The KitKat Club was a two-story plywood balloon-launching shack, obsolete and abandoned, that an enterprising station carpenter had remodeled in his spare time into what he had jokingly proclaimed as "a penthouse pad of pleasure." Actually it was the top floor that had been turned into an unofficial storage attic for base personnel, crammed with cast-off junk. The bottom had been insulated, carpeted, papered with travel posters, and heated. While it was just three hundred yards from the dome, the building- named for the decadent nightclub in Cabaret- had become a place of physical and psychological separation and escape, the one refuge that didn't have a job attached to it. Neutral ground, Norse had called it. When its carpenter-creator left after one season, his shack became a place for parties, sexual trysts, verbal showdowns, and therapeutic solitude. Station managers like Cameron diplomatically ignored its existence because of its value as a pressure relief valve. Fingies were introduced to it after station and social acceptance. It was a perk, like visiting the abandoned base. Winter-overs thought of the KitKat Club, like the Pole itself, as theirs.
When Lewis arrived, Norse wasn't there. He flicked on the lights to look around while he waited. Small windows had been shuttered for the winter but smuggled incandescent bulbs behind a screen of colored paper, violating all fire safety regulations, gave the room a warm glow. There were two surplus single mattresses covered with unzipped nylon sleeping bags, a ratty and torn couch surplused from the dome, crates and a cable spool that had been liberated for tables, and makeshift shelves that held drifts of dog-eared books: Tolkien and Grisham, Shackleton and Byrd. A hot plate, an espresso maker, a small fridge. An old boom box and a shoal of CDs. The walls were a mosaic of posters, clippings, cartoons, and bumper stickers: He who dies with the most toys wins. It seemed unintentionally macabre after what had happened.
Maybe the psychologist would put him on the couch. He felt like he needed it about now.
He heard the crunch of snow outside and considered again what he wanted. Some kind of equality, he decided, some kind of mutual respect. An acceptance of who he was and an end to Norse's incessant observation. The shrink's real problem was that he didn't have enough real work to do and so dwelled on everybody else. With so many lost, they needed a reallocation…
"Hello?" It was Abby outside the door, sounding uncertain.
Just her voice was enough to get his heart to slip sideways off its track. Surprised, by both her presence and the strength of his own reaction, Lewis opened the latch.
She was startled. "It's you," she said, blinking.
"What are you doing here?" he replied.
Great beginning.
She glanced past him to see if anyone else was inside. "Bob…"
Of course, it was always Bob, wasn't it? "Come on in," he said gruffly. "We're letting out the heat."
It was too cold for indecision. She stepped inside and he shut the door. Abby took a deep breath, letting warmth settle back inside her lungs, and then looked at him warily. "I didn't know you'd be out here."
"I think we were set up by Norse. He sent us on the same mission."
"Mission?"
"To find some toys, right? I thought he was coming out, too, but…" Meet on neutral ground, Norse had suggested. He hadn't said with whom. Quite the matchmaker. "Look, I didn't plan this, but I'm glad you came out. Really. I'm surprised but… please don't go." Somehow he had to make things right.
She remembered she was angry about Gabriella. "If Bob did this, then I'm mad at him, too."
"Please." He lifted his arms to take her parka. "It's a long winter." His conciliatory tone softened her. Hesitantly, she let it slip off.
"I thought I was meeting him," Lewis explained, hanging her coat on a peg. "But maybe not, if he sent you, too. He said it's all for station morale."
She looked cautious. "I don't know whether to believe you."
"Really, he's playing with us both. We're just another experiment."
"Which I'm fed up with. I don't need his help. Or yours."
"That's what I said. Except…"
"Except what?"
"Except maybe we should start over. Here, on new ground."
"You thought or Doctor Bob thought?"
"Abby, I got drunk and screwed up the other night. That's not an excuse but it wasn't what I wanted to happen. I wanted things to happen with you. I'm frustrated. Frustrated at how things haven't gone as I planned. Frustrated at myself."
It was apology enough to get her to reluctantly sit, let him help her shuck off her snowy boots, and, with that, concede that she wasn't immediately leaving. "We're all frustrated, Jed," she admitted. "It's been a hell of a winter."
"Yes. So now that the bad stuff is over, let's have a truce, okay?"
"What about her?" She'd be damned if she'd say the name.
"There is no her! That's the whole point. I ran after you. Didn't you hear me?"
She glanced away, letting her eyes roam the room.
"I haven't even seen her," Lewis added. "I think she's embarrassed, too."
"Well." Abby was looking for a way to answer without answering. "Welcome to the club, then, if we've both been sent here by our group therapist." Her voice was quiet, resigned.
