Thirteen Chairs (13 page)

J
enny, my sister, gave me a snowstorm. You know, those toys with a scene in a glass globe full of water, and when you shake it up it snows? One of those. Got it for me as a parting gift, when she heard that I was going to the Antarctic for six months. Pretty good joke.

She made another joke too. She said: ‘It’s a long way to go just because you’re scared of the dark.’ Because I had been, a bit, when we were kids, and because when I got to Oates – the Captain Oates Research Station – in October, the sun would have just come up. And it wouldn’t be going down again until March. That’s how it is there: a day that lasts half a year. They warned me about it at the job interview. Apparently it sends some people a bit crazy, but I wasn’t worried.

Didn’t think I’d mind being there with so few people either. Never been what you’d call sociable. Thought being in a remote place with only a dozen other people would suit me. Thirteen of us. But even with only a small crew, there can still be someone who’ll drive you mad. Drive
me
mad, at least. Most of them did a bit, from time to time, I suppose. But the worst of them was Jim Bailey. Bloody Jim Bailey. Jim Bailey who thought he was funny, but wasn’t.

He thought he was funny because he was always telling jokes. Didn’t bother him that he only knew three. Didn’t notice that no one ever laughed.

These were his ‘jokes’:

Whenever anybody left the station he’d say, ‘Better wrap up warm. It’s cold out.’

Whenever he got anyone a drink he’d say, ‘Do you want ice with that?’ Even if it was tea or coffee.

Whenever he went outside he’d say, ‘I may be some time.’ Only, unlike Captain Oates, he always came back.

At least, for the first five weeks he did.

Then one morning he went out on one of the skidoos (the snowmobiles we used) on his own. You’re not meant to do that. It’s stupid. It was especially stupid for Jim Bailey because he rode a skidoo like a maniac. And it was particularly stupid just then because our radios had been down for a couple of days. Some kind of atmospheric thing, we thought. At least, Deeta – our radio geek – couldn’t find anything wrong with the sets themselves, so we assumed it had to be that. Couldn’t contact the other bases, couldn’t talk to Jim Bailey out on his own on a skidoo and ask him what the hell he thought he was playing at.

And this time he really
was
quite some time. Long enough that something must have happened. Long enough that he’d either broken down or crashed. And I knew he hadn’t broken down because I was the one who looked after the skidoos, and I was good at my job.

But then a crash wasn’t likely either, because there isn’t really anything to crash into out there. But this was Jim Bailey. If anyone could find a way of crashing in the middle of a big, flat expanse of featureless ice with nothing to be seen in any direction for miles, then it was him.

And if he had crashed, or broken down somehow, then most likely he was dead. Because Oates was the newest and southernmost of the UK Antarctic Survey’s bases, and we were too far away from any of the others, or the nearest US base, to reach them. But there were a few derelict facilities dotted around the area. So it was just possible that Bailey might have found his way to some hut half buried in the snow since the seventies or something. And if he’d done that, then it was just possible he might still be alive.

So we had to go and look for him. And as the radios were out of action it was decided that the bloke who could fix the skidoos had better be part of the search party.

I was not happy.

There were three remaining skidoos, so two others from the crew went out with me: Ambler and Cole. They were all right, that pair. Knew each other from working together at another base before. Cole was a big fella, and funny. Used to sing to himself without realizing he was doing it.

Used to.

Ambler was a scrawny-looking sort of bloke, and
a bit of a worrier. Only ever seemed to have time for his work and nothing much else. But, like I say, he was all right. Anyway, we wrapped up warm and we set off. The rest of the crew saw us off. Or at least they stood about watching us go out the door, but nobody said very much. I don’t think anyone expected it to go well.

At least we had a trail to follow. Deeta had seen which way Bailey had headed off, and no one else had gone that way lately, so there was a clear set of tracks. And, it being the summer after all, the weather wasn’t so bad: it was only minus 40°C, and visibility was good. It wasn’t snowing, but that’s rare anyway. Apparently, technically speaking, it’s a desert out there: it’s all about the amount of precipitation, nothing to do with heat. Jim Bailey told me that, I think – it’s certainly the kind of thing he would say.

