Blood and Ice

by Robert Masello

  In her heart, she knew he was right… or at least that he had been right. But wasn't it possible that this curse had been lifted? Wasn't it possible that, in addition to whatever strange miracle had released them from their bondage, another one had been performed, too? That this dreadful sustenance, sitting before her, was no longer necessary?

  “We don't know where we are,” Sinclair said, softly. “And we don't know what awaits us out there.” He was speaking in his most reasonable voice, but Eleanor had become used to such sharp changes. Even in his letters home, she had detected them.

  “I believe we must take our opportunities when and where we find them,” he said, pointedly glancing down at the bottle.

  Eleanor had to shift her position on the floor, so as to warm and dry a different section of her dress. She worried about how long they would be able to stay there without being discovered. “Couldn't we just take it with us, wherever we have to go?”

  “Yes,” he replied, his temper, she could tell, mounting. “But it was taken away from us once, was it not? It could be taken away again.”

  He was right, of course… and she recognized as much. But still her spirit rebelled.

  Either to prove his point, or because he craved another draught, Sinclair grabbed the bottle and drank again. This time, he was able to manage several swallows before slamming the bottle back to the floor and letting a dark rivulet run from the corner of his mouth.

  She found herself transfixed by the deep crimson line touching his chin. He had done that, she knew, deliberately. Her throat, parched already, felt as rough as a dusty road, and she could feel the muscles in her neck straining. Her palms, which she had just gotten dry, were damp again with perspiration, and so, she feared, was her brow. Her temples began to throb, like a distant drumbeat.

  “The least you can do,” he said, “after all this time, is to kiss me.”

  His blond hair, though wild and twisted on his head, gleamed with a fiery light in the glow of the strange heater. The collar of his white shirt lay open at the neck, and a drop from the bottle had landed there, too. God help her, but she wanted to lick the spot away. Her tongue involuntarily pressed at the back of her teeth.

  “As your friend Moira might have said,” he pressed, “will you not do it for auld lang syne?”

  “I will not do it for that,” Eleanor finally answered. “But I will do it… for love.”

  She leaned forward, as did Sinclair, and with the bottle between them, their lips met-at first chastely, but then, when his parted, she could taste it, the blood, in his mouth.

  He put his hand to the back of her head, wound his fingers through her long, tangled hair, and held her there. And she let him-let him hold her, let him ensnare her. She knew that was what he was doing. She let him unite them again as they had been united so long before. She let him do all of it, because it had been so long since she had felt something like this… so long, truly, since she had felt anything at all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  December 13, 6 p.m.

  On the trip back, Michael begged, and Danzig agreed, to let him drive the dogsled. After a few rudimentary pointers, Danzig clambered into the cargo shell-it was even a tighter squeeze than it had been for Michael-and said, “Ready?”

  “Ready” Michael replied, adjusting his goggles and pulling his furred hood tighter around his face. Then, gripping the handlebars and making sure his feet were planted on snow and not ice, he shouted the order-”Hike!”-that Danzig always used. The dogs, perhaps unaccustomed to his voice, at first didn't move; Kodiak actually turned around and looked at him questioningly

  “You've got to do it with some authority,” Danzig said. “Like you mean it.”

  Michael cleared his throat-now he felt like he was auditioning for the dogs-and shouted, “Hike!” while giving a sharp jerk on the mainline.

  Kodiak, in the lead position, whipped around and jumped forward; the other dogs, taking their cue, started to pull, as Michael ran behind, pushing the handlebars.

  “Jump on!” Danzig warned him, and just as Michael got his boots onto the wooden runners, the sled gathered momentum and took off across the snow and ice. Danzig had taken the trouble to point it in the right direction, so Michael didn't have to worry about making a turn, but the task was already harder than he had imagined. As smooth as the surface might look, it was filled with bumps and cracks and stones, and he could feel the shock of each one radiating up his legs. It was all he could do to keep his balance and stay on the runners.

