Whiteout

by Sage Walker

* * *

  In Taos, Signy watched him, Jared and the woman. Jared’s eyes scanned the freezer, rows of frosted plastic sacks, a glimpse of half-hidden black.

  “Jared?” Signy asked.

  He wasn’t listening. Look at the back shelves, she wanted to tell him. Look back there, please.

  Jared and Anna traveled back across the catwalk and out into the Siranui’s passageways.

  * * *

  Signy replayed what Jared had glanced over. She froze the scene, magnified the image, and saw a zippered seam. It was a body bag; it was Skylochori. So that’s where they put the corpse.

  In Taos, it was morning. On the Siranui, it was Tokyo time, late yesterday. Ship’s time was the captain’s choice, but it no way matched McMurdo time, Greenwich plus twelve hours, or the Pole itself, Greenwich. Or so Paul had told her. Or was it the other way around?

  [Signy] Paul?

  Paul was at his desk in New Hampshire, and he answered her in an instant.

  “Paul, they put Skylochori in the fish freezer.”

  “That seems reasonable.”

  “I don’t like it. Jared’s not getting any answers about the lost ship from Anna.”

  “I doubt it’s a medic’s problem. Let it go, Signy. Have you looked through Jared’s trip yesterday?”

  “Not yet,” Signy said.

  “There’s some good visuals,” Paul said.

  Let it go, Signy. Where a fishing ship decided to stash corpses wasn’t Signy’s problem. Paul seemed to have decided not to worry about the lost ship. Good.

  Signy set Jared’s trip up in full surround, hovered above seascapes and magic glimpses of whales, and let herself soar beside the checkerboard of birds circling the Siranui.

  * * *

  Jared and Anna idled through the ship, a factory with a thin layer of ship designed around it, cabins and service areas tucked in wherever they happened to fit.

  “Lunch?” Anna asked.

  Hunger struck at Jared’s stomach.

  “Oh, yes,” Jared said.

  * * *

  Signy looked in on Jared, on his view of Anna’s back as she traversed a maze of black lacquered chairs, legs upended, clipped to Western-style tables. Three workers in dark blue padded coveralls huddled around one of the tables, half-hidden in a geometric forest of chair legs. The workers nursed small cups of tea, and none of them seemed to be talking. A uniformed ship’s officer and a tall man with red hair—Alan? Alan Campbell, yes—stood at a coffee cart. The officer nodded to Jared and Anna, and the two men left.

  * * *

  What the hell was Alan Campbell doing on the Siranui? Signy ran the scene back again, for Jared hadn’t focused on him. His attention had been on the coffee.

  [Signy] Jared?

  But he wasn’t wearing goggles and he couldn’t see a letter display.

  “Jared?” Signy tried a mike, but he didn’t answer.

  * * *

  Jared filled a thick ceramic mug with steaming coffee and took a scalding sip. It was true ship’s coffee, industrial strength and almost overcooked. It was the real fuel of any ship, and Jared wondered if ship’s cooks carried its secret from one mess to another. It was wonderful.

  Hunger attacked him and no food seemed to be in sight. Dull steel urns of coffee and tea, packets of sugar and dried whitener, lemon slices; that’s all he could see on the coffee cart. He wanted to tear into a packet of sugar and eat it, granular and sweet. Would Anna find that strange?

  “I’m so hungry,” Jared said.

  A stainless-steel panel opened in the wall next to the cart. A small thin Japanese man smiled at Jared.

  “Dr. Balchen?”

  Jared nodded.

  “Please sit. A food order has been left for you.”

  Jared looked at Anna. She unsnapped two chairs from a nearby table and sat. Jared tried to pay attention to his coffee. When had he had a real meal last? In Taos? No matter what the kitchen brought him, he would eat it. Mystery soup, pickled plums; he wouldn’t care. Anything.

  The door opened. Cook brought out a tray. On it was a mound of steaming white rice and four perfect over-easy eggs that smelled of butter. And a slab of ham, sweet-scented, brown-speckled crisp at the edges. And a pile of light, puffy biscuits, and pots of California jam.

  Thank the man, grab fork, grab biscuit; Jared’s priorities were, for the moment, confused. He picked up a biscuit, lifted his fork, moaned, “Ahh, mmm,” in a small voice and crammed the biscuit in his mouth. It was a sourdough biscuit. It was tender and rich.

