The Ice Limit
Page 16
"That's why I like it," Masangkay whispered back. "Amoy ek-ek yung kamay mo!"
McFarlane had given him a blank look. But instead of explaining, Masangkay began to laugh: softly at first, and then more and more violently. Somehow, in the supercharged atmosphere of danger and tension, his laughter was irresistibly infectious. And without knowing why, McFarlane, too, dissolved into silent convulsions of laughter, clutching the precious bags, as the very trucks that hunted them crossed and recrossed overhead.
Then McFarlane was back in the present, crouching in the snow, the frozen tins of food and rags of clothing scattered around his feet. A queer sensation had come over him. It seemed like such a pathetic collection of trash. This was a horrible place to die, all alone. He felt a tickling at the corners of his eyes.
"So where's the meteorite?" he heard Lloyd ask.
"The what?" said Puppup.
"The hole, man, where's the hole Masangkay dug?"
Puppup pointed vaguely into the swirling snow.
"Damn it, take me there!"
McFarlane looked first toward Lloyd, then at Puppup, who was already trotting ahead. He rose and followed them through the falling snow.
Half a mile, and Puppup stopped, pointing. McFarlane took a few steps forward, staring at the scooped-out depression. Its sides were slumped in, and a drift of snow lay at its bottom. Somehow, he had thought the hole would be bigger. He felt Lloyd grip his arm, squeezing it so tightly it was painful even through the layers of wool and down.
"Think of it, Sam," Lloyd whispered. "It's right here. Right beneath our feet." He tore his eyes away from the hole and looked at McFarlane. "I wish to hell we could see it."
McFarlane realized that he should be feeling something other than a profound sadness and a creeping, eerie silence. Lloyd slipped off his pack, unfastened the top, and pulled out a thermos and three plastic cups. "Hot chocolate?"
"Sure."
Lloyd smiled wistfully. "That goddamned Eli. He should have supplied a bottle of cognac. Well, at least it's hot." He unscrewed the cap and poured out the steaming cups. Lloyd held his up, and McFarlane and Puppup followed suit.
"Here's to the Desolation meteorite." Lloyd's voice sounded small and muffled in the silent snowfall.
"Masangkay," McFarlane heard himself say, after a brief silence.
"I'm sorry?"
"The Masangkay meteorite."
"Sam, that's not protocol. You always name the meteorite after the place where—"
The empty feeling inside McFarlane vanished. "Screw protocol," he said, lowering his cup. "He found it, not you. Or me. He died for it."
Lloyd looked back at him. It's a little too late now for an attack of ethics, his gaze seemed to say. "We'll talk about this later," he said evenly. "Right now, let's drink to it, whatever the hell its name."
They tapped their plastic cups and drank the hot chocolate down in a single gulp. A gull passed by unseen, its forlorn cry lost in the snow. McFarlane felt the welcome creep of warmth in his gut, and the sudden anger eased. Already the light was beginning to dim, and the borders of their small world were ringed with a graying whiteness. Lloyd retrieved the cups and placed them and the thermos back in his pack. The moment had a certain awkwardness; perhaps, McFarlane thought, all such self-consciously historic moments did.
And there was another reason for awkwardness. They still hadn't found the body. McFarlane found himself afraid to lift his eyes from the ground, for fear of making the discovery; afraid to turn to Puppup and ask where it was.
Lloyd took another long look at the hole before his feet, then glanced at his watch. "Let's get Puppup to take a picture."
Dutifully, McFarlane stepped up beside Lloyd as the older man passed his camera to Puppup.
As the shutter clicked, Lloyd stiffened, his eyes focusing in the near distance. "Look over there," he said, pointing over Puppup's shoulder toward a dun-colored jumble, up a small rise about a hundred yards from the hole.
They approached it. The skeletal remains lay partially covered in snow, the bones shattered, almost unrecognizable save for a grinning, lopsided jaw. Nearby was a shovel blade, its handle missing. One of the feet was still wearing a rotten boot.
"Masangkay," Lloyd whispered.