He smiled. They were going to talk, at least in a general way. "How many clubs does this place have, anyway?"
She considered the light question seriously. "The entire Pole is a club, I guess. So's Antarctica. The science community itself. This is a sub-branch."
"Half hippie hideaway, half slumber party."
"It's not Architectural Digest. I think of it as a den, or burrow." She allowed a slight smile. "I've always liked it. If anything ever goes wrong, I've thought this is where I'd come to wait for the end."
She meant the generator but he had to laugh. "If anything ever goes wrong! You should have camped out here weeks ago!"
"You know what I mean."
"Yeah. It's cozy."
"And hot. How high did you crank the heat, anyway?"
"Enough to get the rest of your stuff off."
She looked at him skeptically and he grinned.
"It's part of my plan, make it a sauna and watch 'em strip. Works with all the girls."
Abby snorted at that joke and shed her nylon bib overalls, keeping on the fleece pants and vest underneath. He enjoyed a glimpse of her stretching and bending even while pretending to politely glance around elsewhere. Men called her Ice Cream because they wanted her to melt. Yet while Abby was attractive, she didn't make him uncomfortable the way Gabriella did. Somehow her presence made him content, like the beauty of a flower. She hung up the overalls next to her parka, water from her boots pooling on the plywood by the door. "Why would it matter where you waited?" he asked her.
"I'd want to die at home."
"Jesus. Let's not be morbid."
"How can we not?" She meant the deaths, the makeshift graves.
"It's been hard, hasn't it?" he said.
"Nothing like what I hoped."
"But it's over, I think. So we should be friends again."
"We've never not been friends. You can be angry at a friend and still be friends."
"So you're still mad?"
She sighed, her look one of exasperation, but an exasperation as much at herself as him. "Yes, but I don't have an excuse for my anger. No claim to you, I mean. I know that. I admit that. I'm trying to be honest about things. I've been thinking a lot about what's going on."
"And?"
"And I'm not doing very well handling it alone."
"We do have Doctor Bob." It was meant as a kind of joke, but his frustration was portrayed in a sarcastic tone that popped out before he could control it.
"Are you jealous, Jed?"
It took him a moment to admit the truth. "Yes. He's… smooth."
"I pulled away from you because I was afraid how I felt about you, not Bob. I don't have the same feeling about Norse. He's too smooth. And that's what I've been thinking about."
Now Lewis was curious. "Maybe we'd better sit more comfortably."
She nodded, pointing him to the torn couch. He sat, sinking in a squeal of springs. Instead of sitting next to him she plopped cross-legged down on one of the mattresses, facing him. "Have you noticed what's been going on?" she began.
"The dying?"
She shook her head. "The Pole. What it feels like here."
"Cold." It was flippant, an attempt to lighten things.
"No, our perspective. We're so low to the ground that we can't see very far. It's almost like treading water. And then as the sun set the horizon kind of shrank in on us. We went from seeing little to seeing almost nothing, on the really dark nights. Step beyond the lights and you step into a void. It's like we're floating, which in a sense is true, since we're on this ice. And at the same time the sky is so clear we're not just looking at the atmosphere but beyond it, out to the universe. It's exactly as if we've blasted into space."
"Doctor Bob again."
She shook her head. "His focus is on the compound, the way all us little bits glue together or fall apart. He's a social scientist studying a spaceship. But to me we're individual atoms after a Big Bang, flying away from each other while maintaining this faint gravity. That's how the station makes me feel, anyway. Maybe it's that all these people here are too close, physically, and so as the winter closes in it forces you deeper inside yourself just to get away. If you're not careful the Pole starts to take you over. Like the monster in The Thing, except it's the Pole itself. Your sleep cycle, your appetite, your hormones, your periods, your energy, your habits: Everything begins to slide out of whack when the sun leaves. And the more you try to run after yourself, the more you seem to fall into yourself, leaving everyone else behind. Do you know what I mean?"
"Sort of."
"It's isolating. We know each other but we don't know each other because if we all admitted what we're feeling it would create this kind of psychic whirlpool which might suck us all down. So we're wary. But some people reach out: you, Bob, even Gabriella."
"But not you."
She took a breath, hesitating, then plunged ahead. "A woman learns to be cautious with men. Guys want to pretend everything doesn't matter, but it does. This thing with my picture baffles me. You baffle me, that a geologist would really want to go to the Pole. It's like a biologist going to the moon. So I chickened out. I'm not afraid of relationships but I'm a little afraid of you. I know another guy, too, I told you that, but I wasn't ready to commit to him, either. I came down to think things through."
"I respect that, Abby."
"It was escape. But it's not working out as I planned."
