The Winter Over Read online

  “God,” Cass said, sick. “Why tap me to go with you?”

  Hanratty shrugged. “We needed two vehicles and some help. You were here in the garage and seemed available. Do you have a problem with that?”

  Cass raised her hands and dropped them in exasperation. “I have a problem with the cavalier attitude. One of our own people just died . This is a big deal. She was a . . . a good person. She deserves better than to be strapped to a gurney and carted off.”

  A flicker of emotion—sympathy or impatience, it was hard to tell—passed over Hanratty’s face. “Antarctica is antithetical to life, Jennings. Every minute we’re here is stolen from the ice and sometimes the ice takes it back. Sheryl, for whatever reason, forgot that fact and paid for it. We don’t have to like it, but it’s happened before and it’ll happen again. So, in regards to my attitude, as much as I regret this . . . accident, I will not let it compromise our work here.”

  Cass was silent.

  “Look, I don’t need panic taking hold while we’re getting ready for nine months of isolation. When we know what happened, I’ll be fully transparent to the rest of the base personnel. You know Sheryl wouldn’t want us to handle it any other way.”

  The silence stretched longer, then Cass nodded once, curtly.

  Hanratty blew out a breath. “Okay, then. Taylor, let’s go see Ayres and hear what he’s figured out, if anything.” He glanced back at Cass. “Living and working down here has always had the potential to be lethal. I’m sorry Sheryl had to be the one to remind us of that.”

  The two men left through the base-side exit door, heads close together as they conferred.

  Cass stared at the sleds and the snowmobiles while the wind battered and screamed at the garage door. Idly, she picked up a wrench, then dropped it with a clatter. Tears formed at the corners of her eyes, resting there but not spilling until she leaned over a workbench, holding on to the edge for support.

  Images she’d hoped to forget splashed across her memory. Crumbling walls. Stricken faces. One long arm draped over the side of a stretcher, bouncing gently as it was pulled hand over hand out of the debris. Incomprehension growing into horror.

  It didn’t matter that this wasn’t that. Sheryl’s death summoned forth the same bottomless, sinking, sucking hole of blame and self-loathing she’d felt then; it opened up at her feet once more, tugging her downward. She rubbed her face against the rough material of her jumpsuit, trying to pull herself out of the spiral, whispering over and over again, “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “So why did he pick you to go?”

  Cass tugged the card table away from the wall so she could run the vacuum behind it, wrinkling her nose at the rising cloud of body odor and stale carpet. That question, among others, had cost her a full night’s sleep and had gnawed at her mind. But when Biddi said it with her lilting Scottish accent—normally employed to tell a dirty joke or dish out gossip about one of the other Shackleton staffers—it possessed all the drama of asking her if she’d seen the mess someone had left in the men’s room.

  “Earth to Cass,” Biddi said. “Anyone home?”

  “I don’t know.” Cass bumped her hip into the table to jog it left another half foot, then plugged in the vacuum. “He claimed I was just . . . here. Available.”

  “And?” Biddi ran a dust cloth over the tops of the bookcases, the door frame, and the pictures of past Antarctic explorers. Her arms jiggled as she wiped. She was the heaviest member of Shackleton’s winter-over staff and a source of wonder to everyone at the base, where—despite doubling caloric intake—most of the staff lost fifteen pounds over a season just trying to stay warm.

  Cass folded the chairs from around the poker table and leaned them up against the wall. “He got the call that Sheryl was missing, ran down to the VMF to grab some wheels, and found me there working on one of the snowcats. He realized a little too late that he might need help getting . . . getting the body onto a sled. I was the only one around, so there you go.”

  “I thought Mr. ‘Have You Reported Your Hours Yet?’ Taylor was with him.”

  “Later. He followed us out.”

  Cass stopped speaking as the door to the lounge opened with a loud clack . A pale man with a sandy blond mustache took a step inside. Without raising her head, she snapped the vacuum cleaner on, filling the small space with a roar like a transport jet taking off. The man made a face and retreated from the room. She waited for the door to close, counted to five, then turned the vacuum off.

