Blood And Ice Part 34

"We have nothing to hide," he said.

He drew her first into the center aisle, then out in front of the ornate and glittering altar itself. The stained-gla.s.s window, in brilliant blues and reds and yellows, glowed like a kaleidoscope that Eleanor had once seen in a London optical shop, and it was so beautiful she could hardly take her eyes away.

Sinclair clasped both of her hands in his, and in a soft voice said, "I, Sinclair Archibald Copley, do take thee, Eleanor-" He stopped. "Isn't that odd? I don't know your middle name-do you have one?"

"Jane."

"Do take thee, Eleanor Jane Ames," he continued, "to be my lawfully wedded wife. To have and to hold, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part."

Eleanor felt that they were being far too conspicuous, and she tried to lower her hands.

But Sinclair hung on. "I hope I remembered that correctly. If there's anything I missed, please tell me."

"No, I believe you had it right."

"Good, then once you recite the vows yourself, we can go and have a toast at that noisy cantina on the square."

"Sinclair," she pleaded, "I can't."

"You can't?" he inquired, a brittle edge entering his voice. "Or you won't?"

Eleanor was sure that the priest had taken notice of them. He had a long white beard and sharp dark eyes under bushy brows. "Sinclair, I think we should leave now."

"No," he said. "Not until we have asked the a.s.sembled congregation-"

"What congregation?" The other Sinclair, the one she dreaded, was coming to the fore.

"Not until we have asked the congregation if any of them knows of any just impediment to our being wed."

"That's meant to come before the vow," she said. "Don't make any more of a mockery of this than we already have."

She knew that they had to go. She could see, out of the corner of her eye, the priest disengaging himself from the Portuguese aristocrats.

"We are making a spectacle of ourselves," she whispered, "and it isn't safe. You know that better than anyone."

He fixed her with a dull glare, as if wondering how much further to go. She'd seen that look in his eye before; he could be tipped over-from mirth to fury, from kindness to callousness-in an instant.

He had just opened his mouth to speak when she heard a rumbling in the stone slabs beneath her feet, and from the wall behind the altar-a wall that had stood for centuries-she saw the heavy crucifix tilt, then sway. The priest, who'd been striding toward them, stopped and looked up in horror as cracks rippled through the plaster. All around her, people screamed, or threw themselves to the floor with their hands clasped in prayer.

As Sinclair and Eleanor stepped back, the cross broke free, ripping bricks from the wall and throwing up a cloud of white dust. Sinclair dragged her behind a column and they huddled there, expecting the earthquake to level the entire church around them. The great stained-gla.s.s window fractured like sheer ice on a pond, then crumbled into a thousand shining shards of gla.s.s. Dust and debris billowed out into the nave. Eleanor clutched her handkerchief over her mouth and nose, and Sinclair raised the sleeve of his uniform over his own. Through the cloud, Eleanor could discern the priest, crossing himself, but pressing forward ... toward them.

"Sinclair," she said, coughing. "The priest, he's coming."

Sinclair turned around and saw the man waving the plaster dust out of his path.

"This way," he said, leading Eleanor toward one of the side chapels. But a couple of men-the ones wearing fine velvet tailcoats-were standing there, aghast but stubbornly unmoving, and he had to suddenly change course. By the time he did, the priest had intercepted them, and was clutching at the gold braid on Sinclair's doublet and shouting angry words that they could not understand. His arms waved, as if indicating that the chaos had been brought on by some terrible sacrilege Sinclair had been performing.

Had it? Eleanor wondered.

Sinclair batted the man's hands away, and finally, when that didn't stop him, he drew back his fist and punched him hard in the belly. The old priest fell to his knees, then, gasping for air, toppled over into the dust. Clutching Eleanor's hand, Sinclair hurried down the nave and out a side door near the chapel of the knight in armor. The bright sunlight blinded them for a moment, and the earth gave another jolt. People were still fleeing from their shops and houses; dogs were barking and pigs were squealing in the street. They turned down a flight of winding steps and into a cobblestoned alley. Loose red tiles skittered off a roof and shattered in their path. A few minutes later, they had lost themselves in the mayhem of a panicked marketplace.

It was not the wedding day that Eleanor, as a young girl lying in a meadow in Yorkshire, might have imagined.

