Douglas Preston: The Ice Limit

"Old ex-partner."

Lloyd sighed. "You're right. I know all about you and Masangkay. It wasn't entirely your fault, losing the Tornarssuk rock like that. If anyone's to blame, it's the bureaucrats at the New York Museum of Natural History."

"Why don't you give up? I'm not interested."

"Let me tell you about the compensation. As a signing bonus, I'll pay off the quarter million you owe, get the creditors off your back. If the project is successful, you'll get another quarter million. If it isn't, you'll have to settle for being debt free. Either way, you can continue at my museum as director of the Planetary Sciences Department if you wish. I'll build you a state-of-the-art laboratory. You'll have a secretary, lab assistants, a six-figure salary — the works."

McFarlane began to laugh again. "Beautiful. So how long is this project?"

"Six months. On the outside."

McFarlane stopped laughing. "Half a million for six months' work?"

" If we're successful."

"What's the catch?"

"No catch."

"Why me?"

"You knew Masangkay: his quirks, his work patterns, his thoughts. There's a big mystery lingering over what he was doing, and you're the man who can solve it. And besides, you're one of the top meteorite hunters in the world. You've got an intuitive sense about them. People say you can smell them."

"I'm not the only one out there." The praise irritated McFarlane: it smacked of manipulation.

In response, Lloyd extended one hand, the knuckle of the ring finger raised. There was a wink of precious metal as he turned it in McFarlane's direction.

"Sorry," McFarlane answered. "I only kiss the ring of the pope."

Lloyd chuckled. "Look at the stone," he said.

Peering more closely, McFarlane saw that the ring on Lloyd's finger consisted of a milky gemstone, deep violet, in a heavy platinum setting. He recognized it immediately. "Nice stone. But you could have bought it from me wholesale."

"No doubt. After all, you and Masangkay are the ones that got the Atacama tektites out of Chile."

"Right. And I'm still a wanted man in those parts as a result."

"We will offer you suitable protections."

"So it's Chile, huh? Well, I know what the insides of their jails look like. Sorry."

Lloyd didn't respond immediately. Picking up a stick, he banked the scattered embers, then tossed the stick onto them. The fire crackled up, beating back the darkness. On anybody else, the Tilley hat would look a little silly; somehow, Lloyd managed to pull it off. "If you knew what we were planning, Dr. McFarlane, you'd do it for free. I'm offering you the scientific prize of the century."

McFarlane chuckled, shaking his head. "I'm done with science ," he said. "I've had enough dusty labs and museum bureaucracies to last me a lifetime."

Lloyd sighed and stood up. "Well, it looks like I've wasted my time. I guess we'll have to go with our number two choice."

McFarlane paused. "And who would that be?"

"Hugo Breitling would love to be in on this."

"Breitling? He couldn't find a meteorite if it hit him in the ass."

"He found the Thule meteorite," Lloyd replied, slapping the dust from his pants. He gave McFarlane a sidelong glance. "Which is bigger than anything you've found."

"But that's all he found. And that was sheer luck."

"Fact is, I'm going to need luck for this project." Lloyd screwed the top back on the thermos and tossed it into the dust at McFarlane's feet. "Here, have yourself a party. I've got to get going."

He began striding toward the helicopter. As McFarlane watched, the engine revved and the heavy rotors picked up speed, beating the air, sending skeins of dust swirling erratically across the ground. It suddenly occurred to him that, if the chopper left, he might never learn how Masangkay died, or what he had been doing. Despite himself, he was intrigued. McFarlane looked around quickly: at the metal detectors, dented and scattered; at the bleak little camp; at the landscape beyond, parched and unpromising.

At the helicopter's hatch, Lloyd paused.

"Make it an even million!" called McFarlane to the man's broad back.

Carefully, so as not to upset the hat, Lloyd ducked his head and began stepping into the chopper.

"Seven fifty, then!"

There was another pause. And then Palmer Lloyd slowly turned, his face breaking into a broad smile.

The Hudson River Valley,

June 3, 10:45 A.M.

PALMER LLOYD loved many rare and valuable things, but one of the things he loved most was Thomas Cole's painting Sunny Morning on the Hudson River. As a scholarship student in Boston, he had often gone to the Museum of Fine Arts, walking through the galleries with his eyes downcast so as not to sully his vision before he could stand before that glorious painting.

Lloyd preferred to own the things he loved, but the Thomas Cole painting was not to be had at any price. Instead, he had purchased the next best thing. On this sunny morning he sat in his upper Hudson Valley office, gazing out a window that framed precisely the view in Cole's painting. There was a very beautiful line of light penciling the extreme horizon; the fields, seen through the breaking mists, were exquisitely fresh and green. The mountainside in the foreground, limned by the rising sun, sparkled. Not much had changed in the Clove Valley since Cole had painted this scene in 1827, and Lloyd had made sure, with vast land purchases along his line of sight, that nothing would.

He swiveled in his chair, gazing across a desk of spaulded maple into a window that looked in the opposite direction. From here, the hillside fell away beneath him, a brilliant mosaic of glass and steel. Hands behind his head, Lloyd surveyed the scene of frantic activity with satisfaction. Work crews swarmed over the landscape, fulfilling a vision — his vision — unparalleled in the world. "A miracle of rare device," he murmured beneath his breath.

At the center of the activity, green in the Catskill morning light, was a massive dome: an oversize replica of London's Crystal Palace, which had been the first structure made entirely of glass. Upon its completion in 1851 it was considered one of the most beautiful buildings ever constructed, but it had been gutted by fire in 1936, and its remains demolished in 1942 for fear it would provide a convenient landmark for Nazi bombers.

Beyond the overarching dome, Lloyd could see the first blocks being laid of the pyramid of Khefret II, a small Old Kingdom pyramid. He smiled a little ruefully at the memory of his trip to Egypt: his byzantine dealings with government officials, the Keystone Kops uproar about the suitcase full of gold that no one could lift, all the other tedious melodrama. That pyramid had cost him more than he liked, and it wasn't exactly Cheops, but it was impressive nonetheless.

Thinking of the pyramid reminded him of the outrage its purchase had caused in the archaeological world, and he glanced up at the newspaper articles and magazine covers framed on a nearby wall. "Where Have All the Artifacts Gone?" read one, accompanied by a grotesque caricature of Lloyd, complete with shifty eyes and slouch hat, slipping a miniature pyramid under his dark cloak. He scanned the other framed headlines. "The Hitler of Collectors?" read one; and then there were all the ones decrying his recent purchase: "Bones of Contention: Paleontologists Outraged by Sale." And a Newsweek cover: "What Do You Do with Thirty Billion? Answer: Buy the Earth." The wall was covered with them, the shrill utterances of the naysayers, the self-appointed guardians of cultural morality. Lloyd found it all an endless source of amusement.

A small chime rang on a flat panel laid into his desk, and the voice of his secretary fluted: "There's a Mr. Glinn to see you, sir."