Frozen Solid A Novel

11




HALLIE ARRIVED LATE FOR HER MEETING WITH THE STATION’S CHIEF scientist, but Agnes Merritt seemed not to mind. Before Hallie even sat, the older woman blurted, “Did you hear what happened in the galley?”

“I was there. Yesterday and today both.”

Merritt shook her head. “What an awful introduction to Pole, Dr. Leland. I can’t imagine how I’d feel in your shoes.”

“Thank you. Please call me Hallie.”

“Good deal. I’m Agnes. Aggie to my friends, which is just about everybody.”

Merritt’s office was slightly bigger than Graeter’s, and she had two folding chairs for visitors. A coffeemaker sat on a small table in one corner. Merritt filled mugs and handed one to Hallie. Then she passed a plate of chocolate chip cookies.

Hallie had left most of her breakfast back in the galley. She nibbled one cookie, then gobbled another. “These are great.”

“Grandma’s recipe. I love to bake. Sneak into the galley during off-hours.”

Unlike Graeter’s office, Merritt’s was adorned with framed pictures. One wall was all Antarctic shots: Merritt boarding a C-130 at McMurdo, standing in her Big Red parka beside the station’s “barber pole” ceremonial marker, hoisting a champagne glass in honor of some holiday or memorable occasion. The other wall’s pictures were from back in the world. Most of them were grip-and-grins, Merritt receiving or holding awards and certificates. A typical bureaucrat’s wall, Hallie noted, except that there were no family pictures.

Merritt looked to be in her late forties. She wore comfort-cut jeans that stretched tight across her wide rump and a black turtleneck with a red fleece pullover on top of that. She had a round face red from high blood pressure or windburn or both, a red-veined snub nose, and a small, moist mouth that formed circles around words, as though she were blowing bubbles when she spoke. “So tell me what happened.”

Hallie did, and then everything slipped out of focus. She realized that Merritt was speaking. “I’m sorry. What?”

“Dear, you just zoned right out.”

“God. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry. Pole’s tough.” She patted Hallie’s knee.

“Agnes … Aggie, two deaths like this, so close together. That has to be unusual, even for the Pole.”

“I thought so, too. But have you ever heard of dehiscence?”

“No.”

“Me, neither, until Doc called. Part of Harriet’s esophagus was removed last year. Some kind of precancerous condition. They severed and reconnected some major veins and arteries.”

“You’re saying they ruptured?”

“Doc thinks so. When surgical scars reopen, it’s called dehiscence.”

“Why now, though?”

“Goodness, why not? Altitude. Extreme temperature fluctuations. Radiation. Stress. Bad food. Hard work. On and on.”

“I never heard of something like that.”

“How many folks do you know who’ve had esophagectomies?”

“What about Diana Montalban?”

“You mentioned a C-section scar. Could have been the same thing, Doc said.”

That seemed like too much coincidence to Hallie. At the same time, it wasn’t hard to understand why Merritt would want to rationalize the deaths. Minimize threats beyond your control. Unknown is always more frightening than known. And as chief scientist, Merritt would have a vested interest in showing that on her watch, deaths were caused by problems the victims brought with them, rather than any they’d encountered here.

Or maybe the deaths were connected in some way to Emily’s, and Merritt knew about all of it. Since Hallie had arrived in the chief scientist’s office, the question had been blinking in her mind. Should I tell her?

There was something else. With each new encounter, it was getting harder not to tell. The secret wanted out. More properly, something in her wanted it released. It felt like a tumor, ugly, foreign, and dangerous. A friend with cancer had told her, “Once you know that thing is in there, you just want it out.” Hallie understood that much better now.

“I’m so glad you’re here.” Merritt brought her back. “Fido will be overjoyed. He’s just been, oh, what’s the word … distraught since Emily’s death.”

“I hope I can help,” she said. “I was sent in a huge rush. Emily and he were researching an extremophile found in a subglacial lake, or so I was told. I didn’t know there were any lakes at the Pole.”

“There weren’t supposed to be. It was a huge surprise. Russians found the closest one hundreds of miles away, called Vostok. Bigger than Lake Ontario. Ours is tiny by comparison—about a thousand feet in diameter.”

“How deep?”

“Two miles, give or take.”

Hallie thought she might not have heard right. “Two miles?”

“Yes.”

“And Emily was diving this lake, right?”

“It’s called a cryopeg. Yes, she was. Poor Emily.” Merritt looked away for a few moments, appeared to compose herself. “She found the extremophile colony only a hundred feet down and retrieved a biosample. They had it in the lab, but it went moribund in three days.”