And now? Now she was standing in front of the squat white box-the fridge-her breath shallow, and the room in the infirmary fading to white before her eyes. She put out a hand to steady herself, but her knees were weak. She let herself sink and came to rest with her head against the cool surface of its door. Inside it, she knew, was what she needed, and without really willing it, her fingers found the handle. She opened the box, and took out one of the bags, with the blood sloshing inside. It said "O Negative" on it. She wondered what that meant, but not for long. With her teeth, she tore it open, and there on the floor, her soft white robe spread out around her, she suckled at the bag like a newborn babe.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX.

December 22, 10 a.m.

SINCLAIR WASN'T SURE what had awakened him. He was slumped forward on a high stool, his head lying on the altar, the book of poetry under one hand and his other hand resting on a nearly empty chalice. A sputtering candle sent a thin trail of smoke into the air.

A dog, sitting on his haunches in the aisle, let out a hungry cry.

He'd been dreaming of Eleanor-what else did he ever dream of?-but it was not a happy dream. It was hardly a dream at all. He was remembering a quarrel that they had had, just before he'd gone off hunting. From the belfry, he had done some reconnoitering and determined that the coast bellied out to the northwest, promising perhaps some escape route. "We may not be so marooned, after all."

"Sinclair," she'd replied, softly and with great deliberation, "we are marooned as no two people have ever been before."

"None of that," he replied, tearing another hymnal into pieces and tossing it into the fire. "We've as much right to the world as anyone else."

"But we're not like anyone else. I don't know what we are, or what the Lord intended for us to be, but this ... this cannot be His plan."

"Well, then, it's mine," he barked, "and for the time being, that will have to serve." He could feel the shortness of breath, the dimming of his vision, as he stared into the blazing grate. "I've seen G.o.d's plan, and I'll tell you this much-the Devil could have done no worse. The world's a slaughterhouse, and I've played my own d.a.m.ned part in making it so. If I've learned anything at all, it's that we must make up our own fate, from scratch, every day." He ripped another hymnal in two and added it to the fire. "If we hope to survive at all, we must fight for every breath we take, every bite we eat, and every drop we drink." Looking around for the nearest bottle, he'd concluded, "G.o.d helps no one."

Raising his eyes to the dog now baying in the aisle, he saw no sign of G.o.d there, either ... unless it was in the strange silence outside. The storm had pa.s.sed. The wind had died to just a whisper. Perhaps it was the cessation of the constant battering that had awakened him ... awakened him to the chance, at last, of going in search of Eleanor.

G.o.d helps no one, but if he could find the strength to harness the dogs and provision the sled, he could help himself. He could take matters into his own hands. He lifted the chalice and drained its last drops.

Michael, not surprisingly, was the first to arrive at the flagpole, the rendezvous spot for the search party. Standing by his snowmobile, he stomped his feet on the ground to keep the blood flowing. Someone had wrapped a long chain of red-and-green tinsel around and around the flagpole; it had become pretty much soldered to the metal, and Michael doubted anyone would ever be able to get it off. It would forever be Christmas at Point Adelie.

He glanced up at the sky; even through his sungla.s.ses, it was a hard, blazing blue, the color of Easter eggs he'd painted as a kid. A bird shot across his field of vision-a dirty gray bird-and wheeled in the sky, then returned to swoop down at his head. He ducked fast, and heard it squawking as it came back for another pa.s.s. He held his gloved hand up above his head, remembering that the birds always dived for the highest point of their target, but it was only when it swooped by again that he realized there was no nest anywhere near here-at least none that he could see-and no carrion that the bird could have been claiming for itself. He quickly wiped the ice crystals from his gla.s.ses to get a better look at the whirring bird. Could it, by any chance, be Ollie?

It was flitting in a wide circle around the top of the flagpole, where Old Glory flapped listlessly in the cold breeze, then landed atop the administration module. Michael dug into his pocket, and found a rock-hard granola bar. Skuas, he knew, weren't too particular. With his gloved fingers, he fumbled to remove the wrapper, as the bird watched him intently. He held it up for inspection, then tossed it onto the ground a few feet away. These birds were scavengers and they knew enough not to miss a chance; in a second, it was zooming off the roof and plopping down with its beak already open. With a couple of quick pecks, it had broken the bar into several pieces, and one or two had already gone down the hatch. Michael studied him, hoping to see anything that might tell him if it was Ollie or not. The bird gulped down the last of the granola bar, and Michael crouched to get a better look.

"Ollie?" he said. "Is that you?"

