The Ice Limit Read online

  As he stared at the fragment from outer space, he suddenly knew what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. But that had been years ago. Now, he tried to think as little about those idealistic days as possible. His eyes strayed to a locked briefcase on the passenger seat, which contained Nestor Masangkay's battered journal. He tried to think as little as possible about that, too.

  A light ahead turned green, and he made a turn into a narrow one-way street. This was the meat-packing district, perched at the uttermost edge of the West Village. Old loading docks yawned wide, filled with burly men manhandling carcasses in and out of trucks. Along the far side of the street, as if to take advantage of the proximity, was a crowd of restaurants with names like The Hog Pit and Uncle Billy's Backyard. It was the antithesis of the chrome-and-glass Park Avenue headquarters of Lloyd Holdings, from which he had just come. Nice place for a corporate presence, McFarlane thought, if you deal in pork-belly futures. He double-checked the scribbled address lying on his dashboard.

  He slowed, then guided the Land Rover to a stop on the far side of an especially decrepit loading dock. Killing the engine, he stepped into the meat-fragrant humidity and looked around. Halfway down the block a garbage truck idled, grinding busily away at its load. Even from this distance, he caught a whiff of the green juice that dribbled off its rear bumper. It was a stench unique to New York City garbage trucks; once smelled, never forgotten.

  He took a deep breath. The meeting hadn't begun yet, and already he felt himself tense, the defensiveness rising. He wondered how much Lloyd had told Glinn about himself and Masangkay. It didn't really matter; what they didn't know they'd learn soon enough. Gossip moved even faster than the impactors he hunted.

  He pulled a heavy portfolio from the back of the Land Rover, then closed and locked the door. Before him rose the grimy brick façade of a fin de siècle building, a massive structure taking up most of the block. His eye traveled up a dozen stories, coming to rest at the words PRICE & PRICE PORK PACKING INC. The paint was almost effaced by time. Although the windows on the lower floors had been bricked over, he could see fresh glass and chrome winking on the upper stories.

  The only entrance seemed to be a brace of metal loading doors. He pressed a buzzer at their side and waited. After a few seconds there came a faint click and the doors parted, moving noiselessly on oiled bearings.

  He stepped into a poorly lit corridor that ended in another set of steel doors, much newer, flanked with security keypads and a retinal scanning unit. As he approached, one of the doors opened and a small, dark, heavily muscled man in an MIT warm-up suit came forward, an athletic spring to his step. Tightly curled black hair, fringed with white at the temples, covered his head. He had dark, intelligent eyes and an easygoing air that was very uncorporate.

  "Dr. McFarlane?" the man asked in a friendly growl, extending a hairy hand. "I'm Manuel Garza, construction engineer for EES." His grip was surprisingly gentle.

  "Is this your corporate headquarters?" McFarlane asked with a wry smile.

  "We prefer our anonymity."

  "Well, at least you don't have to go far for a steak."

  Garza laughed gruffly. "Not if you like it rare."

  McFarlane followed him through the open door. He found himself in a cavernous room, brilliantly lit with halogen lights. Acres of steel tables stood in long, neat rows. On them rested numerous tagged objects—piles of sand, rocks, melted jet engines, ragged pieces of metal. Technicians in lab coats moved around. One passed him, cradling a piece of asphalt in white-gloved hands as if it were a Ming vase.

  Garza followed McFarlane's gaze around the room, and then glanced at his watch. "We've got a few minutes. Care for a tour?"

  "Why not? I always love a good junkyard."

  Garza threaded his way among the tables, nodding to various technicians. He paused at an unusually long table, covered with twisted black lumps of rock. "Recognize these?"

  "That's pahoehoe. There's a nice example of aa. Some volcanic bombs. You guys building a volcano?"

  "No," said Garza. "Just blew one apart." He nodded to a scale model of a volcanic island at the far end of the table, complete with a city, canyons, forests, and mountains. He reached beneath the lip of the table and pressed a button. There was a brief whirr, a groaning noise, and the volcano began to belch lava, spilling in sinuous flows down its flanks and creeping toward the scale city. "The lava is specially formulated methyl cellulose."

