11
Hallie arrived late for her meeting with the station’s chief scientist, but Agnes Merritt seemed not to mind. Before Hallie even sat, the older woman blurted, “Did you hear what happened in the galley?”
“I was there. Yesterday and today both.”
Merritt shook her head. “What an awful introduction to Pole, Dr. Leland. I can’t imagine how I’d feel in your shoes.”
“Thank you. Please call me Hallie.”
“Good deal. I’m Agnes. Aggie to my friends, which is just about everybody.”
Merritt’s office was slightly bigger than Graeter’s, and she had two folding chairs for visitors. A coffeemaker sat on a small table in one corner. Merritt filled mugs and handed one to Hallie. Then she passed a plate of chocolate chip cookies.
Hallie had left most of her breakfast back in the galley. She nibbled one cookie, then gobbled another. “These are great.”
“Grandma’s recipe. I love to bake. Sneak into the galley during off-hours.”
Unlike Graeter’s office, Merritt’s was adorned with framed pictures. One wall was all Antarctic shots: Merritt boarding a C-130 at McMurdo, standing in her Big Red parka beside the station’s “barber pole” ceremonial marker, hoisting a champagne glass in honor of some holiday or memorable occasion. The other wall’s pictures were from back in the world. Most of them were grip-and-grins, Merritt receiving or holding awards and certificates. A typical bureaucrat’s wall, Hallie noted, except that there were no family pictures.
Merritt looked to be in her late forties. She wore comfort-cut jeans that stretched tight across her wide rump and a black turtleneck with a red fleece pullover on top of that. She had a round face red from high blood pressure or windburn or both, a red-veined snub nose, and a small, moist mouth that formed circles around words, as though she were blowing bubbles when she spoke. “So tell me what happened.”
Hallie did, and then everything slipped out of focus. She realized that Merritt was speaking. “I’m sorry. What?”
“Dear, you just zoned right out.”
“God. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry. Pole’s tough.” She patted Hallie’s knee.
“Agnes … Aggie, two deaths like this, so close together. That has to be unusual, even for the Pole.”
“I thought so, too. But have you ever heard of dehiscence?”
“No.”
“Me, neither, until Doc called. Part of Harriet’s esophagus was removed last year. Some kind of precancerous condition. They severed and reconnected some major veins and arteries.”
“You’re saying they ruptured?”
“Doc thinks so. When surgical scars reopen, it’s called dehiscence.”
“Why now, though?”
“Goodness, why not? Altitude. Extreme temperature fluctuations. Radiation. Stress. Bad food. Hard work. On and on.”
“I never heard of something like that.”
“How many folks do you know who’ve had esophagectomies?”
“What about Diana Montalban?”
“You mentioned a C-section scar. Could have been the same thing, Doc said.”
That seemed like too much coincidence to Hallie. At the same time, it wasn’t hard to understand why Merritt would want to rationalize the deaths. Minimize threats beyond your control. Unknown is always more frightening than known. And as chief scientist, Merritt would have a vested interest in showing that on her watch, deaths were caused by problems the victims brought with them, rather than any they’d encountered here.
Or maybe the deaths were connected in some way to Emily’s, and Merritt knew about all of it. Since Hallie had arrived in the chief scientist’s office, the question had been blinking in her mind. Should I tell her?
There was something else. With each new encounter, it was getting harder not to tell. The secret wanted out. More properly, something in her wanted it released. It felt like a tumor, ugly, foreign, and dangerous. A friend with cancer had told her, “Once you know that thing is in there, you just want it out.” Hallie understood that much better now.
“I’m so glad you’re here.” Merritt brought her back. “Fido will be overjoyed. He’s just been, oh, what’s the word … distraught since Emily’s death.”
“I hope I can help,” she said. “I was sent in a huge rush. Emily and he were researching an extremophile found in a subglacial lake, or so I was told. I didn’t know there were any lakes at the Pole.”
“There weren’t supposed to be. It was a huge surprise. Russians found the closest one hundreds of miles away, called Vostok. Bigger than Lake Ontario. Ours is tiny by comparison — about a thousand feet in diameter.”
“How deep?”
“Two miles, give or take.”
Hallie thought she might not have heard right. “Two miles?”
“Yes.”
“And Emily was diving this lake, right?”
“It’s called a cryopeg. Yes, she was. Poor Emily.” Merritt looked away for a few moments, appeared to compose herself. “She found the extremophile colony only a hundred feet down and retrieved a biosample. They had it in the lab, but it went moribund in three days.”
“So that’s the reason you needed another ice diver.”
“Not just a diver. One who knew extremophiles and could function in the Pole environment. And who could get here fast, because of winterover. If we can’t take more biomatter out of the cryopeg in the next few days, it’ll be nine months before we can put anyone down there again. Who knows what will be left, now that we’ve breached the ice capsule?”
“What makes this thing so special?”
“I’m just a garden-variety epidemiologist, Hallie. Fido can explain it better. When were you thinking of diving?”
“That depends. Is there a recompression chamber here?”
“Oh dear, no. There was never any need for one until now.”
“Not good. The water is twenty-two degrees, right?”
Merritt nodded.
“That’s brutal. Did Emily mark a route?”
“Yes.”
“How much ice do you have to pass through to reach the water?”
“It’s a thirty-foot shaft, flooded to surface level.”
“This is going to be very dangerous. Without a recompression chamber, there’s no margin for error. I’m tired, dehydrated, feeling the altitude. It’s all a recipe for decompression sickness.”
“The bends.”
“Yes. Let’s shoot for later this afternoon. Might even need to wait until tomorrow.”
“Oh, either will be fine. Need you healthy, after all.” Merritt seemed not at all disappointed by the possible delay, which surprised Hallie, given the urgency to get her down here. Then Merritt asked, “Have you seen Doc yet?”
“No.”
Merritt sat back, her smile fading for the first time. “Please do that as soon as possible.” Also for the first time, she sounded more like a boss than a kindly aunt.
“I’m not sick. A cold, maybe, but nothing serious,” Hallie said.
“It’s not about being sick. It’s to start your Pole medical file.”
“My medical file should have been sent down.”
“Might have been.”
“Then why—?”
“Studying people at Pole is critical. In a way, the biggest experiment here is us. So everybody gets an incoming physical. Creates a research baseline.”
“I’m leaving in four days, though. Why bother?”