Aaron Elkins: Icy Clutches

"Mmmm,” she called, “smells wonderful.” She yawned, shoved some pillows up against the headboard, and pushed herself partway up with her eyes still screwed shut. Julie was like a zombie in the morning, barely articulate and only marginally coherent until she'd had a cup of coffee or been awake for an hour. Whichever came first.

He brought the pot and the cups to her on a tray, put them on the nightstand, and sat on the side of the bed. She had nodded off again, chin on her chest. He kissed her cheek, at the corner of her mouth. She mumbled something. He kissed the side of her throat. With her eyes still closed she murmured some more and lifted her arms to go around his neck.

"Mmm,” she said again, while he continued nuzzling, “'zis serious?"

"I'm afraid not,” he said. “You have to be dressed and out of here in twenty minutes.” He loosened her hold and poured coffee into the Styrofoam cups for both of them, then stuck hers in her hand, closing her fingers around it. “What's on your agenda anyway?"

Julie took another swallow to gather strength for speaking. “Latest techniques in victim location. All-day field trip. You?” Complex sentences, or even complete ones, were not to be expected first thing in the morning.

"Me? I'm not doing anything. I'll relax, that's all."

Her eyes finally opened to regard him doubtfully. “You're going to spend an entire day doing nothing?"

"Absolutely. With pleasure. I've gotten too goal-oriented, that's my problem. From now on I just take life as it comes."

Professor Tremaine was not altogether pleased with the way things were progressing. Oh, they had gone reasonably well during the introductory dinner the night before (Anna's characteristically vulgar comment aside), but now, at breakfast, he sensed an undercurrent of tension, of reserve. In the cases of Anna Henckel and Walter Judd he could guess at the reasons, ridiculous though they might be, but what did the others have to be touchy about? By the end of the week there would be cause enough, but why now? They had never met each other before. They were enjoying a quite luxurious stay at Glacier Bay at his expense, were they not? Well, perhaps not at his expense, but it amounted to the same thing, didn't it? If they didn't want to come, why were they there? Had anyone forced them?

Or was he imagining things? Might they be not touchy but star struck, now that they grasped that they would actually be working directly with him for the next few days? Sometimes he forgot the impact that meeting a celebrity had on ordinary people. Absurd, really-he was quite the same as anyone else-but there it was, and he supposed it was up to him to do something about it. The better their initial relations, the better things would go later.

He pushed the remains of his buttered English muffin away, signaled for another cup of coffee, and got out his box of Dunhills. He lit up, sucked in a deep lungful of smoke, tucked a loose end of his paisley ascot into his shirt collar, and cleared his throat. “We have twenty minutes before we leave for Tirku Glacier,” he said, “and it occurs to me that there may still be some unanswered questions about just why we are here. If so, please feel free to ask them."

He peered at them with warm sincerity and lifted his eyebrows to indicate that such questions were welcome. More than welcome.

Gerald Pratt's lean, weathered hand went slowly up. Everything Gerald Pratt did went slowly. In that way he reminded Tremaine of Pratt's brother James, killed in the avalanche in 1960. Physically, too, the resemblance was there if you looked for it: the bony nose-broken and poorly mended in Gerald's case-the long face, the lantern jaw. Was this what James would have come to if he'd lived? James, too, had sometimes been maddeningly measured in speech and manner, but there had been a spark, an intensity, flickering beneath that quiet surface. This the dark, gaunt, torpid Gerald lacked utterly. But Gerald was in his fifties, of course. James, his younger brother by a year or two, had never reached thirty. Ah, well, Tremaine thought with the tinge of melancholy that often came with his first cigarette of the day, there was something to be said for dying young.

He smiled tolerantly. “There's no need to raise our hands here, Mr. Pratt."

Pratt lowered his hand. “I'm no scientist,” he said in the laconic, deliberate way that had already begun to grate on Tremaine's nerves. “Comes to that, I'm not much of a reader either. So…” His cheeks hollowed as he drew on his pipe. “So…” One cloud, two clouds, three clouds of nauseous, yellowish-brown smoke emerged in slow procession.

Tremaine made a conscious effort to keep from tapping his foot with impatience. The tolerant smile began to congeal. “Yes…?"

"So I'd appreciate it,” Pratt finally droned, “if you'd tell us just why we're here and what's expected of us. Sort of in a nutshell."

"You didn't get a letter from Javelin Press?"

"I saw it,” Pratt said. “Didn't make a whole lot of sense.” He ran a hand through lank, black, thinning hair.

"Well, then, let me see if I can make it clearer.” In Pratt's case, Tremaine suspected, the problem was not awe, or touchiness either. The man was permanently out to lunch, that was all. “As you know, I am nearing the completion of a book on the Tirku botanical survey party of 1960. Until now I have never discussed those last fateful hours on the ice with complete candor. Now I think it's time to tell the story, the full human story, which no living person but myself knows. It is scheduled for publication in May of next year-1990 being the thirtieth anniversary of the expedition."

He lifted his coffee and sipped. “The idea came to me that before I prepared my final draft it would be a good idea to review the material with people who might have some unique personal or scientific insights into it. Thus, some weeks ago, I asked my publisher about the possibility of gathering a small group together for that purpose. Javelin Press readily agreed, and here we are. As I mentioned last night, I will be reading the manuscript aloud over the next several days, and all of you will be free to make whatever comments or suggestions you care to, as I go along."

"Mm,” Pratt said, sucking at his pipe and looking no less thoughtfully obtuse than he had before. He was wearing oil-stained orange coveralls. Yesterday, it had been oil-stained brown coveralls.

"I have great confidence in the value of the contributions to come,” Professor Tremaine said. “Dr. Henckel here was the assistant director of the project, of course, and I'm sure she will have much to offer. The same applies to Dr. Judd, here on my right, who is the only other surviving member. You, Mr. Pratt, and Ms. Yount next to you, and Dr. Fisk there, as close relatives of the three young people who lost their lives, are in a position to provide many insights into their personalities and characters, of which I could hardly be aware."

He paused for a beat, as they liked to say in television. “I need hardly add that all of your contributions will be gratefully acknowledged in the book."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Anna Henckel stiffen at that. He was right, then. Still nursing that ancient and absurd grudge, was she? Well, he'd forgotten it long ago. Not that her savagely vindictive letters to the Journal of Systematic Botany wouldn't rankle even now, if he let them. And what about that virulent and unjustified attack on him at the 1969 American Society of Plant Taxonomists congress in Phoenix? If anyone had the right to a grudge, he did. Fortunately, that wasn't the kind of person he was. As far as he was concerned, bygones were bygones. Water under the bridge.

He smiled again at Pratt. “Does that clarify things, Mr. Pratt?"