The Winter Over

by Iden, Matthew

  The small crowd was quiet as they all turned to stare out the windows. Cass, the only one without a camera, sat at one of the windows, her chin resting on her forearms. She preferred to commit the vision to memory instead of being ruled by what she could see through a viewfinder. Watching it, thinking about it, focused her mind more than worrying if she had the correct exposure setting or filter enabled.

  And it was a sight worth her attention. The sky was clear and blue, with only a few scudding clouds high in the sky that were no threat to their view. Something about the quality of light had turned the ice fields a deep indigo that set off the weak yellow rays to perfection. The sun itself hung in the air like a flare on the horizon, although it was smaller than she would’ve described it had she been asked, and it seemed faintly ridiculous to think the small golden disc could heat their planet.

  “Get ready.” Anne’s head was bent to the eyepiece of her scope.

  Almost as one, cameras were raised to faces. Cass blinked her eyes several times and stared at the sun. The orb didn’t appear to move at all, and then the rounded bottom was sheared off by the flat horizon as the sun ebbed downward. In a matter of a minute, the sun went from three-quarters, to half, to one-quarter full. Cass watched as its tip seemed to cling to the lip of the horizon, and then it slipped away. A small green sprite flashed just at the point of the sun’s departure, and then there was nothing.

  The group let out a collective sigh, murmuring appreciatively and peppering Anne with questions. Cass continued to watch long after the flash, admiring the clouds turning scarlet from the reflective light, until they were bruise-colored and indistinct. The light was not gone by any means, but it was clear that a profound change had taken place. She straightened in her chair and looked around. Only she and Anne were left in the galley.

  “Last light,” Cass said. Then, realizing that it had sounded overly dramatic, quipped, “The end of an era.”

  “Yes,” Anne said. “Winter is here.”

  PART III

  MAY

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Leroy stumbled through the door to his berth, locked the door, and fell facedown into his bunk. The little bed was barely big enough for him—his feet hung over the edge if he stretched out all the way—but right now he would’ve curled up on a pile of rags, he was so tired.

  It wasn’t the work, which kept him busy enough, he supposed, but he’d been on tougher jobs and even the farm where he grew up had a more demanding schedule. Which is to say, when something broke, you fixed it whether it was night or day, rain or shine, whether you were exhausted or not.

  No, it wasn’t the job. It was the constant push and pull of dealing with so many people, so many personalities, while all the while the wind was blowing and bullying, speaking to him as it thrashed the sides of the base. For weeks, his only solace had been the tunnel system below Shackleton, a place so quiet that his breathing was often the loudest thing he could hear. He’d explored farther and farther, inventing jobs so that he could pass entire shifts simply walking the warrens, old and new. He felt a small flush of pride—there probably wasn’t anyone alive who knew more about the lost tracks and empty rooms below the South Pole than he did.

  But his work had to get done sometime or they’d start asking questions, maybe even following. So, up he would come, like a prairie dog popping its head aboveground, taking the Beer Can steps to the surface where the wind would scream at him, berating him for hiding, setting his nerves on their bleeding edge.

  When he wasn’t in the tunnels, the crew was so small that he was constantly bumping into exactly the people he didn’t want to see. Taylor, who looked at him with a sideways squint. Keene, acting like a long-lost uncle while wearing that phony, three-dollar smile.

  And her . He didn’t want to say her name, not even in his head. Meeting her in the hall, seeing her from across the galley. The pretty smile and long, swinging hair. He was always polite, his upbringing wouldn’t let him act any other way, but every time he saw her coming down the hall, the wind seemed to pick up, screaming and rattling against the outside walls so loud that half the time he couldn’t even hear her say hello or ask him how he was doing.

  He groaned and rolled onto his side, his eyes squeezed shut, willing himself to sleep. Lord knows he was weary enough. But all he seemed to hear was the wind. Whistling in his head, whispering in his ear, telling, demanding, wanting.