The bird's beady black eyes regarded him impa.s.sively, but he didn't fly away. When Michael put out his gloved hand-not, he knew, the smartest thing to do with omnivorous skuas-the bird took one hopping step closer, pecked gently at his palm, then waited there.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned," Michael said. And though he would have been hard put to say why, he felt a lump form in his throat. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the little runt had managed to survive, after all ... or that it was one of the few things Michael had touched that had. He flashed, oddly enough, on Kristin lying in her hospital bed ... and then on the funeral he had not been able to attend. In his mind's eye, he saw a bunch of sunflowers-big and yellow-surrounding a coffin. The bird pecked at his hand again, and he wished he had something else in his pockets to give it.

"All out," he said, standing up again with his empty hands extended.

The skua strutted around the immediate ground, then gave up the hunt and shot back into the air like a rocket. Michael watched it skim the quad, then disappear in the direction of the dive hut. Several other birds gathered in the sky to join it, and Michael felt, stupidly, like a parent whose kid had just been accepted on the playground by his cla.s.smates.

There was an increasing roar from the concourse behind the administration module, followed by the sight of Murphy, Lawson, and Franklin, all riding their own machines. They reminded Michael of a posse, especially when he noticed that they were armed. Murphy had his gun in its holster, and the barrel of Franklin's rifle stuck out of the cargo compartment.

"I thought this was a search party," Michael said, "not a SWAT team."

The chief gave him a look that said, Grow up. "Weren't you ever in the Boy Scouts? Be prepared." He pulled out a speargun from his own cargo bay and tossed it to him. Lawson, Michael noticed, was carrying one, too. "When we get to Stromviken," Murphy announced over the idling engines, "Franklin and I will sweep in from the ocean side, you and Bill here will head straight into the yards." Then, before lowering the visor on his helmet, he said, "And watch where you're going. I lost one beaker in a creva.s.se last year and I don't feel like losing anybody else." The visor dropped, and a second later he took off across the ice with a deafening roar.

Franklin sat down on his own Arctic Cat and said, "Best if you follow in a single file. That way you can be sure the ground ahead is solid."

Lawson followed. The snowmobiles were powerful machines, well over five hundred pounds each, with raised mountain-style handlebars. Michael snapped down the hood of his helmet, with its oversized eye port and antifog screen, and settled himself on the seat. He twisted the throttle, harder than he should have, and the four-stroke engine growled. The tracks bit into the snow and the front skis lifted, and he shot forward in Lawson's wake. The machine he rode was nothing like the snowmobile he'd owned when he was growing up-one of the early Ski-Doos. On the Cat he could feel the ma.s.sive horsepower rumbling under him. Not to mention the heavy-duty suspension; he was used to feeling every b.u.mp in the ice and every rough patch of rugged ground, but on this it was as if he were flying across the snowfield on a magic carpet.

That, he knew, was the danger of it. Already he could see Murphy and Franklin and Lawson peeling in a straight line across the vast white field, but a creva.s.se could still appear out of nowhere, at any moment, and swallow any one of them whole. In snow school, right after he'd arrived at Point Adelie, Michael had gotten the full rundown from Lawson, and though he didn't necessarily remember the exact differences between a marginal creva.s.se, a longitudinal creva.s.se, and a bergschrund, he did remember that they were often camouflaged by the previous year's snowfall. A fragile white bridge was formed across the top-a bridge that could hold for one man and suddenly give way under the next, revealing a jagged, blue-walled canyon of ice a hundred feet deep. At the bottom, where the air was supercooled to forty degrees below, lay a bed of frozen salt water. Very few people who fell into a creva.s.se ever emerged alive ... or, for that matter, at all.

Michael tried to follow in the tracks laid down by the others, but it wasn't always easy to see them. There was a steady glare off the snow, and an occasional sharp stab of light off a slab of wind-polished ice. He hunkered down on the seat in order to let the windshield cut the blast of frigid air coming at him. The helmet helped, too; padded at the cheek and chin, it had a wraparound neck roll that m.u.f.fled the engine noise, along with vents that sucked the heat and moisture out of the face shield. It reminded Michael of the deep-sea diving gear he'd worn when freeing Eleanor from the glacier.

Eleanor ... Sleeping Beauty ... who'd metamorphosed, in his companions' minds, into the Bride of Dracula. How long her living presence could be kept a secret at Point Adelie was an open question ... and how long she could be kept there at all was an even more daunting one. Michael's NSF pa.s.s had only nine days left to run, and he knew that as soon as the next supply plane landed-it was scheduled for New Year's Eve-he was going to have to go back on it. But what would happen to Eleanor then? Who would look out for her? Who would she tell her story to? Who, above all, would she trust? Michael had every confidence in Charlotte, but Charlotte had a job to do-she was the medical officer for the whole base, and she couldn't be expected to be a nursemaid. And Darryl-well, Darryl wasn't exactly the kind of guy who would dote on her, especially if there were fish to be dissected and hematology studies to be done. And what if Sinclair Copley never turned up? Lawson had made it sound pretty unlikely. More and more, Michael thought, Eleanor would again be abandoned, isolated and lonely in a prison not much bigger than that block of ice.