  “Loosen up!” Danzig cried over his own shoulder, and Michael thought, Easier said than done.

  Still, he tried to let his shoulders fall and his arms bend a bit, and he willed his knees to unlock.

  “If you want ‘em to go straight ahead,” Danzig advised, though Michael had a hard time hearing him over the wind battering at his hood, “shout ‘Straight ahead!’ “

  Okay, that one wouldn't be hard to remember.

  “And if you want ‘em to go slower, pull back on the lines and shout, ‘Easy!’ “

  Michael had no idea how fast they were actually going, but the impression of speed was incredible. As he clung to the rubberized handlebars, the icy landscape went flying by on either side. When he'd been hunkered down in the shell, it had been quite different; he'd been warm and protected, and everything had been seen from just a few feet off the ground. But standing up, with the wind smacking his face and rippling at his sleeves-the sound reminded him of the snapping flag at Point Adelie-it was both exhausting and invigorating. A cloud of ice crystals, thrown up by the paws of the running dogs, stung his lips and spattered like rain on his goggles. Carefully, he raised one glove, swiped the crystals away, then grabbed for the handlebars again.

  But as he began to feel the rhythm of the team and became accustomed to the swooshing movement of the sled, he began to relax. He could look beyond the bushy heads and tails of the dogs and off into the distance. The base was still too far off to be seen at all, and that was just as well. What he saw instead was simply a limitless continent of snow and ice and permafrost-larger, he knew, than Australia, but so desolate that it made the great outback look crowded. The sled was clinging to the shoreline, which comparatively teemed with life, but just a few miles inland, the seals no longer frolicked, the birds ceased to fly, and even the modest lichen disappeared from sight. It was a desert, as bereft of life-in fact, as hostile to it-as anyplace on the planet. Humans had found a way to reach the South Pole; they could fly over it, they could plant a flag, they could take some measurements, but they could never really claim it. No one could really stay there, and only a madman would want to.

  The coppery sun was hanging like a watch fob, in an empty sky. Time had become as fluid for Michael as it did for everyone in the Antarctic-he'd already used up nearly half of the time on his NSF pass, but the days simply flowed into each other like a running stream. He had to check his watch constantly, but even then he couldn't always tell if it was a.m. or p.m. There were several times when he had gotten confused, and occasions when he had suddenly had to part the blackout curtains around his bunk, stagger into the hall, and confirm whether it was night or day with the first person he saw. Once it had been Spook, the botanist, who was seldom seen outside his lab-or “the flower shop,” as it was known to the grunts-and together they had agreed it was afternoon, when it actually turned out to be the dead of night. They'd gone to the commons and been surprised to find it so empty. That was when Michael had looked at Spook more closely and seen the telltale signs of Big Eye-the glassy stare, the slack, though oddly bemused, expression.

  It was also when he'd started regulating his own sleep cycle with Lunesta or lorazepam-whatever he could get the good Dr. Barnes to prescribe for him that night.

  “There's an old saying,” she'd advised. “If one person tells you that you look tired, don't worry about it. But if two people tell you that you look tired, lie down.”

  “What are you telling me?”

 
; “Lie down-and take it easy.”

  Michael knew that he'd been pushing it-photographing everything, making endless notes in his journal, trying to master all the polar skills from igloo construction to, right now, dogsledding-but he was conscious of the limited time he had at Point Adelie, and he didn't want to overlook anything. On New Year's Eve, the supply plane would carry him back out, and he didn't want to find himself back in Tacoma, wondering why, for instance, he hadn't taken some photos inside the old Norwegian church-already he was planning to get back there-or how he'd failed to solve the mystery of Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming.

  Even now, he knew, the block of ice was slowly thawing. He'd have to go and see it as soon as they got back to base and get some more photos of that stage in the transformation. It was funny, but that was how he'd come to think of it-as a metamorphosis. The ice was the chrysalis, from which the two lovers would emerge-for lovers, he felt certain, was what they must have been. Who else would have been so yoked together, with coils of chain, and consigned to a watery grave? He tried to imagine the scenario, any scenario, that would make sense of it all. Were they captured and thrown into the sea by a jealous husband? Or was it done at the orders of a spurned wife? Had they violated some code of conduct- a code of the sea, or, given the gold braid on the man's uniform, of the military? What crime could they have committed that such an awful crime would have been committed in turn against them?

