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  ‘Can we get off?’ demanded the mind-blocked Olsen.

  ‘If we leave right now.’

  ‘We’ve got to get the data and records,’ said Stoddart.

  ‘And burn the station,’ announced Patricia, quietly.

  Everyone looked at her. Again there was silence. She said: ‘We have to burn it: that’s my professional opinion.’

  ‘You saying we’re infected?’ demanded Olsen, jaggedvoiced.

  ‘No,’ refuted the woman. ‘I’m saying that if there are bacilli there that can resist a sub-zero temperature it should be destroyed by fire. It’s not automatic that we’d become infected by being exposed to it … that there even are bacilli.’

  ‘What if I can’t get off?’ demanded Burke. ‘We couldn’t survive in this plane if you burn the station down …’ He looked further back into the aircraft. ‘And they’re here …’

  ‘You’ve killed us.’ Olsen accused Stoddart, hysteria bubbling up. ‘You’ve killed us, whatever we do …’

  ‘No one’s killed anyone,’ said Neilson, sternly. To Stoddart he said: ‘We’re lessening our chances, every minute we stay here talking.’

  ‘I’ll get the rest of the stuff,’ said Stoddart.

  He wasn’t aware of Patricia stumbling along with him until he was some way from the plane, leaning forward against a wind-blasted white wall. It was impossible to speak but he reached out, curling his arm around her to help her on and by so doing was pulled down when she sank into a drift. They groped around, needing each other. Once back inside the station they both, momentarily, had to go on clinging to each other, needing the mutual support to recover.

  Patricia said: ‘We do have to burn it, Jack.’

  ‘What if we can’t take off? We’ll be destroying our own protection.’

  ‘The plane’s still our best chance, until the weather lifts.’

  ‘So we are infected?’

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘What are the odds?’

  ‘To gamble I go to Vegas.’

  ‘I daren’t risk any more by destroying the best protection we’ve got.’

  ‘The plane’s safer,’ she insisted. ‘There’ll be a tracked vehicle somewhere. Maybe a Snowcat. Move it out to be ready when the storm lifts and we can get to Amundsen overland.’

  There was a fresh, bullet-hammering blast against the outside wall. Stoddart said: ‘We don’t have time.’

  ‘I’ll stop them taking off.’ Patricia grabbed the satcheled documents and shouldered her way out of the door, leading him back into the storm.

  Stoddart found the storage shed to the right, almost buried under a drift too deep properly to open the door. He pushed it back as far as he could. There was a tracked transporter, but no Snowcat. The motor whirred but didn’t fire, the battery almost at once beginning to fade. It sounded virtually on the point of collapse before it caught and Stoddart revved it desperately, to keep it alive. He drove the transporter hard into the door, bulldozing it open, knowing the wood would be splintering but not able to hear it above the combined noise of the engine and the blizzard. At the point of emerging, the vehicle suddenly rose and tilted dangerously to the left and for a moment Stoddart thought it would topple, so he tensed to throw himself clear but it dropped back to right itself. He drove about ten yards from the main building, seeking the radio mast for a marker. It had been snapped off about two metres from its top aerial, leaving a tangle of cable, but the guy wires were still intact to keep its lower part upright and above the snow. He parked as close to it as he could and struggled back towards the shed. He found the can of special carbon-thickened lubricating oil just beyond the now shattered door, needing to wrap both arms around it to carry it back into the station. He upended it from the table at which Armstrong had died, leaving it to gush rhythmically across the floor while he emptied into the stream bundles of unused paper and log books from the storage cupboard at the end of the desk. He kept the Zippo alight to fire the floating paper as he backed towards the door, wishing it burned more strongly.

  The wind suddenly, absurdly, dropped as he emerged, although it still snowed. In the abrupt silence he heard the revved engine of the plane obviously taxiing, moving away from him, and blundered forward, actually shouting for it to stop before realizing he was still masked. He tore the set away from his face, letting the cylinder drop behind him and stumbled forward through the thick, cloying drifts, waving his arms and shouting. The plane was disappearing, going further away from him into the thickening, perpetual darkness. Stoddart hesitated, knowing they wouldn’t hear or see him and actually thought, calmly and rationally, of turning back in time to stop the fire before it properly caught: to save something at least to provide shelter.

