Killer

Colin watched Simon’s face, pale in the shadows and drawn with strain. His lips were moving with repetitive monotony as he whispered something to himself over and over. The whites of his eyes gleamed restlessly as they shifted aimlessly, seeing nothing. Colin couldn’t think of anything to say. The old weary self-recrimination washed over him. He could almost hear the Queen of Bitches, Antarctica, giggling insanely as her claws closed around him once more, destroying his companions as she had five years ago. His mind ran back along the familiar nightmare’s lines so that he too was unaware of the change in the weather outside.

Kate was more or less asleep. The shock made her mind blank, but snatches of memory flashed up before her tightly closed eyes like the trailer in a cinema for some coming attraction. Her mother’s funeral, the pages from Time, from the London Sunday Times, the airport at Anchorage as her father had given that great whoop of joy. Silently she began to cry.

Quietly at first, the wind sang in the tent-ropes, stirring the orange net, blowing sparks in clouds from the smouldering fire on its steel tray. The waves began to break on the edges of the floe as the grey ocean became more choppy. Flashes of white broke the water’s monotony as white horses formed and foamed. The floe, small enough now to answer to the ocean’s dictates, began to rock gently as the long combers following the outskirts of the storm moved regularly under it. In the supply tent, tins began to chime against each other, the silver harpoons rolled from side to side. The clouds seemed to graze the tops of the floes. The day assumed all the dark claustrophobic solidity of a cave.

One or two heavy drops of warm rain dashed themselves against the coldly glowing ice.

“Have we any aspirin?” asked Kate suddenly.

“Aspirin?” Ross was jerked out of his thoughts. He shook his head to clear it.

“I have a bitch of a headache.” The word made the small hairs on Ross’s back and neck stir.

“I don’t know,” he said. “We should have some in the supply tent. There was a first aid box . . . Simon? Simon!”

“Yes?” Dully.

“Simon, have we any aspirin?”

“Aspirin? For Christ’s sake! Yes, I suppose so. In the first aid box. It’s in the supply tent.” Glad of something to do, he began to move stiffly. “I’ll get some.” He stood up and staggered slightly as the floe moved. “What the hell . . . ?”

Very slowly they began to realise that the weather had undergone a radical change. Simon pushed the tent-flap open and went out, his eyes automatically screwed up against the light; but it was almost as dark outside as it had been in the tent. The wind freshened against his face, warm and wet. He began to walk to the supply tent, his progress slowed by the restless movement of the orange net. He looked up quickly at the swirling clouds, and a volley of raindrops fell into his eyes. He hunched his shoulders without thinking any more about it and went after the aspirin for Kate.

In the tent, Ross asked Kate, “How do you feel?”

“A bit better . . .” She was surprised to discover it was true.

“Just the headache?”

“A bit queasy.” She sounded a little preoccupied.

“I hope it’s nothing you ate . . .”

She realised that some of her panic had been caused by the fact that she had really expected to come to pieces herself now that her father was no longer there. But she wasn’t. She was OK. She was going to be OK. “Hey! No aspersions against my cooking!”

Ross began to laugh. It wasn’t much as witty repartee went, but it meant she was going to be OK. She sketched a smile in reply.

The floe gave a little lurch as two waves passed too close.

Job looked up, blinking his long eyes, disturbed more by the movement than the laughter. He glanced around the dark tent and frowned. After Ross’s laugh there came a little silence broken by the sinister song of the wind, the restless lapping of the waves, the fading roar of the blown fire. One section of the tent flapped and strained like a sail. The two men glanced at each other, and seemed to realise the danger as their eyes met. Then they were scrambling for the opening, bursting out on hands and knees into the black cavernous day as the first serious shower of warm rain slashed out of the sky.