by Paul Briggs
“I think I’m getting used to this car,” said Roger.
“Sort of like riding a good horse, isn’t it?”
“Not really. You don’t have to worry about falling off.”
“I meant the way it’s under your control up to a point, but it sort of filters your actions. You can’t make it do anything dangerous.”
“I’m just glad I can finally parallel park without scraping the hubcaps.”
Carolyn Camberg turned to look at her daughter in the rear driver’s seat, sitting next to the suit jackets the three of them had draped neatly over the back seat. Eleven-year-old Thel was lucky enough to get most of her looks from Roger—freckled complexion, blue-gray eyes and a face that was trending toward beautiful, not just “good-natured” or “handsome” as people kept calling Carrie. She was wearing a smaller version of her mother’s pantsuit, and had managed to avoid crumpling or mussing it so far. The only thing in disarray was her hair, which was coppery red and formed such tangled curls that no mere human strength could get a comb all the way through it in one sweep. Thel occasionally glanced out the window before returning her attention to her phone.
“Remember, this is not a campaign stop,” said Carrie.
“I know, Mom. You said that already.”
Carrie nodded. Her daughter was already making the smooth transition from the stage where if you told her anything less than three times she’d forget it instantly to the stage where if you told her anything more than once she’d lose all patience.
“Don’t ask people to vote for you, don’t mention that you’re running for governor… I got all that,” said Thel. “What do I do if somebody else brings it up?”
“Probably won’t happen. If it does, you can talk about what it’s like going back and forth between school and campaign appearances.” She smiled at her daughter. “You’ve been doing so well. I want you to know I really appreciate it.”
Thel blushed. “Thanks, Mom.”
Even when I’m not campaigning, I’m still using you as a campaign prop, she thought. You’re not even mad at me yet, and already I’m hoping you’ll forgive me one day. All Thel wanted was to help her family. Carrie had been the same way at that age. And then, at a slightly later age, she had been completely different.
But for today at least, Thel and Roger were all right with putting in a required appearance. The big 9/11 ceremonies, of course, were around the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery, but the Navy was quietly holding its own commemoration down in Norfolk, and a lot of Carrie’s old friends would be there. She’d spent four years in the Navy and had run a company that provided the naval base with a lot of its supplies. If she belonged anywhere today, it was there. Even with the election less than two months away, she wasn’t going to push for her political advantage on a day like this.
Also, she was a good seven to ten points over McAllister in last week’s polls. And while her opponent was doing his best to cultivate a conservative-but-not-one-of-the-crazy-ones image, a tape had surfaced this week of him speaking to a church group, explaining to them that the problems with U.S. education policy stemmed from it being unduly influenced at the federal level by a demon named “Baphomet.” In an odd way, Carrie was disappointed. There was something unsatisfying about beating an opponent who sabotaged himself like this. But it assured her that even if staying off the campaign trail today was a mistake, it was a mistake she would survive.
And she could make some use of this time. Carrie dialed Jerome Ross, her campaign coordinator in Fairfax County. The good news was, he was young, brilliant, and loaded with energy. The bad news was, he was, well, Jerome Ross.
“Hello, Rome,” she said.
“Hi, boss.”
“I’ve received an email from our software providers,” she said. “They say you verbally abused the people they sent. You do know they had the meeting recorded?”
“I knew that when I spoke up. I wanted to make sure my complaints were on the record.” Carrie mentally translated this as I couldn’t yell at you and I couldn’t yell at Horner, but I really needed to get in some quality yelling.
And Rome had a point. Horner was a good campaign manager when it came to organizing volunteers and raising money, but he was one of those people for whom the phrase “penny-wise and pound foolish” had been invented. Nothing made him happier than finding some small way to save a piddling amount of money. But even for him, buying cheap half-tested software to run the campaign database had been a little extreme. That said, the way Rome Ross had treated the company reps from Copenhagen had also been… a little extreme.
“Yes, apparently you had a number of complaints. You asked,” Carrie checked the notes on her smartphone, “‘Why is it every expletive time you hit a tab key, a file closes? Why does the whole thing slow to a crawl if the file has photos in it? Why does it crash if there’s an apostrophe in the text? Why are all the error messages in Danish?’ Did they have any answers?”
“They said it was still in beta test and there were bugs to be worked out. They kept promising it was gonna be awesome if we could just wait six months. I had to explain to them we’re in the middle of an election here.”
“And then you interjected by saying ‘Even when this expletive works, it doesn’t work. Why can’t we use runes or passphrases instead of expletive passwords? What is this, 20-expletive-10?’ You also complained that everyone had to log out and log back in again to use internal messaging, which I must admit is a pretty serious flaw. I gather the answers didn’t satisfy you?”
“No. They just said they were going to review our complaints back in the home office in Denmark.”
