now.”
“How badly did he get hurt?”
“Charlotte thinks it's just a mild concussion and a scalp wound.”
“So he's in the infirmary?” Darryl said, ready to race over and collect some fresh blood samples.
“No, the meat locker.”
“That again?”
“Murphy doesn't want to put the whole base at risk.”
However reluctantly, Darryl had to concede the chief's point. After all, he had seen Ackerley in action-and who could tell what might come of reuniting Eleanor with this other lost soul, presumably afflicted in the same way she was. It could create an unholy alliance.
“So,” Michael said, a little too casually, “how's it coming?”
“How's what coming?”
“The cure. You find any way to help Eleanor out?”
“If you're asking me whether or not I've managed to solve one of the most puzzling hematological puzzles in history in the space of, oh, say a few days, the answer is no. Pasteur took his time, too.”
“Sorry,” Michael said, and Darryl regretted being short with him.
“But I am making some progress,” he said. “I have some ideas.”
“That's good,” Michael said, visibly perking up. “That's great. I have faith in you. I think I will have that soda.”
“Help yourself.”
Michael went to the fridge, opened a bottle, then stood sipping it by the aquarium tank with the Cryothenia hirschii in it.
“Because I had this wacky idea of my own,” he finally said, without turning around to face Darryl.
“I'm open to all suggestions,” Darryl replied, capping another vial and labeling it, “though I was not aware that this was your field.”
“It's not,” Michael said. “My idea was, Eleanor should go back on the supply plane with me.”
“What?”
“If you could find a cure, or at least a way to stabilize her condition,” Michael said, turning around now, “I could shepherd her back to civilization.”
“She doesn't belong on an airplane,” Darryl said, “she belongs in quarantine. Or at the CDC. She's still got a blood disease with- what should we call them to be kind? — serious side effects?” But there was a look in Michael's eye that he didn't like. “This woman is off-limits, in a big way. You do get that, right?”
“Jesus, of course I do,” Michael said, as if taking offense at the very suggestion.
“And now, in case you've already forgotten, we've got a second patient with the same problem. Were you planning to take him back with you, too?”
“If we had a solution,” Michael said, though with a touch less enthusiasm, “yes, I would.” He took a long drink from the soda bottle. “I would have to.”
“That's insane,” Darryl said. “The plane is due in what, nine days? I sincerely doubt that anyone but you will be going back on it.”
Michael looked deflated, but accepting, as if he knew he'd been floating a very leaky trial balloon.
“What you can do,” Darryl said, to buck him up, “is ask Charlotte to get me some blood samples from-what was his name again?”
“Sinclair Copley.”
“From Mr. Copley, as soon as possible. And now, instead of distracting me with any more of your lame ideas, you should go back to the dorm and crash. Maybe you'll wake up tomorrow with some more great ideas.”
“Thanks. I just might.”
“Can't wait,” Darryl said, already returning to his work.
But Michael had one more stop to make before sleeping; he'd been avoiding it for days, and Joe Gillespie had left three increasingly urgent messages for him. For a host of reasons, he'd been postponing the conversation. What was he going to tell him? That the bodies discovered in the ice had been successfully thawed out-and they'd then absconded? That they were now alive, in fact, and under lock-down? Oh yeah, that would be an easy sell. Or should he go into what had happened to Danzig, and then Ackerley-tell him how dead men had come back to life, insane with some unknown disease that turned them into a polar version of the living dead? How far would he get with any of that, he wondered, before Gillespie started to speculate on just how crazy his reporter had become? And what would Gillespie do then? Would he notify the NSF headquarters in Washington that an immediate evacuation of his hallucinating staffer was required? Or, would he simply try to contact the base commander himself, none other than Murphy O'Connor? The same Murphy O'Connor whose last pronouncement on this subject had been, “What happens at Point Adelie, stays at Point Adelie.”
Michael called Gillespie at home, on the SAT phone, hoping he'd get a machine, but Gillespie picked up on the first ring.
“Hope I'm not waking you,” Michael said, over the low crackle of static.
“Michael?” Gillespie nearly shouted. “You're a very hard man to reach!”
“Yeah, well, it's kind of a topsy-turvy place down here.”
“Wait a second-let me turn the stereo down.”
Michael stared down at a notepad on the counter; somebody had been doodling a sleigh with Santa on top and it really wasn't bad. Michael flashed on Christmas the year before-Kristin had given him a pup tent, and he'd given her an acoustic guitar… that she'd never had time to learn how to play.
“So tell me,” Gillespie said, back on the line, “where are we on this story? I want to get the art department started on the cover and the layout as soon as possible, and anytime you have a rough draft of the text-and I don't care how rough it is-I want to see it.” His words were coming so fast they were tumbling over themselves. “So what's the latest with the bodies in the ice? Have you thawed ‘em out? Or figured out anything about who they were?”
What, Michael wondered, could he say? That he not only knew who they were, but knew their actual names? Because they had told him?
“The girl's the one I'm particularly interested in,” Gillespie confessed. “What's she look like? Is she completely decayed, or would she be something we could feature in a full-page shot without scaring our younger readers?”
Michael was at a total loss. He didn't want to start laying down a bunch of lies, but he was definitely not about to divulge the truth. The thought of describing Eleanor to him, of pitching her, as the subject of some photo opportunity…
“I hope she's going to be well enough preserved to go on display somewhere,” Gillespie rattled on. “The NSF, I'm sure, is going to want to show her off, and I wouldn't be surprised if they set up some kind of show around her at the Smithsonian.”
Michael's heart sank even lower in his chest. He regretted the haste with which he had informed Gillespie of the find in the first place, and he wished, more than anything, that he could simply roll back time and start all over. That he could take it all back. Maybe now, it dawned on him, he could start. “You know,” he said, “it looks like I was a bit quick on the draw there.”
“Quick on the draw,” Gillespie repeated, slowly for a change. “What do you mean?”
What did he mean? He could picture the fuzz on Gillespie's head getting fuzzier by the second. “The bodies, well, they didn't turn out to be what I thought they were.”
“What the hell are you getting at? They're either bodies, or they're not. Don't do this to me, Michael. Are you saying that-”
While he talked, Michael shook the phone, and when he went back on a few seconds later, he said, “Sorry, you were breaking up. Could you repeat that last bit, Joe?”
“I was saying, is this story for real or not? Because if you were just jerking my chain, I'm not amused in the slightest.”
“I was not jerking you around,” Michael replied, holding the phone at arm's length for maximum effect. “I guess I was fooled myself. It looks like, well, it looks like maybe it wasn't an actual woman at all. Just a carved wooden figurehead.”