“So that’s the reason you needed another ice diver.”

“Not just a diver. One who knew extremophiles and could function in the Pole environment. And who could get here fast, because of winterover. If we can’t take more biomatter out of the cryopeg in the next few days, it’ll be nine months before we can put anyone down there again. Who knows what will be left, now that we’ve breached the ice capsule?”

“What makes this thing so special?”

“I’m just a garden-variety epidemiologist, Hallie. Fido can explain it better. When were you thinking of diving?”

“That depends. Is there a recompression chamber here?”

“Oh dear, no. There was never any need for one until now.”

“Not good. The water is twenty-two degrees, right?”

Merritt nodded.

“That’s brutal. Did Emily mark a route?”

“Yes.”

“How much ice do you have to pass through to reach the water?”

“It’s a thirty-foot shaft, flooded to surface level.”

“This is going to be very dangerous. Without a recompression chamber, there’s no margin for error. I’m tired, dehydrated, feeling the altitude. It’s all a recipe for decompression sickness.”

“The bends.”

“Yes. Let’s shoot for later this afternoon. Might even need to wait until tomorrow.”

“Oh, either will be fine. Need you healthy, after all.” Merritt seemed not at all disappointed by the possible delay, which surprised Hallie, given the urgency to get her down here. Then Merritt asked, “Have you seen Doc yet?”

“No.”

Merritt sat back, her smile fading for the first time. “Please do that as soon as possible.” Also for the first time, she sounded more like a boss than a kindly aunt.

“I’m not sick. A cold, maybe, but nothing serious,” Hallie said.

“It’s not about being sick. It’s to start your Pole medical file.”

“My medical file should have been sent down.”

“Might have been.”

“Then why—?”

“Studying people at Pole is critical. In a way, the biggest experiment here is us. So everybody gets an incoming physical. Creates a research baseline.”

“I’m leaving in four days, though. Why bother?”

Merritt shrugged. “The rules come down from on high, and we follow them. Would appreciate your doing the same.”

“All right.”

Merritt looked ready to finish, but Hallie was not. “Can we talk about Emily? Graeter said you knew the details of her death.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Nothing. He told me to see you. Not very nicely, either.”

She nodded. “Graeter went through some bad times. He wasn’t in such good shape when he came down here. And he’s been at Pole way too long, poor man.” Merritt sipped her coffee.

“What happened?”

“He was the executive officer on a nuclear sub. The Jimmy Carter. An accident in the reactor area killed three sailors. May not have been his fault, but the captain had better connections up the chain. Graeter got the blame, and his career was over. Then his wife left him for another man—the same captain who had tossed him under the bus. Can you believe it?”

“Did he tell you all that?”

“God, no. You met him. The man talks like every word costs ten dollars. No, that information came from other sources.” She looked at her hands, then back at Hallie. “I’m going to share something gal to gal: be careful with Graeter.”

“Careful how?”

“The man is a sad case, but he has problems.”

“Other than disliking women, you mean?”

“Oh, yes. He’s obsessed.”

“In the clinical sense?”

“He’s not certifiable. I don’t think he’s a bad man, deep down. But he can be like a little Hitler with his rules. Just don’t get sideways with him.”

“Forewarned,” she said. “But about Emily.”

Merritt scratched a fingernail over her desktop, as if trying to scrape away something crusty and foreign. “It’s tricky, with all these confidentiality regulations now. You’re not family, so I don’t—”

“What I hear stays here. I promise.”

“Why are you so interested?”

“Emily and I worked together at BARDA, part of CDC, and got to be good friends a few years back.”

“I didn’t know that.” Merritt seemed surprised and, for some reason Hallie couldn’t fathom, unhappy to hear that. “Not sure any of us did. No matter. It was very sad. That young woman was so sweet, and had such potential. What an awful waste.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe this will help you understand why I wasn’t eager to talk. The sad fact is, Emily killed herself.”

Hallie knew that this was not true. She also knew that it was important not to let anyone else know that yet. She did her best to look and sound horrified. “Really? My God.”

“Isn’t that just the most tragic thing you ever heard?”

“Suicide? Emily Durant? It’s hard to believe.”

“I didn’t say suicide.”

“You said she killed herself.”

“Accidental drug overdose. There is a difference.”

“Who determined that?”

“The station manager, Doc, and me. I found her and wrote up the report, since technically she worked for me. But the others had to sign off.”

“How did you come to find her?”

“Her partner—Fido—started to worry after she didn’t show up in the lab. He went to her room and knocked. No answer. Called and asked me to look in on her.” Merritt shook her head. “Oh dear. It was very bad. She was dead on her bunk with a syringe stuck in one arm. There were injection marks in other places, syringes, more drugs. Just … just awful. I’m not used to that kind of thing.”

