Ice Station (24 page)

ANTARCTICA.

The computer whirred for about ten seconds, and the results of the
search came up on the screen:

1,856,157 ENTRIES FOUND. WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE A LIST?

Great. One million, eight hundred and fifty thousand books contained
the word Antarctica in some way or another. That was no help.

Alison thought for a second. She'd need a narrower key word,
something a lot more specific. She got an idea. It was a long shot,
perhaps a little too specific. But she thought it was worth a try
anyway. She typed:

LATITUDE -66.5° LONGITUDE 115° 20' 12"

The computer whirred as it searched. This time the search didn't
take long at all. The results came up on the screen:

6 ENTRIES FOUND. WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE A LIST?

“You bet your ass I'd like to see a list,” Alison said.
She hit the “Y” key for “Yes” and a new screen
appeared. On it was a list of book titles and their locations.

ALL-STATES LIBRARY DATABASE

SEARCH BY KEYWORD

SEARCH STRING USED:LATITUDE -66.5°

LONGITUDE 115° 20' 12"

NO. OF ENTRIES FOUND: 6

TITLE

AUTHOR

LOCATION

YEAR

DOCTORAL THESIS

LLEWELLYN, D. K.

STAMFORD, CT

1998

DOCTORAL THESIS

AUSTIN, B.K.

STAMFORD, CT

1997

POSTDOCTORAL
THESIS

HENSLEIGH, S. T.

USC, CA

1997

FELLOWSHIP GRANT RESEARCH
PAPER

HENSLEIGH, B. M.

HARVARD, MA

1996

THE ICE CRUSADE: REFLECTIONS ON
A YEAR SPENT IN ANTARCTICA

HENSLEIGH, B. M.

HARVARD, MA

1995 AVAIL: AML

PRELIMINARY
SURVEY

WAITZKIN, C.
M.

LIBCONG

1978

Alison stared at the list.

Every one of these entries, in some way or another, mentioned latitude
minus 66.5 degrees and longitude 115 degrees, 20 minutes, and 12
seconds.

They were mainly university papers. None of the names meant anything
to Alison: Llewellyn, Austin, and the two Hensleighs, S and B.

It looked like the latter Hensleigh—B. M. Hensleigh—had
written a book on Antarctica. Alison looked at its location reference.
It had been printed at Harvard University, but it was available at
AML—all major libraries. Unlike all of the other entries—a
collection of single-issue privately published theses—this
Hensleigh guy's book was videly available. Alison decided
she'd check it out.

There was, however, one other entry that caught her attention.

The last one.

PRELIMINARY
SURVEYWAITZKIN, C. M.LIBCONG1978

Alison frowned at the final entry. She checked a quick reference list
that was affixed to the side of the computer monitor. It was a list of
all of the abbreviations used in the database. Alison found
“LibCong.”

“Aha,” she said aloud.

LibCong stood for the Library of Congress. The Library of
Congress was situated across the road from the Capitol Building, not
far from Alison's office.

Alison looked at the final entry again. She wondered what a
preliminary survey was. She looked at the date of the entry.

1978.

Well, whatever it was, it was over twenty years old, so it was worth
checking out.

Alison smiled as she hit the button marked: PRINT SCREEN.

“All right! Hoist her up!” Book
called.

Rebound and Snake pulled on the stabilizing cables, and Wilkes Ice
Station's battered radio antenna—a long black pole thirty
feet high, with a-blinking green beacon light at its tip—rose
slowly into the air. The intermittent flash-flash of the green beacon
light illuminated all of their faces.

“How long do you think it will take?” Schofield asked Book,
yelling above the wind.

“It won't take us long to hoist it up; that's the easy
part,” Book replied. “The hard part will be reconnecting all
the radio wiring. We've got the power going again, but there's
still another fifteen or so radio wires to solder back together.”

“Ballpark?”

“Thirty minutes.”

“Get to it.”

Shane Schofield trudged back down the entrance ramp of the station and
headed inside. He had come back inside to check on two things: Abby
Sinclair and Mother.

Abby met him on the A-deck catwalk. While Schofield and the others had
been outside, she had been in the radio room looking at weather maps
on the computer, trying to find a break in the solar flare.

