Terminal Freeze (17 page)

The crowd in the Operations Center had grown even larger. The last time it had been this crowded, Marshall thought grimly, was when Wolff ordered the emergency meeting after the vault was found empty. At that meeting, there had been shock, dismay, disbelief. This time, the prevailing mood was fear. It was so strong that Marshall could almost taste its metallic bite in the air.

He stepped into the room and was at once approached by both Wolff and Kari Ekberg.

“How’s Toussaint?” Wolff asked.

“He’s half frozen, he’s suffered a broken ankle, and he’s sustained numerous nasty lacerations to the legs and arms. But he’ll survive. He’s raving-we had to sedate him heavily with some meds from the military’s stockpile. Gonzalez has rigged up temporary restraints-even with the tranquilizers, he’s been quite a handful.”

“Raving?” Wolff echoed. “What about?”

“It’s pretty incoherent. He said he was attacked in the infirmary, knocked about a lot, then dragged outside.”

“Who would have done such a thing?” breathed Ekberg.

“According to Toussaint, it’s not a who,” replied Marshall. “It’s a what.”

Wolff frowned. “That’s crazy.”

“Something hung him up like a side of beef. That hook was a good ten feet off the ground.”

“A polar bear wouldn’t do something like that,” said Wolff. “And it couldn’t move in and out of the base with impunity. The man is clearly delusional. What was he doing in the infirmary, anyway?”

“It seems he was trying to sneak a shot of Peters’s corpse.”

Wolff started. Then his face darkened. “Did he get it?”

“Hard to say. There was a camera in the infirmary-Gonzalez had his men check just now. But it was badly damaged, the video feed was blank. All you could hear was the audio, Toussaint murmuring ‘no, no, no’ over and over again.”

“Did he describe what attacked him?” Ekberg asked.

“Not in any detail.” Marshall paused, trying to recollect the frantic torrent of babbling he’d heard while stabilizing Toussaint. “Said it was huge-big as a station wagon.”

Wolff looked skeptical.

“He said it had more teeth than you could count. Not big, but sharp as razors. He said they wriggled.”

Wolff’s look of skepticism increased. “Not likely, is it?”

“I don’t know. Razors would account for all those marks on Peters’s body.” Marshall paused again. “And the eyes. He kept talking about the eyes.”

Ekberg shuddered.

“He said it sang to him,” Marshall added.

“I think I’ve heard enough.” And Wolff turned away.

“There’s something else,” Marshall called after him.

The network rep stopped without glancing back.

“Peters’s body is missing.”

Marshall and Ekberg watched Wolff exit the room. They stood for a moment in silence. People were huddled in small knots, heads together. Their tones were muted, barely whispers. In marked contrast to the rest was Davis, whose shrill complaints and expostulations had been instrumental in spreading the news in the first place. She was standing in a far corner, loudly demanding personal military protection.

Ekberg nodded toward Carradine, who was sitting in a corner by himself drinking cocoa from a Styrofoam cup. “He’s offered to take everybody back,” she said.

“You mean, back down to Yellowknife?”

“Wherever. Away from the base. He said he’d be able to fit almost everyone in Ashleigh’s trailer.”

“Might not be a bad idea-if he sticks to a safe route and doesn’t do any hotdogging.”

“Wolff overruled him. Said it was too dangerous.”

“Well, being around here is getting more dangerous by the minute.” Marshall glanced at her. “Would you leave? If Carradine got the green light, I mean.”

“Depends on what Emilio does.”

“You don’t owe him anything. Besides, now I know what you really think of him.”

“What I really think of him?”

“You didn’t exactly make a secret of it this morning.”

Ekberg smiled ruefully. “I can’t deny he’s something of an ass. But most directors I’ve worked with are. You need an inflated ego if you’re going to put your personal stamp on something as big and complex as a prime-time documentary. Besides, I didn’t just sign on with Conti-I signed on with the show. That’s how it works in this business. I’m the field producer. I stay through the final cut.”

Marshall smiled back. “You’re a brave woman.”

“Not really. Just a very ambitious one.”

Marshall became aware that somebody was standing at his elbow. Looking over, he saw Jeremy Logan watching them. He may be an academic, Marshall reflected as he nodded at him, but he’s like no professor I’ve ever known.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Logan said. “I was hoping to have a few words with Dr. Marshall.”

“Of course. I’ve got to do what I can to reassure the troops anyway. I’ll speak with you later, Evan.” And Ekberg moved away.

Marshall turned to Logan. “What’s up?”

“A great deal, it would seem. Let’s find some place a little more private. We can talk there.” And Logan motioned toward the exit.

