Robert Masello - Blood and Ice

Darryl raised his shoulders, as if to concede the point, before adding, “Not completely true. Weather permitting”-which is something that preceded virtually every statement in the Antarctic-”I'll be stepping outside tomorrow morning.”

Michael sat back on a lab stool and brushed some snow off his sleeve. “Really? Where to?”

“Davy Jones's locker,” Darryl said with a dramatic flourish.

“You're diving?”

“I assume so,” Darryl said. “I didn't see any submersibles lying around, did you?”

“In search of what?”

That was a big question, and Darryl didn't have an easy answer. It was what he had come all that way to investigate. “There are about fifteen kinds of Antarctic fish,” he said, deliberately skipping the Latinate names, “that can survive in conditions that no other species can. They can live in freezing waters, in total darkness for four months at a time. They have no scales, and they have no hemoglobin.”

“So in other words their blood is-?”

“Colorless. Exactly. And even their gills are a pale translucent white. What's more, they carry a kind of natural antifreeze, a glyco-protein, that keeps ice crystals from forming in their circulatory systems.”

“And you're going to catch some of these fish?” It was plain from his tone that Michael found everything he was hearing bizarre, to say the least.

But Darryl was fairly used to that. “Catching them isn't really very hard. When they swim, it's very slowly, and most of the time they just sit on the bottom, waiting for some hapless krill or smaller fish to wander by.”

“How would they feel about my wandering by?”

“You want to come with me?” He could see from the smile on Michael's face that he meant it. “Do you know how to dive?”

“Certified on three continents,” Michael said.

“I'll have to check with Murphy and make sure that it's okay.”

“Don't bother,” Michael said, springing off the stool. “I'll do it.” He was out the door before he'd even finished zipping up his coat, and Darryl wondered if he'd just made a smart call or an utterly insane one. Did Michael have any idea what he was getting into?

But Michael did know. Whenever a new challenge presented itself, and he felt even that slightest flicker of hesitation-sometimes confused with the instinct for self-preservation-he immediately overruled it. The adrenaline rush was what he lived for-and these days, he knew no better counteractive than that to the depression that was always, subtly, tugging at his sleeve. If he let his mind wander, it would invariably, by Byzantine routes he could never have traced, find its way back to the Cascades… and Kristin. And it was only by losing himself in some extreme challenge, or tortuously wrestling his thoughts in another direction, that he could find any real peace.

The night before, when he'd found himself descending into that bottomless pit, he'd mustered up his courage and called her younger sister's cell phone. Though he was a world away, the base had a powerful satellite hookup, courtesy of the U.S. military, and apart from brief bursts of static and a telltale delay, the connection was pretty good. Karen sounded amazed.

“So you're calling from the South Pole?” she'd said.

“Not exactly, but damn close.”

“And are you freezing to death?”

“Only when the wind blows… which is always.”

There was a silence on the line, while the words made their way to her-and they both wondered what to say next.

Michael finally broke the impasse by asking, “Where are you right now?” and Karen laughed. Damn, it was so much like Kristin's laugh.

“You won't believe this,” she said, “but I'm at the skating rink.”

Michael could instantly picture it. “Are you in the Skate and Bake?” That was the coffee shop attached to the rink.

The connection faltered, then came back as Karen was saying “… hot chocolate and a bear claw.”

He could see her in his mind's eye, in a bulky cable-knit sweater, in one of the tiny booths.

“Alone, or are you on a hot date?”

“I wish. I've brought along a book on William Rehnquist. That's my hot date.”

Michael wasn't surprised. Karen was every bit as bright and blond and pretty as her older sister, but she'd always been something of a loner. And even though plenty of guys asked her out- and she sometimes went-she never went out with anyone for very long. It was as if she put up books as a barrier to intimacy, a way of steering clear of emotional entanglements.

They talked for a bit about her classes, and whether or not she'd have time to work at the Legal Aid clinic, then she turned things back to Michael's adventures on the way to Point Adelie; he told her about the voyage on the Constellation, and getting to know Darryl Hirsch and Dr. Barnes. When he described the albatross crashing through the windscreen of the aloft con, she said, “Oh, no! That poor bird!” and Michael had to laugh, ruefully. It was just what Kristin would have said-her concern for the bird immediately superseding any worry about the people involved.

“Don't you care about what happened to me?” he said, feigning exasperation.

“Oh, yeah, that, too. Were you okay?”

“I lived, but the Ops officer got hurt, and she had to be taken back to civilization.”

“That is too bad.” There was a pause, or else it was just a transmission delay. “But I really do worry about you, Michael. Don't do anything too dangerous.”

“Never do,” he said, then regretted it instantly, because it had brought them around, at last, to the one thing they had both been avoiding… and the one occasion when he had indeed let something dangerous, and foolhardy, happen.

Karen must have felt it, too, because she said, “Not much new with Krissy I'm afraid.”

Michael had expected that.

“But my parents are very big on this new stimulation and arousal program. They bang wooden blocks together next to her ear, or shine a flashlight right into her eyes, on and off and on and off. The worst is they put a drop of Tabasco sauce on her tongue- I know for a fact that Krissy hated Tabasco-to see if it would make her swallow, or spit.”

“Did it?”

“No… and even though the doctors and nurses all encourage my folks to keep on trying, I think it's all just to give them a sense that they're doing something.”

Michael could really hear-even over the thousands of miles- all the resignation and sorrow in her voice. Karen was just not a sentimentalist, or a believer. Mr. and Mrs. Nelson were Lutheran, and went to church regularly, but their daughters had long since abandoned the faith. Kristin had defied their parents outright and made sure that every Sunday morning she was off kayaking or rock climbing somewhere, but Karen had simply let things slide, tactfully, until they stopped asking her to go and she stopped having to come up with excuses. And that same gulf was evident when it came to Kristin's predicament. Her parents, despite what all the tests might show, would keep on battering away, while Karen would look hard at the CT scans, discuss the latest findings with the doctors-frankly and plainly-and come to her own conclusions.

Michael knew what those conclusions were. And after they'd hung up, he found that he couldn't sit still-not an uncommon problem for him-or even stay indoors. He put on his heavy-weather gear, and his deep green eye goggles, and went outside, alone. The chief was strict about the buddy system-you were never to go very far unaccompanied, or without entering your itinerary on the blackboard, but Michael intended to stay close to the base… and he definitely did not want company.

A hard wind was blowing, the American flag snapping so hard it sounded like gunshots. Michael made a trip around the encampment, which was laid out in a rough square; there were the main modules-the administration and commons, the dorms and infirmary-then upslope, and lying just outside the central quad, the outlying structures. These were the labs-marine biology, glaciology geology, botany-and the equipment sheds. The base had snowmobiles, boats, graders, all-terrain vehicles called Sprytes that looked like Jeeps with tractor treads, and God knows what else, all housed in tin-roofed shacks with double doors closed by unsecured padlocks. Who was going to steal anything? Where would you go with it? In a separate shed, with a hard-packed earth floor, covered with straw, there were a dozen huskies with bushy gray fur and ice-blue eyes. Sometimes at night, their howls would mingle with the constant wind, and swirl, like the cry of forlorn spirits, around the outside of the dorms.