“This intersection is one of the most interesting parts of the sub-ice section of the base, though not because of the pipes.” She pulled out a flashlight and pointed it at the alcove. Hidden deep in the tangle of pipes was a short corridor. At the end was a plain, plywood door. “That’s the entrance to the ice tunnels. Not ones framed by corrugated ceilings and walls, but passages literally carved out of the ice.”
“Are they part of the regular station?” Sikes asked. His voice started at just above a whisper.
“Yes and no. Most are remnants from past stations and utility corridors for fresh water, sewage, electricity, and fuel. We’ve repurposed some and left others.”
Harvard cleared his throat. “I heard a rumor that past crews have used the ice tunnels to make—what do you call them?—shrines to commemorate their time here.”
“It’s not officially permitted, of course, but personnel at Shackleton are allowed to go almost anywhere on base, so it would be almost impossible to keep them from making the shrines.”
“I’d think you’d want to stop that kind of thing,” Jimmy said.
“A little bit of illicit behavior goes a long way toward improving morale. Better to let a few of the crew blow off steam putting some memorabilia in a niche than going postal halfway through a winter-over.”
The group nodded. Probably thinking about being trapped with Jimmy for nine months.
“Can we see the shrines?” Sikes asked.
“I’m sorry, we can’t for safety purposes.”
“Can you tell us what’s in them? I’ve seen pictures of some.”
“Well,” Cass said, hesitating as she thought of one cubbyhole that had a set of four upright, brightly colored dildos named Fred, Ted, Ned, and Red. Polies had a strange sense of humor. “They’re really just small spaces with personal effects. A compass, an empty beer can, that kind of thing, although one year someone smuggled an entire sturgeon to the base and made a shrine to it. Since it’s almost zero percent humidity and below freezing in the tunnels, nothing ever rots. So there’s a gigantic, mummified fish back there that means a lot to somebody, somewhere.”
She moved on before they could try to pressure her into taking them into the tunnels. The hall’s narrow mouth disgorged them into another hangar-like arch. Everyone’s eyes turned upwards at the metal ribs seventy feet above them; they were all Jonahs in the belly of an Antarctic whale.
“This is our next stop, the logistical facility, which is a fancy name for warehouse. All of our food, emergency extreme cold weather gear—ECW, for short—and base supplies are kept here. It’s the coldest deep freeze on the planet, so dry goods are perfectly preserved. When the end of the world eventually comes, there will still be powdered milk and freeze-dried coffee here.”
Sikes glanced at his watch, no mean feat through three layers. Cass took the hint. “If we had more time, I’d take you outside through one of the exits through the VMF or the fuel station, but that’s definitely the long way around. So, let’s retrace our steps, get something hot to drink in the galley, then I’ll hand you back over to Deb. I’m sure she’s got plenty more to show you before you get on the plane to McMurdo later today.”
There was an overall sound of murmured relief. With the tour essentially over, the aides fell into chatter and jokes again as they followed Cass back through the arches. Freed of the obligation to guide the group, she set a brisker pace than she had coming down, but the senator caught up with her and matched her stride.
“You talked a lot about the facilities, Ms. Jennings,” he said, “but you didn’t say much about the people.”
She shot him a sidelong glance, wondering what kind of answer he was after. “The station was designed with the people in mind, Senator. As you say, we’ve got the lounges, movies, music . . . even the menu in the galley was put together to keep morale up. There’s also enough space to be alone, which is just as important as being part of the community.”
“That’s a fine answer,” he replied drily, “no doubt provided by the TransAnt handbook. But what about the human side of things here? What do people do to relax that wasn’t designed for them by a team of shrinks back in DC? Do you have drunken orgies? Are you sober as monks? And what happens when none of that works? You can’t tell me someone hasn’t gone batty down here before.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but things don’t get that crazy. Everyone’s too cold and tired.” When she saw he was unconvinced, she tried humor. “You had to notice that everyone down here is a geek of one kind or another. We have trouble talking to other people, never mind organizing drunken orgies.”
They passed the bump-out and he shot a glance into the darkness toward the door to the ice tunnels. “Humph. What about when someone loses their marbles down here? What happens then?”
“I haven’t seen it happen,” she said. “All I can say is, the selection testing for station personnel is some of the most rigorous in the world. People are stable, happy, and well balanced.”
“You’d put yourself in that category, then?”
Not really . “Yes. Although I’ll admit you have to be a different kind of crazy to come down here in the first place. They say everyone who comes to Antarctica is either running from something or to something.”
“And which are you?”
“I’m somewhere in between, Senator.” She put a note of finality on the end of the sentence. Subject closed .
“How do you feel about the death of that woman . . . Sheryl, was it?”
She stumbled, feeling like she’d been kicked in the stomach. “You know about that?”
He smirked. “Mr. Hanratty told me. He figured, rightly, that word would get out sooner or later and that it was better to be transparent about the tragedy now than have it appear later when it would suggest a cover-up. Since Shackleton isn’t under NSF purview anymore, the day-to-day situation isn’t a governmental concern, of course, but there’s still intense public interest in what happens down here.”
