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  'Of course not. But if he was dead - '

  He interrupted furiously. 'Don't say it!'

  'I'll say it,' I said. 'It could be murder.'

  'Sure it could. And it could have been a heart attack or a cerebral haemorrhage, too. You're so damn smart, you tell me how I can find out!' He broke off and sniffed. 'You've been drinking,' he said accusingly.

  I said, 'Brandy.'

  'In the morning? He'd done it well and the roles were changed; I was firmly on the defensive now, a morning drunk making trouble.

  Still, I tried once more. Or began, anyway. I said, 'Kirton was - '

  But Smales wasn't having it, dismissal and disgust combining in a single gesture of his hand as he said, 'Sleep it off.'

  But I didn't sleep. I lay on my bunk and thought a lot and finished up with a conclusion or two. One was that Camp Hundred, with all its hazards, was now without a doctor. But it was Kirton I thought about most. If he'd had a stroke or a heart attack, as Smales had said, then perhaps I was being foolish. But Kirton had been no more than thirty, and a relaxed, strong-looking man at that and the odds, surely, were against it. There was perhaps a possibility that he'd been killed accidentally, blundering into a moving tractor or something like that, and an even more remote possibility of suicide, which I included in my mental list only to dismiss it. If he hadn't died of natural causes, an accident, or killed himself, then somebody else had done it.

  There were also the nasty little coincidences. Kirton's body had been only yards away from the entrance to the Reserve Fuel Store, where the polar bear had slashed the tanks and eaten the emergency rations. And it had been the morning doorstep sweeper who'd first discovered both the bear's tracks and Kirton's body. The same man? I decided that was one of the things I ought to find out. I'd go into the tractor sheds and talk propulsion and ask questions. But first there was something else.

  The hospital was my first stop. It was unlocked and I went in, switched on the lights, and stood by the partition between the office and the theatre. What was it Kirton had shouted? That he had something to show me, or tell me; something like that. And that he'd see me later, because he was busy. Had he had a patient in there? If so who? An appointments book lay on the desk and I flipped it open. There weren't many entries anywhere, and only one for the previous day, at 3.30 p.m. It said, Pfc Hansen, nasal polyp.' Well, I'd try to check on Pfc Hansen, too. But I was more concerned about the microscopic examination Kirton had promised to do on the food wrapping. His microscope was in a wooden box which stood on a side workbench, but there was no slide on the clips though there were plenty in a special rack beside it. However, they were only numbered, not labelled, so I'd neither any way of identifying the right one, nor the knowledge to understand it if I did.

  I did find something, though, before I left the hospital. The torn lumps of tinfoil and plastic wrapping from the emergency rations lay discarded in a waste basket by his desk. But there was nothing else: no pad with notes on it, no torn-up scraps of paper in the waste basket. So Kirton had looked and found nothing to interest him? It could only be that. Nothing worthy of remark, nothing to make notes about. The whole thing negative. But then I thought: Nothing? No bacteria? Yet the morning before, when he'd said he'd use his microscope, he'd said also that if the bear had eaten the stuff, there'd be saliva and therefore bacteria. I collected the wrappings, found an envelope, put them inside and tucked them in my pocket. They were certainly no use to me, but if I left them, they'd be thrown out. I left, aware that I was jumping to conclusions and that some of them were pretty wild.

  Then I collected the two fat volumes of the TK4 maintenance manual, took them along to the tractor shed and introduced myself to the top sergeant there, a bulky cigar-smoker called Reilly. He looked at me and the manuals, took the cigar from his mouth, spat out a flake of tobacco and said, 'This all we get?'

  'The principle is that it's all you need,' I said.

  'Jesus!' he said. 'No project engineer. Not even a coupla lectures?'

  I explained about the TK4 and its great simplicity. It was designed on the basis that any bunch of competent mechanics with reasonable workshop facilities could do all that was necessary by way of repairs, servicing and maintenance.

  Reilly said, 'Yeah?' on a rising note, full of disbelief.

  I smiled. 'If you buy the TK4 - '

  'I'm not buying, son.'

  'If the army buys, then?' He nodded. 'If that happens, naturally we'll send a whole crew over to see her through the first operations. But the idea of the trials is to see how well it can be operated without all that. We tried it in Canada and it worked pretty well.'

