***
The Twin Otter aircraft was flying up the Beardmore Glacier at little more than a thousand feet off the deck. It was high enough for the Aussie pilot to feel secure and low enough for his passengers to feel like they were flying through the seracs, standing blue towers of ice, themselves. In the right hand seat was Sierra, who had made the journey possible, to the chagrin of Frodo. He was clearly irked to be relegated to the seats behind, but he was on the plane, and that would have to do. The pilot smiled at Sierra as she looked in wonder at the endless morass of fractured ice below.
“Okay,” he said, getting the groups' attention. “Here’s the drill. When we get on the ground, I want to make sure that we don’t get sucked into a tea party kind of thing with them where they can give us a bunch of bullshit. All we need is to document our being there in pictures that prove what they are up to. With that we can orchestrate worldwide condemnation of the whole thing. I’ll distract the ones who come out to see what’s going on; you guys hold up the signs and get the pictures of where the drilling is being done.”
“Should we try and wreck it, the drill?” Thumper asked. Both of the women were shacked-up, as was Frodo, while he had to share their camp in close proximity with them, alone. A little sabotage would go a long way toward mending his feelings. Frodo contemplated this.
“I don’t think so. Not that I wouldn’t like to, of course,” he added quickly. “In other operations, we can fight a guerrilla war and defeat them through attrition. Here, we have to work with them. When the world finally pressures them to stop the damage, they will need us to steer them in the right direction. If we go too far, then we will only make that harder.”
Thumper didn’t answer, but looked out the window expressionlessly. He had found himself a part of this group after working with the organization in other places where the niceties were a little less observed. Even then, he thought that the whole outfit was a bunch of dilettantes who enjoyed their status as pseudo-revolutionaries. Holding up signs. Please. He had come to the studied conclusion that trying to save the environment by taking pictures and holding up signs was about as effective to the cause of saving the planet as praying was by those who thought that they had ended the war in Vietnam by having prayer meetings.
No, he thought, prayers and wishes were things that were answered by those who took action. Hoping for things to occur was a waste of mental energy. He had been giving it a great deal of serious thought and was decided. When this mission was over, he was going to go somewhere, quietly, and begin to contact those whom he knew felt the same way. He, as well as they, knew that those who worked to destroy nature for profit could only be made to stop by removing their motivation, and that meant making war on the exploiters' ability to be profitable. Holding up signs. What an embarrassment. But soon…and very, very, quietly.
The Pole of Inaccessibility Page 36