Hive by Tim Curran Read Free Book Online

offing here. There were wives and children, sisters and brothers and parents. When they didn’t hear from their people at Kharkhov, they were going to start expecting the very worst.
    And Hayes was with them, because he already expected the worse. He’d felt it from the moment he’d stepped off the LC-130 Hercules at Kharkhov Station six weeks ago and, day by day, it had been growing like a tumor in his belly . . . that near-certainty that things were going to get dark and ugly this winter. But he hadn’t mentioned that to anyone. They would have thought he was crazy.
    Sharkey folded her arms. “I don’t use the Internet much and I don’t really have anyone I keep in contact with, so I guess I’ll survive better than most.”
    Hayes felt something swell up in his throat. He tried to swallow it down. “What about . . . what about your husband?”
    Sharkey looked at him, then looked away. And there it was again, that barely concealed tightening around her mouth and eyes that was akin to bitterness. “We generally don’t keep in close contact.” She uttered a small laugh. A very small one. “Besides, where he is, out in the jungle, the Internet basically consists of knocking coconuts together.”
    Hayes did not comment on that.
    He was divorced, no children. He had a sister, Liza, in Des Moines who was a Jehovah’s Witness. Last winter at the Amundsen-Scott Station they’d started emailing back and forth. But that had come crashing to a halt when he admitted to her that he did not believe in God and never had, asked her point-blank how she’d gotten mixed up in a cult like the Jo-Ho’s.
    So, like Sharkey, he was pretty much alone.
    LaHune had sited security reasons for the blackout.
Security reasons.
That was his explanation and he refused to elaborate on it. And you could count on LaHune to keep his word. No amount of ass-kissing or sweet-talking would thaw him. Better luck trying to get inside a nun’s habit than that cast-iron lockbox LaHune called a skull.
    â€œDid he say anything?” Hayes asked her. “I mean, shit, people are already wigged out down here. They don’t need this, too. Did you try the medical approach? The psychological benefits and all that shit?”
    Sharkey nodded again. “I tried everything short of a lapdance, Jimmy. It’s a no-go. He told me that when he receives clearance from the NSF bigwigs, he’ll give us our Internet and all the rest back. But not until. The National Science Foundation rules.”
    â€œClearance? Clearance for what?”
    She shrugged. “He’s very cloak-and-dagger about the whole thing. But I get the feeling it’s because of Gates’ discovery and the things he was saying. The NSF doesn’t want that stuff getting out, not yet. Not until they’ve had time to think over how they’re going to handle all the questions they’re going to get barraged with. This is big stuff, Jimmy. You’ve got to know that.”
    â€œI do know it, Doc. But, shit, I’m almost a thousand in the hole with those ringers at McMurdo. I mean, damn.”
    Sharkey said she thought that part of it might be the flack the NSF was going to take, the intimations that everyone at Kharkhov was cracking up. Cabin fever.
    â€œWe
are
cracking up for chrissake,” Hayes said. “This whole goddamn winter has a real bad smell to it, Doc. I’ve had a bad feeling since the planes left and the snow started blowing like hell. A real bad feeling and don’t you dare laugh at me.”
    â€œI’m not laughing,” she said.
    He shrugged. “Like I said the other day, those goddamn mummies are like some kind of catalyst here, a big ugly spoon to stir the pot. And now that pot is all stirred-up and the soup is smelling like shit. If that makes any sense.”
    She smiled, seemed to understand.
    â€œI guess what I’m saying, Doc, is that LaHune