"You're not funny, Hayes."

"Sure I am. Ask anybody."

LaHune sat there, sighing heavily. Yes, Hayes had p.i.s.sed all over his dignity, his authority, and his self-respect. But that would come screaming to an end one way or another. LaHune wasn't used to dealing with working cla.s.s hardcases like Hayes. Guys like him b.u.t.tered their bread on the wrong side and sp.a.w.ned in a different pond. Maybe he was good at his job, but he was also smarta.s.sed, disrespectful, and insubordinate.

"I'll tell you what you are, Hayes," LaHune finally said. "You're reckless and childish and paranoid. A man like you has no business down here. You're not up to it. And when spring comes . . . and it will come and no aliens, flying saucers, or abominable snowmen will stop it . . . when it comes, I'll see to it that you never get another contract down here. And if you think I'm joking, you just f.u.c.king try me."

"Hey, hey, easy with the profanity! Remember my virgin ears, you f.u.c.king p.r.i.c.k."

"That's enough!"

Hayes pulled his feet off the desk. "No, it's not, LaHune. And it won't be until you pull your over-inflated head out of your a.s.s and start seeing things as they are. We're in trouble here and you better start accepting that. You're in charge of this installation and the lives of these people are in your hands. And until you accept that responsibility, I'll be riding you like a French wh.o.r.e. Count on it."

LaHune said nothing. "I don't what to hear about your paranoid fantasies, Hayes."

"That's all it is? Paranoia?"

"What else could it be?"

Hayes laughed thinly. "Where do they put your batteries, LaHune? I think they're running low." He sat back in his chair, totally frustrated, folding his arms over his chest. "Those G.o.dd.a.m.n mummies are making people go insane. You've got three men from the drilling tower, that Deep Drill Project, that are missing. You've got three dead men . . . what more do you need?"

"I'll need something factual, Hayes. St. Ours, Meiner, and, yes, Lind have died from cerebral hemorrhages. If you don't believe me, ask Dr. Sharkey. Dammit, man."

Hayes uttered that laugh again. "Cerebral hemorrhages? No s.h.i.t? Three of 'em in a row? I didn't know they were catchy. C'mon, LaHune, don't you think that three exploded brains pretty much tweaks the t.i.t of chance a little too hard?"

"I'm not a medico here. It's not my job to engage in forensics."

Hayes just shook his head. "All right, let me try again. Remember that day we called Nikolai Kolich over at Vostok? Sure you do. Well, old Nikolai, boy, he told us some kind of f.u.c.king yarn. You remember that derelict camp Gates and his boys found? Yeah? Well, that there was a Russian camp from the old Soviet red scare days of yore. Joint called the Vradaz Outpost. Yup. Now this part here, boyo, it's going to sound just whackier than Mother Teresa working the pole in a thong and pasties. But Kolich told us they all went mad at Vradaz. Yup. Crazier'n bugs in bat s.h.i.t. You know what drove 'em crazy? Spooks. Sure. Now I know this is all going to sound real fantastic to you, real far-out and nutty, because you've never heard of nothing like this, but I'm willing to bet you can wrap your spooky little brain right around it, you try hard enough.

"See, how it started at Vradaz was that those scientists up there, they drilled into a chasm, found some things in there. We'll call 'em mummies, okay? Well, not long after, all those commy scientists started having real weird dreams and before you could say Jesus in drag, they started hearing things. Knockings and poundings. Funny sounds. Then they started seeing apparitions, ghosts that walked through walls and the like. Well, the Soviets said that's enough of this horses.h.i.t, so they sent in a team to take care of those boys, root out the infection so to speak. So, those silly communists, they killed everyone there. Isn't that a funny story?"

LaHune was unmoved. "That's some pretty high speculation, isn't it?"

"Oh, not at all. See, the other day when Sharkey and I went with Cutchen to check his remote weather stations, we went out to Vradaz instead. Took a look around there."

LaHune just shook his head. "You are so very out of control, Hayes. That installation, abandoned or not, is property of the Russian Federation."

