In Cold Pursuit (37 page)

“Embarrassed? There’s not a bigger word than that?”

Nancy took another sip of tea.

Valena had finished her eggs and muffin and was working to get enough water down her throat.

Doris arrived at the table and set down a tray full of food, her lascivious boyfriend in close pursuit. “Hey, guys,” she said. “So, Valena, you got everything you needed off of Emmett’s laptop?”

Valena gagged on her water.

Doris continued, “Hey, you got to watch that stuff. It’s got a kick. Just come and see me if you’re having any trouble getting into anything you need,” she said. “You got me?”

“Thanks,” said Valena.

Nancy said, “Oh, did Emmett have books on disc or something?”

“No, just scientific gobbledygook,” said Doris. She gave Valena a sly wink.

Valena stared in wonder. Everybody seemed to know her business, a sensation that had her strung between relief and paranoia.

Nancy had finished eating. “I’m heading over to BFC right now if you’d like me to show you how to get into that cage,” she said.

Valena hopped up and grabbed her tray.

Doris offered a casual wave, as if nothing of importance had been said.

Along the road that led toward the Berg Field Center, Valena asked, “How many seasons have you come to the ice?”

“Ten,” said Nancy. “Not every year, but most. I took a few off. There aren’t many who have been here more than I have. I’d say Dorothy has me by a season or two.”

“Dorothy? You mean Cupcake?”

“People call her that, yes.”

Valena’s pulse quickened. “Is she kind of
…
”

“A shit-stirrer?” asked Nancy.

“Yeah.”

“Valena, this is an unusual community. Of course you’ve noticed that. People who come here like the wildness of the
place, and yet most are all but cooped up on this island. I dare say Dorothy’s never been past the runways. The rec department tries to arrange Sunday outings for people, but once you’ve been out to Pegasus packed into the Delta with twenty other people to see the wrecked plane, you’ve done that. People get to living out of each others’ pockets. There are people you’ll never see do essential jobs, like running the power plant, or keeping the trash sorted out. Just imagine if it was allowed to stack up. They’re like troglodytes. They don’t want to talk to anyone, so they don’t. They eat their meals in their rooms. And then there are others, like Dorothy, who get overly involved with each and every person. Dorothy gets particularly personal with grantees. Forgive me if I speak plainly. This is not a classless society.”

“Please explain. I thought I understood things, but obviously I do not.”

“If you scientists don’t come here, then we can’t be here. We aren’t exactly your servants, but if you don’t come here, we don’t either. We are dependent on you. And then there are the military. It used to be that this whole place was a Navy base; that’s why there are so many terms that hang over—galley for kitchen, pax for passenger—but they stay separate. They’re more conservative in their politics than us townies. They call us liberals.” She laughed. “In fact, we’re Marxists. Have you noticed? There’s almost nowhere to spend money down here, and we all do our parts as little cogs in a big machine. The ultimate in mutual support.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

They had reached the large Quonset that housed the field equipment, and Nancy opened the door and showed Valena in. Inside, she found a large work area in front of a forest of folded Scott tents, and behind that, a series of wire cages. Nancy unlocked the door to Emmett’s and led her inside. “Here’s your sleep kit,” she said. “And you’ll want this tent.” She pulled out a yellow stuff sack about a foot and a half long and ten inches in diameter. “It’s intuitively easy to set up, and quite comfortable. It’ll be hard to figure out how to
tie it down out at Cape Royds, but Nat’s assistant will help you get settled. Will you need a set of skis up on Clark Glacier?”

Valena shook her head in amazement. “You already know everywhere I’m going.”

“It’s my job to know these things. And Kathy Juneau found me at dinner last night. I’ve said that this is a Marxist society. That’s not exactly true. There are others who use their position to
…
”

“Play power games?”

“Aptly put. It is inevitable in such a close, paranoid setting.”

“Paranoid?”

“Again, inevitable. It’s us against Nature. Us against each other. Imagine what happens when you get someone down here who is confused.”

“You mean, someone who feels isolated.”

“You’re catching on quickly. One never needs to feel alone here. In fact, few ever get that luxury. Well, here’s your gear. Do you need a pair of cross-country skis? Take these. They’re pretty beat up, and bindings aren’t much, but they’ll work with the FDX boots. Can you get it all? No, of course you can’t, and you won’t need the skis until the helicopter takes you out to the continent anyway. Take the sleep kit and the tent now—and here’s your pee bottle and water bottle; I’ll just tuck them inside the duffel—I’ll call a shuttle to take you and the gear down to the helo pad. Have them tag the skis so they’ll be on that load when it picks you up tomorrow at Cape Royds. Don’t forget them, now.”

Valena smiled. “I won’t.”

A
FTER CARRYING HER GEAR DOWN TO THE HELICOPTER
pad to be weighed and tagged and stepping on the scales herself, Valena left the skis in a bin marked with Naomi Bosch’s event number and carried her duffels over to her office in Crary. She then went to the library and looked for e-mails. There was one informing her that she should present herself in ten minutes’ time for a briefing on the Dry Valley Protocols,
which would teach her how not to damage that delicate cold desert ecosystem. The only other message was from Em Hansen:

Is this the answer to the Edgar Hallowell question?
Valena wondered.
And yet it answers nothing, because I still have no idea which of the men he is.

