Blood And Ice Part 35

"How many of you are there?" Sinclair's ragged breath fogged in the air. For the first time, Michael could see what this exertion had cost him; the man was defiant but weak on his feet.

"Four. Just four of us."

The tip of the harpoon wavered. His eyelids slowly shuttered, then sprang back open again in alarm.

Had he just "refreshed the image," in Ackerley's words? Michael was reminded, not that he needed to be, of what a dangerous foe he might be facing.

"We're working here at the South Pole," Michael volunteered. "We're Americans."

The harpoon declined farther, and Michael could swear he saw the tiniest glint of a smile cross the lieutenant's lips.

"I had a fancy, a long time ago, to see America," Sinclair said, coughing once or twice. "It seemed ideal. I knew no one there, and no one knew me."

Out of the corner of his eye, Michael saw movement in the rear doorway, and Sinclair must have followed his glance. He whirled around, the harpoon raised, and before Michael could do anything more than shout "Stop!" Franklin had barged through the barrels, rifle at the ready.

Sinclair hesitated for just a second, but when the muzzle of the gun came up, he let the harpoon fly. Simultaneously there was a deafening blast from the gun, and chunks of the redbrick chimney exploded in all directions. One of them stung Michael's cheek like a hornet and a smaller bit flew into his eye. He dropped his head to wipe the grit away, and when he looked up again, blearily the harpoon was quivering in the side of a barrel. Franklin was still holding the rifle up, but he was staring down at Sinclair, who was slumped over the anvil, his arms hanging loose and his fingers twitching.

Murphy was just charging in with his own pistol raised, too.

"What did you do?" Michael exclaimed. "What did you do?"

"He threw a harpoon at me!" But even Franklin looked shaken. "I didn't hit him, anyway. I hit the chimney."

Michael knelt by Sinclair and saw blood seeping from his scalp and matting the blond hair at the back of his head. "What's this then?"

"A ricochet. I was using rubber bullets. It must have ricocheted."

Murphy crouched on the other side of the anvil, and together they gently lowered Sinclair to the floor, then turned him over onto his back. His eyes were receding into his skull, and his lips were blue. All Michael could think of was how this would affect Eleanor.

"Let's get him back to camp," Michael said. "We'll need Charlotte to take a look at him, fast."

Murphy nodded and stood up. "We'll have to tie him up first-"

"He's out cold," Michael interjected.

"For now," Murphy shot back. "What if he comes to?" He glanced over at Franklin. "Then we'll load him onto the back of my snowmobile. At the Point, he goes straight into quarantine. Send up a flare so Lawson knows we're here and ready to go."

As Franklin went outside to shoot off the flare, Michael remembered Ackerley in his own quarantine, laid out on a crate in the meat locker ... and how well that had turned out.

"You know the drill," Murphy said to Michael. "Until further notice, n.o.body but us needs to know he's there. Got it?"

"I got it."

"And that goes double for Sleeping Beauty."

Michael was perfectly willing to keep the secret. What was one more? He was getting to be an old hand at keeping secrets. But he wondered how long it could really be kept. Even if the others at the camp didn't find out about Sinclair, Eleanor might well be another story. For all Michael knew, there was some sort of psychic connection between them. A connection so strong that he would not have been surprised if she was already aware that Sinclair had been found ... that he had been injured ... and that he was on his way back to her.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN.

December 22, 7:30 p.m.

AS DARRYL TRANSPORTED THE FISH to the aquarium tank, it wriggled so hard in his hands that he nearly lost it.

"Hang on," he muttered, "hang on," then he plopped it back into the section of the tank carefully reserved for his previous specimens of Cryothenia hirschii. It swam a bit, nosing around, then settled slowly toward the bottom of the tank, to lie there-virtually motionless and all but transparent-like its companions. If the fish did prove to be an undiscovered species-and Darryl was all but sure that they would-it wouldn't be the most exciting find to a civilian observer. They weren't much to look at. But in the scientific community-where it counted-the discovery would make his name.

Quite apart from their general morphology, their blood alone would launch a thousand lab tests. The antifreeze glycoproteins the blood carried, slightly different from those in the other Antarctic fish he had studied, could one day be used for myriad purposes already under consideration, from deicing airplane wings to insulating deep-sea probes ... and who knew what else.

But Darryl's present experiments had an even more bizarre focus. The moment Charlotte Barnes had mentioned that a plasma bag had gone missing from the infirmary, neither of them had doubted for an instant what happened to it. Eleanor Ames had gotten to it. But if she were ever to leave the shelter of Point Adelie to take up residence again in the outside world, she would first have to overcome her dreadful addiction. Darryl was no fool-he knew the kind of media storm she would be the center of, and there would be no way to satisfy, much less keep secret, such an insatiable need.