  The dogs made a wide circle to skirt some uncommonly high sastrugi-windblown ridges of snow and ice-and Michael was reminded again that the dogs knew the route better than anyone. And they were heading home, to their comfortable kennel, with its straw-lined floor and food bowls. All he had to do, most of the time, was hang on to the handlebars and stay on the runners. He hadn't heard a peep out of Danzig, and he had the distinct impression that the man was asleep, his chin resting on his chest, his hood gathered close around his face. Whether that was a sign of his confidence in Michael, or in the dogs, wasn't clear, but Michael hoped he could make it all the way back to the base without waking him.

  Far off on his left, out on the ice floes, he saw a tiny red light flash, and a few minutes later he saw it again-the beacon, he realized, on top of the dive hut. Michael had witnessed some of the traps being hauled up from the bottom, several of them containing stunned and gasping fish, with translucent gills and white eyes, and he'd watched as Darryl transferred the ones that had survived the trip to specimen buckets. But how, he wondered, could such a confirmed vegetarian and animal rights activist do this kind of work?

  “Rationalization is the key,” Darryl had said. “I tell myself that, by studying the few, I can save the many. The first step in getting the world to conserve natural resources is to remind the world that they are imperiled.” He'd lifted one dead fish by its tail and gently deposited it in a separate bucket, packed with ice. “And if I work fast, I can still get an interesting blood sample, even from this one.”

  As the sled drew parallel to the dive hut, the dogs turned inland, several of them yelping in gleeful anticipation. The blades swished through the snow as the sled surmounted a low hill, and now Michael could see the camp. The various modules and sheds and storehouses looked, from here, like the Lego blocks he'd played with as a kid, strewn about in only the rudest semblance of order. A collection of black and gray structures, with huge yellow Day-Glo circles painted on their roofs so that the camp could be spotted by the supply planes in the long, dark austral winter.

  Hard as it was to live there in the summer, with the unending light, Michael could barely fathom how anyone withstood a winter at the South Pole.

  Danzig stirred in the shell and raised his head. “We there yet?” he mumbled.

  “Almost,” Michael said.

  Now he could see the American flag, so stiffened by the wind that it looked flat.

  “But since you're awake,” Michael said, “what do you say to get the dogs to stop?”

  “Try whoa.”

  “Try it?”

  “It doesn't always work. Pull back on the lines, hard, and step down on the brake.” Michael glanced down at the metal bar, with two claws, that served as the brake, and prepared to step on it as soon as the sled got within a hundred yards of the kennel. He didn't anticipate a swift stop.

  From the ocean side, he could hear the distant roar of a snowmobile, and he couldn't help but compare it to the smooth, natural whooshing of the sled. As a photographer-somebody who relied upon all the latest gizmos-he knew he was in no position to throw stones at technology. Hell, if it hadn't been for airplanes, he'd never have gotten here, and if weren't for digital cameras, he'd be fumbling with a lot of frozen, broken, and scratched film. But the noise of the snowmobile, which looked like it would arrive back at the base just about as he did, was an intrusion nonetheless, like a power mower breaking the perfect quiet of an August morning. He wondered, as he watched it zip across the ice like a black bug skittering across a tabletop, if Darryl was on board, loaded down with fresh specimens.

  The kennel was at the back of the station, beyond the quad where the dorms and administration modules were set up, back where the labs butted up against the equipment sheds and generators. Even though the generators were placed as far away from the dorms as possible, there were still many nights, if the wind was down, when Michael could hear their constant thrumming. When he'd complained about it at breakfast one morning, Franklin had said, “Worry about it when you don't hear that racket.”