Unless ...

The snowmobile hit a mogul, soaring above the ground, then thumping back, its rear briefly fishtailing Concentrate, he told himself, or you'll break your neck and all bets will be off. He shook his helmet to loosen some snow from the visor and gripped the handlebars more tightly. But his thoughts went right back where they'd been ... to the coming day, not far off, when he would have to leave the Point ... and Eleanor.

But what if-and he marveled that he hadn't considered the idea before (or had he?)-what if she were to go back with him? What if she, too, were to board that supply plane? The thought was so crazy he could barely believe he was entertaining it. But Murphy if it came to that, would be nothing but relieved to see her go- and, as chief of operations, he could use his considerable leverage over the few others on the base who knew about her at all to buy their silence; he could make their life there as easy, or as difficult, as he liked. Still ... how could Michael engineer such a thing? How could he get someone like Eleanor-and had there ever been anyone else like Eleanor?-all the way back to the States? Someone who had never seen an airplane, or an automobile, or for that matter a CD player? Who had no citizenship-unless Queen Victoria was around to confirm it-and certainly no pa.s.sport to prove it?

And apart from all the obvious difficulties that the journey alone presented, how could he care for someone in her unheard-of condition? How far, he wondered, was the nearest blood bank in Tacoma?

A half a mile or so ahead, Michael could see the black clutter of smokestacks, warehouses, and sheds and, high on the hill in the distance, the steeple of the church. He was glad to see Murphy and Franklin, as planned, steer their snowmobiles off to the right, toward the beach of bleached bones and the wreck of the Albatros. If Sinclair was here at the whaling station-and what would they do with him if they did find him alive? Would they shutter him away in the infirmary as well?-there was a good chance he was barricaded in the church, in the room behind the altar, and Michael wanted to be the one to find him first. To calm his fears and reason with him. If he was alive, he would be wary, suspicious, even hostile; from his perspective, he had every reason to be.

That was why Michael would need to be alone with him if and when he was found.

Once Lawson had pulled to a stop in the flensing yard, where the iron tracks for the skip wagons threatened to destroy the snowmobile's treads, Michael pulled up alongside and cut his own engine. The sudden silence was awesome. Michael raised the visor on his helmet, and the cold air felt like a slap in the face.

"What now?" Lawson said, and Michael, just to be free of him, said, "Why don't you start looking around these yards and outbuildings? I'll start from the top of the hill and work my way down."

Lawson, toting his speargun, nodded. He hung his helmet on the handlebar of his snowmobile and trudged off. Michael stowed his own helmet and set off for the church. From here, he could see the teetering tombstones and, soon, the doors-both of which were now closed. An interesting sign, since one of them had been propped open by a s...o...b..nk before. Somebody might be home.

As he mounted the steps, his shadow, cut short by the solstice sun directly overhead, fell straight onto the wood between his feet, and he heard from within a scrambling, then a bark. He put his shoulder against the creaking frame, pushed the door open, and was greeted by a mad rush of sled dogs. He knelt and let them lick his face and gloves and dance in wild circles all around him, while his eyes swept the empty chamber. There was a pile of supplies and gear gathered by the door, as if someone had been planning to leave shortly.

On the altar, he could see a candlestick and a black wine bottle.

He didn't know if he should shout to announce his presence or creep in quietly and hope to surprise his quarry.

But then, was he there to rescue Sinclair ... or capture him?

He moved cautiously up the aisle, past the ancient pews, then around the altar to the room beyond. The door was ajar, and when he pushed it open the rest of the way, he saw that the bed had been slept in but the fire in the grate had gone out. There was a smell of cold ashes and damp wool, but through the open window-flung wide, the shutters banging-he glimpsed a furtive figure scrambling through the gravestones, picking its way around the back of the church.

And it wasn't anyone from the search party.

He was wearing a red down coat, open, with a white cross on the back-Michael recognized it as one of the many coats that hung on the kennel clothes rack-and his head was bare. He had dark blond hair, and a moustache of the same color.

So this was Sinclair ... Eleanor's beloved. Alive, after all.

Michael felt a strange pang, gone almost before he'd noticed it.

