Terminal Freeze (10 page)

“Hell, this isn’t cold. Come on, let’s get us a pair of front-row seats.” And the man grabbed two wooden packing crates, set them down in the snow, sat on one, and gestured Marshall toward the other with a flourish.

There was a final commotion by the security checkpoint; the lights came up, Ekberg gave the teleprompter a dry run; the sound check was wrapped; Davis ’s nose was given a last powdering before she shooed the makeup girl away with a curse. Then there was the snap of a clapstick; Conti cried “Action!” and the cameras rolled. Instantly, the fretful scowl left Davis ’s face, replaced by a dazzling smile, her expression somehow becoming excited and dramatic and alluring all at the same time.

“It’s almost time now,” she said breathlessly to the cameras, just as if she’d been with them in the trenches for the last week. “In less than twenty-four hours the vault will be opened, the primordial mystery will be solved. And as if nature itself understands the gravity of this moment, we’ve been treated to a most unusual display of northern lights that is second to none in its allure and grandeur…”

Even though Fear Base turned relatively quiet-everyone abed in expectation of a busy tomorrow- Marshall as usual spent a restless night, tossing in his spartan bunk. Try as he might, he could not get comfortable. Pulling up the sheets made him too warm; throwing them aside chilled him. Now and then, the muscles of his arms and legs tensed spasmodically, as if unable to relax, and he could not escape the feeling that-despite all evidence to the contrary-something was quite wrong.

Finally, he sank into a half doze in which a succession of disturbing images moved slowly across the field of his inner vision. He was out walking the permafrost, alone, beneath the strange and angry northern lights. In his mind, they were lower than ever in the sky, so low they seemed to press down upon his shoulders. He stared at them in mingled awe and unease as he walked. And then he stopped, frowning in surprise. Ahead of him, on the torn and frozen ground, the lights actually met the land, viscous driblets flowing like wax from a tilted candle. As he stared, the forms grew larger, took shape, solidified. Legs and arms appeared. There was a moment of dreadful stasis. Then they began approaching him-slowly at first, then more quickly. There was something horrible about the way they came, their bodies alternately bulging and ebbing; something horrible about the evident hunger with which they stretched out their splayed hands toward him. He turned to run but found, with that horrible creeping paralysis of a nightmare, that his leaden feet were so terribly slow to move…

Marshall sat up with a start. He was sweating and the covers were twisted around him like the winding-sheet of a corpse. He stared left and right, wide-eyed in the darkness, waiting for his breathing to slow, for the vestiges of the dream to fade.

After a minute, he glanced at his watch: quarter to five. “Shit,” he murmured, sinking back onto the damp pillow.

There would be no more sleep-not tonight. He sat up again, then stood, quickly dressed in the gloom of his bunk, and slipped out into the corridor.

The base was so quiet it reminded him of the first nights he’d spent here, when the labyrinthine corridors and the long-abandoned spaces seemed to overwhelm the tiny band of scientists. His footsteps rang on the steel floor and he felt the ridiculous urge to tiptoe. Leaving the dormitory section, he walked past the labs, the mess, the kitchen, then turned down a corridor into an area of the base they’d never used: a warren of equipment rooms and monitoring posts. He paused. In the distance, he could just make out the faintest strains of music: someone’s CD player, he assumed; there were very few radio stations within five hundred miles, and even those tended to concern themselves with the price of diesel oil and the state of the annual moose rut.

Hands in pockets, he wandered deeper into the maze of listening posts. Try as he might, he couldn’t seem to shake an oppressive sense of foreboding. If anything, it seemed to increase: a perverse conviction-given the excitement of the coming day-that something terrible was going to happen.

He paused again. The claustrophobic base, shrouded in watchful silence, just exacerbated his gloom. On impulse, he turned, threaded his way back, climbed a stairway to the topmost level. He walked to the entrance plaza, walked by the sentry post, then passed through the staging area, donning his parka as he did so. It was only eight hours since he’d last been out, but in his current frame of mind nothing was going to keep him inside this shadow-haunted base another minute. Grabbing a flashlight and zipping the parka, he opened the outer doors and stepped outside.