  Sleep wasn’t happening, not right now. Maybe if he went to the lounge and put on a movie he’d pass out and finally get some rest. He sighed and opened his eyes, preparing to roll back out of bed, when he frowned. On his nightstand were two small, orange pill bottles, standing side by side. He hadn’t seen them when he’d come in.

  He reached out and grabbed one, bringing it closer. The pills inside rattled like teeth in a jar. The label read:

  LEROY BUSKINS – TAKE 1 PILL PER DAY AS PRESCRIBED

  He opened the bottle. Inside were perhaps forty pink, hexagonal pills. They barely filled the bottle to the halfway point.

  A gust suddenly slammed the outside wall of his berth and he froze. A prickling sensation ran from the crown of his head down to his toes and he held his breath as he waited for it to speak. But the gale died away and he slowly relaxed.

  Leroy put the lid back on the first bottle, then sat up and reached for the second. The label was identical, but inside were much larger blue capsules. They filled the bottle to the brim. He glanced at the labels again. They looked official enough, but neither had the name of the drug printed on it. That was okay; he’d been on so many meds over the years, with so many different names, it made no difference to him. The important thing was that he’d been taking two kinds of pills before he got to Shackleton. Here were two kinds of pills, right on his nightstand. The math added up.

  Normally, he was supposed to pick up his meds from Doc Ayres at the clinic, but maybe they were trying to simplify the process. It had always seemed a little silly for him to have to go down there, show his ID, then sign for the drugs they both knew damn well were his. It only made sense to streamline things. And he couldn’t complain about the service . . . delivered right to his room. No more BS trips to the clinic.

  Leroy shook out a pill from each bottle, knocked them both back with a swig from an old can of soda he found sitting next to the bed, then rolled out of bed and started donning his cold weather gear again. He grunted a laugh as he pulled on his boots. A movie ? He thought a movie would help him? With the wind thrashing outside and moaning through every crack and crevice? There was only one place he could find peace in this little patch of hell. He shrugged on his parka and grabbed his hat, then headed out the door for the tunnels fifty feet below the station.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It was late and the galley was nearly empty, populated by support staff and the few scientists who had to work as part of a twenty-four-hour shift. Most sat alone, staring at the TV with its endlessly scrolling weather report, out a window, or down at their tray. From time to time, one would give a little start as if remembering why they were there, and mechanically lift a fork or a water glass to their mouth. The wind pushed against the outer walls, but was ignored as nothing more than background noise.

  Cass had made a point to sit down with Jeremy and Sam, two of the fuelies, in an effort to combat the lethargy that seemed to be grabbing hold of everyone at the station. The conversation was painfully stilted, but with the three of them working at it, they made it through a handful of topics before running out of steam. Still, it was a victory of sorts, and they beamed at each other for having beat T3, if only for one meal. Cass looked around at others not so lucky: those who seemingly sat for hours looking out a window; Elise, who still had her hand wrapped around a glass, though she’d emptied it thirty minutes earlier; even Taylor, his face set in a scowl, gazed unblinkingly into some middle distance.

  The fuelies pushed back from the table, excusing themselves just as a neat, trim figure approached, a tray in his hands. Jun nodde
d at them as they passed, smiled at Cass, and sat down.

  “It is nice to see you,” Jun said as he methodically lifted each plastic bowl from his tray and placed them on the table in an array around his plate. He wore the same white short-sleeved shirt she’d originally seen him in and the same—or identical—too-blue department store jeans. She couldn’t see them now, but she was sure he had on the battered Keds as well; they’d become a running, mean-spirited joke around the station.

  “It’s nice to see you, too, Jun,” Cass said mechanically, though beyond the greeting she found herself tongue-tied, having talked herself out of trying to keep up the conversation with Jeremy and Sam.

  “Are you having a good day?”

  “I am,” she said. “How about you?”

