with the upturned blade. The dog yowled as its own weight and the force of its charge impaled it on the saber, pulling Sinclair's arm down with it. He fell beside the writhing animal, his wrist pinned below its neck. He pushed himself back, drawing the saber out as he went, but the weapon had already done its work. The dog, blood spurting from its wound and clotting the white fur, lay twitching on the straw-covered floor. He pushed himself farther away, out of reach of any last lunge, and waited for his own breath to return. There was a gurgling sound from the dog's throat, and now he could hear Eleanor's anxious cries.
“Sinclair! Are you all right? Sinclair!”
“Yes,” he replied, trying to keep his own voice down. “I'm all right.”
He looked at his torn boot, where the dog's spittle coated the leather, and he could feel his own blood seeping down his calf. The dog had bitten hard. He got to his feet and, stepping around the dying dog, went back down the stairs. The glaring white light, from some kind of globe he saw affixed to the ceiling, sent his own shadow lurching down before him. It was, most assuredly, a world of wonders-heat from smokeless grates, illumination from glass bowls, coats made of fabric he had never felt-but it was not altogether unrecognizable. No, he thought, as he wiped the scarlet stain from his hand, in its bloody essentials the world hadn't changed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
December 13, 7:30 p.m.
The moment Michael returned to camp, he hurried back to his room, switched some of his camera gear, and went looking for Darryl. He was on his way to the marine lab when he bumped into Charlotte on the snow-covered walkway.
“Welcome back,” she said. “Want to join me for dinner?”
“First things first,” he said, lifting the camera slung around his neck. “It's been hours since I got a shot of the ice block.”
“Then one more won't hurt,” she said, slinging an arm through his and dragging him in the opposite direction. “Besides, Darryl's in the commons.”
“You sure?” Michael said, digging in his heels.
“Positive,” she assured him, “and you know he doesn't like anyone in his lab when he's not there.”
Michael did know that Darryl was very territorial, but he would still have been willing to risk it-if Charlotte hadn't been clinging to his arm so insistently, and if he hadn't actually worked up quite such an enormous appetite on his journey to the whaling station. He told himself that he'd make it quick, then haul Darryl straight back to the lab with him.
On the short trip to the commons, Charlotte told him that she'd just finished attending to Lawson, who'd dropped some ski gear on his foot, but Michael was still having a hard time focusing. He had that itchy feeling that he sometimes got, the sense that he was missing out on something, and every time the camera thumped on his chest it only got worse.
“But I'll say this,” Charlotte confided, as they mounted the ramp to the commons. “I don't have a single soul in the sick bay. If I can keep that up for the next six months, this won't be such a bad deal, after all.”
In the commons, they ditched their coats and gear, then piled their plates high with beef stew, sticky rice, and sourdough rolls. In the Antarctic, salad just didn't cut it. Beakers and grunts were coming and going, and even Ackerley-a.k.a. Spook-who usually just grabbed a milk carton and some small cereal boxes and took them back to his botany lab, was sitting at one of the picnic-style tables with some of his cronies. Even though there were no hard-and-fast dining hours at the Point-no one would be able to keep them-the kitchen staff, headed by a grizzled old Navy cook who insisted on being called Uncle Barney, always seemed to keep things coming. No one, not even Murphy O'Connor, knew quite how the trick was pulled off.
Michael spotted Darryl before Charlotte did, nearly hidden behind a pile of rice and string beans, with his nose buried in some lab reports. He plopped his tray down across the table and Charlotte slid in next to him.
Darryl glanced up while dabbing at his mouth with a paper napkin. “Such a handsome couple,” he said. Then he tapped the papers. “These are the readouts from the blood sample in the wine bottle.” He said it as if that was what they had been waiting for.
“And this is what you bring to dinner?” Charlotte said as she snapped her napkin open.
“It's fascinating stuff,” Darryl said, but when he started to elaborate on the sources of the putrefaction, Charlotte stuck a sourdough roll in his mouth.
“Didn't your mama tell you not to talk about certain things at the table?”
Michael laughed, and once the roll was removed from his mouth, so did Darryl. “But, really, you would not believe the blood-cell ratios,” he said, starting up all over again, which Charlotte put a stop to by saying, “Michael, why don't you tell us about what you did today?”
Darryl gave up, broke open the warm bread and began to ladle in scoops of butter, while Michael regaled them with tales of the Norwegian station and piloting the dogsled back to camp.
“Danzig let you do that?” Darryl said.
Michael nodded, swallowing a particularly tough morsel of stew. “In fact, I thought I saw you coming back from the dive hut on a snowmobile.”
Darryl admitted that he'd been there. “But nothing I brought up in the traps was worth keeping this time. I'll try again tomorrow.”
They ate in silence for a few minutes-at pole, every meal was a sort of communion, a way to tell your body what time it was, a break in the unending day. There were many times when you had to stop and ask yourself whether it was lunch or dinner you were sitting down to, but Uncle Barney tried to make that easier for you by providing lots of sandwiches at lunch, and big hot entrees, like stew or spaghetti or chili con carne, for dinner. Betty and Tina had suggested candles be put out for the evening meal, but the grunts had overwhelmingly rejected that idea, in colorful language attached to the bulletin board outside Murphy's office.
Michael had tried to be patient, but before Darryl had quite finished with his hot peach cobbler, he said, “You are planning to go back to the lab tonight, aren't you?”
Darryl nodded, as he chased an errant slice of peach around his plate.
“Because I could always go on ahead of you,” Michael said, “if you don't mind.”
Darryl scooped up the peach, ate it, and said, “Gimme a break. I'm coming.” He crumpled up his napkin and tossed it on the plate. “I want to see what's up just as much as you do.”
Charlotte, sipping the last of her latte, said, “I'm in, too.”
After donning their coats and goggles and gloves, they were all barely identifiable, even to each other. In the Antarctic, people tended to recognize other people based on something simple-a colorful scarf, a stocking hat, a way of walking-because apart from that, everyone looked like big fat bundles of down padding and rubber and wool.
The night was uncommonly still, and the sun was veiled by a thin scrim of wispy clouds-all betokening serious weather to come. Their boots crunched on the ice and snow as they walked by the glaciology lab-they could hear the buzzing of a drill from inside the core bin-and approached the sled shed. Off in the distance, the botany lab, where the grow lights were always on, beckoned. It all reminded Michael of Christmas nights as a kid, when his parents would take him to midnight mass, and there was such an air of anticipation hanging over everything. Back then, he knew that something wonderful was waiting for him in the morning, and now he knew that something amazing was waiting for him in that low dark module just around the bend.
Darryl trotted ahead of them and up the ramp. So as not to keep the door open any longer than he had to, he waited for them to catch up before opening it-no one ever locked a lab at Point Adelie; it was a safety point laid down as law by the Chief-and the three of them ducked inside all at once.
The first thing Michael noticed, even before he'd unzipped his coat, was the wet floor. The marine lab often had spills-that was why the floor was a slab of concrete, with drains at regular intervals-but it was a lot wetter than usual. His rubber boots made a sucking noise as he stepped around the lab counter, where the microscope and monitor sat, and followed Darryl over to the side of the central aquarium tank.
Water was still dripping over its sides, the PVC pipes were still operating, as far as he could tell, but apart from the seawater, the tank was otherwise empty. There was no block of ice, and certainly no floating bodies.