He noticed with surprise that the display of northern lights had grown even more intense: a deep, unguent red, throbbing and pulsating. It transformed the entire apron-with its temporary shacks and Quonset huts, tents and supply caches-into a monochromatic, otherworldly landscape. He put the flashlight in a pocket. The wind had picked up sharply, worrying at loose tarps and indifferently tied ropes, but even it could not explain the eerie cracklings and moanings he could have sworn came from the lights themselves.

There was something else that seemed odd, but it took him a moment to realize what it was. The wind was almost warm on his cheek. It felt as if a false spring had abruptly come to the Zone. He unzipped his parka slowly; he should have checked the thermometer on the way out.

He moved through the low structures, half of them backlit blood red, the other half sunken into shadow. As he did so, a low creak sounded from the small forest of outbuildings ahead.

He paused in the crimson half-light. Was somebody out here with him?

Everybody-scientists, documentary crew, and the mysterious new arrival, Logan -were bunking inside the base. The only exceptions were Davis, in her mega-trailer, and Carradine, the trucker. He glanced in the direction of Davis ’s trailer: it was dark, all lights out.

“Carradine?” he called softly.

The creaking noise came again.

Marshall took a step forward, emerging from between two supply tents. Now the bulk of Carradine’s semi came into view. He glanced toward the rear of the cab, where the “sleeper” was. Its windows were dark, as well.

He remained still, listening intently. He heard the mournful howl of the wind, the low rumble of the diesels in the powerhouse, the purr of the backup generator affixed to Davis’s trailer, and-now and then-the eerie murmurings and moanings that appeared to come from the northern lights themselves. But that was all.

He shook his head, smiling despite himself. Here he was, on the eve of what promised to be one of the most memorable days of his life…and he was working himself into a lather over a bad dream. He’d walk to the perimeter fence, take a turn along its length, then head back to his lab. Even if he couldn’t put in useful work, at least he’d try. He squared his shoulders, took another step forward.

The creak came again. And from where he now stood, Marshall got a bearing. It was coming from the direction of the vault.

He moved toward it slowly. The vault stood alone, one wall haloed in the unnatural light, the rest in darkness. Even without his flashlight, Marshall could make out the sheen of water beneath it: clearly, the automated thawing process was well under way. Tomorrow this steel container-and its contents-would be the star of the show. Tugging the flashlight from his pocket, Marshall aimed it at the silver structure.

Then he heard the creak yet again, louder. Armed with the flashlight, Marshall identified its source: a piece of lumber, hanging down loosely into the three-foot crawl space beneath the vault.

Marshall frowned.
Shoddy workmanship,
he thought.
That’ll have to be taken care of before Conti and his variety show go live.
Or perhaps something had simply broken loose from the structure. It was swaying in the wind, just above the dirty puddle of meltwater…

But there was something else wrong here. It wasn’t so much a puddle he was looking at but a lake. A lake full of chunks of dirty ice.

He moved closer, crouched, shone his light at the pool of meltwater. Frowning, he raised the beam to the loose piece of lumber. It creaked again as the wind played with it, the lower end badly splintered. Slowly, he let the flashlight beam travel up the lumber to the vault’s underside.

A hole-large, circular, and rough-had been cut into the wooden floor. And even in the shifting beam of his flashlight, Marshall could clearly see that the vault was empty.

In thirty minutes, somnolent Fear Base was completely awake. Now, Marshall -along with practically every other person on-site-sat in ancient folding chairs in the Operations Center on B Level. It was the only room large enough to hold so many people. He looked around at the assembled faces. Some, like Sully and Ekberg, seemed stunned. Others were openly red-eyed. Fortnum, the DP, sat with his head bowed, hands alternately clenching and unclenching.

