Dark Winter

by William Dietrich

  Lewis slowly nodded. “Got it.”

  “Pikas sort of squeak,” Geller said. “But we liked the sound of the word.”

  “Makes sense to me.”

  “See, Mickey Moss can collect all the medals he wants to but what it comes down to is the guys like Pika,” Tyson said. “We’re at the outer edge of the envelope down here. They don’t like to tell us that, but it’s true. The generators stop, and we’re dead. The well gets fucked up, and we’re dead. A good fire gets started, and we’re dead. This place is the easiest place in the world to sabotage. Any of us could kill all of us in about three nano-seconds. And then they send down a shrink? How does that make you feel?”

  Lewis tried to smile. “That I better stay friends with Pika.”

  “You better believe it. Some idiot shut off the heat the other day. It was this little guy who got it back on.” Tyson nodded in approval.

  “Don’t touch my machines,” the small man mumbled. He didn’t look at Lewis, just mildly kept eating his food.

  Lewis wondered what his story was. “Okay.”

  “Just leave my machines alone.”

  It was quiet for a moment.

  “So you’re the new weather dude, correct?” Tyson finally asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “So how do you like the magic kingdom?”

  “It’s pretty interesting.”

  “Damn right it’s interesting. Absolutely fucking fascinating. For about three days.” Tyson snorted. “After that, it’s ‘Groundhog Day.’ You seen that movie, where they repeat the same day over and over?”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “That’s winter at the Pole.”

  “Don’t listen to Buck too much,” Geller said. “He whines like a mosquito.”

  “I whine because that fucker Cameron, and the bureaucrats he fronts for, won’t get off my back. Have you seen our work schedule? Do this, do that, blah blah blah: more work on that list than you could do in three winters! Give me a fucking break. They’re just showing off.”

  “Buck believes the world is out to get him,” Geller interpreted.

  “Screw you. It is out to get me.”

  “Carries a chip like a cross.”

  “I carry the station, man. I do the shit. You know how many people work here?” he asked Lewis.

  “How many?”

  “About half.” Tyson laughed again.

  “So what are you doing down here?” Lewis asked Tyson.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” He took it like a challenge.

  “It’s volunteer, right? You wanted to come, right?”

  “Hell, yes, it’s volunteer! Until they spend six thousand bucks getting each of us down here with no replacements in the pipeline. Then it’s like, ‘Oh, you don’t care for our little utopia? Seems we’ve lost your return ticket until next October. Gosh golly darn. Have a great winter.’”

  “It’ll go faster with a positive attitude, Buck,” Geller advised.

  “It’ll go faster when Cameron lays off me, man. Maybe I can’t quit, but I don’t have to jump through his work-schedule hoops, either. They may not like me, but they can’t touch me.” He grinned. “Not down here.”

  *******

  Pulaski had found them a pet. By treaty, animals weren’t allowed in Antarctica in order to preserve its pristine environment. Unaware of this agreement, a small slug had smuggled its way onto the continent in a head of freshie lettuce. Lena, their greenhouse horticulturist, adopted the creature and put him in a jar with a clippings from the hydroponic tanks. She called the slug Hieronymous and announced he was good luck. She was a botanist on green card from Slovakia, and to her everything seemed charmed in this new world. “I feel that all the time I am on vacation,” she told Lewis.

  “Someone should have told you about Hawaii.”

  “And now we have a pet!” she enthused.

  “Somebody said something about a dome slug,” he remembered.

  “Those are people. That’s what you become if you don’t get outside.”

  “And if you do get outside?”

  “Then you are a...Popsicle!” She smiled at her own knowledge of the word.

  With some ceremony the slug was designated the official mascot of the Amundsen-Scott drill and dart team, which designated itself the Fighting Gastropods. Twice a week the loose assemblage played a match with the New Zealand winter-overs on the coast, keeping score by crackling radio. The Kiwis relied on their countryman Dana Andrews to keep the Yanks honest as they reported score. A caustically humored redhead with the build of a fireplug and an opinion on everyone, Dana complied. The Americans at McMurdo lent their own monitor who hiked over to the New Zealand base for the matches in return for Kiwi beer.