"No, they disowned it years back, LaHune. Some twenty-odd years back to be exact." Hayes had him and he knew it. He had LaHune hooked and he was now going to play him for all it was worth. "Okay, so we dug our way in there and, lo and behold, we found bullet holes and blood, crosses cut into the walls to keep the haunts away. Then, down below, we found a pit with bodies in there. All them scientists but the three insane ones the Ruskies took away with 'em. All those bodies, LaHune, they'd been gunned down and then burned. Yeah, you heard me right. We also found one of those alien carca.s.ses down there that had been toasted like a marshmallow at Camp c.o.c.kalotta. And Ivan did these things because he realized the very thing that you're afraid of: that those aliens are dangerous. They get in men's mind and destroy them, same way they're doing here. The Russians killed those men and burned them along with My Favorite Martian because those dead, alien minds are a contagion that spreads and devours healthy human minds just as they always have. It was quite a scene there, LaHune. There were even a few Russian soldiers in that pit and you know why? Because those alien minds got them, too."

LaHune said nothing.

There was nothing he could say.

But Hayes could see that he believed him. Completely believed him. But he wasn't really shocked or surprised by any of it and Hayes figured that was because their grand NSF administrator knew all about what happened at Vradaz.

"Now, while back, LaHune, you asked me why in the h.e.l.l I knocked in that wall on Hut Six. Well, I did it to freeze those f.u.c.king Martians back up before this entire G.o.dd.a.m.n station is destroyed. Before we all have our minds sucked out or blown up. See, I don't think those dead minds are completely unthawed yet, but when that happens . . . well, you get the picture, don't you?"

"You're completely mad, Hayes."

"Oh, but let me share one more thing with you. We gave old Nikolai a jingle at Vostok and you know what? He denies ever telling us any of that business. His puppet masters have yanked his strings and now he's dancing to their tune same way you're dancing to yours." Hayes stood up. "But that's okay, LaHune, I'm just s.h.i.t-tired of arguing with you. What happened to the Russians will happen to us. Those minds will eat us alive. But you just sit there on your shiny white a.s.s and do nothing. That's fine. Your mind already belongs to some a.s.s-f.u.c.king suits back in Washington. But as for me? I'm going to fight this tooth and nail and if you want to get in my way, I'll f.u.c.king step on you. And that, sonny, is a promise."

With that, Hayes offered him a courtly bow and left LaHune's office.

34.

The next two days pa.s.sed with a measured, languid slowness . . . drawn out, elastic, and mordantly unreal. A claustrophobic, evil shadow had fallen over the station, breeding a tension and a fear that was barely concealed like a moldering skull seen through a funeral veil. It was an almost palpable thing, a suffocating sense of malevolence and you could feel it wherever you went . . . bunching in the shadows, scratching at the frosted windows, oozing from the ice like contaminated bile. You could tell yourself it was imagination and nerves and isolation, but you never believed it, because it was everywhere, hanging over the camp in a frightful pall, patient and waiting and acutely sentient. It was behind you and to either side, giggling and chattering its teeth and reaching out for your throat with cold, white fingers. And like your soul, you could not put a finger on it, but it was there, alive and breathing and namelessly destructive. It was in your blood and bones like a disease germ and just beneath your thoughts like a dire memory. And whatever it was, it was something born to darkness like worms in a grave.

The personnel at Kharkhov did not speak of it.

Like a cl.u.s.ter of little old ladies at a church luncheon who refused to discuss disquieting things like cancer or the boy next door who came back from the war in a body bag, it was a taboo subject, one their minds burdened under, but one that never got past their lips.

Such things did not make for polite company.

They stirred up bad odors and opened dank cellars that were best left bolted and chained. So the scientists carried on with their research and experiments. The contract personnel kept things humming. People gathered in the community room for lunch and dinner and talked sports and current events and went out of their way not to look one another in the eye because it was better that way. And the subject of Gates and the ruined city, the mummies and those down in Lake Vordog, were never brought up.

