Girl in Ice(13)
Narrow-eyed, Wyatt tilted his head up toward Raj. “What are you, some kind of wiseass?”
For a few seconds, no one said a word. Odin skittered up onto his hind legs, stretching his surprisingly long body upward—as if greeting Wyatt—scratching at the wire mesh.
“I know my Norse mythology,” Raj said, folding his arms across his chest, clearly trying to read Wyatt. “What, is that going to be a problem here?”
“Could be.” Wyatt pushed himself to his full height, which was quite a bit taller and easily fifty pounds heavier than Raj. His expression—or lack of one—remained, and I wondered if he was conscious of it, or if being stone-faced or on edge was the result of isolation in this place for years on end.
Wyatt burst out a sudden, forced-sounding laugh. Smacked Raj a little too hard on his back. “Kidding, my friend, just fucking with ya. But for the others here, who maybe aren’t up on this sort of thing, Odin was the god who killed himself to gain knowledge about the realm of the dead.” He reached down to the cage, unlatched the lid, and lifted up the mouse; after a bit of scrabbling, the creature seemed content to cuddle in his palm. Wyatt held him at eye level, studying him. “When I found this guy, over a year ago now, he was in the Dome, frozen solid. But now look at him.”
“Well, that’s impossible,” Raj said with an exasperated exhale.
“Really?” Wyatt said.
“Cells burst when they freeze—”
Nora took his arm and tugged at it. “Come on, darling, he said it happened.” She took off her hat; her shining hair fell all around her shoulders. “Look, we’re all exhausted—”
“Who do you think is sleeping in the other room?” Wyatt said.
Raj lifted his fine-boned hands in an appeal for a truce. “You know what? Fine. I’m here to do my research and go home.”
“That was my understanding too.” Wyatt settled Odin back into his cage with great gentleness as the mouse’s eraser-pink nose poked between his wind-chapped fingers. Without another word, Wyatt stepped between us, and we trailed him in silence past another open door.
“Jeanne’s room is here.”
Jeanne’s narrow bed was neatly made with a handmade quilt, its pattern of mismatched squares of birds and flowers bleached almost completely white. Half a dozen dolls sat propped against the pillows; these, too, were beat-up and grubby, hair ratty, eyes lazy in their heads, chubby little hands in a half grip in the air; next to them a couple of disturbingly real-looking doll babies in doll diapers cuddled one another. We all paused, Nora and Raj exchanging what the fuck glances, but Wyatt kept the tour on a clip and motioned us to the bathroom: a sad, beige affair with a beige porcelain toilet and plastic shower, narrow as a coffin, its mold-dotted beige curtain barely covering the stall.
“Facilities,” he said. “No tub, I’m afraid, but otherwise she flushes up to thirty below outside. Colder than that, we make other arrangements. But you’ll all be long gone before then.”
Wyatt gestured at a closed door across from the bathroom. “The girl’s room.” Shivering, I drifted my hand over the doorknob as I passed. I could hear her vocalizations in my mind, sounds I had committed to memory.
Wyatt paused at the door across from Jeanne’s room. “Val, this is your little piece of paradise.”
The room was the same dreary shade as the hallway, but a mural covered one wall. A trio of badly drawn palm trees sulked over what I guessed was a beach; coconuts strewn around, happy grinning fish popping between frothy waves. Perhaps some tropics-craving climate scientist felt like indulging his artistic side. Definitely not Andy’s work. Wyatt clicked on a tube light. It swayed back and forth, illuminating a twin bed with a red sleeping bag unzipped over it under a small window. A bed table with a reading lamp cozied up to the bed; next to that, a simple bureau, desk, and chair. The rest of the room was stacked floor to ceiling with boxes.
“We had to improvise a little with the girl here and all, sorry. Your room’s also the storeroom—well, one of them.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Which was Andy’s room?”
For the first time, Wyatt looked uncomfortable in his skin. “Well, I took it over, I figured—”
“I just wanted to know. I’m fine here.”
He gave me an efficient nod. “Now, Nora and Raj, I thought you could crash on the couch tonight, since it’s too late to get you settled in the Dome, okay?”
They agreed, and we all shadowed Wyatt back to the office/living room. Outside, the wind whipped the snow sideways; it stuttered rat-a-tat at the wide picture window. “So, we’re in the main building now, which we call the Shack. Jeanne does her repair work in the Shed. We heat it, but not as much as home base here. Behind the Shed is the Cube, where we store the snowcat and snowmobile, like a garage. Out in the bay is the Dome, but you knew that. Now, some ground rules.” Wyatt paused near a whiteboard scribbled over with calculations. “We’ve had a strange summer here, as you know. Barely a summer at all. Lots of storms, temps closer to fall than summer, in the teens in the daytime; ten, fifteen below at night. So, listen up. Anyone, that includes me and Jeanne, goes anywhere, you sign here on this log sheet.” He held out a clipboard chained to the wall, tapping it with a Sharpie as he spoke. “Mark the time you go out and why. You bring your walkie-talkie everywhere when you’re out there, got it? No exceptions. It’s part of your body.”