  “Which one was that?” Biddi asked.

  “Schaffer. One of the beakers from the geophysics lab. Taking a last look around, probably.”

  Biddi made a rude noise. “That one. Eats like a two-year-old. He’s always spilling milk on the table after breakfast, like he can’t find his mouth yet. Bless him for shipping out with the other summer people.”

  Cass smiled, despite her anxiety. Since the very first base had been founded in Antarctica there had been friction between staffers and scientists—“beakers” to the rough-and-tumble support crew—and it would continue until the last base shut its doors. The former knew they wouldn’t be there without the scientific need in the first place, but it was aggravating to be treated like an afterthought. Conversely, the latter’s work couldn’t exist without around-the-clock support, but most scientists were oblivious to the effort that entailed, or worse, simply accepted the service of others as their due. Biddi had put more than one astrophysicist in his place when she’d been treated like the hired help.

  “I think there’s another reason he picked you,” Biddi continued.

  “Oh?”

  “We’re the low persons on the totem pole, my dear.” Biddi helped her pull a couch away from the wall. “It doesn’t matter that you have a mechanical engineering degree and keep every damnable snowmobile and -cat in the ‘vehicle maintenance facility’”—she put air quotes around the VMF’s formal name—“running. And it doesn’t matter that I’m a registered nurse and went to culinary school, we’re both—”

  “Bloody fucking janitors,” Cass finished for her. It was Biddi’s favorite phrase when she went on an anti-oppression rant. At least she wasn’t singing from Les Mis this time. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Because Hanratty thinks he can control you,” Biddi said, snapping the dust rag. “Do you think the head of the neutrino collection program is going to keep his mouth shut just because Hanratty says so?”

  “And I will?”

  “Yes. Not because of who you are, but what you are. Face it—it doesn’t matter what else we know or what else we’ve done, we really are bloody fucking janitors and not much else for the next nine months.”

  Cass stared at her. “Where is the real Biddi Newell and what have you done with her?”

  “I don’t like class distinctions any more than you do, my sweet, but the way to survive an Antarctic winter is by keeping your head down. You don’t want to stick out as a troublemaker before they’ve even shut the doors, do you?”

  Cass thought about it. She didn’t feel good about the stigma of being a staffer, but it especially stung to think that Hanratty might be banking on the double standard of some kind of class hierarchy to keep her quiet about Sheryl’s death.

  Artificial class divisions had never made sense to her. Even when there was a full crew of two hundred over the summer season from November to February, staffers were expected to wear several hats, which meant most of the crew were competent, educated, and resourceful—and no one came to Antarctica if they didn’t already have guts and drive on top of that. The breakfast cook could also be a core member of the fire response team; the carpenter might be a backup IT specialist. But over the nine months of the austral winter, when Shackleton’s crew was cut down to forty-four, each person on staff really was a walking jack-of-all-trades, capable of backstopping four or five jobs.

  Cass herself was Shackleton’s winter-ov
er mechanic, plumber, and carpenter and was expected to be able to stand in for the physical-plant engineer and run the fuel, HVAC, and waste systems without batting an eye if she had to. Biddi was on the base’s emergency medical team, lent the cooks a hand with dinners, and had recently learned enough electrical engineering to help out in the e-systems lab. With those kinds of skills, not to mention the ambition it took just to land a job in Antarctica, you’d think you’d garner some respect. But, at times, what most people recognized Biddi and Cass for was being, well, bloody fucking janitors and not much else.

  “What do you think happened to the girl, anyway?” Biddi said, switching gears. “You never said.”

  “I shouldn’t have even told you that much.”

  “Oh, look who’s caving to authority now. You’ll walk in here and announce that you just strapped the body of a friend of mine to the back of a snowmobile, but you won’t tell me what you think happened?”

  “You were not friends with Sheryl.”

  “Not in the traditional sense, no,” Biddi said. “She always was a bitch to me. I’m not so sorry to see her go, to tell the truth.”

  “Biddi!”

  She waved the dust cloth dismissively. “I’m just pulling the piss. It’s sad, no doubt about it. Even if she did tell me she found dust in her room after each time I cleaned it.”

  “She did that once.”

  “Once was enough. Anyway, what happened to her?”

  “She’d twisted her ankle. Definitely broken, not just sprained.”

  “Poor thing went hypothermic and tried crawling the whole way, did she?”

  “Well, she was heading back toward Shackleton when we found her,” Cass said, then frowned at the memory. Victims of hypothermia were almost always discovered in the fetal position, or at least that’s what all the training manuals had said. Why had they found Sheryl flat on her back?

  “A terrible way to go.” Biddi shuddered. “Was it like going to sleep, do you think?”

  “I suppose . . .” Cass’s voice trailed off, the image of Sheryl’s arms and legs rocking stiffly back and forth as she was loaded onto the sled so much like the time before. Other arms, other legs, other people.

  “Cass, hon, are you all right?” Biddi was suddenly next to her, a hand under her elbow for support. “Don’t go passing out on me.”

  “I’m fine. I’m okay.”

  “Bollocks,” she said, pushing her down onto the couch. “I’m sorry I made a joke out of the poor dear’s death. It’s the only way I know how to handle tragedy. But it’s not everyone’s approach, I know.”

  “It’s just not what I signed on for, that’s all.” Cass smoothed her hair back with both hands. “I knew that coming here could be dangerous, but for Christ’s sake, when’s the last time anyone died at the South Pole?”

  Biddi clucked sympathetically. “It’s a shock, no doubt. We’re supposed to have every technological advantage, every modern device, yet people can still freeze to death. The unfairness is enough to drive you mad. But I suppose what’s important is how we handle it, don’t you think?”

  “I guess so.” Cass pushed herself off the couch and took up her station at the vacuum. “Could we talk about something else?”

  “Of course,” Biddi said, her voice suddenly brisk. “Let’s rank, by attractiveness, the men who are staying behind for the winter.”

  “Biddi.”

  “‘The goods are odd, but the odds are good.’”

  “I’ve heard that in every oil rig and lumber camp I ever worked in.”

  “Maybe so, but the phrase was invented down here. Besides, was it ever not true?”

  “No,” Cass admitted. “But you’d have to be pretty desperate to play the odds down here.”

  “You say that now, but nine months is a long time to go without a bit of bandicooting. And that’s assuming you managed to snag yourself a piece over the summer.” Biddi looked sideways at her. “Which I don’t think you did, did you? Although, I swear, how you held them off with that red hair and those lips, I’ll never know.”

  Cass felt herself blush up to the roots. “So what if I didn’t?”

  “It’s not healthy.”

  “Says who?”

  “My grandma. In her immortal words, ‘’Tis better to get a frig than give one . . . to yourself.’”

  Their laughter was cut short when the door opened and someone poked their head into the room. Cass moved to turn the vacuum on again, but stopped when she saw it was Deb Connors, the deputy base manager. Deb scanned the room, then waved at the two of them.

  “Cass, we’ve got an early morning tour group that’s missing its early morning tour guide. You’re up.”

  Cass gestured to the vacuum cleaner. “I’m kind of busy, Deb.”

  “Vacuuming? Drop it. This is a VIP group and the last one of the season. Senator Graham Sikes with an entourage. We need him to go out with a bang before he heads home to tell America that it’s okay for TransAnt to be in charge down here.”

  “Can’t Elise do it?”

  “Elise is working comms, you know that. And most of the other guides either left for the summer or they’re just about to. You’re it.”

  “Damn it, Deb,” Cass said, her voice cracking. “I just . . . I had a rough day yesterday, you know?”

  Deb looked at her with perpetually sad eyes. “I’m sorry, Cass. We all liked Sheryl. Nobody is feeling good today, you especially, but life goes on. If I didn’t have to show them the external sites after they land then hustle back to the office and whip up some press info, I’d do the tour myself. Now that everyone’s flown the coop, you’re the only inside guide left.”