  Reilly grinned behind the cigar. 'This ain't Canada, son.'

  I said, 'But that's the idea.'

  He hefted the manuals, about six pounds of assorted paper, and said, 'And this here's a little bedtime reading?'

  'I'm afraid so.'

  Reilly looked at me out of small blue eyes. 'Answer me a question, willya? If this TK4 of yours goes over a guy, what's it do?'

  I said soberly, 'He'd be a bit battered by the air. The rubber skirts might scrape some skin off. It wouldn't kill him, if that's what you mean.'

  'That's what I mean. I just been clearing the doc offa them tracks.'

  He was already turning away. 'Don't worry, son, I'll read the books.'

  I said quickly, 'Who found Doc Kirton ?'

  He turned back. 'I did. So?'

  'You were driving?'

  'Right.'

  'And the bear tracks. Who found those?'

  He took a step towards me, almost aggressively.

  'Why you wanna know?'

  'I wondered, that's all.'

  He said, 'Kid name of Hansen.'

  'He's got a nasal polyp,' I said.

  'Had. The doc fixed it yesterday. Just before . . .' he stopped.

  I said, 'Yes, I know,' and walked away, but I could feel his eyes on my back. Because I was an interloper? Or for some other reason?

  As I went in to lunch, Barney Smales was leaving the mess hall. He stopped and looked at me thoughtfully, then said, 'When you've eaten, come and talk to me, huh?'

  'No time like the present."

  He said, 'Not now. The food's necessary. Eat first.'

  I wasn't hungry, but I ate a little, then went to the command hut. Smales took me into his office and closed the door. He was frowning, but his tone was friendly enough as he said, 'Are you normally this suspicious?'

  I said, 'I'm renowned for my sunny outlook.'

  'You are? I'd take convincing. Listen to me a minute, Bowes. When you run a place like this, there's plenty of problems. They come up all the time. Old problems, new problems, recurrent problems. You come in category two. You're a new problem and I want to know what's eating you.'

  I said, 'It simply seems to me that too many dangerous things have been happening for it all to be coincidence.'

  'And you think maybe there's murder, sabotage, the whole works ?'

  'I began to wonder.'

  He sat back in his chair, toying with a ruler from his desk, then said, surprisingly, 'I can see how you might think it.'

  'I'm relieved to hear it.

  'But I don't think it.'

  'I gathered that.'

  'So what I want to do is go over it with you, right? Tell you what I think and why I think it. What's the first one, the runway lights?'

  'If you take them in sequence, yes.'

  'Okay. Well, this morning I went out there in a Weasel with Herschel and two electricians and we had a look at the cables. Wanna know what we found?'

  'Of course.'

  'They'd been chewed. Not in just one place, either. There were more than forty places. Damn foxes just keep on chewing. Sooner or later, there's a short circuit and bang go the lights. We renew those cables, we have to, around every six months. That satisfy?'

  I said, 'Not entirely, no. The short circuit happened at the exact moment a plane was coming in. A plane with you in it. And Kelle
her.'

  'Yeah. Okay. But it was the first plane in two weeks, right? Two weeks since the lights were used.'

  I wasn't satisfied. 'But the lights did go on. It was when the plane was coming in that they failed.'

  'That's right. That's why I inspected the cables myself. Because I'm not as green and trusting as you think I am. But you get all the teeth marks and you get a dead fox - '

  'Did you?'

  'Oh, sure. There he was, right beside the cable. You see, Mr Bowes?'

  'I do now.'

  'Okay, next problem's the diesel generator, right?'

  'Certainly.'

  'And you say to yourself, how in hell did the fuel get contaminated? Well, I can't tell you.'

  'But. There m a but?'

  He laughed. 'Sure there is. It happens up here. Fuel comes in to Thule by tanker. It's pumped ashore into storage tanks. Then when they bring it up here, it's pumped out again into neoprene. Then it's brought up here and stored, also in neoprene. But rubber pipes are used in pumping, and rubber can go solid and crack in bad cold. Pieces flake off the inside of the pipe and get in the fuel. It's happened with Swing-haul tractors, too. Just one of the hazards.'

  'It's not as convincing as the dead fox.'

