Zodiac Station (41 page)

He picked up a remote. He must have indexed the video; in a few seconds, he’d jumped to a different scene. The camera slightly straighter, the Platform intact. I could make out a cluster of snowmobiles in the foreground, a few of the huts further back. The time-stamp in the corner of the screen said 21:57.

Pharaoh restarted the video. After a second, two figures came into view from behind the Platform and headed towards the snowmobile park. Too far and indistinct to make out, but they must be me and Greta.

Greta
. Even as a few distant pixels, it hurt to see her there. As we reached the snowmobiles, a third figure stood up among them. He’d been there all along, though I hadn’t noticed him. Quam. I watched us chat for a couple of minutes, then Greta and I walked away. Quam went back to fiddling with the snowmobiles. After another few minutes, I saw a blob that must have been the Sno-Cat crawling up the Lucia glacier in the background.

Pharaoh hit the fast-forward button. The Sno-Cat climbed comically fast, up over the top of the glacier and out of sight.

And then it happened. The centre of the screen flared into a white starburst where the explosion overwhelmed the sensor, smoke leaking from its edges. A second later, the whole picture shook as the shock wave reached the camera and knocked it askew. More explosions, more starbursts. Smoking pieces of metal flew in every direction, cartwheeling over the snow. The Platform’s legs buckled, and the whole rear end collapsed in an eruption of flames and smoke.

‘How …?’

Pharaoh rewound the last few seconds and played it again at normal speed. The doomed Platform reassembled itself; the Sno-Cat hurried backwards down the glacier, reversed, and crawled back up and over the top. Quam came out from behind a hut and walked slowly towards the back of the Platform, under the mess windows. I thought of the others, all the Zodiac staff enjoying Thing Night.

Quam fiddled with something, then extended his right arm, pointing at something in the space. The arm looked wrong, too long for his body, but that was because he was holding something. A flare gun.

The camera was too far away to see him pull the trigger. Just the faintest flash, before the Platform exploded and engulfed Quam. It went up so fast, he must have packed oil drums or something underneath.

I rounded on Pharaoh. ‘Is this something to do with you?’

One look at his face quashed that idea. He looked as if he’d been punched in the stomach.

I’m in the business of improving life, not ending it.
I turned to the creature. ‘You?’

The creature shook his head. Unlike the rest of us, he seemed immune to what we’d just played back. Wasn’t even looking at the screen, but staring at one of the Hockneys as if thinking about something completely different. Perhaps he couldn’t comprehend tragedy.

‘I don’t care what you’ve done,’ I told Pharaoh. ‘We need to get back there. If there are survivors …’

‘Of course.’ Pharaoh was still staring at the screen, hypnotised by the carnage. Beside him, Louise looked sick. She slipped her hand into his.

‘Let’s go.’

Anderson’s Journal

My coat and trousers were hung on a hook in the stairwell, mostly dry, though the coat zipper was still broken. I Velcroed it shut the best I could. The hard edges of the notebook in the inside pocket pressed against my chest.

I noticed again the DAR-X logo stencilled on the creature’s jacket. ‘Where did he get that? Another “overreaction”?’

A tight look from Pharaoh told me I was on the money. ‘An unfortunate encounter last September.’

They suited up, and led me down a long corridor lined with corrugated plastic to a heavy door in a concrete wall. Pharaoh unlocked it, stepped through some small sort of vestibule that smelled of sawdust, and out through another door. Daylight hit me, and I wondered what time it was. How many hours had passed in the tunnels, in the mine, listening to Pharaoh speak? It must be at least mid-morning. I’d gone through the night without sleep or food, and I felt it. I found my sunglasses in my coat pocket and put them on.

We were at the top of a narrow mountain valley, looking down at a cluster of tin-roofed buildings joined together by chutes and covered walkways.

‘Vitangelsk?’ I guessed. I’d only ever seen it on the map.

‘Mine Eight.’

We skidded down the slope, following soft tracks in the snow. At the bottom of the complex we came to a large building jacked up on stilts. It seemed to be the terminus for some sort of cable car or chairlift. In the space underneath, hidden behind sheets of rusting corrugated iron, Pharaoh pulled tarpaulins off two gleaming snowmobiles.