They had assembled at the request of Wolff, the channel rep. Actually, Marshall reflected, it hadn’t really sounded like a request. It was more like an order.

When first confronted with the news, Emilio Conti had been dazed, almost paralyzed, by the sudden turn of fortune. But now, as Marshall watched the director move back and forth before the rough semicircle of chairs, he saw a different emotion on the small man’s face-desperate rage.

“First,” Conti snapped as he paced, “the facts. Sometime between midnight and five, the vault was broken into and the
asset
”-he bit the word off-“was removed. Stolen. Dr. Marshall here made the discovery.” Conti glanced toward him briefly, his black eyes glittering with mistrust. “I’ve spoken with the management at Terra Prime and Blackpool. Under the circumstances, they have no choice: tonight’s live feed has been canceled. A rerun of
From Fatal Seas
will be aired instead.” He almost spat out the words. “They will be refunding $12 million in advertising guarantees to their sponsors. That is
in addition
to the $8 million they spent to make all this possible.”

He stopped for a moment, glared at the assembly, then continued his pacing. “Those are the facts. Next: conjecture. There’s a mole among us. Someone in the pay of a rival network. Or perhaps someone working for a ‘handler’-a dealer in exotic goods with connections to museums or wealthy collectors overseas.”

Beside Marshall, Penny Barbour scoffed under her breath. “Bloody daft,” she murmured.

“Daft?” Conti rounded on her. “It’s happened before. This isn’t just an artifact-it’s a commodity.”

“A commodity?” Barbour said. “What are you talking about?”

“We’re talking about a commodity.” It was Wolff who answered. The network liaison was standing in the back of the room beside Sergeant Gonzalez, arms crossed, a plastic swizzle stick in his mouth. “More than just an evening’s entertainment. An indefinitely exploitable network resource. Something that could be repurposed many times-touring on exhibition to museums, loaned to universities and research institutions, used in follow-up broadcasts. Maybe even a future icon for the network. Or-perhaps-its mascot.”

Mascot,
Marshall thought to himself. Until now, he’d had no idea just how ambitious Blackpool ’s plans for their frozen cat had been.

As Wolff stepped to the front, Conti stopped pacing and joined him. “As a network, Terra Prime is part of a very small community,” Wolff went on. “Despite the pains we took to keep things quiet, we knew word of this project might leak out. But we were confident that our vetting process would weed out anyone not one hundred percent reliable.” He raised a hand to his lips, plucked out the swizzle stick. “Apparently our confidence was misplaced.”

Marshall noticed most of the network staff was listening, heads bowed. Only his fellow scientists seemed surprised by this cloak-and-dagger talk.

“What are you saying, exactly?” Sully asked.

“Just a moment.” Wolff turned to the sergeant. “Is the head count finished?”

Gonzalez nodded.

“Anyone unaccounted for?”

“Just one. That new arrival, Dr. Logan. My men are looking for him now.”

“Everybody else? Network and expedition crew?”

“They’re all here.”

Only then did Wolff glance back at Sully. “I’m saying we have reason to believe that someone at this base was paid to appropriate the specimen for a third party. Either arrangements were made before our arrival, or contact was established at some later point. We will be reviewing all communications in and out of Fear Base over the last seventy-two hours to learn more.”

“I thought you had all this under tight control,” Marshall said. “The thawing process, the security, everything. Just how was this pulled off?”

“We don’t know that yet,” Wolff replied. “It would appear the thawing was hastened-obviously by whoever appropriated the carcass. It was a fully automated process, there was a backup generator-nothing could have gone wrong without external manipulation. We’ve checked outside the perimeter fence. There is no sign of a plane either arriving or leaving in the night. That means the asset is still here.”

“What about footprints?” somebody piped up. “Can’t you track those?”

