Hive (12 page)

“W
ell, you missed all the excitement,” Sharkey said to Hayes that afternoon in the community room as he sat down with his tray of food.

Hayes felt something wither in him. “God, do I even want to hear this?”

“I think you will. LaHune has put us back online . . . Internet, satellite, the works. He made the announcement about an hour ago and you could almost hear the sigh of relief around here.”

Hayes wasn't really surprised.

LaHune had to pacify the collective beast before it took a bite out of him. Looking around the community room which was barely half full, Hayes could almost feel that the tensions of the past week had subsided somewhat. Like a chiropractor with a good set of hands had worked out the kinks and bunched muscles of the station.

“No shit?” he said. “You telling me our fine and randy Mr. LaHune isn't worrying about word of our mummies leaking out? That city?”

Sharkey took a bite of stew, chewed it carefully. “Oh, he covered that base. He directed it at our wallets. Told us it's okay to mention that fossils and artifacts had been found, just not to be perpetuating any of the wild rumors circulating through camp. Said that, if crazy stories like that got out, those who sent them would not be invited back by the NSF . . . meaning they can kiss Antarctica good-bye, along with those juicy contracts and exclusive grants.”

Though he didn't care for LaHune anymore than he cared for a woodtick fastened to his left nut, Hayes had to agree that it was the right way to handle things. People didn't pay much attention to threats until you put their livelihood and careers on the chopping block. If LaHune had any sense, he would have done it in the first place.

“Honestly though, Jimmy, I don't think people here are going to talk about any of that. They're barely talking about it amongst themselves. It seems that most of them have accepted my post on Meiner as an embolism.”

Hayes studied his food, set his fork down. “Yeah, but do
you
accept it?”

Sharkey looked indifferent. “Down here, with the very limited pathological facilities, it'll have to do. I examined Meiner's brain pretty thoroughly. It was a massive hemorrhage, all right . . . blood vessels popped like ripe grapes just about everywhere. So I accept that. As to cause . . . well, that's a different bag of chips, isn't it?”

“I suppose it is at that.”

“Gates radioed us this morning on the HF,” Sharkey said. “I was in the radio shack when it came in.”

“And?”

“A few items of interest. Gates and his team are still finding the things up there. He was saying
fossils,
but I guess by this point we can read through the lines pretty much. More fossils, more artifacts. According to what he said, they've been spending a lot of time in that subterranean city. I got on the horn and asked him what he was making of the ruins, but he was almost . . .
evasive,
I guess, about what he's seeing.”

Hayes thought about that, was thinking that Gates should have dynamited that chasm close while he still could. But maybe it was already too late for that. The cage was open, now wasn't it? And the beast had gotten loose after millions of years. He swallowed. “Did you mention that state of his mummies?”

“I did.”

“And his reply?”

She shook her head. “He seemed a little confused about it all . . . like it was some gray area in his head.”

“I'll just bet it is.”

Sharkey said he managed to cover for himself okay, though, saying that letting his specimens thaw and maybe decompose was part of some experiment he was running. And maybe it was, though she didn't believe it. She said Gates alluded to the fact that he had uncovered a great deal more specimens in some kind of cemetery up there . . . or down there . . . and he wasn't too concerned about the ones in the hut.

“He just said to make sure the hut stayed locked and people stayed out of there.” Sharkey was looking into Hayes' eyes now. “I suppose he could be worried about us contaminating something he has going in there, but — “

“But you don't believe it?”

“No, I don't.” She took another bite of stew and washed it down with coffee. “There was . . . well, almost an undercurrent to his voice, Jimmy. Maybe it was my imagination, but I don't think so. He was almost guarded, unnecessarily formal. At times it almost seemed like he was speaking really low like he didn't want to be overheard and other times he muttered nonsensical things. But when I asked him to repeat, he changed the subject.”

“He's in trouble, Doc. I'm willing to bet they all are.”

