Icebound

a prelude to inevitable and eternal death, and sometimes the Arctic so sensitized him that in the faces of the other members of the expedition he could see the skulls beneath the skin.

Of course that was precisely why he had come to the icecap: adventure, danger, the possibility of death. He knew at least that much about himself, though he had never dwelt on it and though he had only a shadowy notion of why he was obsessed with taking extreme risks.

He had compelling reasons for staying alive, after all. He was young. He was not wildly handsome, but he wasn't the Hunchback of Notre Dame, either, and he was in love with life. Not least of all, his family was enormously wealthy, and in fourteen months, when he turned twenty-five, he would gain control of a thirty-million- dollar trust fund. He didn't have a clue in hell as to what he'd do with all that money, if anything, but it surely was a comfort to know that it would be his.

Furthermore, the family's fame and the sympathy accorded to the whole Dougherty clan would open any doors that couldn't be battered down with money. Brian's uncle, once President of the United States, had been assassinated by a sniper. And his father, a United States Senator from California, had been shot and crippled during a primary campaign nine years ago. The tragedies of the Doughertys were the stuff of endless magazine covers from People to Good Housekeeping to Playboy to Vanity Fair, a national obsession that sometimes seemed destined to evolve into a formidable political mythology in which the Doughertys were not merely ordinary men or women but demigods and demigoddesses, embodiments of virtue, goodwill, and sacrifice.

In time, Brian could have a political career of his own if he wished. But he was still too young to face the responsibilities of his family name and tradition. In fact, he was fleeing from those responsibilities, from the thought of ever meeting them. Four years ago, he'd dropped out of Harvard after only eighteen months of law studies. Since then he had traveled the world, “bumming” on American Express and Carte Blanche. His escapist adventures had put him on the front pages of newspapers on every continent. He had confronted a bull in one of Madrid's rings. He'd broken an arm on an African photographic safari when a rhinoceros attacked the jeep in which he was riding, and while shooting the rapids on the Colorado River, he had capsized and nearly drowned. Now he was passing the long, merciless winter on the polar ice.

His name and the quality of several magazine articles that he had written were not sufficient credentials to obtain a position as the official chronicler of the expedition. But the Dougherty Family Foundation had made an $850,000 grant to the Edgeway project, which had virtually guaranteed that Brian would be accepted as a member of the team.

For the most part, he had been made to feel welcome. The only antagonism had come from George Lin, and even that had amounted to little more than a brief loss of temper. The Chinese scientist had apologized for his outburst. Brian was genuinely interested in their project, and his sincerity won friends.

He supposed his interest arose from the fact that he was unable to imagine himself making an equal commitment to any lifelong work that was even half as arduous as theirs. Although a political career was part of his legacy, Brian loathed that vile game: Politics was an illusion of service that cloaked the corruption of power. It was lies, deception, self-interest, and self-aggrandizement: suitable work only for the mad and the venal and the naive. Politics was a jeweled mask under which hid the true disfigured face of the Phantom. Even as a young boy, he'd seen too much of the inside of Washington, enough to dissuade him from ever seeking a destiny in that corrupt city. Unfortunately, politics had infected him with a cynicism that made him question the value of any attainment or achievement, either inside or outside the political arena.

He did take pleasure in the act of writing, and he intended to produce three or four articles about life in the far, far north. Already, in fact, he had enough material for a book, which he felt increasingly compelled to write.

Such an ambitious undertaking daunted him. A book — whether or not he had the talent and maturity to write well at such length — was a major commitment, which was precisely what he had been avoiding for years.

His family thought that he had been attracted to the Edgeway Project because of its humanitarian potential, that he was getting serious about his future. He hadn't wanted to disillusion them, but they were wrong. Initially he'd been drawn to the expedition merely because it was another adventure, more exciting than those upon which he'd embarked before but no more meaningful.

And it still was only an adventure, he assured himself, as he watched Lin and Breskin checking out the transmitter. It was a way to avoid, for a while longer, thinking about the past and the future. But then…why this compulsion to write a book? He couldn't convince himself that he had anything to say that would be worth anyone's reading time.

The other two men got to their feet and wiped snow from their goggles.

Brian approached them, shouting over the wind, “Are you done?”

“At last!” Breskin said.

The two-foot-square transmitter would be sheathed in snow and ice within hours, but that wouldn't affect its signal. It was designed to operate in arctic conditions, with a multiple-battery power supply inside layers of insulation originally developed for NASA. It would put out a strong signal — two seconds in duration, ten times every minute — for eight to twelve days.

When that segment of ice was blasted loose from the winter field with almost surgical precision, the transmitter would drift with it into those channels know as Iceberg Alley and from there into the North Atlantic. Two trawlers, part of the United Nations Geophysical Year Fleet, were standing at the ready two hundred thirty miles to the south to monitor the continual radio signal. With the aid of geosynchronous polar satellites, they would fix the position of the berg by triangulation and home in on it until it could be identified visually by the waterproof, self-expanding red dye that had been spread across wide areas of its surface.

The purpose of the experiment was to gain a basic understanding of how the winter sea currents affected drift ice. Before any plans could be made to tow ice south to drought-stricken coastal areas, scientists must learn how the sea would work against the ships and how it might be made to work for them.

It wasn't practical to send trawlers to the very edge of the polar cap to grapple with the giant berg. The Arctic Ocean and the Greenland Sea were choked with ice floes and difficult to navigate at that time of year. Depending on what the project experiments revealed, however, they might find that it was not necessary for the two ships to connect with the ice even immediately south of Iceberg Alley. Instead, the bergs might be allowed to ride the natural currents for a hundred or two hundred miles before effort was expended to haul them farther south and coastward.

“Could I get a few pictures?” Brian asked.

“No time for that,” George Lin said shortly. He brushed his hands together, briskly knocking thin plates of ice from his heavy gloves.

“Take just a minute.”

“Got to get back to Edgeway,” Lin said. “Storm could cut us off. By morning we'd be part of the landscape, frozen solid.”

“We can spare a minute,” Roger Breskin said. He wasn't half shouting as they were, but his bass voice carried over the wind, which had escalated from an unearthly groan to a soft ululant howl.

Brian smiled thankfully.

“You crazy?” Lin asked. “See this snow? If we delay?”

“George, you've already wasted a minute carping.” Breskin's tone was not accusatory, merely that of a scientist stating an observable fact.

Although Roger Breskin had emigrated to Canada from the United States only eight years ago, he was every bit as quiet and calm as the stereotypical Canadian. Self-contained, reclusive, he did not easily make friends or enemies.

Behind his goggles, Lin's eyes narrowed. Grudgingly he said, “Take you pictures. I guess Roger wants to see himself in all the fancy magazines. But hurry.”

Brian had no choice but to be quick. Weather conditions allowed no time for setting up shots and focusing to perfection.

“This okay?” Roger Breskin asked, standing to the right of the transmitter.

“Great.”

Roger dominated the frame in the viewfinder. He was five eleven, one hundred ninety pounds, shorter and