Dark Winter Page 3

  “Observations of what?”

  “Whatever goes on.”

  Lewis shook his head, bemused. “I heard the power was out.”

  “Somebody goofed, which was great for me because it injected a variable.” Norse smiled. “It’s like a lab where I didn’t have to build the maze. I was planning a briefer visit but I got delayed in New Zealand and then the medic, Nurse Nancy, said she could use some help over the winter. I had a sabbatical leave, an opportunity to observe...the fates conspire, no?”

  “So that’s what to blame.”

  “Yes, destiny,” Norse saying what Lewis had just thought. “Destiny and freewill. A little of both, I think. And we’re the two newcomers here, you and me. Right?”

  “I guess so.”

  Norse nodded. “So, Jed. I want to be your first friend.”

  *********

  Lewis met most of the others at dinner, a confusing blur of fresh faces. Twelve scientists and technicians and fourteen support workers to keep them alive. Lena Jindrova, their greenhouse grad student, was the youngest at twenty-three. The oldest was the man Jed had been quietly sent by Sparco to meet, sixty-four-year-old Michael Mortimer Moss. The astrophysicist wasn’t in the galley and no one seemed surprised.

  “Mickey Mouse is determining the fate of the universe,” an astronomer named Harrison Adams told Lewis when he asked. “Far too important to eat with we mortals. So he takes Twinky-type crap out to the Dark Side and broods, the god on Olympus. It will all sound ennobling in his autobiography.”

  “Mickey Mouse?”

  “Nickname,” Adams chewed. “We call him that behind his back because he’s pretentious. Not a bad guy, really, but the Saint Michael stuff gets a little old when you have to work with him. Although I will concede, he’s the quintessential OAE.”

  “OAE?”

  “Old Antarctic Explorer. Decades of Ice Time.”

  “Jim Sparco knows him,” Lewis said. “Seems to admire him. Told me I should meet him.”

  “Yes, you should. Mickey Moss built this base. He made it all possible, as he’ll remind you at every opportunity. But Jim Sparco doesn’t have to hear those tiresome reminders, like I do. Or compete with him for grant money, like Carl Mendoza does. Or put up with his bullying, like our dear ineffectual station manager Rod Cameron does. Or jump to his orders, like our G.A.s do.”

  “Someone else used that. G.A., I mean.”

  “General Assignment. Assistant. Grunt. Serf. Supporter. Except you never find one when you need one. They’re the people who really run this place. It’s like officers and non-coms. We outrank them in everything except what really counts.”

  “I detect some worldly cynicism.”

  “You detect polar realism. You’ve joined a family, Jed, and like all families ours has some history.”

  “Am I going to regret it?”

  “Not if you fit in.”

  Jed got some food, taking a tray and nodding at the cook, Pulaski. Wade was being helped by a plain but friendly woman named Linda Brown. She looked at the tiny helpings on his plate and laughed. “First night fast.” She patted her ample hips. “Even I remember. Dimly.”

  He took his meager meal and sat down. If Adams seemed a bit sour, the rest seemed to be laughing and joking. Everyone was exclaiming about the shipment of fresh food. Lettuce! Tangerines! There was a vigor to the group, a buzz of energy and camaraderie that Lewis found appealing. They were excited at the departure of the last plane, which marked the true start of winter. Yet there was also a social sorting as they ate, he noticed: four of the women together in apparent defense against male attention, other females mixed casually with the men , scientists tended to congregate at one table, maintenance personnel at another. Those at Lewis’ table made jokes about his pallor. They remembered what arrival was like.

  “When do I stop being the fingie?” he asked, knowing full well that no one newer was coming until October.

  “When you’re so damn cold that your face is beginning to frostbite, your balls have shriveled to peas and your hands feel like shovels,” an astronomer named Carl Mendoza told him.

  “I think I’ve got an inside job.”

  “I know what you do. Wait until you commute to work.”

  “But you get acclimated, right?”

  “You get frozen so many times you’re incapable of thaw.” Mendoza pointed with his head. “Like our Russian aurora expert.”

