Blood and Ice

by Robert Masello

  “Of course, now my mother secretly blames my father; she thinks if he'd left Krissy in the hospital, she'd still be alive, if you want to call it that.”

  “I would never have called it that.”

  Karen sighed. “And neither would Krissy.”

  “What about the funeral?”

  “Tomorrow. Very small. I, uh, took the liberty of ordering some sunflowers in your name.”

  That was a good choice. Sunflowers-with their bold, bright yellow faces-were Kristin's favorite. “They're not namby-pamby flowers,” she'd once told him, as they'd hiked through a field of them in Idaho. “They say, hey, look at me, I'm big, I'm yellow, get used to it!”

  “Thanks,” Michael said. “I owe you.”

  “They were $9.95. We can let it go.”

  “You know I meant for everything else… including this call.”

  “Yes, well, when you get back to Tacoma, you can buy me the Blue Plate special at that Greek diner you like.”

  “The Olympic.”

  There was a pause, filled with the low crackle of static on the line.

  “So,” Karen said, “when are you coming back?”

  “I've got till the end of the month on my NSF pass.”

  “Then what? They just chuck you out at the South Pole?”

  “Then they stick me on the next supply plane flying out.”

  “Are you getting what you need? A good story?”

  If Michael had been in the mood to laugh, he'd have laughed then. How could he even begin to explain what had been happening?

  “Yeah,” he said, “let's just say I don't think I'm going to be short of material.”

  When they hung up, he simply sat there, staring down at the open crossword puzzle. His eye happened to fall on a clue that read “Kinky female photog” Five letters. He picked up the blue pencil the previous guy had left and filled in “Arbus.” Then he just continued to sit there, twirling the pencil, lost in thought. Letting the news sink in.

  “Say, you done with the phone?” one of the grunts asked, leaning in the doorway.

  “Yeah,” Michael said, tossing the pencil back on the desk, “all done.”

  He went back to his room but Darryl had already turned in, and there was no way in the world Michael was going to be able to fall asleep-not without a couple of sleeping pills, and he was trying to cut back on those, anyway, in preparation for his reentry to the real world. He packed up his laptop and a bunch of his papers and, slinging his backpack over his shoulders, braved the last of the storm to head over to the rec room and set up shop. Murphy had said that the weather report indicated a brief but temperate window the next day, which might allow them time to go back to Stromviken in search of the elusive Lieutenant Copley.

  Having heard so much about him from Eleanor, Michael was especially curious to make his acquaintance.

  He got a cup of coffee from the standing machine and turned off the TV, which was playing a DVD of Notting Hill; Betty and Tina must have been the last ones in there. But the place was blissfully empty. The wall clock indicated it was just past midnight. Michael turned on the CD player instead, and a blast of Beethoven-even he recognized the opening of the Fifth Symphony-came on. It was a compilation CD, and no doubt belonged to one of the beakers. He lowered the volume, plunked himself down at a card table in the back, and spread out his work.

  Don't think about Kristin, he told himself, when he realized he'd been sitting there for at least one full movement of the symphony thinking of nothing but. Think about something else. His eyes fell on the work he'd brought-most notably the loose pages Ackerley had been scribbling on in the old meat locker-and he almost laughed. When it came to pleasant distractions, the South Pole was noticeably lacking.

  Ackerley's handwriting was a spidery scrawl, reminding Michael of the labels the man had carefully affixed to every drawer of moss and lichen samples in his botany lab. But these pages were especially hard to read, smudged as they were with blood and written on the back of billing invoices and inventory sheets.

  The first page or two-carefully numbered, as Ackerley had promised, in the upper-right-hand corner-recounted the attack, how he had turned to see Danzig lumbering down the aisle toward his lab counter. “I remember being thrown to the floor-destroying a meticulously cultivated orchid (genus Cymbidium) in the fall-and being set upon with great force and no provocation. The assault, though apparently random and senseless, did ultimately reveal itself to be deliberate in its intent.”

