This was the strangest and most unpleasant photo shoot he’d ever been on. He’d been sent to some out-of-the-way places in his time; he’d been eaten alive by mosquitoes in Cambodia, dusted sand out of every imaginable orifice in Chad, flicked scorpions from his equipment in Paraguay. But this took the cake. Marooned on the roof of the world, hundreds of miles from anything resembling civilization, threatened by ice storms and polar bears, confined to an ancient, smelly military base. Not only that, but it seemed all the discomfort had been for naught.
Reaching an intersection, he stopped, consulted the map, turned right. And that wasn’t the worst of it. What had been merely annoying had now turned abruptly lethal.
What was he doing here, anyway, sneaking around like this? When Conti had given him the assignment he was dazed by the news of Peters’s death, still trying to process it. The implications of what Conti wanted hadn’t really sunk in. But now, walking down this silent corridor, they had. Big-time. Now, when it was too late to object.
He’d only been in this wing of the base once before, yesterday, searching halfheartedly for the missing carcass. It seemed to house lots of engineering and technical apparatus, at least judging by the worn lettering stenciled on the doors he passed. On impulse, he stopped by a door labeled TRANSDUCER ARRAY—BACKUP I. He reached for the knob, jiggled it. Locked. He continued on.
It seemed almost cannibalistic, what Conti wanted: a gratuitous, sensationalist filming of a member of their own crew, now that he was dead and couldn’t object. It was a gross invasion of privacy. What would Josh’s family have to say?
On the other hand, he told himself as he started forward again, the network wasn’t stupid, they’d make sure it was tasteful, nothing gory. And Conti knew what he was doing—he had to remember that. Conti might be a brilliant filmmaker, but he was a realist as well. If there was a way to turn this disaster around, to make something truly memorable, he’d find it. Toussaint reminded himself that he, too, had a reputation to worry about.
The fluorescent bulbs were less frequent now, and the intersection ahead was wreathed in intertwining shadows. And there was something else to think about: this was, at last, a truly unique assignment. Nobody but he and Conti knew about it. It could become a feather in his cap, something to add to his portfolio. For the entire production phase he’d been doing second-unit work, shooting inserts, getting the B shots. He’d always been distinctly in Fortnum’s shadow. This was a chance to change that. He’d make sure to add audio commentary to the shot: if the network liked it, that could only help raise his profile further.
Reaching the intersection, he plucked the lens cap from the camera, switched it on, set the frame rate, fired up the supplemental illumination, adjusted the focus, checked the white balance and exposure, fitted the cord of the shotgun mic to his belt pack. He’d do this in one long take: sweep into the infirmary, move to the examination room, do a 360 of the body, zoom in for a few close-ups, maybe briefly pull back the sheeting he’d been told Peters was wrapped in. That would be it. He could be in and out in ninety seconds, the footage safe and secure on the camera’s hard disk. Like Conti had said: get in, get the shot, get out.
He rounded the corner. There it was: second door on the left. Thrusting the map into his pocket, he fitted the viewfinder to his eye, lined up the shot. The beam of his camera light bobbed along the corridor with the movement of his shoulder, and he aimed the spotlight on the infirmary door. The door was closed.
An unpleasant thought suddenly struck him. What if it was locked? Conti wasn’t in the mood to take no for an answer.
He hastily approached the door, looking through the lens as he walked. A quick try of the door reassured his jangled nerves: it was unlocked. He reached in, felt for the light switch, flicked it on, withdrew his hand.
Taking his eye from the viewfinder, he glanced up and down the corridor again, with the sudden, guilty movements of someone up to no good. But there was nobody; there was nothing. Nothing except the fine hairs on the back of his neck standing nervously on end; a faint high keening in his ears that signified, perhaps, he’d waited too long to take his blood pressure medication.
Time to do this. He cleared his throat quietly, fitted his eye to the viewfinder again, pressed the Record button, and pushed the door wide. “I’m going in now,” he said into the microphone.
