The Winter Over(15)
“Do you think her death was an accident?” He peered at her as though examining a specimen.
She started. “Of course.”
“Ah. Your answer seemed to suggest . . . well, never mind.”
To forestall another battery of questions, she picked up the pace and within a minute they found themselves at the base of the Beer Can. She would normally point out the cheerful, handwritten message “EARN THAT COOKIE!” some wag had scrawled on the bottom step in permanent marker, but she didn’t spare anyone a break, marching directly up the stairs until Jimmy called for her to stop. Months of high-altitude work at the Pole had paid off; her pulse had barely bumped past normal. Based on the number of aides holding on to railings or bent over, sucking wind, however, they hadn’t enjoyed a similar training. Sikes looked ready to stroke out.
She gave them a minute, then flogged them upstairs to the top level and down the hall to the galley. Most were too tired to take their parkas off before they sank into the plastic chairs in the mess hall. Sikes, ashen-faced, sat at one end of the table, eyes closed and pinching the bridge of his nose.
Cass spoke to the cook to line up coffee and hot chocolate for the group, then stood at the head of their table, her hands folded in front of her, smiling sweetly. “I hope you enjoyed the tour. Do you have any questions for me before I call Deb?”
“Yeah.” Jimmy groaned, rubbing his temples. “What the hell are you people made of?”
“It takes a special breed to want to come here.” And you’re not it. “It’s been a pleasure showing you Shackleton station. Have a safe flight back to McMurdo.”
She turned and left. As she opened the door into the hall, she heard Sikes say, “Gentlemen, there goes the only thing more frigid than the ice this station is built upon.”
The door swung closed on not only the last group of visitors she’d have to guide this season, but maybe her career as a tour guide, as well. After that performance, it seemed doubtful that she’d be asked to reprise the role. In fact, if Sikes had any pull at all, it might be doubtful she’d be allowed to come back to the station. And maybe that was okay.
CHAPTER SIX
The stack of files behind Hanratty’s chair towered like some kind of totem pole, each pale manila folder telling a story, though most were as enigmatic or inscrutable as the carved wooden face of a god or a demon. Each contained enough paper to make the whole stack over a foot and a half high.
He poked his head out of his office door. Deb was at her desk shuffling through activity reports. He cleared his throat. “Would you mind running interference for me if anyone comes in, Deb? If I don’t clear my in-box, my ass is grass.”
She shot him a thumbs-up without raising her head. Hanratty backed into his office and sat down at his desk, spinning in place to address the tower of files. He thumbed the stack, glancing at the names typed in small caps on the tabs at the top. Klimt, Takahashi, Simon, nearly a dozen others. He’d sifted through them so many times that they were no longer in alphabetical order, so he’d fallen into his own classification scheme.
First came the most obvious way to tell them apart: the thickness of the folder. A wad of paper didn’t necessarily mean there was a problem; it just meant a lot had been written on the subject. His next criterion was more illuminating: the swatch of color created by the papers inside. White was innocuous. Splashes of green and pink were concerning. Dark pink bordering on red was what his old buddies at DoD would’ve labeled roundhouse: . Hanratty had managed to visually distinguish the roundhouse folders—four in all—from the others at a glance.
A very few folders could be separated by his last criterion, his personal touch: the number of inky thumb stains on the outer folder and name tab. He’d read and reread the contents of those files so often that the tabs had been worn down to rounded bumps peeking out of the pile.
He’d fought to have physical folders at all. TransAnt’s administrative branch had battled him tooth and nail to digitize the records, reminding him that every scrap of written word on base could be contained on a single hard drive or sent over the network in a burst less than a minute long. Physical objects had volume, space that equaled expense when it came to shipping things to the bottom of the earth.
He’d stood his ground. Being old-fashioned had been part of it, of course, but the real reason was that digital files could be stolen and replicated a million times without anyone knowing. If only a finite number of physical copies—in this case, one—existed, then their theft would be obvious. Sometimes the simplest measures were the best.
The base psychologist possessed his own dossiers on the staff, of course, though in reality, Keene had been given no more than half the contents that existed in Hanratty’s files. Sometimes Keene gave him a look when they spoke about Shackleton’s crew and Hanratty wondered if the man knew he’d been given the Reader’s Digest version.
Hanratty found the folder he’d been looking for and set it aside from the others, though he didn’t open it, not yet. He knew its contents intimately, and he wanted to have it at hand, but he also didn’t want to taint his recent observations with a fresh read. Better to jot down his impressions, add them to the growing pile, and synthesize later.
A single white sheet of paper with no lines or holes was his preferred scribbling pad. He pulled out a red, felt-tipped pen and wrote at the top: