Van Nuys Airport sank beneath them. The jet turned south, crossing the flat, glowing expanse of the Los Angeles Basin. The flight attendant brought Evans coffee. On the little screen, it said 6,204 miles to destination. Flying time was nearly twelve hours.
The flight attendant asked them if they wanted dinner, and went off to prepare it.
"All right," Evans said. "Three hours ago, I'm coming to help Sarah deal with a robbery. Now I'm flying to Antarctica. Isn't it time somebody told me what this is about?"
Kenner nodded. "Have you heard of the Environmental Liberation Front? ELF?"
"No," Evans said, shaking his head.
"Not me," Sarah said.
"It's an underground extremist group. Supposedly made up of ex-Greenpeace and Earth First! types who thought those organizations had gone soft. ELF engages in violence on behalf of environmental causes. They've burned hotels in Colorado, houses on Long Island, spiked trees in Michigan, torched cars in California."
Evans nodded. "I read about them amp;. The FBI and other law enforcement agencies can't infiltrate them because the organization consists of separate cells that never communicate with one another."
"Yes," Kenner said. "Supposedly. But cell phone conversations have been recorded. We've known for some time that the group was going global, planning a series of major events around the world, starting a few days from now."
"What kind of events?"
Kenner shook his head. "That, we don't know. But we have reason to think they'll be bigand destructive."
Sarah said, "What does this have to do with George Morton?"
"Funding," Kenner said. "If ELF is preparing actions around the world, they need a lot of money. The question is, where are they getting it?"
"Are you saying George has funded an extremist group?"
"Not intentionally. ELF is a criminal organization, but even so, radical groups like PETA fund them. Frankly, it's a disgrace. But the question became whether better-known environmental groups were funding them, too."
"Better-known groups? Like who?"
"Any of them," Kenner said.
"Wait a minute," Sarah said. "Are you suggesting that the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club fund terrorist groups?"
"No," Kenner said. "But I'm telling you that nobody knows exactly what any of these groups do with their money. Because government oversight of foundations and charities is extraordinarily lax. They don't get audited. The books don't get inspected. Environmental groups in the US generate half a billion dollars a year. What they do with it is unsupervised."
Evans frowned. "And George knew this?"
"When I met him," Kenner said, "he was already worrying about NERF. What it was doing with its money. It dispenses forty-four million dollars a year."
Evans said, "You're not going to tell me that NERF"
"Not directly," Kenner said. "But NERF spends nearly sixty percent of its money on fund-raising. It can't admit that, of course. It'd look bad. It gets around the numbers by contracting nearly all of its work to outside direct-mail advertisers and telephone solicitation groups. These groups have misleading names, like the International Wildlife Preservation Fundthat's an Omaha-based direct-mail organization, that in turn outsources the work to Costa Rica."
"You're kidding," Evans said.
"No. I am not. And last year the IWPF spent six hundred fifty thousand dollars to gather information on environmental issues, including three hundred thousand dollars to something called the Rainforest Action and Support Coalition, RASC. Which turns out to be a drop box in Elmira, New York. And an equal sum to Seismic Services in Calgary, another drop box."
"You mean amp;"
"A drop box. A dead end. That was the true basis of the disagreement between Morton and Drake. Morton felt that Drake wasn't minding the store. That's why he wanted an external audit of the organization, and when Drake refused, Morton got really worried. Morton is on the NERF board; he has liability. So he hired a team of private investigators to investigate NERF."
"He did?" Evans said.
Kenner nodded. "Two weeks ago."
Evans turned to Sarah. "Did you know this?"
She looked away, then back. "He told me I couldn't tell anyone."
"George did?"
"I did," Kenner said.
"So you were behind this?"
"No, I merely consulted with George. It was his ball game. But the point is, once you outsource the money, you no longer control how it is spent. Or, you have deniability about how it is spent."
"Jesus," Evans said. "All this time, I just thought George was worried about the Vanutu lawsuit."
"No," Kenner said. "The lawsuit is probably hopeless. It is very unlikely it will ever go to trial."
"But Balder said when he gets good sea-level data"
"Balder already has the good data. He has had it for months."
"What?"
"The data show no rise in South Pacific sea levels for the last thirty years."
"What?"
Kenner turned to Sarah. "Is he always like this?"
The flight attendant set out placemats, napkins, and silverware. "I've got fusilli pasta with chicken, asparagus, and sun-dried tomatoes," she said, "and a mixed green salad to follow. Would anyone like wine?"
"White wine," Evans said.
"I have Puligny-Montrachet. I'm not sure of the year, I think it's '98. Mr. Morton usually kept '98 on board."
"Just give me the whole bottle," Evans said, trying to make a joke. Kenner had unnerved him. Earlier in the evening, Kenner had been excited, almost twitchy-nervous. But now, sitting on the airplane, he was very still. Implacable. He had the manner of a man who was telling obvious truths, even though none of it was obvious to Peter. "I had it all wrong," Evans said finally. "If what you're saying is true amp;"
Kenner just nodded slowly.
Evans thought: He's letting me put it together. He turned to Sarah. "Did you know this, too?"
"No," she said. "But I knew something was wrong. George was very upset for the last two weeks."
"You think that's why he gave that speech, and then killed himself?"
"He wanted to embarrass NERF," Kenner said. "He wanted intense media scrutiny of that organization. Because he wanted to stop what is about to happen."
The wine came in cut glass crystal. Evans gulped it, held out his glass for more. "And what is about to happen?" he said.
"According to that list, there will be four events," Kenner said. "In four locations in the world. Roughly one day apart."
"What kind of events?"
Kenner shook his head. "We now have three good clues."
Sanjong fingered his napkin. "This is real linen," he said, in an awestruck tone. "And real crystal."
"Nice, huh?" Evans said, draining his glass again.
Sarah said, "What are the clues?"
"The first is the fact that the timing is not exact. You might think a terrorist event would be precisely planned, down to the minute. These events are not."
"Maybe the group isn't that well organized."
"I doubt that's the explanation. The second clue we got tonight, and it's very important," Kenner said. "As you saw from the list, there are several alternate locations for these events. Again, you'd think a terrorist organization would pick one location and stick to it. But this group hasn't done that."
"Why not?"
"I assume it reflects the kind of events that are planned. There must be some uncertainty inherent in the event itself, or in the conditions needed for it to take place."
"Pretty vague."
"It's more than we knew twelve hours ago."
"And the third clue?" Evans said, gesturing to the flight attendant to refill his glass.
"The third clue we have had for some time. Certain government agencies track the sale of restricted high technologies that might be useful to terrorists. For example, they track everything that can be used in nuclear weapons productioncentrifuges, certain metals, and so on. They track the sale of all conventional high explosives. They track certain critical biotechnologies. And they track equipment that might be used to disrupt communications networksthat generate electromagnetic impulses, for example, or high-intensity radio frequencies."
"Yes amp;"
"They do this work with neural network pattern-recognition computers that search for regularities in great masses of datain this case, basically thousands of sales invoices. About eight months ago, the computers detected a very faint pattern that seemed to indicate a common origin for the widely scattered sale of certain field and electronic equipment."
"How did the computer decide that?"
"The computer doesn't tell you that. It just reports the pattern, which is then investigated by agents on the ground."
"And?"
"The pattern was confirmed. ELF was buying very sophisticated high technology from companies in Vancouver, London, Osaka, Helsinki, and Seoul."
"What kind of equipment?" Evans said.
Kenner ticked them off on his fingers. "Fermentation tanks for AOB primersthat's ammonia-oxidizing bacteria. Mid-level particle-dispersal units, military grade. Tectonic impulse generators. Transportable MHD units. Hypersonic cavitation generators. Resonant impact processor assemblies."
"I don't know what any of that is," Evans said.
"Few people do," Kenner said. "Some of it's fairly standard environmental technology, like the AOB primer tanks. They're used in industrial wastewater treatment. Some of it's military but sold on the open market. And some of it's highly experimental. But it's all expensive."
Sarah said, "But how is it going to be used?"
Kenner shook his head. "Nobody knows. That's what we're going to find out."
"How do you think it's going to be used?"
"I hate to speculate," Kenner said. He picked up a basket of rolls. "Bread, anyone?"
The jet flew through the night.
The front of the cabin was darkened; Sarah and Sanjong were sleeping on makeshift beds, but Evans couldn't sleep. He sat in the back, staring out the window at the carpet of clouds glowing silver in the moonlight.
Kenner sat opposite him. "It's a beautiful world, isn't it?" he said. "Water vapor is one of the distinctive features of our planet. Makes such beauty. It's surprising there is so little scientific understanding of how water vapor behaves."
"Really?"
"The atmosphere is a bigger mystery than anyone will admit. Simple example: No one can say for sure if global warming will result in more clouds, or fewer clouds."
"Wait a minute," Evans said. "Global warming is going to raise the temperature, so more moisture will evaporate from the ocean, and more moisture means more clouds."
"That's one idea. But higher temperature also means more water vapor in the air and therefore fewer clouds."
"So which is it?"
"Nobody knows."
"Then how do they make computer models of climate?" Evans said.
Kenner smiled. "As far as cloud cover is concerned, they guess."
"They guess?"
"Well, they don't call it a guess. They call it an estimate, or parameterization, or an approximation. But if you don't understand something, you can't approximate it. You're really just guessing."
Evans felt the beginnings of a headache. He said, "I think it's time for me to get some sleep."
"Good idea," Kenner said, glancing at his watch. "We still have another eight hours before we land."
The flight attendant gave Evans some pajamas. He went into the bathroom to change. When he came out, Kenner was still sitting there, staring out the window at the moonlit clouds. Against his better judgment, Evans said, "By the way. You said earlier that the Vanutu lawsuit won't go to trial."
"That's right."
"Why not? Because of the sea-level data?"
"In part, yes. It's hard to claim global warming is flooding your country if sea levels aren't rising."
"It's hard to believe sea levels aren't rising," Evans said. "Everything you read says that they are. All the television reports amp;"
Kenner said, "Remember African killer bees? There was talk of them for years. They're here now, and apparently there's no problem. Remember Y2K? Everything you read back then said disaster was imminent. Went on for months. But in the end, it just wasn't true."
Evans thought that Y2K didn't prove anything about sea levels. He felt an urge to argue that point, but found himself suppressing a yawn.
"It's late," Kenner said. "We can talk about all this in the morning."
"You're not going to sleep?"
"Not yet. I have work to do."
Evans went forward to where the others were sleeping. He lay down across the aisle from Sarah, and pulled the covers up to his chin. Now his feet were exposed. He sat up, wrapped the blanket around his toes, and then lay down again. The blanket only came to mid-shoulder. He thought about getting up and asking the flight attendant for another.
And then he slept.
He awoke to harsh, glaring sunlight. He heard the clink of silverware, and smelled coffee. Evans rubbed his eyes, and sat up. In the back of the plane, the others were eating breakfast.
He looked at his watch. He'd slept for more than six hours.
He walked to the back of the plane.
"Better eat," Sarah said, "we land in an hour."
They stepped out onto the runway of Marso del Mar, shivering in the chill wind that whipped in off the ocean. The land around them was low, green, marshy, and cold. In the distance Evans saw the jagged, snow-covered spires of the El Fogara range of southern Chile.
"I thought this was summer," he said.
"It is," Kenner said. "Late spring, anyway."
The airfield consisted of a small wooden terminal, and a row of corrugated steel hangars, like oversize Quonset huts. There were seven or eight other aircraft on the field, all four-engine prop planes. Some had skis that were retracted above the landing wheels.
"Right on time," Kenner said, pointing to the hills beyond the airport. A Land Rover was bouncing toward them. "Let's go."