“Maybe. Thing is, LaHune showed for the last half of our convo and, true to form, he didn't seem to think there was anything out of the ordinary. I don't know. Maybe there isn't.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“Gates? Well . . . he said that they found an abandoned Russian camp up there, about ten miles from their location. He said it was pretty much buried in snow, but he was really intrigued by it. I could hear the excitement in his voice, Jimmy. It may mean nothing, but . . . “

“Maybe everything?”

Sharkey didn't bother with her food anymore. “I know Gates as well as anyone, Jimmy. He's completely self-involved and dedicated. He pays no attention to that which doesn't directly concern his project. And I tell you right now that his interest in that camp isn't simple curiosity. He asked me to call my Russian friends down at Vostok, see what they had to say about it.”

Sharkey corresponded with a Russian physician at the Vostok Station and was pretty friendly with him. The guy's name was Nikolai Kolich and he had been part of the Russian program since the Soviet days in the 1960s. He knew all the scuttlebutt on just about everything. As it so happened, there was another huge warm-water lake beneath the Vostok Station and plans were in place to drill down to it after Vordog.

“LaHune okay with that? You calling him?”

“He suggested it.”

“Anything else?”

Sharkey told him that Gates seemed very interested in the progress that Dr. Gundry's drilling operation was making. He seemed, she said, very excited about what might be found down there. Either excited or scared, it was hard to say.

“What do you think's down there, Jimmy?”

He told her about his convo with Dr. Gundry. “He won't say much, but he's thinking things, Doc. Lots of things. I got a good idea that me and him are pissing in the same bucket here, that we're on the same page. There's something down there creating that magnetic flux and I think it worries him.”

H
ayes was there in the radio shack when Sodermark, the communications tech, established contact with the Vostok Station. Another old Soviet installation, Vostok had existed now for some forty-odd years and was staffed by Russians, Americans, and the French, all of whom were involved in joint projects and independent research. Once Sodermark had them on the HF set, he told Sharkey that it was all hers, he was going to grab a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

The connection wasn't bad, despite the weather, though now and then there was a funny whining sound that would rise and fall. Hayes listened while Sharkey and Nikolai Kolich talked shop for a time.

Finally, Sharkey said, “Nikolai? That excavation I mentioned to you . . . yes, I imagine you've heard about it by now . . . Dr. Gates is up there again. No, I don't know, I don't know . . . lots of strange stories flying around that's for sure.”

Sharkey smiled and rolled her eyes while Kolich talked non-stop about what Gates had found. If it was all over the Vostok Station, then it was surely all over McMurdo and Palmer, too.

When Kolich stopped for a breath, Sharkey jumped in: “I have a question for you, Nicky. Dr. Gates needs to know something only you can answer, I think. There's a camp up near him, an abandoned Russian camp up there. Do you know of it?”

The usually gregarious Kolich went silent for a moment or two. That whine rose and fell from the set. They waited a minute, two, three, nothing.

“Nikolai? Nikolai? Are you there?” Sharkey asked. “Vostok? Can you hear me, Vostok?”

“Yes . . . we hear you, Elaine. I've . . . I've been getting properly chastised by the radio officer here . . . he says that I am not following proper procedure. I should be saying ‘over' and that nonsense. There. There, he is gone and now we can talk.”

“The abandoned camp . . . do you know of it?”

“Yes, Elaine, yes. You speak of the Vradaz Outpost, a coring site. It was abandoned back in 1979 or ‘80, as I recall. There was a lot of noise about it at the time, lots of wild stories . . . “

“Do you remember what happened?”

Silence, static. “Yes, but it's hardly worth going into. Just crazy talk. There was . . . well how do I say this . . . something of a ghost scare up there. Talk of a haunting of all things. Crazy business. Vradaz was a summer post and they were coring, struck into a cave or chasm or something. Yes. Then . . . I remember things got funny after that.”

He paused and Hayes looked at Sharkey, but she wouldn't look at him. She was thinking what he was thinking. He knew it.