  Like a tap being turned off, the snow stopped and he saw the DHC-8 stationary. He blundered on, snow snatching at his feet and legs, needing to lift high for each step, like an artificial ceremonial march. At first he thought he imagined it, but then saw an open door and Patricia seemingly half in and half out. At last she saw him and shouted but he couldn’t hear the words. But the plane didn’t move. It was difficult to breathe, the frozen air burning into his lungs, and he wished he still had the oxygen. His entire body ached, with the constant effort. Twice he fell. The second time he was actually seized, insanely, with the thought of lying there and letting them go without him, but then he did hear Patricia, just calling his name again and again.

  It was Morris Neilson who got out of the plane to get him, virtually carrying him to where Patricia waited, arms outstretched, finally to drag him into the aircraft. Stoddart remained for a long time lying where he fell, on the fuselage floor, the breath groaning into him, all his strength gone.

  He was only vaguely aware of Burke finally gunning the engine and of the plane appearing to slide sideways, not continuing in a straight take-off line. The feeling of the ground, of something solid, beneath the skis went and the aircraft lifted and there was Burke’s hysteria-tinged voice.

  ‘We’re off! We’re OK … we’re going to be OK.’

  Then Stoddart heard Patricia speak. She said: ‘Bastard sons of bitches.’

  * * *

  The storm did die, so immediate that the next voice Stoddart heard was Neilson’s saying: ‘Look at the smoke! It’s burning, totally,’ and with Patricia’s help he managed to push himself up, first against a seat and then into it just in time to look out and see the dramatic black smear marked out like a sign – a warning sign? a death sign? – on the shrouded whiteness below.

  Stoddart felt a physical pain dive through his tired eyes. He had to close and then open them carefully, to refocus and even then was not sure he could see everything. What awaited outside could easily have been choreographed on a Hollywood – or maybe Fellini – directed set. Everything was glaringly whitened by fierce lights. The waiting vehicles were lined up – in reverse and with their back doors open – so tightly together it looked like a solid barrier against an escape. They were all white. So were the protective, head-dressed uniforms of the people he could see.

  Beside him Patricia said: ‘Jesus!’ although more in disbelief than in despair.

  A disembodied, metallically amplified voice said: ‘Please remain seated, as you have been told.’

  The repeated instruction seemed to be the cue. Four-man teams, each with collapsible gurneys, reacted simultaneously, but in prepared order, forming a line which came up the ramp running between the webbed-off area and the plane, each assigned a body to lift on to the ambulance trolleys. From the way the bags sagged when lifted, Stoddart guessed the bodies had thawed during the flight. The procession back down the ramp was as meticulously precise as the ascent. One man, quite apart from the ambulance attendants, carried the satchels.

  The voice said: ‘You are being taken to the microbiological research establishment at Fort Detrick, where there are the necessary isolation facilities. They’re on standby for every medical examination and test. Everything else will be explained to you on your arrival.�
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  Stoddart suddenly felt a burst of irritation. As he stood he said: ‘Who’s in charge here? My name is Stoddart: I headed the rescue attempt.’

  ‘We’re responsible for your transportation, sir,’ echoed the voice. ‘Everything else will be explained in detail at Detrick. Please, sir, sit down. You’ll be escorted from the aircraft one by one, once your protective clothing has been checked.’

  Neilson said: ‘I want to talk to my wife.’

  ‘Please wait until you reach Detrick,’ came the refusal.

  There was a fresh surge of white ant figures from the bottom of the ramp. Again there was an allocation of escorts, three to each person. Before they were encouraged to move, one man checked the security of each protective suit fastening and then gestured for them to stand legs apart, arms outstretched, to be sprayed from head to foot. Through his bemusement Stoddart noted that the decontamination device was pump driven, not activated by an aerosol that would have released ozone-depleting chlorofluocarbons.

