'I understand what you're saying. I'm sorry. I'm busy.'
But as the approaching tempest swelled with power, Lewis was its first witness, and while he resented that all communication had to be initiated by himself, his duty was to warn the others. The storm would howl over the corpse of Mickey Moss, entombing him, and trap any human who hadn't scurried for shelter. In fact, the storm would do its best to snuff out the entire station, trying to push people back home where they belonged. Except at the end they'd still be here, burrowing out, and with them would reemerge his own problems, his own mystery. What was the astronomer doing in that pit?
He telephoned Cameron.
'Rod here.' The tone was tired.
'This is Lewis. We've got a Herbie.' The name was slang for storm and Lewis had picked up on it immediately, adopting the language of Antarctica.
'What?' Cameron came to life. 'Where? When?'
'Greenwich quadrant. It will hit soon.'
'How soon is soon?'
Lewis looked at the storm boiling up on his screens. 'Within the hour. Maybe sooner. I don't know. I've never seen one before.'
'An hour! Didn't you see the storm?'
'I saw it.'
'I'm supposed to get a heads up!'
'I'm giving you one.'
'Earlier! Why the hell didn't you call earlier?'
'The sucker brewed up out of nowhere. You know how fast the weather changes.'
'I need more of a heads up.'
The scolding irritated Lewis. 'Rod, I haven't noticed a whole lot of interest lately in what I have to say.'
There was silence for a moment. 'Anybody else out with you?'
'No.'
'You okay?'
'I'm talking to you.'
'Okay, listen. I want you to stay there. I want you to clock the storm.'
'The instruments will do that automatically.'
'I know. I just don't want you wandering around until this blows through.'
'That might take a while.'
'Just sit tight. I've got to get everyone battened down. This is dangerous, Lewis. We need an early heads up. We need to get some warning.'
'That's why I'm calling. Listen, nobody ever calls me.'
Cameron hung up.
'Nice talking to you, Rod.'
Lewis watched the sun wink out in the advancing wall of snow and then the ice plateau itself seemed to evaporate as the storm rushed forward, devouring ground. It was as if the world were dissolving. The dome was snuffed, the route flags jerked over, flapping, and then the blizzard hit his own research building with a howl. Clean Air lurched and then shuddered, its glass quaking, the wind rising to a shriek. Flakes streamed past the railings in parabolic swirls. The plateau below was gone, replaced with a rushing river of fogged snow, and the sky was equally obliterated. Here was the real Antarctica, powerful and malevolent. Lewis clung to the frame of a window, drinking in the magnificent violence. The building trembled under his hand like a frightened animal.
He thought again of his predicament, suspicion rubbing on his concentration like a rock in a boot. The damning e-mail had been traced to the Macintosh that Abby had fixed, someone using his log-on or, more likely, taking advantage of the fact that he rarely bothered to log off of the machine. Unless she'd done it! Abby had their passwords. But no…
The problem was that Lewis had skipped the galley that night, electing to work out at the gym and take a packed meal to Clean Air afterward. Depressed by the feuding of Tyson, he'd purposefully been alone. Then he'd come back to his bed, leaving his computers on and unattended.
He had no alibi.
'Maybe it was Jerry Follett,' he'd tried with Norse.
'Jerry?' The psychologist had smiled. 'We both know Follett is a nerd's nerd. His idea of conversation is atmospheric chemistry. The station could burn down and he might not notice. No, Jed, Jerry Follett is an extremely hard sell.'
'And I'm not?'
'I don't suspect you,' Norse assured Lewis. 'It's too neat. Too obvious to send the message from Clean Air. That's why I was against Harrison poking around in the first place. People jump to conclusions on fragmentary evidence. But you understand why you can't stop probing. We need to plumb the soul of every person on this base before this is over, Jed. We need to know who, how, and why you're being made to look like a killer. There's something really perverse going on and I'm worried it will only get worse.'
'This is all a game to you, isn't it?' He was frustrated.
'No. I'm in greater earnest about this whole issue than any person on this base.'
'Except me.'
'Yes. Except you.'
Well, that's just dandy, Doc, except I'm a damned fingie murder suspect in some kind of psychotic sinkhole where we don't even know if a murder occurred, he thought glumly. Maybe you could speed up the analysis and give me a little hand.
Lewis looked out at the storm now, the flakes rasping his shelter. He knew that relatively little snow was falling. The polar plateau was a desert with only a few inches of precipitation a year. What produced the ice cap was the fact that nothing ever melted. The blizzard was made of the ice cap's skin, picked up by the wind and hurled like Saharan sand. He was in a world where the molecules all rearranged themselves fifty times a year. When the storm ended there'd be an entirely new landscape- and it would look exactly the same as before.
The telephone buzzed again. It was Cameron. 'Lewis, you with Adams?'
'Who?'
'Harrison. He set off from the Dark Side to talk to you about something. Something he found on Mickey's hard drive. You seen him?'
'I told you I was alone.'
'I thought maybe he'd gotten there.'
'No.'
'Shit. That means he's out in the storm.'
'Maybe he's holed up in astronomy.'
'No, I tried there but Bob says he's gone.' Norse was still boxing up Moss's things. 'This is why we need a heads up.'
Dammit. 'I gave you one.'
'I got people all over station. We need that heads up.' He clicked off again.
Why the hell did Harrison Adams want to see him now? Had he found something incriminating? He moved from window to window, watching them breathe in and out against the wind. There was no sign of the astronomer.
It made him uneasy. He'd been too moody, not sounding the alarm the instant he could have, and that meant another mistake. What pissed him off about Cameron was that the station manager was right. He should have alerted everyone earlier.
Suddenly he felt restless, unfairly cut off. He had no food, no water, no toilet. He didn't want to sit out the storm here. It felt useless.
Cameron called again. 'Adams there yet?'
'No sign of him. Not at the dome?'
'No.'
They were quiet, Lewis listening to the rising wind.
