“You asked if you could do anything for us,” Usuguk said. Marshall noticed, to his surprise, that the man spoke with a completely uninflected accent.

“Yes,” Sully replied, equally surprised.

“There is something important you can do-very important. You can leave here. Today. And don’t come back.”

This response left Sully speechless.

“Why?” Marshall asked after a moment.

The man pointed toward Mount Fear. “That is a place of evil. Your presence here is a danger to all of us.”

“Evil?” Sully repeated, recovering. “You mean, the volcano? It’s extinct now, dead.”

The Tunit glanced at him, the lines of his face thrown into sharp relief by the setting sun. It was a mask of bitter anxiety.

“What evil?” Marshall asked.

Usuguk declined to elaborate. “You should not be here,” he said. “You are intruding where you have no business. And you have made the ancient ones angry. Very angry.”

“Ancient ones?” Sully asked.

“Normally they are”-Usuguk searched for the word-“benevolent.” He made a semicircular movement with one hand, palm open. “In the old days, all the men here, the ones with guns and uniforms, stayed inside the metal walls they built. Even today, the soldiers never stray into the forbidden place.”

“I don’t know about any forbidden place,” Gonzalez rumbled. “But I keep my keister inside, where it’s nice and warm.”

Usuguk was still staring at Sully. “You are different. You have stepped on ground where no living man should tread. And now the ancient ones are angry, more so than in any memory of my people. Their wrath paints the sky with blood. The heavens cry out with the pain, like a woman in labor.”

“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘crying out,’” Sully said. “But the strange color of the night sky is simply the aurora borealis. The northern lights. They’re caused by solar winds entering the earth’s magnetic field. Admittedly the color is rather unusual, but surely you’ve noticed them before.” Sully was acting the kindly paterfamilias now, smiling, patronizing, like a man explaining something to a young child. “Gases in the atmosphere give off excess energy in the form of light. Different gases emit photons of different wavelengths.”

If this explanation made any difference to Usuguk, he didn’t let on. “As soon as we saw how angry the spirit folk had become, we started on our way here. We have been walking-no rest, no food-ever since.”

“All the more reason for you to come inside,” Sully said. “We’ll give you food, something hot to drink.”

“Why is the mountain forbidden?” Marshall asked.

The shaman turned to him. “Can you not understand? You have heard my warning. You now refuse to heed it? The mountain is a place of darkness. You must leave.”

“We can’t leave,” Sully said. “Not yet. But in a few weeks, two or three, we’ll be on our way. And until then, I give you my word that-”

But the shaman turned away, toward the Tunit women. “Anyok lubyar tussarnek,” he said. One of them began to cry loudly. Turning back, Usuguk looked at each of the scientists in turn, his face filled with such a mixture of sorrow and fear that it curled the hairs on Marshall ’s neck. Then, pulling a small pouch from his parka, the elder dipped a finger inside and daubed a number of signs in the frozen tundra with a dark liquid too viscous to be anything but blood. And finally-intoning something in his own language with a low and prayerful voice-he turned away and joined the others already retreating across the permafrost.

For the two days that followed, a frigid wind blew out of the north, bringing clear skies and bitter temperatures. At 11:00 AM on the third day, Marshall, Sully, and Faraday left the base and walked across the frozen plain that stretched south endlessly from Mount Fear. It was a perfect morning, the sky a dome of arctic blue unblemished by clouds. Beneath their feet, the permafrost was as hard as concrete. The temperature hovered around zero degrees Fahrenheit, and, temporarily at least, the glacier had stopped its dreadful cracking and groaning.

Their thoughts were interrupted by a sudden low drone, strangely attenuated by the arctic chill. A speck appeared on the southern horizon. As they watched, it slowly resolved into a helicopter, flying low toward them.

Faraday sniffed with displeasure. “I still think we should have waited a few days. Why did we need to phone it in so quickly?”

“That was the deal,” Sully replied, eyeing the approaching chopper. “If we’d stalled, they’d have known.”

Faraday mumbled something, clearly unconvinced.

Sully frowned at the biologist. “I’ve said it before. Make a deal with the devil, don’t complain about the consequences.”

Nobody replied. Nobody needed to.

Northern Massachusetts University didn’t pretend to be in the first rank of educational institutions. With grant money in short supply, the university had resorted to a relatively new tactic: securing expedition financing from a media conglomerate in return for exclusive rights and access. While global warming wasn’t particularly sexy, it was topical. Terra Prime had bankrolled the team as it had half a dozen others-a group studying native medicines in the Amazon jungle, another excavating the potential grave of King Arthur-in hopes of snagging at least one science documentary worth developing. For weeks now, Marshall had kept his fingers crossed, hoping they could finish up their research and leave without attracting attention. Those hopes were now dashed.

The scientists drew together as the helicopter approached, circled over the camp, then settled onto a relatively level section of ground, rotors beating hard against the air. The passenger door opened and a woman jumped out. She was dressed in a leather jacket and jeans. Long black hair spilled over her collar, dancing lightly in the chopper’s wake. She was slim and perhaps thirty, and as she turned to reach for her luggage, Marshall caught sight of a shapely derriere.

“Nice-looking devil,” he murmured.

Now the woman was hoisting her bags and heading toward them, ducking beneath the rotors. She turned to give the pilot a wave of thanks; he gave a thumbs-up and, goosing the engine, quickly lifted off and banked sharply southward, hurrying back the way he’d come.

The scientists stepped forward to meet her. Sully pulled off his glove and quickly extended his hand. “I’m Gerard Sully,” he said. “Climatologist and team leader. This is Evan Marshall and Wright Faraday.”

The woman shook their hands in turn. Marshall found her grasp brief and professional. “And I’m Kari Ekberg, field producer for Terra Prime. Congratulations on your discovery.”

Sully took one bag, Marshall the other. “Producer?” Sully asked. “So you’re in charge?”

Ekberg laughed. “Hardly. You’ll find that on a set like this, everybody with a clipboard is a producer.”

“Set?” Marshall repeated.

“That’s what it is to us, anyway.” She stopped to look carefully around, as if scouring the landscape for drama.

“You’re a little underdressed for the Federal Wilderness Zone,” Marshall said.

“So I see. I spent most of my life in Savannah. The coldest place I’ve ever been is New York City in February. I’ll have the crew bring me up something from Mountain Hardwear.”

“Underdressed or not, you’re the best-looking thing that’s ever happened to this base,” Sully said.

Ekberg stopped studying the landscape to glance at him, her eyes traveling from head to toe. She didn’t reply, but she smiled slightly, as if in that glance she’d taken the measure of his person.

Sully colored slightly, cleared his throat. “Shall we get back, then? Careful where you step-the ground around here is riddled with old lava tubes.”

He led the way, discussing the morning’s research with Faraday. Ekberg wasn’t in charge, and she apparently wasn’t receptive to his clumsy flirtations; that was sufficient to put an end to his interest. Ekberg and Marshall brought up the rear.