Zodiac Station Read online

  A dark shadow lay flat against the ice.

  Six

  It was Hagger. Neither of us doubted it. We called his name; Greta threw down the cup from the Thermos to see if he would stir. He didn’t move.

  ‘I’m going down,’ she announced.

  You don’t just go down into a crevasse – not if you want to make it out again. Greta spent half an hour driving screws into the ice, fixing pulleys and carabiners, and running a network of ropes between them. When she’d finished, she was webbed in a harness clipped to one end of the rope; I held the other.

  ‘Slowly,’ she told me. ‘I tug once, it means you stop. Two tugs, I’m down.’

  Standing well back, I paid out the rope. I didn’t like to think what would happen if she fell. I imagined the jerk of the rope, my feet slipping over the ice towards the edge of the hole. Would I hold on? Let go? I remembered Quam: the biggest danger in a situation like this is people trying to play the hero.

  The rope went slack. Two tugs told me she’d got down safely. I crawled to the edge of the crevasse and peered in.

  Hagger still hadn’t moved. Greta knelt beside him. She took off her mitten and wriggled her bare hand under the collar of his balaclava. It stayed there a long time.

  ‘Well?’ I called.

  She shook her head.

  Hagger was still wearing his climbing harness. Greta clipped him on to the rope, then added a loop around his chest so he wouldn’t spin. I lay on the ground and watched from above. Compact snow pressed hard against me; the cold seeped into my chest.

  And something was digging into my ribs. I rolled over and scrabbled in the snow, expecting a pebble or a lump of ice. Instead, through my mitten, I felt something unmistakably man-made.

  It was a key. A perfectly ordinary flat Yale key, attached to a teddy-bear key ring. The bear wore a T-shirt, grubby with fingerprints, that said I ♥ NY.

  I stared at it and wondered how it had got there. Had it fallen out of Hagger’s pocket? There are no locks at Zodiac. Why did he need a key?

  I zipped it into my pocket. Greta had finished with Hagger. She climbed the second rope, and together we pulled up the body. The hardest part was getting it over the cliff. Greta chopped a ramp in the crevasse lip with her ice axe, and I hauled him over. Like landing a fish.

  ‘He’s frozen stiff,’ I said. Not just the body – his coat and trousers were solid ice, as if they’d been soaked through and then frozen. How had he possibly contrived to get wet? The glaciers wouldn’t start melting for months, and we were a long way from the coast.

  Of course, we didn’t have a body bag. We zipped Hagger into a sleeping bag from the emergency box and pulled the hood tight around his face. A tuft of his beard, frosted with ice crystals, stuck out.

  The sun had come up. I felt the weariness of having seen a long night through – though really, it was only three in the morning. Greta fetched the sledges we’d left up the hill, and we strapped Hagger on the one I’d brought. In case we have to bring anything back.

  ‘You take the emergency sled,’ Greta said. I was grateful. I didn’t fancy three hours dragging a dead man.

  I pulled the starter cord and gunned the throttle. The engine roared, but the snowmobile didn’t move. Maybe the weight of the sled? I added more power; I smelled smoke. Too late, I saw Greta waving angrily at me.

  ‘You forgot to loosen the tracks,’ she shouted.

  I jumped off as if I’d been shot. Together, we heaved the frozen tracks off the ice. I smelled scorched metal.

  ‘Will it be OK?’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s a long way home.’

  We followed our tracks back up the glacier. I tried to look at the ground, and not at the stiff bundle on the sledge in front. There were an awful lot of implications wrapped up in that sleeping bag, but I didn’t want to think about them.

  And then I couldn’t. The engine note changed; I felt the power sapping. Every time I eased a fraction off the throttle, the engine stuttered as if it was about to cut out. Twice, I rescued it by jamming on the throttle again. The third time, it died.

  For a heart-stopping moment, I watched Greta carry on into the distance. Then she circled round, drove back and pulled up beside me. She flipped up the snowmobile’s plastic nose and peered at the engine.

  ‘Kaput.’

  The day had actually got darker since sunrise. Clouds had blown up, fed by a wind that scoured the ice dome. The moment I opened my visor, a volley of ice granules peppered my face. I didn’t know exactly where we were, but I knew it was still a long way from base.

