Robert Masello - Blood and Ice

What, Michael wondered, could he say? That he not only knew who they were, but knew their actual names? Because they had told him?

“The girl's the one I'm particularly interested in,” Gillespie confessed. “What's she look like? Is she completely decayed, or would she be something we could feature in a full-page shot without scaring our younger readers?”

Michael was at a total loss. He didn't want to start laying down a bunch of lies, but he was definitely not about to divulge the truth. The thought of describing Eleanor to him, of pitching her, as the subject of some photo opportunity…

“I hope she's going to be well enough preserved to go on display somewhere,” Gillespie rattled on. “The NSF, I'm sure, is going to want to show her off, and I wouldn't be surprised if they set up some kind of show around her at the Smithsonian.”

Michael's heart sank even lower in his chest. He regretted the haste with which he had informed Gillespie of the find in the first place, and he wished, more than anything, that he could simply roll back time and start all over. That he could take it all back. Maybe now, it dawned on him, he could start. “You know,” he said, “it looks like I was a bit quick on the draw there.”

“Quick on the draw,” Gillespie repeated, slowly for a change. “What do you mean?”

What did he mean? He could picture the fuzz on Gillespie's head getting fuzzier by the second. “The bodies, well, they didn't turn out to be what I thought they were.”

“What the hell are you getting at? They're either bodies, or they're not. Don't do this to me, Michael. Are you saying that-”

While he talked, Michael shook the phone, and when he went back on a few seconds later, he said, “Sorry, you were breaking up. Could you repeat that last bit, Joe?”

“I was saying, is this story for real or not? Because if you were just jerking my chain, I'm not amused in the slightest.”

“I was not jerking you around,” Michael replied, holding the phone at arm's length for maximum effect. “I guess I was fooled myself. It looks like, well, it looks like maybe it wasn't an actual woman at all. Just a carved wooden figurehead.”

“A… carved… wooden… figurehead?”

“Attached to a bowsprit.” Michael was momentarily impressed at his own ingenuity. “Quite old, and very beautiful, but not a woman. Or a man, either-he just turned out to be some more wood-though nicely painted-in the ice behind her. They must have been part of some shipwreck.” He could embellish it further, but he didn't want Gillespie to get too excited about shots of the figurehead, because then he'd have to find a way to manufacture some. “I just can't tell you, Joe, how embarrassed I am.”

“Embarrassed?” Michael heard, faintly. “That's all? You're embarrassed? I was planning to make you the poster boy for Eco-Travel Magazine. I was planning to shell out real money to hire a PR firm, just to plaster your face all over the media.”

Michael knew that with every syllable he'd just uttered, his chances of making news-winning awards, getting famous, maybe even getting rich-had withered, and vanished into the thinnest of air. “But I've got some other great stuff-an abandoned whaling station, the last dogsled team in the Antarctic, a big storm rounding the Horn. Tons of material.”

“That's great, Michael, just great. We'll talk more as soon as you get back here, after the first of the year. You can show me what you've got then.”

“You bet,” Michael said, still silently assessing what he had done to his career. He had taken what could have been a career-making moment, and torched it.

“And you're feeling okay?”

“Absolutely,” Michael replied.

“And the situation with Kristin? Has that changed at all?”

He could see what was going through Gillespie's mind-he thought that Michael had begun to come a little unhinged over the lingering tragedy. And, much as he hated to exploit something like that, Michael did see an opportunity.

“Kristin passed away,” he said.

“Oh jeez. You should have said something sooner.”

“So between that, and the weird conditions down here, maybe yeah, I have been a little out of whack.” He made sure his tone implied that that was definitely the case.

“Listen, I'm really sorry about Kristin.”

“Thanks.”

“But at least her ordeal is over. And yours, too.”

“I guess.”

“Just take it easy-don't overextend yourself-and we'll talk again, maybe in a day or two.”

“Sure.”

“And Michael-in the meantime, why don't you check in with the doctor on the base? Have him make sure-”

“Her. It's a woman.”

“Okay-have her look you over. Can't hurt.”

“Will do.” Michael waved the phone in the air, then rubbed his sleeve against it to create some more static. Whatever bromides Gillespie was offering next, he didn't hear. Michael mumbled a good-bye into the receiver, hung up, then sat with his hands hanging down between his knees. He still wasn't sure, but he suspected that he'd just done the dumbest thing in his life. He'd always operated on instinct-picking which route to take up a cliff face, which fork in the rapids to run, which cave to explore-and just now he'd gone with his instincts again. And he wasn't even sure why. All he did know was that something inside him had rebelled-recoiled, even-at the thought of delivering Eleanor. To Joe Gillespie. To the world. Sure, what he'd done was a lie, but anything else would have felt like a betrayal.

Michael, he said to himself, you have well and truly fucked yourself.

He trudged alone to the commons, where he grabbed a sandwich and a couple of beers. Sam Adams Lagers, which only served to remind him of the flyers that Ackerley had written his last notes on. Uncle Barney had laid out a tray of Christmas cookies-gingerbread men decorated with pink icing-and Michael had a couple of those, too. But the Christmas spirit, which ought to have been easy to come by in a snowy landscape like the Pole, wasn't anywhere around. Yeah, they'd all sung Danzig's favorite songs at his memorial service, but he hadn't heard a lot of singing since. A kind of pall still hung over everything and everyone at the Point.

He thought about stopping off at the infirmary on the way back to his dorm, but kept on going instead; he had no heart to face Eleanor just then, much less to lie to her about Sinclair, as he had been enjoined to do. He had some serious soul-searching to do-especially since he had derailed things with Gillespie. He just needed to be alone with his thoughts.

That was getting to be a constant refrain for him.

What had started as a fleeting question, in the back of his mind, was becoming something more than that, something that his mind kept returning to. What was going to happen to Eleanor? She couldn't stay at Point Adelie forever, that was for certain. But how, and under what circumstances, could she leave? Did Murphy have some secret plan of his own? As far as Michael could see, she was going to require a friend, no matter what-someone she knew and trusted, to usher her into the modern-day world. And he also realized that, without any conscious deliberation, he had cast himself in that role.

In the communal bathroom, he took a long look at his own weary face in the mirror, and decided to shave. Why not shave before bed? At the South Pole, everything else was upside down.

But it wasn't just Eleanor-there was Sinclair to consider. The two of them would want to be together. And what role would he serve then? He'd wind up as a kind of chaperone, shepherding the two lovers back into a brave, new, and bewildering world.

His beard was so rough the razor kept snagging, and drops of blood appeared on his cheek and chin.