“We’ll all miss Sheryl,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “But if officials determine her death was an accident, then it’s important to keep the base moving forward.”
“Do you think her death was an accident?” He peered at her as though examining a specimen.
She started. “Of course.”
“Ah. Your answer seemed to suggest . . . well, never mind.”
To forestall another battery of questions, she picked up the pace and within a minute they found themselves at the base of the Beer Can. She would normally point out the cheerful, handwritten message “EARN THAT COOKIE!” some wag had scrawled on the bottom step in permanent marker, but she didn’t spare anyone a break, marching directly up the stairs until Jimmy called for her to stop. Months of high-altitude work at the Pole had paid off; her pulse had barely bumped past normal. Based on the number of aides holding on to railings or bent over, sucking wind, however, they hadn’t enjoyed a similar training. Sikes looked ready to stroke out.
She gave them a minute, then flogged them upstairs to the top level and down the hall to the galley. Most were too tired to take their parkas off before they sank into the plastic chairs in the mess hall. Sikes, ashen-faced, sat at one end of the table, eyes closed and pinching the bridge of his nose.
Cass spoke to the cook to line up coffee and hot chocolate for the group, then stood at the head of their table, her hands folded in front of her, smiling sweetly. “I hope you enjoyed the tour. Do you have any questions for me before I call Deb?”
“Yeah.” Jimmy groaned, rubbing his temples. “What the hell are you people made of?”
“It takes a special breed to want to come here.” And you’re not it. “It’s been a pleasure showing you Shackleton station. Have a safe flight back to McMurdo.”
She turned and left. As she opened the door into the hall, she heard Sikes say, “Gentlemen, there goes the only thing more frigid than the ice this station is built upon.”
The door swung closed on not only the l
ast group of visitors she’d have to guide this season, but maybe her career as a tour guide, as well. After that performance, it seemed doubtful that she’d be asked to reprise the role. In fact, if Sikes had any pull at all, it might be doubtful she’d be allowed to come back to the station. And maybe that was okay.
CHAPTER SIX
The stack of files behind Hanratty’s chair towered like some kind of totem pole, each pale manila folder telling a story, though most were as enigmatic or inscrutable as the carved wooden face of a god or a demon. Each contained enough paper to make the whole stack over a foot and a half high.
He poked his head out of his office door. Deb was at her desk shuffling through activity reports. He cleared his throat. “Would you mind running interference for me if anyone comes in, Deb? If I don’t clear my in-box, my ass is grass.”
She shot him a thumbs-up without raising her head. Hanratty backed into his office and sat down at his desk, spinning in place to address the tower of files. He thumbed the stack, glancing at the names typed in small caps on the tabs at the top. Klimt, Takahashi, Simon, nearly a dozen others. He’d sifted through them so many times that they were no longer in alphabetical order, so he’d fallen into his own classification scheme.
First came the most obvious way to tell them apart: the thickness of the folder. A wad of paper didn’t necessarily mean there was a problem; it just meant a lot had been written on the subject. His next criterion was more illuminating: the swatch of color created by the papers inside. White was innocuous. Splashes of green and pink were concerning. Dark pink bordering on red was what his old buddies at DoD would’ve labeled roundhouse: . Hanratty had managed to visually distinguish the roundhouse folders—four in all—from the others at a glance.
A very few folders could be separated by his last criterion, his personal touch: the number of inky thumb stains on the outer folder and name tab. He’d read and reread the contents of those files so often that the tabs had been worn down to rounded bumps peeking out of the pile.
He’d fought to have physical folders at all. TransAnt’s administrative branch had battled him tooth and nail to digitize the records, reminding him that every scrap of written word on base could be contained on a single hard drive or sent over the network in a burst less than a minute long. Physical objects had volume, space that equaled expense when it came to shipping things to the bottom of the earth.
He’d stood his ground. Being old-fashioned had been part of it, of course, but the real reason was that digital files could be stolen and replicated a million times without anyone knowing. If only a finite number of physical copies—in this case, one—existed, then their theft would be obvious. Sometimes the simplest measures were the best.
The base psychologist possessed his own dossiers on the staff, of course, though in reality, Keene had been given no more than half the contents that existed in Hanratty’s files. Sometimes Keene gave him a look when they spoke about Shackleton’s crew and Hanratty wondered if the man knew he’d been given the Reader’s Digest version.
Hanratty found the folder he’d been looking for and set it aside from the others, though he didn’t open it, not yet. He knew its contents intimately, and he wanted to have it at hand, but he also didn’t want to taint his recent observations with a fresh read. Better to jot down his impressions, add them to the growing pile, and synthesize later.
