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 lockdown? 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 Adélie, stays at Point Adélie.”
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.”