  “What cold?” Alexi Molotov said, reaching for the butter.

  “Or when you join the Three Hundred Degree Club,” said the medic, Nancy Hodge. She was in her late 40s, a thin and once-pretty woman with the kind of lines that suggested she’d seen a little too much of life. Her welcoming smile had a twist to it. No ring, but a white mark where one had been.

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ll see.”

  The others were excited about the fresh food, loud about their plans for the winter, and excited by the new responsibility of being cut off. Lewis picked at his own food but as he tired he realized he couldn’t fully share the mood. He was exhausted from his journey. In his weariness the crowd became cloying and the galley air hot and steamy. His appetite deserted him and he couldn’t concentrate. The plan after the meal was to watch “The Thing,” a perennial Polar ritual.

  “It is this American movie about an outer space being infecting the bodies of Polar scientists and killing them, one by one,” Molotov summarized with relish. “It is very funny. They fight back with guns and flame throwers. Boom! Boom! Yet this -” he held up a butter knife - “is as wicked as it gets at real Pole.” He laughed. “Everywhere else in life your body is taken over, by bosses, by advertisers, by government, by nagging wife. Here, no.”

  “Yet you watch it anyway.”

  “It is, what you call it...” He made a squeezing motion on his arm with his fingers.

  “Inoculation,” Hodge said.

  “Yes! Yes! Inoculation against the fear. The scare of being left here, for the winter. You know? The veterans know all the lines by heart. You will see. It is lots of fun.”

  But Lewis was so weary he felt in danger of falling into his plate of food. The thought of enduring a movie appalled him. After embarrassing himself twice with dull responses that made him sound like a half-wit, he finally excused himself to bed.

  The others nodded without surprise. It took time.

  “If you wake up and you are the last one left,” Alexi called after him, “don’t be surprised. Then you know the outer space being, the creature - it is you.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lewis’ sleep was ragged, his body periodically jerking awake as he gasped for breath. Each time it did so he’d have to roll out of bed to urinate, ridding himself of bloat. By morning his soup can was full and his breathing was easier. He felt his body beginning to adjust, his red blood cells multiplying, but when he went to the galley all he wanted for breakfast was toast and coffee. The construction worker sitting next to him looked at his plate with disbelief.

  “You’ll starve on that bird feed.” He shoved more food into his mouth, talking as he chewed. “George Geller, G.A. I’m serious, you gotta eat more.”

  Geller was consuming a four-egg ham and cheese omelet, hash browns, two steaks, a bowl of cereal, and three tumblers of orange juice. The gluttony renewed Lewis’ nausea.

  “How can you hold all that?”

  “This? Hell, I still lose weight in the cold. You better have more than that, man. The Pole devours calories. You eat against it.”

  Lewis put aside the last of his toast. “Not today.”

  Geller shrugged. “You’ll see.”

  “I’m just not hungry.”

  “You will be.”

  Geller attacked his meal with a steady industry, like a steam shovel excavating a foundation. Lewis was half-hypnotized by it. “You came here for the food, then.”

  The maintenance man broke his pace enough to smile. “Pulaski ain’t that good. I came here to get away from it all. S
o did everybody.”

  “The urban stress of turn-of-the-millennium life?”

  Geller speared a piece of steak. “The Minnesota stress of a fucked-up marriage, nowhere job, and pressing debt. Same problems as the guys who went with Columbus.”

  “I’ve got a Visa balance too.”

  “My creditors are a little heavier than that, man.” He chewed. “Truth be told, this is the Betty Ford clinic for me. Cold turkey from the track and cards. I had an affair with Lady Luck and the bitch dumped me, so these loan sharks who looked like the missing link came calling and said highly disturbing things about accumulating interest. Down here they can’t reach me. I’ll make enough this winter to start over.”

  Lewis nodded. “You’re here for the money.”

  “Fuckin’ A,” Geller nodded. “Everybody needs money.”

  “Is the money good down here? For you guys?”