  The dogs cut a narrow path past the ice-core bins and the botany lab, past the garage where the Sprytes and snowmobiles and augers were housed, and on toward the kennel, across a winding alley from the marine biology lab. Michael shouted “Whoa!” to almost no effect, and pressed with both feet on the brake. He could feel its steel claws digging into the permafrost and slowing the speed of the sled, but they weren't slowing it enough for a soft landing. He shouted again and leaned back, with all his weight, on the mainline, until he saw the brush bow, at the front of the sled, lift an inch or two, and the dogs gradually wind down. Kodiak stopped straining against the harness and fell into a trot, and the others immediately followed suit. The blades coursed almost silently across the snow and ice, until the sled pulled up to the kennel-an open shed with a hayloft above, illuminated by a glaring, white light. From the happy reaction of the dogs, it looked to them like the Ritz.

  “Nice job, Nanook,” Danzig said, hoisting himself up and out of the shell. “What's on the meter?”

  Sinclair had heard the sled arriving-the barking of the dogs, the runners cutting through the snow. But he didn't dare to open the door to see what was out there-for all he knew, a guard might be posted right outside.

  There were no proper windows, either, but he did see a narrow glass panel running just below the flat ceiling, close to the door, and he quietly drew a stool over to it. He stepped up on the stool-his socks, still damp, squishing on its seat-and tried to peer outside. The noise of the dogs was quite close. But the window was so encrusted with snow and ice, he could barely see anything. On his side of it, however, there did appear to be a handle of some kind-like a crank-and when he turned it, the bottom of the window lifted, pushing some snow out of its way. He cranked it again, and now he had a couple of inches through which he could see. The blast of wind, despite the narrowness of the aperture, was forbidding.

  He saw an ice-packed alley, with a team of wolfish dogs prancing through it. There were two men on the sled-one, in a bulky, hooded coat, was driving, and the other, wearing a necklace of bones around his neck, was riding in the carriage. The sled ground to a halt inside a wide-open barn-brightly lighted, even though it appeared to Sinclair to be midday outside-and the man in the sled clambered out. Sinclair could not hear what the men were saying. But his attention was drawn instead to the back of the dog pen.

  His chest was there. The one that had contained the cache of bottles.

  The men pushed their hoods back and lifted some sort of heavy dark spectacles fro
m their eyes. The driver was young-maybe Sinclair's own age-tall, with longish black hair; the other man, with a full beard and wide Slavic cheekbones, was older and stocky. Neither of them wore anything that suggested a uniform, or national allegiance, of any kind, but that was little help. Sinclair had known soldiers, so weary and so encumbered with gear, that by the time they arrived at the front, they looked more like a band of hooligans than Her Majesty's own.

  The bearded man was untying the harness lines-Sinclair was reminded of his own horses and carriages, back at his family's estate in Nottinghamshire-while the driver filled a stack of bowls with food from a sack. One by one, the dogs were tied to stakes, spaced a few feet apart; their eyes were riveted on the bowls as the young man dispensed them. While the dogs devoured their meals, the bearded man hung his overcoat on a wall hook-he had some other coat on underneath it-where Sinclair saw a motley assortment of other garments, hats and gloves and even a pair of those green spectacles, also hanging.

  More and more, he knew that he would have to raid that barn. There was food (even if it was only considered fit for dogs), there was clothing… and there was his chest.

  “What do you see?” Eleanor whispered.

  “Our next objective.”

  He climbed down from the stool and began to put his own clothes back on.

  “Are they dry yet?” Eleanor asked. “If they're not dry…”

  He lifted his saber out of its scabbard-it stuck for a second, before sliding free-then slid it back in again. He hoped he would not have to draw it, but it was best to know, that if things came to such a pass…

  “What do you want me to do?” Eleanor asked, her voice not only soft but weak. He knew she hadn't really tested her strength yet-for that matter, neither had he-but he wondered if she would be fit to travel, as they would no doubt have to do, and especially in what appeared to be the same hostile climes they had last encountered.