d just been standing.

  Gage never looked up at the backpack oscillating silently over his head. Striding to check the barricaded entrance by the archways, he disappeared from view.

  Lewis pulled the pack up the rest of the way, put it on, reversed the hook, and pitched the climbing rope down the outside of the geodesic structure. Grasping it and walking backwards, he gingerly made his way down the face of the dome to the snow, the aluminum making a faint hollow pop as it flexed under his weight.

  It became so steep that he had to let go and drop the last few feet, rolling into the drifts that mounded against the dome. Then he bounded up, shaking himself like a dog. He was out! The freedom, after being locked in the sauna, was exhilarating.

  Lewis looked around. All exterior lights had been shorted out in the explosion and the base was dark. A ground fog of blown snow skittered waist-high across the plateau. Yet he could see surprisingly well. The stars were a shoal of diamonds, the Milky Way a brilliant white arch. Their galaxy! He’d never seen so many stars, so close and so brilliant. He tilted his head back to drink them - bite them, as Sparco had promised. The glory of it stunned him with the force of belated recognition: yes, I’m a part of that. He stood for a moment gaping, oblivious to the cold.

  “This is why I’m down here,” he murmured.

  Then he began walking toward the dark blue huts that marked Bedrock, the emergency shelter that housed a small auxiliary generator. He had about three hours.

  *********

  The Hypertats were modest and modern Quonset-shaped huts that had been installed as an emergency refuge in case the dome somehow failed. Insulated, modern and cramped, they were designed to keep people alive until rescue could be organized. As winter deepened they were drifting with snow and no one, as far as Lewis knew, had been inside them this season. Behind them was an emergency generator building. This shed was deliberately unlocked and had clear instructions to allow any survivor to start the machine. Still, it took Lewis fifteen minutes to push aside snow blocking its door. Inside the machines were brittle and cold, ice crystals glittering as his flashlight played over them, their fuel like jelly, and with the grid down the batteries had lost much of their charge. It took another twenty minutes of hard labor for Jed to hand-crank a diesel to get iot going. Each reluctant chug that died increased his sense of desperation. Yet just as he was thoroughly frustrated by its mule-like reluctance, ready to scream with resentment, it coughed and rumbled and gave him the first real hope he’d had for some time. Energy! A source Norse and Pulaski had overlooked! The generator’s modest chug couldn’t be heard from the distant dome but it was enough to make electricity for the Hypertats, and power was power. This juice was going to let him reach the outside world.

  Bedrock’s small generator was never designed to power other outlying buildings. Yet it connected to a substation shack and, if switched and re-routed as Abby had instructed, it could shunt electricity away from the wrecked Comms center and out to Clean Air. He trudged to the shack, butted it open, and searched with his flashlight for the right switches. He hesitated only a moment. If he threw the wrong ones he could short out the entire system. But no, they were clearly labeled, and one-by-one he flipped them over as the woman had instructed. No sparks flew. He looked outside. A deck light had come on at Clean Air.

  Abby knew her stuff.

  The light would alert anyone watching, but no one would be watching. The others had blinded themselves by barricading the dome.

  Lewis set off for his workplace. It was eerie how dead the rest of the station looked with outside power off and its inhabitants barricaded. Everything was in silhouette under the stars, the antennas mute, the telescopes blinded. It was like walking a ghostly ruin. The snow was a frozen sea, an undulating series of drifts he stroke up and down like a boat, his trail leading from one half-buried flag to the next. He wondered about the distant future. Would humans stay at the Pole forever or retreat someday? Would everything they had built eventually become as ghostly as the abandoned Navy base?

  While fairly confident he wouldn’t be missed until morning, Lewis flicked off the deck light when he reached Clean Air and didn’t take the chance of turning on a light inside his old workplace. Instead he flicked on an auxiliary heater and used his flashlight to pick his way to one of the computers, dragging some furniture over to block its glow from the windows. Then he turned the machine on. There was the familiar whir and bleep, and a faint crackle as photons danced in the tube.

  Lewis checked his watch. The satellites that tied them to the Internet cleared the horizon at intervals of eight hours apart. The next one was rising now.

  The temptation to
simply sound a cry for help was powerful but it was unlikely to bring any meaningful response. He couldn’t stay out here to wait for a reply because he’d be missed in the sauna and a hunt would be on. And even if the National Science Foundation decided to dispatch the Texas Rangers at his strange SOS, it would take at least days and more likely weeks in winter to mount the logistics to fly to the Pole. All the military transports were back in the United States, their National Guard crews had dispersed, and their cold weather gear was stored. The Pole was designed to be self-sufficient until October. The winterovers were facing a danger they’d have to deal with themselves, and before they could deal with it he had to understand what their peril was.

  There was now one person of uncertain past, one person leading them to an even more uncertain future. Lewis launched a web search.

  Robert Norse.

  He started with the usual string of search engines: Alta Vista, Yahoo, AOL, Google, MSN. The results were frustrating because the name was too common. There were scores of references to Bobs and Norses, but none obviously fitting their psychologist. He turned up Robert’s Rules of Order and a reference to Norse mythology, a link to a Warhammer game and a construction company in Minneapolis. “Come on...” There were even puzzling references to New Zealand, referring to outdoor hiking trips there. What the hell was that about? “Damn brainless Internet clutter...”

  He tried searching professional journals but quickly became lost in a bog of poor indexing and the ceaseless accumulation of academic publication. So much stuff that no one could read it, and so dense no one could understand it. He didn’t have the vaguest idea who Norse might have written for anyway. And what would an academic study prove?

  Stymied, he decided to try news media data bases instead. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal came up empty, but a Los Angeles Times brief from two years before briefly identified Norse as a visiting lecturer at San Diego State University in a story about a psychological conference on human adaptation to extremes. The story said Norse was planning polar research. Well, that made sense. Frustratingly, there was nothing more. The university web site had no listing for Norse: no picture, no biography, no vital statistics.