Inside the little terminal, which was little more than a single large room, its walls covered with faded, stained air charts, the group tried on parkas, boots, and other gear brought by the Land Rover. The parkas were all bright red or orange. "I tried to get everybody's size right," Kenner said. "Make sure you take long johns and microfleece, too."
Evans glanced at Sarah. She was sitting on the floor, pulling on heavy socks and boots. Then she unselfconsciously stripped down to her bra, and pulled a fleece top over her head. Her movements were quick, businesslike. She didn't look at any of the men.
Sanjong was staring at the charts on the wall, and seemed particularly interested in one. Evans went over. "What is it?"
Punta Arenas 18882004 "It's the record from the weather station at Punta Arenas, near here. It's the closest city to Antarctica in the world." He tapped the chart and laughed. "There's your global warming."
Evans frowned at the chart.
"Finish up, everybody," Kenner said, glancing at his watch. "Our plane leaves in ten minutes."
Evans said, "Where exactly are we going?"
"To the base nearest Mount Terror. It's called Weddell Station. Run by New Zealanders."
"What's there?"
"Not much, mate," the Land Rover driver said, and he laughed. "But the way the weather's been lately, you'll be lucky if you can get there at all."
Evans stared out the narrow window of the Hercules. The vibration of the props made him sleepy, but he was fascinated by what he saw beneath himmile after mile of gray ice, a vista broken by intermittent fog, and the occasional outcrop of black rock. It was a monochromatic, sunless world. And it was huge.
"Enormous," Kenner said. "People have no perspective on Antarctica, because it appears as a fringe at the bottom of most maps. But in fact, Antarctica is a major feature on the Earth's surface, and a major factor in our climate. It's a big continent, one and a half times the size of either Europe or the United States, and it holds ninety percent of all the ice on the planet."
"Ninety percent?" Sarah said. "You mean there's only ten percent in the rest of the world?"
"Actually, since Greenland has four percent, all the other glaciers in the worldKilimanjaro, the Alps, the Himalaya, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Siberiathey all account for six percent of the planet's ice. The overwhelming majority of the frozen water of our planet is in the continent of Antarctica. In many places the ice is five or six miles thick."
"No wonder they're concerned that the ice here is melting," Evans said.
Kenner said nothing.
Sanjong was shaking his head.
Evans said, "Come on, guys. Antarctica is melting."
"Actually, it's not," Sanjong said. "I can give you the references, if you like."
Kenner said, "While you were asleep, Sanjong and I were talking about how to clarify things for you, since you seem to be so ill-informed."
"Ill-informed?" Evans said, stiffening.
"I don't know what else one would call it," Kenner said. "Your heart may be in the right place, Peter, but you simply don't know what you're talking about."
"Hey," he said, controlling his anger. "Antarctica is melting."
"You think repetition makes something true? The data show that one relatively small area called the Antarctic Peninsula is melting and calving huge icebergs. That's what gets reported year after year. But the continent as a whole is getting colder, and the ice is getting thicker."
"Antarctica is getting colder?"
Sanjong had taken out a laptop and was hooking it up to a small portable bubble jet printer. He flipped open his laptop screen.
"What we decided," Kenner said, "is that we're going to give you references from now on. Because it's too boring to try and explain everything to you."
A sheet of paper began to buzz out of the printer. Sanjong passed it to Evans.
Doran, P. T., Priscu, J. C., Lyons, W. B., Walsh, J. E., Fountain, A. G., McKnight, D. M., Moorhead,D. L., Virginia, R. A., Wall, D. H., Clow, G. D., Fritsen, C. H., McKay, C. P., and Parsons, A. N., 2002, "Antarctic climate cooling and terrestrial ecosystem response," Nature 415: 51720.
From 1986 to 2000 central Antarctic valleys cooled.7є C per decade with serious ecosystem damage from cold.
Comiso, J. C., 2000, "Variability and trends in Antarctic surface temperatures from in situand satellite infrared measurements," Journal of Climate 13: 167496.
Both satellite data and ground stations show slight cooling over the last 20 years.
Joughin, I., and Tulaczyk, S., 2002, "Positive mass balance of the Ross Ice Streams, West Antarctica," Science 295: 47680.
Side-looking radar measurements show West Antarctic ice is increasing at 26.8 gigatons/yr. Reversing the melting trend of the last 6,000 years.
Thompson, D. W. J., and Solomon, S., 2002, "Interpretation of recent Southern Hemisphere climate change," Science 296: 89599.
Antarctic peninsula has warmed several degrees while interior has cooled somewhat. Ice shelves have retreated but sea ice has increased.
Petit, J. R., Jouzel, J., Raynaud, D., Barkov, N. I., Barnola, J.-M., Basile, I., Bender, M., Chappellaz, J., Davis, M., Delaygue, G., Delmotte, M., Kotlyakov, V. M., Legrand, M., Lipenkov, V. Y., Lorius, C., Pepin, L., Ritz, C., Saltzman, E., and Stievenard, M., 1999, "Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica," Nature 399: 42936.
During the last four interglacials, going back 420,000 years, the Earth was warmer than it is today.
Anderson, J. B., and Andrews, J. T., 1999, "Radiocarbon constraints on ice sheet advance and retreat in the Weddell Sea, Antarctica," Geology 27: 17982.
Less Antarctic ice has melted today than occurred during the last interglacial.
Liu, J., Curry, J. A., and Martinson, D. G., 2004, "Interpretation of recent Antarctic sea ice variability," Geophysical Research Letters 31: 10.1029/2003 GL018732.
Antarctic sea ice has increased since 1979.
Vyas, N. K., Dash, M. K., Bhandari, S. M., Khare, N., Mitra, A., and Pandey, P. C., 2003, "On the secular trends in sea ice extent over the antarctic region based on OCEANSAT-1 MSMR observations," International Journal of Remote Sensing 24: 227787.
Trend toward more sea ice may be accelerating.
Parkinson, C. L., 2002, "Trends in the length of the southern Ocean sea-ice season, 197999," Annals of Glaciology 34: 43540.
The greater part of Antarctica experiences a longer sea-ice season, lasting 21 days longer than it did in 1979.
"Okay, well, I see slight cooling referred to here," Evans said. "I also see warming of the peninsula of several degrees. That certainly seems more significant. And that peninsula's a pretty big part of the continent, isn't it?" He tossed the paper aside. "Frankly, I'm not impressed."
Sanjong said, "The peninsula is two percent of the continent. And frankly, I am surprised that you did not comment on the most significant fact in the data you were given."
"Which is?"
"When you said earlier that the Antarctic is melting," Sanjong said, "were you aware that it has been melting for the last six thousand years?"
"Not specifically, no."
"But generally, you knew that?"
"No," Evans said. "I wasn't aware of that."
"You thought that the Antarctic melting was something new?"
"I thought it was melting faster than previously," Evans said.
"Maybe we won't bother anymore," Kenner said.
Sanjong nodded, and started to put the computer away.
"No, no," Evans said. "I'm interested in what you have to say. I'm not closed-minded about this. I'm ready to hear new information."
"You just did," Kenner said.
Evans picked up the sheet of paper again, and folded it carefully. He slipped it into his pocket. "These studies are probably financed by the coal industry," he said.
"Probably," Kenner said. "I'm sure that explains it. But then, everybody's paid by somebody. Who pays your salary?"
"My law firm."
"And who pays them?"
"The clients. We have several hundred clients."
"You do work for all of them?"
"Me, personally? No."
"In fact, you do most of your work for environmental clients," Kenner said. "Isn't that true?"
"Mostly. Yes."
"Would it be fair to say that the environmental clients pay your salary?" Kenner said.
"You could make that argument."
"I'm just asking, Peter. Would it be fair to say environmentalists pay your salary?"
"Yes."
"Okay. Then would it be fair to say the opinions you hold are because you work for environmentalists?"
"Of course not"
"You mean you're not a paid flunky for the environmental movement?"
"No. The fact is"
"You're not an environmental stooge? A mouthpiece for a great fund-raising and media machinea multi-billion-dollar industry in its own rightwith its own private agenda that's not necessarily in the public interest?"
"God damn it"
"Is this pissing you off?" Kenner said.
"You're damn right it is!"
"Good," Kenner said. "Now you know how legitimate scientists feel when their integrity is impugned by slimy characterizations such as the one you just made. Sanjong and I gave you a careful, peer-reviewed interpretation of data. Made by several groups of scientists from several different countries. And your response was first to ignore it, and then to make an ad hominem attack. You didn't answer the data. You didn't provide counter evidence. You just smeared with innuendo."
"Oh, fuck you," Evans said. "You think you have an answer for everything. But there's only one problem: Nobody agrees with you. Nobody in the world thinks that Antarctica is getting colder."
"These scientists do," Kenner said. "They published the data."
Evans threw up his hands. "The hell with it," he said. "I don't want to talk about this anymore."
He walked to the front of the plane and sat down, crossed his arms, and stared out the window.
Kenner looked at Sanjong and Sarah. "Anyone feel like coffee?"
Sarah had watched Kenner and Evans with a certain amount of uneasiness. Even though she had worked for the past two years for Morton, she had never shared her employer's passion for environmental issues. All during that time, Sarah had been in a tempestuous, exciting relationship with a handsome young actor. Their time together consisted of an unending series of passionate evenings, angry confrontations, slammed doors, tearful reconciliations, jealousies, and infidelitiesand it had consumed her more than she cared to admit. The truth was that she had paid no more attention to NERF or Morton's other environmental interests than the job required. At least, until the sonof-a-bitch actor appeared in the pages of People magazine with a young actress from his TV show, and Sarah finally decided she had had enough, erased the guy from her cell phone, and threw herself into her work.
But she certainly held the same general view about the state of the world as Evans did. Perhaps Evans was more aggressive in stating his views, and more trusting of his assumptions, but she basically agreed with him. And here was Kenner, casting doubt after doubt.
It left her wondering whether Kenner was really correct about everything he was saying. And it also made her wonder just how he and Morton had become friends.
She asked Kenner, "Did you have these same discussions with George?"
"In the last weeks of his life, yes."
"And did he argue with you the way Evans is?"
"No." Kenner shook his head. "Because by then, he knew."
"Knew what?"
They were interrupted by the pilot's voice on the intercom. "Good news," he said. "The weather's broken over Weddell, and we will land in ten minutes. For those of you who have never made a landing on ice, seat belts should be low and tight, and all your gear safely stowed. And we really mean it."
The plane began a slow, curving descent. Sarah looked out the window at a crusty expanse of white, snow-covered ice. In the distance she saw a series of brightly colored buildingsred, blue, greenbuilt on a cliff, overlooking the gray and choppy ocean.
"That's Weddell Station," Kenner said.
Trudging toward structures that looked like oversize children's building blocks, Evans kicked a clump of ice out of his path. He was in a grumpy mood. He felt relentlessly bullied by Kenner, whom he now recognized as one of those perpetual contrarians who argued against all conventional wisdom, simply because it was conventional.
But since Evans was stuck with this lunaticat least for the next few dayshe decided to avoid Kenner as much as possible. And certainly not engage him in any more conversations. There was no point in arguing with extremists.
He looked at Sarah, walking across the ice airfield beside him. Her cheeks were flushed in the cold air. She looked very beautiful. "I think the guy is a nut," Evans said.
"Kenner?"
"Yeah. What do you think?"
She shrugged. "Maybe."
"I bet those references he gave me are fake," he said.
"They'll be easy enough to check," she said. They stamped their feet and entered the first building.
Weddell Research Station turned out to be home to thirty-odd scientists, graduate students, technicians, and support staff. Evans was pleasantly surprised to find it was quite comfortable inside, with a cheerful cafeteria, a game room, and a large gym with a row of treadmills. There were big picture windows with views of the choppy, restless ocean. Other windows looked out over the vast, white expanse of the Ross Ice Shelf, stretching away to the west.