Beside him, McFarlane was silent. They had been through so much together. His former friend, former brother-in-law, reduced now to a cold jumble of broken bones at the bottom of the world. How had he died? Exposure? Freak heart attack? Clearly, it hadn't been starvation: there was plenty of food back at the mules. And what had broken up and scattered the bones? Birds? Animals? The island seemed devoid of life. And Puppup had not even bothered to bury him.
Lloyd swiveled toward Puppup. "Do you have any idea what killed him?"
Puppup simply sniffed.
"Let me guess. Hanuxa."
"If you believe the legends, guv," Puppup said. "And as I said, I don't."
Lloyd looked hard at Puppup for a moment. Then he sighed, and gave McFarlane's shoulder a squeeze. "I'm sorry, Sam," he said. "This must be tough for you."
They stood in silence a moment longer, huddled over the pathetic remains. Then Lloyd stirred. "Time to get moving," he said. "Howell said three P.M. and I'd rather not spend the night on this rock."
"In a moment," McFarlane said, still staring down. "We need to bury him first."
Lloyd hesitated. McFarlane steeled himself, waiting for the protest. But the big man nodded. "Of course."
While Lloyd collected the bone fragments into a small pile, McFarlane hunted up boulders in the deepening snow, prying them loose from the frozen ground with numb fingers. Together, they made a cairn over the remains. Puppup stood back, watching.
"Aren't you going to help?" Lloyd asked.
"Not me. Like I said, I'm a Christian, I am. It says in the Book, let the dead bury the dead."
"Weren't too Christian to empty his pockets, though, were you?" McFarlane said.
Puppup folded his arms, a silly, guilty-looking smile on his face.
McFarlane went back to work, and within fifteen minutes they were done. He fashioned a rough cross from two sticks and planted it carefully atop the low pile of rocks. Then he stepped back, dusting the snow from his gloves.
"Canticum graduum de profundis clamavi ad te Domine," he said under his breath. "Rest easy, partner."
Then he nodded to Lloyd and they turned east, heading for the white bulk of the snowfield as the sky grew still darker and another squall gathered at their backs.
23: Isla Desolación
July 16, 8:42 A.M.
MCFARLANE LOOKED out over the new gravel road, cut through the brilliant expanse of fresh snow like a black snake. He shook his head, smiling to himself in grudging admiration. In the three days since his first visit, the island had been transformed almost beyond recognition.
There was a rough lurch, and half of McFarlane's coffee splashed from his cup onto his snowpants. "Christ!" he yelped, holding the cup at arm's length and swatting at his pants.
From inside the cab, the driver, a burly fellow named Evans, smiled. "Sorry," he said. These Cats don't exactly ride like Eldorados."
Despite its massive yellow bulk, and tires almost twice as tall as a man, the Cat 785's cab held only one person, and McFarlane had ended up sitting, cross-legged, on the narrow platform beside it. Directly beneath him, the huge diesel engine snarled. He didn't mind. Today was the day. Today they were going to uncover the meteorite.
He thought back over the last seventy-two hours. The very night they arrived, Glinn had initiated an astonishing process of unloading. It had all happened with ruthless speed and efficiency. By morning, the most incriminating equipment had been moved by heavy equipment to prefab hangars on the island. At the same time, EES workers under Garza and Rochefort had blasted and leveled the beach site, built jetties and breakwaters with riprap and steel, and graded a broad road from the landing site around the snowfield to the meteorite area—the road he was now on. The EES team had also o
ffloaded some of the portable container labs and workspaces and moved them to the staging area, where they had been arranged among rows of Quonset huts.
But as the Caterpillar 785 Hauler rounded the snowfield and approached the staging area, McFarlane saw that the most astonishing change of all had taken place on an escarpment about a mile away. There, an army of workers with heavy equipment had begun gouging out an open pit. A dozen huts had sprouted up along its verge. Periodically, McFarlane could hear an explosive shudder, and clouds of dust would rise into the sky over the pit. A tailings pile was growing to one side, and a leachpond had been built nearby.
"What's going on over there?" McFarlane shouted to Evans over the roar of the engine, pointing to the escarpment.
"Mining."
"I can see that. But what are they mining?"
Evans broke into a grin. "Nada."
McFarlane had to laugh. Glinn was amazing. Anyone looking at the site would think the activity on the escarpment was their real business; the staging area around the meteorite looked like a minor supply dump.