"These deaths haven't exactly created a retreat atmosphere."
"I'm just trying to explain that I haven't been trying to be a jerk, even if it seems like it. I like you, and because of that I'm afraid of getting hurt. I'm not teasing, I'm just… incompetent." She looked defeated.
"Abby, everyone's incompetent. It's a fact of life."
She looked at him hopefully. "Do you think so?"
"At that stuff they are. Look at the gossip columns about the rich and famous. It's one constant litany of incompetence. The more confident they act, the more frightened they feel."
She smiled. "I don't know if I believe that. If that's true, then Norse must be very frightened indeed. I've never seen anyone so confident under such pressure."
"I think that's because it's good for his damn study."
"Or he's rising to the occasion."
"He thinks that's what the best people do. And I admit he's got a weird charm. I don't really blame you for leaving with him at the dance. I don't have a claim to you, either. We just never seem to get very far."
"There's just been too much going on."
"Too much pressure."
"Bob and I talked about that picture of Mickey's. He's easy to confide in. A talker. A professional. Charismatic, even. He invited me to take a bottle of wine and to go talk, so we did, but then he came on to me."
"You're an attractive woman, Abby."
"I wasn't offended. I didn't think it was some breach of professional ethics. It's not like I'm in therapy. But when he began touching me I stiffened up, no matter how hard I tried not to, and this terror- this irrational terror- took over. I broke away and he accused me of being dishonest, with him and myself, and I saw something…" She shivered. "Suddenly he looked very analytical. It was so dispassionate he frightened me. Like his warmth is a disguise for his cold. So I left, looking for you, but you'd left the dance, too, and then I found you…" She looked hopeless. "I pushed you away."
"We both screwed up."
"Yes."
"We wound up with the wrong partners."
"Yes."
"So forget about it. It's over. This is the first day of the rest of whatever." It amused him to quote Doctor Bob.
She looked depressed. "You're so much better at getting over things than I am. All men are."
"That's not really true."
"You function. Compartmentalize. I can't even function."
"Women get paralyzed. Men go out and do something stupid. Start wars and things. I'm not sure one's better than the other."
Abby grinned ruefully. "I guess what I'm admitting is that I would like to kind of start over. Now that the bad stuff is past, or at least I hope it is. That I'd like to know you, just so I can tell myself I know somebody on station in some kind of meaningful way."
He looked at her with hope. "Can't you sense how alike we are? I'm incompetent, too. I got into rocks because they were as unlike people as anything I could find. Then I joined this industry that seemed to be just about money, disposable conscience, and transience. Nobody belonged anywhere, it was all just oil. Ruthless competition. So then I ran away from that. I ran here, to the Pole."
"To become the fingie. The outsider."
"If Buck Tyson hadn't run away I'd have gone nuts from being ostracized. His disappearance saved my winter." Lewis studied her, trying to decide what to do. He wanted to kiss her again but feared it would drive her away. He wanted to take her in his arms and feared she'd evaporate if he did that, too.
"Can we make it through?" Her voice held doubt.
"That analytical hardness you saw in Bob Norse isn't entirely a bad thing. He's held things together by staying levelheaded. He's trying to prove we can all sail to the stars."
"I was bad to him, too."
"Abby, did it ever occur to you that you weren't bad to anybody? That it's your prerogative to have doubts, to say no, to change your mind?"
She shook her head. "No. You're supposed to be nice."
"You're supposed to be honest."
"You're supposed to be some mix of those two things and that's where I always foul up." She flopped backward on the mattress, her hands over her eyes. "I know I make things harder than they are."
He laughed at her. "I'll say."
She lay there, her hands over her eyes, her legs stretched out and stiff, her chest rising and falling. He slid off the couch and knelt beside her. She didn't move. He bent, admiring the sculpture of her ear, the barest down on her cheek, wondering if he had the right to kiss her again after what had happened. Still she didn't move. So he kissed her, lightly, brushing her lips.
She slid her hands down to cover her mouth, her eyes watching him with deep seriousness but without surprise. Then she reached up to put her arms around his neck, pulling him down to her, and kissed him again, fully this time. It was sweeter than with Gabriella, less wanton and more affectionate. Softer. He held her, going again to her cheek and neck, and she cuddled into him, shivering slightly as he nuzzled her. He was content for the moment to just hold her, his fingers on the fine bones of her back. Ivory on a piano.
They lay quietly for several minutes. Finally she spoke. "What are we doing down here, Jed?"
He was drowsy in her heat and embrace. "Trying to understand the universe," he mumbled. "That's what Mickey Moss said. Buck Tyson argued for realism. He said everything but the paycheck is a pose."
