Terminal Freeze

by Lincoln Child

  Still—Marshall thought as he filled and sealed a fresh bag, recorded the sample’s location in a notebook, then measured and photographed the extraction site—Faraday had a point. And that point was one reason he himself was collecting samples at an almost frantic pace. A glacier was a near-perfect place for his kind of research. During its formation, as it accumulated snow, it trapped organic remains: pollen, plant fibers, animal remains. Later, as the glacier retreated, melting slowly away, it gracefully yielded up those secrets once again. This was an ideal gift for a paleoecologist, a treasure trove from the past.

  Except there was nothing slow or graceful about this glacier’s retreat. It was falling to pieces with alarming speed—and taking its secrets with it.

  As if on cue, there was another ear-shattering explosion from the face of the glacier, another shuddering cascade of ice. Marshall glanced toward the sound, feeling a mixture of irritation and impatience. A much larger section of the glacier’s face had fallen away this time. With a sigh, he bent toward his specimens, then abruptly swiveled back in the direction of the glacier. Among the fractured ice boulders at its base, he could see that part of the mountain face beneath had been exposed by the calving. He squinted at it for a moment. Then he called over to Faraday.

  “You’ve got the field glasses, don’t you?”

  “Right here.”

  Marshall walked toward him. The biologist had pulled the binoculars from a pocket and was holding them out with a heavily gloved hand. Marshall took them, breathed on the eyepieces to warm them, wiped them free of mist, then raised them toward the glacier.

  “What is it?” Faraday said, excitement kindling in his voice. “What do you see?”

  Marshall licked his lips and stared at what the fallen ice had revealed. “It’s a cave,” he replied.

  2

  An hour later, they stood before the icy rubble at the Fear glacier’s front face. The freezing rain had stopped, and a weak sun struggled to pierce the gunmetal clouds. Marshall rubbed his arms briskly, trying to warm himself. He looked around at their little group. Sully had returned, bringing with him Ang Chen, the team’s graduate student. Except for Penny Barbour, their computer scientist, the entire expedition was now assembled at the terminal moraine.

  The cave lay directly ahead, its mouth black against the clear blue of the glacial ice. To Marshall, it looked like the barrel of a monstrous gun. Sully stared into it, chewing distractedly on his lower lip.

  “Almost a perfect cylinder,” he said.

  “It’s undoubtedly a branch pipe,” Faraday said. “Mount Fear’s riddled with them.”

  “The base is,” Marshall replied. “But it’s very unusual to see one at this altitude.”

  Abruptly, another section of ice front calved off the glacier about half a mile south, collapsing in house-sized blue chunks at its base and throwing up a cloud of ice shards. Chen started violently, and Faraday covered his ears against the roar. Marshall grimaced as he felt the mountain shudder beneath his feet.

  It took several minutes for the echoes to die away. At last, Sully grunted. He glanced from the ice face, to the mouth of the cave, to Chen. “Got the video camera?”

  Chen nodded and patted the equipment bag slung over one shoulder.

  “Fire it up.”

  “You’re not planning on going in, are you?” Faraday said.

  Instead of answering, Sully straightened to his full five feet six inches, sucking in his paunch and adjusting the hood of his parka, readying himself for the camera lens.

  “It’s not a good idea,” Faraday went on. “You know how brittle the lava formations are.”

  “That’s not all,” Marshall said. “Didn’t you see what just happened? More ice could calve off and bury the entrance at any minute.”

  Sully looked back at the cave indecisively. “They’d want us to.”

  “They” referred to Terra Prime, the cable channel devoted to science and nature that was underwriting the expedition.

  Sully rubbed one gloved hand against his chin. “Evan, Wright, you can stay out here. Ang will follow me in with the camera. If anything happens, get the army guys to chop us out.”

  “The hell with that,” Marshall said immediately, grinning. “If you discover buried treasure, I want a cut.”

  “You said it yourself. It’s not safe.”

  “All the more reason you need another hand,” Marshall replied.