Half an hour out from the base and we realized we didn’t need to follow the tracks any more. Ambler saw it first: Bailey’s skidoo, abandoned. At first glance there was no obvious damage to it. Close up it was just the same. I tried the engine and it started first time, as I’d expected. There was nothing wrong with it, not a mark on it. The engine just purred beautifully, until I turned it off.

We took a look around. We were on a flat, featureless plain of blue-white ice, with good visibility in all directions, a clear view right to the horizon, and we were looking for a man in a bright red anorak. If
he’d been there, you’d have to figure we’d’ve spotted him.

But there was no sign.

‘Who leaves a perfectly good skidoo and decides he’d rather walk in this place?’ Cole said.

‘An idiot,’ I said.

‘Uh-huh. OK,’ said Cole. ‘But which way did the idiot go?’

‘Are we near anything here?’ I said.

‘There was an outpost …’ Ambler was looking at a map and a compass and slowly turning himself round on the spot. Then he stopped turning and looked up, out across the big white nothing, frowning. ‘About five k that way.’ He pointed. ‘Finnish geophysicists back in the seventies. But it’s likely buried by now, and I doubt Bailey even knew it was there.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘But it’s the place we should look.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if he’s anywhere else then he’s dead anyway.’

There was no wind. No sound except our breathing and the crunch of the ice beneath our feet as we shuffled and shifted our weight from side to side. Keeping warm, or nervous; I’m not sure which.

Ambler nodded. ‘OK. Let’s go.’

It took us about fifteen minutes on the skidoos to get to the right spot, then fifteen more before Cole spotted the nearly buried outpost. The entrance was just visible above the surface of the ice, a slit of
darkness gaping up from the whiteness, like the mouth of a drowning man gasping for air. We parked up and looked in.

The snow had piled up, forming a natural ramp up to a letterbox gap into the small domed building. No answer when we shouted in, and no footprints leading up to the entrance, so we knew there couldn’t be anyone in there. But we decided that one of us had to go in anyway. And Cole and Ambler knew each other from before, so I got outvoted.

I scrambled up the slope, and had to crawl through the gap on my belly because it was so narrow. While I was trying to squeeze through, Cole started giggling, watching me struggling and flailing about, and that set Ambler off too. Don’t think I’d ever heard him laugh before. Just a nervous reaction, I suppose, but it made me angry at the time. I was just about to shout at them to shut up when I finally managed to haul myself through, and dropped.

The snow sloped down sharply inside, so I slid down hard and fast, yelling out in surprise and setting the other two laughing even harder. I came to a standstill with a mouthful of snow, my cheeks burning with cold and embarrassment. I could hear the other two laughing outside. I shouted and swore at them to shut up, but the angrier I got the harder they laughed. And the harder they laughed the angrier I got, so eventually I decided to ignore them and get on.

There was hardly any light getting through but it
was still enough to see that there was nothing and no one there. It was a tiny space and the Finnish team had done a thorough job of clearing it out. I turned the torch on anyway and kicked around in the snow on the floor for a while just because, well, we’d gone a long way to get there and it just seemed right to take the time. But there really was nothing.

I realized as I moved to make my way back out that Ambler and Cole had stopped laughing, but then the silence was broken by another noise.

A dull thump, then a quiet cry. Then a moment of muffled conversation that I couldn’t make out.

I shouted, ‘All right out there?’

No reply.

I made my way out again, lumbering up the slope, cursing, and posted myself back out into the light. The glare off the ice did my eyes in for a second. Everything was nothing. Then when I could see again, I realized that Ambler and Cole were gone.

I trudged down the ice slope to where they’d been standing, shouted out their names. No answer. And there were three small splashes of blood on the ice.

Then I saw the footprints leading off round the shelter. Well-spaced, long strides – Ambler and Cole moving quickly. And another drop of blood every other footstep. Once I was round the dome I could see them, orange specks on the snow at the end of a line of footprints, too far off to hear me shouting. They were walking away from me, Cole ahead, walking really
purposefully, Ambler behind, waving his arms about as if he was trying to get him to stop. If I’d been thinking straight I’d have got on a skidoo to go after them, but instead I ran. Well, not much of a run. The clothing you wear in those parts isn’t exactly built for speed. But I took long strides and swung my arms, like a child pretending to be a giant, or an astronaut bounding about on the moon.