  Michael sat back, stunned. He really had to hand it to him; even after being savagely mauled-and rising from the dead, as it were-Ackerley had managed to retain his scientific composure and prose style. The notes, written in a meat locker under what might only be called extreme duress, read like an article being submitted to a scholarly journal for peer review.

  “Upon consideration, Mr. Danzig's efforts,”- Mr. Danzig? — “however wild and distracted, were all directed toward the breaking of the skin and accessing the blood supply. What the reasons for that might have been, or the particular components of the blood that were most sought after, was unclear at the time of the event, and remain so. I am, however, inevitably reminded of the Nepenthes ventri-cosa and its own hematophagous needs.”

  His sangfroid was beyond belief.

  “Death-in any previously understood construction of the term-occurred no more than a minute or so into the event. The interval between that time and what I shall hereinafter refer to as the Revival is unknown to me, though as I have ascertained no material decay it can't have been excessive. (Must consult morbidity and decomposition graphs.) Quick refrigeration of my remains appears to have helped considerably.”

  The next few lines were hopelessly smudged, and Michael had to go looking for the next sequentially numbered page. They were scattered all over the tabletop in front of him, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

  “The Revival was gradual,” Ackerley continued, in the margins of a purchase order, “much like awakening from a deep, possibly hypnagogic state. The line between the dream state and the real was imperceptibly crossed, though it was immediately followed by a sense of panic and disorientation. I was in total darkness, confined somehow, and the fear of premature burial was, of course, paramount in my mind; to be blunt, I screamed and fought against the constraints, and was greatly relieved to establish that I was encased only in plastic sheets, which were permeable and easily shredded.”

  My God, Michael thought. Ackerley's ordeal was like something out of Edgar Allan Poe-and the fact that he had had a hand in it gave him a sharp and guilty pang.

  “But my left wrist had been inexplicably handcuffed to a pipe. That would lead me to believe that someone-Mr. O'Connor? — had reason to believe that (a) a third party might try to make off with my body (for what purpose?) or (b) something like the Revival might have been expected to happen. It was the work of several hours-including the abrasion of much skin and, I believe, the dislocation of three fingers-to free myself.

  “My liberty obtained, I must record that the strongest sensation-quite overpowering in its way-was one of thirst. Attempts to assuage it with beverages found in the locker were useless. It was accompanied by a visual disturbance. I am a scientist-or, more accurately, was a scientist, as I remain convinced that my present, and quite unnatural, state will soon come to an end-and I feel it's incumbent on me, while I can recall it, to describe to the best of my abilities the sensations I underwent.”

  Michael had to search for the next page, which he found under his coffee mug. This one was written on the back of an advertising flyer for Samuel Adams Lager.

  “There was a washed-out look to everything in my visual field. I can only compare it to the illumination from a bank of feeble fluorescent lights. Slightly dim. But blinking, as I did repeatedly, seemed to refresh the image. Then it would fade again. I am doing it even now, to continue writing. It is possible that this ocular disturbance is a sign of the Revival ebbing. I'll try to write faster, just in case. Not
e: Please forward my love and effects to my mother, Mrs. Grace Ack-erley at 505 French Street in Wilmington, DE.”

  Michael had to pause at that. Jesus. Then, reaching for his coffee mug, he read on.

  “A certain shortness of breath has also been introduced. It is as if I am insufficiently oxygenated, leading to dizziness, though my lungs and airways do not in any way feel obstructed.”

  Michael was aware of being watched before he actually saw anyone. He raised his eyes above the rim of the coffee mug and saw a slim figure, bundled in an orange coat, lurking just inside the wide, arched entryway.

  And even with the hood pulled forward, and the coat hanging almost to the floor, he knew it was Eleanor.

  He put the cup down and said, “Why aren't you in bed?” But what he really wondered was, Why are you out of the infirmary? You're supposed to be in virtual quarantine, and definitely out of sight.

  “I can't sleep.”

  “Dr. Barnes could give you something to help.”

