“Another spook hunt?”
“Something like that. Besides, the black-ops types who did all the interrogating this morning know where I live. I doubt I’ve heard the last of them.” He paused. “What did you tell them?”
“Exactly what happened, as best I could remember,” Marshall replied. “But it seemed every answer I gave just spawned more questions, so in the end I basically shut up.”
“Did they believe you?”
“I think so. With all of us as eyewitnesses I don’t see why they wouldn’t.” He looked at Logan. “Don’t you think?”
“I think it would have helped if there was a carcass.”
“Yes, that is strange. Certainly left plenty of blood behind. I’d have sworn up and down it was stone dead, its skull the way it was.”
“It must have crawled off to die,” said Faraday. “Just like the first one.”
“You know what Usuguk would say about that,” Marshall replied. He looked toward the horizon, where the Tunit was already dwindling to a brown speck between the broad smears of white and blue.
“I’m damned glad it died,” Logan said, “but I still don’t understand the mechanics. How the sound waves killed it, I mean.”
“Without a corpse we can’t be sure,” Marshall answered. “But I knew that high frequencies irritated it. A pure sine wave, without harmonics, seemed even more painful.”
“But don’t most sounds produce harmonics?”
“That’s right,” said Faraday. “So-called ‘imperfect’ instruments, like a violin or oboe-or a human voice-all do. It’s ironic, because those harmonics are what make sounds rich and complex.”
“But certain sine waves don’t,” Marshall said. “I had the machine produce a series of waves that would reinforce the fundamental tone. I hoped that if we found a sound sufficiently painful, we could drive it from the base.”
“It had a much greater effect than that,” said Logan.
Marshall nodded. “It’s interesting. Fish and whales have internal air bladders, which can be disrupted by sonar. Some scientists believe dinosaurs had organs in their brains for making incredibly loud, trumpeting noises that could be heard miles away. I wouldn’t be surprised if this creature had some similar organ or cavity in its skull-for mating, or communication, or something else. I believe these high frequencies triggered a sympathetic resonance within that organ, and ultimately caused it to burst.”
“I’m a historian, not a physicist,” said Logan. “I’ve never heard of sympathetic resonance.”
“Think of glass shattering when a soprano sings a high note. There’s a natural frequency at which that glass vibrates. If the soprano keeps singing the same note, it keeps adding energy to the glass. At some point the glass can’t dissipate the energy quickly enough and it breaks.” Marshall glanced back toward the base. “In this case, I guess we’ll never know.”
“A pity.” Logan turned to Faraday. “And what did you tell our uniformed interrogators?”
Faraday looked back with his perpetually startled expression. “I tried to explain it from a purely biological perspective. How the two creatures were frozen separately during a single event: an atmospheric inversion causing a downdraft of super-cooled ice, flash-freezing the animals before ice could form in their bloodstreams, keeping them alive in suspended animation. I explained how the ice melted: its unique composition, ice-fifteen, that melts a few degrees below zero centigrade. I explained the second causal agent: the opposite phenomenon to a terminal freeze, a downdraft of unusually warm air that helped revive the creature-and how both events could have triggered the bizarre crimson northern lights that upset Usuguk. I gave them the example of the Beresovka mammoth as a precedent.”
“What did you say about the creature itself?” Logan asked.
“I told them about the Callisto Effect. How the creature could well have been a genetic mutation, or perhaps something as simple as an unknown species. And I told them about the creature’s hyper-developed white blood cell line, how it would promote healing that was almost instant. How beneath the fur it had a chitinous exoskeleton, but scaled almost like a snake, allowing for rapid and flexible movement-and the deflection of bullets. And its unique neurological makeup: even high doses of electricity didn’t disrupt its nervous system or stop its heart. Yet, ironically, sound-of a certain amplitude and frequency-was lethal: aided, perhaps, by weakness brought on due to starvation.”
“So that explains everything,” said Logan.
“Everything-and nothing,” Faraday added.
Logan frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Because everything I just told you-except for the blood work-is mere theory and speculation. The fact is, strange types of ice, like ice-fifteen, require a great deal of pressure to form. The fact is, the creature survived being frozen in ice-whatever kind of ice-for thousands of years. It was transcendentally strong. It was impervious to even high doses of electricity…” Faraday shrugged.
Marshall looked at him thoughtfully. The biologist had just constructed a plausible explanation to everything- and then, quickly, pulled the rug out from under it. “Maybe Usuguk was right, after all,” he said.
The two men looked at him.
“Are you serious?” asked Faraday.
“Of course-partly, anyway. I’m a scientist, but I’d be the first to admit science can’t explain everything. We’re a long way from civilization. This is the top of the world. A different set of rules is in place here, rules we don’t have the least idea about. This isn’t man’s environment-but the men who are here have seen a lot more than we have, and we should listen to them. If any land could be called the land of the spirits, wouldn’t it be here-this strange, sacred, distant spot? Do you really think the way the northern lights winked out just when the creature died was utter coincidence?”
The question hung in the cold air, unanswered. In the silence that followed, Marshall heard the distant whap-whap of helicopter blades.
“That would be my ride,” Logan murmured. He hoisted the duffel at his feet.
“What about you?” Marshall asked.
“What about me?” Logan slung his laptop over his shoulder. “If either of you are ever in New Haven, look me up.”
“That’s not an answer. Which theory do you subscribe to-the scientific or the spiritual?”
Logan looked at him for a moment, eyes narrowing slightly. Instead of answering, he asked a question of his own. “Where did you grow up, Dr. Marshall?”
This was the last thing Marshall expected to hear. “ Rapid City, South Dakota.”
“Have any pets?”
“Sure. Three dachshunds.”
“Ever go on long driving trips as a kid?”
Marshall nodded, mystified. “Practically every summer.”
“Ever lose any of those dachshunds at a roadside rest stop?”
“No.”
“I did,” said Logan. “Barkley, my Irish setter. I loved that dog more than just about anything. He ran off at a picnic ground in the middle of Oklahoma nowhere. My family looked for three hours. Never found him. Finally, we had to leave. I was inconsolable.”
The helicopter was landing now outside the security perimeter, beating up diaphanous skeins of powdery snow. Marshall looked at Logan, frowning. “I don’t understand what losing a pet has to do with-”
All of a sudden Logan ’s implication hit home. Marshall blinked in surprise as the light dawned. “Except that the travelers you’re talking about were from much farther away than Rapid City, South Dakota.”
Logan nodded. “Much, much farther.”
Marshall shook his head. “Is that what you believe?”
“I’m an enigmalogist. It’s my job to exercise my imagination. As your friend Faraday here said-mere theory and speculation.” He grinned, shook their hands in turn, then walked toward the waiting helicopter. As the pilot opened the passenger door, he turned back.
“It’s a hell of a speculation, though-isn’t it?” he called over the whine of the engine. Then he clambered in and closed the door. The helicopter rose; wheeled over the Fear glacier-blue against the blue of the sky-and then