  He shrugged. “Same as a beaker. A long work week and no expenses. The wage scale’s no better than back home but it’s like forced savings: there’s nothing to buy. I might even save enough to not go back. Keep my money for myself and chill out on some tropical island. Buy a boat. Who knows?”

  Indeed, Lewis thought. The Pole offered possibility.

  Cameron came into the galley and stood over them, assessing. His air of authority had come back but there was also a hesitant uncertainty to it, Lewis thought, the betraying experimentation of someone new to command. “How’s it hanging?” the station manager asked.

  “Didn’t freeze,” Lewis said.

  “You ate?”

  “A little.”

  Cameron looked dubiously at the toast. Fingies. They all had to learn. “All right then. Looks like you’re ready to see the homestead. Let’s saddle up.”

  “Yippie-ki-yay.”

  ********

  Suiting up to go outdoors was as laborious as donning armor. Heavy long underwear and two pairs of socks. Sweater. Fleece vest, pants, and nylon bib overalls. Neck gaiter, goggles, stocking hat, white plastic “bunny” boots, glove liners, mittens, ski gloves, and down parka with hood. Lewis felt as padded as the Michelin Man and as awkward as an astronaut. He was roasting.

  “Up to a point, there’s no such thing as cold,” the station manager said. “Just inadequate clothing.”

  “Up to a point?”

  “If you put too much on when you’re working you can actually sweat,” Cameron said. “That’s dangerous when you cool down, or because of dehydration. At the other extreme, nothing will keep you warm when the wind comes up.”

  “What do you do then?”

  “Tough it out. Up to a point.”

  “I can’t walk in these things.” Lewis pointed to his boots, inflated with air for insulation. They looked like white melons.

  “You’d be walking on frostbitten stubs without them. Dorky, but they work.”

  Lewis clumped along the floor. “Like wearing weights.”

  “One year some pranksters started pouring sand into a guy’s bunnies where the air goes. Little bit each day. By the end of the season they weighed about seventy pounds. Pretty funny.”

  Lewis shook a boot, listening. “Ha.”

  Stepping out of the berthing unit into the gray light of the dome was like stepping into a freezer. Lewis was jarred again at the nearness of such cold, just outside the door. The icicles hung overhead as before. And yet he was so hot from the dressing that the change felt good at first. Refreshing.

  The snow ramp from the dome exit led upward to the plateau surface and a bright cold that was more telling. This was a chill that wasn’t confined to an enclosure but was the single salient fact of his new world. He stood a moment, letting himself adjust. The sky was overcast, the light flat. Even with a mild breeze he could feel the temperature sucking at him, trying to drain him of heat. The cold got into his lungs and palpated his heart.

  He pulled his gaiter over his nose and mouth, the moisture of his breath immediately starting a growth of frost. Goggles shielded his eyes and forehead. His hood helped keep a little cocoon of slightly warmer air near his face. He took a moment to practice breathing, as if he were underwater.

  Okay. He wasn’t going to die.

  Lewis looked around. The snow was flat and, beyond the cluster of human structures, utterly empty. Nothing moved. There was no natural feature to catch the eye.

  “First of all, stay close to the base,” Cameron lectured, leaving his neck gaiter down so he could be clearly heard. “Even when it’s not snowing the wind can kick up surface powder into a blizzard six or seven feet high. The blowing snow is just high enough to put any human who isn’t in the NBA into whiteout conditions. So, if you do go somewhere, sign out, take a radio, and take some bearings. Pay attention to where you are, where we are. Start memorizing the layout. People have died in Antarctica a dozen feet from shelter. Temperatures can drop fifty degrees in ten minutes.”

  Lewis nodded.

  “Second, we’re marking the most frequently used routes with flags.” He pointed to long poles with pennants on the end. “In the dark that’s coming you just follow one flag to another to get back to a building. One route goes to astronomy, which the beakers call the Dark Sector because lights aren’t allowed out there: it screws up their telescopes. Everyone else calls it the Dark Side. Another goes to Clean Air, where you’ll work. It’s away from the generators and any air pollution. A third goes to Summer Camp, which is shut down now.” He pointed at distant buildings. Summer Camp was a row of Korean-War-vintage canvas Quonset huts. “A branch goes to Bedrock, those little blue huts there. That’s our emergency shelter if anything goes wrong in the dome.”

