State Of Fear

"I know."



"They're getting blown away."



"I know." Sometimes he was such a baby. What did he expect her to do about the wind?



"What do we do?" he said.



"I don't know, Peter. I've never been lost in Antarctica before."



"Well, me neither."



They trudged onward.



"But it was your idea to come up here."



"Peter. Pull yourself together."



"Pull myself together? It's fucking freezing, Sarah. I can't feel my nose or my ears or my fingers or my toes or"



"Peter." She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. "Shut up!"



He was silent. Through slots in his facemask, he stared out at her. His eyelashes were white with ice.



"I can't feel my nose either," Sarah said. "We have to keep a grip."



She looked around, turning a full circle, trying to conceal her own growing desperation. The wind was blowing more snow now. It was becoming harder to see. The world was flatter and grayer, with almost no sense of depth. If this weather continued, they would soon not be able to see the ground well enough to avoid the crevasses.



Then they would have to stop where they were.



In the middle of nowhere.



He said, "You're beautiful when you're angry, you know that?"



"Peter, for Christ's sake."



"Well, you are."



She started walking, looking down at the ground, trying to see the tread marks. "Come on, Peter." Perhaps the tracks would return soon to the road. If they did, the road would be easier to follow in a storm. And safer for walking.



"I think I'm falling in love, Sarah."



"Peter amp;"



"I had to tell you. This may be my last chance." He started coughing again.



"Save your breath, Peter."



"Fucking freezing."



They stumbled on, no longer speaking. The wind howled. Sarah's parka was pressed flat against her body. It became harder and harder to move forward. But she pressed on. She did not know how much longer she continued in that way before she raised a hand, and stopped. Evans must not have been able to see her, because he walked into her back, grunted, and stopped.



They had to put their heads together and shout to hear each other above the wind.



"We have to stop!" she yelled.



"I know!"



And then, because she didn't know what else to do, she sat down on the ground and pulled her legs up and lowered her head to her knees, and tried not to cry. The wind grew louder and louder. Now it was shrieking. The air was thick with flying snow.



Evans sat down beside her. "We're going to fucking die," he said.



Chapter 37



SHEAR ZONE



WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6



5:02 P.M.



She started shivering, little tremulous bursts at first, and then almost continuously. She felt as if she were having a seizure. From skiing, she knew what that meant. Her core temperature had dropped dangerously, and the shivering was an automatic physiological attempt to warm her body up.



Her teeth chattered. It was hard to speak. But her mind was still working, still looking for a way out. "Isn't there a way to build a snow house?"



Evans said something. The wind whipped his words away.



"Do you know how?" she said.



He didn't answer her.



But it was too late, anyway, she thought. She was losing control of her body. She could hardly even keep her arms wrapped around her knees, the shaking was so bad.



And she was starting to feel sleepy.



She looked over at Evans. He was lying on his side on the ice.



She nudged him to get up. She kicked him. He didn't move. She wanted to yell at him but she couldn't, because her teeth were chattering so badly.



Sarah fought to retain consciousness, but the desire to sleep was becoming overpowering. She struggled to keep her eyes open and, to her astonishment, began to see swift scenes from her lifeher childhood, her mother, her kindergarten class, ballet lessons, the high school prom amp; Her whole life was passing before her. Just like the books said happened, right before you died. And when she looked up, she saw a light in the distance, just like they said happened. A light at the end of a long, dark tunnel amp; She couldn't fight it any longer. She lay down. She couldn't feel the ground anyway. She was lost in her own, private world of pain and exhaustion. And the light before her was growing brighter and brighter, and now there were two other lights, blinking yellow and green amp; Yellow and green?



She fought the sleepiness. She tried to push herself upright again, but she couldn't. Her muscles were too weak, her arms blocks of frozen ice. She couldn't move.



Yellow and green lights, growing larger. And a white light in the center. Very white, like halogen. She was starting to see details through the swirling snow. There was a silver dome, and wheels, and large glowing letters. The letters said NASA.