  “You’re welcome,” Cook said. He darted into the gallery and reappeared in moments with a similar tray for Anna, garnished with a side dish of pickled veggies and a small bowl of smelly fish sauce. Cook turned to Jared. “You are from a different time zone. Dr. Kihara has designed your food to help with the time lag. Many carbos, much lipid.”

  “Saigo Kihara is a wonderful man,” Jared mumbled around a mouthful of rice. “You’re a wonderful cook.”

  Anna spooned fish sauce over her rice.

  Well-being rose from Jared’s belly, and warmth that drowned out all apprehension. The strange woman had looked up at him from the hold because he was strange, or because she was bored. She wasn’t a terrorist spy. A ship sank? Well, ships sank. Shit happened. He spread strawberry jam on the last biscuit.

  Cook’s smile faded as he observed the rapid depletion of Jared’s plate. “More is coming,” he said. He disappeared behind his magic door again.

  EIGHT

  Signy’s head felt stuffed with information on krill, protein conversions, and biomass specs. Their cold wet realities were somewhat warmed by the heat of the fireplace, and when she felt too soggy, she could look out at the white, clean angles of Taos Mountain. She worked until sunset had spilled its blood-red shadows on the Sangre de Cristos.

  Jared had gone from his meal to his cabin, and fallen into a nap that had lasted until well into his night. He’d sent her a brief grumble that he was completely off schedule, and then headed again to the mess, which never shut down. The factory ran day and night, and Jared talked to some of the crew while he ate. He was back asleep in less than an hour.

  Yet to be dealt with was the slight discomfort caused by Alan Campbell’s presence on the ship. Alan hadn’t shown up in Jared’s vision again, but he would. The one-night stand had to be mentioned.

  Or did it?

  Campbell was there on some business or other, something he hadn’t bothered to tell Signy about. But reviewing their conversations, Signy couldn’t remember telling Alan that she had business in Antarctica, so why would Alan have brought up any plans he had there? If she’d given Alan Campbell any ideas about Antarctica, and she probably had, it was still no problem for Edges.

  Let it alone, or not? Not, Signy decided, but rather than deal with the miniproblem right now, Signy, at dusk, went into town for groceries.

  At the parking entrance, a row of patient women stood, holding signs: WILL WORK FOR FOOD.

  They looked Indian, wrapped in their blankets, but they weren’t. The Pueblo took care of its own, the village still an isolated shelter against time and the outside world. Taos Pueblo was a shared hallucination, Signy sometimes thought, a dream place, romanticized and ridiculous. But its existence, its endurance, remained an odd comfort in complex mythology of the mountains and the mesas.

  WILL WORK FOR FOOD, and the women would, whether the work was housekeeping or carpentry, or sexual accommodation of any known variety. Signy stowed her small sack of groceries in the little electric runabout and drove past them, trying, as she always tried, to ignore their faces. But she never could.

  The night was moonless and clear. Snow beneath her boots went scritch, scritch, as Signy carried her sacks into the house, into the welcoming shelter of thick adobe walls. It was warmer in Antarctica tonight than it was here.

  The groceries were oddities that Signy liked to eat when no one else was around. She stashed peanut butter and fat black olives and packets of instant cereal
s in her personal little cabinet and put the veggies and the milk and eggs away.

  Unfinished business remained in the studio, and its name was Campbell. On Jared’s empty desk, the pudgy tech’s gift chip lay in its case, a reminder of Houston. Signy slipped her headset on and picked up the chip, idly, to turn it in her hands. Its cover was unadorned white plastic, and the chip was not the brand that Paul usually ordered, by the gross, for the group to use.

  Signy entered the workspace, Antarctica, another world.

  * * *

  The deck of a four-rigger materialized beneath her feet. Pilar and Paul sat side by side on deck chairs, cozy in thick blankets, watching a seascape whose horizons tilted, and tilted.

  “Signy, what’s that?” Pilar asked.

  Signy held up the chip.

  “This tech gave it to me in Houston. I forgot I brought it home.”

  “Have you looked at it?” Paul asked.

  Signy shook her head at him.

