Frozen Solid A Novel

43




AFTER ANOTHER LONG MEDITATION IN THE WOMEN’S ROOM, HALLIE hurried back to her own. There were things she needed to do: talk to Graeter, check the cultures, look in on Vishnu, try to get a couple of emails out. She started on an email but fell asleep in the middle of writing it. She was still sitting there, arms folded on the keyboard, head on her arms, when someone started hitting her on the head. She woke and realized that there was indeed hammering, but on the room door rather than her. Then a shout, louder than the hammering:

“It’s Graeter. Answer the door!”

“Coming!”

“Weather’s eased,” he said when she opened the door. “We’re going out to look for Fida. I thought you’d want to come.” He started away, said over his shoulder, “Meet me in front of the station in twenty.”

“What day is this?”

She expected a strange look, but he must have been accustomed to such questions from Polies. “Wednesday. Little after ten.” He turned to go.

“Mr. Graeter—wait.”

Before she had gone to sleep, there had been something she’d wanted to tell Graeter. Maybe quite a few somethings. She fought to pull the things up from memory. Got one of them. “I need to show you something in the—”

“Not now. The goddamned pope could be coming in and he’d have to wait. Search and Rescue takes priority over everything.”

Thirty minutes later, Hallie stood beside Graeter’s yellow snowmo. She had brought her Leatherman tool, which had all kinds of uses. Left the dive knife behind this time. Around them, operators sat astride six other growling machines, their headlight beams streaking the solid dark. Shimmering green and purple lights flowed across the sky.

“I know how to drive a snowmobile. Another machine would increase the probability of finding him,” she said.

He appeared to give that some thought. “Not a bad idea, but SORs say no. Hop on.”

He checked the emergency box contents, then sat in front of her, pumped his raised fist twice, and snowmo engines screamed as operators fanned out in all directions. Leaving the station, he had explained the protocol: “For a Search and Rescue like this, the station is divided into grids assigned to specific team members. We do regular SAR drills, so a searcher gets to know his grid like a good cop on the beat. That’s the theory, anyway.”

Hallie wore full ECW gear, including a face mask, and Graeter’s body in front of her on the snowmobile broke the wind, but she felt the cold seeping in anyway, despite the fact that it was “just” seventy-two degrees below zero. She hesitated to think what the windchill factor was on a snowmo going thirty miles an hour.

As SAR leader, Graeter had no assigned grid. He parked at the end of the iceway, where they could see most of the station and the surrounding area. For an hour they watched the snowmobiles’ headlight beams slashing the dark, stopping, flashing off as team members searched buildings and open spaces. One after another, they began radioing back reports: “Block B2 complete. Nothing found.” When the last transmission ended, Graeter said, “God damn” and walked away, his back to Hallie and the station.

“Mr. Graeter.” She started after him, caught up, touched his shoulder. He turned. She could see only his eyes. Long experience underwater had taught her that eyes were not just windows on the soul. They were remarkably reliable indicators of a person’s mental state. They showed panic even before a victim knew it was coming, and when that happened they looked like thin glass pushed out of shape by a strong wind. Graeter’s didn’t look like that. Instead, they looked immeasurably sad.

“Drive that thing back. I need some time,” Graeter said.

“Sure.”

But she didn’t leave immediately. She sat on the snowmo, watching him, the phrase “taking a penguin” echoing in her mind. Graeter stood there, staring out into the wasteland, for a long time, then headed back toward her. She had been trying to decide what to tell him about first, Emily’s murder, or the bacteria cultures, or Maynard’s confession. About halfway back, he caught a boot toe on a sastrugi ridge and stumbled, surprising her because until then he had been sure-footed and agile. Seeing it, she thought that the other things could wait. There was enough to deal with here. Neither Maynard nor the bacteria were going anywhere, after all.

He stood beside the snowmo, still looking out and away.

“Go ahead, take it back,” he said. “I’ll walk to the station.”

She stood, nearly as tall as he, and looked him in the eye. “You were not responsible for Fida’s death—if he is dead. Nor Emily’s, nor the other three. There might have been more, if not for you and your SORs.”

When he answered, his voice had less rasp than she had yet heard.

“Everything here is my responsibility, Leland. Every leaking pipe, rusting beam, fuel shortage, sore throat, plugged toilet, broken light, flat tire, power outage. When I go to sleep at night, I hear old faucets dripping and sad people crying.” The words came faster and faster until they just stopped, and Hallie understood that such things and a thousand others must have gnawed at Graeter’s brain every waking minute and invaded his sleep as well. It was the first time she had seen them take over and come flying out, but now he regained control.

He raised a hand, possibly intending to touch her shoulder. She might have flinched, or he might have thought better of it. The hand dropped.

“Go ahead and take that thing back,” he said. “I’ll be all right.”