Dark Winter by William Dietrich Page A

women they won't tell to men."
    Lewis smiled as he looked at her, her neck high, ears as fine as shell, eyes large and guileless. He could guess why Norse had recruited this assistant- she could attract any man on base- and wasn't surprised she'd agreed to be recruited. It was indeed a small town. People would make fast friendships, and they'd rupture even faster. He'd noticed the undercurrent of flirting and competition almost immediately. What was it Cameron had said about women? We're more civilized now. Well, maybe.
    "For a spy, you're pretty blunt. You might want to work on that."
    "The truth is, I'm not very good at the whole human interaction thing."
    "Who is?"
    "I guess that's what Doctor Bob wants to know."
    "So, do you want me on a couch?" he asked. "Should I blame it all on my parents? My unhappy childhood?"
    "Did you have an unhappy childhood?"
    "Dismayingly, no. Middle class, middle brow, middle life."
    "Me neither. Wealthy parents, but nice, too. It's so annoying."
    They watched each other for a moment, smiling slightly.
    "Damn," Lewis finally said. "I don't know what Doctor Bob is going to find to do all winter."
    "Well," she said, "you're not entirely normal. We're all wondering what a geologist is doing on an ice cap."
    "Ah. Jim Sparco was desperate for a replacement. He's studying oscillations in polar climates spaced over decades and my predecessor took sick, as you know. Reading the thermometer is not that hard a job."
    "What did your family say?"
    "My folks are dead, actually. Accident."
    "I'm sorry."
    "It happened after I left home, quite a while ago. Anyway, I was pretty much alone. Job gone. Friends fleeting. No warm and fuzzy relationships."
    "No significant other?"
    He took her curiosity as a good sign. "I never stayed in one place, so girls didn't stay, either. There wasn't a lot holding me."
    "Still," she persisted, "it's hard to find people to come down here sometimes, especially at the last minute."
    "Yes. I was desperate, too."
    She looked at him with honest curiosity. "What happened?"
    He paused to remember. What had happened? The tumult of emotions he'd experienced was only slowly being sifted by his mind into a coherent story. "I went into geology because I liked explanations," he finally said. "Rocks were a puzzle out of the past, a trip back in time. They were also stationary and organized and understandable, compared to people. I liked mountain climbing, so it meshed with my hobby. But to make a living in geology I had to concentrate on one kind of puzzle: where oil is hidden. That was fine for a while. Exciting, even. Texas, the Gulf, Arabia. But then I wound up on the North Slope of Alaska, puzzling in a place we weren't really supposed to be, just in case Congress changes its mind someday about opening up the wildlife refuges to drilling. We were pretending to be backpacking tourists, but we were setting off shock waves to probe for oil."
    "And you began to question what you were doing."
    "No…" he said slowly. "It was like there was never any question, and then suddenly there was no question about quitting. The tundra did that to me."
    She waited for him to explain.
    "It's a place something like this one. Not snow-covered, not in summer, but treeless and stark with this low, everlasting light that seems to reach inside you. And yet it took me a month before I really noticed that. My mind was underground. Finally there was a rainstorm late one afternoon, dark and furious, driving us into camp, and then rainbows, and finally a plume, like smoke, curling over one ridge under that prism of light. At first I thought it was a fire, but how could a fire burn in a place that damp? Then I realized it was caribou. A drift of life in a place so empty that suddenly everything hit me like adrenaline. All my senses suddenly came awake. Do you know the feeling?"
    She nodded, cautiously. "Maybe. Like falling in love?"
    The analogy hadn't occurred to him, and he cocked his head. "Maybe. Anyway, what I