  Patricia said: ‘We’re being taken prisoner!’

  The man siphoning his spray up and down her body said: ‘Ma’am, everything’s being done for your safety and protection.’

  ‘That’s a comforting thought.’ Patricia’s intended cynicism was lost in the distortion of the sound system.

  ‘That’s what it’s meant to be, ma’am,’ said the man, finishing his hosing-down. ‘There’s no living microbe – nothing – that can survive what I’ve just covered you in: you’re the most germ free thing on the planet.’

  ‘Let’s hope you’re right,’ said Patricia, no longer sarcastic.

  A stronger feeling of unreality engulfed Stoddart as he began to be moved and he at once needed the physical support of his assigned attendants, groping sideways for their outstretched arms. He felt one of his own arms being shaken, for attention, and realized he was being addressed, asked his name for the already prepared and chained identification tags, and that he couldn’t remember it. Then he did, blurting it anxiously. Robot-like he allowed himself to be led out of the concentrated light, not aware he was being helped into a helicopter – unable to remember climbing in – until one of his escorts began fastening a seat belt. To the second identically McMurdo-suited figure sitting directly opposite, he said: ‘Patricia?’

  A man beside him said: ‘She’s in another machine. She’s being looked after.’

  Dull voiced, Neilson recited: ‘I want to talk to my wife.’

  Stoddart lost consciousness as the helicopter lifted, not able to feel the pressure of the seat belt as he sagged against it or of the men either side closing up, to hold him steady. He didn’t detect the almost immediate landing or know he was actually walking until he found himself doing so, held up between them. His first half-conscious appreciation was that the other four were in a room ahead of him, seated in a row, and when he slumped alongside them he saw they were facing what appeared to be a long window.

  At once, from the other side of the observation gallery a voice, no longer distorted, said: ‘My name’s Walter Pelham. I’m the director here. Our concern is whether or not you have been infected by whatever it was that occurred in the Antarctic. You are to be quarantined, separately, for examination and investigation …’

  It was a superhuman effort for Stoddart to hold on, to force himself to concentrate with any sort of lucidity, but he did. ‘I led the rescue party … Stoddart … station’s burned …’

  ‘… We’re not going to attempt a debrief now … you need to rest … we’ve got other things …’

  ‘… two to three days,’ said Stoddart, knowing his voice was switchbacking, unevenly, in his anxiety to be heard. ‘That’s the symptoms cycle … the beginning …’

  ‘You’ve read the logs?’ demanded Pelham. ‘What …?’

  ‘Not analysed …’ withdrew Stoddart, needing to stop as the window behind which the unseen man sat or stood misted before him. Nothing about warming, he told himself: had to avoid that. ‘… read them, in parts. Jane … Jane Horrocks … she was pregnant.’

  There was a pause. ‘Thank you for telling us that.’

  ‘The onset’s very quick … two, three days … we’ve been …’ tried Stoddart again.

  ‘We’ve already calculated your period of exposure since you found them,’ stopped Pelham. That’s why you’re here …’

  ‘Well?’ demanded Paul Spencer. It had been five hours since the obediently shambling figures had been led unprotestingly away from the observation theatre, finally to be stripped of all protective, personal and inner clothing and to be swabbed and skin-scoured before, even more finally, to be bathed in water later to be filtered, and then laid then to sleep – linked to heart, lung and respiratory monitors – in the individually partitioned quarters where they would remain, in solitary confinement, until they were diagnosed free of any disease or infection.

  During those intervening five hours Spencer, the tall, fat, balding aide from the Chief of Staff’s office, David Hoolihan, the director of the polar programme at the US National Science Foundation, and Pelham read all the salvaged field base documentation, studied yet again the amateurishly taken McMurdo Polaroid prints of the dead scientists and even more intently – over several replays – watched the multi-cameraed video footage of Stoddart’s group, from the moment of the ramp lowering through to their being settled in bedrooms in which there were permanently running and noise-activated video and sound recorders, so sensitive they already knew that James Olsen suffered a flatulence or constipation difficulty, either of which could contribute to a diagnosis, if it hadn’t been a prior problem.

