amusement. She wasn't dour, but she was serious. Tired, maybe. Thin, her face beginning to line, her hair to gray, her eyes to lose their optimism. Late forties and tough as horn. 'Not something we'd advertise to NSF.'
'That's the odd thing, isn't it?' Lewis said. 'That in theory we could do anything we want down here and nobody would ever know.'
Nancy shrugged. 'That's the theory. The truth is that everyone is such a blabbermouth that sooner or later the feds in D.C. know everything. Which probably is just as well.' That half smile again. 'Keeps the place from exploding.'
'I'm wondering if you know everything.'
'What does that mean?'
'About the people who come down here. You get their records, and you might have some insight as to what makes them tick.'
She laughed. 'If you mean their organs, yes. If you mean their heads, no. That's Doctor Bob's business.'
'He's too new. You've been with everybody for four months.'
'As their medic, not their mother.'
'I just need somebody who might have insights.'
That slight smile again, and a sigh. 'Lewis, you're looking at a woman who realized not long ago that she doesn't know anything about anybody.' She held up her left hand, displaying that white streak on her ring finger. 'A medical marvel who just happened not to notice that the man she'd lived with for eighteen years had taken up with one of her own nurses, drained her savings, and eloped to Mexico- until he sent a 'Dear Jane' letter from a Guadalajara cyber-cafe. You want medical advice, maybe I can help. You want to understand people? There's nobody more clueless than me.' She nodded toward the door.
He stood his ground. 'Well, you're the only person I can think of to start.'
'Start what?'
'Getting Mickey Moss off my back.'
She regarded him speculatively for a moment. Finally she pushed away from the pill-laden bed. 'What's the problem?'
'Doctor Moss found this meteorite in the ice. Now it's missing.'
'So?'
'It's been stolen.'
Nancy looked skeptical. 'Stolen? Why?'
'It's probably worth some money.'
The medic barked a laugh. 'Not down here it isn't. Who are you going to hock it to?'
'But later, outside…'
'No, that doesn't make sense.' Nancy's mind was quick, everyone admitted that, and she was instantly engaged by this mystery. 'I mean, steal it now and sit on it all winter? No, no, no. A prank, maybe. A borrowing. When was it missed?'
'I don't know. Couple days ago. I took a look at it because I'm a geologist and Mickey hid it out in the solar observatory and now it's gone.'
'Not that long after the last of the summer crew?'
'Yes.'
'Then they took it, don't you think? It's gone. Forget about it.'
'No, I saw it after they left.'
'Saw it? Or a fake? What if Moss swapped rocks? It's an alibi, see. Send the real rock out, bring in a fake, have the fingie tentatively authenticate the phony, and then get rid of it before he can really tell.'
Lewis looked at the doctor in surprise. Hodge seemed to have certainly considered the problem in a very short time. 'You've heard about this before.'
She smiled, a certain grimness to her grin. 'About the rock. Everyone has. If I was in charge, I'd start with you.'
'They already did. I was searched last night.'
'What'd they find?'
He kept his face straight. 'A bag of white powder, a wallet full of prophylactics, and an Aryan Nations membership card.'
'Told ya you didn't have it.'
'My Hustlers they simply confiscated.'
'I would have let you keep them.'
'So who does have it? Nancy, I need help here. I come down, take a look at a meteorite as a favor, and it disappears.'
'So you're questioning me?'
'I need to know who I should question.'
'Maybe no one. Maybe you should tell Mickey to go fuck himself. Snooping around isn't going to make you very popular, you know.'
'Moss is the station's eight-hundred-pound gorilla. I can't have him on my case all winter, either.'
'True,' she conceded. 'I feel your pain.' She thought a moment. 'Well. Any number of people need money. Greed is universal. Cameron has no real career except as polar junkie, Linda Brown has a loser boyfriend back home who might marry her if she came with sufficient dowry, Gabriella Reid would be a gold digger if she could find anyone with any gold…' The medic shrugged. 'Take your pick.'
'See? You do know things.'
'That's stuff everyone knows. I'd swipe it, if I could.'
'Do you need money, too?'
'I already told you I was pillaged by the son of a bitch I was married to. The bottom line, however, is it would be stupid as hell to take the meteorite at the start of winter. Why have to hide it for eight months? Hocking something from the Pole wouldn't be all that easy anyway. The whole thing makes no sense. Why not wait and steal it in the spring? Mickey is smart, and old, and cranky, and I think he's somehow messing with all of us. Either that or…'
'Or what?'
'If it's one of us?' She thought some more. 'I think it was taken not to sell, but to send a message. Make a point. Zing Mickey Moss. Relieve the tedium. Create a joke. Screw him. Screw you.'
'But why?'
She shrugged. 'Who knows?' She pointed to the door again. 'But I wouldn't look for someone greedy. I'd look for someone pissed.'
Lewis stood back under the intersection of archways again, more frustrated than ever. Take your pick. Well, hell. This kind of interrogation was really Rod Cameron's job but the station manager had been all too eager to palm the job off on Lewis. Nor was Cameron about to tell Mickey Moss to bug off. Harrison Adams had told Lewis that Moss had been down too long and was worshiped too much. He pushed everything too far, giving the Pole an importance it had never quite lived up to. It was rash to promise discovery and yet Moss promised incessantly, and bragged on work half done, creating pressures for performance that became obnoxious. 'It's true he brings in research money and charms when he wishes,' Adams had told him. 'I've watched him schmooze a whole planeload of government VIPs who fly down for an hour to get their picture taken at the Pole. But he can also be as vain and vindictive as hell. Rod's afraid of him, and probably you should be, too. NSF can yank the old scientist's chain whenever they want to but they never will: Michael M. Moss is their polar god, the eminent graybeard poster boy. Don't cross him.'
Yet someone had. Who had the balls to steal Mickey's rock?
One beneficiary of the mystery was Norse. He was an outsider, too, and the theft was exactly the kind of thing that played with their heads and gave the psychologist more to write about. Except that a stunt like that, the deliberate introduction of an artificial variable, would discredit the reliability of his entire study. Norse had said himself that he couldn't build a rat maze. Besides, the shrink had been surprised at the meteorite's value and was almost as new as Lewis, with no obvious ax to grind against Moss or anyone else.