The head of the station greeted them warmly. He was a heavyset, bearded scientist named MacGregor who looked like Santa Claus in a Patagonia vest. Evans was annoyed that MacGregor seemed to know Kenner, at least by reputation. The two men immediately struck up a friendly conversation.
Evans excused himself, saying he wanted to check his e-mail. He was shown to a room with several computer terminals. He signed on to one, and went directly to the site for Science magazine.
It took him only a few moments to determine that the references Sanjong had given him were genuine. Evans read the online abstracts, and then the full text. He began to feel a little better. Kenner had summarized the raw data correctly, but he had drawn a different interpretation from that of the authors. The authors of those papers were firmly committed to the idea of global warmingand said so in the text.
Or at least, most of them did.
It was a bit complicated. In one paper, it was clear that even though the authors gave lip service to the threat of global warming, their data seemed to suggest the opposite of what they were saying in the text. But that apparent confusion, Evans suspected, was probably just the result of drawing up a paper with half a dozen authors. What they said was they supported the idea of global warming. And that was what counted.
More disturbing was the paper on the increase in ice thickness in the Ross Ice Shelf. Here Evans found some troubling points. First, the author did say that the shelf had been melting for the last six thousand years, ever since the Holocene era. (Though Evans could not remember reading, in any article about melting Antarctic ice, that it had been going on for the last six thousand years.) If that were true, it wasn't exactly news. On the contrary, the author suggested that the real news was the end of this long-term melting trend, and the first evidence of ice thickening. The author was hinting that this might be the first sign of the start of the next Ice Age.
Jesus!
The next Ice Age?
There was a knock on the door behind him. Sarah stuck her head in. "Kenner wants us," she said. "He's discovered something. Looks like we're going out on the ice."
The map covered the entire wall, showing the enormous, star-shaped continent. In the lower right-hand corner was Weddell Station, and the curving arc of the Ross Ice Shelf.
"We've learned," Kenner said, "that a supply ship docked five days ago bringing boxes of field material for an American scientist named James Brewster, from the University of Michigan. Brewster is a very recent arrival who was permitted to come at the last minute because the terms of his research grant were unusually generous in their allowance for overheadmeaning the station would get some much-needed money for operations."
"So he bought his way in?" Evans said.
"In effect."
"When did he get here?"
"Last week."
"Where is he now?"
"Out in the field." Kenner pointed to the map. "Somewhere south of the slopes of Mount Terror. And that's where we're going."
"You say this guy's a scientist from Michigan?" Sarah said.
"No," Kenner said. "We just checked with the university. They have a Professor James Brewster, all right. He's a geophysicist at the University of Michigan, and right now he's in Ann Arbor waiting for his wife to deliver a baby."
"So who is this guy?"
"Nobody knows."
"And what was his offloaded equipment?" Evans said.
"Nobody knows that, either. It was helicoptered out to the field, still in the original crates. The guy's been out there a week with two so-called graduate students. Whatever he's doing, he's apparently working across a large area, so he moves his base camp frequently. Nobody here knows precisely where he is." Kenner lowered his voice. "One of the graduate students came back yesterday to do some computer work. But we won't use him to lead us out there, for obvious reasons. We'll use one of the staff people at Weddell, Jimmy Bolden. He's very knowledgeable.
"The weather's too dicey for helicopters, so we have to take snow-tracks. It's seventeen miles to the camp. The snowtracks should get us there in two hours. The outside temperature's perfect for springtime in Antarcticaminus twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit. So, bundle up. Any questions?"
Evans glanced at his watch. "Won't it get dark soon?"
"We have much less nighttime now that spring is here. We'll have daylight all the time we're out there. The only problem we face is right here," Kenner said, pointing to the map. "We have to cross the shear zone."
"The shear zone?" Jimmy Bolden said, as they trudged toward the vehicle shed. "There's nothing to it. You just have to be careful, that's all."
"But what is it?" Sarah said.
"It's a zone where the ice is subjected to lateral forces, shear forces, a bit like the land in California. But instead of having earthquakes, you get crevasses. Lots of 'em. Deep ones."
"We have to cross that?"
"It's not a problem," Bolden said. "Two years ago they built a road that crosses the zone safely. They filled in all the crevasses along the road."
They went into the corrugated steel shed. Evans saw a row of boxy vehicles with red cabs and tractor treads. "These are the snowtracks," Bolden said. "You and Sarah'll go in one, Dr. Kenner in one, and I'll be in the third, leading you."
"Why can't we all go in one?"
"Standard precaution. Keep the weight down. You don't want your vehicle to fall through into a crevasse."
"I thought you said there was a road where the crevasses were filled in?"
"There is. But the road is on an ice field, and the ice moves a couple of inches a day. Which means the road moves. Don't worry, it's clearly marked with flags." Bolden climbed up onto the tread. "Here, let me show you the features of the snowtrack. You drive it like a regular car: clutch there, handbrake, accelerator, steering wheel. You run your heater on this switch here" he pointed to a switch "and keep it on at all times. It will maintain the cab at around ten above zero. This bulgey orange beacon on the dashboard is your transponder. It turns on when you push this button here. It also turns on automatically if the vehicle shifts more than thirty degrees from horizontal."
"You mean if we fall into a crevasse," Sarah said.
"Trust me; that isn't going to happen," Bolden said. "I'm just showing you the features. Transponder broadcasts a unique vehicle code, so we can come and find you. If for any reason you need to be rescued, you should know the average time to rescue is two hours. Your food is here; water here; you have enough for ten days. Medical kit here, including morphine and antibiotics. Fire extinguisher here. Expedition equipment in this boxcrampons, ropes, carabiners, all that. Space blankets here, equipped with mini heaters; they'll keep you above freezing for a week, if you crawl inside 'em. That's about it. We communicate by radio. Speaker in the cab. Microphone above the windshield. Voice-activatedjust talk. Got it?"
"Got it," Sarah said, climbing up.
"Then let's get started. Professor, you clear on everything?"
"I am," Kenner said, climbing up into the adjacent cab.
"Okay," Bolden said. "Just remember that whenever you are outside your vehicle, it is going to be thirty below zero. Keep your hands and face covered. Any exposed skin will get frostbite in less than a minute. Five minutes, and you're in danger of losing anatomy. We don't want you folks going home without all your fingers and toes. Or noses."
Bolden went to the third cab. "We proceed single file," he said. "Three cab-lengths apart. No closer under any circumstances, and no farther. If a storm comes up and visibility drops, we maintain the same distance but reduce our speed. Got it?"
They all nodded.
"Then let's go."
At the far end of the shed, a corrugated door rolled up, the icy metal screeching. Bright sunlight outside.
"Looks like a beautiful day in the neighborhood," Bolden said. And with a sputter of diesel exhaust, he drove the first snowtrack out through the door.
It was a bouncing, bone-jolting ride. The ice field that had looked so flat and featureless from a distance was surprisingly rugged when experienced up close, with long troughs and steep hillocks. Evans felt like he was in a boat, crashing through choppy seas, except of course this sea was frozen, and they were moving slowly through it.
Sarah drove, her hands confident on the wheel. Evans sat in the passenger seat beside her, clutching the dashboard to keep his balance.
"How fast are we going?"
"Looks like fourteen miles an hour."
Evans grunted as they nosed down a short trench, then up again. "We've got two hours of this?"
"That's what he said. By the way, did you check Kenner's references?"
"Yes," Evans said, in a sulky voice.
"Were they made up?"
"No."
Their vehicle was third in the row. Ahead was Kenner's snowtrack, following behind Bolden's in the lead.
The radio hissed. "Okay," they heard Bolden say, over the speaker. "Now we're coming into the shear zone. Maintain your distance and stay within the flags."
Evans could see nothing differentit just looked like more ice field, glistening in the sunbut here there were red flags on both sides of the route. The flags were mounted on six-foot-high posts.
As they moved deeper into the field, he looked beyond the road to the openings of crevasses in the ice. They had a deep blue color, and seemed to glow.
"How deep are they?" Evans said.
"The deepest we've found is a kilometer," Bolden said, over the radio. "Some of them are a thousand feet. Most are a few hundred feet or less."
"They all have that color?"
"They do, yes. But you don't want a closer look."
Despite the dire warnings, they crossed the field in safety, leaving the flags behind. Now they saw to the left a sloping mountain, with white clouds.
"That's Erebus," Bolden said. "It's an active volcano. That's steam coming from the summit. Sometimes it lobs chunks of lava, but never this far out. Mount Terror is inactive. You see it ahead. That little slope."
Evans was disappointed. The name, Mount Terror, had suggested something fearsome to himnot this gentle hill with a rocky outcrop at the top. If the mountain hadn't been pointed out to him, he might not have noticed it at all.
"Why is it called Mount Terror?" he said. "It's not terrifying."
"Has nothing to do with that. The first Antarctic landmarks were named after the ships that discovered them," Bolden said. "Terror was apparently the name of a ship in the nineteenth century."
"Where's the Brewster camp?" Sarah said.
"Should be visible any minute now," Bolden said. "So, you people are some kind of inspectors?"
"We're from the IADG," Kenner said. "The international inspection agency. We're required to make sure that no US research project violates the international agreements on Antarctica."
"Uh-huh amp;"
"Dr. Brewster showed up so quickly," Kenner went on, "he never submitted his research grant proposal for IADG approval. So we'll check in the field. It's just routine."
They bounced and crunched onward for several minutes in silence. They still did not see a camp.
"Huh," Bolden said. "Maybe he moved it."
"What type of research is he doing?" Kenner said.
"I'm not sure," Bolden said, "but I heard he's studying the mechanics of ice calving. You know, how the ice flows to the edge, and then breaks off the shelf. Brewster's been planting GPS units in the ice to record how it moves toward the sea."
"Are we close to the sea?" Evans said.
"About ten or eleven miles away," Bolden said. "To the north."
Sarah said, "If he's studying iceberg formation, why is he working so far from the coast?"
"Actually, this isn't so far," Kenner said. "Two years ago an iceberg broke off the Ross Shelf that was four miles wide and forty miles long. It was as big as Rhode Island. One of the biggest ever seen."
"Not because of global warming, though," Evans said to Sarah, with a disgusted snort. "Global warming couldn't be responsible for that. Oh no."
"Actually, it wasn't responsible," Kenner said. "It was caused by local conditions."
Evans sighed. "Why am I not surprised?"
Kenner said, "There's nothing wrong with the idea of local conditions, Peter. This is a continent. It would be surprising if it didn't have its own distinctive weather patterns, irrespective of global trends that may or may not exist."
"And that's very true," Bolden said. "There are definitely local patterns here. Like the katabatic winds."
"The what?"
"Katabatic winds. They're gravitational winds. You've probably noticed that it's a lot windier here than in the interior. The interior of the continent is relatively calm."
"What's a gravitational wind?" Evans said.
"Antarctica's basically one big ice dome," Bolden said. "The interior is higher than the coast. And colder. Cold air flows downhill, and gathers speed as it goes. It can be blowing fifty, eighty miles an hour when it reaches the coast. Today is not a bad day, though."
"That's a relief," Evans said.
And then Bolden said, "See there, dead ahead. That's Professor Brewster's research camp."
It wasn't much to look at: a pair of orange domed tents, one small, one large, flapping in the wind. It looked like the large one was for equipment; they could see the edges of boxes pressing against the tent fabric. From the camp, Evans could see orange-flagged units stuck into the ice every few hundred yards, in a line stretching away into the distance.
"We'll stop now," Bolden said. "I'm afraid Dr. Brewster's not here at the moment; his snowtrack is gone."
