by Jonah Buck
Bernard Poole, the Sulaco’s first mate, appeared in the hallway behind Fletch. He touched the pilot on the shoulder as the ship rocked again under another icy impact.
“Afternoon.” Poole nodded at Denise and the others before turning his attention fully to Fletch. “Hey, the captain asked me to find you. We’ve been in contact with a whaling ship in the area. They’re going to be in this stretch of ocean for the next week. You’re in luck. If we have to leave in a hurry for some reason, you won’t be stranded.”
“A whaling ship? Huh. Okay. Thanks. Good to know.”
Poole nodded and retreated up the hallway back toward the bridge.
“That sounds like it’s a good thing,” Denise said.
“Yeah, I suppose it is,” Fletch said. “It’s just changed a lot down here over the last few years. Even five years ago, anyone who came down here for a scientific expedition was on their own. There was no help coming. It was just you and whatever supplies you could carry with you.” A wistful note had entered Fletch’s tone.
“You almost sound like you miss it that way.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong. If we get to sleep behind some solid walls on full-sized cots and eat warm food from an honest-to-God kitchen, I won’t miss it a bit. I’m just dating myself here. People only discovered Antarctica in the 1820s. It took most of a century for anyone to actually trek all the way to the South Pole. But things are changing. Better generators and radio equipment mean that we can apparently set up some pretty extensive bases down here and wave to industrial whaling boats as they sail past. It used to be just you against the elements. Next thing you know, the place will be a tourist trap. No offense meant, of course,” Fletch said, looking back and forth between the women in front of him.
“None taken,” Denise said.
She knew something of the same feeling. When she was a young girl, the big game on the veldt used to be a lot more plentiful. Those numbers had dwindled with the influx of poachers looking for ivory and new settlements that paved over grasslands and forests. The savanna was a very different place from the one she grew up with. Areas that used to be almost uninhabited were populated by small towns and farms, now. Seeing that same process play out on the ice would be even stranger, though.
“There was something that would have sent the great Romance-era poets panting about the place ten years ago. To be here, just to survive for any length of time, was an accomplishment. A feat among the tumult of nature. The journey of hungry, cold men through the windswept crags as they raced to make discoveries before the environment could suck the life out of them. It was the stuff of heroic legend. Antarctica was the last place on earth mankind ever set foot on, and it was a personal test just to survive.”
“I think I’m glad we’re here when it’s a bit less likely we’ll freeze to death if we miscalculate the weather,” Cornelia said.
“Fair enough. By itself, progress certainly isn’t bad. I talk about it now like we spent the old expeditions performing the twelve labors of Hercules and feats of manliness and then boasting about it all night over a fountain of mead. Not that I didn’t personally perform many feats of courageous manliness myself. Obviously, my companions were in constant awe of me.” Fletch mimed flexing in his baggy jacket and flashed a smile.
“But most of the time, we were just hungry and cold and miserable. Nobody was too interested in doing anything other than accomplishing their individual goal and getting back to civilization before the weather turned and killed us all. I just worry that things are going to have a different timbre now that groups seem intent on setting up semi-permanent bases down here. Before, you didn’t much care whose claimed territory you were in. It wouldn’t matter much if you froze to death in the French section or the British section or the little rump that Norway wants to muscle into. It was all the same, no matter which government had to go dispatch a team to collect your iced-over corpse the next summer.
“It was about endurance. Now, with people creeping in and setting up places like this, I’m worried it’ll start to be more about conquering the landscape. If people can actually survive down here long enough to enforce the claims they’ve made, it’s only a matter of time before some damn fool manages to spark a diplomatic fight about whose borders end where or who can or can’t build a research station on some particular outcropping of rock. Eventually, you might have military bases out here on the ice and warships patrolling the ice flows. I think I like it better when it was something you could only step foot on for so long before you had to flee the elements. Nobody could really own it then. If somebody thinks they can own this place, then the whole area is just like any other spot on earth except cold as a well digger’s tit.”
A person could die of acute nostalgia poisoning thinking about such things for too long. Denise tried to steer the conversation toward something more practical. She’d be better off gathering a little more information beforehand.
“What sort of animals can we expect to see around here?”
“Well, I would imagine we’ll see the occasional seal out on the shore. Mostly, you’re going to see penguins, though. Lots and lots of penguins.”
“So the French have all these people here just to study penguins, you think?” Denise knew perfectly well that the French government wouldn’t want to build an entire research station down in one of the most ungodly environments on earth just to poke and prod at some sea chickens. She knew more about the current situation than Fletch did because she was aware of the meteorite landing. That didn’t mean it wouldn’t be useful to hear from someone who had some experience with this territory. Usually, the stupidest thing anyone could do on a big game hunt was to assume they knew everything they needed to know about an area, its inhabitants, or the creatures that lived there.
“Nah, they won’t all be here for the penguins. Not a facility like this. Maybe a couple of people will be here for the penguins. Or the krill in the ocean. Or the lichen under some rock. A lot of the people here will be geologists or meteorologists, though.”