He ran back out of the room, his boots clomping and sliding on the stone floor, the dogs leaping and gamboling in his way.

"Not now!" he cried, pushing their furry heads aside.

By the time he got to the doors, Sinclair was well down the slope, sometimes running, sometimes sliding with his arms outspread. Under the open down coat, Michael saw the glint of gold braid on a uniform jacket and a scabbard clattering at the man's side; he was making for the factory floors, where the evisceration and rendering of the whales was once done. Then he disappeared into a narrow alleyway that ran between two of the vast ramshackle buildings, but Michael, trying to run with a speargun in hand, had to make his way more carefully down the frozen hillside. He was also trying to think where Sinclair might be heading. He might have heard the approach of the snowmobiles, or he might have been caught off guard. The gear stacked at the door suggested he'd been planning a mission of his own. But if he'd simply wanted to hide, why hadn't he done so? There must be something in the yards and warehouses that he wanted.

And the only thing that Michael could think of was weaponry.

There was a flash of red far ahead, darting between two sheds, and Michael followed it. Lawson, fortunately, was nowhere to be seen-the last thing Michael wanted was any interference-and he could hear the distant rumbling of Murphy's and Franklin's snowmobiles down along the waterfront. If he could catch him, Michael would have Sinclair all to himself, at least for a while.

Then he remembered the rack of rusty harpoons in what had probably once been the blacksmith's shop. But where was it? Michael stopped for a second to catch his breath and get his bearings. He had seen the place when he'd been here before. It was far ahead, and somewhere on his left, but he felt sure he could find it again; an enormous rusted anchor had leaned beside the door.

Michael trotted along with the speargun down at his side, afraid that if he tripped and fell, the d.a.m.n thing would go off. He pa.s.sed one vacant building after another, giving each a quick glance inside- he saw hanging chains and frozen pulleys, long, scarred worktables, hacksaws, and enormous cauldrons squatting on stubby iron legs. He began to understand that, as random and scattered as the buildings appeared, there was an underlying plan to the way they were laid out. You could see it in the crisscrossing of the railroad ties that the skip-wagons ran on; everything was organized like a primitive a.s.sembly line-or disa.s.sembly line, to be more precise-to carve up and process the carca.s.s of the whale, from skin to gristle. Their bones and teeth, even petrified eyes the size of medicine b.a.l.l.s, still lay scattered here and there, blown into haphazard piles against the walls.

He came to an intersection, with footpaths or alleys leading off in many directions, and he had to re-create his first entry into the town. He had come in from the southwest, which meant he probably had traveled along the windswept concourse veering off to his right. He followed along it, until, to his relief, he saw the anchor next to a low and darkened doorway.

He slowed down as he approached, but there was absolutely no sight, or sound, of life within. Perhaps his guess had been mistaken. Lowering his head to duck inside, he had just looked up again- there was another open doorway at the rear, partly blocked by a bunch of hooped barrels-when something whizzed past his cheek and pierced the wall a foot away. The harpoon stuck fast in the wood, the shaft still thrumming beside his ear.

"Don't take another step," Michael heard, though in the dim confines of the cluttered shop, he still couldn't see his adversary.

"And drop your weapon."

Michael let the speargun clatter to the brick floor.

There was a huge, freestanding chimneystack made of red bricks-no doubt the forge-and a black iron anvil just in front of it. A figure emerged from behind the chimney. He had doffed the overcoat, and was wearing only a scarlet cavalry uniform, with the sword hanging down at his side and another harpoon already in his hand.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Michael. Michael Wilde."

"What are you doing here?"

"I've come to find you."

There was an uneasy pause, filled only by the moaning of the wind that had found its way down the chimney and into the cold forge. There was a faint scent of old, dead coals.

"You must be Lieutenant Copley," Michael said.

The man looked taken aback but quickly recovered.

"If you know that, then you must have Eleanor."

"Yes. We do. And she's safe," Michael a.s.sured him. "We're taking good care of her."

An angry spark lighted in Sinclair's eye, and Michael immediately regretted his choice of words. Surely Sinclair thought no one but he should be charged with that duty.

"She's at the camp," Michael went on, "at Point Adelie."

"That's what you call it?"

Sinclair looked, and certainly sounded, like a British aristocrat-someone Michael might have seen in a movie-but there was also a patently mad and unpredictable gleam in his eye. Not that it should have come as such a surprise. Michael just wished he could figure out what he could say that would get him to put down the harpoon.

"We haven't come here to do you any harm," Michael said. "Far from it. We can help you, in fact." He wondered if he should keep on talking, or simply shut up.