"I'll just have a look," Kenner said.
They shut the engines and climbed out. Evans had thought it was chilly in the cab, but it was a shock to feel the cold air hit him as he stepped out onto the ice. He gasped and coughed. Kenner appeared to have no reaction; he went straight for the supply tent and disappeared inside.
Bolden pointed down the line of flags. "You see his vehicle tracks there, parallel to the sensor units? Dr. Brewster must have gone out to check his line. It runs almost a hundred miles to the west."
Sarah said, "A hundred miles?"
"That's right. He has installed GPS radio units all along that distance. They transmit back to him, and he records how they move with the ice."
"But there wouldn't be much movement amp;"
"Not in the course of a few days, no. But these sensors will remain in place for a year or more. Sending back the data by radio to Weddell."
"Dr. Brewster is staying that long?"
"Oh no, he'll go back, I'm sure. It's too expensive to keep him here. His grant allows an initial twenty-one-day stay only, and then monitoring visits of a week every few months. But we'll be forwarding his data to him. Actually, we just put it up on the Internet; he takes it wherever he happens to be."
"So you assign him a secure web page?"
"Exactly."
Evans stamped his feet in the cold. "So, is Brewster coming back, or what?"
"Should be coming back. But I couldn't tell you when."
From within the tent, Kenner shouted, "Evans!"
"I guess he wants me."
Evans went to the tent. Bolden said to Sarah, "Go ahead with him, if you want to." He pointed off to the south, where clouds were darkening. "We don't want to be staying here too long. Looks like weather coming up. We have two hours ahead of us, and it won't be any fun if it socks in. Visibility drops to ten feet or less. We'd have to stay put until it cleared. And that might be two or three days."
"I'll tell them," she said.
Evans pushed the tent flap aside. The interior glowed orange from the fabric. There were the remains of wooden crates, broken down and stacked on the ground. On top of them were dozens of cardboard boxes, all stenciled identically. They each had the University of Michigan logo, and then green lettering:
University of Michigan
Dept. of Environmental Science
Contents: Research Materials
Extremely Sensitive
HANDLE WITH CARE
This Side Up "Looks official," Evans was saying. "You sure this guy isn't an actual research scientist?"
"See for yourself," Kenner said, opening one cardboard carton. Within it, Evans saw a stack of plastic cones, roughly the size of highway cones. Except they were black, not orange. "You know what these are?"
"No." Evans shook his head.
Sarah came into the tent. "Bolden says bad weather coming, and we shouldn't stay here."
"Don't worry, we won't," Kenner said. "Sarah, I need you to go into the other tent. See if you can find a computer there. Any kind of computerlaptop, lab controller, PDAanything with a microprocessor in it. And see if you can find any radio equipment."
"You mean transmitters, or radios for listening?"
"Anything with an antenna."
"Okay." She turned and went outside again.
Evans was still going through the cartons. He opened three, then a fourth. They all contained the same black cones. "I don't get it."
Kenner took one cone, turned it to the light. In raised lettering it said: "Unit PTBC-XX-904/8776-AW203 US DOD."
Evans said, "These are military?"
"Correct," Kenner said.
"But what are they?"
"They're the protective containers for coned PTBs."
"PTBs?"
"Precision-timed blasts. They're explosives detonated with millisecond timing by computer in order to induce resonant effects. The individual blasts are not particularly destructive, but the timing sets up standing waves in the surrounding material. That's where the destructive power comes fromthe standing wave."
"What's a standing wave?" Evans said.
"You ever watch girls play jump rope? Yes? Well, if instead of spinning the rope, they shake it up and down, they generate loopy waves that travel along the length of the rope, back and forth."
"Okay amp;"
"But if the girls shake it just right, the waves appear to stop moving back and forth. The rope takes on a single curved shape and holds it. You've seen that? Well, that's a standing wave. It reflects back and forth in perfect synchronization so it doesn't seem to move."
"And these explosives do that?"
"Yes. In nature, standing waves are incredibly powerful. They can shake a suspension bridge to pieces. They can shatter a skyscraper. The most destructive effects of earthquakes are caused by standing waves generated in the crust."
"So Brewster's got these explosives amp;set in a row amp;for a hundred miles? Isn't that what Bolden said? A hundred miles?"
"Right. And I think there's no question what he intends. Our friend Brewster is hoping to fracture the ice for a hundred miles, and break off the biggest iceberg in the history of the planet."
Sarah stuck her head in.
Kenner said, "Did you find a computer?"
"No," she said. "There's nothing there. Nothing at all. No sleeping bag, no food, no personal effects. Nothing but a bare tent. The guy's gone."
Kenner swore. "All right," he said. "Now, listen carefully. Here's what we are going to do."
"Oh no," Jimmy Bolden said, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, but I can't allow that, Dr. Kenner. It's too dangerous."
"Why is it dangerous?" Kenner said. "You take these two back to the station, and I'll follow Brewster's snowtracks until I meet up with him."
"No, sir, we all stay together, sir."
"Jimmy," Kenner said firmly, "we're not going to do that."
"With all due respect, sir, you don't know your way around this part of the world amp;"
"You forget, I am an IADG inspector," Kenner said. "I was resident in Vostok Station for six months in the winter of '99. And I was resident in Morval for three months in '91. I know exactly what I'm doing."
"Gee, I don't know amp;"
"Call back to Weddell. The station chief will confirm it."
"Well, sir, if you put it that way amp;"
"I do," Kenner said firmly. "Now get these two people back to base. Time is wasting."
"Okay, if you'll be all right amp;" Bolden turned to Evans and Sarah. "Then I guess we go. Mount up, folks, and we'll head out."
Within minutes, Evans and Sarah were jouncing along on the ice, following behind Bolden's snowtrack. Behind them, Kenner was driving parallel to the line of flags, heading east. Evans looked back just in time to see Kenner stop, get out, check one of the flags briefly, then get back in again and drive on.
Bolden saw it, too. "What is he doing?" he said in an anxious tone.
"Just looking at the unit, I guess."
"He shouldn't be getting out of his vehicle," Bolden said. "And he shouldn't be alone on the shelf. It's against regulations."
Sarah had the feeling Bolden was about to turn back. She said, "I can tell you something about Dr. Kenner, Jimmy."
"What's that?"
"You don't want to make him mad."
"Really?"
"No, Jimmy. You don't."
"Well amp;okay then."
They drove on, climbing a long rise, descending on the other side. Brewster's camp was gone, and so was Kenner's snowtrack. Ahead lay the vast white field of the Ross Ice Shelf, stretching away to the gray horizon.
"Two hours, folks," Bolden said. "And then a hot shower."
The first hour passed uneventfully. Evans started to fall asleep, only to be jolted awake by the sharp movements of the vehicle. Then he would drift off again, his head nodding until the next shock.
Sarah was driving. He said to her, "Aren't you tired?"
"No, not at all," she said.
The sun was now low on the horizon, and obscured by fog. The landscape was shades of pale gray, with almost no separation between land and sky. Evans yawned. "Want me to take over?"
"I've got it, thanks."
"I'm a good driver."
"I know you are."
He was thinking she had a definite bossy side, despite her charm and her beauty. She was the kind of woman who would want to control the remote.
"I bet you want the remote," he said.
"You think so?" She smiled.
It was irritating in a certain way, he thought, that she did not take him seriously as a man. At least, not as a man she could be interested in. In truth, she was a little too cool for his taste. A little too ice blond. A little too controlled, beneath that beautiful exterior.
The radio clicked. Bolden said, "I don't like this weather coming in. We better take a shortcut."
"What shortcut?"
"It's only half a mile, but it'll save twenty minutes on our time. Follow me." He turned his snowtrack left, leaving the packed snow road, and heading off onto the ice fields.
"Okay," Sarah said. "Right behind you."
"Good work," Bolden said. "We're still an hour from Weddell. I know this route, it's a piece of cake. Just stay directly behind me. Not to the left or right, but directly behind, you understand?"
"Got it," Sarah said.
"Good."
In a matter of minutes, they had moved several hundred yards from the road. The ice there was bare and hard, the treads of the snowtracks scratching and squeaking as they crossed it.
"You're on ice now," Bolden said.
"I noticed."
"Won't be long now."
Evans was looking out the window. He could no longer see the road. In fact, he wasn't sure anymore in which direction it lay. Everything now looked the same. He felt anxious suddenly. "We're really in the middle of nowhere."
The snowtrack slid laterally a little, across the ice. He grabbed for the dashboard. Sarah immediately brought the vehicle back under control.
"Jeez," Evans said, clinging to the dashboard.
"Are you a nervous passenger?" she said.
"Maybe a little."
"Too bad we can't get some music. Is there any way to get music?" she asked Bolden.
"You should," Bolden said. "Weddell broadcasts twenty-four hours. Just a minute." He stopped his snowtrack, and walked back to their stopped vehicle. He climbed up on the tread and opened the door, in a blast of freezing air. "Sometimes you get interference from this," he said, and unclipped the transponder from the dash. "Okay. Try your radio now."
Sarah fiddled with the receiver, twisting the knob. Bolden walked back to his red cab, carrying the transponder. His diesel engine spit a cloud of black exhaust as he put the snowtrack in gear.
"You think they'd be a little more ecologically minded," Evans said, looking at the exhaust as Bolden's snowtrack chugged forward.
"I'm not getting any music," Sarah said.
"Never mind," Evans said. "I don't care that much."
They drove another hundred yards. Then Bolden stopped again.
"Now what?" Evans said.
Bolden climbed out of his vehicle, walked to the back of it, and looked at his own treads.
Sarah was still fiddling with the radio. Punching the buttons for the different transmission frequencies, she got bursts of static for each.
"I'm not sure this is an improvement," Evans said. "Just let it go. Why have we stopped, anyway?"
"I don't know," Sarah said. "He seems to be checking something."
Now Bolden turned and looked back at them. He didn't move. He just stood there and stared.
"Should we get out?" Evans said.
The radio crackled and they heard "is Weddell CM to401. Are you there, Dr. Kenner? Weddell CM toKenner. Can you hear?"
"Hey," Sarah said, smiling. "I think we finally got something."
The radio hissed and sputtered.
"just found Jimmy Bolden unconscious inmaintenance room. We don't know who isout there withbut it's not"
"Oh shit," Evans said, staring at the man in front of them. "That guy's not Bolden? Who is he?"
"I don't know, but he's blocking the way," Sarah said. "And he's waiting."
"Waiting for what?"
There was a loud crack! from beneath them. Inside the cab, the sound echoed like a gunshot. Their vehicle shifted slightly.
"Screw this," Sarah said. "We're getting out of here, even if I have to ram the bastard." She put the snowtrack in gear, and started to back away from the vehicle in front of them. She shifted, starting the snowtrack forward again.
Another crack!
"Let's go!" Evans said. "Let's go!"
Crack! Crack! Their vehicle lurched beneath them, tilted sideways at an angle. Evans looked out at the guy pretending to be Bolden.
"It's the ice," Sarah said. "He's waiting for our weight to break through."
"Ram him!" Evans said, pointing ahead. The bastard was making some hand gesture to them. It took him a moment for Evans to understand what it meant. Then he got it.
The man was waving goodbye.
Sarah stomped on the accelerator and the engine rumbled forward, but in the next moment the ground gave way completely beneath them, and their vehicle nosed down. Evans saw the blue-ice wall of a crevasse. Then the vehicle began to tumble forward, and they were encased for an instant in a world of eerie blue before they plunged onward into the blackness below.