  ‘Can you fix it?’

  Ignoring me, she reached inside her coat and took out the satellite phone.

  ‘One of the snowmobiles broke down,’ she told whoever answered. ‘And Hagger’s dead.’

  She waited, fingers drumming impatiently.

  ‘Have you got a fix on our position?’

  Evidently they had.

  ‘We’ll stay here. I’m switching off the phone to save battery.’

  She tucked the phone back in her coat and starting pulling equipment off my sledge. I stood there, helpless, feeling the warmth leaching out of me.

  ‘Can’t we both go on your snowmobile?’

  ‘It can’t carry both of us and two sleds. Two people, one snowmobile and no emergency gear isn’t a good equation.’

  ‘So what’s going to happen?’

  ‘We’ll put up the tent.’ She undid the bag and pulled out a large red tent roll. Another blast of wind almost blew it out of her hands.

  ‘Is it safe?’

  She didn’t bother to answer. We laid the tent flat on the ground and weighted it with blocks of ice and steel canisters. Several times, we nearly lost it as we raised the poles. At last, we were able to crawl in. We spread mats and sleeping bags; I massaged my jaw, trying to get feeling back.

  Greta lit the stove and reboiled water from one of the Thermoses. She pulled out two orange food sachets and offered them to me.

  ‘Chicken or fish?’

  I chose chicken. Copying her, I ripped off the top and poured boiling water over the dehydrated meal. I was too hungry to wait for it to absorb: I shovelled it in too quickly, spilling it on myself like Luke did when he was a baby. Hard fragments caught in my throat. The rush of calories made me shake.

  ‘No hurry,’ Greta said. ‘Too much wind for the helicopter. They won’t come here for hours.’

  ‘Are we going to make it?’

  I could feel my chest tightening with panic. The more I fought it, the more it pushed back. Forty-eight hours ago, I’d been at home with Luke. Now I was trapped in a tent on a glacier, the wind rising, with a broken snowmobile and a dead body outside. And I was so cold.

  Greta didn’t offer any sympathy. ‘This is a Scott tent.’

  ‘Is that supposed to be reassuring?’

  ‘Scott survived eight days in one of these.’

  ‘I thought the point was he didn’t survive.’

  ‘That was on the ninth day.’

  I scratched around at the bottom of my carton, trying to pick out the last bits of food. Without asking, Greta handed me another.

  ‘Where are you from?’ I asked, as I waited for the second serving to go soft.

  ‘All over.’

  I wasn’t going to let her off so easily. ‘You have to come from somewhere.’

  She thought about that. ‘My mother’s Norwegian.’

  That explains the looks, I thought. I almost said it, but chickened out. It would be a long wait in that tent if she took it the wrong way.

  ‘What brought you to Zodiac?’

  She rolled over on her side. ‘I need some sleep.’

  ‘Me too. But I’m not tired.’

  ‘I’m kind of upset about Martin right now.’

  ‘Of course.’ I felt like a heel. The truth is, Hagger had made such a fleeting cameo in my life it was hard to remember he’d been there at all. In the blink of an eye, he’d gone from an email on a screen to a bundle
on a sledge; I’d never even spoken to him. Whatever reason he’d had for bringing me there, I’d never find out now.

  I stared at the roof of the tent. Ice crystals were beginning to form on the underside of the canvas. ‘He was like a father to me.’ I saw the look Greta gave me. ‘For a while.’

  It sounded phoney, even to me. But it was true. The memory surprised me, like an embarrassing shirt found at the back of the wardrobe – something to make you wonder who you ever were.

  ‘As undergraduates, we were all in awe of him. So many stories went round. He was like Professor Challenger, or Indiana Jones. He overwintered in the Arctic on a wooden boat, collecting samples. They said he shot a polar bear and ate his own shoes.

  ‘The polar-bear story’s not true,’ Greta said.

  It occurred to me that we weren’t talking about the same man. For me, Hagger was something from the past – a piece in a jigsaw I’d abandoned a long time ago. For Greta, he was now. Someone she passed in the corridor, ate with in the canteen, sat next to at their movie nights. No wonder she was taking it harder than me.