He moved quickly inside, careful to keep the camera level as he panned around the cramped space. His heart was beating faster than he liked, his motions jerky and abrupt. He cursed himself for not bringing the Steadicam, then reconsidered: an amateurish approach might be just the thing for this sortie. They could add some digital filters back in the lab, give the film the grainy look of a cheap camera rig, imitating shots taken on the sly…
The doorway to the next room came into focus in the viewfinder. The body, Conti said, would be in there.
“The body’s in the next room,” he murmured into the mic. “Beyond the office.”
He felt his breathing accelerate, matching his heart. Ninety seconds. That’s all. In and out.
He moved forward, sweeping the camera left and right as he went, careful not to trip over any obstacles. The doorway was a pool of blackness, perforated by the small yellow cone of the camera’s light. Again his hand felt along the nearest wall; again he snapped on the old-fashioned bulky switch.
The lights came up and immediately the view through the lens went solid white. Stupid mistake—he should have turned the light on before he entered, given the camera time to compensate. As the saturated white faded somewhat and the room shapes resolved themselves, he saw the examining table in the center. The body lay on it, wrapped tightly in plastic sheeting. Thin smears of blood ran along the underside of the sheeting like stripes on a candy cane.
Breathing still faster now, he got a good establishing shot of the room, then maneuvered slowly around the table, panning the camera along the length of the sheeted corpse. This was good. Conti’s instincts had been right. They’d edit the content down, add a few jump cuts, let the viewers’ imaginations fill in the gaps. He laughed through his panting breaths, forgetting in his excitement to continue the audio commentary. Wait until Fortnum sees this…
That was when he heard it. Although “heard” wasn’t quite right—it was more like a sudden change in air pressure, a painful sensation of fullness, felt through the pulmonary cavity of his chest and—especially—the deepest channels of his ears and nasal sinuses. Something nearby, something he instinctually understood to be perilous, made Toussaint take instant notice. His head jerked away from the viewfinder and—with the atavistic certainty of a million years of prey—locked his gaze onto the dark doorway in the far wall of the exam room.
Something lurked there. Something hungry.
His breath was coming even faster now, rough gulps of air that somehow weren’t enough to fill his lungs. The camera was still rolling, but he no longer noticed. His mind worked frantically, trying to tell him this was crazy, just an attack of nerves, completely understandable under the circumstances…
What the hell was he so worried about all of a sudden? He hadn’t seen anything, heard anything—not really. And yet something about the perfect blackness of that far doorway set his instincts ringing five-alarm.
He stepped back, swinging the still-whirring camera wildly, the beam of light lashing across the walls and ceiling. His retreating back bumped heavily against the corpse and it pushed back with the sickening stiffness of rigor.
Just turn around, he told himself. You’ve got the shot. Turn around and get the hell out.
He wheeled, preparing to flee.
And yet he could not flee. Deep inside he knew that if he didn’t look now, he’d never dare to look, ever again. And he sensed something else—something even deeper—telling him that, if his instincts were right, running wouldn’t make the least difference anyway.
Lifting the camera, fitting the viewfinder to his eye, panting audibly now, Toussaint turned back and—very slo
wly—aimed the beam of light into the darkness beyond the far doorway.
And into the face of nightmare.
28
“I got your message,” Marshall said as he stepped into Faraday’s lab and closed the door behind him. “You’ve found something?”
Faraday glanced up at Marshall, then at Chen, then back at Marshall. The biologist’s eyes looked wide and anxious behind the round tortoiseshell frames. But this in itself didn’t disturb Marshall—Faraday wore a nervous look on even the best of days.
“It’s more an interesting succession of facts than a hard theory,” Faraday said. He was standing behind—almost hiding behind, it seemed—a bewildering array of test tubes and lab equipment.
“Not a problem.”
“I can’t corroborate any of it. Not from here, anyway.”
