"I thought the whole point was to work together," Abby said. "We're a team. That's what makes the Pole work, our working together."
"Or not work when you have a malcontent. Then it boils down to leadership. I was hoping Rod would come to terms with the need for leadership, or at least I was observing his struggle, and then…"
There was quiet, everyone thinking about the murder.
"You did the right thing to get rid of Buck," Dana finally said. There. It was out in the open. She'd said what everyone knew.
Norse's mouth twisted wryly, not trying to deny it. "He had a knife but… I just gave him a choice and he got rid of himself. It's not a light thing, you know. More like banishment in the Middle Ages. Back then everything was kin and clan. Being forced out was being forced into poverty. No family, no land, no equivalent of social security to take you into whatever old age you could manage. Exile was a kind of death sentence. Down here, with our feudal cluster of bases, maybe it's not so different."
"Don't be so grim, Doc," Pulaski said. "The research stations help each other, they don't besiege each other. Tyson will survive if he can make it. I'm not sure the bastard deserves to survive."
"That is the question, yes?" said Molotov. "Will he make it?"
"No, the real question is how we're going to celebrate his leaving," said Geller. "I propose a thank-God-I'm-still-here dinner and a polar cocktail contest."
"Here, here," Dana said.
"The pig!" Pulaski suggested.
"The what?" Calhoun asked.
"I had one shipped down for our winter solstice party. I'm thinking maybe we need it now. You know, Hawaiian luau? What do you think, Doc? Good for morale?"
"Good for my morale."
"Yes, bring on the mai tais!" Dana said. "And an initiation session into the Three Hundred Degree Club!"
"Is it cold enough?" Geller asked.
"Didn't you feel it this morning?" she asked. "Breathing out there was like drinking Dr no."
"The temperature's getting down there," the cook agreed. "We'll have to get an official reading from Lewis out in Clean Air. Assuming he gives us the time of day. That fingie has been treated pretty rough."
Norse looked at the New Zealander. "You ready to accept Jed, Dana?"
She sighed. "I don't know. When I saw him with that severed cord, and Harrison's hand reaching through the snow… I thought the worst. Unlike Abby, here, I can't warm up to Lewis. He's quiet, hard to read. But yes, we're down to just twenty-two now. Buck's escape points to Lewis's innocence, right?"
"Let's assume so," the psychologist said. "I don't think they were Butch and Sundance. Bonnie and Clyde."
"God, I didn't even consider if the killer had an accomplice!"
Norse looked at her evenly. "Or if Tyson was the wrong man."
She looked uncertain. "We still don't know for sure, do we?"
"We never know for sure on anything. In a courtroom or down here. All the important things in life remain a mystery. So, your verdict on Jed. Your responsibility. Your choice. Your call."
She glanced at Abby. "Bring him in." She sighed. "It was Buck. Or I'll go crazy."
"Call Lewis up, Cueball," Norse told their cook. "Find out if we're going to get weather severe enough to let we fingies join your club."
Every tribe has its initiation, Lewis thought. This is mine.
The temperature at Clean Air had actually registered only ninety-eight degrees below zero but he'd promised Norse that it would keep on dropping and then altered the thermometer link to the dome to make sure the reading on the galley television screen fell to minus one hundred. The slight subterfuge seemed justified after all he'd gone through. This was his way back into the fold.
Pulaski, who'd done this once before, briefed those who assembled outside the sauna. "First of all, this club- short of having walked on the moon- may be the most exclusive on the planet," he told them. "You've gotta be at the Pole when it's a hundred below, which means you've got to be here in winter, which means you've got to be stupid enough to sign on for eight toasty months of cheerful isolation." There was nervous laughter among the group.
"Accordingly, it may also be the most foolish club on the planet. There's some polar plunges into the Antarctic ocean at Palmer, and dips into the frozen lakes near McMurdo, but for sheer idiocy I think we take the cake. This is a story you can tell your grandchildren about- and if you do, they'll have you institutionalized."
The tittering had an edge to it.
"Exhibit One is this temperature gauge." He pointed to the dial registering the temperature inside the sauna. "As you can see, our cedar box is crawling upward to two hundred degrees above zero, just about enough to let me slow-roast some meat. That's you." He gave his best evil smile, the lights glinting off his bald head. Cueball could look scary when he wanted to.
"Exhibit Two is your appearance. This is the South Pole, people, and you look like you bought tickets to Tahiti." Laughter again. Thirteen of the twenty-two survivors were bunched outside the sauna door, men and women segregating into separate groups. All were wrapped in towels, had tennis shoes on to protect their feet, and clutched balaclavas, scarves, or gaiters to cover their mouths at the critical moment. Still, there was more bare skin on display than they'd seen for months. Their bodies looked pasty in the fluorescent light, like shelled oysters. The clumped flesh was as depersonalizing as a military haircut.
"Exhibit Three is the goaclass="underline" to endure the heat until it hits the two-hundred-degree mark, to drop your towels, and then to sprint stark-raving naked except for shoes and head covering to the South Pole marker, or as close to it as you care to go, given safety and screaming common sense. A three-hundred-degree-difference shock to the senses. For those of you hoping for an erotic experience, let me disappoint. We dim the lights for privacy, and subzero temperatures have a way of diminishing- and I do mean diminishing- any sexual ardor. Nature attacks any and all appendages. I urge you to listen to your body and retreat prudently: We had a case of genital frostbite one year and it was not a pretty sight. Nipples, noses- anything that sticks out."
"Jesus, they got more encouragement at Omaha Beach," Geller muttered. "You're not exactly getting my spirits up."
"That's just what I'm saying, George. Don't get anything up."
"Or don't get it up around me," Nancy Hodge added.
"I shrivel every time I have to see you, Doc."
"Yeah. I noticed."
"Ooh, that hurts!" the men hooted. "That's more painful than the cold!"
"Who does get it up for you, Nurse Nancy?"
"If this is an issue for you, George, there's some new drugs in BioMed that might help."
More moans and laughter.
"Okay, enough anticipation," Pulaski interrupted. "Doctor Bob can take care of all your Freudian problems while you're packed like Pringles in the sauna. I'll open the door to let you out after it hits two hundred. Move briskly, but not recklessly. Don't fall on the ice and break your leg."
"Or anything else, if you're on Nancy's drugs!" Calhoun called.
Pulaski turned to Lewis, still standing a little apart from the others. "So, fingie. You glad we brought you back to share in our secret society?"
Lewis managed a grin. "Didn't know what I was missing."
"Damn right. Last night we all set fire to our hair. Tomorrow is electric shock therapy. Okay, in the sauna! Go, go, go! Get pumped! Get psyched! Get hot! Sweat! Snarl! The night is just beginning!"
They crowded into the dimly lit box with their towels, laughing and cracking jokes. "George, you're poking me!" someone said in a falsetto voice. The door closed and there was only dim red light. It was initially claustrophobic, a mesh of flesh as intimate as a crowded elevator. The box was already one hundred and fifty degrees. For the first minute or so, the heat felt good, like an enveloping blanket. Then it began to seem cloying. Skin scraped unfamiliarly on skin. It was a tangle of bodies, hard to make out who was who, which sex was which. And yet Lewis felt the terrycloth press of a breast against one arm. Long dark hair. Gabriella.