“Any luck?” Schofield asked.

“Depends on what you mean by luck,” Abby said. “How
soon did you want it?”

“Soon.”

“Then I'm afraid it's not that good,” she said.
“By my calculations, a break in the solar flare will pass over
this station in about sixty-five minutes.”

“Sixty-five minutes,” Schofield said. “How
long will it last?”

Abby shrugged. 'Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. Long enough to get a
signal through."

Schofield bit his lip as he took all of this in. He had been hoping to
get a window in the solar flare a lot sooner than that. He desperately
needed to get in contact with McMurdo Station to tell them about the
French warship that was sailing off the coast of Antarctica aiming a
battery of missiles at Wilkes Ice Station.

He asked, “Will there be any more breaks coming over the
station?”

Abby smiled. “I thought you'd ask that, so I checked it out.
There will be two more breaks in the flare after the first one, but
there's a long wait for them. OK. The time is now 2:46 p.m. so the
first window period won't be until 3:51 P.M., sixty-five minutes
from now. The other two will be a lot later, at approximately 7:30
p.m. and 10:00 p.m. tonight.”

Schofield sighed. This wasn't good at all.

“Good work, Abby,” he said. “Good work. Thank you. If
you want something else to do, I was hoping you might like to man the
radio room while my men fix your antenna outside. Just in case
anything comes through.”

Abby nodded. “I'd like that.”

“Good,” Schofield said. Abby wanted something to do, needed
something to do. The events of the previous few hours had hit her
hard, but once she had something to occupy her, she seemed to be OK.

Schofield smiled at her and headed for the rung-ladder.

Mother was sitting on the floor with her back up against the cold ice
wall when Schofield entered the storeroom on E-deck. Her eyes were
closed. She appeared to be sleeping.

“Hey there,” she said, without opening her eyes.

Schofield smiled as he came over and crouched beside her. “How
you feeling?” he asked.

Mother still didn't open her eyes. “Methadone's
good.”

Schofield looked down at what was left of Mother's left leg. Book
had bandaged up the jagged protrusion at her knee quite well. The
bandages, however, were soaked through with blood.

“Guess I won't be playing football anymore,” Mother
said.

Schofield looked at her face, and he saw her open her eyes.

“That fucking fish took my leg,” she said indignantly.

“I noticed. Could have been worse, though.”

“Don't I know it,” Mother snorted.

Schofield laughed.

Mother looked him over as he laughed. “Scarecrow. Have I ever
told you that you are one damn fine-lookin' man?”

Schofield said, “I think that's the methadone talking.”

“I know a good man when I see one,” Mother said as she
leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes slowly.

Schofield spoke softly. “I'm not certain of many things,
Mother, but one thing I am certain of is that I am not much
to look at.”

Schofield began to think about the two scars that cut down across his
eyes and how hideous they were. People instinctively winced when they
saw them. When he was back home, he almost always wore sunglasses.

As he thought about his eyes, Schofield must have looked away from
Mother for an instant, because when he looked back at her he found
that she was staring at him. Her eyes were hard and sharp, not glazed
or drugged out. They bored right through his reflective silver
glasses.

“Any woman who won't have you 'cause of your eyes
doesn't deserve you, Scarecrow.”

Schofield said nothing. Mother let it go.

“All right, then,” she said. “Now that we got all these
pleasantries out of the way”—she raised her eyebrows
suggestively—“what brings you down to my neck of these
woods? I'm hoping it wasn't just to check up on my
health.”

“It wasn't.”

“Well... ?”

“Samurai's dead.”

“What?” Mother said seriously. “They told me he was
stable.”

“He was murdered.”

“By the French?”

“No, later. Much later. The French were all dead when he was
killed.”

“It wasn't one of their scientists?”

“Accounted for.”

Mother spoke evenly. “One of our scientists?”

“If it was, I can't figure out why,” Schofield said.

There was a short silence.

Then Mother said, “What about the one that was shut up in his
room when we got here? You know, what's-his-name. Renshaw.”

Schofield's head snapped up.