A psychologist would have called it avoidance and he or she would have been right. When you did not openly discuss things, they seemed all the less real . . . even if said things did make your skin crawl. But you ingested them, tucked them away into the scarred and secret landscape of your subconscious where you ultimately knew they would boil and fester and one day fill you with a seething poison. Like being touched in a private place by a child molester, you purged it and pretended such things could not have happened.

But later? Well, yes, later it would show its teeth, but that was later.

And this is how it was at Kharkhov Station.

This was how the population kept their sanity . . . by sheer deception and willpower born of self-preservation and desperation. But it was there, of course, that gnawing and pervasive sense of violation. The feeling that maybe your mind and your thoughts were not entirely your own and maybe never had been. But such ideas were venomous and infective, so the small colony refused them and went about being industrious and ignorant even while that ancient web was spun around them thickly. What they were feeling and how they were dealing with those feelings was exactly how they were supposed to deal with them. Exactly how the architects of their minds had intended it so very long ago.

Hayes, of course, was not among them.

He freely admitted the danger to any and all who would listen. But therein lie the twist: they refused to listen. They nodded when he spoke to them, but not a word of what he said got past their ears. He had put a stop to it by bulldozing down the wall of Hut #6. If there ever was a danger - and they were not certain of this - then it was over now. Back to reality. But Hayes didn't believe them because he was feeling what they were feeling and was seeing that barely-disguised terror in their eyes.

"You see that's what kills me," he said to Sharkey on the evening of that second day while they lay in the warm darkness of her bed. "That's what really f.u.c.king tears me a new a.s.shole, Doc. These people know they're screwed, but they won't admit to it now. Not a one of them."

"It's herd instinct, Jimmy. That's all it is. They cope by losing themselves in the mundane politics of day to day living. They submerge themselves into the body of the herd and pretend that there is no tiger hiding in the shadows," Sharkey told him. "This is how they stay alive, how they stay sane. It's human nature. If something is so immense and terrible that it threatens to peel your mind bare, you exorcise it and pretend everything is hunky-dory."

"I suppose," he said.

"No, really. How do you think people survived those concentration camps? Do you think they dwelled on their imminent deaths or what that smoke coming out of the chimneys was from? The fact that they could be going to the showers next? Of course not. If they had, not a single sane mind would have come out of that horror. But a surprising amount did."

"There's a parallel there, Doc, and a good one, but I'm just too p.i.s.sed-off at them to see it. I hate complacency. I hate people sitting around and pretending the world isn't falling apart around them. That's what's wrong with us Americans as a whole . . . we've gotten too G.o.dd.a.m.n selfish and too G.o.dd.a.m.n good at putting our blinders on. Millions are being slaughtered in Rwanda? We just accidentally bombed a schoolhouse in Iraq . . . oh, that's just terrible, isn't it? Well, not my affair. Praise the Lord and pa.s.s the gravy, mom."

Sharkey said, "I never realized you were a political activist at heart."

He relaxed a bit, chuckled. "I do get on my soapbox now and again." He lit a cigarette and blew smoke into the darkness. "My old man was a dire-hard conservative republican. Anything the government told him, he believed. He thought they were incapable of lying. The sort of guy politicians thrive on. Salt of the earth, but mindless. I had a teacher in high school . . . a real 1960s radical who was big on confrontation with those in power . . . I think a lot of him rubbed off on me. Because he didn't just sit there and take it. He demanded that our government be held responsible for anything it f.u.c.ked up or lied about. I agreed then and I agree now. My old man and me had some real rows over our conflicting viewpoints. But to this day, I feel exactly the same. I do not trust people with money and power and I despise the little guy who looks the other way while these fat cats f.u.c.k up the world as they always have."

"And you're seeing a microcosm of that here, aren't you?"

"Yeah, definitely. I have to ask myself if those people deserve saving . . . are they worth it?"

"And?"

"And I'm not honestly sure. Complacency deserves what its gets."

Sharkey didn't say anything for a time.

Neither of them did.