  “I’m okay,” he said, then looked down at a bowl of salad. He pushed the contents around with his fork as though the actual food was somewhere underneath.

  Cass cast around for something to say, latched onto an easy topic. “How’s your work out at COBRA?”

  “It’s good, thank you for asking,” Jun said, brightening. “It’s lonely sometimes, but I’ve gotten used to it.”

  Cass swirled the last inch of coffee in her cup. “I don’t know how you guys do it, spending all that time alone monitoring the equipment.”

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” he said. “I take my books, some music. There’s lots of time to think. I pretend I can hear the stars talk.”

  “Oh?”

  As though a dam had burst, he began talking fast, building up speed as the words tumbled out. “Whales communicate through their songs and dolphins through ultrasonic clicks, but not many people think they are actually talking to us. It’s a form of information delivery, but not necessarily speech. What if we thought of distant suns as communicating in a similar way? Radio astronomy is an accepted subfield of the science, but it’s passive observation. What if we could interpret the language of a star like we do a whale’s song or a gorilla’s sign language or a human’s speech?”

  After months at the South Pole, the theory didn’t sound nearly as batty as it might’ve in a previous life. “Have you mentioned this to the other people on your team?”

  “Oh, no.” Jun’s face registered shock at the suggestion. “They’d think I was crazy.”

  Cass smiled. You’re kidding. “Maybe when this is all over, you could test the idea back at home.”

  “I don’t think so. They are not much more open-minded than my colleagues here.”

  “Where is home, again?”

  “Pasadena.” The answer came easily enough, but Jun’s face fell as he said it. “Caltech.”

  “Not a good place?”

  “Oh, no. It is a very good school. Many opportunities for research, grants, post-docs.”

  Cass nodded hesitantly. There was something there, but most Polies weren’t fond of prying. Either someone offered personal information or they didn’t. Jun tore open a sugar packet and stirred it into a glass of iced tea, focusing on it like it would talk to him like his stars. Cass watched him.

  “My wife is in Pasadena,” he said finally. “It is very hard to have her so far away.”

  Cass nodded again. The rattle of metal pans and utensils being washed filtered to them distantly from the kitchen.

  “What does she do?”

  “She is a physician’s assistant at a local practice.” He said it as if reading from a script.

  “The two of you sound very successful,” Cass said awkwardly.

  He looked up and smiled briefly. “Thank you.”

  “No kids?”

  Jun’s face fell again. “No.”

  Idiot , Cass chided herself. “Well, I’m sure it’s hard on her to be away from you, too, Jun.”

  He nodded, but not like he was agreeing. He pushed his salad around more, then said to it, “She was not happy that I came to Shackleton. But it is very rare to be invited. This will be very good for my career.”

  Outside, a capricious gust flung a spray of ice against one of the windows. Even through the thick glass, it made a sound like gravel being thrown at a wall. Jun didn’t flinch. Moments passed.

  “I came here to punish my wife,” he finally continued. “I wanted to make her miss me.”

  Cass said nothing.

  “At home,” he said, “we had very different schedules. She always left work before me. Long hours, early in the morning. I study space, so my work is late at night, like here. But, no matter how late I came home, I would still get up every morning before she went to work.”

  A knot of pain formed at the base of Cass’s throat. She found herself unable to speak.

  “Every day, I would stand on our little porch and wave as she drove away. I waved. I waved as long as I could see her car,” he said, almost in a wondering tone. “But, after all the times I waved, she never looked back.”

  Jun’s face pulled inward then, and tears welled in his eyes. It was made worse by the fact that he made no sound. He simply cried.

  Cass’s mouth opened to say something, but nothing came out. She shared some amount of his loss and pain, but it was as if she had no ability to empathize, as if her emotions had been walled away and made unavailable for her to use on behalf of others or for herself. She could only watch as the man wept silently, his tears spilling down his cheeks and falling into his salad.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Aside from the smell of sweat and institutional cleaner, the gym was empty. Cass flicked the lights on and wandered the small but well-equipped room, spinning the wheels on the bikes and stabbing the buttons on the machines.

