line all the way back up to the top. If we made it, great. If we didn't, the others weren't getting off that ledge anyway.
Just before we started I faced away from the weeping group, looked out to the gray eternity swirling all around us, and fumbled under my coat. I was mindful of what had happened to Kressler and Fleming and was determined that it wasn't going to happen to me. It wasn't prophetic. I was counting on those two kids, sure. But if you're going to survive in this jungle of ours you prepare for every contingency. You have to think ahead. Every time I've won in life it's because I've thought two or three moves down the road. A step ahead: That's the secret.
So I took out a silver commando knife, slipped it out of its sheath, and tucked it into a strap near my neck where I could snatch it out easily. Just in case. Then I turned to the others and actually managed a reassuring grin.
What a hero I was.
We started back up.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Flat gray clouds spoiled the final exit of the sun. There was a week of overcast, as dark and featureless as a pot lid, and when it blew away, the lingering orb was finally gone and the long polar night had begun. The sky was still dusk blue. A couple of stars popped out, tiny and cold, the first outriders of the glory to come. Instead of seeming foreboding, the approaching dark heralded a kind of peace to Lewis. The sun's scheduled disappearance meant it would reappear on schedule, too, and when that happened he would be near release from the Pole. Meanwhile, the ground had lost shadow and definition and the boundary between snow and sky became even more indistinct.
At first he didn't mind his isolation in the Clean Air quadrant. It spared him the necessity of trying to prove his own innocence. He didn't have to act some kind of normal relationship with a group of people half suspicious that he might be a murderer at worst and a bad-luck enzyme at best. Solitary, he called it, except that each day he had four hours in which orbiting satellites lifted high enough above the polar horizon to allow access to the Internet. Lewis monitored world news that seemed increasingly remote, shopped for products he had no use for and couldn't get delivered, and kept his mentor Sparco updated on his weather measurements. He found himself surprisingly intrigued by the accumulating data points of temperature, wind, snow, carbon dioxide, and ozone. Graphing the readings was like painstakingly sculpting a work of art. When winds were calm he watched from the windows as Gerald Follett launched his atmospheric balloons, observing the quiet routine of inflation, rigging, and recording. The man had declined Lewis's help, looking nervous when Lewis even offered, but the regularity of the task was somehow reassuring. Life went on. There was a purity to the science, and a purity to the dry cold that Lewis found bracing. Meteorology itself was a constant dance of interwoven factors, like the twisted glass of a kaleidoscope suggesting different global futures.
He'd found a better purpose.
His exile also spared him fevered group speculation on the deaths of Moss and Adams. No theories, no rumors, no jokes. It made him calmer. People were complicated but science was not. The universe was designed to be understood. Only humans were an enigma.
Yet when his tasks were completed he was increasingly lonely as well. The others brought him a mattress, a bucket, and food as if he were a leper. His basic dilemma was that day after day went by without mishap, according to Cameron. There were no disappearances, no discoveries, and no confessions, and thus nothing to turn suspicion away from him. Lewis comes, and things go wrong. Lewis is banished, and normalcy returns. No G-man parachuted in, no conclusions were drawn.
A week drifted by, empty of real news.
Then Abby came, the first time he'd seen her since Adams's death.
Once more he detected her breath before he noticed her approach. A spike in his carbon measurements that he duly noted in the log. He stepped to a window and watched her walk the flag line, following a path of snow clumpy enough that she occasionally stumbled, a heavy daypack adding to her clumsiness in the dusk. He'd learned to recognize her from a distance: her quick, straightforward walk, the rather tight swing of her arms, her habit of sometimes tucking them around her torso as if to warm herself, bowing her head in thought like a bird at roost- and then popping upright suddenly to peer around like a startled dove. It was funny how much you could tell from posture and movement. Everyone looked alike in their orange parkas and black bib pants and yet they didn't. A tilt of head, a curve of back, an angle of foot: stances as individualistic as fingerprints.
She clanged up the stairs, stamped snow loose in the vestibule, and came inside, swinging the backpack onto the floor with a soft thud. 'More food, Enzyme.'
Lewis grimaced. He was getting tired of hot-plate leftovers. 'Bread and water?'
'Meat loaf and macaroni. A little junk food as well, for morale. Chemical preservatives disguised as cake, salt disguised as chips, sugar dusted with a little flour. Cueball promised he won't put in enough to poison you.'
'Not without a group vote, at least.' He meant it as a joke, but it came out sounding sour. 'I'm sure everyone misses me.'
'Forgotten you, actually.' She shed her coat. 'Too many troubles.'
Trouble? He was shamelessly hungry for gossip. 'A suspect unmasked?'
'Just bad feeling. It's turning into a pretty grim winter.'
'Rod told me nothing's happening.'
'That's because he doesn't know what to do. Tyson has gone nuts. He thinks everyone's against him, which we are. One shower stinks. Yet he won't back down. He's announced that since no one appreciates his contributions to our little society he's going to find the meteorite and make himself rich, and to hell with anyone else. So he's stomping around, ignoring his job, and even threatening to wig out of here on a Spryte or something- fixing those is the one thing he'll work on. Cameron blew up at him in the galley and said he's pulling Buck's bonus, as if he had any chance of getting it anyway, so then they almost got into a fistfight. It scared everybody. Geller fantasizes about putting a contract out on the guy, Pulaski is about to call Buck out, the beakers are bitching about not getting enough work done, and Bob is writing it all up like we're a bunch of lunatics. Which maybe we are. We're toasting at record speed.'
'Jesus.' Tyson was being pushed toward an explosion. Maybe Norse's plan of removing Lewis from the center of things was working after all: Bad feeling couldn't be blamed on him. Yet the tension sounded risky. 'So you came to visit the only sane man on station?'
She looked at him warily. 'Just to deliver groceries.'
'Even though I might be dangerous. The mysterious fingie. The enzyme.' Impulsively, he took a step toward her to see what she'd do.
'Doctor Bob actually suggested I deliver the food this time. Said it's good for you to see other people. And he said that…' She stopped, suddenly flustered.
'And what?'
'Nothing.' She looked away.
'What?'
'He said we mesh well together.'
He took another step. 'I thought I made people nervous, Abby.'
She'd stiffened, he noticed, not as sure of him as she pretended. 'Not me. I'm not afraid of you, Jed.'
Another step, very close now. 'If so, you're the only one.'
'Stop it. I'm trying to trust. Don't put everything to the test.'
He stopped, feeling foolish. 'I'm sorry. I shouldn't joke around. It's just that the whole situation is so… absurd. This place, this paranoia…'
'People are spooked. I'm spooked. We all just want to go home.'
'And yet we can't.'
'Yes.' She slumped in a chair. 'Stuck with each other.' She squinted at him, slightly annoyed at his advance. Her lips were full, her neck high. Her hands were small, good for working with electronics. She was prettier than he remembered. He realized that he'd missed her.
