Frozen Solid A Novel

20




BACK IN HER ROOM, HALLIE SLUMPED IN THE DESK CHAIR. THINGS were happening too fast. Emily’s killing. Two dead women. Graeter’s close call. Bacon’s closer call. Even so, the hardest thing of all was one that had not happened: she still had told no one about the murder. Could not tell anyone.

She checked for email, found none, used the room phone.

“Agnes, Hallie. I’m still not getting any email. Is yours working?”

“On and off,” Merritt said. “Apparently there was a solar event yesterday. Medium-sized coronal mass ejection. It’s been really screwing up comms. I wouldn’t worry too much. Things usually settle down in a couple of days.”

In a couple of days I’ll be out of here, she thought, but she said only, “Thanks.”

She wondered about sharing the secret with Graeter. She would not even be considering it if she had not caught, out on the ice, a glimpse of something human beneath his spiky carapace. But you didn’t have your life saved every day, and it might have been nothing more than adrenaline and endorphin intoxication. She would wait.

She had to meet with the one they called Fido, and that was becoming more urgent with each hour that brought her closer to the dive. She called comms and asked them to page him.

She fetched herself a cup of chlorinated coffee and sat at a table by one of the windows to wait. Because it was light inside and so dark outside, she could see nothing through the glass. Leaning back, she gazed up at the strings of lights. More appeared to have burned out since her first visit to the galley. It was hard not to put her arms on the table and fall asleep right there, like napping in elementary school.

A man at a nearby table was eating a hamburger and French fries, washing the food down with gulps of milk. She watched him chewing. Listened to him chewing. And chewing and chewing, mouth mostly open, making sounds like horses walking in mud. Finally he swallowed, took another bite, and started chewing again, jaws working away beneath glazed eyes. She felt herself getting mad, understood, dimly, that the Pole was wearing her down already, eroding her patience. She felt like getting up and smacking both of the man’s bulging cheeks between clapping hands to make him swallow.

He must have felt her staring, because he glanced up suddenly and stopped chewing. They looked at each other for several seconds. He turned away first and closed his mouth. Her anger drained, and she felt both guilty and stupid.

It was not a big leap from those feelings to Bowman. At once the biggest and the most gentle man she had ever known. And the fiercest, when he had to be. The previous year, she had seen him, armed only with two knives, kill three Mexican narcotraficantes carrying AK-47s. They had been taking her to a jungle camp where torture, rape, and eventual death would have been her certain fate.

So what would she and Wil have done if she had been pregnant? What kind of father would Bowman make? For that matter, what kind of mother would she? Hallie thought him probably better suited temperamentally for parenting. He was patient, good-hearted, and gentle—with her, at least. Having grown up on a ranch, he loved horses with a passion matching her own.

During their year together, they had visited friends with small children. She’d worried that they would be afraid of the giant Bowman. But when he got down on the floor they climbed all over him, draped themselves around his neck, hung from those long arms. Like dogs and horses, she thought, picking up something adults had lost the ability to sense.

A man who resembled a street person wandered into the galley. He was vacant-eyed and shambling, his face a mask of dark stubble, in a stained shirt and green Dickies work pants. He had the chocolate complexion of an East Indian. She waved him over, stood.

“Dr. Muktapadhay?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Hallie Leland. I’m so glad to finally meet you.”

They shook hands, and his felt to Hallie like an assembly of bird bones. “You had me paged,” he said.

“Twenty minutes ago,” she said. “I tried your room earlier, but you weren’t there. The lab was locked.”

“You were lucky I heard it.”

“Sorry?” she asked.

He dropped into a chair, put his hands in his lap, stared.

“Would you like some coffee? Something to eat?” she asked.

She could almost hear gears scraping in his brain. “No coffee. It hurts my stomach.” His voice was hoarse—Pole throat—and too much time elapsed between his words.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Look, can we dispense with formalities? I’m Hallie. Is it okay if I call you Fido?”