  Lewis was invited to join. “We’re a classier team now that we have a mascot,” Geller told him. “There’s a real status to it now.”

  “I’m not much on darts.” He sat down to one side as they shoved aside tables in the galley.

  “You can’t be any worse than Curious George,” coaxed another woman who sat next to him. Gabriella, her name was, and she was a more effective recruiter, as sensual as Dana was stolid. She was slim, dark-haired, her skin the color of butterscotch, her eyes large and her mouth arrested in a wry curl. She moved with a self-consciously liquid grace. Not pretty like Abby so much as alluring. Dangerously so.

  “I suppose not,” Lewis agreed. He watched while Geller put three darts wide of the bulls-eye.

  The maintenance man was frowning at his own volley when Gabriella brought Lewis over. Geller looked at the newcomer with relief. “I see you’ve managed to let yourself be recruited. You found this dame persuasive?”

  The woman gave Lewis a glance.

  “More so than you,” Jed said.

  “That isn’t even a compliment,” Gabriella complained.

  “I like the mascot.”

  “That’s no better! I hope you’re more adept with darts than words.”

  In truth, Lewis had never played the game. But he was determined to socialize down here and threw, managing to hit the board. Then he watched as Gabriella toed the line and cocked her slim arm, the dart balanced in her fingers like a feather. She was a male magnet and knew it, reeking of femininity and pheromones. “Who is she?” he murmured to Geller as they watched.

  “Gabriella Reid, gal Friday. She does berthing, assignments, time cards, records, and all that administrative crap. Not to mention keeping men on red alert.”

  “I heard that, George.” She didn’t seem very offended, arcing her body up on her toes as she threw.

  “We call her Triple-A,” Geller whispered after she threw a near bulls-eye and went out of earshot to retrieve the dart. “Anybody, anytime, anywhere.”

  “Ouch.”

  “She’ll put out for you if you want. Looking for love in all the polar places. Easier to warm up than Ice Cream.”

  “Ice Cream?”

  “Abby Dixon. We keep the ice cream here outside and it comes in so rock hard we have to microwave it to eat it. The joke is that Dixon needs thirty seconds in the box too.”

  “She seemed friendly enough.”

  “Everybody likes Abby. She just not as friendly as our teammate there. Abby’s got a boyfriend somewhere and pretends it still matters at the Pole.”

  Gabriella took aim again. She could tell they were watching her, talking about her, and thrived on it.

  “She’s really a good kid. Fun-loving. If you’re looking for that kind of thing.”

  “I’m still getting over altitude sickness.”

  Geller laughed.

  Gabriella hit the bulls-eye again. “She’s good,” Lewis said quietly.

  “Coordinated,” Geller said, loud enough for her to hear.

  The woman pulled the dart out. “Coordinated enough to keep my thumb out from under a hammer, which is more than I can say for you, George.”

  “I know. I worship you, babe.”

  “And I’m indifferent to your existence
.” She winked at Lewis.

  “What brings you to the Pole?” Lewis asked her.

  Gabriella considered that one more seriously. “Time. Money. Fun. It’s kind of a do-over, you know?”

  “Do-over?”

  “I was in a cubicle next to three thousand co-workers and not a single real friend. None of it was real. Nothing I was doing counted. Nobody seemed genuine. There was too much…noise. So I decided to see if I could get a new start down here.”

  “Quite a change.”

  “I hope so. Everyone comes down here with a lot of baggage. Armor. Everyone knows they’re going home. So some people are here but they’re not really here, you know what I mean? You can just wait the winter out if you want to. I don’t want to wait, I want to live life. Here. Now. How about you?”

  Lewis shrugged. “I guess I’m still a fingie on that one.”

  “Not for long, maybe.” She was flirting.

  He decided on caution. “There’s some interesting personalities at the Pole.”

  “Oddballs, you mean.”

  “Characters. Individuals.”