  'I can see I got to work on you, Sherlock. Let's put it this way. It's happened a few times at Thule, and at Belvoir, and on the Trail up here. And here. We know this one. It's one of the standing hazards.'

  I shrugged and moved on. 'The coins in the reactor?'

  'Carelessness. That's what Kelleher says and I believe it. Tell you why I believe it, too. Not because we had that problem before. We haven't. But because carelessness and lack of concentration are standard here. You're not the man you were three or four days ago and neither am I. You're affected by the altitude, by claustrophobia; you resent the necessity to put heavy clothing on to go to the can.'

  I shook my head. 'There's a good reason. I can understand it well enough.'

  'Okay,' he said. 'But you resent it. You wish you didn't have to do it. It's a goddam drag. There's a million things. We eat a lot but we get no proper exercise. There's no sun, no space, damn little privacy. We don't take enough fluid and dehydration's a constant hazard, so don't forget to drink your milk. People don't sleep well here. There's no visible difference between night and day down here - or up on the cap, for that matter, through the winter darkness. We've had all the tests done. Doctors, shrinks, efficiency people. Know what they found ?'

  'Well, obviously that people aren't as efficient,'

  'That's right. They're just about half as efficient. Half! And that's everybody. Officers, enlisted men, visiting scientists and engineers. Everybody, including you, Bowes, is at roughly fifty per cent of normal. Give you two instances. There was a guy up here last winter working on ice movement, a specialist in glaciers. He was also a hot shot bridge player. Not just good, he's a real top player, gets his name in the New York Times. He's sitting in the club one night playing a contract and he suddenly turns nine colours of green and red.'

  Smales waited for me to ask why, and I obliged.

  'Because he'd forgotten what trumps were, or if it was a no trump hand, and even whether he was trying to make a contract or defending. There's the dummy hand sitting there opposite, and he didn't even know that. His mind had gone blank. What is it, Bowes, is it carelessness? Now the other guy, he was an officer here. Civil engineer. Had been here six weeks and he'd lost the ability to add up, right? Two and two he could do, but fifty-eight and thirty-seven he had to get a pencil. Those coins in the reactor kettle, they're a nuisance, sure. And worse. If I knew who'd done it, I'd kick his ass from here to Fort Belvoir, Virginia. But I have to accept that things like that are gonna happen.'

  'And the helicopter crash? And the man lost on the surface? And Doc Kirton?'

  He sighed and ran his hand wearily across his forehead. Then he said, 'Okay. I got no explanations. But. There's been five years of operations up here. That was the first air crash. The first. It was bound to happen sooner or later. It makes me sick to my stomach, but statistically it was coming. Same with the guy lost on top. We got nearly three hundred men here. Five hundred sometimes. They live and work in the worst weather conditions in the world. It's a miracle it hasn't happened before. Can you accept that ?'

  'I suppose so.' I couldn't accept it quite as readily as he apparently did, but there was obvious truth in what he said and I'd no wish to be needlessly offensive, especially as this was olive-branch time. 'And Kirton ?'

  'Doc Kirton's death,' he said, 'is a mystery to me too. I don't know how he died, or why. Nor have I any way of finding out. For that you need an autopsy and we'll damn well have an autopsy as soon as I can get a pathologist flown in here, or Kirton's body flown out. Then, maybe, we'll know. Meantime, I refuse to speculate. Okay?'

  'No,' I said. 'It's not okay. Not until you've had the pathologist’s report. If Kirton's death was natural, or some kind of accident, then of course you're right. If it wasn't, if he was killed, then - '

  He said dangerously, 'You trying to tell me my duty?'

  'It was you,' I said carefully, 'who said we're all working at fifty per cent.'

  Smales grinned suddenly. 'Okay, okay,' he said. 'Maybe you got something. I get defensive about this place. I know it.'

  I said, 'Did anybody dislike Kirton ?'

  'Who knows? I doubt it. Kirton was a good guy. Look, I'm not an idiot, I'm not naive, I'm not smug, or I hope not. But when you raise the matter of my duties, you're on a tricky spot, because I'm not even sure what they are. Oh, there's administration, the rest of the paper work. Discipline, sure. Normal commander's routine. But beyond that there's the area of morale, of keeping this joint working, and that's a knife edge. Standard military discipline won't work up here. You've seen all the beards ?'