Carrie nodded. “As I understand it, it was at this point that you stood up and shouted at the representatives…” As she read the transcript, she carefully did not raise her voice, but kept it soft and pleasant. “‘Expletive Denmark, I hope your country gets nuked, I hope an asteroid falls on it, I hope it gets hit by all the plagues of Egypt including the stupid one with the frogs, expletive everything Danish, expletive your language, expletive your culture, expletive your history, expletive your big ugly dogs, expletive your godawful expletive little hotel Continental breakfast pastries that taste like frosted cardboard, expletive your depressing expletive movies that make people want to slit their expletive wrists, expletive Hans Christian Andersen, expletive the Little Mermaid, I’m not even sure she has an expletive but expletive her anyway,’ and, then, very loud, ‘Expletive… Denmark.’ Do I have that right?”
“Pretty much, yeah.” At this point, Roger had his jaws clamped shut, straining to keep from laughing out loud. Thel wasn’t even trying not to laugh.
“Some might consider that hate speech, young man.”
“You gotta understand, everybody in tech—Leo and Daphne and Raúl, everybody who’s been trying to work with this new system—they’re angry. Really, really angry. As they see it, they’ve been working their asses off trying to do a job they can’t do because management got sold a bill of goods with this software and they’re gonna get blamed for everything and nobody gives a damn. They need to know that their issues are being taken seriously and somebody in authority is on their side.”
“Spoken like a man with a future in politics. Although if you ever become president, I hope you’ll refrain from declaring war on Denmark. Just to change the subject, what’s McAllister up to right now?” Carrie expected there to be a delay of several seconds as Rome jumped to the monitor to find out what he should have been keeping track of already.
She was wrong—Rome replied instantly. “He’s parked himself as close to the Pentagon as they’ll let him get,” he said, “and he’s got a bunch of cameras in front of him. He’s telling everybody as governor he’ll use all the resources at his command to combat terrorism. Oh, and some people are coming forward and saying they’ve heard him say some racist stuff.”
“Worse than the stuff you said about Denmark?”
“Not worse, but about as bad.”
“Oh, dear. Is there a tape?”
“No, we just have their word for it.”
“Baphomet declined to comment?”
Rome laughed. “Yep.”
Carrie nodded. “Don’t issue a statement on it just yet. Let it play out a little.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s about it. I’ll let you go. Behave yourself, Rome.”
“Thanks for calling, boss.”
Carrie ended the call and put the phone down. Then she had a good, long laugh.
“Really, Mom,” said Thel. “‘Expletive expletive expletive’? Are you sure you used to be in the Navy? You know you can cuss in front of me, right?”
“Call me old-fashioned.”
Thel turned back to her own smartphone and started looking things up. Carrie turned back to the road. Seeing that their lane had been blocked off up ahead by an accident, Roger hit the turn signal. Two seconds later, the car changed lanes of its own accord.
“Holy shit!”
“Thel!”
“Mom, you gotta check this out. The ice cap. It’s gone, Mom.”
“What!?” Carrie was pretty sure that neither of the world’s polar ice caps could have just disappeared.
“Not the whole thing. Just the sea ice. And only at the North Pole, not, you know…”
Antarctica. If you made a list of all the things a husband and wife could have a painful, long-standing argument about, Antarctica probably wouldn’t show up on it anywhere.
Dr. Roger Camberg was a glaciologist. Until two years ago, he would leave just after Christmas to spend January through March in Antarctica, monitoring the ice flow around the edge of the continent. Thel—God only knew why—had always wanted to go with him on one of those trips when she was old enough. Carrie had hated being separated from her husband, but Antarctica had a prominent place on her private list of Places You Didn’t Go Unless You Were Personally Needed There, right underneath the world’s war zones.
It was dangerous work. Much of it was in unexplored territory—territory that had been flown over or mapped by satellites, but that wasn’t the same thing as exploring it. There were places where thin crusts of snow concealed deep crevasses in the ice that no one knew about. Blinding snowstorms could appear in a moment and last for hours. And of course the parts of the ice cap Roger was visiting were the parts where all the melting was, the parts that were least stable and most treacherous… and were usually a minimum of twenty-four hours away from anyone who could help if he got in trouble out there.
But it wasn’t the ice that had almost killed him. It was the “shrieking sixties”—the notorious ring of high winds around the continent, with its frequent cyclones. He had been returning from a survey of East Antarctica through a stretch of what had been relatively clear weather… until, very suddenly, it wasn’t. His plane’s radio had failed, and Carrie and Thel had spent one long, horrible night waiting before word had come that he was all right.
After that, Carrie had told him enough was enough. No more fieldwork. Take a desk job. I can’t lose you. I can’t raise our daughter alone.
Roger had argued every step of the way, but Carrie had learned how to press an issue in the Virginia House of Delegates, and she had been relentless. And, after weeks of shouting and tears and long silences at the dinner table, she’d had her way.
These days, Roger was a teacher. He’d shaved his wiry beard—Carrie missed the feel of that beard against her cheeks—lost his tan and gained a little weight. But even now, those great shining sheets of ice called to him. It was a part of him that after all these years Carrie still couldn’t understand.
* * *
In a residential neighborhood west of Syracuse, New York, a fifteen-year-old Kia pulled into a driveway. It had no self-driving capacity, wasn’t a hybrid, was missing two hubcaps and had one side mirror held on with duct tape. Still, it had managed the five-and-a-half-hour drive from Boston, which was all its owner had asked of it.