  “It wouldn’t be worth being here if there weren’t. Would it?” She held out the darts. “Your turn again.”

  “And why the Pole?” Lewis asked her, toeing up to the line.

  “Because it’s a powerful place. Where all lines converge. Point zero. You’re on sacred ground, Jed Lewis.”

  “Sacred snow, isn’t it?”

  “Just give yourself the luxury of feeling.”

  Their medic, Nancy Hodge, came in and was cajoled into taking a turn. Her stance was firmer, legs apart, head cocked back rigidly, dead serious. She missed the board completely and everyone laughed.

  “That’s the way she gives shots!” Geller called.

  Nancy pulled the errant dart out good-humoredly. “Watch what you say, George. My charts tell me you’re due for a prostate exam.”

  “I’d rather get cancer.”

  Hodge lined up again, mouth pursed in concentration, and this time managed to hit the edge of the board. Dana radioed the scoreless result.

  “Now we know why we won the America’s Cup,” the Kiwis radioed back, the comment buzzing with static.

  “I guess athletics aren’t Nurse Nancy’s forte,” Lewis observed.

  “Not after teatime anyway,” Geller murmured. “If you need something checked, try to see her in the morning. She’s steadier then.”

  “Booze?”

  “Ah, I don’t know. She just not big on the hand-eye coordination thing, which ain’t too cool if you need brain surgery.”

  “Our sole physician?”

  “You get the best and worst at Pole. Missionaries and escapees. How many good doctors can walk away from their practices for a year? It’s like the old naval surgeons. They all tend to have interesting stories. From the lines on her face, she looks like she’s got more than one. My bet is she busted up with someone too, and came down here.”

  “To lick her wounds?”

  “Or to find somebody else. This can be Lonelyhearts Club sometimes, goofily so. Hell, even somebody as ugly as me gets lucky sometimes.”

  “I don’t know if I believe that one,” Lewis said, playing straight man.

  “It’s true. The pilots brought in a crash dummy once and even he scored.”

  “But Nancy’s not competent?”

  “I didn’t say that. She’s smarter than any of us. We have a lot of fun with each other, kidding around. Just seems kind of rattled sometimes, like she’s anxious to get rid of a patient. Like she’s afraid of making a mistake.”

  The darts were fun and unworldly, performed to the background buzz of a radio linking them to a base across eight hundred miles of ice and snow. The Kiwis were intrigued by the new American mascot and Dana insisted the slug was doing gyrations every time the Yanks scored a point. Players drifted in and out, Lewis holding his own for awhile. With the Americans down three matches to one, he took a break and walked up a flight of stairs to the upstairs bar, the only place on station where alcohol could be consumed. It was the one nutrient they had to pay for.

  Norse was there and Lewis joined him, nodding at the psychologist’s beer and getting one of his own from the fridge, putting a mark on a tab for later accounting.

  “Feeling better, I see,” Norse observed.

  “Just drinking after realizing what I got myself into.”

  “Miss your rocks already?”

  “At least the ones ground into sand on a sunny beach.”

  Norse looked at Lewis with amusement. “It’s interesting that they picked a geologist to do your job.”

  “I was available.”

  “That’s their reason. What’s yours?”

  It sounded like a shrink question. “I trace it all to my mother.”

  “Ah.” The psychologist nodded in defeat. “Okay. Confession some other time.” He sipped his own beer. “I heard you met the estimable Doctor Moss.”

  “He granted me an audience.”

  “Interesting you two got together so quickly.”

  Lewis wanted to deflect this line of questioning, too. “He’s friends with my mentor, Jim Sparco. And it’s fun to talk to God. He says we’re all down here for Science.”

  “Well, that’s the party line,” Norse said. “We’re the cannon fodder of the National Science Foundation, you know. They see us all as a means to an end: knowledge.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “I see knowledge as a means to us: as a way to develop as people. It’s a subtle difference, but an important one. Are we here to save civilization or is it here to save us? Some see all of human history as the triumph of the group over the individual. But one of my questions is whether it isn’t the extraordinary individual who defines the group. If the group’s purpose isn’t to make possible the occasional exceptional human being. The Einstein. The Jefferson. The Alexander.”