He turned his gaze from the ersatz mine back to the road that lay ahead. The Hanuxa snowfield coruscated, seeming to grab the light and draw it into its depths, turning it to infinite hues of blue and turquoise. The Jaws of Hanuxa stood beyond, their grimness softened by a dusting of fresh snow.
McFarlane hadn't slept at all the night before, and yet he felt almost too wakeful. In less than an hour, they would know. They would see it. They would touch it.
The truck lurched again, and McFarlane tightened his grip on the metal railing with one hand while quickly downing his coffee with the other. It might be sunny for a change, but it was also hellishly cold. He crushed the foam cup and slid it into a pocket of his parka. The big Cat was only slightly less shabby-looking than the Rolvaag itself, but McFarlane could see that this, too, was an illusion: the interior of the cab was brand-new.
"Quite a machine," he yelled over to Evans.
"Oh, yeah," the man replied, his breath smoking.
The roadbed grew smoother and the Cat sped up. As they trundled along, they passed another hauler and a bulldozer headed back toward the shore, and the drivers waved cheerfully at Evans. McFarlane realized he knew nothing about the men and women wielding all the heavy equipment—who they were, what they thought about such a strange project. "You guys work for Glinn?" he asked Evans.
Evans nodded. "To a man." He seemed to wear a perpetual smile on his craggy face, overhung with two bristly eyebrows. "Not full-time, though. Some of the boys are roughnecks on oil rigs, some build bridges, you name it. We even have a crew from the Big Dig in Boston. But when you get the call from EES, you drop everything and come running.
"Why's that?"
Evans's smile widened. "The pay is five times scale, that's why."
"Guess I'm working the wrong end of the job, then."
"Oh, I'm sure you're doing all right for yourself, Dr. McFarlane." Evans throttled down to let a grader pass them, its metal blades winking in the brilliant sunshine.
"Is this the biggest job you've seen EES take on?"
"Nope." Evans goosed the engine and they lurched forward once again. "Small to middling, actually."
The snowfield fell behind them. Ahead, McFarlane could now see a broad depression, covering perhaps an acre, that had been scraped into the frozen earth. An array of four huge infrared dishes surrounded the staging area, pointing down. Nearby stood a row of graders, lined up as if at attention. Engineers and other workers were scattered around, huddled together over plans, taking measurements, speaking into radios. In the distance, a snowcat—a large, trailerlike vehicle with monstrous metal treads—was crawling toward the snowfield, wielding high-tech instruments held out on booms. Off to one side, small and forlorn, was the cairn he and Lloyd had built over Nestor Masangkay's remains.
Evans came to an idle at the edge of the staging area. McFarlane hopped off and made for the hut marked COMMISSARY. Inside, Lloyd and Glinn sat at a table near a makeshift kitchen, deep in discussion. Amira was standing by a griddle, loading a plate with food. Nearby, John Puppup was curled up, napping. The room smelled of coffee and bacon.
"About time you got here," Amira said as she returned to the table, her plate heaped with at least a dozen slices of bacon. "Wallowing in your bunk until all hours. You should be making an example for your assistant." She poured a cup of maple syrup over the mound of bacon, stirred it around, picked up a dripping piece, and folded it into her mouth.
Lloyd was warming his hands around a cup of coffee. "With your eating habits, Rachel," he said good-humoredly, "you should be dead by now."
Amira laughed. "The brain uses more calories per minute thinking than the body does jogging. How do you think I stay so svelte and sexy?" She tapped her forehead.
"How soon until we uncover the rock?" McFarlane asked.
Glinn sat back, slid out his gold pocket watch, and flicked it open. "Half an hour. We're just going to uncover enough of the surface to allow you to perform some tests.
Dr. Amira will assist you with testing and analyzing the data."
McFarlane nodded. This had already been carefully discussed, but Glinn always went over everything twice. Double overage, he thought.
"We'll have to christen it," Amira said, thrusting another piece of bacon into her mouth. "Anybody bring the champagne?"
Lloyd frowned. "Unfortunately, it's more like a Temperance meeting around here than a scientific expedition."
"Guess you'll have to break one of your thermoses of hot chocolate over the rock," McFarlane said.