  I nodded.

  'Beards aren't allowed in the US Army. But a lot of the men get sore faces, real sore, if they shave every day. Other guys feel dirty if they don't. So I give the option. I give every little lift I can. If some eighteen-year-old kid wants to grow a beard, gets to feeling a little proud of it, that's fine by me. It helps him keep going. But it's all fragile. Nobody knows how the doc died, right? Maybe, here and there, people are doing some speculating. But what if I took your line? What if I say, "Look, this could be murder, fellas, but there's no way of knowing and no way of finding out." Then they all start looking over their shoulders and the place starts to fall apart. But if you want to know what I believe, I think it could only be some kind of accident. Why? Well, I'll tell you. Doc Kirton was a self-contained sort of guy. He stayed in his hospital and did his job, when there was work to do. Otherwise he played music, a little chess, and kept to himself. He wasn't the kind to make enemies. He was a good doctor and a good guy. Period. I haven't satisfied you, have I?' He smiled.

  I smiled back. 'Not entirely.'

  'Well, I'll tell you. This morning I thought you were paranoid, then I thought you were drunk. Now I don't think either of those things. But I do think you're wrong, and I can't afford to have suspicion flying round this camp.'

  'So shut up?'

  He looked at me. 'Not even that. You want to listen while people talk, you do that. You're not busy, you're wandering around, that's natural. I could stop you, but I won't. And I'm interested in every little thing that happens in this place, so you hear something, you tell me. Okay? Now come with me.'

  We put on parkas and over-trousers and went out, along Main Street and into the kitchens. Smales went over to one of the cooks and said, 'I want a pork chop.'

  The cook said, 'Major Smales, sir, you got the wrong guy. I'm the kosher cook.'

  Smales laughed, apologized and tried another man, then returned with the chop in his hand, held in a pair of cooking tongs. 'Right, come on. Get the mitts on, the parka hood up and tied tight.'

  We went along the trench to the escape hatch, and up the metal spiral staircase, and Smales pushed back the hatchcover bolts, then wound the hand
le that raised it. As the lid opened, wind and snow howled in. He looked down at me and shouted, 'Wind's forty miles an hour. Temperature's fifteen below. Keep your back to the wind.' Then he climbed out on to the icecap, and I followed, and we stood side by side, backs to the Arctic wind, feeling the hard snow crystals pattering continuously on the cloth of the parkas.

  Smales raised the tongs, keeping his hand carefully in the shelter of his shoulder, the pork chop poked upwards into the wind. He bellowed, 'Start counting seconds. One, two, three...'

  We shouted in unison. By the time we'd reached thirty, I could feel the cold beginning to reach my heels, even inside the felt boots. By fifty, my feet were beginning to be cold. At sixty, Smales waved me back to the hatch cover and climbed in after me, then wound the cover down again. The noise of wind and snow receded, then disappeared, and he handed me the pork chop. It was frozen solid.

  He said, 'That's what we live with. Don't forget it. It explains a lot.'

  And he left me standing there, at the base of the stair, looking at an inch-thick pork chop that had become hard as a plank in sixty seconds. We hadn't moved more than six feet from the hatch-cover up there, and it had been an impressive glimpse of the implacably hostile environment in which Camp Hundred managed to exist. More than any words could have done, those sixty seconds underscored the nature of the job Barney Smales had to do.

  After that I drifted round to the radio room. There'd been contact with the Swing during the morning and good news : it was under way again, but, having been held up by the white-out and two big crevasses that opened on the trail, it was still only thirty miles on, with seventy still to go. Several days would probably be needed yet before my TK.4 arrived at Camp Hundred.

  It may have been auto-suggestion, following the talk, with Barney, or it may have been reaction to the morning's horror, but I certainly felt fifty per cent below normal. I was headachy, listless and generally out-of-sorts. It was one of those don't-feel-like times. I didn't feel like lying down and reading; didn't feel like going for some coffee; didn't feel anything much except uselessness and dissatisfaction; the Hundred Heebies, Doc Kirton had called it, and I decided I'd better snap out. I made myself march with reasonable briskness along to the reactor trench. Kelleher had said, 'Come back tomorrow' and it was tomorrow. I went in and could see at once from the faces that something was wrong.