  “You’re looking for Einstein at the Pole?”

  “I’m looking for character. Integrity. Individuality. I sense some of that in you, Jed. You have a certain center of gravity. And then determining if that kind of person functions in a tight, almost claustrophobic society like the Pole. Is smothered by it. Transcends it.”

  “I’m just trying to keep my butt warm.”

  “Exactly.”

  Lewis smiled. Norse seemed more interested in who Jed really was than in helping him fit what the Pole wanted him to be. “Lots of individual characters here,” he said, “and I like that. But it can be lonely being too individual.”

  “Thinking of someone in particular?”

  “Well, I heard Buck Tyson’s real name is Island.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s lonely.”

  “He said at dinner that you two think alike.”

  Norse laughed. “Did he? Well. My belief is that no two people do think alike, contrary to popular belief. The Western god is rationality, and a communal kind of sanity: all of us agreeing on reality, and pulling along the same track. This social scientist is squishier, I’m afraid, theorizing that each of us is a prisoner of our own beliefs, fears, perceptions. That we live in different worlds. So to me the fundamental question is whether the kind of knowledge we gather in places like this leads to real sanity or some view of the universe that, in its very rationality, is truly insane. Does it lead to happiness? Well-being? Does it solve anything at all?”

  Lewis considered. “Isn’t knowledge worthwhile just for its own sake? Rod Cameron told me the purpose of life is learning. Aren’t we all down here because we sort of believe that, in an unconscious way?”

  “Do you believe that?” the psychologist asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s nice to have a goal.”

  “Whose goal? Yours? Or the group’s?”

  “Both.”

  “No. Cameron just gave the goal to you.”

  Lewis was irked now. “What do you think we came down here for?”

  “I don’t know,” the psychologist admitted. He s
ipped again. “That’s what I’m down here to find out.”

  “Make a guess.”

  “I don’t guess. I’m a trained professional.” It was self-deprecating.

  The psychologist had his own evasions, Lewis saw. “Not good enough,” he persisted. “What’s your reason, Doc?”

  “Okay. I came down here to see if we should be here at all.” The psychologist nodded, as if to confirm it to himself. “Do you know that America spends two hundred million dollars a year in Antarctica? Two hundred mil on the altar of knowledge! That’s a goodly chunk of change. But what if rationality is a fraud? What if sanity - the idea everyone should think the same way, share the same reality - is a fraud? What if science is a fraud? That what pretends to explain everything in fact explains nothing to animals like ourselves, that NSF stands for a myth, that the druids and pagans and witches were right and that the true knowledge, the real insight, is in the dark wood - is in ourselves? What if the outermost veneer of civilization we represent is no thicker than the aluminum on this dome? What if at some point in our explorations we reach not revelation but utter mystery, a whole new pit of the indescribable, the unknowable?” He was looking at Lewis, his eyes bright. “What do we do then?” That intensity again.

  Lewis shrugged in self-defense. “Well, golly. Open another beer, I suppose.” He got one and did so. “You’re saying you’re getting your ass frozen off for no reason?”

  Norse laughed, as if that were a huge joke. “I hope not!”

  “But you think we’re nut cases because we believe in sanity?”

  “No, no. I’m rambling.” The psychologist studied his beer. “Drinking. But in an age when the machines are bending us to become like them, to become part of them, I’m curious what it still means to be human. To stand for yourself. Here, at the most inhuman place on Earth.”

  **********

  Lewis left the bar more wound up than when he entered it, still unable to sleep as his brain tried to make up its mind about his new home. He impulsively decided to walk outside. No dome slug he. The suiting up took fifteen laborious minutes and when he surmounted the ramp he saw the same pale sun at midnight that he’d seen that morning. Weird. The constant light was disorienting, the circuit of the orb dizzying. His own mind was swirling with impressions, new faces, glib philosophies. Individuals, every one. But a group, too. Which was what he’d come for.