Marshall ’s lab was just half a dozen doors from the Operations Center, but nevertheless the walk seemed to last an eternity. Marshall kept thinking about the torn, sprawled figure of Peters, the wild-eyed rantings of Toussaint. It was all he could do to resist glancing over his shoulder.

Reaching the lab, Marshall removed his MIDI keyboard from the spare chair, waved Logan to sit down, closed the door carefully behind them. Then he took a seat on the lab table.

“Private enough for you?” he asked.

Logan glanced around. “It’ll do.” He paused. “I heard what happened. How are people taking it?”

“Hit-and-miss. There’s an awful lot of fear. I’ve seen several who are pretty close to the breaking point. One of the makeup crew got hysterical and had to be sedated. If this storm doesn’t pass soon…” He shook his head. “People don’t know what to believe, don’t know what’s going on-and that’s probably the hardest thing of all.”

“I want to know what you believe. You scientists, I mean. I have a hunch you’re on to something-and I need to know what it is.”

Marshall glanced at him thoughtfully a moment. “I’ll tell you what I don’t believe. I don’t believe a human could have torn Peters apart like that. And I don’t believe a polar bear could have hung Toussaint up by his ankles.”

Logan crossed one leg over the other. “That doesn’t leave very much, does it?”

Marshall hesitated. Logan, he recalled, had already taken him into his confidence, told him why he was here, explained about the ill-fated scientific team. “Faraday has a theory,” he began after a moment.

Briefly, he sketched out what Faraday had explained to him: about the unique low-temperature melting qualities of ice-fifteen; about the possibility the creature had been flash-frozen in the ice; how there was a chance-a remote chance, but a chance nevertheless-that it had not been killed but instead placed in a form of cryogenic sleep.

Logan listened intently, and Marshall noted the historian didn’t once look skeptical. When it was over, he nodded slowly. “That’s very interesting,” he said. “But it still doesn’t answer the biggest question of all.”

“Which one is that?”

Logan leaned back in his chair. “What is it?”

“We’ve talked about that, as well. Have you heard of something called the Callisto Effect?”

Logan shook his head.

“It’s a biological theory of evolutionary turbulence. According to the theory, when species become too comfortable in their niche-when they stop evolving, or start to overburden the ecosphere-a new creature is introduced, a killing machine, to cull the population, jump-start the evolutionary process. Ecologically speaking, a perfect weapon.”

“Another fascinating theory. Except it’s hard to imagine a population explosion needing to be culled up here.”

“Don’t forget, we’re talking about the local ecology as it existed thousands of years ago-when the creature was originally frozen. And even then, given the climate, it probably wouldn’t have taken a large population to overtax such a barren habitat. But in any case the theory goes on to say that the Callisto Effect is, by and large, an evolutionary aberration. Because such a killing machine seems to be too effective. Ultimately, it becomes its own worst enemy. It kills everything-leaving itself without sustenance.”

Logan nodded again, even more slowly, as if fitting a piece into some mental puzzle he was constructing. “‘A perfect weapon,’ you called it. Interesting you should use those words, because I just came across them myself. You see, this morning I found a notebook one of the old scientists left behind. He’d hidden it away in his quarters.” And he patted his shirt pocket with a little smile.

“This morning? And you’re only telling me now?”

“I didn’t realize I had to tell you anything.”

Marshall waved his hand, conceding the point.

“The truth of the matter is, I delayed telling you because the thing is about as hard to read as the Linear A texts of Agia Triada. It’s written in code.”

Marshall frowned. “Why would the scientist do that?”

“No doubt he felt it wasn’t enough just to hide the notes, he had to encrypt them as well. This was the fifties, remember-the cold war was white-hot. People were serious about security; the fellow probably didn’t want to spend twenty years in Leavenworth. In any case, I’ve been working on decrypting it all day.”

“You’re a cryptanalyst, too?”

Logan smiled again. “It comes in very handy in my line of work.”

“And just where did you pick that up?”

“I was once employed by-how should I put it?-by the ‘intelligence services.’ In any case, I’ve had only limited success so far-words, the odd phrase here and there. It’s polyalphabetic, a variant of the Vigenère cipher, but with a nasty twist. I think he combined it with a book cipher, but of course they took all the books away when they cleared out his quarters.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a tiny notebook-battered and dusty and furred with mildew-and placed it on the lab table beside Marshall. He opened it and extracted a folded sheet of paper.

“Here’s what I’ve managed to decipher so far.” Logan unfolded the sheet and glanced over it. “A couple of the entries are quotidian, talk of poor meals and spartan accommodations and working conditions that were less than ideal-I’ll skip those. For example: ‘We’ve had to work very quickly. Unpacked sonar equipment underfoot everywhere.’ And here: ‘The secrecy makes it all so difficult. Only Rose has been briefed.’”