‘Get on.’

All I remember about the ride is the cold. No spare helmet or goggles – they never expected guests – so I had to keep my head down and clench my eyes shut. With the zip broken, I could only Velcro my jacket shut and keep close to Pharaoh. He kept his rifle in a sort of holster attached to the saddle – I could probably have reached it, if I’d wanted. But what would have been the point? We were beyond that.

Any hope that the video might have been a fake, some warped practical joke, died ten miles from Zodiac. Pharaoh paused at the top of a rise; I opened my eyes, and saw a column of oily smoke polluting the sky. We went on; the wind cut my eyes and made me weep, but I couldn’t stop looking at it. Wishing it would disappear.

We came down the Lucia glacier and saw the whole horror show. The Platform had blown open like a ruptured artery; several of the nearby huts had burned, and some of the further ones had been torn apart by shrapnel. You could see bare rock where the fire had melted away the ice around the Platform. The snow that survived was black and cratered with wreckage.

No chance to get into the Platform. Fires still burned inside; even as we dismounted the snowmobiles, another strut gave out and collapsed in a shower of sparks and screaming metal. We could feel the heat twenty metres away. No one could have survived.

Louise voiced the obvious question. ‘
Why?
’

I thought of the video, Quam taking the gun from his holster and calmly putting a flare into a pile of high explosives and oil drums. I remembered that night I met him in the corridor, the dead look in his eyes.
This island’s trying to kill us.
Was it the pressure that had got to him? The endless funding threats; the egos and the sniping; something in his personal life?

I think it was this place. Surrounded by nothing, his mind had expanded so fast it shattered, like brittle ice drawn from a deep hole.

We wandered around the base, opening doors and checking the cabooses for survivors.
If only
, I kept saying to myself. If only Greta and I had stopped Quam when we had the chance. If only we’d guessed. If we hadn’t rushed off to the Helbreen.

If we hadn’t gone to the Helbreen, we’d have been on the Platform and we’d be dead. That’s the truth.

The mag hut was far enough from the Platform that it had survived unscathed. I drifted towards it and peered in the door. The machines had stopped. All I smelled inside was dust and darkness.

But there was something else. A sound, a shadow, a sense of movement at the back of the room. It was too dark to see. I took off my sunglasses, but the contrast was so stark it made no difference. Could there be survivors? And if there were, did I want to give them away to Pharaoh? I hesitated on the threshold.

A shout spun me back around. Fifty metres away, Fridge stood in the open doorway of Star Command. His hair was wild and burnt away in patches; smoke smudged his cheeks. He leaned on a ski pole, but the pole was too short for his height so he listed like a drunk. His right leg hung bent at a painfully unnatural angle. I couldn’t understand what he was shouting.

I still don’t know if I heard the shot. If I did, I thought it was just another pop from the burning Platform. I’d started to run to Fridge. He’d seen me and turned, dragging himself towards me, still shouting. Then he suddenly fell backwards. I thought he’d dropped his stick, or skidded on a patch of ice. It was only when I knelt beside him that I saw the hole in his jacket. Round as a ten-pence piece, straight over the heart, blood pumping out through the hole.

I took off my hat and pressed it over the hole, trying to staunch the bleeding. It wouldn’t work. I tried anyway. Holding it in place, I looked up. The creature stood about ten metres away, rifle in hand. No emotion on his face.

‘What have you done?’

Pharaoh looked as stricken as me. He ran over and grabbed the gun by its barrel, twisting it out of the creature’s hands. He must have let it go. Pharaoh threw the gun on to the snow and stared up at his creation. There were tears in his eyes. They rolled down his cheeks and froze in his beard.

‘What have you done?’ he repeated.

Overshadowed by the creature, Pharaoh didn’t look like the unstoppable tyrant I’d always known. He’d grown small, an old man whom time had caught up.

‘Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mould me man?’ said the creature.

Pharaoh squinted up at him. ‘What?’

He said it again. Shreds of black smoke blew around his face.

‘Where did you learn that?’

‘Careful.’ Louise had backed away. I didn’t know who she was speaking to. ‘Don’t do anything—’

My hat was soaked through. I pulled off my neck-warmer and laid it on top. A drop of blood squeezed out from the hat and trickled down on to the Zodiac badge.