Sarah opened her eyes and saw a huge blue starburst, streaks radiating outward in all directions. Her forehead was icy cold, and she had terrible pain in her neck. Tentatively, she shifted her body, checking each of her limbs. They hurt, but she could move all of them except her right leg, which was pinned under something. She coughed and paused, taking stock. She was lying on her side, her face shoved up against the windshield, which she had shattered with her forehead. Her eyes were just inches from the fractured glass. She eased away, and slowly looked around.
It was dark, a kind of twilight. Faint light coming from somewhere to her left. But she could see that the whole cab of the snowtrack was lying on its side, the treads up against the ice wall. They must have landed on a ledge of some kind. She looked upwardthe mouth of the crevasse was surprisingly close, maybe thirty or forty yards above her. It was near enough to give her a burst of encouragement.
Next she looked down, trying to see Evans. But it was dark everywhere beneath her. She couldn't see him at all. Her eyes slowly adjusted. She gasped. She saw her true situation.
There was no ledge.
The snowtrack had tumbled into the narrowing crevasse, and wedged itself sideways within the crevasse walls. The treads were against one wall, the roof of the cab against the other, and the cab itself was suspended over the inky downward gash. The door on Evans's side hung open.
Evans was not in the cab.
He had fallen out.
Into the blackness.
"Peter?"
No answer.
"Peter, can you hear me?"
She listened. There was nothing. No sound or movement.
Nothing at all.
And then the realization hit her: She was alone down there. A hundred feet down in a freezing crevasse, in the middle of a trackless ice field, far off the road, miles from anywhere.
And she realized, with a chill, that this was going to be her tomb.
Boldenor whoever he washad planned it very well, Sarah thought. He had taken their transponder. He could drive a few miles, drop it down the deepest crevasse he could find, and then go back to the base. When the rescue parties set out, they would head for the transponder. It would be nowhere near where she was. The party might search for days in a deep crevasse before giving up.
And if they widened the search? They still wouldn't find the snowtrack. Even though it was only about forty yards below the surface, it might as well be four hundred yards below. It was too deep to be seen by a passing helicopter, or even a vehicle as it drove by. Not that any vehicle would. They would think the snowtrack had gone off the marked road, and they would search along the edge of the road. Not way out here, in the middle of the ice field. The road was seventeen miles long. They would spend days searching.
No, Sarah thought. They would never find her.
And even if she could get herself to the surface, what then? She had no compass, no map, no GPS. No radioit lay smashed beneath her knee. She didn't even know in what direction Weddell Station might be from her present location.
Of course, she thought, she had a bright red parka that would be visible from a distance, and she had supplies, food, equipmentall the equipment that guy had talked about, before they set out. What was it, exactly? She vaguely remembered something about climbing supplies. Crampons and ropes.
Sarah bent down, managed to free herself from a toolbox that had pinned her foot to the floor, and then crawled to the rear of the cab, balancing carefully to avoid the gaping, wide-open door beneath her. In the perpetual twilight of the crevasse, she saw the supply locker. It was crumpled slightly from the impact, and she couldn't get it open.
She went back to the toolbox, opened it, took out a hammer and a screwdriver, and spent the better part of the next half hour trying to pry the locker open. At last, with a metallic screech, the door swung wide. She peered inside.
The locker was empty.
No food, no water, no climbing supplies. No space blankets, no heaters.
Nothing at all.
Sarah took a deep breath, let it out slowly. She remained calm, refusing to panic. She considered her options. Without ropes and crampons, she could not get to the surface. What could she use instead? She had a toolbox. Could she use the screwdriver as an ice axe? Probably too small. Perhaps she could disassemble the gearshift and make an ice axe out of the parts. Or perhaps she could take apart some of the tread and find parts to use.
She had no crampons, but if she could find sharp pointed things, screws or something like that, she could push them through the soles of her boots and then climb. And for a rope? Some sort of cloth perhaps amp;She looked around the interior. Maybe she could tear the fabric off the seats? Or cut it off in strips? That might work.
In this way, she kept her spirits up. She kept herself moving forward. Even if her chance of success was small, there was still a chance. A chance.
She focused on that.
Where was Kenner? What would he do when he heard the radio message? He probably had, already. Would he come back to Weddell? Almost certainly. And he would look for that guy, the one they thought of as Bolden. But Sarah was pretty sure that guy had disappeared.
And with his disappearance, her hopes for rescue.
The crystal of her watch was smashed. She didn't know how long she had been down there, but she noticed that it was darker than before. The gap above her was not as bright. Either the weather on the surface was changing, or the sun was low on the horizon. That would mean she had been down there for two or three hours already.
She was aware of a stiffening in her bodynot just from the fall, but also, she realized, because she was cold. The cab had lost its heat.
It occurred to her that perhaps she could start the motor, and get heat going. It was worth a try. She flicked on the headlights, and one of them worked, glaring off the ice wall. So there was still electricity from the battery.
She turned the key. The generator made a grinding sound. The engine did not kick on.
And she heard a voice yell, "Hey!"
Sarah looked up, toward the surface. She saw nothing but the gap and the strip of gray sky beyond.
"Hey!"
She squinted. Was somebody really up there? She yelled back: "Hey! I'm down here!"
"I know where you are," the voice said.
And then she realized the voice was coming from below her.
She looked down, into the depths of the crevasse.
"Peter?" she said.
"I'm fucking freezing," he said. His voice floated up from the darkness.
"Are you hurt?"
"No, I don't think so. I don't know. I can't move. I'm wedged in some kind of cleft or something."
"How far down are you?"
"I don't know. I can't turn my head to look up. I'm stuck, Sarah." His voice trembled. He sounded frightened.
"Can you move at all?" she said.
"Just one arm."
"Can you see anything?"
"Ice. I see a blue wall. It's about two feet away."
Sarah was straddling the open door, peering down into the crevasse, straining to see. It was very dark down there. But it seemed as if the crevasse narrowed quickly, farther down. If so, he might not be that far beneath her.
"Peter. Move your arm. Can you move your arm?"
"Yes."
"Wave it."
"I am."
She didn't see anything. Just darkness.
"Okay," she said. "Stop."
"Did you see me?"
"No."
"Shit." He coughed. "It's really cold, Sarah."
"I know. Hang on."
She had to find a way to see down into the cleft. She looked under the dashboard, near where the fire extinguisher was clipped to the car wall. If there was a fire extinguisher, there was probably a flashlight there, too. They would be sure to have a flashlight amp;someplace.
Not under the dashboard.
Maybe the glove compartment. She opened it, shoved her hand in, feeling in the darkness. Crunching paper. Her fingers closed around a thick cylinder. She brought it out.
It was a flashlight.
She flicked it on. It worked. She shone it down into the depths of the crevasse.
"I see that," Peter said. "I see the light."
"Good," she said. "Now swing your arm again."
"I am."
"Now?"
"I'm doing it now."
She stared. "Peter, I don't seewait a minute." She did see himjust the tips of his fingers in their red gloves, protruding briefly beyond the tractor treads, and the ice below.
"Peter."
"What."
"You're very near me," she said. "Just five or six feet below me."
"Great. Can you get me out?"
"I could, if I had a rope."
"There's no rope?" he said.
"No. I opened the supply chest. There's nothing at all."
"But it's not in the supply chest," he said. "It's under the seat."
"What?"
"Yeah, I saw it. The ropes and stuff are under the passenger seat."
She looked. The seat was on a steel base anchored firmly to the floor of the snowtrack. There were no doors or compartments in the base. It was difficult to maneuver around the seat to see, but she was sure: no doors. On a sudden impulse, she lifted up the seat cushion, and saw a compartment beneath it. The light of her flashlight revealed ropes, hooks, snow axes, crampons amp; "Got it," she said. "You were right. It's all here."
"Whew," he said.
She brought the equipment out carefully, making sure none of it fell through the open door. Already her fingers were growing numb, and she felt clumsy as she held a fifty-foot length of nylon rope with a three-pronged ice hook at one end.
"Peter," she said. "If I lower a rope, can you grab it?"
"Maybe. I think so."
"Can you hold the rope tight, so I can pull you out?"
"I don't know. I just have the one arm free. The other one's pinned under me."
"Are you strong enough to hold the rope with one arm?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. I mean, if I got my body partway out, and lost my grip amp;" His voice broke off. He sounded on the verge of tears.
"Okay," she said. "Don't worry."
"I'm trapped, Sarah!"
"No, you're not."
"I am, I'm trapped, I'm fucking trapped!" Now there was panic. "I'm going to die here!"
"Peter. Stop." She was coiling the rope around her waist as she spoke. "It's going to be all right. I have a plan."
"What plan?"
"I'm going to lower an ice hook on the rope," she said. "Can you hook it onto something? Like your belt?"
"Not my belt amp;No. I'm wedged in here, Sarah. I can't move. I can't reach my belt."
She was trying to visualize his situation. He must be wedged in some sort of cleft in the ice. It was frightening just to imagine it. No wonder he was scared. "Peter," she said, "can you hook it onto anything?"
"I'll try."
"Okay, here it comes," she said, lowering the rope. The hook disappeared into the darkness. "Do you see it?"
"I see it."
"Can you reach it?"
"No."
"Okay, I'll swing it toward you." She turned her wrist gently, starting the rope in a lateral swing. The hook vanished out of sight, then swung back, then out of sight again.
"I can't amp;keep doing it, Sarah."
"I am."
"I can't get it, Sarah."
"Keep trying."
"It has to be lower."
"Okay. How much lower?"
"About a foot."
"Okay." She lowered it a foot. "How's that?"
"Good, now swing it."
She did. She heard him grunting, but each time the hook swung back into view.
"I can't do it, Sarah."
"Yes you can. Keep trying."
"I can't. My fingers are too cold."
"Keep trying," she said. "Here it is again."
"I can't, Sarah, I can't amp;Hey!"
"What?"
"I almost got it."
Looking down, she saw the hook spinning when it came back into view. He'd touched it.
"Once more," she said. "You'll do it, Peter."
"I'm trying, it's just I have so littleI got it, Sarah. I got it!"
She gave a long sigh of relief.
He was coughing in the darkness. She waited.
"Okay," he said. "I got it hooked on my jacket."
"Where?"
"Right on the front. Just on my chest."
She was visualizing that if the hook ripped free, it would tear right into his chin. "No, Peter. Hook it on the armpit."
"I can't, unless you pull me out a couple of feet."
"Okay. Say when."
He coughed. "Listen, Sarah. Are you strong enough to pull me out?"
She had avoided thinking about that. She just assumed that somehow she could. Of course she didn't know how hard he was wedged in, but amp;"Yes," she said. "I can do it."
"Are you sure? I weigh a hundred and sixty." He coughed again. "Maybe a little more. Maybe ten more."
"I've got you tied off on the steering wheel."
"Okay, but amp;don't drop me."
"I won't drop you, Peter."
There was a pause. "How much do you weigh?"
"Peter, you never ask a lady that question. Especially in LA."
"We're not in LA."
"I don't know how much I weigh," she said. Of course she knew exactly. She weighed a hundred and thirty-seven pounds. He weighed over thirty pounds more than that. "But I know I can pull you up," she said. "Are you ready?"
"Shit."
"Peter, are you ready or not?"
"Yeah. Go."
She drew the rope tight, then crouched down, planting her feet firmly on either side of the open door. She felt like a sumo wrestler at the start of a match. But she knew her legs were much stronger than her arms. This was the only way she could do it. She took a deep breath.
"Ready?" she said.
"I guess."
Sarah began to stand upright, her legs burning with effort. The rope stretched taut, then moved upwardslowly at first, just a few inches. But it was moving.
It was moving.
"Okay, stop. Stop!"
"What?"
"Stop!"
"Okay." She was in mid-crouch. "But I can't hold this for long."
"Don't hold it at all. Let it out. Slowly. About three feet."
She realized that she must have already pulled him part of the way out of the cleft. His voice sounded better, much less frightened, though he was coughing almost continuously.