A small, skinny young woman in jeans and a knobbly sweater stepped out of the car. Her face was pale and girlish, with thick glasses and no makeup. Her hair was a shade somewhere between ash-blond and mouse-brown, and was held in a glossy ponytail that flowed down to just past the small of her back.
She pulled two suitcases from the front passenger seat and gritted her teeth as she hauled them to the door, the loose heel on her right sneaker slapping against the bottom of her foot with every step. Between them, the suitcases weighed about half what she did.
Her name was Sandra Symcox. Nine years ago, she’d been accepted to college at the age of fourteen with great fanfare and a good deal of sponsorship. Her IQ test results, the tutoring she’d received, her calculus scores and her “intuitive grasp of chemistry” had been the stuff of local news posts. So off she had gone, visions of technological breakthroughs and Nobel Prizes dancing in her head.
She had just turned twenty-three. Her bank account was a four-digit number, and two of those digits were on the wrong side of the decimal point. She was here because she had nowhere else to go. Not that she was out of ideas—she had a few possible breakthroughs rattling around in her skull—but any one of them would have needed research funding in the hundreds of millions to find out if it was practical. And after her experience with Verdissimus, she was a little reluctant to take on another business partner.
A tall, black-haired woman of about thirty answered the door. Marty had said he’d be home by now, but it looked like he was as reliable as ever.
“Hi,” said Sandy.
“You must be Sandy,” the woman said with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Or her cheeks. Or her lips. Actually, it wasn’t so much a smile as an expression of undisguised loathing and hostility.
“Mmm-hmm,” said Sandy with a smile that was as authentic as she could force it to look. “You’re Nora, right?” She was tempted to say You’re Kendra, right? Or You’re Michelle, right?—those being the names of two of her father’s ex-wives. But she decided that this time she’d try the diplomatic approach before she got unpleasant.
“Marty said I should expect you.”
“He did say I could stay.” Sandy spent two and a half seconds on the doorstep waiting for Nora to suddenly sprout a hospitality, then gave up and pushed past her into the living room. She dropped the suitcases on the floor, collapsed on the couch, then took off her sweater and mopped her forehead with it.
Sandy took a moment to look at the sweater. She’d knitted it herself a few years ago, after completing a course in advanced topological mathematics. She’d done it more as an intellectual exercise than anything else, but it did keep her warm. It consisted of two layers—a charcoal-gray layer on top and a mauve layer underneath—the strands of which were intertwined together in hundreds of complex little knots. Like the one-hoss shay in the old poem, it might suddenly collapse into a cloud of dust one day a hundred years from now, but it would never, ever unravel. It was a good sweater, and she was proud to have made it… but Sandy doubted she could make a living from knitting.
She looked around the room. It was plain her father was getting by financially. The furniture might not match, but everything was clean and in good shape… unlike the apartment she’d had to vacate, which was furnished in Early Modern Curbside. There was a nice big screen, currently tuned to a news channel. The anchor was talking about the 9/11 anniversary and various commemorations of the attacks. A message scrolling across the bottom said that according to scientists, there was no more sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. Yet another thing wrong with the world.
“How long do you plan on staying?” said Nora in what she probably thought was a diplomatic tone.
“I don’t really have plans right now.”
“I’m having a baby.”
“I heard. Congratulations.”
“It’s due in six months.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“We’ll be turning the guest bedroom into the baby’s room.”
“Not a problem. I c
an sleep on the couch.”
Nora put her hands on her hips. “To be perfectly frank,” she said, sounding more and more irritated, “I would expect you to have found other living arrangements by then.”
To be equally frank, you’re Martin’s fifth wife. So far. I wouldn’t bet on YOU being here six months from now. “I hope so. We’ll just have to see.”
Nora glowered at her, then strode into the kitchen.
Several minutes later, Sandy heard a car pulling into the driveway. She considered greeting her father at the door and throwing her arms around him, then decided that would be too obviously fake.
The last time she’d seen Martin Clearwater had been at Mom’s funeral, six years ago. He hadn’t changed much since then—he was in his late forties and still looked about thirty-five. If there was more gray in his blond hair, it was hard to see. He was a short man, not quite as tall as Nora.
“Sandy,” he said.
She blinked a couple of times while they just stood there and looked at each other. Then Martin smiled and spread his arms. Sandy hugged him, slipping her arms under his sport coat. The corner of her glasses pressed against his cheek.
“You look just the same,” he said. To Sandy, this felt less like a compliment than a reminder that her body had gotten about a quarter of the way through puberty and then given up, but it was a compliment she could return honestly.
“Sandy, this is my wife, Nora,” he said.
“We’ve met,” said Sandy, smiling at Nora like they’d hit it off at first sight. She’d discovered over the past few years that even social skills could be learned by rote if you worked at it. Right now she calculated that if she acted like she and Nora were getting along great, Nora would lose a lot of points if she showed any sign of hostility.
A few minutes later, she was sitting on the couch again. Martin was next to her. The conversation had turned, inevitably, to Verdissimus.