  Sully’s lower lip protruded truculently, and Marshall waited him out. Then the climatologist relented. “Okay. Wright, we’ll be as quick as we can.”

  Faraday blinked his watery blue eyes but remained silent.

  Sully brushed stray flakes of snow from his parka, cleared his throat. He glanced up a little gingerly at the ice front. Then he positioned himself before the camera. “We’re standing at the face of the glacier,” he said in a hushed, melodramatic voice. “The retreating ice has exposed a cave, nestled in the flank of the mountain. We’re preparing to explore it now.” He paused dramatically, then signaled for Chen to stop recording.

  “Did you really say ‘nestled’ just now?” Marshall asked.

  Sully ignored this. “Let’s go.” He pulled a large flashlight out of his parka pocket. “Ang, train the camera on me as we go inside.”

  He started forward, the gangly Chen obediently following in his wake. After a moment, Marshall pulled out his own flashlight and swung in behind them.

  They picked their way slowly and carefully through the debris field. A few of the blocks of ice were the size of a fist; others, the size of a dormitory. In the weak sunlight, they glowed the pale blue of an October sky. Runnels of meltwater trickled past. As the three continued, the shadow of the glacier fell over them. Marshall looked up apprehensively at the vast wall of ice but said nothing.

  Close up, the cave mouth looked even blacker. It exhaled a chill breath that pinched at Marshall’s half-frozen nose. As Sully had said, it was quite round: the typical secondary vent of a dead volcano. The glacier had smoothed the surrounding rock face to almost a mirror finish. Sully poked at the blackness with his flashlight. Then he turned toward Chen. “Turn that off a moment.”

  “Okay.” The student lowered the camera.

  Sully paused, then glanced at Marshall. “Faraday wasn’t joking. This whole mountain is one big pile of fractured lava. Keep on the lookout for any weaknesses. If the tube seems at all unstable, we turn back immediately.”

  He looked back at Chen, nodded for him to start filming again. “We’re going in,” he intoned for the camera’s benefit. Then he turned and stepped into the cave.

  The roof wasn’t especially low—at least ten feet—yet Marshall ducked instinctively as he followed Chen inside. The cave bored straight into the mountain, descending at a gentle grade. They proceeded cautiously, flashlight beams playing over the lava walls. It was even colder in here than out on the ice field, and Marshall snugged the hood of his parka tightly around his face.

  “Hold up,” he said. The beam of his flashlight had caught a hairline fracture in the braids of lava. He let his light travel along its length, then pressed at it gingerly with one hand.

  “Looks solid,” he said.

  “Then let’s proceed,” Sully replied. “Carefully.”

  “It’s amazing this tunnel hasn’t collapsed under the weight of the glacier,” said Chen.

  They moved deeper into the cave, treading cautiously. When they spoke, it was in low tones, almost whispers.

  “There’s a coating of ice beneath the snow here,” Sully said after a minute. “Spans the entire floor. Remarkably even.”

  “And it’s getting deeper the farther we go,” replied Marshall. “At some point, this branch pipe must have been filled with water.”

  “Well, it must have frozen with remarkable speed,” Sully said, “because—” But at that moment the climatologist’s feet slid out from under him and he fell heavily on the ice with a whinny of astonishment.

  Marshall cringed, heart in
mouth, waiting for the ceiling to come crashing down around them. But when nothing happened, and he saw Sully was uninjured, his alarm turned to bemusement. “You got that on film, right, Ang?”

  The graduate student grinned through his sudden pallor. “Sure did.”

  Sully rose laboriously to his feet, frowning and wiping snow from his knees. He had a cat’s ingrained displeasure of losing dignity. “This is a serious moment, Evan. Please remember that.”

  They continued even more slowly now. It was intensely quiet, the only sound the crunch of their feet on the dusting of snow. The ancient lava walls to either side were dark. Sully led the way gingerly, brushing the snow away with his boots, passing his flashlight beam back and forth over the path ahead.

  Chen peered into the gloom ahead. “Looks like the cave opens up ahead.”

  “That’s good,” Sully replied, “because the ice sheet’s getting deeper, and—”

  Suddenly he fell again. But this was no clumsy repetition: Marshall immediately grasped that this time the scientist had fallen out of sheer surprise. Sully was frantically wiping away the snow underfoot and probing his light into the ice beneath. Chen dropped to his knees beside him, the camera temporarily forgotten. Marshall came quickly forward, peering down into the ice.

  With a chill unrelated to the cave’s air, Marshall saw what Sully had found. There, buried beneath the ice floor, two fist-sized eyes—yellow, with black oval pupils—were staring implacably back up at him.

  3

  The trip down the mountain was as silent as the journey up had been chatty. Marshall could guess what they were all thinking. This discovery would change what up to now had been a quiet, unglamorous, even monotonous scientific expedition. Exactly how things would change, none of the scientists could say. But from now on, everything would be different.

  At the same time, he knew, everyone was privately asking one question: What the hell was it?

  Sully broke the silence. “We should have taken an ice core for testing.”

  “How long has it been there, do you think?” Chen asked.

  “The Fear’s an MIS-2 glacier,” Marshall replied. “That cave has been buried at least twelve thousand years. Maybe much longer.”

  Silence settled over them again. The sun had finally succeeded in burning through the low-hanging clouds, and as it sank toward the horizon it ignited the snowpack into fiery brilliance. Absently, Marshall pulled a pair of sun goggles from his pocket and snugged them into place. He was thinking of the unfathomable blackness of those dead eyes under the ice.

  “What time is it in New York?” Sully asked at last.

  “Half past eight,” said Faraday.

  “They’ll have gone home; we’ll try first thing in the morning. Ang, will you make sure the satphone is fired up before breakfast?”

  “Sure thing, but I’ll need to apply to Gonzalez for fresh batteries, because—”

  Chen stopped in mid-sentence. Looking up, Marshall immediately saw what made the graduate student fall silent.

  The base lay a few hundred yards below, the long, low structure rusted and sullen-looking in the dying sun. They had followed the glacial valley in a gentle curve, and the main entrance to the base was now in view beyond the security fencing. Penny Barbour, the team’s computer scientist, stood on the concrete apron between the guardhouse and the central doors, wearing jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. The air was very still, and her short, mouse-brown hair hung limply over her forehead. Beside her was Paul Gonzalez, the sergeant in charge of the tiny posting that kept Fear Base nominally operational.

  Four figures in heavy parkas, trousers of polar bear fur, and animal-skin mukluks surrounded them. One was holding a rifle; the others had spears or bows lashed to their backs. Although their faces were hidden, Marshall was certain these were Native Americans from the small encampment to the north.

  As they quickened their steps toward the base, Marshall wasn’t sure whether to feel curiosity or alarm. Although they’d been on-site for a month, the scientists had had no interaction with the Indians. In fact, they only knew of their existence because the soldiers at the base had mentioned it in passing. Why would they choose today, of all days, to pay a visit?

  As they passed the fence and empty guardhouse and approached the entrance, the group turned to face them. “This lot knocked on the door not two minutes ago,” Barbour said in her broad North London accent. “The sergeant and I came out to meet them.” Her plain, friendly face was pinched and somewhat worried-looking.

  Sully glanced at Gonzalez. “Has this ever happened before?”

  Gonzalez was fifty-something and burly, with the clear-eyed fatalism of the career soldier. “Nope.” He unshipped his radio to alert the other soldiers, but Sully shook his head.

  “That won’t be necessary, will it?” Then Sully turned to Barbour. “You’d better get back into the warmth.” He watched her head for the main entrance, then cleared his throat, faced their guests. “Would you like to step inside?” he said, slowly enunciating each word and gesturing toward the door.