Hayes wasn't sure what she was thinking. Maybe it was something good and maybe it was something bad. Regardless, she just didn't say. The silence between them was heavy, but not uncomfortable. It seemed perfectly fine, perfectly acceptable, and that's how Hayes knew this wasn't what you might call a winter-camp fling. It was something more. Something with weight and volume and substance and he was almost glad that things were too crazy, too spooky for him to sit and think about the absolute truth of their relationship. Because, he figured, it might just have scared the s.h.i.t out of him and sent him running into a hole like a rabbit with a hawk descending.

"Tell me something, Doc," he said, pulling off his cigarette. "Be honest here. Do you think I'm losing it? No, don't answer that too quickly. Ponder it. Do that for me. Because sometimes . . . I can't read you. You no doubt know that some of the boys around here see you as some sort of ice-princess, a freezer for a heart and ice cubes for eyes. I think it's some kind of wall you put up. A sort of protective barrier. I figure a woman like you that spends a lot of time marooned in camps full of men has to distance herself some way. So, really, I'm not judging you or insulting you in any way. But, like I say, I can't read you sometimes. I wonder if maybe you're thinking I'm a whacko or something, but are too polite to say so."

He felt her hand slide into his, felt her long fingers find his own and grip them like they never wanted to let go. But she didn't say anything. He could hear her breathing, hear the clock ticking on the shelf, the wind moaning through the compound. But nothing else.

So he said, "Sometimes I say things, I start spouting off about things, theories of mine, and you just don't say anything. And I start to wonder why not. Start to wonder if maybe this all isn't in my head and I'm having one of those . . . what do you call them?"

"Hysterical pregnancies?"

"Yeah, that's it."

"No, I don't think you're crazy. Not in the least. Sometimes I just don't say anything because I need time to think things over and other times, well, I'm just amazed by a man like you. You're so . . . intuitive, so impulsive, so instinctual. You're not like other men I've known. I think that's why even when we had no real proof about those aliens, I believed what you said. I didn't doubt any of it for a moment."

Hayes was flattered and embarra.s.sed . . . he'd never realized he was those things. But, s.h.i.t, she was right. He was a seat-of-the-pants kind of guy. Trusting his heart over his brain every time. Go figure.

"Tell me something, Jimmy," she said then. "Nothing's happened really since you plowed in that wall. n.o.body's been coming to me for sedatives, so I'm guessing our contagion of nightmares has dwindled in direct proportion to you freezing those things back up. But what about you? Have you had any dreams?"

"No. Not a one. I shut my eyes and I sleep like I'm drugged. There's nothing. I don't think I can remember having such deep sleep . . . least since I quit smoking dope."

"That's a good thing, isn't it? Not having dreams? It's a good indicator?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. My brain tells me we're in the clear, maybe. But my guts are telling me that this is the calm before the storm. Whenever I try to talk to anybody here, I don't know, I get a bad feeling from them. Something that goes beyond their avoidance of all this . . . something worse. I'm getting weird vibes from them that weren't there before, Elaine. And it makes me feel . . . kind of freaky inside."

He was having trouble putting it into words, but the feeling was always there. Like maybe the lot of them had already been a.s.similated into the communal mind of those things. That they were already lost to him. Whatever it was, it made his guts roll over, made him feel like he could vomit out his liver.

"Good. I've been feeling that way all day . . . like there's nothing behind their eyes," she admitted. "And all over camp . . . well, something's making my skin crawl and I'm not sure what it is."

Hayes stubbed out his cigarette. "I'm willing to bet we're going to find out real soon. Because this isn't over. I know it isn't over. And I'm just waiting for the ball to drop."

35.

When the ball did in fact drop the next afternoon, Hayes was lucky enough ... or unlucky enough ... to have it pretty much drop at his feet. He and Sharkey and Cutchen had decided on a plan of attack which was to do absolutely nothing. Just to go about their jobs and to not even mention what had happened before and what might be happening now.

But to keep their eyes open and their minds, too.

For Hayes, there was always work to be done. The energy supply at the Kharkhov Station was supplied by no less than five diesel generators, two wind-turbine generators, grid reactive boilers, and fuel-fired boilers. All of which were run through a central power station control system. Most days he pretty much sat at his computer in a booth at the power station and studied read-outs, crunched numbers, and made sure everything was operating at peak efficiency. But then there were the other days that demanded physical maintenance. And today was one of those.

