Frozen Solid: A Novel Read online

  The two men lifted him out as easily as they had put him in. He extended his legs, tested them, his ex-runner’s knees aching. “What are we doing?”

  “You are not a young man any longer. We cannot have you suffer a heart attack or some such thing before we deliver you.” The two men exchanged glances, smiled.

  “We walk a little.”

  Deliver me? “I feel perfectly well.”

  They scooped him along again, one on either side, to the chain-link fence. The ground was littered with trash, bottles, blowing paper. He could see that someone had cut a gash in the fence and peeled back the two sides. Nothing but darkness beyond. Like the mouth of a cave. Or hell.

  The man who spoke reached toward his holster, and Gerrin could not stop himself from making a sound, half whimper and half groan. From his pocket, the man withdrew a slim metal case, rectangular and shining. He opened it, offered an unfiltered cigarette to his partner, and took one himself. The other man lit both, and they stood there smoking with great relish.

  “Do I n-n-ot get one, too?” Gerrin asked. He was losing control of his mouth.

  “You don’t smoke.”

  “A last cigarette. I should get a last cigarette. It’s how they do it.” Babbling, he disgusted himself, but he could not stop the words.

  The two laughed and shook their heads. When they were finished smoking, they flicked the butts away. The companion urinated with gusto. They put Gerrin back into the trunk.

  They traveled for what he estimated to be about an hour. Then he felt several stops and starts, heard snatches of conversation that he could not understand. Lifted from the trunk, he stamped his feet to restore circulation, stretched his hands and shoulders.

  When he opened his eyes, having finished his stretch, the two men and the driver were gone. Standing before him was a huge man with short, straw-colored hair, his cheeks rough with stubble, a red-checked shemagh wrapped around his neck. He wore dusty jeans, a khaki shirt, and a monstrous automatic pistol in a shoulder holster. Gerrin recognized him. The giant who had come with Barnard.

  Behind the man stood two others dressed similarly. They had holstered pistols and carried assault rifles, neither M-16s nor AK-47s but a kind he had never seen. It would have been impossible to take the men for anything but Americans. Tall, thick with muscle, well-fed, and, most of all, the gun-muzzle eyes.

  “Dr. Gerrin,” the big man said, and Gerrin shuddered. You hoped to hear a voice like that only once. He had the eyes of a natural predator—one who would know very well how prey went to ground, and where.

  “Why do you not just kill me here and save us all the t-t-trouble?” Gerrin’s fear was talking again, words just bubbling out. It wanted to know what would happen to him, and he could not make it stop.

  “What?”

  “Just do it. Get it over with. Those others were supposed to, but they lost their nerve. So go ahead.”

  “That’s not how we operate,” the other man said, and he glanced over his shoulder. Gerrin noticed for the first time a hangar with an odd black helicopter crouching inside.

  “What will you do with me, then?”

  “The right thing.”

  72

  HALLIE WALKED OUT OF THE JET BRIDGE AT DULLES AND ALMOST ran straight into Bowman. She no longer asked about things like how he could be in a secure area without a ticket. She dropped her carry-on and hugged him long and hard while the crowd flowed around them.

  “Let’s go someplace.” He carried her bag and most of her—exhausted after four days and nights of traveling, again, on top of the Pole time—away from the busy gate area. In a deserted one nearby, they stood facing each other.

  “Did you get my email?” she asked.

  “No,” he said, and she looked surprised.

  “Did you get mine?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, and he looked just as surprised. “I thought you were mad, Wil.”

  “I wasn’t. I thought you were,” he said.

  “I wasn’t either,” she said.

  It took a moment for their brains to sort everything out.

  “As you were leaving, you told me there was something else,” she said.

  “So did you,” he said.

  “What did you mean?” she asked.

  He told her what he had written in his email.

  Once over her amazement at such a misapprehension, she told him what she had written in hers.

  A small boy tugged on his mother’s hand. He was bouncing along the Dulles concourse in the kind of sneakers whose heels blinked with colored lights at every step. They were passing a gate area that was empty save for a tall blond woman and a giant of a man. The two were holding on to each other as if afraid of being pulled apart by something. Like a big storm, the boy thought. Giant wind. Shaped like a funnel. He could see it, but he couldn’t remember the name.

  “Mama, what’s the thing called that picked Dorothy and her house up?”

  “A tornado,” she said. “Why?”

  “Those people,” he said. “What’s wrong with them?”

  She glanced quickly. “Don’t point. Nothing’s wrong. They’re just so happy to see each other.”

  “Why is she crying if they’re so happy?”

  “Sometimes happiness hurts,” his mother said, which he thought was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. Still, he found it hard to stop watching them. They were—what was the right word?—different.

  Just then the blond woman happened to look straight at the boy. The man followed her eyes. Caught by both, he froze.

  “I told you not to stare.” His mother frowned and squeezed his hand.

  The woman held his gaze. Then she looked at the man and pointed at the twinkling sneakers and they both smiled. She waved to the boy. He waved back. Then she and the man hugged some more.

  “See? She’s not mad,” he informed his mother, who dropped his hand and told him to keep up.

