Beyond the Ice Limit

30

DR. PATRICK BRAMBELL chewed on a Mars bar as he stared pensively at the crushed ball that had formerly been the DSV Paul, sitting on a tarp in the hangar deck. The immediate area had been cordoned off with yellow curtains. Two engineers and as many roustabouts were wheeling in a bizarre device they had jerry-rigged in order to dismantle the submersible so they could extract the remains of Lispenard’s body from the wreckage. It looked like nothing so much as a large, villainous Jaws of Life. Glinn stood silently in the background, taking in everything.

The workers began positioning the jaws of the contraption at two sides of the wreckage, in order to draw apart the wrinkled, shattered mass of the titanium sphere; huge eyebolts had been affixed at the two places and the machine was now set to draw them apart, unfolding the metal the way someone might unfold a balled-up piece of paper.

Brambell turned to his medical assistant, Rogelio, who was standing next to a polished stainless-steel gurney. This gurney was where they would reassemble the body. The idea did not overly disturb Brambell—he had seen far worse—but he was worried about his assistant, who looked a bit green around the gills.

“We must recover every, ah, piece, no matter how small,” Brambell told the workers. Glinn’s silent presence in the back made him nervous. He felt like a student teacher being monitored by the principal. He had never liked Glinn—the man was cold, remote, a cipher. Never mind the fact he was largely responsible for what had happened to the Rolvaag.

The assistant nodded weakly.

The “jaws” were affixed to each eyebolt and a deep hum started up as the machine began to spread them apart. With a creaking, cracking noise, the crumpled ball began to separate along its fracture zones, and water began draining from within it.

“Halt!” Brambell called. Immediately, the machine stopped. Rogelio rolled the gurney in close and, with large, rubber-tipped tweezers Brambell and his assistant began picking out mashed pieces of flesh and pulverized bone, mingled with bits of clothing, and laid them all out on the gurney in turn.

After a few moments he turned to the assistant. “Rogelio, how are you doing?”

“Hanging in there,” Rogelio said in a strangled voice.

“Good man.”

It took at least ten minutes to remove every little bit from the fissure in the wrinkled titanium, and then they backed off and signaled the engineers to continue.

The procedure went on for hours, prying first one piece of metal apart, then another, and another, in between stopping to pick out the remains, sometimes with the help of a portable magnifier on wheels with built-in illumination. At least it was a cool day, the good weather holding; the temperature inside the hangar was about sixty degrees—not bad, Brambell mused, for the preservation and handling of human remains. And a large proportion of the remains were of workable size, which was also a good thing: he’d feared the corpse might have been little more than tomato paste.

Slowly the body began to take shape on the gurney—in a grotesquely altered state. Brambell and his assistant had been able to identify virtually all of the pieces by a combination of their position in the wreck, the bone fragments, and the clothing present. By chance, they had started working from the feet upward. Brambell knew that recovering the head and skull would be the last, and most difficult, part.

As he worked, Brambell was mightily impressed by the immense forces that must have been applied to the submersible—especially the titanium sphere—to crush it so violently. In some areas, the pressure had been so intense and so sudden that it appeared to have softened or even melted the metal.

It was disagreeable work, and Rogelio bore up relatively well under it, not losing his lunch as Brambell had feared. The two roustabouts operating the machinery, and the two engineers, were another story: turning their backs, looking away whenever possible, averting their eyes assiduously to avoid seeing the remains to the point where Brambell had to speak to them sharply to keep their eyes on the job. Glinn, on the other hand, was just the opposite: watching the entire procedure in silence, face expressionless. He could have been observing a golf match. Nobody spoke except the fellows operating the jaws, and then only to communicate tersely about the equipment.

Now they separated the personnel sphere, laying the pieces out in jigsaw position on a large tarp spread precisely for that purpose. As they pried apart the last two large pieces, the upper torso, neck, and crushed head became visible.

Brambell glanced at Rogelio and was dismayed to see the man had gone pale. The two roustabouts were not even bothering to cover up their horror and disgust. An engineer turned away, retching. Only Glinn seemed unmoved.

“All right, let’s keep going,” said Brambell, moving in with a pair of rubber-tipped forceps and picking up the jaw, teeth and skin still adhering. He laid it all on the gurney. Another piece followed, then another. The face itself had survived almost entirely whole, flattened without being mashed to a pulp. Rogelio worked on the opposite side of the gurney while a great silence collected in the hangar. As they continued, Brambell found himself becoming disturbed by something. It wasn’t the gruesomeness—it was an odd feeling that something was not quite right. But he said nothing. He didn’t want to seem like a crank—or, worse, cause a panic.

As they neared the end of the dismantling process, the titanium sphere lay in neatly arranged and numbered pieces on the spread tarp, along with mashed equipment from inside the sphere. Everything had been thoroughly picked over by Brambell and Rogelio, and all the remains were laid out on the gurney. Brambell, bending over them, putting body pieces into place like a puzzle, felt a presence behind him. It was Glinn.

“Have you recovered all of the remains?” he murmured.

Brambell did not answer right away. He wondered just how to phrase it. Finally he said: “We’ll know when we weigh the remains if a substantial portion is missing. Of course, we’ll have to factor in the loss of blood and the infusion into the tissues of a certain amount of salt water…” He swallowed.

“Of course.”

One of the roustabouts, having recovered somewhat, asked, “Why the hell did the creature crush up the DSV like this? Was it defense?”

“It happened right after Lispenard switched on her acetylene torch,” said Glinn. “So I would say yes—it felt pain and reacted.”

Brambell said nothing.

“I think it was fear,” said the roustabout. “The thing was afraid.”

Another silence, then Glinn turned to Brambell. “Doctor, you don’t agree?”

Blast Glinn, he thought. “If it was a purely defensive action, why would the thing swallow it in the first place?”

“Part of that very defensive reaction.”

“But Lispenard was trying to escape, not attack. It sucked her in. It wasn’t afraid.”

“What are you suggesting?” said Glinn.

You asked for it. “Think about what the DSV looked like when the thing expelled it,” said Brambell. “All crushed up in a ball like that.”

“Meaning?”

Brambell drew in an irritated breath. “As a child, I used to roam the Killarney National Forest with my brother Simon—may he rest in peace. Two would-be naturalists, collecting wee skeletons of mice and shrews. And we knew the best place to get them. Near owl nests.”

“May I ask where this recollection is going?”

“It’s a pellet,” Brambell said flatly.

“A what?”

“A pellet. Like an owl pellet. Good God, man, need I be more plain?” He waved a hand at the remains—metal and organic both. “It’s a shite.”