  “I've slept enough.” But he saw the hood swivel, as she turned her head, perplexed, around the room. She looked at the piano, and its empty bench, then back around the rec hall. “I heard the music.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Beethoven. But maybe you know that.”

  “I know some of Herr Beethoven's compositions, yes. But…”

  “It's a CD,” he said, gesturing at the player on the shelf. “It plays music.” He got up from his chair, went to the CD player, hit stop, then start. The opening notes of the Moonlight Sonata began to play.

  Eleanor, mystified, drifted into the room and pushed the hood back off her head. She went straight to the machine and stood a few feet in front of the speakers, almost as if she were afraid to get any closer. When Michael, just to surprise her, hit FORWARD and it skipped ahead to the Emperor Concerto-and the lush sounds of a full orchestra again-her eyes opened wide in even greater amazement, and she looked over at him… with a smile on her lips. The first such smile, of sheer amazement, he had ever seen there. Her eyes sparkled and she nearly laughed.

  “How does it do that? It's like Covent Garden!”

  Michael wasn't really up to giving a lecture on the history of audio electronics-not that he'd have known where to start. But he was enthralled at her obvious delight. “It's complicated,” he simply said. “But it's easy to use, and I can show you how.”

  “I would like that, very much.”

  So would I, he thought. The aroma from the coffee machine was strong, and he asked her if she'd like some.

  “Yes, thank you,” she said, “I have had Turkish coffee before. In Varna and Scutari.”

  “Yes, well, this is what we call Folger's. It's in the same family.” He was keeping his eye on the door the whole time he filled the mug. It wasn't likely that anyone else would be popping in at that hour, but he didn't know how he could explain her away if anyone did. New faces didn't just turn up out of nowhere at Point Adelie.

  “Sugar?” he asked.

  “If you have it, please.”

  He shook a packet of sugar, then tore it open and poured it in for her. Even that she watched with interest, and he had to remind himself, yet again, that every single thing in his world-in the present day-was likely to be strange, foreign, and sometimes even alarming to someone who wasn't born into it.

  “I'd offer you milk, but it looks like we're all out.”

  “I would imagine it's very difficult indeed to get milk in a place as remote as this. Surely you don't keep cows?”

  “No, we don't,” Michael said. “You're right about that.” He handed her the mug and asked if she'd like to sit down.

  “Not yet, thank you.” With her coffee mug in hand, she moved slowly around the perimeter of the rec hall, taking in everything from the Ping-Pong table-where she stopped to bounce a ball once or twice-to the plasma-screen TV-which she studied, without asking what in the world it was; thank God it wasn't turned on. There was no way Michael was going to get into all that just now. There were framed posters on the wall-provided, no doubt, by some governmental agency-since every one of them commemorated a national triumph. One was the United States Olympic hockey team celebrating in 1980, another was Chuck Yeager standing, helmet in his hand, next to the X-1 research plane, and the last, before which Eleanor lingered, showed Neil Armstrong in a space suit planting the American flag on the moon. Please no, Michael thought. She'll never believe me.

  “He is in the desert,” she inquired, “at night?”

  “Sort of. Sure.”

  “He's dressed almost the way we do here.” She put the cup down on top of the TV, then took her down coat off, and laid it on the worn-out Naugahyde sofa. She was wearing her own clothes again, freshly cleaned and laundered, and looked to Michael like a figure from a painting. The dress was a dark blue, with white cuffs and collar, and billowy sleeves; on her breast, she wore the white ivory brooch. Her shoes were black leather, buttoned up well above her ankle, and her hair was drawn back from her face and fastened behind with an amber comb he'd never noticed before.

  She glanced over at the table where he'd been sitting, and asked, “Have I interrupted your work?”

  “No, no problem.” The pages from Ackerley were the last things he'd ever want her to see, and he quickly went back and gathered them into a neat stack, with the Sam Adams Lager ad showing on top.

  “You're anxious,” she said.

  “I am?”

  “You keep looking toward the door. Are you really so afraid that I'll be discovered?”