“No! Please do not use that term.”

“I’m sorry. I thought that was your first name. I heard other—”

“My name is Fida.” Feeda. “Fido is my Pole name, and I despise it. Some people think I look like … Goofy.”

“The cartoon dog?”

He glared at her.

She had to admit there was a resemblance. The man had large, ovoid eyes, slightly buck front teeth, and the angles of his face slanted toward the end of a long, muzzle-like nose.

“Look.” He held up a hand. “I have four fingers.”

She understood that he was differentiating himself from three-fingered cartoon characters.

“I am sorry, Fida. Did I get it right that time?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“So I assume you know why I’m here.”

“To replace Emily.”

“To help retrieve biomatter from the cryopeg, actually.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m with CDC, not NSF, but I have the same skill sets that Emily did, and I could come here on short notice. No notice, to be honest.”

“Short notice,” he repeated. The outburst about his name had kindled some attention, but now he had gone off again to some other place in his head, staring past Hallie’s shoulder.

“I’ll need a briefing on your work. We have to get this dive done before I fly out for winterover.”

“We can talk later. I am very tired.”

“I’d also like to talk about Emily,” she said.

That brought him back. “I do not want to talk about Emily.”

“I can understand that. But let me explain. Emily and I were good friends at one time. So her death causes me pain, too.”

He looked at her more closely, nodded. “But not here.”

“You mean, in the galley?”

“Yes.”

“Why not?”

“Come on. We will go someplace else.”

He was already shambling away, and she had no choice but to follow.

His room smelled like spoiling food and dirty laundry. The bunk mattress was bare, and a wadded parka served for a pillow. Snickers wrappers and Pepsi cans littered the floor.

“I am sorry for the way this place looks,” Fida said. “I just cannot seem to get around to cleaning. I am not spending much time here these days, anyway.” He shoved books and papers off his desk chair. “You can sit here.”

She did, and he approached as though he were going to kiss her, but at the last minute put his lips close to her ear and whispered, “Do you have your cellphone?” Then he put an index finger over his mouth and extended the other hand palm up.

Hallie gave him the phone. He powered it down, wrapped it in aluminum foil, and stowed it in a steel toolbox.

“Why did you do that?” She was whispering, too.

“We can speak now,” he said in a normal voice, slumping against the bunk frame.

She had actually thought her cellphone would be useless here but had been told that NSF had installed a special system for the Polies’ convenience. They’d given her a Pole chip on arriving. She would turn it back in when she left.

“You think my phone is bugged?”

“You can install a program just by calling. It can record audio, take pictures, even video. Without you knowing. And send those to someone.”

“Nobody has called me.”

“I tried to call you twice. Sent you an email, too.”

“You did?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t get calls from you. Or from back home. No emails, either. I should have by now.”

“Possibly there is something wrong with your phone.”

“And my terminal, too?”

“I do not want you to think … never mind.” His eyes went out of focus, came back. “I am sorry. What is your name again?”

“Hallie Leland. I knew Emily very well at one time. We worked together at a CDC lab.”

“Emily did not call me Fido.” He peered at Hallie. “Now I remember. She was very fond of you. She did climbing and things with you.”

“Lots of things. On one climb she saved my life. I wouldn’t be here if not for her.”

“She was an easy person to like.” His eyes filled with tears.

“I can’t think of a better epitaph.” She managed to keep tears out of her own eyes. “I was told Emily died of a drug overdose. I find that hard to believe.”

He glanced at the door, licked his lips, caught her gaze and held it. Hallie knew he was taking her measure. She had long ago come to trust what her gut said about people, and it was telling her that this man was exhausted, overworked, pained by grief, burned out maybe—but trustworthy. In his eyes, she thought something changed, a softening and relaxing, that might suggest that he found her to be, also.

“I do not think Emily died of a drug overdose either.”

“You don’t?”

“No.”

“What do you think happened?”

“I believe that somebody killed her.”