The Winter Over(74)

“Jesus. What happened?”

“Taylor made short work of them, sad to say. Apparently, while the two of them were tinkering with fuel lines and playing video games, Mr. Taylor was earning his black belt in any number of martial arts.”

Cass blanched. “Are they . . . ?”

“He hurt them bad enough to put them in the trauma center. Dr. Ayres was very upset and told me privately he’s going to bring charges against Taylor as soon as all of this is over. My sweet Dave is beside himself.”

“When did this happen?”

“The day after they tossed you in here. Our dear leader has a near mutiny on his hands and knows it. I believe he’s hoping by bringing everyone together he can present his side of the story and save his hide by shifting the blame to someone else.”

“Someone else? Who?” Biddi had said the words matter-of-factly and without emphasis, but now she tilted her head, giving Cass a pointed look. “Me? What do I have to do with it?”

“I left before people started asking questions, but he said that there was, indeed, an experiment of sorts going on. Then he started holding forth about some kind of psychological mumbo jumbo beyond me. I’m just a bloody fucking janitor, after all.”

“He actually admitted it?”

“I just said so, didn’t I? That wasn’t the real revelation, though. He claimed that he was as much a subject of the experiment as anyone else. Someone else, another crew member posing as a staffer, has been pulling the strings the whole time.”

“Who?”

Biddi rolled her eyes. “You , obviously. Haven’t you been paying attention?”

“Jesus, Biddi.”

“I’m sorry, bird,” she said, and now Cass could see her friend, for all her banter, was worried. Dark blue smudges hung beneath each eye and her normally rosy cheeks were sallow. She raised a hand to tuck a loose lock of hair behind her ear; the hand trembled. “It’s not a joke, I know, but the whole thing has been terrifying.”

“Who is this mastermind supposed to be?”

“Hanratty calls him—or you, I suppose—the Observer, like some comic book villain.”

“Keene said something about that when they had me in Hanratty’s office. I didn’t know what they were talking about,” Cass said, scowling at the memory. “And people believe his bullshit?”

Biddi shrugged, deflated and out of jokes now. “It makes as much sense as anything else, doesn’t it?”

“And he’s trying to convince everyone that I’m the one? I’m this Observer?”

“I’m afraid so.” She paused. “People are scared, Cass. Hanratty knows he doesn’t have to be right, he just has to sound good. Whatever will keep the crew from turning on him. And you, as a distraction, will do.”

Cass put her face in her hands and spoke through them, her voice muffled. “It doesn’t make any sense. Why would I come screaming back to base and accuse him of running the experiment if I’m actually the one behind it all?”

“He’d simply say you were upping the ante on the test, I imagine. Stoking the fire and turning people against him just to see what they’d do. Like the bit about Sheryl still being alive.”

“She is,” Cass said bitterly. “I’m sure of it. But he’d simply say I was taking advantage of a psychologically traumatic event in order to utilize it for the experiment.”

“Now you’re thinking like a true bastard,” Biddi said. “I do believe you know how his mind works.”

“What happens now? Are they going to listen to him? Is the lynch mob coming?”

Biddi clucked her tongue. “Don’t get too maudlin, darling. They’re not all mad dogs. I imagine that even if Hanratty persuades them to his way of thinking, he’ll do no more than tell everyone to leave you right here and let the ‘authorities’—whoever that is—decide once they get communications back up or, God forbid, after the winter runs its course and the first plane comes back.”

“Christ,” she said, trying to imagine the next four months in a literal, instead of figurative, prison. Then a thought occurred to her. “What happens when the ‘accidents’ keep happening? What’s Hanratty going to do then?”

“Good news! You’ll be exonerated.”

“And someone else might be dead. That’s not good enough,” Cass said. Then, when her friend hesitated, “Spit it out, Biddi.”

“Before Commander Jack’s dog-and-pony show, a few people were talking.”

“About?”

Biddi paused, then sighed. “I think it’s madness, but a few of the younger crew were talking about trying to make the trek overland to Orlova for help.”

Cass’s mouth fell open. “That’s thirty miles away. In the dark. At a hundred below zero.”

“You forgot the one-hundred-mile-an-hour winds.”

Cass calculated the journey in terms of the obstacles, not the distance. With the darkness, the low temperatures, and the wind, the journey would take several days even by snowmobile or snowcat . . . but would you really want to drive it when, if you wandered even slightly off the SPoT, you could plunge headfirst into a two-hundred-foot crevasse? Walking, with the ability to plumb for ice bridges and faults, would be safer, but then you were talking a top speed of just a few miles a day. It would take a week to make it to the Russian base. No one on earth had the stamina and strength to survive the journey. She shook her head.