Glinn reached down, drew out a satchel, removed a bottle of Perrier-Jouët and placed it carefully on the table.
"Fleur de Champagne," Lloyd whispered almost reverentially. "My favorite. Eli, you old liar, you never told me you had bottles of champagne aboard."
Glinn's only reply was a slight smile.
"If we're going to christen this thing, has anybody thought up a name?" Amira asked.
"Sam here wants to call it the Masangkay meteorite," Lloyd said. He paused. "I'm inclined to go with the usual nomenclature and call it the Desolación."
There was an awkward silence.
"We've got to have a name," Amira said.
"Nestor Masangkay made the ultimate sacrifice finding this meteorite," said McFarlane in a low voice, looking hard at Lloyd. "We wouldn't be here without him. On the other hand, you financed the expedition, so you've won the right to name the rock." He continued gazing steadily at the billionaire.
When Lloyd spoke, his voice was unusually quiet. "We don't even know if Nestor Masangkay would have wanted the honor," he said. "This isn't the time to break with tradition, Sam. We'll call it the Desolación meteorite, but we'll name the hall it's in after Nestor. We'll erect a plaque, detailing his discovery. Is that acceptable?"
McFarlane thought a moment. Then he gave the briefest of nods.
Glinn passed the bottle to Lloyd, then rose. They all went out into the brilliant morning sun. As they walked, Glinn came up to McFarlane's side. "Of course, you realize that at some point we're going to have to exhume your friend," he said, nodding in the direction of the stone cairn.
"Why?" McFarlane asked, surprised.
"We need to know the cause of death. Dr. Brambell must examine the remains."
"What for?"
"It's a loose end. I'm sorry."
McFarlane began to object, then stopped. As usual, there was no arguing with Glinn's logic.
Soon they were standing along the edge of the graded area. Nestor's old hole was gone, filled in by the graders.
"We've scraped the earth down to within about three feet of the top of the rock," Glinn said, "taking samples of each layer. We'll grade off most of the rest, and then switch to trowels and brushes for the last foot. We don't want to so much as even bruise the meteorite."
"Good man," Lloyd answered.
Garza and Rochefort were standing together by the line of graders. Now Roch
efort came over to join them, his face purple with windburn.
"Ready?" Glinn asked.
Rochefort nodded. The graders were manned and idling, their exhausts sending up plumes of smoke and steam.
"No problems?" Lloyd asked.
"None."
Glinn glanced over toward the graders and gave a thumbs-up to Garza. The engineer, wearing his usual athletic warm-ups, turned, held up his fist and cranked it in a circle, and the graders rumbled to life. They moved forward slowly, diesel smoke fouling the air, lowering their blades until they bit into the ground.
Behind the lead grader, several white-jacketed workers walked, sample bags in their hands. They picked up pebbles and dirt exposed by the graders and dropped them in the bags for later examination.
The line of graders made a pass over the area, removing six inches of dirt. Lloyd grimaced as he watched. "I hate to think of those big blades passing so close to my meteorite."
"Don't worry," Glinn said. "We've factored in elbow room. There's no chance of them damaging it."
The graders made another pass. Then Amira came slowly through the center of the graded area, wheeling a proton magnetometer across the ground. At the far end, she stopped, punched some buttons on the machine's front panel, and tore off the narrow piece of paper that emerged. She came up to them, trundling the magnetometer behind her.
Glinn took the paper. "There it is," he said, handing it to Lloyd.
Lloyd grasped the paper and McFarlane leaned over to look. A faint, erratic line represented the ground. Beneath, much darker, was the top edge of a large, semicircular shape. The paper shook in Lloyd's powerful hands. McFarlane thought, God, there really is something down there. He hadn't quite believed it, not until now.
"Fifteen inches to go," said Amira.
"Time to switch to archaeological mode," Glinn said. "We're sinking our hole in a slightly different place from where Masangkay dug, so we can sample undisturbed earth above."
The group followed him across the freshly exposed gravel. Amira took some more readings, tapped a few stakes into the ground, gridded it off, and snapped some chalk strings to make a square two meters on a side. The group of laborers came forward and began carefully troweling dirt from the square.