  Cass nodded wearily. “When do you need me?”

  “I’m heading out to greet them on the skiway in five.” Deb glanced at her watch. “The external show-and-tell should take about ten more, so you should still have plenty of time to meet us at Destination Alpha for a handoff if you get moving.”

  “Jesus. Why don’t you cut things close?”

  “Remember. Senator Sikes, Destination Alpha.” Deb pulled her head out of the room and the door slammed shut, then opened again. “And Cass?”

  “Yes?”

  “I know you’re not in the mood, but don’t be afraid to put on a show. Sikes is on the Senate subcommittee that handed Shackleton to TransAnt. And word is that he’s something of a letch. We could use some good press. Make sure we get it.”

  Cass flipped a middle finger in the direction of the closing door. “Good press, my ass.”

  “I believe that was her very point,” Biddi said, grunting as she shoved the couch back against the wall with a hip. “Better get going. Mind what I said. The key to surviving a winter-over is getting along.”

  “You said the key was to keep your head down. Or was it the part about getting a frig?”

  “It all amounts to the same.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Taylor stood on Shackleton’s external observation deck, watching the off-loading and on-loading of the season’s last flights. The workhorse of the continent, the Hercules LC-130, was used to fly new crew members, fuel, and supplies in from McMurdo Station, and to take old crew members, waste, and scientific data out. On the surface it wasn’t all that different from any other day of the past two weeks—summer crew had been cycling out constantly as the season had wound down.

  Officially, however, today was the final day to travel, the last chance to leave the base, and there was a frantic pace to the scene as hundreds of crew members prepared to either flee an Antarctic winter or endure one. The only group above the fray was Senator Sikes and his boys, who’d come in on their own private flight from McMurdo, an unheard-of extravagance that had pissed off more than a few old-timers. But one of Taylor’s jobs over the summer had been to remind the base’s personnel that TransAnt was running the show now. When they said jump , you said how high? and not why does the senator get his own plane?

  Halfway between the ob deck where he stood and the ski
way, a knot of fuelies hovered around one of their trucks. The vehicle was apparently on a return trip from the giant bladders that acted as temporary storage for the AN8 jet fuel until it could be siphoned into the ten-thousand-gallon tanks in the fuel arch under the station. Taylor had blanched the first time he’d heard that the entire station was powered by avgas. The source for much of it was the very planes used to bring people to Shackleton, which meant that the nearly thousand-mile flight back to McMurdo was routinely done on fumes. When he’d asked the pilots on his arrival flight about it, they’d joked that there was always enough left in the tank to walk back. Taylor hadn’t laughed.

  He stamped his feet to warm them, watching the activity below and wincing at the tang of AN8. The cold always seemed to make sharp smells sharper, and the fumes from the Hercules seemed to be riding the low temperatures straight into his skull, giving him a headache to write home about.

  The cold itself was no picnic, either, especially for a kid born and raised south of Shreveport. Only in Antarctica, he thought, would thirty degrees below zero be flirting with a record high for this time of year. And that on one of the prettiest days he’d seen yet. Yesterday’s storm had cleared out a week’s worth of scud, leaving a sunny, cornflower-blue sky straight off a postcard. Hello from the South Pole! Colder than a witch’s tit and dropping just as fast. Wish you were here.

  The beautiful day, unfortunately, barely registered; the pervasive chill and piercing headache put him in a foul mood. Easy enough to solve, of course; he could’ve just walked inside and warmed up away from the fuel dump. But it wasn’t just a migraine and the god-awful temperature driving his bad attitude.

  The business of getting Larkin’s body back to base, of recruiting Jennings to help, had been foolish. And waiting to tell the rest of the staff about Larkin and the circumstances in which they found her—that was just stupid. Maybe Hanratty had some kind of larger plan, but sitting on information that radioactive was precisely how rumors got started.