  In addition to the treadmills and rowing deck, there were two stationary bikes, a punching bag, four weight machines, and some kind of stretching device with pegs and straps that looked like it had been invented during the Inquisition. Poking her nose into a utility closet revealed mats, some weird-looking rubber bands, and other odds and ends left over from various workout crazes. She sighed and shut the closet.

  Since spraining her ankle, Cass had reluctantly turned to her non-running options for exercise, trying to rest an injury that, thanks to the fiasco in the tunnels underneath Shackleton, was still tender and occasionally buckled when she walked down a set of stairs. Ayres’s suggestion when she’d asked what she should do—not exercise—wasn’t an option. In recent years, she’d grown accustomed to throwing herself into each run, exhausting her mind as well as her body, punishing and pushing herself to accomplish a kind of therapy through fatigue. Rowing, biking, and lifting weights all helped satisfy in part the physical and emotional craving running had created, but it was no substitute for actually picking ’em up and putting ’em down. Unlike Sheryl and some of the more adventurous in Shackleton’s crew, she couldn’t bring herself to run outside, but the miles stacked up the same on a treadmill.

  But she hadn’t been able to put those miles in since the end of the summer season. Desperate, she’d tried a light jog a few weeks ago, hoping enough time had passed that the ankle had healed. She’d put in three miles, encouraged by the lack of pain during the run . . . only to find the next morning that her ankle had blown up to three times its normal size.

  Enough time had passed since for the ankle to heal, but she was skittish, remembering the tweak she’d felt deep in the tendons and muscles when she’d initially sprained it. She could probably run again . . . but what if she couldn’t? Give it one more week , she thought. You have the entire second half of the winter to get back in shape .

  Whatever she did, whenever she did it, Cass knew she had to do something to stretch her body and mind. Between the darkness outside the station and the lassitude she felt inside herself, exercise seemed the only weapon against the creeping sense of depression gripping everyone on base. She’d been ashamed that she hadn’t been able to summon any empathy for Jun when he’d broken down in the galley; maybe with enough time in the gym she could beat some humanity back into her soul.

  Grumbling, she mounted one of t
he stationary bikes and started pedaling. Thirty minutes later, having built up a decent sweat at the expense of a throbbing in her ankle, she strapped on a pair of boxing gloves and began slugging the punching bag, careful to put most of her weight on her good ankle. Imagining Keene’s or Hanratty’s face in place of the bag helped the throbbing go away.

  She kept it up until her arms and shoulders burned and she felt a twinge in one wrist from hitting the bag at an awkward angle, but her pent-up anxiety slowly leaked away. The familiar and welcome feeling of serenity that came with an intense workout took its place.

  Cass was about to wrap it up when the door opened and Anne Klimt came in. She flashed a smile at Cass, then walked by and headed for one of the treadmills. Anne, tall and lithe, was a runner, too, and Cass looked on enviously as the other woman started jogging effortlessly, her long hair pulled back in a ponytail that swung back and forth with her stride. Feeling peevish, Cass forgot about quitting and went back to slugging the bag despite the pain in her wrist.

  She has good form , Cass thought grudgingly as she watched Anne segue into a full-stride, six-minute-mile pace after just a few minutes of warm-up. Elbows tucked to the sides. No wasted, bouncy, up-and-down motion. Heel-to-toe rocking motion, minimizing impact and compression.

  Cass’s hands slowly dropped to her sides as she watched. The other woman’s running brought another’s stride to mind: a floppy, arm-swinging figure dashing down a tunnel of white ice. She visualized the form over Anne’s, comparing the sleek movement in front of her to the mystery runner’s awkward sprint.

  Anne, maybe feeling the weight of Cass’s gaze, turned her head. Caught staring, Cass blushed.