‘I made you,’ Pharaoh said. A trace of the old arrogance, holding out against a changing tide. ‘You owe me everything. Every cell in your being.’

‘And you? Does a father owe his son nothing, except the fact of his existence?’

Pharaoh took a step back. ‘I’m not your father, Thomas.’

‘What, then? A god?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Why are you talking like this?’ said Louise.

‘My master? Am I your slave?’

‘Of course not. You’re—’

Whatever life might be, it goes in an instant. One moment, Pharaoh was living, a being of infinite capacities. The next – nothing. Those big, disproportionate arms he’d created reached out and clutched him in an embrace. One arm went around his head, the other held his shoulders fast. Almost as if he was trying to comfort him.

One arm moved; the other didn’t. The neck cracked. Pharaoh slumped to the ground.

Louise screamed. I was too far away. Thomas picked up the rifle where Pharaoh had thrown it, aimed and fired. Blood sprayed from her neck and fell on the snow like rain as she twisted away and fell hard. Her body jerked as a second shot went into her.

I moved towards her, but a hand on my shoulder spun me back. He held me there, his fingers digging into my collarbone.

‘Come with me.’

Anderson’s Journal

I struggled, of course, but I hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten in hours, and he had the strength of the damned. It wasn’t a fair fight. When I was down, he pulled open my jacket to take it off me – that really would have been the end. Then he saw the broken zip and thought better of it. He stuffed me in a sleeping bag, wound it up with rope, and tied me on the sled behind the snowmobile, packed in with the survival gear.

Strapped down, I could only twist my head and watch as he carried the bodies to the gulch and dropped them in. Pharaoh, Louise, Fridge; one, two, three. When he came to Fridge, the creature stripped off his yellow coat and put on Fridge’s red Zodiac jacket. Fridge was big enough it just about fitted him.

He walked past and disappeared from my field of vision. The sledge rocked as he mounted the snowmobile. The engine coughed into life; I gagged as exhaust fumes blew over my face.

The smoking hulk of Zodiac Station slid by out of sight. I felt a see-saw bump as we crossed the shoreline. Then we headed out on to the ice.

I can’t write much about the journey. While it was happening, it felt like one long moment stretching for eternity – and then when we stopped it seemed to have gone in a flash. Hours, I don’t know how many, navigating the sea ice: bouncing over cracks and ridges, backing up when an obstacle blocked our way, trying again. Once I opened my eyes and saw dark water rushing beside us, as if we were taking a scenic drive along a lake. The snowmobile heeled over on the slope, and for a terrifying second I thought we’d tumble in. Mostly, I kept my eyes shut, my head burrowed in the sleeping bag to keep off the wind and the fumes. Pressing myself flat against the sledge to minimise myself. Dematerialise. Bumping and jarring as the sledge whiplashed on the rugged ice. The knots that seemed so tight weren’t tight enough to stop me bouncing, bruising me deep into my bones. I waited for us to drop off the edge of the world.

And then we stopped. It felt sudden, though everything feels sudden when you have no control. The engine cut out and the silence hit me like a brick. Just wind and whiteness.

He dismounted, opened the engine cover and fiddled with the drive belt, the same way I’d seen Greta do it when we’d towed Hagger’s snowmobile home. Then he went round to the back and pushed. The machine slid obediently over the snow, towards a break in the ice a few metres away. It splashed into the water, breaking the sugary crust that had already begun to form, and sank. Was I next?

He unloaded the sledge. The skis, the stove, the ration box and the tent. A strange replay of that first night with Greta, when we’d camped out and been found by DAR-X.
Except
tonight, the role of Martin Hagger (deceased) will be played by Thomas Anderson.
The first of that name.

He put up the tent. He unstrapped me and carried me inside, like a bear bringing his meal back to the cave. I rubbed my arms inside the sleeping bag to get blood back where the cords had numbed them, while he melted ice over the stove. He thrust the metal cup against my lips, his clumsy hands spilling it over my face. The water was so hot I choked, but I forced it down. I had to get my strength back. The snowmobile was gone. The nearest settlement was probably Svalbard – or maybe Nord Station, on the tip of Greenland. Hundreds of kilometres.