Part 29 (1/2)

”The idea,” Darryl admonished her, ”is to close them before you get in bed.”

”I did, but I could have sworn ...” She stopped, then went on. ”I could have sworn I heard something outside, in the storm.”

Michael waited. Something in her voice told him what was coming.

”Heard what?” Darryl asked.

”A voice. Shouting.”

”Maybe it was the banshee,” Darryl said, burrowing into his plate.

”What was it shouting?” Michael asked, as casually as he could.

”Best I could make out-and the wind was pretty high-it was something like 'Give it back.' ” She shook her head and went back to her toast and eggs. ”I'm starting to miss those car alarms.”

Michael could barely swallow his food, but he decided to keep his own counsel for a while.

”Which reminds me,” she said, fis.h.i.+ng in the pocket of her overcoat and removing a blood sample in a plastic vial. ”I need a full blood a.s.say done on this.”

Darryl didn't look thrilled. ”Why am I so honored?”

”Because you've got all that fancy equipment in your lab.”

”Whose is it?” he asked.

”Just one of the grunts,” she said, offhandedly. ”No big deal.”

”Well,” he said, dabbing at his mouth with the napkin, ”as it so happens, I do have some big news of my own.”

Michael wasn't sure if he was kidding or not.

”You are sitting, my friends, in the company of greatness. In that last set of traps, I captured a heretofore undiscovered species of fish.”

Both Michael and Charlotte suddenly gave him their full attention.

”This is for real?” Michael asked.

Darryl nodded, grinning. ”Although it is closely related to the Cryothenia amphitreta, which remained undiscovered until 2006, this specimen is as yet unrecorded.”

”How can you be sure?” Charlotte asked.

”I've consulted the definitive sourcebook, a little tome called Fishes of the Southern Ocean, and it's not there. Its head morphology alone is like nothing I've ever seen. It's got a bifurcated ridge above its eyes, and a purple crest.”

”That's fantastic,” Michael said. ”What are you going to call it?”

”For the time being, I'm calling it Cryothenia-which means, 'from the cold'-hirschii.”

”That's modest,” Charlotte said with a laugh.

”What?” Darryl replied. ”Scientists name things after themselves all the time-and it will truly p.i.s.s off a guy named Dr. Edgar Montgomery back at Woods Hole.”

”Then I say go for it,” Michael said.

”Now, what I'd really like to do,” Darryl said, ”is catch a few more of them fast; there might be a whole school in the vicinity. The one I've got I'll need to dissect, but it'd be great to have a few spares that I could keep intact.”

”Maybe you'll get lucky,” Michael said.

”Murphy's ordered everyone to stay on base until the storm clears, but if I can get permission to go just as far as the dive hut, I'm going to drop some more nets and traps. You're welcome to come along-both of you. You could tell your grandchildren that you were there while history was being made.”

Charlotte blotted up some more yolk, and said, ”Much as I'd like to freeze my b.u.t.t off fis.h.i.+ng, I think I'll take a nice long nap instead.”

But Michael, jumping at the opportunity to get off the base any way he could-especially since Eleanor was off-limits-said, ”I'm game. When do you want to go?”

One hour later, they were cruising across the ice on a snowmobile, with Michael driving and Darryl hanging on in back. Michael had been riding snowmobiles for years, and normally he'd found the experience exhilarating, but snowmobiling in Antarctica was something else. The air was so blisteringly cold that any inch of skin that was exposed could burn like fire, then go totally numb, in a matter of seconds. He had to keep his head down over the handlebars, with his ski mask covering his face, his goggles over his eyes, and his fur hood gathered tight around his head.

It was a blissfully short ride to the dive hut, squatting out there on its cinder-block legs, and Michael let the vehicle glide to a slow stop at the foot of the ramp leading up to the door. The moment the sound of the motor died away, the roar of the wind took over. It whipped around them, nearly knocking Darryl over. Michael grabbed him by the shoulder to steady him, then helped carry the gear inside. Just getting the door closed again was a fight in itself, the gusting wind threatening to tear it right off its hinges.

”Jesus,” Michael said, collapsing onto the wooden bench and brus.h.i.+ng his hood back with his mitten. The hut, with its gaping hole in the middle of the floor, was not much warmer than it was outside, but at least they were protected from the wind. Darryl flicked on the heaters, and they both simply sat, s.h.i.+vering, for a minute or two before trying to do anything at all. As the heaters worked, a fine mist rose up off the water below and hung like a pall over the diving hole.

”Got a lot of ice clogging up the hole,” Michael observed. ”We're gonna have to break that up before we try to lower anything.”

”Why do you think I invited you along?” Darryl said as he tried, without removing his thick gloves, to fasten his nets and traps to the long lines.

”I should have known.” Michael looked around at the racks of tools and equipment fixed to the wall or lying on the floorboards. Ice saws, steel cables, spearguns. The most likely candidate was a sharp-tipped spade, but he found it impossible to hold without taking off his mittens; reluctantly, he did so. He still had glove liners on underneath, but at least they were slim enough that he could slip his fingers through the handle.

The water, covered with a thin film of fresh ice, lay a couple of feet below, and it was awkward work to plunge the tip of the spade down, crack the ice, then pull the spade back again for another strike. It reminded Michael, inevitably, of shoveling the driveway after a big storm when he was a kid. His dad was always telling him to get out there and do it now-”it won't get any easier when it's had time to freeze over”-and Michael remembered well the peculiar pain, the one that would travel right up his arms, when he drove the tip of his shovel into what looked like loose snow but turned out to be hard-packed ice. The shudder would course down the length of his entire spine and even his teeth would ache. He was getting to relive that sensation, only over and over, and the shoulder he had dislocated in the Cascades began to complain bitterly.

Eventually, he had reduced the ice at the bottom of the hole to a slushy mush, though he knew the ice would quickly start to knit itself together again.

”You about ready?” Michael asked, feeling a rivulet of sweat running down the small of his back.

”Almost ... there,” Darryl said, testing the clamp on a trap shaped like an hourgla.s.s. The line was like a giant charm bracelet, looped and coiled around the baseboards of the hut, with nets and lures tied to it at various spots. Darryl crawled toward the hole on his knees, and at its very rim he leaned over to drop the weighted end of the cable into the water.

”Clear away?” he asked, and Michael used the spade to spread the slush to one side. Darryl fed the line into the hole, and the lead weight at its end pulled it straight down. The winch, to which it was attached, hummed as the line dropped, carrying several of Darryl's devices into the depths of the polar sea.

Michael used the spade to keep the ice shards away, until it was suddenly jerked, mysteriously, from his grasp, and rattled down the ice hole like a log shooting down a flume.

”What the h.e.l.l?”

Darryl laughed and, looking up, said, ”Murphy's going to charge you for that.”

Michael started to laugh, too, but then Darryl plunged forward, too, headfirst, into the hole. Michael thought he must have been snagged by the cable somehow, and instinctively he stamped his foot on it to keep it from playing out, but the line simply burned beneath his rubber boot and kept on unspooling And it wasn't the cable, anyway.

A big beefy hand, cobalt blue, was reaching out from under the floorboards of the hut and wrestling with the collar of Darryl's parka. Darryl's feet were kicking wildly, and he had one arm in the water and one flailing at his attacker.

Michael grabbed at his boots and struggled to pull him up.

A head, too, appeared now, from the s.p.a.ce between the floorboards and the ice. A big head, with a frozen beard, and crazed white eyeb.a.l.l.s.

Danzig.