Maid for the South Pole

by Demelza Carlton

  "No, Jay. I want to go to Antarctica again. It's amazing there. And there's...there's an opportunity to do further study there, too. Maybe even a PhD." She laughed. "Listen to me. I never thought I'd be able to afford to do it, but the thought of being the one to discover something, to add to the store of human knowledge because of something I've done, however small...it means I'm not just someone's maid, destined to clean up other people's messes for the rest of my life. I have the opportunity to make a difference for once in my life, and I'm going to take it, if I can."

  "What do you have to do to get it? Apply to some university or other and convince the professors to take you? Those guys don't get paid much. Maybe I could – "

  "NO!" She glared at him. "You are not going to pay off any professor, anywhere, to buy me entrance into a PhD program. Besides, it wouldn't work. It's a program they're offering through the Bureau. We have six months to build an online following, promoting how great it is to work for the Bureau. I'm going to do a video channel with regular vlogs about my life in Antarctica."

  Jay nodded. "And wait for the right video to go viral. That's what happened for Chaya. Just...boom. One interview went viral and suddenly Necessary Evil was the most downloaded song on iTunes that day. It was mental."

  "Are you offering to write me a song?"

  It was Jay's turn to laugh. "Fuck, no. You wouldn't want me to. I never wrote any of our songs. I just performed them. But if I posted something, saying how I thought it'd be cool if all my fans followed you...you'd win for sure."

  "Don't you dare." Audra ripped her hands out of his grip. "If I get this, it'll be through my own effort, not because I know someone famous. I earn things through merit, not through favours."

  "But that's not how the world works," Jay argued. "It's who you know, not what you know. Chaya was one of a thousand bands, until we scored that TV interview because...because of who we knew. Sure, we're good, but there were plenty of other bands better than us. It was luck and circumstance and other people who made the band what they became. You don't get a couple million followers from just putting up a few videos and being good. You need more than that. Something that'll make the world want to watch every minute."

  He wasn't wrong, but Audra knew all this. "I'll have penguins."

  "Penguins won't make you go viral," Jay said. "You need to do more than that."

  "What, then?" Audra challenged. The man might have millions of followers, but he wouldn't have the first idea on how to get them in the first place.

  "Marry me."

  "What?"

  Jay swallowed. "Marry me. It's one thing you could do that would definitely get you the worldwide attention you want. The minute the media learn your name, they'll all go wild for you."

  "Like they did for Flavia, you mean?"

  "No. They buzzed around her because of the auction, not because of me. I still don't think the media know about my involvement. That's completely different," he insisted. "Marry me, Audra."

  The man was insane. "You mean marry you and stay here? Instead of going to the South Pole?"

  "That's what I'd like, yes, but if you really feel you need to go, I guess you could – "

  "Stop. Just stop. The answer is no, Jay. No matter what you might think, or what I might have thought the last time I was here, I am NOT made to live my life as arm candy to a rock star, or as a maid in someone's hotel. I'm capable for more than that. I'm made for adventure, for discovery, for – "

  "For the icy wasteland that's the South Pole?" he asked bitterly.

  "Yes!" Audra exploded. "I'm made for the South Pole. Not for you."

  He got that kicked puppy look. "Why not?"

  Audra bit her lip. When he looked at her like that, it was hard to remember all her objections to him as a person. He was unbelievably good in bed, but he was as troubled as her brothers for all that, and she didn't want to spend the rest of her life propping up his ego while her own life went on hold. She'd done that for her family for as long as she could remember. Now, it was time for her to live her own life. And win that contest on merit, without cheating by asking for favours from Jay.

  Cheating. The perfect excuse.

  "Because you cheated on me. Not just once, but with hundreds of girls," she said.

  "It wasn't cheating!" Jay protested. "We weren't together!"

  "So if I go to Antarctica, and you stay here, and either of us sleep with anyone else, you don't think it's cheating because of geography?"

  "No?" he ventured.