  “Use the isolate rig,” Paul snapped.

  “Of course, fearless leader,” Signy said. Security, security. Paul feared viruses in their little playground. Half of what they did was sent around on AT&T lines; the raw stuff was usually a jumble, anyway, nothing that would look tempting to any paid hacker. And still, Paul purged the programs once a month; and he always found some little bug or other.

  Signy rolled her chair away from the imaged ship’s deck and took off her headset. She powered up a PC that sat by its lonesome in a corner. She patted it, the little huerfano, and brought up—

  Music. No visuals, just music. An oboe sobbed over the eerie sounds of some stringed instrument she did not recognize.

  “A cello played col legno,” Pilar said.

  With the wood of the bow. Lonely, cold, the music ached with desolation and longing.

  “Damned good,” Pilar said.

  “Maybe he wrote it,” Signy said.

  “Who?” Pilar asked.

  “Jimmy McKenna. He’s desperately in love with you, Pilar, and he found the Tanaka contract for us.” Signy stared at the blank screen of the huerfano, as if waiting for visuals to appear.

  “Tanaka’s staff told me they looked around the net for ‘brilliant new groups.’ McKenna sent in a list of our stuff. He said we weren’t new,” Paul said.

  “New? Not us,” Signy said.

  “But he said we had Pilar Videla, and that was as good as they were going to find,” Paul continued.

  “Oh, joy. A loyal fan,” Pilar said. She hummed along with the music’s phrases, repeated one. “It’s what I need,” she said.

  “Paul, could there be anything in it that would mess up our system?” Signy asked.

  Behind Pilar, behind Paul, white canvas billowed and rigging creaked.

  “Not from what we’ve just heard, and that’s in tonight’s data already. If Pilar wants to use it, and if it’s okay, then it’s okay. I guess.” Paul tucked his chin under his blanket. “Come on up, Signy. I’ll fix a chair for you.”

  He did. Signy switched herself onto the deck, into Pilar’s vision of the helo’s flight, the ice, the images of a vast and lonely sea.

  Signy’s head worked best in the morning. Pilar and Paul insisted they couldn’t function until the day began to fade. Jared couldn’t think straight until he had gotten up a sweat doing one odd thing or another, and some of those odd things were very enjoyable. Janine could work anytime, anywhere, she said, as long as her feet were warm.

  “Where’s Janine?” Signy asked.

  “Here.” Janine popped into view on deck. She scooted her chair closer to Pilar and tucked her feet under Pilar’s blanket.

  “You can put your real feet in my lap, babe. I don’t mind,” Pilar said.

  Then, “Shit! They’re cold.”

  “Sorry,” Janine said.

  Watching, all of them, Jared’s Antarctica, his arrival, the views of the raft with its faded letters and its sad cargo. Each of them framing their own images, important or trivial. Overlaying transparencies of their individual visions into malleable storage of tonight’s real-time view of a day gone past.

  As they worked, each set of inputs shifting in focus, in interest, certain things were emphasized, others ignored. Shadows deepened, images strengthened in line and depth. Light glared across pancake ice, glowed beneath the streamlined shape of Bryde’s whales. Myriad colors of blue. Birds scattered in a black and white.…

  “That’s close,” Pilar said. She stared at something invisible above Janine’s head. Janine wiggled her toes on Pilar’s lap and Pilar resumed kneading them, automatic response.

  “Break?” Signy asked.

  An iceberg appeared at the horizon, pulled from Jared’s walk on the icy deck before the storm.

  “No,” Pilar said. “Not yet.” Pilar counted out some silent cadence, her lips moving and her attention somewhere totally not in this space.

  Signy closed her eyes and waited. Her mind ran through some of her afternoon’s reading; she saw tedious treaty language and polysyllabic descriptions of the reproductive cycles of krill. The critters shrank when they got low on food and built themselves smaller shells, an unusual thing for a crustacean to do. Antarctic creatures were mostly unusual. One fish swam around happy without having any oxygen-carrying pigment in its blood, getting what it needed from the cold water without need of hemoglobin. Predators and prey intertwined in unique ways. Krill populations were keyed to penguins; count penguins and decide how much to catch.

  Signy opened her eyes at the sound of Jared’s indrawn breath.

  He appeared on the deck behind them, a blocky silhouette with no features.

  “I can’t get much detail from this little rig in Kihara’s cabin,” Jared said. “I’m sorry I’m just a blob, but that’s all you’re going to get.”

  “You woke up,” Signy said.

  “Maybe. It’s three in the goddamned morning. Go ahead, Pilar. I’m just watching.”

  Signy transferred her awareness to Jared’s recorded body language, while all of them followed Anna around the Siranui.

  From long familiarity with Jared’s muscular signatures, Signy accepted Jared’s awareness of earth-mother Anna. Or was it Signy’s desire for stolid warmth, her need to touch Anna’s firm smooth skin?

  Immersed in a new place, its sounds and colors and textures, all of them. Signy sensed no activity in the shadowed virtual figures on the deck beside her; she heard no restless click of keyboards. We’re all a frigging bunch of voyeurs, she thought. Worse than that. We’re so different, but we’re alike in the pursuit of orgasmic moments of epiphany, realization. Devoted to the “Aha!” moment, the gestalt of what we distill for and from each other, the indrawn breath that is closure and opening. Called by so many names, that feeling. The moment of awakening. We’re addicted to the search for images and symbols that give us a brain rush. We’re brain-rush junkies.

  “I’ve got something,” Pilar said. “Be back in a minute.”

  “We’re getting some beautiful stuff here,” Janine said. “But so far it’s tourism. Besides which, I think all we may need is going to be words, words that will translate from English treaty language into Japanese with some degree of grace. And that, I’ll tell you right now, will be tough.” Janine’s voice trailed away.

  “We need more than that,” Jared said. “We need to know what the ins and outs are of this company we’re working for. I tell you, I get a feeling of—a glass wall, or something, between what we’ve been asked to do and the reality that’s down here. I’m uneasy.”

  “Are you uneasy working for inscrutable Asian bosses?” Paul asked; Paul, who had too much of New England Brahminism in his childhood and would spend his life overcompensating for it.

  “No,” Jared said. “It’s wuzzy stuff. I feel like we’re being set up for something. That dead guy, for instance. Everybody’s so quiet about him.”

  “You’re in a high-risk environment,” Janine said. “Death on the job is a routine occurrence down there. In any
fishing fleet, as best as I can tell.”

  “I feel—eyes. Eyes on me. Yes, there’s time displacement and air and sea that are different—I hope I’m showing you how different this place feels. But—”

  He seemed so afraid. Signy closed her eyes and concentrated on the inputs from Jared’s skinthin. He sat very still, ready for fast action. He was in Kihara’s cabin, he had told them, but his body said he didn’t trust the locks on the door, that he tensed for invaders who might break into the cabin at any moment.

  “It’s just a week,” Paul said. “You can get what we need in a week, and then your medic friend comes back and you can get out of there.” Paul did not deny Jared’s uneasiness, he just put it in a business perspective. “We need the money, you know.”

  Yes, the money. Signy noticed that Pilar had vanished from the virtual of the ship’s deck, busy in some other work. Yes, the money. What do we do if this contract doesn’t work out? Jared gets a locum tenens and works himself into a contract offer, pushing pills for money. He hates that. Do I follow him? Do I start the round of interviews, looking for a company that could use a slightly rusty neurobiologist? I wouldn’t tailor street drugs; it’s not something I could live with. And anyway, Jared wouldn’t put up with that for five minutes. I’d have to go solo and stay away from them all. I would become a dangerous person to know. Oh, shit.

  Pilar reappeared and sank into her deck chair. She had missed the interchange or chosen to ignore it. “Try this,” Pilar said. “Oh, try this for size.” And Pilar built:

  —a looming presence of ice that floated in a silent sea. Jimmy’s music breathed against the water. An albatross hung motionless in the air. The checkered black-and-white wings of cape pigeons wove intricate script against a stormy horizon, peripheral messages in an unknown language. The music ached with the rhythmic peace of ocean swells.

  The four-rigger rocked against blue nothing as Pilar finished.

  “Forty-six seconds,” Paul said. “The computer says the eye-movement coordinates are spectacular. Pilar Videla, if we need a net spot, you just made one. What it sells I ain’t quite sure yet, but whatever it is, I’m sold.”