“How do you know about the injection marks?”

“She was almost naked. You couldn’t miss them. I’m no expert on druggies, but Doc said they find all kinds of strange places to shoot up.”

“I seriously doubt Emily Durant was a druggie,” Hallie said.

“Pole changes people. Emily had been here almost a year. You’ve just arrived.”

“Emily never used drugs when I knew her. She rarely even drank. She was a nationally ranked ski racer in college. Stayed in top shape.”

“To tell you the truth, her health had been deteriorating for some weeks before she died. I saw it. Others did, too.”

“How so?”

“The poor girl was exhausted. Depressed. Not eating. Forgetful.”

Must have been watching her pretty closely to know all that, Hallie thought. But then, a good chief scientist would.

“It’s called getting Polarized,” Merritt said. “Happens at the end of a long stay.”

“Why didn’t she just leave?”

“Don’t you know, I suggested that very thing? But she’d been given a sizable grant. And signed a contract. If she had to withdraw for mental health reasons … Well, I don’t have to tell you. Poor thing. It would have ended her career.”

“It might have kept her alive.”

Merritt gave Hallie an odd look. “Did you have any more questions about this?” Her tone indicated that she hoped Hallie’s answer would be no.

“What was the drug?”

“We don’t know just yet. But—and it pains me to say this—it’s like Alice’s Restaurant here. You can get anything you want.”

“What did the medical examiner’s report say?”

“We haven’t seen one yet.”

“Isn’t that unusual?”

“Not really. The ME at Christchurch does the autopsy and sends his report to the New Zealand Police. They give it to State, and they send it through diplomatic channels to Washington. After all that, it might be routed back to NSF and, if the powers there see fit, shared with us worker bees.”

“Did the doctor do a tox screen?”

“No, we’re not equipped for that.”

“You said you found injection marks, as in plural?”

“On her thighs and both arms.”

“Were photographs taken of the body? The death scene?”

“No.”

That struck Hallie as odd, too. “Does everybody know you were the one who found Emily’s body?”

“No, just Graeter, Doc, and Fido. Details like that are all confidential.” She hesitated, then continued: “And honestly, Hallie, you wouldn’t either, if I hadn’t learned you were friends. If details start leaking before the muckety-mucks get their paperwork, I could wind up in very hot water.”

“I give you my word, nothing I heard leaves this room.”

Merritt smiled. “I knew the minute we met that I could trust you. Just a feeling you get about some people.”

That sounded like a closing statement to Hallie. She got up to go. “Thanks for taking time, Aggie. I appreciate—”

Merritt waved her down. “Whoa, hang on. All we’ve done is talk work. What about you? Married, have a family?”

“No husband, no kids.”

“There must be a Mr. Right, though. Beautiful girl like you.”

“As a matter of fact. We’ve been together about a year.”

“Making family plans yet?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, family plans. Marriage, babies, all that.”

Merritt’s questions were mild in tone and accompanied by a sincere-looking smile, but they felt strange to Hallie. They had known each other for only twenty minutes. And why would she care about Hallie’s family plans, of all things?

“We haven’t gotten there,” she said. Which was true, if you discounted her recent close call and the impasse with Bowman it had caused on the way to Dulles. Merritt didn’t need to hear any of that, but Hallie felt it would be discourteous to just walk out now without showing some personal interest in return.

“How about you, Aggie?”

“Married, you mean?” Long sigh. “Once. Not anymore.”

So, death or divorce, Hallie thought, either of which could bite if you reached too far. She nodded, waited to see if Merritt wanted to continue. She did.

“He came from a big family. And wanted a big family. We—I—couldn’t have children at all. He didn’t want to adopt. So he found a better breeder.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, I’m over it long since. Seems like a dream now. Nightmare, actually.”

Are you over it? Hallie wondered. Something in Merritt’s tone and expression suggested otherwise.

“You two tying the knot anytime soon?” Merritt asked.

Hallie had not heard that expression for a long time, but something in Merritt’s tone made it sound more like a hanging than marriage. She shrugged. “We both travel a lot and do dangerous work.”

“Can get addictive, though, right? That kind of work?”

Hallie had been thinking about that a good bit recently. Still, the question surprised her, coming from a relative stranger.

“Honestly, yes. I’m always glad to be home. But then I can’t wait to get out again.”

“Interesting choice of words.”

“How so?”

“Most people would have said ‘leave home’ or maybe ‘go away.’ You said ‘get out.’ Like from prison.”