Marshall crossed one arm over the other. “I won’t tell the NMU board of regents if you won’t.”
“And I warn you that Sully’s going to—”
Marshall sighed in exasperation. “Just let me hear it.”
One last hesitation. “Okay.” Faraday cleared his throat, straightened the soup-stained tie he insisted on wearing under the lab coat. “I think I understand. About the melting in the vault, I mean.”
Marshall waited.
“I told you we went back up to get more ice samples from the cave. Well, we’ve been examining them with X-ray diffraction. And they’re very unusual.”
“Unusual how?”
“The crystalline structure is all wrong. For normally occurring precipitant ice, I mean.”
Marshall leaned against a lab table. “Go on.”
“You know how there are many different kinds of ice, right? I mean, other varieties beyond the kind we put in our lemonade or chop off our car windows.” He began ticking them off on his fingers. “There’s ice-two, ice-three, five, six, seven, and so forth, up to ice-fourteen—each with its own crystalline structure, its own physical properties.”
“I remember something about that in my graduate-level physics course. It takes great pressure or extreme temperatures for the solid-state transformation to take place.”
“That’s right. But the really unusual thing about some of these types of ice is that—once they’ve formed—they can remain solid well above the freezing mark.” He handed Marshall a sheet of paper through the forest of test tubes. “Look. Here’s the structure diagram for ice-seven. Look at its unit cell. Under sufficient pressure, this form of ice can remain in solid form up to two hundred degrees centigrade.”
Marshall whistled. “That hot? We could have used that kind of ice in the vault yesterday.”
“But here’s the thing,” Faraday went on. “I read an article in Nature last month describing another type of ice that could theoretically exist: ice-fifteen. Ice that has just the opposite qualities.”
“You mean…” Marshall paused. “You mean, ice that would melt below thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit?”
Faraday nodded.
“The key word is ‘theoretically,’” Chen added.
“And the unusual crystalline structure of this melted cave ice—does it match ice-fifteen?”
“There’s no way to be sure,” Faraday said. “But it may well.”
Marshall pushed away from the lab table, paced back and forth. “So possibly—just possibly—that ice melted on its own.”
“They were slowly raising the temperature overnight,” Faraday said. “And in all the commotion of finding their prize missing, nobody bothered to check the temperature in the vault. To verify it was actually above freezing inside.”
“That’s right.” Marshall stopped. “Nobody would have thought it necessary. They just left the door wide open and went off searching.”
“Allowing the temperature inside the vault to quickly return to the ambient level,” said Chen.
“So there might have been no saboteur at all,” Marshall said. “The thawing process was proceeding properly. It’s the ice itself that was the culprit.”
Faraday nodded.
“How would this unusual ice have formed?” Marshall asked.
“Therein lies the rub,” said Chen.
A brief silence settled over the lab.
“That’s a very interesting speculation,” said Marshall. “But even if you’re right, and there was no thief, no saboteur, the question remains: What happened to the cat?”
No sooner had he asked the question than he saw Faraday’s nervous expression deepen. “No, don’t tell me,” he went on. “Let me guess. It let itself out.”
“You saw my photographs of the vault flooring. Those marks were of something getting out, not in. And they weren’t saw marks, either.”
“True. They didn’t look like saw marks. But they didn’t look like cat claws, either. They were much too powerful for—” Marshall stopped abruptly. “Wait a minute. It’s a very clever theory, ice melting below freezing and all. But there’s an enormous problem. In order for the cat to break free of the remaining ice, to tear its way out of the vault, it would have to be alive. But it’s been dead for thousands of years.”
“That’s the problem we were discussing the last time you came in here,” Faraday said. “I’ve got an answer for that, too—again, a theoretical one.”
Marshall glanced at him. “Ice crystals would have formed in the cells as the animal froze. It would be fatal.”
“Maybe. Or maybe not. At an evolutionary biology conference in Berkeley last year, I listened to a lecture on the Beresovka mammoth.”