He had taken additional samples of Eleanor's blood and immediately begun to run a.s.says, screens, and other tests, working on a hunch that was as outlandish as the problem. Her blood, like Ack-erley's, had a phagocytic index that was virtually off the charts, but instead of eliminating only the bacteria, foreign particles, and cell debris in the bloodstream, her phagocytes devoured the red blood cells, too-first their own, then whatever they could ingest from outside sources. But what if, Darryl thought, he was able to find a way to leave the normally toxic index level alone-clearly, it helped to sustain life under the most adverse conditions-while introducing an element that might obviate the need for foreign erythrocytes? What if, in short, Eleanor was able to borrow a trick or two from the cold-blooded, hemoglobin-free fish that filled Darryl's aquarium and holding tanks?

He'd made up a dozen different blood combinations, all of which were kept in carefully marked test tubes, under a steady temperature in the same minifridge where he kept his soft drinks, and he regularly checked them to see what had developed. He was just about to do so again when there was a loud banging on the lab door.

When he opened it, Michael clomped in, his wet boots squelching on the rubber mat.

"Want a cold drink?"

"Very funny," Michael replied, throwing his snowy hood back.

"I wasn't joking." Darryl went to the minifridge, popped the top of a root beer, and perched on top of his lab stool. "Where have you been?"

"Stromviken."

Darryl knew there was only one reason to have gone there. "Did you find him?"

Michael hesitated, but that was enough to tell Darryl what he needed to know.

"Was he alive?"

Michael balked again, as he unzipped his parka and plopped down on a neighboring stool.

"Forget whatever Murphy told you," Darryl said. "You know I'm going to have to be told eventually, anyway. Who else knows how to do a blood a.s.say around here?"

"Yes," Michael finally replied. "But he didn't come easy. He got hurt, and Charlotte's taking care of him right now."

"How badly did he get hurt?"

"Charlotte thinks it's just a mild concussion and a scalp wound."

"So he's in the infirmary?" Darryl said, ready to race over and collect some fresh blood samples.

"No, the meat locker."

"That again?"

"Murphy doesn't want to put the whole base at risk."

However reluctantly, Darryl had to concede the chief's point. After all, he had seen Ackerley in action-and who could tell what might come of reuniting Eleanor with this other lost soul, presumably afflicted in the same way she was. It could create an unholy alliance.

"So," Michael said, a little too casually, "how's it coming?"

"How's what coming?"

"The cure. You find any way to help Eleanor out?"

"If you're asking me whether or not I've managed to solve one of the most puzzling hematological puzzles in history in the s.p.a.ce of, oh, say a few days, the answer is no. Pasteur took his time, too."

"Sorry," Michael said, and Darryl regretted being short with him.

"But I am making some progress," he said. "I have some ideas."

"That's good," Michael said, visibly perking up. "That's great. I have faith in you. I think I will have that soda."

"Help yourself."

Michael went to the fridge, opened a bottle, then stood sipping it by the aquarium tank with the Cryothenia hirschii in it.

"Because I had this wacky idea of my own," he finally said, without turning around to face Darryl.

"I'm open to all suggestions," Darryl replied, capping another vial and labeling it, "though I was not aware that this was your field."

"It's not," Michael said. "My idea was, Eleanor should go back on the supply plane with me."

"What?"

"If you could find a cure, or at least a way to stabilize her condition," Michael said, turning around now, "I could shepherd her back to civilization."

"She doesn't belong on an airplane," Darryl said, "she belongs in quarantine. Or at the CDC. She's still got a blood disease with- what should we call them to be kind?-serious side effects?" But there was a look in Michael's eye that he didn't like. "This woman is off-limits, in a big way. You do get that, right?"

"Jesus, of course I do," Michael said, as if taking offense at the very suggestion.

"And now, in case you've already forgotten, we've got a second patient with the same problem. Were you planning to take him back with you, too?"

"If we had a solution," Michael said, though with a touch less enthusiasm, "yes, I would." He took a long drink from the soda bottle. "I would have to."

"That's insane," Darryl said. "The plane is due in what, nine days? I sincerely doubt that anyone but you will be going back on it."

Michael looked deflated, but accepting, as if he knew he'd been floating a very leaky trial balloon.

"What you can do," Darryl said, to buck him up, "is ask Charlotte to get me some blood samples from-what was his name again?"

"Sinclair Copley."

"From Mr. Copley, as soon as possible. And now, instead of distracting me with any more of your lame ideas, you should go back to the dorm and crash. Maybe you'll wake up tomorrow with some more great ideas."

"Thanks. I just might."

"Can't wait," Darryl said, already returning to his work.

