Duncan Kyle - Whiteout!

I hesitated, knocked, and went in on the word 'Come'.

Then I waited for the blast. Barney sat behind his desk, smiling benignly. I looked at him warily; the last days had accustomed me to his psychological tricks. He looked up at me and said, 'Ah, the Englishman, ain't that right ?'

'Morning, sir,' I said neutrally.

He snapped his fingers. 'Something I wanted to say to you.'

'Oh.' I watched his face, waiting for the swift change of expression, the sudden rasp of anger.

'Yeah.' There was a pause. He reached for a ballpoint pen on his desk and looked at it. 'Kind of a neat piece of design, you agree?'

'The pen?' I said. I could feel myself being drawn into some kind of trap. Any second now, the world would fall on me.

'Sure,' Smales said. 'Real functional.' After a second, he added: 'Pretty colour, too.'

'Very.'

'Yeah.' He blinked.

I said, 'You sent for me.'

'That I did.' He held up the pen. 'I like things functional, things that do the job. Like your machine.'

He was talking, I realized with relief, about the TK4. Metamorphosis into salesman. 'Fine machine,' I said quickly. 'And she can do a lot more than that. I'm looking forward to demonstrating - '

He nodded. 'Functional,' he said. He was still holding the pen, looking at it, not at me. I wondered suddenly if he were drunk, then rejected the idea. The pattern of his words, the genial lassitude, were reminiscent of mild drunkenness, but the words themselves were spoken with clarity; there wasn't even the suspicion of a slur.

He said, 'It's my duty to tell you a thing like that. I'll also tell you - ' he paused again and it was a long pause - 'that I don't want air-cushion vehicles up here.'

I felt my scalp click back. I knew perfectly well that Barney Smales didn't approve of the hovercraft as Arctic transport; I knew also that he was the last man to say so before the trials had taken place. There was something wrong here and I'd better disengage myself before it became worse. I said, 'Well, thanks for telling me,' keeping my tone carefully cheerful, turning for the door. He didn't stop me. 'You ought to be told,' he said, as the door opened and closed behind me. I found myself looking into Master Sergeant Allen's eyes. He said, 'Okay, Mr Bowes ?'

I hesitated. Allen looked calm, competent . . , was there an enquiring look somewhere behind the formality? I said, 'I'm not sure.'

He regarded me steadily. 'Not sure?'

I thought about it, and Allen sat there, still and intelligent, watching me think. If I said anything, however mild, however delicate the hint, the meaning would be the same; I'd be saying, 'Your boss is going weird.'

The phrases ran through my mind: 'a little strange this morning; did you notice anything? He must be tired.' All meaning the same, and if spoken by this possibly paranoid stranger who'd been seeing spooks ever since he arrived, further proof of a perhaps dangerous instability. I searched for some lame phrase. Finally, I said, 'I wouldn't want to job!'

Unhelpfully, Allen said, 'Why's that, sir?'

'Not at a time like this. The strain . ..' Strain! The word hadslid out. Your boss is going weird. Allen lit a cigarette. He said slowly, 'The responsibility is very great.'

I thought about that. Was I reading more into all this than could possibly be there? Or was Allen coming to meet me? I looked at his face. It was calm, the dark brown skin uncreased, smooth on the planes and curves of his face. Allen was the senior non-commissioned officer, very senior, high-quality, but.., but non-commissioned. Experienced, though, and knowing the rule-book backwards. I realized suddenly that it was possible this conversation was even more difficult for him than for me. He was outranked by a lot of men at Camp Hundred and all of them would react with hostility at the merest suggestion . . . No, there had to be another approach, an oblique one. And it was up to me, the civilian, to make it. But what if I were mistaken ? What if Allen weren't moving to meet me, and all these supposed undertones were part of my paranoid imaginings ? In that case, I thought, he'd merely think I was a little nuttier than he'd thought in the first place.

But how to start? The atmosphere in the little office felt electric, but perhaps only I felt it. Allen still looked totally unruffled, except that there seemed to be something in his eyes, some gleam of - of what ? I said, 'What's tonight's movie, Mr Allen?'

'No decision yet, sir.'

'What,' I asked, 'do you have in stock ?'

He looked at me for a moment, then rose and went to a filing cabinet. 'I have a list. If you've got some kind of request, I'll do what I can.'

'I'm a Bogart fancier,' I said. 'Got any Bogey pictures?'

He looked at the list. 'African Queen, Casablanca.'

'I've seen them both too many times,' I said. I hesitated, knowing the hesitation would add emphasis when I spoke, but unable for a moment to force out the words. Then I made myself say, 'There's one performance I liked best of all.'

'What was that, sir?'

'Captain Queeg,' I said. 'In The Caine Mutiny.'

Allen gave me a glance. 'Guess we don't have that picture, sir.'

'You've seen it, though?'

'No.'

I pushed on quickly. 'Oddly enough,' I said, 'it's about what we were talking about. The responsibilities of command in dangerous situations.'

Did Allen's dark face soften a little? He said, 'I didn't see the movie, sir, but I did read the novel. As I recall, it was more about the responsibilities of subordinates.'

'None of whom,' I said, 'showed up very well atthe court martial.'

'Yeah, that's right.' He was non-committal again.

Well, I thought, it was early days. Barney was benign and it was perfectly possible nothing was wrong and that he was merely playing psychological games. We'd all know soon enough if anything was seriously wrong with him. And that would be time enough. I said, 'Breakfast time,' and left. I walked out of the command trench and into Main Street on my way to the mess hall. The lighting along the huge principal trench was down, the snow walls were grey rather than white, and the few men who moved along it looked dulled and depressed. In the mess hall, too, the atmosphere was heavy and voices low. On the night of my arrival - the only night, come to think of it, when things had been fairly normal at Hundred - there had been a kind of boisterous noise, a defiant good humour. There was none of that now. I sat at a table with one of the scientific officers, a captain named Vale, to whom I'd been introduced one night in the officers' club. Like most of the other scientists at Hundred, he worked for CRREL, the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory of the United States Army Terrestrial Sciences Centre. Captain Vale was not pleased with me, he said.

'Why not?'

'You made it to Belvoir, so I hear?'

'In my little hovercraft,' I nodded.

'Wish I'd known you were going. I'd have hitched a ride out.'

'Your tour over?'

He smiled. 'No tour's ever over till you make it out. Don't worry, I'm used to it. I been stuck a few times before.'

'For long?'

'Six weeks up here, one time. But in the other place it can be longer.'

'What other place?'

'The Antarctic. I've done two tours on Deep Freeze down there. One time we were three months overdue.'

'Depressing,' I said.

'It's okay if you can work. If you can't, the Heebies get you.'

'The Heebies," I said, 'seem to be very much present.'

He glanced round the mess hall. A scattering of men were sitting over coffee or breakfast, some talking quietly, most silent. He said, 'I've known worse.'

'Here?'

'Hell, no. In huts in the Antarctic' He gave a rueful grin. 'These guys are too used to the good life. They're over-reacting.'