By the time I caught them up, Ambler was in front of Cole, facing him, bracing himself, ready to physically block his path. He was barely half Cole’s size so he’d’ve struggled to manage it, but Cole had come to a halt anyway. He was hunched over, like the air was leaking out of him, and he was staring up at Ambler looking dazed, like he’d just woken up and didn’t know where he was. Took a while before anyone said anything.

‘He thought he saw someone,’ Ambler said to me. He had a thin, bloody, snotty icicle trailing down from one nostril over his beard.

‘Bailey?’ I said.

Cole said, ‘No.’ He was staring off into the distance, squinting in confusion, and then wide-eyed and surprised. Then he blinked once and turned his head my way, looked me straight in the eyes.

‘It was a boy,’ he said.

I looked at him very closely. I didn’t know what to say. It couldn’t have been a boy. And Cole must have known that.

‘I know it doesn’t make any sense,’ he said, clear and calm, and still looking me straight in the eye. ‘I know it can’t have been. But it
was
. It was a boy. Maybe … twelve, thirteen years old.’

I turned my head, looking off over the white expanse in all directions. Obviously there was no boy. And there was nowhere for a boy to be and not be seen. But I didn’t say anything.

He said: ‘I know. I do know.’

I glanced at Ambler and he shrugged back at me, overacting it so that the gesture was still clear even through the thick padding of his anorak.

I pointed at the messy frozen blood in his moustache and beard. ‘What happened?’

He said: ‘Cole bumped into me when he set off after this boy he says he saw. Kind of head-butted me by accident.’

‘So he’s had a bang on the head?’

‘No,’ said Cole. ‘Well, yes, a bit. But
after
I saw the boy. It wasn’t concussion, if that’s what you’re thinking.’ He scowled. ‘I just … saw something impossible … that no one else did, that’s all.’

We all stood there for a minute. Ambler wiped the back of his glove under his nose and most of the icy, bloody snot there broke off and fell to the ground.

I said: ‘Let’s get back.’

And they didn’t take any persuading. We walked back to the skidoos, along the trail of our footprints. And there
were
only
our
footprints.

The cold had got right into us by the time we got back to the base. We trudged up the steps in silence. I was thinking about Bailey. Feeling sad about him, but not
only
sad, because I really hadn’t liked him. So I also felt guilty about the fact that he was almost certainly dead. As if it was my fault somehow. And I was wondering how the others would take it too.

At the top of the steps the door was open.

Cole was at the front. He shouted in: ‘Oi! Who left the door open? Were you all born in a barn?’ He was trying to be funny, trying to sound like his old self, but he didn’t.

There was no answer.

Everyone was gone.

We looked really carefully to make sure – especially once we realized that all the cold-weather gear was still there – but there really weren’t very many places to look. Everyone was gone. And they hadn’t wrapped up warm before they went.

We ended up in the leisure room. When we spoke, our breath made ghosts in the air.

Cole said: ‘What’s happening? What happened?’

There was no point answering. We’d all run through the same thoughts. Everyone was gone. Everyone had gone outside, on foot, without cold-weather gear. For no reason. There was no sign of anything bad having happened, no sign of a struggle, nothing to suggest they were forced to leave – not that there was anyone
for miles around anyway. They just went out. It made no sense.

I realized Ambler was speaking to me. ‘Do you want some?’

‘What?’

‘I said I’m going to make some tea. Do you want some?’

Tea. Ridiculous. Normal.

‘Yes, please,’ I said, and Cole grunted and nodded.

We all shambled into the mess. No one said anything as the kettle boiled, the switch flicked itself off and Ambler poured the steaming water into the mugs. We waited, silent and staring, while the tea brewed, the room still cold from the door being open. Then Ambler stirred sugar into Cole’s tea, and the tinkling of the teaspoon on the mug rang out bell-like in the silence. Cole and I glanced a thank you at him as he handed us our mugs, and it was the first time we’d looked him in the eye in minutes. Then we stood around, warming our hands around the hot mugs, but none of us drinking.