He was glad for it.

Glad to climb into his heated coveralls and get some tools in his hands. Get dirty and sweaty and cold, anything to be doing something other than letting his imagination have full reign.

He shut the diesel generators down in sequence, changing their oil and putting in new fuel and air filters. He tested fuel injection nozzles and drained cooling systems. Inspected air cleaners and flame arrestors, checked the governors. When he had the generators back on-line, he went after the boilers. He checked fuel systems and feed pumps, he reconditioned safety valves and inspected mercury switches, recorded gas and oil pressures, checked the cams and limit controls. Then he shut down the wind turbines and made physical inspections of their alternators and regulators. He spent most of the day at it.

It was demanding, time-consuming work.

And when he was done, he was sore and aching and pleased as always after putting in a hard day's work. There was something about a day of manual labor that steadied something in the human beast. Got it on an even plane. Maybe when the muscles woke up, the intellect shut down and that always wasn't a bad thing.

Especially at the South Pole.

And especially that winter.

Finally, though, Hayes called it a day and climbed into his ECW's, which consisted of a polar fleece jacket and wool pants, wool hat and mittens, balaclava and goggles. As soon as he stepped out into the winter darkness, the winds found him. Did their d.a.m.nedest to either carry him into that black, brooding sky or knock him flat. He took hold of the guylines and never let go.

Cutchen's prediction of a Condition One storm became a reality. The wind was rumbling and howling and moaning, making the structures of Kharkhov Station shake and creak. The snow came whipping through the compound, obscuring everything, knocking visibility down to less than ten feet at times. Three-foot drifts were blown over the walkways. Snow-devils funneled along the hard-pack.

Hayes struggled along, the wind pulling at him, finely ground ice particles blasting into him. He could see the security lights outside the buildings and huts and the blizzard made them look like searchlights coming through thick fog. They glowed orange and yellow and murky, trembling on their poles.

As he followed the guylines to Targa House, he suddenly became aware that faces were pressed up against the windows. He wasn't sure at first, but the nearer he got, yeah, those were faces pressed up to the frosty windows.

Was his plight that entertaining?

The wind shifted and he heard what he first took to be the muted growl of some beast echoing across the ice-fields, then he realized it was an engine. He stopped and looked into the wind, snow spraying into his face. He could see the lights of the compound . . . the far-flung huts and even the meteorology dome . . . but nothing else. The blizzard hammered into him and nearly knocked him over like a post . . . and then it died out some, still howling and screeching, but sounding like it was old and tired now and in need of a rest.

And that's when Hayes saw those other lights, four of them in fact. Two below and two above coming out of the storm, coming down the ice-road past the meteorology dome. He was hearing the engine now, too . . . noisy, rattling diesel being down-shifted. The roar of the engine, the grinding of gears.

Jesus, it was the Spryte from Gates' camp. It had to be.

The Spryte was a small, tracked utility vehicle for ferrying men and supplies back and forth. It looked roughly like a bright red box sitting on caterpillar treads.

What in the h.e.l.l?

The storm was taking a momentary breather, but the wind was still strong, but not strong enough to stay Hayes' curiosity. They hadn't heard from Gates in days and now here came the Spryte. Hayes stepped over the guylines and walked out into the compound. The sound of that approaching engine was getting louder, the lights brighter.

People were coming out of Targa House now, wearing goggles and parkas, straining into the wind. They were carrying lanterns and flashlights. Looked like a mob of angry villagers from an old Frankenstein movie.

Rutkowski came up behind Hayes. "What the f.u.c.k's going on, Jimmy?"

"h.e.l.l if I know."

He stood there in the wind, watching the Spryte coming on. The others were circled behind him in a loose knot. It took a lot to get people out on a night like that, but something like this, well, it drew them like metal filings to a magnet.

"Sodermark tried to raise 'em on the radio, but they're not responding," Sharkey said as she joined the group out there.