  "Guess again."

  "But we weren't together. It's not like we were married or anything," he insisted.

  "I didn't cheat on you," Audra said softly. "All the time I was in Antarctica, I didn't sleep with anyone. While you...you probably slept with half the country."

  "Who would you sleep with in Antarctica?" Jay scoffed. "There's no one there! Just penguins and seals and whales and shit!"

  "In summer, there are plenty of people there. Researchers. People who keep the bases operational. More people than you have on this island in peak season. If I went to Antarctica looking for love, I bet I'd find it."

  "You wouldn't find better than me." The arsehat had returned.

  Audra stared at him steadily, measuring her words carefully. "Jay, even the penguins there are better than you, because they mate for life. They're faithful. Unlike you."

  "Not as big as me. Penguins have tiny dicks."

  She didn't want to know when he'd seen a penguin's genitals.

  "An elephant seal, then," Audra retorted, trying hard not to laugh. Just the thought of getting close to an elephant seal, let alone...ugh. "But you know what? It doesn't matter. Here's something you missed in all your romance reading: cheaters never win. A man who cheats on his beloved never gets a happily ever after. It's one of the cardinal rules of romance."

  "Never?" he whispered.

  She met his pleading gaze. "Never."

  Oh shit, if she stayed another moment, she'd give in to him. Again. And she couldn't. "Goodbye, Jay," she said, striding off before he could follow her. The moment she was out of sight, she broke into a run, hoping to reach the main building, where she could hide until the helicopter returned for her. No way was she spending any more time on the island with Jay Felix. She didn't want to do something else stupid. It was time for adventure again, at the bottom of the world. And she didn't need a man to help her succeed – this time, she'd do it all on her own.

  ELEVEN

  It seemed like no time at all before Jean was back at Sea-Tac Airport, waiting in the departure lounge for the boarding call for his flight to New Zealand. The first of several flights, really, but that didn't matter. The first time he'd done this, his heart had been filled with eager excitement at the adventure awaiting him at the bottom of the world.

  Now, all he felt was grim determination.

  Sure, there'd be adventure and excitement and all, but underlying that was his true goal. A simple one, really: to discover, so his name would be remembered. Some distant relation centuries ago had first described king penguins for science. Now it was his turn to make his mark, unfettered by family or a whining wife who wanted to hold him back from greatness. He was adding to the vast body of human knowledge through science – a noble cause, certainly. Anyone could breed and work a boring day job. Only a handful of people got to make a difference, to discover things. He wouldn't screw it up this time.

  Dragging himself home to a wife who didn't want him. Instead, he should have been taking the next flight back to Antarctica, to finish his research. Most people wouldn't have gotten a second chance when they'd messed up so badly, and no one got a third. This time, he wouldn't let any woman stand in his way.

  His goal was as clear in his mind as it was when he started studying, without being clouded by thoughts of Dairine. She'd seduced him, he knew now, tempting him away from his true calling so that he could satisfy her dreams, while his shrivelled and died.

  Sure, the sex had been okay, in that there'
d been plenty of it, but he'd always thought a marriage ought to have a bit more to it than bonking like rabbits and the inevitable result: kids. Shared feelings, maybe. Love. Or similar goals. It was obvious to him now that the feelings and love had all been on his side, while Dairine had felt nothing for him. As for goals...well, he had his own now. But he wasn't sharing them with anyone, no matter how good she looked naked. No, shared goals meant shared glory, and he was having none of it.

  Let Dairine see what she'd lost when she'd discarded him to get with that nerdy computer guy.

  When Jean finally decided he'd had enough adventure for a bit and settled down for a little while to have kids, they'd know their dad was a great man who'd helped discover things. A scientist. A scholar. Someone to be proud of, with a reputation to live up to.

  But all that was years away. He was young. He had all the time in the world to find a wife and have kids and all that. Right now, he had a PhD to complete, and a postdoc to plan.