"To come so far?" She sounded doubtful. "To a place this bitter?"
"We're adventurers, Abby. People are driven."
"No." She shifted restlessly. "We misplaced something and we've come down here to find it. We came down here to take it back home. Our real home."
"Misplaced what?"
"Hope. That we can make things right again."
He lifted on one elbow, looking at her lazily, more contented at her quiet intimacy than he'd have guessed, more contented than at any time since he'd come to Antarctica. "Make things right how?"
"By finding the best in ourselves."
He grinned. "I'm starting to find the best in you. Let's explore some more."
She considered, then rolled away. "No. Not yet. Not now."
He fell on his back, the picture of rejection. "Forget what I said about the honest part. Go back to nice."
"Let's make sure we truly like each other first." She was too shy to say love.
"Now, there's the difference between men and women."
She laughed ruefully at herself. "I am a complete tease, aren't I?"
"No, but I'm not sure you recognize how attractive you are. The effect you can have on men."
"That's sweet. I'll remember that."
"So let me kiss you again."
"No." She held out her hand to pull him up. "Come on, Enzyme. We've started over, and we'll see how things go. Doctor Bob sent us for a reason."
"Dang." He looked wistfully at the mattress.
"People store stuff upstairs. Oddball stuff that they've smuggled down and then don't want to bother taking back. Musical instruments, obsolete stereos, leftover hobby kits, ancient laptops, even a Foosball set. Our mission is to bring back something fun."
"Even if it's other people's stuff?"
"It becomes our stuff when we sign on, like an inheritance. We share it."
"Like Santa Claus?"
"Maybe we're anti-Claus, since we're at the South Pole. Gathering data is fine, but we've got to have something more at the end of the day, right? That's what our shrink said. Bring it back to the others. Become The Waltons. Or Little House on the Prairie."
"Oh, yuck." He looked around. "Instead of hauling stuff out of the attic, maybe we should just have a party out here. Not a scientific instrument in sight."
"It's too small to fit everybody and we need everybody right now. We need to lighten up the galley."
"I've still got a hangover from the last party." He looked at a ladder that led to a trapdoor and shook his head. It reminded him uncomfortably of the entrance to the underground base. "It's got to be freezing cold up there, Abby. Let's pass for now and just go back to what we were doing."
"No. We'll never get to it." She stood. "I'll go first." She marched to the ladder and pushed up on the trapdoor, letting it fall over and bang down with a thud on the plywood floor above. Light from below gave a pillar of pale upward illumination but the room, jammed with junk, was mostly shadow. "I need a flashlight."
"You're letting in the cold," Lewis grumbled, feeling the draft. He went to his parka to get a light.
Abby glanced around as he fetched it, letting her eyes adjust. It was fun, like peeking into Santa's workshop. There were boxes, a guitar case, an improbable single-speed bicycle. Old skis and snowshoes, skates and a runner sled. What could they bring back for the others? There was a trombone: That might be fun. In one corner something white and shapeless hung like an old dress, moving slightly in the column of warm air that was wafting up from below. Next was a broken Universal gym, a driving wood, an unstrung racket… It was bitterly cold in the unheated upper floor, a deep freeze as effective as a time capsule. Frost spotted the boxes but there was no rust, no decay. It was too dry.
Then Abby realized what she'd seen.
Shadows can confuse the mind's eye. Sometimes one sees what isn't there. Sometimes one misses what is. Her head was turning back, her brain reassembling the patterns even as Lewis handed up the flashlight. It was with growing dread that she suddenly swung back to that white form in the corner.
It had feet.
She turned the flashlight beam on and jerked so violently she almost dropped it. Then screamed, "Oh my God!"
"What, what?" Lewis shouted from below. He was climbing up next to her, trying to get past her.
Her blood was a roar in her ears, her vision dazed. She forced herself to play the light across what was hanging there. The body was ghost-white, all right, the head tilted, the tongue purple, everything waxy and elongated and sad.
"Abby, what the hell…"
"It isn't over."
"What isn't over?"
"The bad stuff." She forced herself to look, sickened. The toes were small and pointed down, like the broken wings of a bird.
Jammed in next to her, Lewis took the flashlight and aimed it. The face that stared back at him had been made hideous by strangulation, completely transformed by a cruel death. A naked and forlorn Gabriella Reid hung limply from a ceiling crossbeam, turning slowly in the current of warmer air.
"Ah, Jesus."
He finally forced his way past Abby and stepped up onto the floor. The body was frozen by now, a noose around its neck. He approached it cautiously. Suicide?
No, of course not. There was a sign around her neck. He played the light across it, reading block letters that had been cut and pasted from a magazine like a ransom note: