Robert Masello - Blood and Ice

A kerchiefed orderly had eventually shambled over, the stub of a cigar wedged behind one ear, but when he saw that it was Eleanor, and not just another dying soldier, who needed help, he'd picked up his pace.

Sinclair had looked stricken, and she had tried, even in her own extremis, to assure him that she would be all right. She was escorted back to the nurses’ quarters in the tower, and Moira had immediately pressed a glass of port to her lips-where she was always able to find such things remained a mystery-and put her to bed. Over the next week, Eleanor would remember little of what transpired… apart from Moira's worried face, hovering over her… and, on one unforgettable night, Sinclair's.

There was a low hissing sound from the machine that she only became aware of when she stopped talking. She had almost been unaware that she was talking.

“Why,” Michael asked again, “did you never go back to England?”

“We would not have been welcome there,” she finally said, leaning back on her hands. “Not then… not as we were. We became… what do you call them?” She was starting to feel hazy, confused; whatever substance the doctor had given her was clearly having its intended purpose. “People who have been banished from their own country?”

“Exiles?”

“Yes,” she murmured. “I believe that's the word. Exiles.”

She heard a little click, and looked down to see the red light stop flashing on Michael's hissing little box. “Ah. Your beacon has gone out.”

“We'll put it back on another time,” Michael said, gently lifting her feet off the floor and resting her legs on the bed. “Right now, I think you should just sleep for a while.”

“But I have rounds to make…” she said, even as she struggled, unsuccessfully, to keep her head from falling back onto the pillow. She felt an increasing sense of urgency. Why was she lying down when she should be visiting the wards? Why was she babbling on when soldiers were dying?

She felt the slippers being taken off her feet.

“And I am so far behind in my duties…”

Once her eyes had closed, Michael threw a blanket over her. She was fast asleep again. He put his tape recorder and notepad away, then pulled down the blackout shade and turned off the light.

Then he simply stood there, like a sentinel, watching over her in what little light still penetrated the room. He had been on vigils like this before, he reflected. The blanket barely moved as she breathed, and her head lay turned on the pillow. Where was she now? And what strange concatenation of events had led to her terrible demise? To being wrapped in a chain and consigned to the sea? That was a question he would never know how, or when, to ask. But time, he knew, was already running short; his NSF pass had less than two weeks left to run. Still, who knew what reaction she might have to reliving such a trauma? The silken strands of her hair lay across one cheek, and though he had a momentary impulse to brush them away, he knew better than to touch her. She was somewhere far away… an exile, in a place and time that no longer even existed.

December 19, 2:30 p.m.

Until he'd gotten sidetracked by that blood sample Charlotte gave him, Darryl thought, things had been going great.

He'd been hard at work on the blood and tissue samples from the Cryothenia hirschii — the discovery on which he was going to make his scientific reputation-and the preliminary results were remarkable: The blood from the fish was not only entirely hemoglobin-free, but also mysteriously low in the antifreeze glycoproteins he had been studying. In other words, this species could thrive in the frigid waters of the Antarctic Sea, but only so long as it remained extremely careful. It had even less protection against the ice than all the other species he had studied-a mere touch of actual ice could propagate across its body like lightning and flash-freeze it on the spot. Perhaps that was why he had discovered the first one-and the two others now swimming in the aquarium tank-relatively close to shore, and hovering near the warm current from one of the camp's outflow pipes. Or maybe they had just liked the shafts of sunlight, dim as they were, that had been admitted to the depths by the dive hut holes. Whatever the reason, he was grateful to have them.

He was reveling in all the new data, which made his find increasingly distinctive and newsworthy, when he remembered the favor he had promised Charlotte. He fished the sample out of the fridge and noticed then that the label had only initials on it- E.A.-and no name. He quickly ran through the beakers in his mind, but none of them had those initials. So it had to be from one of the grunts; he wasn't familiar with a few of them, and a couple just went by nicknames like Moose or T-bone. The other thing Charlotte hadn't given him was any specific instructions on what he should be testing for, and that was more than a little irritating. Didn't she know he had his own work to do?

Fortunately, the marine biology lab was provided with everything a hematologist could ask for, from state-of-the-art autocrits to a high-volume analyzer that could incorporate monoclonal assays, fluorescent staining, and advanced optical platelet readings in pretty much one fell swoop. He ran the whole battery of tests, from ala-nine aminotransferase to triglycerides and everything in between, and while he'd expected to simply shoot the results back to Charlotte, he had to stop when he read through the printouts. Nothing in them was making any sense, and in some respects he could just as well have been looking at the results from one of his marine samples. While a normal cubic millimeter of human blood contained an average of 5 million red blood cells and seven thousand white, this sample was nearly reversed. If the results were right, Charlotte's patient made his newly discovered fish look positively red-blooded and vital.

That convinced him that the results couldn't be right, or that he had somehow inadvertently mixed up the samples. Jeez, he thought, maybe you're getting the Big Eye and don't even know it. He'd have to ask Michael for a reality check. But just to see if the equipment was functioning properly, he ran a sample of his own blood, and it came back fine. (His cholesterol, he was happy to see, was even lower than usual.) With what was left of the E.A. sample, he ran the tests again

… and got back the same results as before.

If this was human blood, the toxicity levels alone should have killed the patient off in a heartbeat.

Maybe, he considered, he had to get out of the laboratory for a while and clear his head. Ever since his last visit to the dive hut- where Danzig had nearly drowned him-he'd been holed up in his room or the lab. His scalp and ears still itched from frost nip, and as a precaution he'd been taking blood thinner and a course of antibiotics. At the South Pole, inattention to the slightest thing-a blue spot on your toes, a burning sensation at the tips of your fingers- could wind up costing you a limb… or even your life. Nor had the relentlessly bad weather made outdoor activities any easier; he wondered, as he stuffed the lab printouts into the pockets of his parka, how the Point Adelie personnel who “winter-overed,” as it was called, managed to survive. Six months of foul weather was bad enough, but six months of foul weather with no sun was hardly conceivable.

Outside, the wind was so strong that he could lean completely into it and still remain upright. He put his head down and plowed slowly ahead, clinging to the guide ropes that had been strung along all the concourses between the labs and the communal modules. Off to his left, the lights were burning bright in Ackerley's botany lab. He hadn't seen Ackerley lately, it occurred to him, and he thought it might be nice to drop in and say hello. Maybe even snag a fresh strawberry or two.