And his glove was leaking—not a lot, not so much to be dangerous, but enough to make things uncomfortable already. The glove was the one noncontiguous part of the suit, and as such, no matter how tightly you tried to seal it, there could be a certain amount of penetration. The linings underneath it absorbed the moisture as it leaked in, eventually bringing it to body temperature, but in the meantime it was a numbingly cold reminder of just what a hostile climate he was traveling in.
He slowed up in the water and turned to make sure Lawson—the ever-cheerful Boy Scout leader—was still with him. He could see his face mask glittering in the water, the sharp tip of his ice saw, and the salvage line playing out behind him; it was tied to his harness and tethered up top to a 200-hp winch behind the dive hut. The line, normally used for dredging up oil barrels and sunken wreckage, had two thousand yards on it and could withstand a couple thousand pounds of weight. Michael turned around again and continued toward the glacier. As it loomed above him, and below, he felt a note of hesitation, even fear, that he had not felt the first time. Then, he had been unaware of what the ice held. Now, he not only knew, but he was there to steal it. The walls of ice seemed more defensive now, like the walls of a fortress erected by some ancient god of sea and ice, and Michael felt like a soldier about to try to breach them.
There was even a low murmur of noise, a crackling and grinding, from the ice itself. He hadn’t noticed it before. But the immense glacier was moving, it was always moving, though so slowly it could not be seen, and only seldom heard. Michael drew closer to the wall, and now he knew that the hard part was about to begin. The wall was vast, and finding the body was a question not only of longitude but of latitude. He could roughly gauge the section of wall where he had seen it, but at what depth? He would have to travel both up and down the wall, and that could take time. He motioned at one large area with his arm, and indicated to Lawson that he should begin to scout the glacier there. Michael himself moved thirty yards off, and to orient himself took one long look back at what was called the down line—it extended from the safety hole, far, far away, and there were colored pennants attached to it for better visibility. He tried to recall if this was the angle he’d had on it the day before. But he couldn’t remember at all. He had been so shocked that he’d just paddled away backwards, in a burst of bubbles and flapping fins.
What he did remember was the quality of the light, and that, he decided, would be his best clue. The weather today was much like the day before, and the unchanging sunlight—if he could just remember how bright, or dim, it had been when he discovered the body—could steer him in the right direction. The water and the light was not the pristine blue that he was inhabiting now, so he deflated his suit and allowed himself to sink, staying close to the wall, a dozen yards or so. He swept the flashlight across its rough mottled surface in even strokes, back and forth, while looking for anything—a fissure in the rock, an unusual formation—that might trigger a memory. But so far, he saw nothing.
What he did notice was the creeping cold, colder than the water even a little ways off. The iceberg gave off a freezing breath that made him have to wipe his mask with the back of one glove. It also made him wonder what it could possibly be like to be a captive of that ice for decades, even centuries. To be absorbed, suspended, immobilized—like one of Darryl’s specimens floating in a jar of formaldehyde—forever. Lifeless, but immaculately preserved. Dead, but not gone.
And he thought then of Kristin, lying perfectly still in her hospital bed in Tacoma.
He raked the tip of the saw against the glacier, and slivers of ice immediately came loose, like the skin curling off a potato. Another drop or two of frigid water seeped into his glove.
He went lower still, and the light grew dimmer, more like the quality of the light that he recalled. He swam from one side to the other of a wide swath, gradually working his way down, until something in the ice looked different—a spot where it didn’t sparkle quite so brightly in the concentrated beam—and he went straight for it.
The closer he got, the darker and colder the water became, but his heart was beating fast. He waved his arms and fins slowly to keep his position, and surveyed the wall. There was indeed something buried here (there had been moments, though he confessed them to no one, when he, too, had wondered if he’d imagined it all) and he quickly waved his flashlight beam at Lawson, still a considerable distance above him, to catch his attention. Then he swam even closer, peered in at the ice…and saw her face staring out at him.