She coughed. The thing emerged from the snow. It was some kind of small vehicleabout three feet high, no larger than those Sunday lawn-mowers that people drove around on. It had big wheels and a flattened dome, and it was beeping as it came directly toward her.



In fact, it was going to drive right over her. She realized it without concern. She could do nothing to prevent it. She lay on the ground, dazed, indifferent. The wheels grew larger and larger. The last thing she remembered was a mechanical voice saying, "Hello. Hello. Please move out of the way. Thank you very much for your cooperation. Hello. Hello. Please move out of the way amp;"



And then nothing.



Chapter 38



WEDDELL STATION



WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6



8:22 P.M.



Darkness. Pain. Harsh voices.



Pain.



Rubbing. All over her body, arms and legs. Like fire rubbed on her body.



She groaned.



A voice spoke, rasping and distant. It sounded like "Coffee grounds."



The rubbing continued, brisk and harsh and excruciating. And a sound like sandpaperscratching, rough, terrible.



Something struck her in the face, on the mouth. She licked her lips. It was snow. Freezing snow.



"Cousins set?" a voice said.



"Nod eely."



It was a foreign language, Chinese or something. Sarah heard several voices now. She tried to open her eyes but could not. Her eyes were held shut by something heavy over her face, like a mask, or She tried to reach up, but couldn't. All her limbs were held down. And the rubbing continued, rubbing, rubbing amp; She groaned. She tried to speak.



"Thin song now whore nod?"



"Don thin song."



"Kee pub yar wok."



Pain.



They rubbed her, whoever they were, while she lay immobilized in darkness, and gradually more sensation returned to her limbs and to her face. She was not glad for it. The pain grew worse and worse. She felt as if she were burned everywhere on her body.



The voices seemed to float around her, disembodied. There were more of them now. Four, fiveshe was not sure anymore. All women, it sounded like.



And now they were doing something else, she realized. Violating her. Sticking something in her body. Dull and cold. Not painful. Cold.



The voices floated, slithered all around her. At her head, at her feet. Touching her roughly.



It was a dream. Or death. Maybe she was dead, she thought. She felt oddly detached about it. The pain made her detached. And then she heard a woman's voice in her ear, very close to her ear, and very distinct. The voice said:



"Sarah."



She moved her mouth.



"Sarah, are you awake?"



She nodded slightly.



"I am going to take the icepack off your face, all right?"



She nodded. The weight, the mask was lifted.



"Open your eyes. Slowly."



She did. She was in a dimly lit room with white walls. A monitor to one side, a tangle of green lines. It was like a hospital room. A woman looked down at her with concern. The woman wore a white nurse's uniform and a down vest. The room was cold. Sarah could see her breath.



She said, "Don't try to speak."



Sarah didn't.



"You're dehydrated. It'll be a few hours yet. We're bringing your temperature up slowly. You're very lucky, Sarah. You're not going to lose anything."



Not lose anything.



She felt alarmed. Her mouth moved. Her tongue was dry, thick feeling. A sort of hissing sound came from her throat.



"Don't speak," the woman said. "It's too soon. Is your pain bad? Yes? I'll give you something for it." She raised a syringe. "Your friend saved your life, you know. He managed to get to his feet, and open the radio-phone on the NASA robot. That's how we knew where to find you."



Her lips moved.



"He's in the next room. We think he'll be all right, too. Now just rest."



She felt something cold in her veins.



Her eyes closed.



Chapter 39



WEDDELL STATION



THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7



7:34 P.M.



The nurses left Peter Evans alone to get dressed. He put on his clothes slowly, taking stock of himself. He was all right, he decided, though his ribs hurt when he breathed. He had a big bruise on the left side of his chest, another big bruise on his thigh, and an ugly purple welt on his shoulder. A line of stitches on his scalp. His whole body was stiff and aching. It was excruciating to put on his socks and shoes.



But he was all right. In fact, better than thathe felt new somehow, almost reborn. Out there on the ice, he had been certain he was going to die. How he found the strength to get to his feet, he did not know. He had felt Sarah kicking him, but he did not respond to her. Then he'd heard the beeping sound. And when he looked up, he saw the letters "NASA."