  Tornado. A storm that tore. Ripped things apart. Plucked up houses and barns and cows. And people. But looking back at them one last time, he thought that even a tornado might not tear apart those two.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The construction of this novel’s dark atmosphere required certain modifications to real life at Pole. Food, amenities, and Polies themselves all suffered somewhat in the translation. Let me acknowledge at the outset that those who toil at the bottom of the world are for the most part competent, companionable, and sane.

  That said, it is a hellish environment that can exact extreme tolls from both body and mind. Murders and mayhem are not common, but neither have they been absent. One source of inspiration for this novel was the mysterious 2000 death of scientist Dr. Rodney Marks. For reasons unclear, to this day U.S. agencies have stonewalled New Zealand police attempts to investigate. NZP senior sergeant Grant Wormald said several years ago, “I am not entirely satisfied that all relevant information and reports have been disclosed to the New Zealand police or the coroner.” In January 2007, a document pried loose with the Freedom of Information Act stated that “diplomatic heat was brought to bear on the NZ inquiry.” The case remains open to this day, with an interesting coda for those inclined to conspiracy theories: one of the few Polies in a position to know what really happened disappeared, also mysteriously, at night from a ship in polar waters not long after Marks died.

  There is no disputing the fact that the South Pole station is awash in good liquor (and, according to more than a few, other mood enhancers) that fuel Thing Nights and more. One Polie noted, “There is an unbelievable amount of alcohol down here. Pallets of booze were flown in.” And while all is usually calm on the southern front, things do happen. In 2008, two intoxicated Polies brawled over a woman. One suffered a broken jaw and both were summarily flown out—sans jobs. It’s safe to say that lesser disputes which don’t break bones (and get people fired on the spot) are more common and less publicized.

  And while some of this novel’s elements required poetic license—in rea
lity, cellphones cannot be used at Pole—the novel’s central theme, overpopulation, required none. Though a solution to the crisis would ameliorate the planet’s biggest threats—climate change, global warming, environmental degradation, water shortages, famines—overpopulation goes largely unaddressed in the public square. Because population control involves white-hot issues like contraception, abortion, and sterilization—voluntary or otherwise—it has become virtually a taboo topic for politicians, scientists, and major media. For those who wish to know more, one rational take on the topic is 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, by Dr. Jorgen Randers, a professor at the BI Norwegian Business School.

  Frozen Solid is, of course, a work of fiction, but the science is very much grounded in reality. It examines what would happen if highly capable vigilante scientists decided to solve overpopulation on their own, with means available today. Though it hasn’t happened, a pathogen (meaning a conjoined bacterium and virus) like Triage is certainly possible. Hallie Leland cites one example of research in this area and it is very real, conducted by Dr. Vincent Fischetti and Dr. Raymond Schuch at Rockefeller University. They confirmed that the survival of the deadly anthrax bacterium, Bacillus anthracis, “is directed and shaped by the DNA of bacteria-infecting viruses.” The bacterium provides a home for the virus, which in turn prolongs anthrax’s life and directs its actions—classic symbiosis. Would it be impossible for scientists to reverse-engineer that kind of relationship, for good or evil? To me, the answer seems obvious. In fact, though my research didn’t uncover an extant microbial “depopulator,” I would not be a bit surprised if one were flourishing in government or private-sector labs—maybe in both.

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO

  T. ALAN BROUGHTON,

  WHO SHOWED ME THE WAY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My literary agent, Ethan Ellenberg, saw promise in the concept that became Frozen Solid and provided reassurance during the inevitable dark times when my own faith was weakening.

  I am more grateful than I can say for the support and belief in my work from Ballantine Bantam Dell’s publisher, Libby McGuire, associate publisher Kim Hovey, and editor in chief Jennifer Hershey.

  Mark Tavani, my editor at Ballantine, again and again went far beyond the call of duty to help me shape this novel. I said it in my other novel’s Acknowledgments and I will say it here: Mark puts the lie to the oft-heard criticism that editors today don’t edit. He sure as hell does, and brilliantly.

  Special words of thanks to senior publicist Cindy Murray and assistant director of marketing Quinne Rogers. Steve Messina, an indefatigable production editor, shepherded the book during its long journey from thought to print. Finally, it’s true that the devil is in the details, and I’m grateful to Ratna Kamath for managing those demons so effectively.

  As always, my wife, Liz, was my first reader and critiquer. Through more “story meetings” than I can count, she was more helpful than I can say. Other readers and critiquers included Walllis Wheeler, Tasha Wallis, Damon Tabor, and Jack Tabor.

  BY JAMES M.TABOR

  FICTION

  Frozen Solid

  The Deep Zone

  NONFICTION

  Forever on the Mountain

  Blind Descent

  About the Author

  JAMES M. TABOR is the bestselling author of The Deep Zone, Blind Descent, and Forever on the Mountain and a winner of the O. Henry Award for short fiction. A former Washington, D.C., police officer and a lifelong adventure enthusiast, Tabor has written for Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Outside magazine, where he was a contributing editor. He wrote and hosted the PBS series The Great Outdoors and was co-creator and executive producer of the History Channel’s Journey to the Center of the World. He lives in Vermont, where he is at work on his next novel.

  www.JamesMTabor.com