“Haven’t heard of it.”
“It was a woolly mammoth, found in Siberia in the early part of the twentieth century. Frozen solid, with fragments of a buttercup between its teeth.”
“And?”
“Well, the question is—how could the mammoth freeze so quickly in a spot warm enough for buttercups to bloom?”
Suddenly, Marshall understood. “A downdraft of cold air. Caused by an inversion layer.”
Faraday nodded. “Super-cold arctic air.”
“I see where you’re going. Because when your mammoth froze, it must have been summer, based on the buttercup. But here—in the dead of winter—” Marshall stopped.
For a moment there was silence. Then Chen continued. “Flash-freezing.”
“Terminal freeze,” added Faraday.
“And the faster it froze—if, say, high winds were involved—the smaller the ice crystals that would form in its cells. If it happened quickly enough, the creature could conceivably be frozen alive.” Marshall looked at them. “Do you suppose this terminal freeze could be reversed?”
Faraday blinked. “Reversed how?”
“If there could be a sudden downdraft of super-cold air in summer—couldn’t there just as easily be a downdraft of super-warm air in winter?”
Faraday nodded slowly. “In theory.”
“So what if the phenomenon was reversed? Sent down remarkably warm air? Don’t you remember how tropical it felt that night before the documentary was to go live?”
Faraday nodded again.
“It must have been close to freezing.” Marshall began to pace again. “The vault freezer would have kicked in—but if your ice-fifteen was involved, it wouldn’t have mattered. It would still have been close enough to freezing to cause a massive thaw.” He hesitated. “When you went back to get those ice samples in the cave, did the ice around the excavation site show any signs of melting?”
“No.”
“But it’s colder up there, by the glacier…” Then Marshall hesitated, shook his head. “I don’t know, Wright. It’s brilliant—but it seems pretty far-fetched.”
Faraday held up the phase diagram. “The crystalline structure doesn’t lie. We performed the X-ray test on the ice ourselves.”
A brief silence settled over the lab. Marshall looked at the diagram, then quietly placed it on the table.
“If you’re right about the reversal,” Faraday said slowly, “about the heated air, then it could explain som
ething else.”
“What?” Marshall said.
“What we saw in the sky that night.”
“You mean, the bizarre aurora borealis? You think it was a side effect?”
“A side effect,” Faraday replied. “Or a causative agent. Or, perhaps, a harbinger.”
Another silence. Faraday thought back to the old shaman’s warning: Their wrath paints the sky with blood. The heavens cry out with the pain.
“What about the blood?” he asked. “That you found caked on the vault splinters?”
“We’ve been too busy analyzing the ice to check it yet.”
Another silence fell over the lab.
“Well, you’ve been busy,” Marshall said after a moment. “But this still begs two questions. If these unusual forms of ice require great pressure, or extreme temperature, how did they form here in the first place?”
Faraday took off his glasses, polished them on his tie, replaced them. “I don’t know,” he replied.
The three of them looked at one another a moment. “You said you had two questions,” said Chen.
“Yes. If your speculations are right, and the creature is still alive—and on the loose—where is it now?”
The question hung in the air. And this time the lab remained silent.
29
As news of Peters’s death spread through Fear Base, people—almost unconsciously—began leaving their quarters, gathering in the larger spaces of B Level, seeking consolation in the company of others. They sat around the tables of the officers’ mess, speaking in low tones, sharing affectionate anecdotes: outrageous things he’d done or said, dumb technical mistakes he’d made. Others hung out in the Operations Center, drinking tepid coffee, speculating on when the blizzard would lift, promising darkly to assemble a hunting team and seek out the polar bear that mauled the production assistant. The sorrowful atmosphere only exacerbated the sensation of being marooned in an icy wasteland, cut off from all the reassuring comforts of civilization. As the evening lengthened and conversations began to falter, the groups nevertheless remained where they were, reluctant to return to their bunks and the private, unsettling silence of their own thoughts.