A single white sheet of paper with no lines or holes was his preferred scribbling pad. He pulled out a red, felt-tipped pen and wrote at the top:
E1. SUB 1. DISCOVERY OF LARKIN BODY
Next to that, he placed the date. It seemed faintly ridiculous to do so—he’d have as much chance forgetting the day Sheryl Larkin had died as his own birthday—but he’d learned over time that any and every bit of information was valuable.
He took out a ruler and marked off an inch of white space with a tiny dot of his pen, then proceeded to write using bullet points and acerbic sentence fragments. He kept at it for the next thirty minutes, sometimes with speed and confidence, but more often with his eyebrows knotted in concentration and tapping the pen’s cap against his teeth, a habit his wife had found infuriating. Ex-wife , he corrected himself, then sealed off that line of thought like he’d closed a tank hatch and spun the wheel.
He frowned when he’d nearly filled the page. The unrelieved red scratches gave a sense of alarm to the whole thing, which hadn’t been his intention. Most of his notes were only observations, with just a few items that deserved special attention. Sighing, he reached into his drawer and pulled out a blue pen, this time to underline only the critical parts, the most significant of which was the last line on the page.
Yesterday, after returning to Shackleton with Larkin’s body and leaving the VMF, he’d acted on a hunch and told Taylor to head back without him. Creeping like a thief, he’d rested his ear against the garage door, then peeked inside to confirm with his eyes what he’d heard with his ears. The intel had been valuable, but he’d slunk away, ashamed of himself. Even now the memory caused him to curl his lip.
He exhaled through his nose, long and slow, consciously purging the thought and the emotions that rode shotgun alongside it. Too much depended on this project, professionally and personally, for him to get squeamish or sentimental about his conduct. If a brief moment of shame was the worst casualty of the winter, it would be a ridiculously small price to pay. He circled the last bullet point and read it once more.
Subject distraught upon return (expressed privately). Seemed to feel personal culpability. Highest—lowest?—emotional point observed to date.
He capped the blue pen and tossed it into the drawer, then blew on the ink to make sure it had dried—an old habit—before the page went into the file to join the others. He let the folder’s leaf fall shut, then tossed the well-thumbed file beside the stack and picked up the next one. Sparing a glance at the name, he slipped another single sheet of unblemished paper from the ream, picked up his red pen, and got back to work.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The two men stared at each other for a pregnant moment until the one behind the desk said, “You just came in on yesterday’s flight with the other fingies, didn’t you?”
“The what?”
A smile. “Sorry. It’s local slang. Fingie stands for ‘fucking new guy.’ It’s just a term we use. No insult intended. Anyway, you just came in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“First time in Antarctica?”
“First time.” He nodded.
“Why don’t you tell me something about yourself?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Like where you grew up.”
He smiled nervously. “Isn’t that all in my file?”
“It tells me where you were born, where you went to high school, where you’ve lived. But those are just facts.” The man gestured extravagantly. “My file says I was born in San Francisco and earned a degree at Stanford. Those are facts, and true, but they mean very little. Millions of people live in that area and tens of thousands have gone to that school. If I said instead that, as a child, I lived in a small town on the coast and woke up smelling pine trees every morning, that tells you something no written record can. Do you see what I mean?”
“I guess so.” He considered. “Though there’s nothing much to tell. I was born on a farm in Iowa, learned how to fix tractors and turn the lights on when they quit, then got the heck out of there as soon as I could.”
“What did your family farm?”
“Boredom.”
Smile. “What did you sell?”
“Soy and corn, like everyone else.”
“Did you have any brothers or sisters?”
His jaw muscles bunched once, then released. “A sister.”
“Was she older or younger than you?”
“Older.”
“Much older or just a few years?”
“She was seven years older than me.”
“Most older sisters boss their younger brothers
around. Did yours?”
He paused. “Yes.”
“Did you push back?”
“When I could. There were chores. And work to be done. She whipped me when I didn’t carry my share.”
“Did you run away or did you have to take it whenever she dished it out?”
“I ran when I saw it coming.” He laughed. “She was pretty good about hiding it until it was too late.”
“And where did you run?”
“It’s Iowa. There wasn’t no place to run to . I just picked a direction and went.”
“Out into the fields.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What did you do out there? How long did you wait before you went back?”
He tilted his head and smiled again. “You ever sat in a cornfield?”
The other man pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. “No, I haven’t.”
“If you had, you’d know there’s nothing to do. I sat and thought and I listened. When I figured I could sneak back into the house without getting a whipping, I went.”
“To what did you listen?”
He hesitated. “The wind.”
“Why the wind?”
“It was the only thing out there.”
“What did it sound like?”
He paused. “Like wind.”
“Was it the same every time?”
His eyes flicked around the room, following the shelves, counting the books. He was unaware his mouth moved as he did so. After a moment, he answered. “Not always. When it went through full cornstalks, it was different than later in the season.”
“After the corn had been harvested.”
“Yeah.”
“And what was different about it?”
“It hummed, a little.”
The man nodded. “Did you ever fight with your sister?”
“I told you, she whipped me.”
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