“Around the vault, where the ice thawed, the ground has been churned up by so many prints it’s impossible,” said Wolff. “Beyond that, the permafrost is too hard for prints to leave an impression.”

“If somebody stole it, why didn’t they take off in the Sno-Cat?” Marshall asked. “You keep the keys up in the weather chamber; anybody could grab it.”

“Too conspicuous. And too slow. The thief would use a plane.” Conti looked around. “We’ll be checking everyone’s belongings. Everyone’s quarters. Everything.”

Wolff rested his oddly expressionless eyes on Gonzalez. “You have the schematics for Fear Base, Sergeant?”

“For the central and southern wings, yes.”

“What about the third wing, the northern wing?”

“That is off-limits and tightly locked.”

“There’s no way somebody could get in?”

“Absolutely not.”

Wolff remained silent a moment, staring at the sergeant as if a new thought had just occurred to him. “Bring me what you can, please.” He looked around the room. “Once this meeting is over, I want everyone to return to their quarters. We’ll try to conduct the search as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, be watchful. If you see anything suspicious-any activity, conversation, transmission,
anything
-come to me.”

Marshall looked from Wolff, to Conti, and back again. He wasn’t sure which surprised him more: the inherent assumption of treachery, or the speed with which Wolff was moving to address it.

Ashleigh Davis had been sitting disconsolately in a front-row seat, one leg crossed over the other at a sharp angle. She wore a rich silk nightgown beneath the fur coat, and her long blond hair was tousled. “Have fun playing policeman,” she said. “Meanwhile, Emilio, will you please arrange for me to fly back to New York right away? If this tiger thing has fallen through, I still have a chance to cover that special about coral bleaching on the Great Barnacle Reef.”

“Barrier,” Marshall said.

Davis looked at him.

“ Great Barrier Reef.”

“I’ve got someone working on transportation,” Wolff said, with a warning glance at Marshall. “By the way, Ms. Davis, you and Mister…ah, Carradine were the two closest to the vault last night. Did you hear anything, or see anything, unusual?”

“Nothing,” Davis replied, seemingly annoyed at being mentioned in the same breath with the trucker.

“And you?” Wolff glanced at Carradine. The trucker, his seat tilted backward at a dangerous angle, merely shrugged.

“I’d like to speak with the two of you once this meeting ends.” Wolff looked at Marshall. “You too.”

“Why me?” Marshall asked.

“You’re the one who reported the theft,” Wolff replied, as if this act alone established him as a prime suspect.

“Just a minute,” Sully broke in. “What about this new arrival, this Dr. Logan? Why isn’t he here?”

“We’ll be looking into that.”

“It’s one thing to toss orders around, confine everyone to their bunks. But it’s another to start questioning my staff without my authorization.”

“Your
staff
”-Wolff shot back-“will be the first to be questioned. Your people are the only ones here not cleared in advance for this network operation.”

“ Logan isn’t cleared, is he? Besides, what does clearance have to do with anything?” Apparently the abrupt loss of any chance for television immortality-along with this bureaucrat encroaching on his bit of turf-had reawakened Sully’s professional territoriality.

“It is plenty to do with it,” Wolff replied. “The magnitude of this prize-not only in terms of science but in terms of scientific careers.”

Sully opened his mouth, then closed it again. His face turned beet red.

“I think that covers everything.” Wolff glanced at Conti. “Care to add anything?”

“Just this,” the producer said. “Twenty minutes ago, I got off the phone with the president of Blackpool Entertainment Group. It was one of the more unpleasant conversations of my life.” He scoured the room with his glance. “I’m speaking now to the person or persons who did this. You know who you are. Blackpool considers the value of this find to be incalculable, and is therefore considering its disappearance a gross criminal act.”

He paused once again. “This theft is not, I repeat,
not,
going down as a black mark on my oeuvre. The asset is here, and you won’t have a chance to get away with it. We will
find
it, we will
re-task
our documentary, and we will emerge with an
even greater
work of art.”