  ‘I should have kept in touch. He was an amazing scientist. He—’

  She’d stopped paying attention – still listening, but not to me. She was staring at the tent door.

  I reached for the rifle. ‘Is it a bear?’

  She shook her head and took the gun.

  ‘It sounds like an engine.’

  I heard it too. Deeper than a snowmobile’s gadfly whine – more bass, throbbing beneath the howling wind. The ice beneath us shook. Greta pulled on her boots and unzipped the tent.

  The noise stopped. The shaking stopped. I heard the styrofoam squeak of footsteps crossing the snow, the crust snapping. Then that stopped, too – right outside our tent.

  ‘It’s triple-A,’ an American-accented voice said. ‘You want a lift?’

  Seven

  Anderson

  A yellow Sno-Cat sat parked outside our tent. Not like the machine I’d seen at Zodiac, a relic of the 1960s; this one was low and shiny and powerful and very much of the twenty-first century. Even the snow blown over its door sills looked like it had been styled for the brochure. Three pairs of skis stuck out of a rack on the back, and three men in yellow parkas stood peering at our tent. The word ‘DAR-X’ was stencilled liberally on everything I could see: doors, coats, hats, skis.

  ‘Trouble?’ Even right there, the man outside the tent had to shout over the wind.

  Greta nodded.

  He gestured to his Sno-Cat. ‘You want out?’

  The tent we’d raised so laboriously came down in a hurry. We left it with the snowmobiles. Hagger came with us on his sledge, wagging behind the Sno-Cat like a tin can tied to a car. I glanced out the rear window, and thought what a strange last journey it was for him.

  There were only two seats in the cab. Greta and I and the man who’d rescued us sat in the passenger cabin mounted on the back. It was almost more luxurious than the Platform back at Zodiac, complete with folding bunks, a table and even a stove. Our host – the name on his coat said Malick; he introduced himself as Bill – brewed up coffee. We took off our coats in the heated cabin and cradled the mugs to stop them spilling over the bumps. Even the mugs said DAR-X.

  ‘What is DAR-X?’

  ‘We say it “darks”,’ he corrected me. I’d pronounced it to rhyme with ‘Daleks’. ‘Deep Arctic Exploration. Oil and gas.’

  That explained the high-end equipment. ‘Aren’t there easier places in the world to drill oil?’

  He laughed. ‘I guess. But a hundred million years ago, Texas was under an ice sheet too. The majors figure it won’t be long before this place goes the same way.’

  I looked out the window at the desolate ice field, and tried to imagine cactuses growing there.

  ‘I thought oil companies didn’t believe in global warming,’ said Greta.

  Bill gave her a look as if she’d started to smell. ‘Even a Prius needs gas.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you were around,’ I said emphatically. ‘How did you find us?’

  ‘Your boss from Zodiac phoned Echo Bay. Said you’d had a breakdown. We were out here anyway, so we thought we’d drop by.’

  Greta’s eyes narrowed. ‘Aren’t you supposed to stick to the coast?’

  Bill smiled. He smiled a lot. ‘Tourism. Little R & R. We did some skiing over on the Wendel, then stopped by Vitangelsk on the way home. You been to Vitangelsk, Tom?’

  ‘He just arrived,’ said Greta. ‘He hasn’t been anywhere.’

  ‘Freaky place. Old Russian mining town—’

  ‘Soviet,’ Greta corrected.

  ‘—abandoned in the eighties when Gorby couldn’t afford to keep it open. Spooky as hell. Lenin, Stalin – all the shit that came down with the Wall everyplace else, it’s still there. Commie time capsule.’

  ‘I’d like to see it,’ I said.

  Bill jerked his thumb out the back, where you could just see Hagger’s feet bumping along behind us. ‘What’s the story with him?’

  ‘He fell down a crevasse,’ I said.

  Bill grimaced. He was older than me, probably in his fifties, grey hair and beard, but still wiry, someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. ‘Tough. We lost a guy last year.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Rock fell on his head and knocked him flat. He was frozen solid before we found him. Not so far from here, actually.’

  He stared out the window. ‘You look at this place and you think it’s some kind of winter wonderland. But it’s a killer.’