“Rose?” Marshall repeated.

“He was the officer in charge of Fear Base at the time, remember?” Logan scanned down the sheet. “Here we go: ‘It is hor rifying. Wonderful, but horrifying. It truly is the perfect weapon-assuming we can harness its power. That will be’-two words I haven’t yet deciphered-‘challenge.’ Toward the end, the writing gets more rapid, agitated: ‘It killed Blayne. God, it was awful, so much blood…’ And then there’s one other that I haven’t gotten quite right: ‘The Tunits have the answer.’ ‘Tunit’ is clearly a garble of some kind, I have to work some more on that.”

“It’s not garbled. The Tunits are the local Native Americans.”

Logan looked up quickly from the sheet. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. They came here to see us, just after we made the discovery in the ice cave. Warned us to leave in no uncertain terms.”

Logan ’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve never heard of the Tunits. And I know a lot of Alaskan tribes. Inuit, Aleut, Ahtena, Ingalik-”

“They basically went extinct a thousand years ago, when their lands were overtaken and they were turned out into the wilderness. Over the years, those few that remained either died off or were absorbed into the mainstream population. I’m told this is the last remaining camp.”

Logan chuckled. “I knew coming to you wasn’t a mistake. Do you see what this means?” And he slapped the sheet of paper. “This might be the answer we’ve been looking for.”

“You think there’s a connection between the dead scientists and what’s been attacking this base? There can’t be. That creature we discovered has been frozen-under a glacier-for more than a thousand years. The evidence of that is absolutely incontrovertible.”

“I realize that. But I don’t believe in coincidence.” Logan paused. “There’s only one way to find out.”

For a long moment, Marshall did not reply. Then he slowly nodded. “I’ll take the Sno-Cat,” he said. “It’s the only way to get through this blizzard.”

“You can drive one?”

“Sure.”

“Do you know where the Tunit settlement is?”

“I know the rough location. It’s not far, maybe thirty miles to the north.”

Logan folded the sheet, slipped it back into the small journal, and returned them to his pocket. “I’ll come along.”

Marshall shook his head. “It’s better if I go alone. The Indians strongly disapprove of our presence here. They’re suspicious. The fewer who go, the better.”

“It isn’t safe. If you get injured, there will be no one to help.”

“There’s got to be a radio in the Cat. I’ll be careful. At least the Tunits have met me before. They don’t know you. Your time would be better spent here, bringing my colleagues up to speed.”

“The powers that be may take a dim view of your appropriating the Sno-Cat.”

“That’s why we won’t tell them. I’ll be as quick as I can. I doubt they’ll even notice, under the circumstances.”

Logan frowned. “You realize, of course, it’s possible the Indians are responsible for what’s been going on. You said it yourself: they don’t want us here. You could be walking right into a trap.”

“That’s true. But if they can shed any light on what’s happening-any at all-it’s worth the risk.”

Logan shrugged. “I guess I’ve run out of objections.”

Marshall stood up. “Then come and see me off.” And he nodded toward the door.

It seemed that Conti spoke up almost before Fortnum knocked on the door. “Come in.”

The cinematographer stepped inside and closed the door softly behind him. Conti was on the far side of the room, in the makeshift screening area, absorbed by a video playing on his huge LCD screen. The image was choppy and scratchy, but nevertheless instantly recognizable: the Hindenburg, afire and crumpling to the ground at Lakehurst Naval Air Station.

“Ah, Allan,” the director said. “Have a seat.”

Fortnum walked over and settled into one of the comfortable armchairs before the screen. “How’s Ken?”

Conti tented his fingers together. He was still staring at the screen. “I’m sure he’ll be just fine.”

“That’s not what I heard. He’s out of his mind.”

“Temporary. He’s had a bad shock. And that’s what I wanted to speak with you about.” Conti pulled himself away from the newsreel footage long enough to look at Fortnum. “How are you coming?”

Fortnum had assumed Conti summoned him to discuss Toussaint’s condition. Instead, it seemed the director wanted to talk business. He told himself he shouldn’t be surprised: with high-powered directors like Conti, business always came first. “I’ve got half a dozen decent reaction shots to Peters’s killing. I’m rendering them now.”

“Good, good. That’s an excellent start.”

Start? Fortnum was under the impression these were wrap shots: the rather distasteful final footage for a documentary about a documentary-a study of a project that had gone tragically wrong.

