“Good afternoon to you, Mr. Graeter,” she said, no great pleasure in her voice. To Hallie: “We just can’t stop bumping into each other, can we?”
“Are you headed for the early grading?” Graeter asked.
“That’s right.”
“How’s the cold?”
“Can’t seem to shake it.”
“I could get Landis or Richards to handle it this morning.”
“Thanks, but it takes more than that to keep me off my Cat.”
After Bacon walked away, Hallie said, “I thought it was too cold for planes to land now.”
“It is.”
“So why send her out there, sick as she is, to grade the runway?”
“Not runway. Iceway.”
“To grade the iceway.”
“SORs say it gets graded twice a day. So we grade it twice a day.”
They walked on. As Graeter led them to the first level, Hallie asked, “Why are all the stairs yellow?”
“Human factors experts said fewer people would fall down them.”
“Did they do the decorating, too?” She was referring to the irregular polygons in clashing colors — deep blue, fire orange, blood-red, sharp purple — that covered the corridors’ walls and ceilings.
“Sort of. They also claimed that asymmetrical patterning warded off depression. In a place that goes dark for eight months, it’s a serious problem.”
“Reminds me of a badly lit elementary school decorated with paintings by disturbed children. Does it work?”
“Not hardly.”
They moved in their pool of light down dark corridors, past a grimy gym and weight room, offices, storage chambers. Descended stairs at one end of the station, came to an air-lock door with a sign:
ATTENTION! LABORATORY ZONE
AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY
DO NOT ENTER UNLESS YOU WANT TO GET BURNED BLOWN UP
OR INFEKTED
“Beaker humor. Merritt can take you in there,” Graeter said.
Minutes later, they stood beneath the station in a rectangular tunnel, eight feet wide and twelve feet high. The floor and walls were smooth, white ice. Icicles and frost formations dangled from the ceiling. Round metal tubes, two feet in diameter, hung from one wall.
“Welcome to the Underground,” Graeter said. “A labyrinth carved out over the years. This main tunnel runs under the length of the station. Other tunnels branch off, and still others branch off them. Imagine a Scrabble board late in the game.”
“What is that smell?”
“Sewage and diesel fuel.”
They walked on. Graeter turned right down one secondary corridor, right again into another, and kept turning into new corridors for several minutes. “Know where you are?”
“Do you mean could I find my way back to the stairs? Maybe.”
“Maybe isn’t good enough at Pole,” Graeter said.
“Why did I know you were going to say that?” Hallie asked.
“That’s what you need to know about the Underground. Let’s go back.”
“What else is down here?” Hallie asked as they walked.
“Bulk food storage. Generators, primary and backups. Fuel reservoirs. NCS holdings more than anything else.”
“NCS?”
“Non — cold sensitive. Everything from old furniture to files.”
They passed a chamber whose entrance was blocked by a sheet of heavy black canvas. The other “rooms” she’d seen were open.
“What’s in there?” she asked.
“That’s the morgue. Lanahan and Montalban are in there, until we get them on a flight out.”
She stopped. “Is that where Emily stayed?”
“Yes.”
He looked at the black sheet, then back at her. Turned and kept going. She lingered for a few moments, feeling tears start to well up, pushed them back down. Rage came, hot and red. Then grief, and then, last of all, horror.
Something touched her shoulder and she started. “Jesus!”
Graeter. He had come back without her hearing. “I told you about ghosts,” he said.
17
“Coffee, tea, or Glenfiddich?” Don Barnard asked as Wil Bowman settled into a red leather chair. They were in Barnard’s office in the BARDA complex, outside Washington, D.C. It was ten A.M. on Tuesday.
“Nothing, thanks.”
They sat with a coffee table between them. Barnard brought a mug of coffee with him. “Thanks for making time on short notice.”
“When the director of BARDA calls, I answer. Especially when it has to do with Hallie.”
“It’s good to see you under happier circumstances. The last time was …” Barnard shook his head, unable to find the right word.
“Scary as hell,” Bowman said.
“Amen.”
It was at BARDA, thanks to Don Barnard, that Bowman had first met Hallie Leland, a year earlier. Barnard had assembled a team of scientists to search the world’s deepest cave for a natural antibiotic that might stave off a pandemic. He made no secret of the fact that people could die. When an uncomfortable silence extended — these were scientists, not SEALs — Hallie stalked to the front of the room and declared that this was the opportunity of a lifetime: millions of lives might be saved. The rest of them might not go down into the cave, but she sure as hell would. Alone, if she had to. Bowman, in his government’s service, would go, of course. The others could choose. In the end, they all went, and Bowman had never forgotten how she’d galvanized that team.
Not many men outsized Don Barnard, but Bowman was one. Six feet four, 230 pounds of hard muscle. A natural mesomorph, big-shouldered and narrow-waisted, clean-shaven, with a straw-colored brush cut. His nose showed the effects of nonverbal conflict resolution, and a thin pink scar divided his right eyebrow into two short dashes. His was a lean face of juts and angles, hardly handsome but surprising enough to attract stray glances and hold them.
Bowman worked for, or was attached to, or emanated from — Barnard had still not found the right word for Bowman’s affiliation — some dark entity hidden invisibly deep in the government’s intelligence labyrinth. Bowman had never volunteered its name, and Barnard had never pressed him for details. He suspected that Bowman had a military special operations background. Hallie had said he held a PhD in some esoteric engineering subspecialty.
“Have you heard from Hallie?” Barnard asked.
“No,” Bowman said. “You?”
Wil smiled rarely and frowned almost never. If Barnard had been pressed to describe the man in a word, it would have been centered.
“No.”
“Really? I was sure she would have contacted you.”
“I thought the same thing about you,” Barnard said.
“That’s not like Hallie at all. Do you know if she actually reached the Pole?”
“Not even that. I got an email from her at McMurdo on Sunday, but nothing after.”
“I emailed her earlier this morning but haven’t gotten an answer. Have you tried to call?” Bowman asked.
“A number of times. Apparently the moon is easier to talk to. All communications to the Pole are satellite-dependent. Right now, there are just two two-hour windows in every twenty-four-hour period. And lots of things can screw those up — storms, solar events, power failures.”
“She told me she would be replacing a scientist who had died unexpectedly. And that she’d known the woman here at one time.”
“That’s right.”
“Who was that woman working for? Durant was her name, I think.”
“National Science Foundation,” Barnard said.
“How long ago did she die?”
“Not exactly sure. Sometime early last week, though.”
“And you don’t know how?”
“Here’s where it gets a bit strange.” Barnard recounted his conversation with Laraine Harris.