Robert Masello - Blood and Ice

It was only when the ship grew closer, and the anchor chains were loosed, that Sinclair noticed something else, something bobbing about in the waters of the bay. At first he took it for some form of aquatic life-were there seals here? or dolphins? — until one of the shapes, sinking and rising like a buoy, was drawn toward the bow of the Henry Wilson. As he watched, it slowly made its way along the length of the ship, caught in the swirls and eddies, bumping against the wooden hull, then spinning away. And he saw suddenly that it was the head and shoulders of a soldier in his sodden red tunic. The lifeless head lolled from one shoulder to the other, the cheeks were hollow, the glassy eyes stared. And then it was gone, past the stern, moving out to sea.

But there were many others, bobbing about like hideous red apples in a barrel.

A sailor standing at the rail next to Sinclair crossed himself. “It's the cholera,” he muttered. “They're too dangerous to bury, or burn.”

Sinclair turned to Hatch, whose teeth were firmly clenched on his pipe.

“But… this?” Sinclair asked.

Hatch took the pipe from his lips. “They're weighted down before they're thrown overboard,” Hatch said, “and they're meant to sink. But sometimes the weights aren't enough.”

“And they do swell up,” said the sailor in a sober voice. “That's when they come back, some of ‘em, for a last look about.”

Sinclair looked out over the busy harbor, where ships and transports were being unloaded and troops ferried to shore in white rowboats, where flags rippled in the ocean breeze and bayonets glistened in the bright sunlight… and then down again at the terrible flotsam rising and falling on the whitecapped waves.

“What's the name of this place?” he said, sure he would never forget it, and the sailor chuckled mirthlessly.

Touching a finger to his brow before turning away, the man said, “It's called Calamita Bay.”

December 11, 1 p.m.

Betty Snodgrass and Tina Gustafson were sometimes thought to be sisters. Both were “big-boned gals,” as they often joked with each other, with blond hair and wide-open faces. They'd met at the University of Idaho's renowned Glaciological and Arctic Sciences Institute, and that was probably the first place, though certainly not the last, where they'd been dubbed the ice queens. Glaciology was generally considered the toughest, most rigorous, most hard-core specialty in all the earth sciences, and that was undoubtedly what had interested them both in pursuing it. They wanted nothing wimpy, or soft, or feminine; they wanted something that required sheer physical stamina and guts. If you wanted to be a glaciologist, you weren't going to be spending much time on the beaches of Cozumel.

And they'd gotten what they wished for.

At Point Adelie, they lived a spartan life in the great outdoors, drilling core samples, storing them in their underground deep freeze-kept at a steady 20 degrees below zero-or, if they needed the compressed ice to relax a bit, in the core bin, before analyzing the samples for isotopes and gases that would indicate changes in the earth's atmosphere over time. And along the way, they'd become expert ice carvers-the best, they liked to think, in the business. Betty sometimes kidded Tina that if things didn't work out in glaciology they could always make a living doing ice sculptures for weddings and bar mitzvahs.

With Michael's find they had their work cut out for them. The massive ice block chopped out of the underwater glacier stood upright, midway between the stack of cylindrical ice cores ranged on the rack and the wooden crate, marked PLASMA, that housed Ollie, the baby skua. To provide a windbreak, there was a sheet metal fence, about six feet high, all around the pen. But that was it- no roof, no floor, just the gray sky above and the frozen tundra below.

From force of habit, Betty and Tina had put on bright white “clean suits” over their cold-weather gear-ice cores were notoriously easy to contaminate-although they didn't have such fears about the specimen before them. That ice had already been compromised in a hundred different ways, from the saws that had cut it out of the iceberg to the dive hut where it had been hauled up out of the depths. And anyway, if you were looking to date it, you were going to get much better evidence from the body inside; even now, with several inches of ice still needing to be cut away from the front, Betty could see the vague shape and style of the clothing the woman wore-and it reminded her of various Masterpiece Theater series she used to watch as a girl. She thought she could even detect the dull glow of an ivory brooch on the woman's breast.

She tried not to look into her eyes as she worked the hand drill, the saw, and the pick. It was too unnerving.

Tina was working on the back of the block, using the same tools, and as usual, they were talking about something else entirely-the recent changes in the NFL-when Tina stopped and said, “They were right.”

“About what?” Betty shaved another slice of ice away.

“There is a second person in the ice. I can see him now.” Betty came around back, and she could see him, too. His head was pressed against the back of the woman's, and the same iron chain was wrapped around his neck; he had a pale moustache, and appeared to be wearing a uniform of some kind. Betty and Tina looked at each other, and Betty said, “Maybe we should stop.”

“Why?”

“This might be bigger than we can handle, down here. It might be the kind of thing that ought to be sent up to, say, the NSF labs in D.C. Or even back to the U. of Idaho.”

“What-and miss our chance to make history?”

Michael, laden down with gear-cameras, a tripod, a couple of lights-didn't have a hand free to bang on the sheet-metal panel that served as a gate to the core bin, so he had to simply kick it with his foot. He'd heard Betty and Tina talking behind it-one of them had just said something about history-and when Betty pulled it back, he said, “Sorry I didn't call ahead.”

“That's okay. We love company.”

“Living company,” Tina added, portentously.

But Michael was so intent on his first task that he failed to pick up the hint. Instead, he laid a few things on the ground, then immediately went to the crate in the corner of the pen. He got down on his knees and looked inside-Ollie was so used to him by then that he actually got to his feet and waddled forward. Michael removed the strips of bacon he had just taken from the commons and held one out. Ollie cocked his fluffy gray head-he was looking more like a gull every day-studied it for a moment, then took a quick peck.

“Whoa, you almost got my finger there.” Michael placed the other strips at the edge of the box, then stood up. But when he saw the apprehensive looks on Betty and Tina's faces, he stopped and said, “Don't look so worried-skuas can eat anything.”

Betty said, “It's not that.”

And then he followed Tina's gaze, toward the block of ice. “Holy smokes,” he said, stepping closer. “I was right.”

The man was still buried in the ice-if she was Sleeping Beauty, then had this been her true Prince Charming? — and Michael had the immediate impression that the man had been a soldier; there was a hint of gold braid around the chest area.

And he also experienced the oddest feeling-a sense of comfort, that she had not been alone all this time.

“Don't make another cut,” he said. “I need to make a photo record of this stage in the process.”

He quickly assembled some lights and mounted them around the block. It was a bitterly cold and gray day and the lights suddenly turned the ice into a glittering beacon.

“Betty and I were just talking,” Tina ventured, “and we were thinking that something as extraordinary as this maybe ought to be kept intact.”