  "Beats my old N-scale railroad."

  "A Third World government needed our assistance. A dormant volcano had erupted on one of their islands. A lake of lava was building up in the caldera and was about to bust out and head straight for this city of sixty thousand. Our job was to save the city."

  "Funny, I didn't read anything in the news about this."

  "It wasn't funny at all. The government wasn't going to evacuate the city. It's a minor offshore banking haven. Mostly drug money."

  "Maybe you should have let it burn, like Sodom and Gomorrah."

  "We're an engineering firm, not God. We don't concern ourselves with the moral status of paying clients."

  McFarlane laughed, feeling himself relax a little. "So how'd you stop it?"

  "We blocked those two valleys, there, with landslides. Then we punched a hole in the volcano with high explosives and blasted an overflow channel on the far side. We used a significant portion of the world's nonmilitary supply of Semtex in the process. All the lava went into the sea, creating almost a thousand acres of new real estate for our client in the process. That didn't quite pay our fee, of course. But it helped."

  Garza moved on. They passed a series of tables covered with bits of fuselage and burnt electronics. "Jet crash," said Garza, "terrorist bomb." He dismissed it with a quick wave of his hand.

  Reaching the far side of the room, Garza opened a small white door and led McFarlane down a series of sterile corridors. McFarlane could hear the hush of air scrubbers; the clatter of keys; a strange, regular thudding sound from far below his feet.

  Then Garza opened another door and McFarlane stopped short in surprise. The space ahead of him was vast at least six stories tall and two hundred feet deep. Around the edges of the room was a forest of high-tech equipment: banks of digital cameras, category-5 cabling, huge "green screens" for visual effects backdrops. Along one wall sat half a dozen Lincoln convertibles of early sixties vintage, long and slabsided. Inside each car sat four carefully dressed dummies, two in the front and two in the rear.

  The center of the enormous space was taken up by a model of a city intersection, complete down to working stoplights. Building façades of various heights rose on either side. A groove ran down the asphalted road, and a pulley system within it was fixed to the front bumper of yet another Lincoln, its four dummies in careful place. An undulating greensward of sculpted AstroTurf lined the roadway. The roadway ended in an overpass, and there stood Eli Glinn himself, bullhorn in one hand.

  McFarlane stepped forward in Garza's wake, halting at last on the pavement in the artificial shade of some plastic bushes. Something about the scene looked strangely familiar.

  On the overpass, Glinn raised the bullhorn. "Thirty seconds," he called out.

  "Syncing to digital feed," came a disembodied voice. "Sound off."

  There was a flurry of responses. "Green across the board," the voice said.

  "Everyone clear," said Glinn. "Power up and let's go." Activity seemed to come from everywhere. There was a hum and the pulley system moved forward, pulling the limo along the direction of the groove. Technicians stood behind the digital cameras, recording the progress.

  There was the crack of an explosion nearby, then two more in quick succession. McFarlane ducked instinctively, recognizing the sound as gunfire. Nobody else seemed alarmed, and he looked in the direction of the noise. It seemed to have come from some bushes to his right. Peering closely into the foliage, he could make out two large rifles, mounted on steel pedestals. Their stocks had been sawn off, and leads
ran from the triggers.

  Suddenly, he knew where he was. "Dealey Plaza," he murmured.

  Garza smiled.

  McFarlane stepped onto the AstroTurf and peered closer at the two rifles. Following the direction of their barrels, he noticed that the rear right dummy was leaning to one side, its head shattered.

  Glinn approached the side of the car, inspected the dummies, then murmured to someone beside him, pointing out bullet trajectories. As he stepped away and came toward McFarlane, the technicians crowded forward, taking pictures and jotting down data.

  "Welcome to my museum, Dr. McFarlane," he said, shaking his hand. "I'll thank you to step off our grassy knoll, however. That rifle still holds several live rounds." He turned toward Garza. "It's a perfect match. We've cracked this one. No need for additional run-throughs."