“Do you remember the details, Nicky?” she asked.

“Details? Yes. Yes, yes, I was here at Vostok when they brought the last three men in. They were all mad, hopelessly mad. The man in charge here then . . . you know of the sort I speak, Elaine? The political officer was a big Ukranian whom no one liked. He placed those three men in segregation, had me shoot them full of sedatives so they would not disturb the others.”

“You said three men? I thought there were ten?”

“There was said, I recall, to be a rash of insanity up there. Men killing each other and committing suicide. We had been getting some very odd communications from Vradaz and then, nothing. Three weeks and nothing. A security force went up there, came back with the three and said the others were all dead. I was one of the few, being a medico, that was allowed to see these men. They were only here for three days, I think, then they were flown out. It was a sad, tragic business. Isolation . . . it can do terrible things to men.”

“Those communications . . . do you remember them?”

“Yes.” Another long pause and Hayes could almost imagine him mopping sweat from his brow. “Crazy business . . . the men up there, they wanted to get out, said they could not stay up there. These were scientists, Elaine, and they were scared like schoolchildren, yes? Talking rubbish . . . noises and bumps, knocks and tappings, shapes seen flitting about at night . . . madness, that's all it was.”

Sharkey chewed her lower lip. “Dr. Gates will find this all interesting.”

“It was rubbish, Elaine, make sure you tell him that I did not believe these things!”

“Oh, of course not, Nicky.” Sharkey stared at the dials and LEDs on the radio, thumbed the mic again. “Did those three men . . . did they say anything?”

The silence dragged on longer this time, much longer. “Yes, even sedated, they would not stop talking. It was all nonsense, Elaine. Silly stories, all of it. They were raving. Sounds in the night, noises in the walls and on the roofs . . . knocks at the door, scratching at the windows. Things of that nature. There was a ruined house when I was a child and . . . but, no matter. These men were raving about nightmares and voices in their heads . . . weird figures wandering through the compound that were not men . . . ghosts, bogies, I think. They spoke of devils and monsters, figures that walked through walls. It was a terrible business.”

Kolich signed off soon after this and seemed to be in a hurry to do so. Maybe he was being overheard or maybe the memory of all that wasn't sitting on him right. Regardless, he had something that needed doing and he went to do it.

“What do you make of that?” Hayes asked.

Sharkey kept staring at the set. She shook her head. “Nikolai is a man who likes to talk, Jimmy. But he was very abrupt about all this. Any other time I would have been on here an hour hearing about his take on that business. It's not like him.”

“I got the feeling that maybe he was talking about something he wasn't supposed to be saying.”

“Me, too.”

“But you saw the familiar pattern there, I take it?”

She nodded. “It's like what we have . . . but worse.” She was looking in his eyes now and Hayes saw something like fear in them. “Is this what's going to happen here, Jimmy? Are we all going to go mad and kill each other?”

“I don't know, but I think we better do something here before this gets out of hand.”

“Like what?”

He smiled thinly. “Oh, I was thinking about asking you to take a little Sunday drive with me. Up to a place called Vradaz.”

“That ultimate, nameless thing beyond the mountains of madness.”

— H.P. Lovecraft

Z
ero hour.

Gundry and his people weren't calling it that, but that's how Hayes was seeing it. The cryobot had been launched some twelve hours before. It took nearly eight of those for it to melt through the remaining 100 feet of the ice dome over Lake Vordog and then it dropped to the misty, black waters of the lake far below. Gundry and his people had not slept for over twenty-four hours now and Hayes didn't see that happening anytime soon.

They were all wired.

Hayes had gotten up at like four a.m. because he, too, was excited. Excited and, yes, apprehensive as to what might be found down in that ancient lake. He went about his work, checking in at the drill tower from time to time to see how things were proceeding. Apparently, Gundry and Parks, the project's geophysicist, had been concerned about the possibility of there being some massive methane ice bubble trapped down below the cap. Most permafrost regions have quantities of methane beneath them, they explained to him.