The Pole of Inaccessibility

by Alan Bronston

  ***

  Barry, as always when there was the possibility of an incoming aircraft, was on hourly’s while the rest of the crew slept. Or attempted to sleep. Or pretended to sleep. He went outside to smoke; the civilians wouldn’t allow it inside, and kept the coffee pot primed. He didn’t really mind. The console was his station. His. He knew that he wasn’t commanding the bridge of a carrier, but this job, be it ever so humble, was his.

  The engine noise from high above was fading into the distance, but that only meant that soon it would turn and come back in to land. The Captain would come. The Russians would leave. Then life would go on as it always did. Everyone would go back to bed and after they were rested, they would all start to pontificate again to whomever would listen. Barry was proud of the fact that he never paid much attention to anything any of these geeks said. It only encouraged them, and he wanted no part of it.

  The door opened, jerking him out of his reverie, and he realized that he had probably been half asleep himself. He turned to see who it was and groaned inwardly. The cook came in, getting ready to start breakfast. He braced himself, amazed at how in one instant he could be enjoying the satisfaction of one who had command over his own domain, and in the next, feel like the very life was being sucked out of his ears, one drop at a time.

  “What’s the matter with you?” the cook demanded to know, seeing him wince.

  “The aliens came and ate my brain when I wasn’t looking,” Barry told him.

  “Not possible,” he was told.

  “Why not?” Barry wanted to know, intrigued in spite of himself.

  “You never had one.”

  And so another day began.

  The sound of the aircraft passing overhead woke the sleeping members of the expedition and, understanding what it meant, each got up quickly and made their way towards the hut. Lt. Richards was in Susan’s tent, but in his own sleeping bag. They started off the night together, but every move each of them made only made Susan’s multiple injuries that much worse. Her barely healed shoulder was sore from the long climb, her tailbone was badly bruised, if not broken; her jaw was throbbing from the ice screw exploding out of the wall of the crevasse… It was a shorter list to catalog what wasn’t hurt.

  The Lieutenant got dressed first to try and avoid jostling her, and he went into the hut, where the full complement, minus Susan and Jake, were already assembled. The Russians were still in their bunks. The Doctors Atkinson, Daniels, and Adams were huddled over Barry at the radio as he communicated with the inbound aircraft. He joined them there.

  “What’s the news?” he asked.

  “Skipper’s on his way in,” Barry said, using the naval descriptor for his commander, since the Lieutenant was one of them.

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  Jake came in while they were talking. He asked the same questions, and got the same answers.

  “I suppose that will be it, then,” Dr. Atkinson said to the others. “The Russians will be here shortly, and then be on their way.”

  Jake was filling his mug from the pot when he heard this.

  “Minus one,” he said to them.

  “Minus one what?” Dr. Atkinson asked.

  “Russian,” Jake said, stirring the powdered milk into the coffee and biting into a biscuit.

  “One Russian?” Dr. Atkinson said, not following what Jake was saying. “How, one Russian?”

  “More like which, than how. Of course, how might be a pretty good question too,” Jake allowed.

  “Can someone please explain to me what he is saying,” Dr. Atkinson pleaded in his most exasperated lecture-hall voice, and holding up his palms.

  “Jake, what are you saying?” Lt. Richards inquired when none of the other Ph.D.’s could translate.

  “The guy I sat with on the sled. Says he wants to stay.”

  “Stay?” Alistair Adams echoed. “Nobody stays, not if they can help it, anyway. What you mean is that he doesn’t wish to go with his people.”

  Jake replied by pointing his index finger straight up, then flipping it down in Alistair’s direction.

  “Good God,” Dr. Atkinson said, finally catching on.

  Susan had joined them by this point, gingerly settling into a seat and wincing from the pain.

  “Which God?” she asked; not having heard what led the lead scientist to make that exclamation.

  “You really need to let me take a look at that,” Jake said, his solicitousness betrayed by the bemused smirk.

  “Over my dead body,” she told him once again.

  “And this is something you were going to tell us when?” Dr. Atkinson shouted, ignoring their exchange.

  Jake shrugged. “I forgot,” he explained.

  “Did you say anything back to him?” Lt. Richards asked, understanding immediately the potential consequences.

  “Sure. Mi Casa, Su Casa. Seems like a pretty good guy. Why not?”

  “Why not what?” Susan asked, realizing there was more going on than she knew.

  “Your guide has just granted asylum to a Russian defector!” Dr. Atkinson complained to her, as if she were responsible for him.

  “Just wait a minute, Steven,” she said. Then turning around, she asked, “Jake?”

  He shrugged again, and she responded by closing her eyes and groaning deeply.

  “Good God,” she said, repeating Dr. Atkinson’s sentiment.

  “Yes,” Dr. Atkinson agreed, nodding his head towards her. “Precisely.”

  “We’re going to have to handle this carefully,” the Lieutenant said, rubbing the stubble on his chin. “They aren’t going to like our letting one of their people stay.”

  Susan looked up sharply. “You can’t be seriously thinking of allowing this to happen, can you?”

  The Lieutenant gazed at her with a questioning look for an instant before saying, “I don’t see how we can in good conscience refuse him. Can you?”

  “I sure as damn well can,” she said. “This is the one place on the planet where cooperation trumps politics. This person can destroy 25 years of accumulated good will in an instant. We can’t risk that.”

  Dr. Daniels agreed. “It would be a disaster. The harmony we have developed here with the Russians is a beacon of hope in an ever darkening world. This could end it all, right here.”

  “They must have known,” Susan said, thinking it through. “That’s why they were coming. They found out about this project and were coming to investigate. I knew that something like this would have to come of such an idiotic idea.”

  “Susan,” Lt. Richards began to say, the pain in his expression clear, “be that as it may, this is really about just one person. One person, who is reaching out for help.”

  “No, this is much, much bigger than that. Bigger than any one person.”

  “I see,” Lt. Richards said, quietly though stiffly, looking at the other scientists, but speaking to Susan. “All the talk about science benefiting mankind and saving the planet becomes just so much chatter when it gets in the way of your agendas.”

  “Agendas!” Susan shouted, jumping to her feet in spite of her bruised tail. “You’re going to lecture us about agendas? It’s the agenda that sent you here that is going to end up destroying the whole program!”

  “You know how I feel about that,” Lt Richards said, “and how I feel about all of you.”

  This time he spoke to all the others, but looked only at her. She started to speak, but turned her back and held one elbow in the palm of her hand, knuckles of the other on her chin.

  The sound of aircraft engines interrupted the rapidly escalating debate to everyone’s relief, and the scientists except Susan went out to look. When she didn’t turn back around, a dejected looking Lieutenant followed them. Jake was stretched out in a chair with his feet on a table, staring at Susan.

  “What?” she asked by way of interrogation.

  “When was the last time I told you I loved you?” he asked.

  “Aagghh!” she
raged at the ceiling, her fists clenched and shaking all over. Then, she, too, exited the hut. Jake continued to sit, relaxed in the chair.

  “No?” he said. Then, looking at Stan the cook, he said, “What about you?”

  “Can’t remember,” Stan said, his folded elbows resting on the galley table. He pointed his thumb at Barry. “He did, though. Right before you came in.”

  “Good,” Jake said, nodding approvingly. “That’s very good.”