"I can't see much," Anna said, peering ahead. She gripped the skimobile to keep from being thrown out.
"Neither can I," Carter said grimly. "We'll have to stop. Did you find a snow tent in the gear?"
"In back," she said. "I feel as if we've been here before."
"It's the same trail," Carter said. "I want to go on a little farther, back to that sheltered spot where I put up the tents."
She nodded, sitting upright, her eyes closed.
"Anna!"
The eyes flew open.
His fingers were numb in the mittens. His lips were stiff. He had that queasy, hopeless feeling that came as cold relentlessly settled into the bones and marrow. They would have to stop and make camp soon.
"At least Silver Dove won't follow us in this weather," he said. "They'll hope we die in it."
He watched as best he could. He saw the ridges and boulders he'd seen before, now covered with swirling mantles of snow. They made progress too slowly.
Then as the storm at last built itself into a fury, he saw what he wanted. Straight ahead. The boulders that spilled into a roof over the flat area.
He drove under the sheltering rock canopy and jumped out.
"Get out, Anna. Walk around. Now!"
Obediently she stumbled out as he pulled apart the gear on the back of the skimobile. With clumsy fingers he spread out the tent, pounded stakes, fitted the poles of its internal skeleton together, and inserted the skeleton into the tent. He was shaking with the cold. Anna stood dumbly nearby.
He attached a cord to the skimobile engine and made adjustments. He earned the other end of the cord and a bundle of supplies into the tent.
"Get in!" he told her.
She moved stiffly and slowly.
He picked her up and carried her. Inside the tent, he wrapped around her the special electric blanket that was plugged into the skimobile.
"This will warm you," he told her. "We'll take care of the bullet when you're strong enough."
He went back out to the skimobile, staked it down, stripped it of supplies, and carried them into the tent. Anna lay passively, her eyes closed. Her skin temperature was still dangerously low. She needed something hot inside her.
He heated soup above a solid-fuel pellet, held her head, and spooned it into her mouth as she swallowed feebly.
At last she licked her lips and sighed.
He drank soup until he felt hot and full.
He crawled into the heated blanket bag with her, pulled off his clothes and hers, and cradled her still-cold naked body against his.
The next day, the savage blizzard still groaning and howling outside the tent. Carter gave Anna a large dose of sleeping sedatives.
As she went to sleep, he heated antiseptic above the fuel pellet. He dropped in his knife and the forceps from the first aid box.
He adjusted the heated blanket so that her thigh wound was exposed to the cold air. He washed the skin. It was a ragged hole, but it was in the fleshy part of the leg. The bullet had missed her bone.
He laid out thread and needle, antibiotics, and gauze bandages. Then he used the sterilized knife to make the incision.
Blood poured out. He'd have to work quickly. He cut again, and inserted the forceps. Sweat beaded on his cold forehead. Anna cried out in her sleep.
At last he felt the hardness of the pellet. He turned the forceps, closed them over it, and pulled. Anna cried weakly.
Blood covered his hand, hot and sticky. He packed antibiotics into the wound. Sewed. Bandaged. His hands made gentle pressure to stem the bleeding.
He looked at her twisted face, the tears streaming down uncontrolled in her sleep. The twisted face of pain. Thank God she was unconscious.
He washed the instruments, cleaned up, and hoped.
After almost twelve hours of restless sleep, Anna awoke. Her face was gray.
"I was dreaming of the Englishman Scott," she said. "He was dragging a dog sled alone across an ice shelf. The dog sled was empty. No supplies. Totally useless to him. But he wouldn't give it up. It would be the death of him."
Carter watched her, worried.
"How do you feel?" he said.
"Weak," she said. "I didn't know getting shot could make you feel so terrible."
He made soup and they drank it quietly. She closed her eyes again and slept as the blizzard roared and crashed outside the shelter of their tent.
She awoke five more times over the next two days. Each time she claimed she felt better, but Carter could see that she had improved little if at all. Her skin color was bad. She had a fever. The wound had a puffy red ridge of infection around it. He opened it up and poured more antibiotics in, and insisted that she take oral antibiotics as well. Rather than argue, she did what he told her.
At the end of the third day she drank her soup heartily and asked for more. He gave it to her, pleased, and urged her to take as much as she could.
"Did you hear about Vostok Station, what happened in the winter of 1982?" she asked, peering over the top of her cup.
"Russian station," he said. "The power plant was destroyed by fire, as I recall."
"That's right. There were twenty men. They survived by using diesel fuel candles and an ice drill generator for power. There wasn't enough heat for everything. Just about all their equipment froze. But despite the hardships, they continued their scientific observations and extended the deep ice core hole they were studying. Rescuers didn't arrive until eight months had passed. Once Antarctica is frozen in for the winter, it's unreachable."
"It's summer now," Carter reminded her.
She looked at the sides of the tent, and watched them shudder and shake. She listened to the power of the brutal wind.
"We're unreachable right now," she said, putting her cup down. "How long have we been here?"
He told her, and she sighed.
"I'm holding you back," she said. "Without me, you'd go on."
"I'd be an idiot to go anywhere now. No one can see anything out there. I need shelter just like you do."
But still, she was right. He'd been thinking of the Silver Dove installation for all of the four days they'd been stranded there. Worried that Skobelev had already implemented the plan to contact Russia. Worried that an accident had happened and bacteria had escaped the lab to harm the world. Even worried that Skobelev had blamed Blenkochev for their escape and executed him. Carter needed Blenkochev safe inside the installation, needed him to help. But even Carter couldn't go on just yet. He had to wail for the blizzard to break. Then he would have to go slowly and carefully because of Anna. Even with the skimobile, he'd have to rest more often to care for her. He didn't want anything else to happen to her.
She was looking at him, staring deep into his eyes.
He smiled.
"Come here," she said. Take off your clothes and come inside with me."
Her eyes were sapphire blue, as bright as her flaxen hair. He ran his hand from her blond crown to the tips of the soft, silky strands. He kissed the fragrant hair.
"I want you," she said simply.
Her eyes were tender now, smiling, as shining as stars.
He wanted her, too, the passion growing big within him.
As she watched, her eyes hungry, he took off his clothes and slid inside the blanket.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, melting into him, the bandaged leg strong and firm against him.
He kissed her, and she ran her fingers down his chest, kneading his sides, insistent.
He buried his face in her hair, while they touched, tasting the salt and sweetness of the other. Felt the intimate places that made them soar. They made love, building to their peaks as leisurely as if the world stood still for them.
Later, Carter slept the sleep of the exhausted. The last few days weighed heavily upon him: the constant observation and care of Anna; the constant worry and planning about the Silver Doves' activities; the frustration that he couldn't be out and doing something about it. But now he was happy, exhausted but happy in the way all men are when they're with the right woman.