  The Native Americans said nothing. There were three women and a man, Marshall noticed, and the man was by far the oldest. His face was seamed to an almost leathery complexion by years of cold and sunlight. His eyes were a clear, deep brown. He wore large earrings of bone, carved with fantastic detail; there were feathers in the fur of his collar; and his cheekbones bore the dark tattoos of a shaman. Gonzalez had told them the band lived a life of unusual simplicity, but—Marshall thought, staring at the spears and animal skins—he’d had no idea just how simple.

  For a moment, an uncomfortable silence settled over the group, the only noise the grumbling of the nearby generators. Then Sully spoke again. “You’ve come from the settlement to the north? That’s a long journey, and you must be tired. Can we do anything for you? Would you like something to drink or eat?”

  No answer.

  Sully repeated himself, slowly and emphatically, as if speaking to a half-wit. “You like drink? Eat?”

  When there was no response, Sully turned away with a sigh. “We’re not getting anywhere.”

  “They probably don’t understand a word you’re saying,” said Gonzalez.

  Sully nodded. “And I don’t speak Inuit.”

  “Tunit,” the old man said.

  Sully turned back quickly. “I’m sorry?”

  “Not Inuit. Tunit.”

  “I’m very sorry. I’ve never heard of the Tunits before.” Sully patted his chest lightly. “My name is Sully.” He introduced Gonzalez and the scientists by name. “The woman you met is Penny Barbour.”

  The old man touched his own breast. “Usuguk.” He pronounced it Oos-oo-gook. He didn’t offer to introduce the women.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Sully said, as usual playing his role as team leader to the hilt. “Would you care to step inside?”

  “You asked if you could do anything for us,” Usuguk said. Marshall noticed, to his surprise, that the man spoke with a completely uninflected accent.

  “Yes,” Sully replied, equally surprised.

  “There is something important you can do—very important. You can leave here. Today. And don’t come back.”

  This response left Sully speechless.

  “Why?” Marshall asked after a moment.

  The man pointed toward Mount Fear. “That is a place of evil. Your presence here is a danger to all of us.”

  “Evil?” Sully repeated, recovering. “You mean, the volcano? It’s extinct now, dead.”

  The Tunit glanced at him, the lines of his face thrown into sharp relief by the setting sun. It was a mask of bitter anxiety.

  “What evil?” Marshall asked.

  Usuguk declined to elaborate. “You should not be here,” he said. “You are intruding where you have no business. And you have made the ancient ones angry. Very angry.”

  “Ancient ones?” Sully asked.

  “Normally they are”—Usuguk searched for the word—“benevolent.” H
e made a semicircular movement with one hand, palm open. “In the old days, all the men here, the ones with guns and uniforms, stayed inside the metal walls they built. Even today, the soldiers never stray into the forbidden place.”

  “I don’t know about any forbidden place,” Gonzalez rumbled. “But I keep my keister inside, where it’s nice and warm.”

  Usuguk was still staring at Sully. “You are different. You have stepped on ground where no living man should tread. And now the ancient ones are angry, more so than in any memory of my people. Their wrath paints the sky with blood. The heavens cry out with the pain, like a woman in labor.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean by ‘crying out,’” Sully said. “But the strange color of the night sky is simply the aurora borealis. The northern lights. They’re caused by solar winds entering the earth’s magnetic field. Admittedly the color is rather unusual, but surely you’ve noticed them before.” Sully was acting the kindly paterfamilias now, smiling, patronizing, like a man explaining something to a young child. “Gases in the atmosphere give off excess energy in the form of light. Different gases emit photons of different wavelengths.”

  If this explanation made any difference to Usuguk, he didn’t let on. “As soon as we saw how angry the spirit folk had become, we started on our way here. We have been walking—no rest, no food—ever since.”

  “All the more reason for you to come inside,” Sully said. “We’ll give you food, something hot to drink.”

  “Why is the mountain forbidden?” Marshall asked.

  The shaman turned to him. “Can you not understand? You have heard my warning. You now refuse to heed it? The mountain is a place of darkness. You must leave.”

  “We can’t leave,” Sully said. “Not yet. But in a few weeks, two or three, we’ll be on our way. And until then, I give you my word that—”