Hive

She smiled. “We won’t see a plane until September at the earliest and mid-October wouldn’t surprise me. Sorry, Jimmy, what we got is what we got and we’ll have to live with it.”

“They’re talking some pretty crazy shit, Doc,” Hayes told her. “And not just the contractors either, if what I’m hearing is correct.”

The building shook and the lights dimmed momentarily.

Sharkey sighed. “No, it’s not just the contractors, it’s the scientists, too. I think this is going to be a long winter. Should make for an interesting psychological profile by spring.”

“Sure, I don’t doubt it a bit. Maybe Gates ought to ship his mummies back up to those caves.”

“That won’t happen,” she laughed.

“I’m serious, Doc. Those goddamn things are like catalysts. These people are already acting goddamn loony and I hate to see what another month will bring.”

“I’ve spent three winters at the Pole, Jimmy, and most of them are just lonely and quiet and boring. But I don’t think we’ll see that this year. What Gates found has everyone worked up. I’m hoping it’ll die down in a week or so, but I have to wonder. Even I have to wonder.”

“Why’s that?”

She looked at him, her eyes sparkling. “You saw those mummies, Jimmy, and you can’t deny that there’s something . . . peculiar about them. Don’t look at me like that, you felt it same as I did. They have to be the most alien-looking creatures I’ve ever seen, but I don’t know if that’s what’s eating people around here. I’m only going to say, from a very safe medical pedestal, that those . . . remains seem to be having a very unusual psychological impact on whoever looks at them.”

Hayes didn’t doubt that a bit. He’d felt it right away when he’d been in Hut #6 with Lind and the others. He hadn’t been able to put a finger on what it was about the thing and still really couldn’t, other than to say that there was something extremely unsettling about it. Something that got inside you, dug in deep like a burrowing worm looking for a hot, moist place to lay its eggs.

And what had Lind said?

Can’t you feel it getting inside your head, wanting to steal your mind...?

Hayes swallowed, something caught in his throat. “There’s something . . . bad about those things, Doc. We’re all feeling it. Maybe not Gates and those other eggheads, but the rest of us are feeling it just fine, thank you. I don’t know what to make of it.”

“Lind seemed to think it was trying to steal his mind or something?”

Hayes nodded. “That’s what he said. It was getting inside his head, unlocking things. You want to take a stab at that?”

She shook her head. “I’m not a therapist, Jimmy. I’ve given you my learned G.P. speculation, that’s all I can do.”

“How about off the record?”

She set her fork down. “Off the record? Off the record you couldn’t pay me a million dollars to spend the night alone out there with that horror.”

7

That evening after dinner, Gates finally left the side of his lover out in Hut #6, and joined the others in the community room at Targa House. At what seemed a prearranged moment — the entire winter crew in attendance, some 20 scientists and contractors — he stood up and tapped a spoon against his water glass. It drew everyone’s attention right away, because to a man, they’d been waiting for it.

Waiting patiently.

Now, it was rare to find everyone in the community room. Usually some of the contractors would be out at the power station or working on the vehicles and snowmobiles, maybe down in the shafts checking lines. And the scientists were usually out at the drilling tower or in one of their improvised labs or at their laptops, tapping away.

But not tonight.

Everyone was there, gathered around just waiting for Gates to say something because he hadn’t exactly been a social butterfly since he came down from the tent camp. So everyone was in attendance like spooks hanging around the War Room wondering if the president was going to bomb some country.

Hayes was sitting with Doc Sharkey and Cutchen, the meteorologist, playing poker. Rutkowski and most of the other contractors were at the table opposite playing cribbage . . . now and again, one of them would look over at Elaine Sharkey, nod their heads as if to say, yup, she’s a woman, all right, knew it first time I saw her.

“I think Dr. Gates would like to say a word or two,” LaHune said. He was sitting alone at a table in the corner looking . . . efficient. Sitting there in his fancy L.L. Bean sweater and windpants, straight and tall like he had an iron bar shoved up his ass and he wanted to keep it there.

“Ah, the plot thickens,” Cutchen said.

Gates smiled to everyone. His eyes were bloodshot with brown half-moons under them. He’d been busy and hadn’t been sleeping much. “Hello, everyone,” he said. “Tomorrow afternoon I’m going back up to the excavation, but before I do that, I’d like to touch base and tell you what all this is about and what it might mean.”

Everyone was watching him now.