"He is a Nazi is what he is," Molotov said grimly.
"Do scientists have even the slightest idea of the human hardness that's going to be required now to explore the extremes of the universe or survive among the evolving brilliance of machines? Just how strong is your collective? Not very strong, is it? You panicked. You abandoned your work. You locked yourself in. You armed yourself. You quarreled. You turned on each other. You were ready to kill each other. The one who finally woke you up was Lewis, the fingie I set up as the outsider."
There was noise in the background, a scrape of furniture. "Shut up," Norse muttered. They assumed he was speaking to Abby.
"Civilization is a fraud," he resumed, his pontificating reminding Lewis of Mickey Moss. "It's a blip in time, a blemish on a million years of humanoid existence. Society is a fraud. They always fall, always break down. And when they do it comes down to individual survival. When something new is built in the ruins it's the strong individual, the visionary, the freethinker, who points the way. I followed the most fundamental of human instincts: survival. And they hounded me for it! So I came down to their little jewel, their farthest place, the place of night and hypothermia, to test social utopia. And you snapped like a cord in this cold."
"You wouldn't have survived thirty minutes by yourself, you deluded bastard," Pulaski muttered. There was no answer, of course.
"I hope you realize that you've made things far more terrible than I intended them to be," Norse went on. "I wasn't planning much more than an embarrassing psychological paper on station dysfunction, illustrated by depression and mistrust. But God had more in store for us, it seems: He planted an apple in Eden! Mickey was so greedy to get back his meteorite. And so pathetic at the end that he followed it, and me, right into the pit. He begged to be let out again. Let out? Was Lucifer let out? He fell from grace! He'd chosen his own fate! But the rest of you wouldn't stop. You wouldn't stop! First Adams, and then Cameron. It was you who turned on Buck Tyson, not me. You who mistrusted Lewis, not me. You who missed every clue and misplaced every doubt. I used Carl's candle to make a wax impression of Buck Tyson's knife locker lock. I didn't forge Lewis's name, I got him to write it for me. When I wondered how Lewis had escaped the dome, all I had to do was look down at the icicles stabbed into the snow, guess what he'd done, and find the rope to confirm it. I wanted to humiliate your little society, not destroy it. I'd made my point! But you wouldn't stop!" He took a breath.
They waited. He didn't mention Gabriella.
"So. At last it stops. How to end my little demonstration? Closing down an experiment can be as difficult as starting it. I think the best solution is that I leave, alone. I'm at my best alone. I'll give Miss Dixon here a final choice on her fate. She can save herself by coming with me or cast her lot with the morons. I'm indifferent either way."
"Let her go now so we can test your little experiment, tough guy," Pulaski said to the speaker. It was pointless. He was talking to a machine.
"As you saw, my telescope kit allowed me to smuggle down the necessary components of a gun," Norse went on blandly. "You might take me, sure, but I'd be sure to take more of you. Frankly, however, I think there's been enough violence. So this is what we're going to do. I need one hour. One hour to make my preparations! At the end of that time I'll commandeer the remaining Spryte. I'll take my chances on the polar plateau, just as Tyson did. And if you go telling stories to our Vostok friends, well, let's just say that I have a story of my own prepared. I can be quite convincing."
No one bothered to answer this time. They were depleted, defeated by their own mistakes. Spirit had been sucked out of them. It was difficult for them to even look at Lewis, the innocent man they'd almost executed.
"I was the serpent, people, and when I came you had no individual strength to resist my temptation. Look around at those so-called friends of yours. You have none. You have none! You'll all despise each other the rest of your short, miserable lives! Lewis, look at the people who just tried to kill you! And then credit me the path to inner strength. You came ten thousand miles for a family. Which meant you came ten thousand miles for a mirage."
More noise in the background. Then: "Shut up! Shut up!" A long pause.
He resumed. "One hour. One hour and I'm out of your lives. Remain in the galley until I'm on my way. I see that galley door open and the agreement's off. Don't forget, I have Abby."
The intercom switched off.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
They sat in the galley in sick indecision, listening to the hum of the ventilation system and half expecting it to go off as the power died. If they hunted down and confronted Norse, they risked Abby. If they didn't go after him, they might risk themselves: How did they know the psychologist wasn't sabotaging the station? Yet they were emotionally depleted. After the near-disaster with Lewis, none had the stomach to sacrifice Abby for the group right now by confronting the psychopath. A showdown might prompt Norse to somehow not just shoot her, but damage the fragile machinery that kept them alive. Maybe it was safer to wait. Maybe he would simply keep his word and drive away.
It was a depressed silence, each of them profoundly alone, a cataloguing of misgivings and second guesses and confused doubts. Norse had robbed them of their own self-confidence. He'd drained them of purpose.
"I don't get it," Pulaski finally said. "How can a man hate all of us like that? Hate his own kind?"
Lewis was in no mood for philosophy. "Easy. By hating himself."
"And if he hates himself, why? What the hell did he do?"
"Who knows? I think he lost it completely when he strangled Gabriella. Before that maybe it's something he didn't do once. Something he's been trying to justify to himself."
"Justify by killing people."
"By getting us to act like the fools he thinks we are. Maybe we'll find out someday, if we get through this."
"It would have to be something pretty bad, wouldn't it? Something to really make you feel terrible about life?"
Lewis looked at the cook for a long time and then let his gaze drift around the room. Geller. Calhoun. Dana Andrews. Alexi Molotov. Accusers. Executioners. "Yes," he finally said. "Like tying an innocent man to a stake at the Pole." He couldn't hide the bitterness.
Everyone looked away.
He should have bit it back but Norse's taunting had hit home. Lewis was angry, sore, depleted. He'd lived, yes, but some vital part of him seemed to have gone: He felt that he'd died a little just by being strapped to that stake. He wondered if he'd ever get that part of himself back. Basic optimism. Trust.
He'd come looking for community and they'd been willing to dispose of him. The harder he'd tried, the worse things seemed to get. So here he was, the woman he was falling in love with in the hands of a madman, without a friend and without a future. Welcome to the Three Hundred Degree Club, buddy.
Sitting in a metal box, waiting like dumb poultry for their fate. That's what Norse would have predicted, wouldn't he?
Predicted that, at the end, none of them would be talking to each other.
He'd played with them.
What if he was still playing with them?
It was the first thought to jolt Lewis out of his depressed apathy. What was Norse's game now? They had nothing but the word of a killer that he'd ever let Abby go. That he wouldn't damage the station. There were, what? He counted. Seventeen of them. Abby, the eighteenth, and then Norse. Six dead, assuming Tyson had succumbed. And…
Where the hell was Pika?
The little man was so quiet he was easy to miss.
Lewis stood up, suddenly terribly concerned but not certain what he was concerned about. The lethargy! They had to shake it off! Norse was counting on it to give himself time to get away. Get away with Abby. Get away with… what?