Denise knew that the French government had specifically sent biologists down here, not geologists or meteorologists, but she nodded anyway. She’d already learned a little something by comparing her own notes with Fletch’s first impressions, even if she wasn’t sharing any of that information with him.
The mere fact that the French had undertaken a major construction project down here was telling. It would be difficult and expensive to build anything here. Delambre Station was apparently unlike anything their experienced guide had ever seen before, so it was obvious that somebody was serious about whatever was going on down here.
That all but satisfied the first part of Denise’s little inquest down. Was there anything important happening down here at the ass end of the world? Apparently so.
The second question was more important, and it would take a little snooping to answer. Whatever was happening down here, was it both alive and dangerous?
“C’mon, let’s gather your stuff and head for the skiff. We’re going to make landfall soon,” Fletch said. The ship hit another chunk of ice, and his voice was nearly drowned out by a sound like frozen thunder.
THREE
WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T TRY TO HELP THEM
Denise felt like a cat that someone had sprayed with a hose. Sour. Cold. Wet. The little boat bobbed up and down in the choppy water. Sometimes a little mist of salty spray would splash into the skiff as it moved toward the shore, and she would shy away from it.
It hurt just to be alive in this weather. Every single inch of exposed skin on her body tingled like as if she’d just been slapped with a slab of frozen beef. The wind cut right through her parka and the other layers she was wearing, and it never seemed to let up. She’d given up on trying to talk to anyone else in the skiff over the noise of the wind whipping past their heads and the whine of the boat’s engine.
Even though they weren’t moving particularly fast, Denise felt like she was sitting on top of a car as it sped do
wn the road. She wore a set of tinted goggles against the glare of the ice all around them, but the wind still managed to dry her eyeballs out. If she didn’t keep her eyelids squinted down to little slits, it felt like her eyes were in danger of withering to the consistency of dried apricots. It felt like the air itself was trying to push her back from the rocky shore ahead of them.
Despite the weather, Denise actually felt a small thrill of excitement inside her, buried far beneath her layers and layers of clothing. Until a couple of months ago, when the French set out to investigate the meteor strike in their southernmost territory, very few people had ever set foot on this stretch of land. As far as she knew, none of them had been women. She, Cornelia, and Metrodora would be the first to visit the French territory.
Now that she was almost here, she could better understand some of the things Fletch had said earlier. There was an undeniable allure in getting to explore the world’s only continent that lacked a permanent human population. If she wandered over the horizon in the right direction, she might see something that no other human being had ever seen before, even if it was just another hillock of rock and ice. Of course, if she wandered off in the wrong direction, it might take them months to find her body, stiff as a board and attached to the ice by a thin layer of frost.
That second option was none too appealing. Denise didn’t think she’d need to do much wandering, though. Mostly just a little snooping. She’d poke around outside a little with Fletch and some of the researchers, if they’d allow her along. She figured she’d have a better chance of finding out the general nature of the research station form the inside, though. Plus, whenever she was all suited up for wandering outside, it would take her half an hour to remove everything if she needed to pee. No, hopefully, she could get most of what she needed while remaining inside the research station.
They were moving closer to Delambre Station itself now, skirting around bits of ice as they moved. Fletch was right. The place was huge. Denise wasn’t sure exactly what she had been expecting to see when she reached the French outpost. In her head, she’d sort of pictured wooden cabins and sheds, maybe frosted with snow like some sort kids’ camp in the winter.
Instead, Delambre Station looked like an industrial outpost that had been built out in the middle of nowhere by mistake. The largest building, which she figured was probably the main crew quarters, was a big concrete rectangle squatting in the center of the facility like a mother hen guarding her chicks. There were a number of smaller buildings spread across about an acre of ice and rock. Seeing this kind of construction effort amid such a barren landscape was almost surreal. It was like visiting the surface of the moon and finding a department store.
She could see a small contingent of men in brightly colored parkas waiting for them at the docks. The Sulaco was too large to fit at the concrete docks, but Denise could see that a much larger docking facility was under construction nearby, something big enough for a couple of supply ships to sidle up to at once. Without the benefit of the larger facilities though, the Sulaco would simply remain anchored just off the coast for the few days Denise and company were scheduled to be here. It would only leave if the ice started to close in around their little harbor and risked stranding them all here.
The sun hung low in the horizon, giving a false impression that it was about to dip below the horizon. It kept the sky cast in a sort of orange and yellow glory, but it never actually slipped all the way down into the embrace of dusk. At this time of year, there would be sunlight for twenty-four hours a day down here. The famous midnight sun would give them light to work by no matter the hour. Denise was at least thankful that they hadn’t been sent down here during the winter, when there would be weeks or months of darkness at a time. The false sunset painted some of the ice sheets in brilliant shades of red and orange, almost like a lake of shimmering, frozen fire. She had to squint even further against the dazzling sight.
Poole, the Sulaco’s first mate, piloted the little skiff toward the shore. Within a few minutes, they’d navigated the minefield of floating ice and arrived at the docks.
