Whiteout!

I thought about that. Was I reading more into all this than could possibly be there? Or was Allen coming to meet me? I looked at his face. It was calm, the dark brown skin uncreased, smooth on the planes and curves of his face. Allen was the senior non-commissioned officer, very senior, high-quality, but.., but non-commissioned. Experienced, though, and knowing the rule-book backwards. I realized suddenly that it was possible this conversation was even more difficult for him than for me. He was outranked by a lot of men at Camp Hundred and all of them would react with hostility at the merest suggestion . . . No, there had to be another approach, an oblique one. And it was up to me, the civilian, to make it. But what if I were mistaken ? What if Allen weren't moving to meet me, and all these supposed undertones were part of my paranoid imaginings ? In that case, I thought, he'd merely think I was a little nuttier than he'd thought in the first place.

But how to start? The atmosphere in the little office felt electric, but perhaps only I felt it. Allen still looked totally unruffled, except that there seemed to be something in his eyes, some gleam of - of what ? I said, 'What's tonight's movie, Mr Allen?'

'No decision yet, sir.'

'What,' I asked, 'do you have in stock ?'

He looked at me for a moment, then rose and went to a filing cabinet. 'I have a list. If you've got some kind of request, I'll do what I can.'

'I'm a Bogart fancier,' I said. 'Got any Bogey pictures?'

He looked at the list. 'African Queen, Casablanca.'

'I've seen them both too many times,' I said. I hesitated, knowing the hesitation would add emphasis when I spoke, but unable for a moment to force out the words. Then I made myself say, 'There's one performance I liked best of all.'

'What was that, sir?'

'Captain Queeg,' I said. 'In The Caine Mutiny.'

Allen gave me a glance. 'Guess we don't have that picture, sir.'

'You've seen it, though?'

'No.'

I pushed on quickly. 'Oddly enough,' I said, 'it's about what we were talking about. The responsibilities of command in dangerous situations.'

Did Allen's dark face soften a little? He said, 'I didn't see the movie, sir, but I did read the novel. As I recall, it was more about the responsibilities of subordinates.'

'None of whom,' I said, 'showed up very well atthe court martial.'

'Yeah, that's right.' He was non-committal again.

Well, I thought, it was early days. Barney was benign and it was perfectly possible nothing was wrong and that he was merely playing psychological games. We'd all know soon enough if anything was seriously wrong with him. And that would be time enough. I said, 'Breakfast time,' and left. I walked out of the command trench and into Main Street on my way to the mess hall. The lighting along the huge principal trench was down, the snow walls were grey rather than white, and the few men who moved along it looked dulled and depressed. In the mess hall, too, the atmosphere was heavy and voices low. On the night of my arrival - the only night, come to think of it, when things had been fairly normal at Hundred - there had been a kind of boisterous noise, a defiant good humour. There was none of that now. I sat at a table with one of the scientific officers, a captain named Vale, to whom I'd been introduced one night in the officers' club. Like most of the other scientists at Hundred, he worked for CRREL, the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory of the United States Army Terrestrial Sciences Centre. Captain Vale was not pleased with me, he said.

'Why not?'

'You made it to Belvoir, so I hear?'

'In my little hovercraft,' I nodded.

'Wish I'd known you were going. I'd have hitched a ride out.'

'Your tour over?'

He smiled. 'No tour's ever over till you make it out. Don't worry, I'm used to it. I been stuck a few times before.'

'For long?'

'Six weeks up here, one time. But in the other place it can be longer.'

'What other place?'

'The Antarctic. I've done two tours on Deep Freeze down there. One time we were three months overdue.'

'Depressing,' I said.

'It's okay if you can work. If you can't, the Heebies get you.'

'The Heebies," I said, 'seem to be very much present.'

He glanced round the mess hall. A scattering of men were sitting over coffee or breakfast, some talking quietly, most silent. He said, 'I've known worse.'

'Here?'

'Hell, no. In huts in the Antarctic' He gave a rueful grin. 'These guys are too used to the good life. They're over-reacting.'

'I think,' I said, 'that I'm over-reacting too.'

'Sure you are. So am I, really. So's everybody. First time in the cold regions ?'

'Yes.'

'You'll find it grows on you. Two, three years, you won't want to be anywhere else.'

'You do,' I pointed out. 'You want to be at Belvoir.'

'I want,' he said, 'to be in Virginia. But when I get there, I'll want to be right back here.'

'So all this doesn't worry you ?'

'Nope. Can't say it does."

'Morale's low,' I said.

'It'll lift.'

'A chapter of accidents.'

'It'll end.'

I laughed. 'You're an optimistic fatalist?'

'I'm a glaciologist,' Vale said. 'In my game you get to take the long view.'

It was a reassuring little conversation. Vale was a quiet, competent man who'd seen it all. If he wasn't worried, why should I be worried? But the memory of Barney Smales nagged at me. I said, 'The Heebies

- how do they show?'

'I'm no psychologist.'

'Even so?'

'Well . . .' he hesitated. 'People start going flat. They get obsessive about little things and ignore the big ones. Then that stops and they sit and stare at their boots or something hours at a stretch. Like I say, I'm no psychologist, but I'd say it's close to classical depression.' He rose, slapped my shoulder, and added,

'Meantime, the coffee's hot, there's booze in the club, soft beds and movies. Don't worry about it. You'll live.'

I watched him go, conscious of my own confusion. Vale was so manifestly confident, his confidence based on long experience, that it was absurd to doubt him. Indeed I didn't doubt him. But along with all the reassurance, he'd handed me one disquieting thought. People, he'd said, became obsessive about little things. And a ballpoint pen was little enough.

Chapter 10

We all have our neuroses; everybody's a little nuts in some direction or another. But I've always liked to think of myself as reasonably sane. I don't feel uncontrollable urges to murder people who step in front of me in bus queues and I don't turn into Frankenstein's monster once I get behind a car wheel; by and large I sleep undisturbed by conscience. But after a few days at Hundred I was beginning to entertain some doubts about myself. Walking away from the mess hall after my talk with Captain Vale, I was feeling more or less reassured. I remember telling myself inside my head to stop trying to make patterns out of random events and concentrate on the TK4 and the urgent need to sell the damn thing to the American gentlemen. Little nod of determination for my own benefit; conscious setting of jaw. And then the conversation with Master Sergeant Allen came back, with all its doubts, hesitations and possible overtones, and I realized that my mental state was changing by the second like a well-shaken kaleidoscope. Every time I talked to anybody, damn it, I took on a new viewpoint. One man said, don't worry, and I told myself not to worry. Another was mildly enigmatic and I started looking for the puzzle inside the enigma. Barney Smales was polite but withdrawn and I imagined . . . The hell with it, I decided. It was their business, not mine. If the United States Army was having its troubles, at least it was equipped to handle them ; I had a job of my own to do and at the moment there seemed no likelihood of its getting done. The weather was lousy up top and apparently relentless. I'd been told before I left England that there should be a few days within the following four weeks when the TK4 could give performance demonstrations. Past experience and weather records said so. But apart from the fast runs to and from Camp Belvoir there'd been no opportunity at all for me to demonstrate what she could do. Agreed that she'd done all that had been asked of her; the trouble was that nobody had seen her in action, and performance demonstrations, by definition, need witnesses; more important, they need witnesses who are going to influence the great decision to buy or not to buy. I'd set off intending to give the TK.4 a swift once-over-lightly, but the weather office was on the way. I decided I might as well go there first.