  “Goes wrong?”

  “Fire. Generator failure. Battery explosions. Well poisonings. The usual.” He smiled.

  Cameron also pointed out antenna towers, telescopes, construction materials, supply crates, drifted-over vehicles and random jetsam, everything raw and jutting from the snow like the debris of some mid-air collision. Lewis thought the place looked like a dump but wasn’t surprised. All the treeless places he’d worked in had the same look: where could you hide the mess? The chaos represented logistical evolution.

  “Third, pay attention to your body. It’s sort of like being an astronaut where you pay attention to your air. Are you staying warm? Are you still alert? Are you losing energy? If you start to feel frozen, get back inside for a while. Capisce?”

  “Yeah. Common sense.”

  “You’d be amazed how quickly that can disappear around here.”

  Lewis looked out at the foggy horizon. “How far can we see?”

  “About six miles, three in each direction. A few more if you get up on a tower.”

  The sun was low, a white disk behind fog like a dim headlight. It circled the horizon every twenty-four hours, each day settling lower like a marble rolling down a funnel. On March 21 it would be gone.

  “You been to the Ice before, Rod?”

  “Four times.”

  “So you like it.”

  “I love it.”

  “Even the Pole?”

  “Especially the Pole. It’s like no place else on Earth. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  They started walking toward the astronomy complex that squatted three quarters of a mile away and crossed the ice taxiway. Just beyond was a stake jutting two feet out of the snow.

  “Here it is. Go ahead, walk around the world.”

  “This is the South Pole?”

  “Yep. Bottom of the planet. When it gets dark I come out here sometimes on a clear night and lay down to watch the stars and the aurora. Sometimes I do feel upside down, like I’m about to float off and drift into the sky. It’s spectacularly beautiful then, and the vertigo makes me high.”

  “I thought the Pole would look like something more.”

  “In summer there’s a ceremonial pole over there.” Cameron pointed vaguely. “We just took it down a couple weeks ago. It looks like a Santa Claus pole - you know, with barber stripes and a silver
globe on top? We put the flags of the Antarctic treaty nations around it and the VIPs who fly in for a few hours walk over for pictures. But this stake is the real pole. The ice cap moves, flowing toward the sea, so every January we have to drive a stake about ten meters from the last one to keep pace.” He pointed out a line of older stakes marching away across the snow, marking where the Pole had been. “Eventually the dome will roll right over it, except maybe we can win funding for the new base and the dome will be dismantled.”

  “Everybody needs money,” Lewis recited. He trod a circle around the stake. “Around the world. I read that Admiral Byrd said it was the middle of a limitless plain. You get here, and that’s all. He said it was the effort to get here that counted.”

  “That, and getting away. But Byrd said that back in the 1920s, way before the base started in ’58. Nowadays it’s the staying that counts. We’re here for a purpose. Your job is important. Mine is important. They’re all important. Scientifically. Politically. We’re at a place that no single nation owns, dedicated to knowledge. I think that’s pretty cool.”

  “Cool.” Lewis brushed the frost on the ruff of his hood.

  “You know why people like it down here, Jed?” Cameron was looking directly at him but with the goggles on the effect was odd, like being looked at by an insect.

  “Why?”

  “Because the purpose of life is to learn. That’s why we exist, to learn. That’s my belief, anyway. That’s why the station exists. Moss and Adams and Mendoza have the world’s best window on space. Jerry Follett and Dana Andrews are deciphering the atmosphere. Hiro and Alexi are trying to understand the aurora, which is one hell of a show. You do climate, Lena hydroponics...it doesn’t get any purer than this.”

  The hood against Lewis’ ears made everything like listening through a blanket. “So how do we tell direction down here?”