  And any woman who tried to seduce him away from his work would be in for a rude shock. No one would distract him from his goals this time. Not even if she owned a perfect pair of tits.

  TWELVE

  Audra planted her feet on the deck and took a deep breath. She hadn't counted on feeling nervous before her first vlog. Best to get started, then. She pressed the RECORD button.

  "Hi, I'm Audra, a graduate meteorologist on my way to my first posting, and this is my ride."

  She lifted the camera and panned across the deck, turning slowly on the spot until she'd shown them the full circle of her view.

  "The Aurora Australis, a ninety-five-metre-long icebreaker that can cruise through sea ice more than a metre thick. It might be spring in Australia, but there's ice in Antarctica year round, so I've got my gloves, my hat and my polar thickness coat to keep warm. Most of the other hundred or so passengers are inside, grabbing something to eat in the mess hall, working out in the gym, chilling in the rec room or catching up on sleep in their bunks.

  "The sea out here can get pretty rough, with the sort of ten-metre swell I'd expect to see in cyclones further north, but today it's relatively calm, so I'm out here in the hope of seeing whales. Humpback and southern right whales are headed south with me, to spend their summer in Antarctica."

  She leaned on the railing, holding the camera steady as the ship cut through the waves. There wasn't a whale in sight, but she figured she might use the ocean footage for something else later when she cut the video. If she did catch a whale, it would be an added bonus.

  A gust of wind tugged at her hat, so she shoved it further down on her head, stroking the faux fur like the cat it reminded her of. She'd splashed out in the stocktake sales while she was in Melbourne, buying a new hat and coat and gloves to supplement the standard expedition gear. Now she was glad of it – she'd stand out in the videos.

  Audra waited until her fingers started to go numb, then turned the camera off and headed inside.

  She took several videos over the next week, trying her best to make shipboard life look fun. She uploaded them over the ship's slow internet connection and watched the number of views slowly creep up. Maybe these viral video things were harder to create than she'd thought.

  Three days out of Davis, they ran into a storm. Audra wasn't sure how big the swell was, but it tilted the ship to some crazy angles as it made most people seasick. Suddenly, inside the ship was the last place she wanted to be, with the stench of bile combined with bleach and disinfectant everywhere she went. Everyone else took to their bunks except the crew and a few unaffected passengers, Audra included.

  While she was sitting in the near-empty mess hall, tinkering with the zoom on her ocean video to see if she'd captured any whales or not, she encountered Doug, who remembered her from her last voyage. They got to talking about her videos and her project, so he invited her up to the bridge to film the storm from the best vantage point.

  Audra eagerly accepted, hurrying back to her shared cabin to retrieve her camera and stow her laptop. She left her fellow groaning passengers in their curtained-off bunks, and made her way carefully up the ladders to the control centre of the ship. With every step, she had to remind herself to keep three points of contact. It didn't stop her from being bumped against the wall whenever the ship lurched, but it kept her from losing her footing.

  Audra exchanged nods with the captain, as his eyes darted from one display to another, before he peered out of the spray-spattered glass to the tempest outside.

  "Wow," she breathed, her own eyes fixed over the seething sea as the waves laid siege to the deck. She'd seen the waves licking at the mess hall windows like they'd wanted to taste her lunch, but here they were enormous, from one rain-fogged horizon to the other. She lifted her camera. "Can I?"

  She gripped the nearest railing and held her camera to the glass, her own eyes glued to the storm outside. A normal person would have been frightened. She should have been frightened. As a meteorologist, she knew what sort of power she was seeing, but she didn't care. Or, maybe more accurately, she did care, but she found it more awe-inspiring than frightening. No one could control this sort of power – raw, untamed, glorious. She didn't have enough words to describe it. Nevertheless, she tried, murmuring a description of the storm into the camera's microphone that couldn't do the phenomenon justice.

  She hadn't thought anyone heard her until the captain remarked, "This is nothing. You should see the storms we get in Drake's Passage."