"Peter?"
"Minute. I'm hooking it on my belt."
"Okay amp;"
"I can see up now," he said. "I can see the tread. The tread is about six feet above my head."
"Okay."
"But when you pull me up, the rope's going to rub on the edge of the tread."
"It'll be okay," she said.
"And I'll be hanging right over the, uh amp;"
"I won't let you go, Peter."
He coughed for a while. She waited. He said, "Tell me when you're ready."
"I'm ready."
"Then let's get this over with," he said, "before I get scared."
There was only one bad moment. She had pulled him up about four feet, and he came free of the cleft, and she suddenly took the full weight of his body. It shocked her; the rope slid three feet down. He howled.
"Sar-ah!"
She gripped the rope, stopped it. "Sorry."
"Fuck!"
"Sorry." She adjusted to the added weight, started pulling again. She was groaning with the effort but it was not long before she saw his hand appear above the tread, and he gripped it, and began to haul himself over. Then two hands, and his head appeared.
That shocked her, too. His face was covered in thick blood, his hair matted red. But he was smiling.
"Keep pulling, sister."
"I am, Peter. I am."
Only after he finally had scrambled into the cab did Sarah sink to the floor. Her legs began to shake violently. Her body trembled all over. Evans, lying on his side, coughing and wheezing beside her, hardly noticed. Eventually the trembling passed. She found the first-aid kit and began to clean his face up.
"It's only a superficial cut," she said, "but you'll need stitches."
"If we ever get out of here amp;"
"We'll get out, all right."
"I'm glad you're confident." He looked out the window at the ice above. "You done much ice climbing?"
She shook her head. "But I've done plenty of rock climbing. How different can it be?"
"More slippery? And what happens when we get up there?" he said.
"I don't know."
"We have no idea where to go."
"We'll follow the guy's snowtracks."
"If they're still there. If they haven't blown away. And you know it's at least seven or eight miles to Weddell."
"Peter," she said.
"If a storm comes up, maybe we're better off down here."
"I'm not staying here," she said. "If I'm going to die, I'll die in daylight."
The actual climb up the crevasse wall was not so bad, once Sarah got used to the way she had to kick her boots with the crampons, and how hard she had to swing the axe to make it bite into the ice. It took her only seven or eight minutes to cover the distance, and clamber onto the surface.
The surface looked exactly the same as before. The same dim sunlight, the same gray horizon that blended with the ground. The same gray, featureless world.
She helped Evans up. His cut was bleeding again, and his mask was red, frozen stiff against his face.
"Shit it's cold," he said. "Which way, do you think?"
Sarah was looking at the sun. It was low on the horizon, but was it sinking, or rising? And which direction did the sun indicate, anyway, when you were at the South Pole? She frowned: She couldn't work it out, and she didn't dare make a mistake.
"We'll follow the tracks," she said at last. She took off her crampons and started walking.
She had to admit, Peter was right about one thing: It was much colder here on the surface. After half an hour, the wind came up, blowing strongly; they had to lean into it as they trudged forward. Worse, the snow began to blow across the ground beneath their feet. Which meant "We're losing the tracks," Evans said.
"I know."
"They're getting blown away."
"I know." Sometimes he was such a baby. What did he expect her to do about the wind?
"What do we do?" he said.
"I don't know, Peter. I've never been lost in Antarctica before."
"Well, me neither."
They trudged onward.
"But it was your idea to come up here."
"Peter. Pull yourself together."
"Pull myself together? It's fucking freezing, Sarah. I can't feel my nose or my ears or my fingers or my toes or"
"Peter." She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. "Shut up!"
He was silent. Through slots in his facemask, he stared out at her. His eyelashes were white with ice.
"I can't feel my nose either," Sarah said. "We have to keep a grip."
She looked around, turning a full circle, trying to conceal her own growing desperation. The wind was blowing more snow now. It was becoming harder to see. The world was flatter and grayer, with almost no sense of depth. If this weather continued, they would soon not be able to see the ground well enough to avoid the crevasses.
Then they would have to stop where they were.
In the middle of nowhere.
He said, "You're beautiful when you're angry, you know that?"
"Peter, for Christ's sake."
"Well, you are."
She started walking, looking down at the ground, trying to see the tread marks. "Come on, Peter." Perhaps the tracks would return soon to the road. If they did, the road would be easier to follow in a storm. And safer for walking.
"I think I'm falling in love, Sarah."
"Peter amp;"
"I had to tell you. This may be my last chance." He started coughing again.
"Save your breath, Peter."
"Fucking freezing."
They stumbled on, no longer speaking. The wind howled. Sarah's parka was pressed flat against her body. It became harder and harder to move forward. But she pressed on. She did not know how much longer she continued in that way before she raised a hand, and stopped. Evans must not have been able to see her, because he walked into her back, grunted, and stopped.
They had to put their heads together and shout to hear each other above the wind.
"We have to stop!" she yelled.
"I know!"
And then, because she didn't know what else to do, she sat down on the ground and pulled her legs up and lowered her head to her knees, and tried not to cry. The wind grew louder and louder. Now it was shrieking. The air was thick with flying snow.
Evans sat down beside her. "We're going to fucking die," he said.
She started shivering, little tremulous bursts at first, and then almost continuously. She felt as if she were having a seizure. From skiing, she knew what that meant. Her core temperature had dropped dangerously, and the shivering was an automatic physiological attempt to warm her body up.
Her teeth chattered. It was hard to speak. But her mind was still working, still looking for a way out. "Isn't there a way to build a snow house?"
Evans said something. The wind whipped his words away.
"Do you know how?" she said.
He didn't answer her.
But it was too late, anyway, she thought. She was losing control of her body. She could hardly even keep her arms wrapped around her knees, the shaking was so bad.
And she was starting to feel sleepy.
She looked over at Evans. He was lying on his side on the ice.
She nudged him to get up. She kicked him. He didn't move. She wanted to yell at him but she couldn't, because her teeth were chattering so badly.
Sarah fought to retain consciousness, but the desire to sleep was becoming overpowering. She struggled to keep her eyes open and, to her astonishment, began to see swift scenes from her lifeher childhood, her mother, her kindergarten class, ballet lessons, the high school prom amp; Her whole life was passing before her. Just like the books said happened, right before you died. And when she looked up, she saw a light in the distance, just like they said happened. A light at the end of a long, dark tunnel amp; She couldn't fight it any longer. She lay down. She couldn't feel the ground anyway. She was lost in her own, private world of pain and exhaustion. And the light before her was growing brighter and brighter, and now there were two other lights, blinking yellow and green amp; Yellow and green?
She fought the sleepiness. She tried to push herself upright again, but she couldn't. Her muscles were too weak, her arms blocks of frozen ice. She couldn't move.
Yellow and green lights, growing larger. And a white light in the center. Very white, like halogen. She was starting to see details through the swirling snow. There was a silver dome, and wheels, and large glowing letters. The letters said NASA.
She coughed. The thing emerged from the snow. It was some kind of small vehicleabout three feet high, no larger than those Sunday lawn-mowers that people drove around on. It had big wheels and a flattened dome, and it was beeping as it came directly toward her.
In fact, it was going to drive right over her. She realized it without concern. She could do nothing to prevent it. She lay on the ground, dazed, indifferent. The wheels grew larger and larger. The last thing she remembered was a mechanical voice saying, "Hello. Hello. Please move out of the way. Thank you very much for your cooperation. Hello. Hello. Please move out of the way amp;"
And then nothing.
Darkness. Pain. Harsh voices.
Pain.
Rubbing. All over her body, arms and legs. Like fire rubbed on her body.
She groaned.
A voice spoke, rasping and distant. It sounded like "Coffee grounds."
The rubbing continued, brisk and harsh and excruciating. And a sound like sandpaperscratching, rough, terrible.
Something struck her in the face, on the mouth. She licked her lips. It was snow. Freezing snow.
"Cousins set?" a voice said.
"Nod eely."
It was a foreign language, Chinese or something. Sarah heard several voices now. She tried to open her eyes but could not. Her eyes were held shut by something heavy over her face, like a mask, or She tried to reach up, but couldn't. All her limbs were held down. And the rubbing continued, rubbing, rubbing amp; She groaned. She tried to speak.
"Thin song now whore nod?"
"Don thin song."
"Kee pub yar wok."
Pain.
They rubbed her, whoever they were, while she lay immobilized in darkness, and gradually more sensation returned to her limbs and to her face. She was not glad for it. The pain grew worse and worse. She felt as if she were burned everywhere on her body.
The voices seemed to float around her, disembodied. There were more of them now. Four, fiveshe was not sure anymore. All women, it sounded like.
And now they were doing something else, she realized. Violating her. Sticking something in her body. Dull and cold. Not painful. Cold.
The voices floated, slithered all around her. At her head, at her feet. Touching her roughly.
It was a dream. Or death. Maybe she was dead, she thought. She felt oddly detached about it. The pain made her detached. And then she heard a woman's voice in her ear, very close to her ear, and very distinct. The voice said:
"Sarah."
She moved her mouth.
"Sarah, are you awake?"
She nodded slightly.
"I am going to take the icepack off your face, all right?"
She nodded. The weight, the mask was lifted.
"Open your eyes. Slowly."
She did. She was in a dimly lit room with white walls. A monitor to one side, a tangle of green lines. It was like a hospital room. A woman looked down at her with concern. The woman wore a white nurse's uniform and a down vest. The room was cold. Sarah could see her breath.
She said, "Don't try to speak."
Sarah didn't.
"You're dehydrated. It'll be a few hours yet. We're bringing your temperature up slowly. You're very lucky, Sarah. You're not going to lose anything."
Not lose anything.
She felt alarmed. Her mouth moved. Her tongue was dry, thick feeling. A sort of hissing sound came from her throat.
"Don't speak," the woman said. "It's too soon. Is your pain bad? Yes? I'll give you something for it." She raised a syringe. "Your friend saved your life, you know. He managed to get to his feet, and open the radio-phone on the NASA robot. That's how we knew where to find you."
Her lips moved.
"He's in the next room. We think he'll be all right, too. Now just rest."
She felt something cold in her veins.
Her eyes closed.
The nurses left Peter Evans alone to get dressed. He put on his clothes slowly, taking stock of himself. He was all right, he decided, though his ribs hurt when he breathed. He had a big bruise on the left side of his chest, another big bruise on his thigh, and an ugly purple welt on his shoulder. A line of stitches on his scalp. His whole body was stiff and aching. It was excruciating to put on his socks and shoes.
But he was all right. In fact, better than thathe felt new somehow, almost reborn. Out there on the ice, he had been certain he was going to die. How he found the strength to get to his feet, he did not know. He had felt Sarah kicking him, but he did not respond to her. Then he'd heard the beeping sound. And when he looked up, he saw the letters "NASA."
He'd realized vaguely that it was some kind of vehicle. So there must be a driver. The front tires had stopped just inches from his body. He managed to get to his knees, and haul himself up over the tires, grabbing onto the struts. He hadn't understood why the driver hadn't climbed out and helped him. Finally, he managed to get to his knees in the howling wind. He realized that the vehicle was low and bulbous, barely four feet off the ground. It was too small for any human operatorit was some kind of robot. He scraped snow away from the dome-like shell. The lettering read, "NASA Remote Vehicle Meteorite Survey."
The vehicle was talking, repeating a taped voice over and over. Evans couldn't understand what it was saying because of the wind. He brushed away the snow, thinking there must be some method of communication, some antenna, some Then his fingers had touched a panel with a finger hole. He pulled it open. Inside he saw a telephonea regular telephone handset, bright red. He held it to his frozen mask. He could not hear anything from it, but he said, "Hello? Hello?"
Nothing more.
He collapsed again.
But the nurses told him what he had done was enough to send a signal to the NASA station at Patriot Hills. NASA had notified Weddell, who sent out a search party, and found them in ten minutes. They were both still alive, barely.
That had been more than twenty-four hours ago.
It had taken the medical team twelve hours to bring their body temperatures back to normal, because, the nurse said, it had to be done slowly. They told Evans he was going to be fine, but he might lose a couple of his toes. They would have to wait and see. It would be a few days.
His feet were bandaged with some kind of protective splints around the toes. He couldn't fit into his regular shoes, but they had found him an oversized pair of sneakers. They looked like they belonged to a basketball player. On Evans, they made huge clown feet. But he could wear them, and there wasn't much pain.
Tentatively, he stood. He was tremulous, but he was all right.
The nurse came back. "Hungry?"
He shook his head. "Not yet."
"Pain?"
He shook his head. "Just, you know, everywhere."
"That'll get worse," she said. She gave him a small bottle of pills. "Take one of these every four hours if you need it. And you'll probably need it to sleep, for the next few days."
"And Sarah?"
"Sarah will be another half hour or so."
"Where's Kenner?"
"I think he's in the computer room."
"Which way is that?"
She said, "Maybe you better lean on my shoulder amp;"
"I'm fine," he said. "Just tell me the way."
She pointed, and he started walking. But he was more unsteady than he realized. His muscles weren't working right; he felt shaky all over. He started to fall. The nurse quickly ducked, sliding her shoulder under his arm.
"Tell you what," she said. "I'll just show you the way."
This time he did not object.
Kenner sat in the computer room with the bearded station chief, MacGregor, and Sanjong Thapa. Everybody was looking grim.
"We found him," Kenner said, pointing to a computer monitor. "Recognize your friend?"
Evans looked at the screen. "Yeah," he said. "That's the bastard."
On the screen was a photo of the man Evans knew as Bolden. But the ID form onscreen gave his name as David R. Kane. Twenty-six years old. Born Minneapolis. BA, Notre Dame; MA, University of Michigan. Current Status: PhD candidate in oceanography, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Research Project: Dynamics of Ross Shelf Flow as measured by GPS sensors. Thesis Advisor/Project Supervisor: James Brewster, University of Michigan.
"His name's Kane," the Weddell chief said. "He's been here for a week, along with Brewster."
"Where is he now?" Evans said darkly.
"No idea. He didn't come back to the Station today. Neither did Brewster. We think they may have gone to McMurdo and hopped the morning transport out. We have a call in to McMurdo to do a vehicle count, but they haven't gotten back to us yet."
"You're sure he's not still here?" Evans said.
"Quite sure. You need an ID tag to open the exterior doors here, so we always know who's where. Neither Kane nor Brewster opened any doors in the last twelve hours. They aren't here."
"So you think they may be on the plane?"
"McMurdo Tower wasn't sure. They're pretty casual about the daily transportif somebody wants to go, they just hop on and leave. It's a C-130, so there's always plenty of room. You see, a lot of the research grants don't permit you to leave during the period of your research, but people have birthdays and family events back on the mainland. So they just go, and come back. It's unrecorded."
"If I recall," Kenner said, "Brewster came here with two graduate students. Where's the other one?"
"Interesting. He left from McMurdo yesterday, the day you arrived."
"So they all got out," Kenner said. "Got to give them credit: They're smart." He looked at his watch. "Now let's see what, if anything, they left behind."
The name on the door said "Dave Kane, U. Mich." Evans pushed it open, and saw a small room, an unmade bed, a small desk with a messy stack of papers, and four cans of Diet Coke. There was a suitcase lying open in the corner.
"Let's get started," Kenner said. "I'll take the bed and the suitcase. You check the desk."
Evans began to go through the papers on the desk. They all seemed to be reprints of research articles. Some were stampe u mich geo lib followed by a number.
"Window dressing," Kenner said, when he was shown the papers. "He brought those papers with him. Anything else? Anything personal?"
Evans didn't see anything of interest. Some of the papers were highlighted in yellow marker. There was a stack of 3-by-5 notecards, with some notes written on them, but they seemed to be genuine, and related to the stack of papers.
"You don't suppose this guy is really a graduate student?"
"Could be, though I doubt it. Eco-terrorists aren't usually well educated."
There were pictures of glacier flows, and satellite images of various sorts. Evans shuffled through them quickly. Then he paused at one:
What caught his eye was the caption. "Listen," he said, "on that list of four locations, wasn't one of them called Scorpion'?"
"Yes amp;"
"It's right here, in Antarctica," Evans said. "Look at this."
Kenner started to say, "But it can't be" and abruptly broke off. "This is extremely interesting, Peter. Well done. It was in that stack? Good. Anything else?"
Despite himself, Evans felt pleased by Kenner's approval. He searched quickly. A moment later he said, "Yes. There's another one."
"It's the same basic pattern of rock outcrops in the snow," Evans said, excitedly. "And, I don't know about these faint lines amp;roads? Rocks covered in snow?"
"Yes," Kenner said. "I think that's almost certainly correct."
"And if they're aerial photographs, there must be a way to trace them. Do you think these numbers are references of some kind?"
"There's no question." Kenner pulled out a small pocket magnifying glass, and scanned the image, peering closely. "Yes, Peter. Very well done."
Evans beamed.
From the doorway, MacGregor said, "You found something? Can I help?"
"I don't think so," Kenner said. "We'll deal with this ourselves."
Evans said, "But maybe he will recognize"
"No," Kenner said. "We'll get the ID off the NASA image files. Let's continue."
They searched in silence for several minutes more. Kenner took out a pocketknife and began cutting the lining of the suitcase lying open in the corner of Brewster's office. "Ah." He straightened. In his fingers, he held two curved arcs of pale rubber.
"What are those?" Evans said. "Silicon?"
"Or something very similar. A kind of soft plastic, at any rate." Kenner seemed very pleased.
"What're they for?" Evans said.
"I have no idea," Kenner said. He resumed his search of the suitcase. Privately, Evans wondered why Kenner was so pleased. Probably he was not saying what he knew in front of MacGregor. But what could two bits of rubber mean, anyway? What could they be used for?
Evans went through the documents on the desk a second time, but found nothing more. He lifted the desk lamp and looked under the base. He crouched down and looked under the desk, in case something was taped there. He found nothing.
Kenner closed the suitcase. "As I thought, nothing more. We were very lucky to find what we did." He turned to MacGregor. "Where's Sanjong?"
"In the server room, doing what you requestedcutting Brewster and his team out of the system."
The "server room" was hardly larger than a closet. There were twin racks of processors running floor to ceiling, and the usual mesh ceiling for cabling. There was a master terminal in the room, on a small steel table. Sanjong was crowded in there with a Weddell technician at his side, looking frustrated.
Kenner and Evans stood outside, in the hallway. Evans was pleased that he felt steady enough to stand. His strength was coming back quickly.
"It hasn't been easy," Sanjong said to Kenner. "The procedure here is to give each Weddell researcher private storage space and also direct radio and Internet connections. And these three guys knew how to take advantage of it. Apparently the third man with Brewster was the computer guy. Within a day of his arrival, he got into the system as root, and installed back doors and trojans all over the place. We're not sure how many. We're trying to get them out."
"He also added a few dummy user accounts," the technician said.
"Like about twenty," Sanjong said. "But I'm not worried about those. They're probably just thatdummies. If this guy was smartand he washe'd have given himself access to the system through an existing user, so he'd go undetected. We're looking now for any users who have added a new secondary password in the last week. But this system doesn't have a lot of maintenance utilities. It's slow going.
"What about the trojans?" Kenner said. "How are they timed?" In computer slang, a trojan was an innocent-looking program installed in the system. It was designed to wake up at a later time and carry out some action. It derived its name from the way the Greeks won the Trojan warby making a huge horse and presenting it to the Trojans as a gift. Once the horse was within the walls of Troy, the Greek soliders who had been hiding inside it came out and attacked the city.
The classic trojan was one installed by a disgruntled employee. It erased all the hard drives in a business three months after the employee was fired. But there were many variations.
"Timing on all of the ones I found here is short," Sanjong said. "One day, two days from now. We found one that is three days from now. Nothing after that."
"So. Just as we suspected," Kenner said.
"Exactly," Sanjong said, nodding. "They intended it to happen soon."
"Intended what?" Evans said.
"The calving of the big iceberg," Kenner said.
"Why soon? They would still have been here."
"I'm not sure they would have. But in any case the timing was determined by something else."
"Yes? What?" Evans said.
Kenner gave him a look. "We can go into it later." He turned back to Sanjong. "And what about the radio connects?"
"We disabled all the direct connects right away," he said. "And I assume you did work on the ground at the location itself."
"I did," Kenner said.
"What did you do on the ground?" Evans said.
"Random disconnects."
"Of what?"
"Tell you later."
"So we're redundant," Sanjong said.
"No. Because we can't be sure there's not someone else embedded in this place who will undo our work."
"I wish," Evans said, "I knew what the hell you guys were talking about amp;"
"Later," Kenner said. This time the look was sharp.
Evans was silent. He felt a little wounded.
MacGregor said, "Ms. Jones is awake, and getting dressed."
"All right," Kenner said. "I believe our work here is done. Wheels up in an hour."
"To go where?" Evans said.
"I thought that was obvious," Kenner said. "Helsinki, Finland."
The plane flew back through the dazzling morning light. Sarah was sleeping. Sanjong was working on his laptop. Kenner stared out the window.
Evans said, "All right, what did you disconnect randomly?"
"The cone charges," Kenner said. "They were laid out in a precise pattern, four hundred meters apart. I disconnected fifty at random, mostly along the eastern end of the line. That will suffice to prevent the standing wave from being generated."
"So, no iceberg?"
"That's the idea."
"And why are we going to Helsinki?"
"We're not. I only said that for the benefit of the technician. We're going to Los Angeles."
"Okay. And why are we going to Los Angeles?"
"Because that's where the NERF Conference on Abrupt Climate Change is being held."
"This is all related to the conference?"
Kenner nodded.
"These guys are trying to break off an iceberg to coincide with the conference?"
"Exactly. All part of any good starburst media plan. You arrange an event with good visuals that reinforces the point of the conference."
"You seem awfully calm about it," Evans said.
"It's the way things are done, Peter." Kenner shrugged. "Environmental concerns don't come to the public's attention by accident, you know."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, take your favorite fear, global warming. The arrival of global warming was announced dramatically by a prominent climatologist, James Hansen, in 1988. He gave testimony before a joint House and Senate committee headed by Senator Wirth of Colorado. Hearings were scheduled for June, so Hansen could deliver his testimony during a blistering heat wave. It was a setup from the beginning."
"That doesn't bother me," Evans said. "It's legitimate to use a government hearing as a way to make the public aware"
"Really? So you're saying that in your mind, there's no difference between a government hearing and a press conference?"
"I'm saying hearings have been used that way many times before."
"True. But it is unquestionably manipulative. And Hansen's testimony wasn't the only instance of media manipulation that's occurred in the course of the global warming sales campaign. Don't forget the last-minute changes in the 1995 IPCC report."
"IPCC? What last-minute changes?"
"The UN formed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in the late 1980s. That's the IPCC, as you knowa huge group of bureaucrats, and scientists under the thumb of bureaucrats. The idea was that since this was a global problem, the UN would track climate research and issue reports every few years. The first assessment report in 1990 said it would be very difficult to detect a human influence on climate, although everybody was concerned that one might exist. But the 1995 report announced with conviction that there was now a discernable human influence' on climate. You remember that?"
"Vaguely."
"Well, the claim of a discernable human influence' was written into the 1995 summary report after the scientists themselves had gone home. Originally, the document said scientists couldn't detect a human influence on climate for sure, and they didn't know when they would. They said explicitly, we don't know.' That statement was deleted, and replaced with a new statement that a discernable human influence did indeed exist. It was a major change."
"Is that true?" Evans said.
"Yes. Changing the document caused a stir among scientists at the time, with opponents and defendants of the change coming forward. If you read their claims and counter-claims, you can't be sure who's telling the truth. But this is the Internet age. You can find the original documents and the list of changes online and decide for yourself. A review of the actual text changes makes it crystal clear that the IPCC is a political organization, not a scientific one."
Evans frowned. He wasn't sure how to answer. He'd heard of the IPCC, of course, although he didn't know much about it amp;.
"But my question is simpler, Peter. If something is real, if it is a genuine problem that requires action, why does anybody have to exaggerate their claims? Why do there have to be carefully executed media campaigns?"
"I can give you a simple answer," Evans said. "The media is a crowded marketplace. People are bombarded by thousands of messages every minute. You have to speak loudlyand yes, maybe exaggerate a littleif you want to get their attention. And try to mobilize the entire world to sign the Kyoto treaty."
"Well, let's consider that. When Hansen announced in the summer of 1988 that global warming was here, he predicted temperatures would increase.35 degrees Celsius over the next ten years. Do you know what the actual increase was?"
"I'm sure you'll tell me it was less than that."
"Much less, Peter. Dr. Hansen overestimated by three hundred percent. The actual increase was.11 degrees."
"Okay. But it did increase."
And ten years after his testimony, he said that the forces that govern climate change are so poorly understood that long-term prediction is impossible."
"He did not say that."
Kenner sighed. "Sanjong?"
Sanjong pecked at his laptop. "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, October 1998."* "Hansen didn't say that prediction was impossible."
"He said quote The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change' endquote. And he argued that, in the future, scientists should use multiple scenarios to define a range of possible climate outcomes."
"Well that isn't exactly"
"Stop quibbling," Kenner said. "He said it. Why do you think Balder is worried about his witnesses in the Vanutu case? It's because of statements like these. However you attempt to reframe it, it's a clear statement of limited knowledge. And it's hardly the only one. The IPCC itself made many limiting statements."
"But Hansen still believes in global warming."
"Yes, he does. And his 1988 prediction," Kenner said, "was wrong by three hundred percent."
"So what?"
"You are ignoring the implication of an error that large," Kenner said. "Compare it to other fields. For example, when NASA launched the rocket carrying the Mars Rover, they announced that in two hundred and fifty three days, the Rover would land on the surface of Mars at 8:11 p.m., California time. In fact, it landed at 8:35 p.m. That is an error of a few thousandths of a percent. The NASA people knew what they were talking about."
"Okay, fine. But there are some things you have to estimate."
"You're absolutely right," Kenner said. "People estimate all the time. They estimate sales, they estimate profits, they estimate delivery dates, they estimateby the way, do you estimate your taxes for the government?"
"Yes. Quarterly."
"How accurate does that estimate have to be?"
"Well, there's no fixed rule"
"Peter. How accurate, without penalty?"
"Maybe fifteen percent."
"So if you were off by three hundred percent, you'd pay a penalty?"
"Yes."
"Hansen was off by three hundred percent."
"Climate is not a tax return."
"In the real world of human knowledge," Kenner said, "to be wrong by three hundred percent is taken as an indication you don't have a good grasp on what you are estimating. If you got on an airplane and the pilot said it was a three-hour flight, but you arrived in one hour, would you think that pilot was knowledgeable or not?"
Evans sighed. "Climate is more complicated than that."
"Yes, Peter. Climate is more complicated. It is so complicated that no one has been able to predict future climate with accuracy. Even though billons of dollars are being spent, and hundreds of people are trying all around the world. Why do you resist that uncomfortable truth?"
"Weather prediction is much better," Evans said. "And that's because of computers."
"Yes, weather prediction has improved. But nobody tries to predict weather more than ten days in advance. Whereas computer modelers are predicting what the temperature will be one hundred years in advance. Sometimes a thousand years, three thousand years."
"And they are doing better."
"Arguably they aren't. Look," Kenner said. "The biggest events in global climate are the El Niсos. They happen roughly every four years. But climate models can't predict themnot their timing, their duration, or their intensity. And if you can't predict El Niсos, the predictive value of your model in other areas is suspect."
"I heard they can predict El Niсos."
"That was claimed in 1998. But it is not true."* Kenner shook his head. "Climate science simply isn't there yet, Peter. One day it will be. But not now."
Another hour passed. Sanjong was working continuously on the laptop. Kenner sat motionless, staring out the window. Sanjong was accustomed to this. He knew that Kenner could stay silent and immobile for several hours. He only turned away from the window when Sanjong swore.
"What's the matter?" Kenner said.
"I lost our satellite connection to the Internet. It's been in and out for a while."
"Were you able to trace the images?"
"Yes, that was no problem. I have the location fixed. Did Evans really think these were images from Antarctica?"
"Yes. He thought they showed black outcrops against snow. I didn't disagree with him."
"The actual location," Sanjong said, "is a place called Resolution Bay. It's in northeast Gareda."
"How far from Los Angeles?"
"Roughly six thousand nautical miles."
"So the propagation time is twelve or thirteen hours."
"Yes."
"We'll worry about it later," Kenner said. "We have other problems first."
Peter Evans slept fitfully. His bed consisted of a padded airplane seat laid flat, with a seam in the middle, right where his hip rested. He tossed and turned, waking briefly, hearing snatches of conversation between Kenner and Sanjong at the back of the plane. He couldn't hear the whole conversation over the drone of the engines. But he heard enough.
Because of what I need him to do.
He'll refuse, John. amp;he likes it or not amp;Evans is at the center of everything.
Peter Evans was suddenly awake. He strained to hear now. He raised his head off the pillow so he could hear better.
Didn't disagree with him.
Actual location amp;Resolution Bay amp;Gareda.
How far amp;? amp;thousand miles amp; amp;the propagation time amp;thirteen hours amp; He thought: Propagation time? What the hell were they talking about? On impulse he jumped up, strode back there, and confronted them.
Kenner didn't blink. "Sleep well?"
"No," Evans said, "I did not sleep well. I think you owe me some explanations."
"About what?"
"The satellite pictures, for one."
"I couldn't very well tell you right there in the room, in front of the others," Kenner said. "And I hated to interrupt your enthusiasm."
Evans went and poured himself a cup of coffee. "Okay. What do the pictures really show?"
Sanjong flipped his laptop around to show Evans the screen. "Don't feel bad. You would never have had any reason to suspect. The images were negatives. They're often used that way, to increase contrast."
"Negatives amp;"
"The black rocks are actually white. They're clouds."
Evans sighed.
"And what is the land mass?"
"It's an island called Gareda, in the southern part of the Solomon chain."
"Which is amp;"
"Off the coast of New Guinea. North of Australia."
"So this is an island in the South Pacific," Evans said. "This guy in Antarctica had a picture of a Pacific island."
"Correct."
"And the scorpion reference is amp;"
"We don't know," Sanjong said. "The actual location is called Resolution Bay on the charts. But it may be known locally as Scorpion Bay."
"And what are they planning down there?"
Kenner said, "We don't know that, either."
"I heard you talking about propagation times. Propagation times for what?"
"Actually, you misheard me," Kenner said smoothly. "I was talking about interrogation times."
"Interrogation times?" Evans said.
"Yes. We were hoping we'd be able to identify at least one of the three men in Antarctica, since we have good photographs of all three. And we know the photographs are accurate because people on the base saw them. But, I'm afraid we're out of luck."
Sanjong explained that they had transmitted photos of Brewster and the two graduate students to several databases in Washington, where pattern-recognition computers checked them against individuals with known criminal records. Sometimes you got lucky, and the computer found a match. But this time, no match had come back.
"It's been several hours, so I think we're out of luck."
"As we expected," Kenner said.
"Yes," Sanjong said. "As we expected."
"Because these guys don't have criminal records?" Evans said.
"No. They very well may."
"Then why didn't you get a match?"
"Because this is a netwar," Kenner said. "And at the moment, we are losing it."
In media accounts, Kenner explained, the Environmental Liberation Front was usually characterized as a loose association of eco-terrorists, operating in small groups on their own initiative, and employing relatively unsophisticated means to create havocstarting fires, trashing SUVs in car lots, and so on.
The truth was quite different. Only one member of ELF had ever been apprehendeda twenty-nine-year-old graduate student at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He was caught sabotaging an oil rig in El Segundo, California. He denied any association with the group, and insisted he was acting alone.
But what troubled authorities was the fact that he was wearing an appliance on his forehead that changed the shape of his skull and made his eyebrows jut out prominently. He was also wearing false ears. It wasn't much of a disguise. But it was troubling, because it suggested that he knew quite a lot about the pattern-matching programs used by the government.
Those programs were tuned to look past changes in facial hairwigs, beards, and mustachessince that was the most common method of disguise. They were also designed to compensate for changes in age, such as increased heaviness in the face, drooping features, receding hairlines.
But ears didn't change. The shape of the forehead didn't change. So the programs were therefore weighted to rely on the configuration of ears, and the shape of the forehead. Changing these parts of the face would result in a "no-match" outcome on a computer.
The guy from Santa Cruz knew that. He knew security cameras would photograph him when he got near the rig. So he changed his appearance in a way that would prevent identification by computer.
Similarly, the three extremists at Weddell clearly had formidable backing to carry out their high-tech terrorist act. It took months of planning. Costs were high. And they obviously had in-depth support to obtain academic credentials, university stencils on their shipping boxes, shell companies for their Antarctic shipments, false websites, and dozens of other details necessary for the undertaking. There was nothing unsophisticated about their plan or the way they had executed it.
"And they would have succeeded," Kenner said, "except for that list George Morton obtained shortly before his death."
All of which suggested that if ELF was once a loose association of amateurs, it was no longer. Now it was a highly organized networkone that employed so many channels of communication among its members (e-mail, cell phones, radio, text messaging) that the network as a whole eluded detection. The governments of the world had long worried about how to deal with such networks, and the "netwars" that would result from trying to fight them.
"For a long time, the concept of a netwar was theoretical," Kenner said. "There were studies coming out of RAND, but nobody in the military was really focusing on it. The notion of a networked enemy, or terrorists, or even criminals was too amorphous to bother with."
But it was the amorphous quality of the networkfluid, rapidly evolvingthat made it so difficult to combat. You couldn't infiltrate it. You couldn't listen in on it, except by accident. You couldn't locate it geographically because it wasn't in any one place. In truth, the network represented a radically new kind of opponent, and one that required radically new techniques to combat it.
"The military just didn't get it," Kenner said. "But like it or not, we're in a netwar right now."
"And how do you fight a netwar?" Evans said.
"The only way to oppose a network is with another network. You expand your listening posts. You decrypt around the clock. You employ techniques of networked deception and entrapment."
"Such as what?"
"It's technical," Kenner said vaguely. "We rely on the Japanese to spearhead that effort. They are the best at it in the world. And of course we extend our feelers in multiple directions at the same time. Based on what we've just learned at Weddell, we have lots of irons in the fire." Kenner had databases being searched. He had state organizations mobilized. He had inquiries into where the terrorists had obtained their academic credentials, their encrypted radio transmitters, their explosive charges, their computerized detonation timers. None of this was commonplace stuff and it could be traced, given enough time.
"Is there enough time?" Evans said.
"I'm not sure."
Evans could see that Kenner was worried. "So: What is it you want me to do?"
"Just one very simple thing," Kenner said.
"What's that?"
Kenner smiled.