  Pelham said: ‘Autopsies as necessarily detailed as these will take days … weeks. There’s all sorts of things that have to be eliminated. There are ageing illnesses, genetically caused. But they affect children. Progeria. Werner’s Syndrome. Shock can send a person white-haired overnight. So can Shy-Drager Syndrome, as well as making them blind …’

  ‘What about the condition of the living?’ persisted Spencer. There’d been just the slightest risk he’d knee-jerked his reaction to Hoolihan’s Antarctic photographs, but after seeing the bodies through the mortuary observation window, as well as witnessing the automaton-bodied group that had travelled back with them, he knew now he hadn’t.

  ‘I’m not going to pre-judge anything,’ refused the director, a thin man pedantic in everything he said and did. They’ve every reason – and cause – to look the way they do after what they’ve been through and the time it took them to get here.’

  ‘Stoddart was the shakiest of them all,’ suggested Spencer.

  ‘He was able to say more than any of the others,’ Pelham pointed out.

  ‘You know his reputation?’ asked Hoolihan.

  ‘Yes,’ said the director.

  ‘What do you think about the log notes reporting that it had been unusually warm around the new station?’

  ‘I think, scientifically, it would be interesting – but at this stage no more than that – to know if that was confined to that location or whether there’s a record of it extending to Amundsen-Scott or McMurdo.’ Pelham was a man who needed corroborative scientific proof for every opinion.

  ‘We have to consider the families,’ said Spencer, more a reflection than a statement.

  The quality and abundance of the catch had justified a crew bonus and the captain had delayed his intended sailing until the morning to allow the celebration, but he was anxious to leave Misaki, in Kanagawa prefecture, to get back to the Antarctic fishing grounds. Shoals, like they’d just found, could disappear as quickly as they built up and if the minke whale mating season was going to be this heavy he wanted to get back to take every advantage of it.

  He waited impatiently, an hour longer than he intended, and when the two crewmen failed to arrive he sailed without them. There would be more bonus money to go around among a smaller crew if they did as well this time as they’d done last.

  He’d kept enough toro, tuna belly, to provide th
e sashimi, for which he’d bought beefsteak plant leaves and chives. And it was a celebration. So he’d have some of the raw whale tongue he’d kept back, for his own personal enjoyment.

  Three

  Some large men are extremely nimble and Paul Spencer was very fast on his feet indeed, mentally as well as physically. He was convinced now of the personal career advantages of the situation and saw the early morning White House meeting as essential in establishing his intended role as the always visible, ever necessary mover and shaker at the epicentre of things, the co-ordinator and conduit between the worker drones in the foothills and the oracles on the mountain top. It was a strategy he had successfully pursued since the earliest days of the current presidency – his getting into the inner sanctum of the Chief of Staff as planned as everything else – but the determination was far more than opportunism. That began, and ended, with his entering such a core office. Once there, he was ruthlessly efficient. Setbacks were obstacles for the hard driven drones to surmount, rare failure the professional problem of others, never that of Paul Spencer. His respected and untarnished reputation was that of the man who got things done, which was why he’d risen to be the Chief of Staff’s deputy and why he’d known the chief himself, Richard Morgan, would unquestioningly agree to the short notice meeting, which he did. Morgan was unsettled, like the leader of a herd becomes fidgety at the first scent of a predator.

  The meeting, of course, had to be at the White House, his and Morgan’s workplace, but the impressiveness fitted into Spencer’s scheme of things, even though the necessary space with projection facilities – for the video and still pictures – meant that the workplace was, in fact, in the windowless basement. David Hoolihan was visibly awed, which Spencer had known the Science Foundation executive director would be. Walter Pelham wasn’t, outwardly. The agenda was Spencer’s, so the encounter began with the videos and photographs after which Morgan was stiff faced, which he always became when confronted by a potential crisis. Spencer had anticipated that, too.