He'd realized vaguely that it was some kind of vehicle. So there must be a driver. The front tires had stopped just inches from his body. He managed to get to his knees, and haul himself up over the tires, grabbing onto the struts. He hadn't understood why the driver hadn't climbed out and helped him. Finally, he managed to get to his knees in the howling wind. He realized that the vehicle was low and bulbous, barely four feet off the ground. It was too small for any human operatorit was some kind of robot. He scraped snow away from the dome-like shell. The lettering read, "NASA Remote Vehicle Meteorite Survey."



The vehicle was talking, repeating a taped voice over and over. Evans couldn't understand what it was saying because of the wind. He brushed away the snow, thinking there must be some method of communication, some antenna, some Then his fingers had touched a panel with a finger hole. He pulled it open. Inside he saw a telephonea regular telephone handset, bright red. He held it to his frozen mask. He could not hear anything from it, but he said, "Hello? Hello?"



Nothing more.



He collapsed again.



But the nurses told him what he had done was enough to send a signal to the NASA station at Patriot Hills. NASA had notified Weddell, who sent out a search party, and found them in ten minutes. They were both still alive, barely.



That had been more than twenty-four hours ago.



It had taken the medical team twelve hours to bring their body temperatures back to normal, because, the nurse said, it had to be done slowly. They told Evans he was going to be fine, but he might lose a couple of his toes. They would have to wait and see. It would be a few days.



His feet were bandaged with some kind of protective splints around the toes. He couldn't fit into his regular shoes, but they had found him an oversized pair of sneakers. They looked like they belonged to a basketball player. On Evans, they made huge clown feet. But he could wear them, and there wasn't much pain.



Tentatively, he stood. He was tremulous, but he was all right.



The nurse came back. "Hungry?"



He shook his head. "Not yet."



"Pain?"



He shook his head. "Just, you know, everywhere."



"That'll get worse," she said. She gave him a small bottle of pills. "Take one of these every four hours if you need it. And you'll probably need it to sleep, for the next few days."



"And Sarah?"



"Sarah will be another half hour or so."



"Where's Kenner?"



"I think he's in the computer room."



"Which way is that?"



She said, "Maybe you better lean on my shoulder amp;"



"I'm fine," he said. "Just tell me the way."



She pointed, and he started walking. But he was more unsteady than he realized. His muscles weren't working right; he felt shaky all over. He started to fall. The nurse quickly ducked, sliding her shoulder under his arm.



"Tell you what," she said. "I'll just show you the way."



This time he did not object.



Kenner sat in the computer room with the bearded station chief, MacGregor, and Sanjong Thapa. Everybody was looking grim.



"We found him," Kenner said, pointing to a computer monitor. "Recognize your friend?"



Evans looked at the screen. "Yeah," he said. "That's the bastard."



On the screen was a photo of the man Evans knew as Bolden. But the ID form onscreen gave his name as David R. Kane. Twenty-six years old. Born Minneapolis. BA, Notre Dame; MA, University of Michigan. Current Status: PhD candidate in oceanography, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Research Project: Dynamics of Ross Shelf Flow as measured by GPS sensors. Thesis Advisor/Project Supervisor: James Brewster, University of Michigan.



"His name's Kane," the Weddell chief said. "He's been here for a week, along with Brewster."



"Where is he now?" Evans said darkly.



"No idea. He didn't come back to the Station today. Neither did Brewster. We think they may have gone to McMurdo and hopped the morning transport out. We have a call in to McMurdo to do a vehicle count, but they haven't gotten back to us yet."



"You're sure he's not still here?" Evans said.



"Quite sure. You need an ID tag to open the exterior doors here, so we always know who's where. Neither Kane nor Brewster opened any doors in the last twelve hours. They aren't here."



"So you think they may be on the plane?"



"McMurdo Tower wasn't sure. They're pretty casual about the daily transportif somebody wants to go, they just hop on and leave. It's a C-130, so there's always plenty of room. You see, a lot of the research grants don't permit you to leave during the period of your research, but people have birthdays and family events back on the mainland. So they just go, and come back. It's unrecorded."