surroundings, gathering provisions, planning strategies. Eleanor was relieved to see it, and hoped the mood held… for she had learned that something far darker could always, at any moment, supplant it.
Grabbing at the bag of food from the kennel, now propped against the table leg, he said, “Should we warm some up for dinner?” He made it sound as if he was asking if she would care to indulge in a chocolate souffle. “Food,” he said, before adding, as he placed one of the black wine bottles on the table, “and drink.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
December 14
The infirmary at Point Adelie did not actually have a proper morgue, but then it didn't really need one. The whole continent of Antarctica was a cold-storage unit, and Murphy decided to keep Danzig's body in the coldest and most protected spot of all-the glaciology vault built ten feet under the core bin. After the geologist's body had been recovered from the crevasse the year before, that was where they'd kept his body, too. Betty and Tina were less than thrilled, but they understood the gravity of the situation and were willing to make the accommodation.
“Just so long as you seal the body up tight,” Betty said. “We can't have any risk of contamination to the core samples.”
“And I don't want to feel the poor guy's eyes boring through the back of my skull,” Tina added. “It's spooky enough already down there.”
With that, Michael had to agree. He had volunteered to help Franklin with the removal of the corpse; he felt he owed at least that much to Danzig. After Charlotte had made some basic preparations, the body was zipped into a clear plastic body bag, then into a second bag of olive-green canvas. Michael and Franklin had used a gurney to transport it down the bumpy concourse to the glaciology lab; the wind was blowing so powerfully that the gurney was tipped over twice, and each time that Michael had to lift the body again, he felt a chill descend his spine. The corpse was already beginning to stiffen up, either from rigor mortis or the effects of the subzero temperatures. It felt to Michael like he was lifting a human statue.
The steps down into the ice vault had been cut out of the permafrost, and rather than try to negotiate the gurney down them, Franklin and Michael simply carried the body, by its shoulders and feet, underground. A single white light on a motion sensor went off as they entered and bathed them in a hollow glare. There was an earthen slab carved from one corner of the vault, and Franklin gestured at it with his chin. Michael hoisted up his end-the head and shoulders-and they swung the body onto the slab. It landed with a thump. On the other side of the vault, a cylindrical ice core rested on a long lab table, held by a vise. Several drills and bits and saws hung from a wall rack. In a continent of cold, this place struck Michael as the coldest spot of all-and the most frightening. A frozen tomb that called only for a millstone to be rolled across its entrance.
“Let's get the hell out of here,” Franklin said, and Michael thought he saw him surreptitiously cross himself.
At the top of the stairs, huddled in the freezing wind with her arms around herself, was Betty. “I hope he's not going to have to be there long,” she said to Franklin.
“Whenever the next plane can make it in,” he said, already stomping off toward the rec hall. But Michael lingered. He had a generous slice of cold roast beef in his pocket for his pet skua, and when he pulled it out, Betty smiled. “Ollie will be beside himself.”
Michael brushed away the snow that had once again piled up in front of the plasma crate, knelt and looked inside. There he was- bigger than ever-his gray bill poking up out of a nest of slender wood shavings. Seeing his benefactor, the bird shook himself all over and waddled to his feet. Michael held out the roast beef, and after regarding it for a second, Ollie lunged forward, grabbing it in one swoop and gulping it down. “Next time maybe I should bring some horseradish,” Michael said. The bird looked up at him, perhaps waiting for more. “One day he's going to have to fly away” Michael said over his shoulder, and Betty chuckled.
“What, and give up a good thing?”
When Michael stood up again, she said, “Face it-that bird is tame and probably wouldn't survive a day in the wild. They don't serve roast beef there.”
“But what happens when my time here is up?” Michael said. “I can't exactly take him back to Tacoma.”
“Don't worry,” Betty said. “Tina's already drawing up adoption papers. Ollie will be fine.”
That put his mind to rest, at least on that one small point. It seemed so long since he'd been able to rectify anything in this world-much less save it-that he was grateful even for any little unforeseen break. Maybe the curse he'd felt ever since the Cascades disaster could be lifted, after all… one tiny bit at a time.
Trudging back toward the commons, he passed one of the search teams Murphy had sent out-one made up of Calloway the divemaster, and another grunt whose hat, with a big brim and earflaps, was pulled so far down that Michael couldn't even identify him. “Evening, mate,” Calloway called out, waving a flashlight, and Michael lifted a gloved hand in acknowledgment. “If you see any lost dogs,” Calloway added, “you'll let me know, right?”
“You'll be my first call.”
As he approached the marine biology lab, Michael saw that the lights were on, and even under the wind he could hear the strains of classical music playing inside. Detouring to the lab, he tried the door, but it stopped short, and he could see that a rope had been tied around the handle on the inside.
“Who's there?” he heard Darryl shout.
Michael shouted back, “It's me, Michael.”
“Hold on.”
Darryl came over to the door, slipped the rope off the handle, then let him in.
“That's some high-tech security system you've got there,” Michael said, stamping the snow off his boots.
“It'll have to do until Murphy gets a real lock put in.”
“But it only works when you're inside. What do you do when you're not here?”
“I'm posting a sign.”
“That says what?”
“That says there are several amphibious specimens loose in here and that they're all poisonous.”
Michael laughed. “And you think that will work?”
“No, not really” Darryl admitted, returning to his lab stool, “but then I think the thieves have already got the only thing they actually wanted.”
On the counter in front of him, Darryl had a fish, about a foot long, splayed open from one end to the other, with pins holding its skin back. The whole thing was nearly transparent. Its gills were white, and its blood-if there was any-had no more color than water. Only its eye, fixed and dead, was golden. Michael was unpleasantly reminded of biology class in high school. The next victim was already lined up, sitting almost motionless at the bottom of a supercooled tank with frost coating its rim, on the other side of a row of glass jars, the size of shot glasses; all the jars were filled with solution, but two or three also contained small organs extracted and preserved for further study.
“Should he be watching this?” Michael said.
“That's why I've blocked his view with the jars.”
“Looks sort of like a perch,” Michael said, of the fish being dissected.
“You've got a good eye,” Darryl said. “It's part of the perchlike suborder, JVotothenioidei.”
“Come again?”
“Over the past fifty-five million years,” Darryl began, clearly happy to hold forth on such topics, “the temperature of the Southern Ocean has steadily decreased, from about twenty degrees centigrade to its present- day extremes, roughly minus one point eight degrees centigrade. The Antarctic marine environment also became more and more isolated. The water got colder, migration got harder, and the shallow-water fish either had to adapt, or die. Most of them went extinct.”
“But not these guys?”
“These guys,” Darryl said, with evident fondness and satisfaction, “toughed it out. The notothenids hung out at the bottom of the sea, biding their time. They acclimated themselves by developing a lower metabolic demand and raising their individual oxygen solubility. They could store the oxygen and hold on to it longer in their