She opened an Internet browser on the computer and requested Emmett’s Web site, hoping for a look at the picture Sweeny had seen. The machine returned the answer that it could not load the site, please try later.
Okay, I will
, she told herself. Then, switching back to Em Hansen’s e-mail, Valena replied:

Valena headed down the stairs to Brenda Utzon’s office. She found the woman humming a happy tune. “Oh, hi, Valena! Lovely day, isn’t it? That storm swung a different direction. Want some chips?”

“Thanks, I just ate. So, I was wondering if you could tell me what kind of lab equipment we have here for doing petrographic analysis.”

“Oh, you’d need to see Lennie about that, down the hallway.” She pointed. “He could help you.”

“Thanks, Brenda.”

Valena headed down the outer hallway of the western arm of phase 2 and eventually came across a laboratory with Lennie’s name on the door plaque. Someone had artlessly added, in Sharpie,
LENNIE’S SPIDER HOLE.
Ah, another ornate McMurdo personality
, Valena mused. She knocked on the door. No one came. She turned the knob, rattling it. It was locked. She had begun searching through her pockets
for a bit of paper to leave a note when the door was yanked open.

“What?” barked the man who had opened it.

“Lennie?”

He continued to stare at her.

“Okay,” she said. “Well, my name is Valena, and I am told you can help me with some lab equipment.”

Lennie glared at her. “I’m really busy right now. Come back later.”

“Okay …”

The door slammed shut.

Here to serve science, eh?

Valena walked back down the hall to Brenda’s office. “Can you tell me where to find Ted the blaster this time of day?” she inquired.

“Oh, he’d be up at the blast site, setting charges. Let me show you on this map.” She got out a little folding map of McMurdo Station and indicated how Valena could wind her way to the place where Ted was working.

Valena zipped up her big red and headed out through the air lock. The breeze had died, and the sun felt warm in its northerly transit across the sky. She trudged happily up the labyrinth of gravel streets, soon leaving the land of scientists behind and achieving the realm of heavy equipment operators. She passed yards parked with tractors, loaders, and trailers of varying descriptions and ages. The older ones had names. A pair of small green airline tugs were labeled
CLOSET CASE
and
BASKET CASE, FUEL MULE
was a tank truck. A back-hoe was emblazoned with
JECKLE
, and she imagined that
HECKLE
was not far away, or would it be
HYDE?

Hyde
, thought Valena.
Hiding … is Ted more than he lets on?

She passed yards laid out with fuel drums stacked on pallets and wondered if this was where the Airlift Wing had come to get a barrel to add weight to the bundle they had dropped on Emmett’s camp. She passed shipping containers and neat piles of scrap. At last, she came to the place above
town where Ted the master blaster was working to straighten the road.

“Hello, Valena,” he said, rubbing his face as if it hurt.

“Hey, Ted. I had a couple more questions, if you have time.”

Ted sighed heavily. “Can it wait?”

“I want to know about the Gamow bag.”

“They never found it, like I said.”

“No, I mean the other one. The one which Emmett took along when you first went to the high camp.”

Ted was distracted by a large front-end loader that was coming toward them at high speed. He grabbed Valena by the arm and towed her out of range of the three-cubic-yard bucket that preceded it along its trajectory.

Valena said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get in the way.”

“You weren’t in the way. He’s a lousy shot.” He shook his head and began to mutter, talking to himself more than to Valena. “They’re supposed to know how to handle this equipment before they’re sent down here or they don’t get the job, but not this one. Just look at the way he slams that bucket into the muck pile. Wham! No finesse. You’re supposed to move into it, not ram it, and you lift the bucket as you go.” He held both hands out, indicating the motion that should have occurred. “This one slams into the pill, spills half his load … rough on equipment…”

Valena stepped further back as the operator backed out of the spoils pile, swung the vehicle around, and charged off toward where he was dumping it. “I was asking about the first Gamow bag,” she said.

“What first Gamow bag?” said Ted. “What are you talking about? Golly Moses, this crazy son of a bitch!”

The front-end loader once again slammed into the rubble, this time at an angle. For the first time, she could see the driver’s face. It was Wee Willy. “Tell me about him,” she said, pointing a glove his way.

“William? He’s got military written all over him. Does nothing unless told to directly. A regular sloth.”

“Which branch of service?”

“I only suppose he was in the military. In fact, I know nothing about him,” said Ted. “And I don’t
want
to know anything about him, either. He’s a trog. He keeps to himself. We’re all the more fortunate for it.”

“A trog? As in, he hides out a lot?”

“Everybody around here is hiding something.”

The great machine spun its wheels. It was stuck.

“I’m not going to help him this time,” Ted hissed. “I’m just not going to help him. Absolutely no feeling for the machinery. None.”

Willy slammed the loader back and forth between forward and reverse, eventually working his way free. He swung the load. Stopped, staring at Valena.

She waved.

He waved back.

“Shit,” said Ted. “Don’t distract him. You never know what he might do if he loses what concentration he has.”

Valena made a sweep with one hand, guiding Willy’s attention toward the direction he should be moving. Willy nodded, gunned the engine, slipped it back into gear with a horrendous scream of tortured metal, and lumbered away.

“You’d better get out of here before he returns,” said Ted.

“With pleasure,” said Valena. “But first, two questions.”

“Shoot.”

“What’s your full name?”

Ted tore his eyes off the waddling front-end loader long enough to glare at her. “Theodore Xavier O’Hare. Who wants to know?”