One of the French researchers stepped forward and offered his hand to help Denise out of the boat. She hopped out on her own and then took the proffered glove in a handshake instead.
“Welcome to Terre Adélie. I’m Dr. Jacques Benoit. A pleasure to meet you. Let me be the first to congratulate you on a successful journey to our little corner of paradise.” He shook her hand with the energy of a terrier trying to kill a rat.
“Denise DeMarco. Excited to be here.” Her teeth chattered a little as she spoke.
Terre Adélie, or Adélie Land, as the English-speaking world called it, was the French sector of Antarctica. She’d read up on the legal situation a little bit before travelling down here. The question of who actually owned Antarctica was a matter of some dispute.
The British claimed the whole of the continent for themselves. Every last square meter was part of the British Empire, to be administered by the governments of Australia and New Zealand. That was only according to the British, though. Lots of other governments claimed individual chunks, although no one else had the diplomatic chutzpa to try to claim the whole pie for themselves.
Chile and Argentina had claims on a couple of areas based on treaties involving Spanish conquistadors and the Catholic Church from the fifteenth century. They said that the old claims of the Spanish Empire to anything south of the Straits of Magellan gave them a right to their corner of the frozen continent. Meanwhile, Norway was trying to force its presence into some of the same areas.
Adélie Land encompassed a stretch of about three hundred and fifty kilometers of coastline and theoretically extended all the way down to the South Pole. Nominally, it was a narrow triangle of French territory penetrating deep into the continent’s ice-choked heart. The basis for the French claim came from when the explorer Jules Dumont d’Urville discovered the area and named it after his wife.
The various sectors didn’t line up all that well. Even ignoring the fact that Britain had claimed the whole thing for themselves, the miscellaneous boundaries overlapped with each other in places. If the continent was actually inhabited, it would have been a source of constant diplomatic tension trying to sort out just which territory belonged to each nation. The fact that there were no permanent residents made the point moot, but Fletch was right. If countries like France started building up their territories down here with permanent installations like Delambre Station, somebody was going to have to sort all those claims out at the League of Nations or through some complex series of treaties that would no doubt leave some country or another pissed that it had lost its stretch of icy wasteland. Wars had been fought over less.
“Thanks for hosting us, Dr. Benoit.” Denise smiled and reached down to haul her baggage up out of the boat as Cornelia and Metrodora clambered up onto the docks. If Dr. Benoit thought it was odd to be standing out here like a tour guide, he didn’t give any indication of that fact. Either the research grant the Squires had funneled down here or the sheer excitement of seeing new faces in this isolated little community was enough to drag him out here in the cold.
“It’s Jacques, please. My research students are the only people who call me Dr. Benoit. Come, I’ll take you all to your quarters. I’d imagine you would like to get out of this weather. I have the best English of anyone stationed down here, so you can think of me as your minder while you’re visiting us.”
She glanced out over the landscape again. The shore leading up to the compound was mostly a jumble of rocks with the occasional glint of frozen sea ice hanging off in little icicles like frozen boogers. The first ten feet of the continent didn’t exactly inspire the sort of awe that might be expected when stepping foot on a barely explored land.
The horizon was considerably more interesting, though. The ice on the ground rose up away from the shore to create a relatively flat plane of glistening white. In a few places, the underlying rock managed to poke a finger of stone up th
rough the ice and create a jagged little break in the landscape, like skeletal fingers clawing their way up through the hard-packed dirt of an old grave.
Further off in the distance, Denise could see mountains erupting up out of the ice. The compacted flatness of the ice made it difficult to determine distances. There were almost no reference points to draw on, just a low, flat featureless plain that seemed to stretch on forever in haunted loneliness.
High above them, there were a couple of stretched, anemic-looking clouds. There was no moisture in the air. Even the clouds looked like they’d been drained dry by some sort of atmospheric vampires.
“What do you think? Everything you expected?” Dr. Benoit asked.
“I was expecting more snow,” Denise said lamely. It was true, though. In her mind, there had been great snowbanks drifting across the land like sand dunes, the wind occasional whipping the stuff into playful flurries. There wasn’t so much as a single flake of snow on the ground though, despite how cold it was.
“A lot of people ask about the snow, actually. The truth is, there’s basically none, though. Antarctica’s climate is technically a desert. The world’s largest desert, as a matter of fact. There’s almost no precipitation on any given year. However, the ice on the ground is actually the result of what little snow we do receive here. It hits the ground, freezes in a thin layer, and then another layer paves over it the next year. All the ice you see here is actually made of layers and layers of compacted snow, built up over tens or hundreds of thousands of years. It’s kilometers thick in places.”
Dr. Benoit continued to expound on the natural marvels of the continent as they walked toward the facilities. One of the other scientists had grabbed onto the opposite end of her baggage and was helping her carry it. She didn’t really need the help, but she appreciated anything that would speed her way toward the relative warmth of Delambre Station. She nodded a thanks to the man, who wasn’t much more than a vague shape under his layers of clothing. He didn’t bother to respond. Maybe he didn’t speak English.