she could die right here where she had deplaned, with the station in plain sight. She decided that all the sages were wrong about hell. It would not be fire. It would be like this. Cold, dark, dead. She rotated 360 degrees, saw nothing but the station. In this pristine air it looked closer than a half mile, but she knew the distance from maps at McMurdo. She kicked the ice, scarred and dusted with chips like a hockey rink after a game. Her head felt light and airy; silver sparks danced in her vision. Her ears were ringing, she was nauseated and short of breath, and her heart was pounding. Altitude, Antarctic cold, exhaustion—and she had just arrived.
She had brought her own dive gear, and each duffel weighed forty pounds. At this temperature, the ice was like frozen sand. Dragging the bags was going to hurt. She had made this trip on short notice—no notice, really, for such was the life of a BARDA/CDC field investigator. But it was still bad form, she thought, letting a guest freeze to death out here.
“Let’s go, then,” she said. Inside four layers of gloves and mittens, her hands were numbing already. She managed to grab the bags’ end straps and headed for the station, hauling one with each arm. It was like trudging through deep mud—at altitude. After thirty steps she stopped, lungs heaving, muscles burning, body cursing brain for making it do this mule work. The station seemed to have receded, as if she were drifting away from it on an ice floe in black water, like Victor Frankenstein’s pathetic monster.
She looked up and saw a light detach from the distant glow and dance toward her. Several minutes later, the snowmobile slewed to an ice-spraying stop. Its operator was about the diameter of a barrel and not much taller. He was all in black, right down to his boots. She kept her headlamp trained on his chest to avoid blinding him.
“It was getting cold out here. I didn’t expect a marching band, but—”
“Honey, you ain’t seen cold.” Hoarse, but definitely not a him. Woman with an Australian accent. “Graeter said you were supposed to come tomorrow. Lucky for you, the pilot radioed about an incoming.”
“Graeter?”
“Station manager. Think you can grab maybe one bag?” Hallie heard condescension, irritation, or a combination. She dumped both duffels onto the orange cargo sled.
“So why are you here? Nobody ever comes early for winterover,” the woman said. She sounded angry, though Hallie was hard-pressed to understand why. Chronic ire of the short? But then, going from cozy station to one hundred below for some clueless stranger could do it, too. A coughing fit left the woman gasping. She straightened, breathed in gingerly.
“That sounded bad,” Hallie said. “Bronchitis?”
“Pole cold. Don’t worry, you’ll get it. So are you a winterover?”
The woman got on the snowmobile and motioned for Hallie to sit behind her. The wind had picked up. “Does it always blow like this?” Hallie asked.
“No.”
“That’s good.”
“What I meant, it’s usually stronger.”
Before she gunned the engine, the woman peered over her shoulder at Hallie. “I got it. You’re replacing that Beaker who died, right? What’s-her-name.”
“Her name was Emily Durant,” Hallie said.
2
“WELCOME TO ARSE,” THE BARREL-SHAPED WOMAN ANNOUNCED. “STANDS FOR—”
“I got it. ASRS. Amundsen-Scott Research Station.” Hallie had regained her breath. “It looks like a Motel 6 on stilts.”
They were standing beside the parked snowmo at the bottom of the yellow stairs that rose to the station’s main entrance.
“Wind blows underneath, stops snow buildup. Otherwise, five years, we’re buried. Just like Old Pole.”
“Everything happens here? Living, research, all of it?”
“Now it does. Summer people are gone. Beakers are finishing up projects. And there’s a skeleton crew of Draggers.”
“Beakers? Draggers?”
“Pole slang. Scientists are Beakers. Support workers are Draggers like me. As in ‘knuckle draggers.’ ”
Inside, they shoved Hallie’s bags against a wall, peeled off outer layers. The other woman was five inches shorter and a good bit heavier than Hallie, who stood five-ten and weighed 135. She wore her brown hair in a crew cut. Her cheeks were pitted with old acne scars, and she had a kicked dog’s wary look. She peered at Hallie, took in the short, almost white-blond hair, high cheekbones, large, turquoise-blue eyes, and whistled softly. “Gonna have your hands full with boy Polies. And some of the girls. So you know.”
“What’s your name?” Hallie asked.
“Rockie Bacon.”
“Rockie?”
“As in Rochelle. What’s yours?”
“Hallie Leland.” She was peering, nose wrinkled, down a long, dim corridor. “Clean, well-lighted place you