The image on the screen faded to black. Conti picked up a remote, pressed a button, and the newsreel began again: the Hindenburg gliding serenely in toward its berth, a huge silver cigar floating over the grassy fields of New Jersey. Suddenly, flames shot from its underside. Dark palls of smoke began roiling skyward. The zeppelin slowed; hung in the air for a horrible moment; then began sinking to the ground, fire devouring its skin, exposing wide black ribs one after another.

Conti gestured toward the screen. “Look at that. The framing’s horrible, the camera movement’s choppy. It’s completely lacking in mise-en-scène. And yet it’s probably the most imperishable image ever captured on celluloid. Does that seem fair?”

“I don’t think I follow you,” Fortnum replied.

Conti waved a hand. “Here we are, year in and year out, refining our technique, creating ever more subtle and beautiful shots, worrying endlessly about three-point lighting and non-diegetic inserts and eyeline matches. And to what end? Somebody with a box camera just happens to be in the right place at the right time-and in five minutes shoots something more famous than all of our carefully orchestrated hours of film put together.”

Fortnum shrugged. “That’s just the way it goes.”

“Not necessarily.” Conti fiddled with the remote.

“I still don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“It’s just that-this one time-maybe fate has put someone with the skills and the tools in the right place.”

Fortnum frowned. “You’re talking about whatever mauled Josh Peters. The thing Ken was raving about.”

Conti nodded slowly.

“Are you buying into that? You don’t believe it was sabotage anymore?”

“Let’s say I’m keeping my options open. And if there’s an opportunity here, I plan to seize it. We’d be fools not to.”

Fortnum paused. He couldn’t be talking about…No, of course not. Not even Conti is cold-blooded enough for that.

The film ended and Conti started it yet again with a flick of the remote. “Allan, let me ask you a question. Why do you think the Hindenburg footage is so famous?”

Fortnum thought. “It was a huge tragedy. You don’t often get to see that.”

“Precisely. And you phrase it exactly right: one doesn’t often get to see it. Did anyone capture the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre on film? No. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire? No. If somebody had, would those be just as iconic today as the Hindenburg film? Probably.” Conti turned to look at him, and Fortnum-with a growing sense of dismay-saw the director’s eyes were alive with excitement. “And the real tragedy is that the few films we have of such disasters are crude and unsophisticated. We’ve been given a chance to change that. Now do you understand what I mean by opportunity?”

Fortnum could barely believe what he was hearing. His worst fears about Conti’s motivations and intentions were proving true. “You expect me to catch this thing-whatever it is-in the act of killing somebody? Try to get it on film? Is that it?”

Instead of answering directly, Conti looked back at the screen. “You know what the most popular videos on YouTube are? Animal maulings. And the documentary with the best Nielsen numbers last year? When Sharks Attack. People have this primitive urge to see others die. I can’t explain it. Maybe it’s some reflexive form of schadenfreude. Maybe it’s a primitive fight-or-flight instinct, something programmed into our amygdala. But we’ve been given a chance here, a chance filmmakers rarely get: we’re present at a moment of real crisis. Is this what we came here for? No. Did we plan it this way? Of course not. But we owe it to ourselves, to the network-to posterity-to document it.”

Fortnum stood up. “So you want me not only to expose myself to extreme risk but to actually film the creature in the act of mauling our crew. Film it, instead of doing all I can to save lives.”

“Who knows? There may be no more attacks. There may not even be an animal. The storm may clear prematurely, and we’ll be out of here tomorrow. But we need to be prepared, Allan-just in case.”

Fortnum felt his shock and disbelief giving way to anger. “Why was Ken Toussaint’s camera found in the infirmary, not ten yards from where Peters’s body was stowed? That was the assignment you gave him back in the entrance plaza, wasn’t it: to film Josh’s torn-apart corpse.”

“A shame the video feed was destroyed.” Conti’s eyes turned back to the screen, where once again the great dirigible was sinking to the ground in a slow, strangely formal gesture, engulfed in flames and smoke. “Primitive,” he murmured. “Amateurish. But not this time. I plan to take this documentary-this autobiography-and immortalize the unfolding tragedy on film. A crisis as memorable, in its way, as the Hindenburg…yet, this time, it will be art.”

“Mining Peters’s death for reaction shots was bad enough. But this…” Fortnum stiffened. “I won’t have any part of it. And I think you’re a monster for even suggesting such a vile thing.”

It took Conti a moment to tear his eyes from the screen and look at Fortnum. “You’re working for me,” he said. “If you don’t have what it takes to do this, you’re not fit to be a documentary cinematographer. I’ll see to it that you’re finished in the business.”

“Somehow,” Fortnum replied, “I think one or the other of us already is.” And he turned on his heel and strode out of the room without another word.