  "So this is the project you're just wrapping up?" McFarlane asked.

  Glinn nodded. "Some new evidence turned up recently that needed further analysis."

  "And what have you found?"

  Glinn gave him a cool glance. "Perhaps you'll read about it in the New York Times someday, Dr. McFarlane. But I doubt it. For now, let me just say that I have a greater respect for conspiracy theorists than I did a month ago."

  "Very interesting. This must've cost a fortune. Who paid for it?"

  There was a conspicuous silence.

  "What does this have to do with engineering?" McFarlane finally asked.

  "Everything. EES was a pioneer in the science of failure analysis, and half our work is still in that area. Understanding how things fail is the most important component in solving engineering problems."

  "But this... ?" McFarlane jerked his hand in the direction of the re-created plaza.

  Glinn smiled elusively. "Assassination of a president is a rather major failure, don't you think? Not to mention the botched investigation that followed. Besides, our work in analyzing failures such as this helps us maintain our perfect engineering record."

  "Perfect?"

  "That's right. EES has never failed. Never. It is our trademark." He gestured to Garza, and they moved back toward the doorway. "It's not enough to figure out how to do something. You must also analyze every possible path to failure. Only then can you be certain of success. That is why we have never failed. We do not sign a contract until we know we can succeed. And then we guarantee success. There are no disclaimers in our contracts."

  "Is that why you haven't signed the Lloyd Museum contract yet?"

  "Yes. And it's why you're here today." Glinn removed a heavy, beautifully engraved gold watch from his pocket, checked the time, and slid it back. Then he turned the door handle briskly and stepped through. "Come on. The others are waiting."

  7: EES Headquarters

  1:00 P.M.

  A SHORT ASCENT in an industrial elevator, a mazelike journey through white hallways, and McFarlane found himself ushered into a conference room. Low-ceilinged and austerely furnished, it was as understated as Palmer Lloyd's had been lavish. There were no windows, no prints on the walls—only a circular table made out of an exotic wood, and a darkened screen at the far end of the room.

  Two people were seated at the table, staring at him, evaluating him with their eyes. The closest was a black-haired young woman, dressed in Farmer Brown-style bib overalls. She was not exactly pretty, but her brown eyes were quick and had glimmers of gold in their depths. They lingered over him in a sardonic way that McFarlane found unsettling. She was of average size, slender, unremarkable, with a healthy tan browning her cheekbones and nose. She had very long hands with longer fingers, currently busy cracking a peanut into a large ashtray on the table in front of her. She looked like an overgrown tomboy.

  The man beyond her was dressed in a white lab coat. He was blade thin, with a badly razor-burned face. One eyelid seemed to droop slightly, giving the eye a jocular look, as if it was about to wink. But there was nothing jocular about the rest of the man: he looked humorless, pinched, as tense as catgut. He fidgeted restlessly with a mechanical pencil, turning it over and over.

  Glinn nodded. "This is Eugene Rochefort, manager of engineering. He specializes in one-of-a-kind engineering designs."

  Rochefort accepted the compliment with a purse of his lips, the pressure briefly turning them white.

  "And this is Dr. Rachel Amira. She started out as a physicist with us, but we soon began to exploit her rare gifts as a mathematician. If you have a problem, she will give you an equation. Rachel, Gene, please welcome Dr. Sam McFarlane. Meteorite hunter."

  They nodded in reply. McFarlane felt their eyes on him as he busied himself with opening the portfolio case and distributing folders. He felt the tension return.

  Glinn accepted his folder. "I'd like to go over the general outline of the problem, and then open the floor for discussion."

  "Sure thing," said McFarlane, settling into a chair.

  Glinn glanced around, his gray eyes unreadable. Then he withdrew a sheaf of notes from inside his jacket. "First, some general information. The target area is a small island, known as Isla Desolación, off the southern tip of South America in the Cape Horn islands. It lies in Chilean national territory. It is about eight miles long and three miles wide."