  "Really?" Audra asked. In her head, she added an item to her bucket list: travel through a storm in Drake's Passage.

  "Yeah. Worst patch of water in the world, but the only way to travel between South America and Antarctica. I wouldn't want to take this old bucket through there any more," he said.

  Audra laughed. If the Aurora Australis was a bucket, it was the biggest, reddest bucket in the world. "She doesn't look that bad to me."

  "That's because you're not an expert on ships."

  She bristled for a moment, before conceding that he had a point.

  "Most icebreakers are only good for twenty years or so before they need a massive rebuild. They take a lot of punishment between the storms and the ice they constantly have to shove their way through. This bucket has so many dents in her, it's no wonder someone's ordered her replacement. None too soon, either – she's twenty-six, and overdue for retirement."

  For the first time, Audra didn't feel so secure. "Is she safe?"

  "Safe enough, or she wouldn't be sailing this season."

  Audra nodded, satisfied. Before she'd left Hobart, the Australian Antarctic Division staff had insisted she do an updated safety training course before she left, on her supervisor's instructions. Now, she wasn't just an emergency surgical assistant, but a safety officer tasked with preventing injuries, too.

  "Don't be scared," the captain said. "We're not the Titanic. Plenty of lifeboats and supplies aboard for everyone if the worst were to happen and this ship sinks."

  "Oh, I'm not scared," she replied, lifting her gaze to the window again. Was it strange for a meteorologist to sympathise with the storm? Maybe.

  THIRTEEN

  Jean deliberately turned his back on the storm outside. He preferred to be in the relative safety of McMurdo Station instead of the whiteout that had engulfed the rest of Ross Island. He wasn't the only one trapped in the station because of the bad weather – a bunch of scientists and technicians were due to replace the winter staff at the South Pole astrophysics station, which they all referred to as the Ice Cube. Jean wasn't sure if that was its actual name or some sort of nickname for whatever its official title was. Either way, they weren't happy to be stuck here instead of heading inland to start their research.

  He'd joined them in drinking away their communal sorrows to the point where he was down to his last two bottles of whisky. If he didn't stop soon, he'd have nothing to celebrate with when he finally found that penguin colony.

  Sighing, he reluctantly switched to water. He'd stick to be
er until the storm blew over.

  He couldn't really complain. He'd managed to get a lift out to New Zealand's sub-Antarctic islands with a cruise ship, so he'd already started his research for the season. Numbers were up at all the king penguin colonies, as he'd predicted, but the forced idleness meant he'd already had time to include his findings in his thesis and fire off a copy to Louis. So Jean was left to cool his heels, waiting for a ship to take him to Australian Davis Station, before meeting up with the oceanography survey ship that would take him out to Heard Island.

  He didn't need to see the South Pole to be satisfied. Just one more island to conquer and he'd be a happy man.

  FOURTEEN

  "Welcome back to Davis!" Shelley enveloped Audra in a hug the moment she stepped off the icy helipad.

  Audra returned the hug, still dazed at having to be flown to the station over a substantial slab of sea ice, too thick for even the icebreaker ship to negotiate. "Thanks, boss," she said awkwardly. "I don't remember that much ice when I left at the beginning of the year."

  Shelley waved her hand. "That's because it all melted over the summer, of course. This is winter reminding us it's not done with us yet. And I'm not really your boss. Just on paper, because they had to put someone in charge. We both answer to Lord High Whatever-His-Name-Is in Kingston."

  Audra laughed. "You don't know your own boss's name?"

  Shelley shrugged. "There's a new one. I haven't met him yet. Hopefully I won't until the summer's over and I head back to the mainland. In the meantime, I hope you brought all the equipment with you, because we got the go ahead for another expedition to the South Pole to upgrade that weather station. We're both going this time."

  Audra wanted to cheer. How many people got to visit the South Pole in their lifetime, let alone twice? This was why she'd taken the Antarctic posting.