But Michael had one more stop to make before sleeping; he'd been avoiding it for days, and Joe Gillespie had left three increasingly urgent messages for him. For a host of reasons, he'd been postponing the conversation. What was he going to tell him? That the bodies discovered in the ice had been successfully thawed out-and they'd then absconded? That they were now alive, in fact, and under lock-down? Oh yeah, that would be an easy sell. Or should he go into what had happened to Danzig, and then Ackerley-tell him how dead men had come back to life, insane with some unknown disease that turned them into a polar version of the living dead? How far would he get with any of that, he wondered, before Gillespie started to speculate on just how crazy his reporter had become? And what would Gillespie do then? Would he notify the NSF headquarters in Was.h.i.+ngton that an immediate evacuation of his hallucinating staffer was required? Or, would he simply try to contact the base commander himself, none other than Murphy O'Connor? The same Murphy O'Connor whose last p.r.o.nouncement on this subject had been, "What happens at Point Adelie, stays at Point Adelie."

Michael called Gillespie at home, on the SAT phone, hoping he'd get a machine, but Gillespie picked up on the first ring.

"Hope I'm not waking you," Michael said, over the low crackle of static.

"Michael?" Gillespie nearly shouted. "You're a very hard man to reach!"

"Yeah, well, it's kind of a topsy-turvy place down here."

"Wait a second-let me turn the stereo down."

Michael stared down at a notepad on the counter; somebody had been doodling a sleigh with Santa on top and it really wasn't bad. Michael flashed on Christmas the year before-Kristin had given him a pup tent, and he'd given her an acoustic guitar ... that she'd never had time to learn how to play.

"So tell me," Gillespie said, back on the line, "where are we on this story? I want to get the art department started on the cover and the layout as soon as possible, and anytime you have a rough draft of the text-and I don't care how rough it is-I want to see it." His words were coming so fast they were tumbling over themselves. "So what's the latest with the bodies in the ice? Have you thawed 'em out? Or figured out anything about who they were?"

What, Michael wondered, could he say? That he not only knew who they were, but knew their actual names? Because they had told him?

"The girl's the one I'm particularly interested in," Gillespie confessed. "What's she look like? Is she completely decayed, or would she be something we could feature in a full-page shot without scaring our younger readers?"

Michael was at a total loss. He didn't want to start laying down a bunch of lies, but he was definitely not about to divulge the truth. The thought of describing Eleanor to him, of pitching her, as the subject of some photo opportunity ...

"I hope she's going to be well enough preserved to go on display somewhere," Gillespie rattled on. "The NSF, I'm sure, is going to want to show her off, and I wouldn't be surprised if they set up some kind of show around her at the Smithsonian."

Michael's heart sank even lower in his chest. He regretted the haste with which he had informed Gillespie of the find in the first place, and he wished, more than anything, that he could simply roll back time and start all over. That he could take it all back. Maybe now, it dawned on him, he could start. "You know," he said, "it looks like I was a bit quick on the draw there."

"Quick on the draw," Gillespie repeated, slowly for a change. "What do you mean?"

What did he mean? He could picture the fuzz on Gillespie's head getting fuzzier by the second. "The bodies, well, they didn't turn out to be what I thought they were."

"What the h.e.l.l are you getting at? They're either bodies, or they're not. Don't do this to me, Michael. Are you saying that-"

While he talked, Michael shook the phone, and when he went back on a few seconds later, he said, "Sorry, you were breaking up. Could you repeat that last bit, Joe?"

"I was saying, is this story for real or not? Because if you were just jerking my chain, I'm not amused in the slightest."

"I was not jerking you around," Michael replied, holding the phone at arm's length for maximum effect. "I guess I was fooled myself. It looks like, well, it looks like maybe it wasn't an actual woman at all. Just a carved wooden figurehead."

"A ... carved ... wooden ... figurehead?"

"Attached to a bowsprit." Michael was momentarily impressed at his own ingenuity. "Quite old, and very beautiful, but not a woman. Or a man, either-he just turned out to be some more wood-though nicely painted-in the ice behind her. They must have been part of some s.h.i.+pwreck." He could embellish it further, but he didn't want Gillespie to get too excited about shots of the figurehead, because then he'd have to find a way to manufacture some. "I just can't tell you, Joe, how embarra.s.sed I am."

"Embarra.s.sed?" Michael heard, faintly. "That's all? You're embarra.s.sed? I was planning to make you the poster boy for Eco-Travel Magazine. I was planning to sh.e.l.l out real money to hire a PR firm, just to plaster your face all over the media."

Michael knew that with every syllable he'd just uttered, his chances of making news-winning awards, getting famous, maybe even getting rich-had withered, and vanished into the thinnest of air. "But I've got some other great stuff-an abandoned whaling station, the last dogsled team in the Antarctic, a big storm rounding the Horn. Tons of material."

"That's great, Michael, just great. We'll talk more as soon as you get back here, after the first of the year. You can show me what you've got then."

"You bet," Michael said, still silently a.s.sessing what he had done to his career. He had taken what could have been a career-making moment, and torched it.