  She didn't miss a thing, he thought. “It's not for my sake,” he said. “It's for yours.”

  “People are always doing things for my sake,” she said, ruminatively “And strangely enough, I'm the one who suffers for it.”

  She went to the piano and ran her fingertips lightly across the keys.

  “You can play it if you like.”

  “Not while the orchestra…” she said, indicating the ambient music with a wave of the hand. Her voice was sweet, and with the English accent she sounded to Michael like someone from one of those Jane Austen movies.

  He flicked off the CD player-she looked at him as if he were a magician who had suddenly waved his wand-and pulled out the piano bench for her.

  “Be my guest,” he said, and he could tell, even though she held back, that she was eager to play. “In for a penny, in for a pound.” That was one expression he felt she'd recognize.

  She smiled, and blinked. Slowly. More like the shutter of an old-fashioned camera opening and closing. Michael stood stock-still. Had everything, as Ackerley had put it, suddenly assumed a “washed-out” appearance to her? And was she now “refreshing the image”?

  Impulsively, she swept her skirt up behind her and slid onto the piano bench. Her fingers, slender and pale, extended over the keys but without touching them. Michael glanced toward the door again, then heard the first notes of a traditional old song, “Barbara Allen;” he remembered it from an old black-and-white version of A Christmas Carol. He looked down at Eleanor, whose head was tilted toward the keyboard, but whose eyes were closed again. Once or twice she hit wrong notes, stopped, and picked up again where she had left off. She looked… transported. As if, after a very long time, she was finally going somewhere she'd dreamt of.

  He stood behind her, one eye on the door, until, finally, he stopped doing duty as a sentinel and simply listened to the music. She played well, despite the occasional missed note. There was a wealth of feeling and expression, and he could well imagine how long, and how tightly, it had all been bottled up inside her.

  After the piece was ended, she sat very still, eyes closed. And when she opened them again-and how green and alive they were, Michael thought-she said, “I'm afraid I'm a bit out of practice.”

  “You've got a good excuse.”

  She nodded and smiled, pensively. “Do you play?” she asked.

  “Just Chopsticks.”

  “What's that?”

  “It's a very difficult pie
ce, reserved for concert pianists only.”

  “Truly? I'd like to hear it,” she said, starting to rise.

  “Stay put,” he said. “This will only take a second.” He sat down beside her on the bench, and as she scooted over, he put his index fingers on the keyboard and banged out the tune. That close to her, she smelled of Irish Spring soap, and when he'd finished and looked at her to see if she was amused, he realized that he'd made a terrible mistake. A blush as fierce as fire was in her cheek, and her eyes were downcast. His shoulder was brushing hers, his foot was touching her boot, and she looked shocked by the sudden, physical contact. Shocked, but so loath to offend him that she hadn't jumped up and moved away, but simply sat and waited for it to be over.

  “I'm sorry,” Michael said, getting up. “I didn't mean to offend you. I forgot…” Forgot what? That over 150 years ago, what I just did was probably considered pretty forward? “It's just that, today, it's not a big deal to-”

  “No, I'm not offended,” she said, her voice strained. “That was… a very interesting piece.” She smoothed her skirt. “Thank you for playing it for me.”

  “There you are!” came from the door, and Michael saw Charlotte, her coat flapping open over sweatpants and rubber boots, breathing a huge sigh of relief. “I did a bed check, and when you were gone, I imagined all kinds of disasters.”

  “I'm quite well,” Eleanor said.

  “I don't know if I'd go that far,” Charlotte replied, “but you're definitely on the upswing. I can see that now.”

  “You are aware, I hope, that I can't be confined forever.”

  Charlotte looked like she didn't want to get into all that. “You didn't steal her, did you?” she asked Michael.

  Michael raised his palms in a gesture of innocence, and Eleanor came to his defense-”No, he did not”-and then to her own. “I've been deprived of many things, including my liberty, for quite a long time, but there is one thing I still retain.”