  He paused and looked around.

  "Our client, Palmer Lloyd, insists upon moving ahead with the utmost possible speed. He is concerned about possible competition from other museums. That means working in the depths of the South American winter. In the Cape Horn islands, temperatures in July range from above freezing to as much as thirty below zero, Fahrenheit. Cape Horn is the southernmost major landmass outside of Antarctica itself, more than a thousand miles closer to the South Pole than Africa's Cape of Good Hope. During the target month, we can expect five hours of daylight.

  "Isle Desolación is not a hospitable place. It is barren, windswept, mostly volcanic with some Tertiary sedimentary basins. The island is bisected by a large snowfield, and there is an old volcanic plug toward the north end. The tides range from thirty to thirty-five vertical feet, and a reversing six-knot current sweeps the island group."

  "Lovely conditions for a picnic," Garza muttered.

  "The closest human settlement is on Navarino Island, in the Beagle Channel, about forty miles north of the Cape Horn islands. It is a Chilean naval base called Puerto Williams, with a small mestizo Indian shantytown attached to it."

  "Puerto Williams?" Garza said. "I thought this was Chile we were talking about."

  "The entire area was originally mapped by Englishmen." Glinn placed the notes on the table. "Dr. McFarlane, I understand you've been in Chile."

  McFarlane nodded.

  "What can you tell us about their navy?"

  "Charming fellows."

  There was a silence. Rochefort, the engineer, began tapping his pencil on the table in an irritated tattoo. The door opened, and a waiter began serving sandwiches and coffee.

  "They belligerently patrol the coastal waters," McFarlane went on, "especially in the south, along the border with Argentina. The two countries have a long-running border dispute, as you probably know."

  "Can you add anything to what I've said about the climate?"

  "I once spent time in Punta Arenas in late fall. Blizzards, sleet storms, and fog are common. Not to mention williwaws."

  "Williwaws?" Rochefort asked in a tremulous, reed-thin voice.

  "Basically a microburst of wind. It lasts only a minute or two, but it can peak at about a hundred and fifty knots."

  "What about decent anchorages?" Garza asked.

  "I've been told there are no decent anchorages. In fact, from what I've heard, there's no good holding ground for a ship anywhere in the Cape Horn islands."

  "We like a challenge," said Garza.

  Glinn collected the papers, folded them carefully, and returned them to his jacket pocket. Somehow, McFarlane felt the man had already known the answers to his own questions.

  "Clearly," Glinn said, "we have a complex problem, even without co
nsidering the meteorite. But let's consider it now. Rachel, I believe you have some questions about the data?"

  "I have a comment about the data." Amira's eyes glanced at a folder before her, then hovered on McFarlane with faint amusement. She had a superior attitude that McFarlane found annoying.

  "Yes?" said McFarlane.

  "I don't believe a word of it."

  "What exactly don't you believe?"

  She waved her hand over his portfolio. "You're the meteorite expert, right? Then you know why no one has ever found a meteorite larger than sixty tons. Any larger, and the force of impact causes the meteorite to shatter. Above two hundred tons, meteorites vaporize from the impact. So how could a monster like this still be intact?"

  "I can't—" McFarlane began.

  But Amira interrupted. "The second thing is that iron meteorites rust. It only takes about five thousand years to rust even the biggest one into a pile of scale. So if it somehow did survive the impact, why is it still there? How do you explain this geological report that says it fell thirty million years ago, was buried in sediment, and is only now being exposed through erosion?"

  McFarlane settled back in his chair. She waited, raising her eyebrows quizzically.

  "Have you ever read Sherlock Holmes?" McFarlane asked with a smile of his own.

  Amira rolled her eyes. "You're not going to quote that old saw about how once you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth—are you?"

  McFarlane shot a surprised glance at her. "Well, isn't it true?"

  Amira smirked her triumph, while Rochefort shook his head.

  "So, Dr. McFarlane," Amira said brightly, "is that your source of scientific authority? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?"