  I couldn’t disagree.

  The DAR-X camp was a few shacks and cabins sprawled around a huge gantry, on the edge of a bay on the west side of the island. Red lights flashed a warning from the top of the rig. We slept a few hours in the Sno-Cat’s cabin – I could have gone much longer – until a man at the door announced that the helicopter had come.

  The Platform was silent and sullen when we got back to Zodiac. I lay down on my bed, but my thoughts wouldn’t let up, so I went to Hagger’s lab. I had a vague idea of packing things up, but the sheer volume of equipment defeated me before I began. Outside, the sun dazzled on the snow; inside, a crippling darkness gripped me. I’ve had it a few times in my life, and this was as bad as any of them. I sat on a stool and stared at the mountains until I had spots in front of my eyes.

  Of course I was sad for Hagger. But – I’m ashamed to say – I was also angry, and the more I thought about it, the angrier I got. He’d been my one shot at redemption, after five years as a lab slave, and now he’d ruined it before I’d properly begun, because he couldn’t look where he was going.

  Years of injustice seethed out of me: not just what was, but what might have been. The papers I’d have got my name on, the conferences, the seminars. The association with Hagger would have opened so many doors – and maybe one of them would have had a proper academic job behind it. Now I was just the man who’d found the body, a footnote to a piece of academic gossip. I could imagine the conver-sation playing out in the senior common rooms over glasses of sherry.

  Hagger fell in a crevasse. One of his old students found him, you know.

  Are they sure the student didn’t push him in, ha ha?

  Self-pity takes a lot of concentration; I almost didn’t hear the knock. I looked, and saw Dr Kennedy peering round the door.

  ‘I thought I’d find you here. Quam wants to see you.’

  I didn’t move. Kennedy gave me a searching, professional look.

  ‘Hagger’s death hit you hard, I’m sure. It’s a terrible thing. So … unlikely.’

  He advanced into the room. He looked as if he was about to take my arm. I didn’t want to be touched, so I got off my stool and crossed to the door, keeping the lab bench between us.

  ‘If you need to talk about it …’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  I didn’t want sympathy from these people I hardly knew. Luckily, Quam wasn’t the man to give it. He sat behind his computer and his papers, a silv
er-balled executive toy click-clacking on his desk, and waved me into the chair opposite. The picture of a bureaucrat. He looked cross. Hagger’s death affected us all in different ways: for him, it was a tragedy of paperwork.

  ‘You’ll have to write it up, of course. Can’t be helped – but keep it brief. There’s nothing anyone could have done. Terrible accident.’

  ‘And me?’

  He looked surprised. ‘The plane’s coming for Hagger tomorrow. You’ll go too.’

  ‘But what about his research? There must be experiments in progress – I could finish them up. So it doesn’t go to waste.’ It’s what he would have wanted, I almost said. But that would have been too trite.

  Quam shook his head. There was a picture on his desk I’d just noticed – two girls, about secondary-school age. No sign of their mother, and no wedding ring on his finger. I guessed long seasons at the poles took their toll on any marriage. Not that I was in a position to judge.

  ‘I don’t think there’s any profit carrying on his work. My understanding is that he’d run into a bit of a dead end.’ He winced. ‘Unfortunate turn of phrase. But, frankly, it’s probably for the best.’

  ‘For the best,’ I repeated. ‘Are you saying—’

  ‘Of course not.’ He rowed back in a hurry. ‘Martin Hagger was a great scientist who made valuable discoveries.’ The words sounded so pre-baked I thought he must be reading them off his computer screen. ‘But he’d had his fifteen minutes of fame. Between you and me, he was a busted flush.’

  I didn’t need to hear this. ‘Was there anything else?’

  ‘That’s it.’ Quam smiled, as if there were no hard feelings. Then remembered something as I reached the door.

  ‘Don’t forget to return your ECW gear before you go.’

  I stepped into the corridor and almost ran straight into Greta. She must have just come in from outside: her face was red, and the frost on her eyelashes had just melted, so it looked like tears. She barged through the door and slammed it behind her.

  ‘She’s upset,’ said Kennedy, loitering a little further down the hallway. Clearly a psychologist.