He had completely forgotten about James Renshaw. Renshaw was the
scientist Sarah Hensleigh had said had killed one of his fellow
scientists only days before the Marines had arrived at Wilkes. He was
the man the residents of Wilkes had locked inside his room on B-deck.
After Samurai's death, Schoneld hadn't even checked to see if
Renshaw was still in his room. If Renshaw had escaped, then maybe
he had ...

“Shit, I forgot all about him,” Schofield said. He quickly
eyed his helmet mike. “Book, Rebound, Snake, you out there?”

“Copy, Scarecrow,” Snake's voice replied.

“Snake, I need someone up there to go down to B-deck right away
and make sure that that guy who was shut up in his room is still
there, OK?”

“I'm on it,” Snake said.

Schofield clicked off his intercom.

Mother smiled, spread her arms wide. “Honestly, where would you
be without your Mother, Scarecrow?”

“Lost,” Schofield said.

“Don't you know it,” Mother said. “Don't you
know it.” She eyed Schofield carefully; he was staring at the
floor. What's wrong?" she said softly.

Schofield kept his head down. He shook his head slowly.

“I should have known they were soldiers, Mother. I should have
anticipated it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I should have locked them up as soon as I saw them—”

“You couldn't do that.”

“We lost three men.”

“Honey, we won.”

“We got lucky,” Schofield said seriously. “We got very,
very lucky. They'd flushed four of my men out onto that catwalk
and were about to slaughter them when they dropped into that pool.
Christ, look at what happened down in the drilling room. They had a
plan right up to the end. If Rebound hadn't caught wind
of it beforehand, they would have got us, Mother, even at the very
end. We were on the back foot the whole damn time. We didn't
even have a plan at all.”

“Scarecrow. Listen to me,” Mother said firmly. “You
wanna know something?”

“What?”

Mother said, “Did you know that about six months ago I was
offered a place in an Atlantic Recon unit?”

Schofield looked up at that. No. He hadn't known.

“I still have the letter back home if you want to see it,”
Mother said. “It's signed by the Commandant himself. You know
what I did after I got that letter, Scarecrow?”

“What?”

“I wrote back to the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps
and said thank you very much, but I would like to stay with my current
unit, under my commanding officer, Lieutenant First Class Shane M.
Schofield, USMC. I said that I could find no better unit, under no
better commander, than the one I was currently in.”

Schofield was momentarily stunned. That Mother would do such a thing
was quite incredible. To reject an offer to join an Atlantic Recon
Unit was one thing, but to politely decline the personal invitation of
the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps to join such a unit
was something else.

Mother looked Schofield squarely in the eye. "You are a great
officer, Scarecrow, a great officer. You are smart and you
are brave and you are something that is very, very rare in this world:
you are a good man.

"That's why I stayed with you. You've got a heart,
Scarecrow. You care about your men. And I'll tell you
right now, that puts you above every other commander I have ever
known. I am prepared to risk my life at your judgment because I know
that whatever the plan is, you're still worried about me.

“A lot of commanders, they're just looking for glory, looking
for a promotion. They ain't gonna care if that dumb ol' bitch
Mother gets herself killed. But you do care and I like that.
Shit, look at you now. You're beating up on yourself because we
almost got our asses capped. You are smart, Scarecrow, and
you are good, and don't you ever doubt that. Ever. You
just have to believe in yourself.”

Schofield was taken aback by the force of Mother's words. He
nodded. “I'll try.”

“Good,” Mother said, her tone now a little more upbeat.
“Now. Was there anything else you wanted to hear from 'Dear
Abby' while you were down here?”

Schofield snuffed a laugh. “No. That's it. I better get
going, check on this Renshaw guy.” He stood up and headed for the
doorway. When he reached the doorway, however, he stopped suddenly and
turned.

“Mother,” he said, “do you know anything about men
being planted in units?”

“What do you mean?”

Schofield hesitated. “When I found out Samurai had been murdered,
I remembered something that happened a couple of years ago to a friend
of mine. At the time, this friend had said something about people
planting men inside his unit.”

Mother looked hard at Schofield. She licked her lips, didn't speak
for a very long time.