Jack and the Geniuses

by Bill Nye

  “You’re not thinking about the Rambler, are you? That’s the director’s baby! You heard what they said during Happy Camper.”

  “She doesn’t even like people breathing on that truck,” Ava added.

  “It’s the only one that could fit all of us and get us back by morning. If we want to save Anna, the Rambler is our only choice.”

  Matt flopped back on his bed and stared at the ceiling. I was going to continue, but Ava lifted a finger to her lips. Let him think, the gesture said. So I did, and after a moment of silence Matt sat up again. “See, the only thing is, I don’t want to get caught,” he said.

  “None of us do, but—”

  “Jack, let me talk, okay? I don’t want to get caught, because I want to get invited back someday. This place . . .” He shook his head, smiling. “This is the most amazing place I’ve ever been. I’d come back here every year if I could. But if we get caught sneaking off the base in the middle of the night, during a storm, there’s no way they’ll ever let me return.”

  “I’ll take the blame.” I spun around. Hank stood in the doorway. “Nice speech, Jack. We may have to make a senator out of you.”

  This was no time for flattery, but I quietly savored the comment. “What do you mean, you’ll take the blame?”

  “If we’re caught, I’ll say it was all my idea. I don’t mind being kicked out of here, to be honest. The environment is fascinating, but it’s simply too cold. You were right, Jack. Tahiti really would have been a nicer spot for the Clutterbuck Prize. Still, I do understand your passion, Matt, and the last thing I want to do is jeopardize your ability to return.”

  “But we have to get Anna,” Ava said, surprising me.

  “Agreed. We can’t leave her out there another night. Borrowing the Rambler would be a terrible decision, though, so we will have to use another means of transportation.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, we,” Hank said. “I’m driving.”

  Ava actually bounced across the room and hugged him. Matt started to do the same, then stuck out his hand and modified the embrace into what Hank calls the one-arm-guy-hug. It’s an expression of affection common among young and adult men. They hold their right hands out, with their arms bent at right angles, clasp those hands together, then lean in and pat each other on the back with their left hands. It’s more of a half hug, really. And Matt had only recently come to master it.

  I remained at the desk. This was good news but hardly a reason to celebrate. “However we get there, we’ll need to slip away without anyone knowing. Whoever’s been trying to steal Anna’s work definitely won’t want us finding her. We need a good distraction.”

  “The karaoke contest will help. Golding will draw a crowd.”

  “We need more than a regular crowd.”

  The sound of Evgeny Levokin’s voice floated through my mind. “What if we bill it as Golding against the Russian?”

  They let the idea hover for a moment before Ava answered. “You heard Evgeny in our shelter that night. He never even goes to the contests. And there’s still a chance he could be part of this whole thing . . . he never did say exactly what he’s submitting for the Clutterbuck Prize.”

  “Certainly suspicious,” Hank said.

  “Ava and I will convince him to compete.”

  “We will? How?”

  “I have an idea.”

  “Okay,” Matt said. “If you say so. What am I supposed to do?”

  “You come with me,” Hank said to Matt. “We have a few tests to run before the trip.”

  We split up, and by dinnertime, the showdown was all anyone could talk about. Ava and I had made up boxing-match-style posters with Golding’s face on one side and Levokin’s on the other. We billed it as the battle of the century. The Russian Lullaby versus the Golden Boy. As part of our scheme to distract the director, we also noted in large lettering that there would be free baguettes—so Sophie was essential. For two hours we plastered our posters all across McMurdo Station. At one point, Angelo, our Happy Camper instructor, stopped me while I was taping one outside the director’s office and offered to help post more.

  Ava and I were at the door to the basketball court when someone coughed behind us. A deep, rumbling sort of cough that could have come from only one person. Slowly I turned around. Levokin’s huge eyebrows were scrunched together. “You did this, yes?”

  “Yes,” Ava answered.

  “I do not wish to compete.”

  “Golding said he’s going to flatten you,” I lied. “He said you have the voice of a dying bear.”

  Levokin snorted.

  “It’s true,” Ava added. “He said listening to you sing will be like listening to an elephant seal trying to cover Taylor Swift.”

  That was all the man needed to hear. He added another snort, then finished with an emphatic grunt. “I do not sound like seal! I hate nothing more than seals! Where is this impersonator? This fool! I will beat him now. I will take his pretty blond hair and twist it around—”

  “Wait, no!” Ava said. “You’re going to fight him? That wasn’t—”

  Levokin waved both hands in the air. “No, no, no. I was speaking . . . with metaphor? Yes. Metaphor. I will beat him like this with my voice.” He massaged his throat and closed his eyes. A few low notes emerged, and he ascended to an impossibly high pitch. Then he coughed. He shook his head. “No, tonight is impossible. I have cold.”

  Suddenly I felt hollow. If the Russian had the crud, I could see only one way to get him to compete. It would require a great personal sacrifice. And yet it had to be done. I reached into my pocket, removed Hank’s greatest contribution to the world, and held it out to him. “This should help,” I said.

  Levokin needed no instructions. He untwisted the steel cap and lifted the vacuum to his nose. The slurping sound that followed was revolting. Ava looked ready to vomit. But then he sang a few notes, and the sound of his voice was magical.

  He tried to give me back the vacuum. “No,” I said, figuring Hank would not mind. “It’s yours. Really.”

  Levokin held it up and shook his head. “I will not forget this, my little friend. Tonight I will be ready. Make sure they have the Billy Joel.”

  An hour before the start of the karaoke contest, the crowd was already growing at Gallagher’s Pub, the site of the showdown. Outside the cafeteria I heard Danno trying to convince the Facilities Engineer that he was better than either Levokin or Golding. We bumped into Britney, too, and I could see in Ava’s eyes that she wanted to tell her about our plan. But even if Britney was innocent, she’d never let us go out in that storm. I gently stepped on my sister’s toes to keep her quiet.

  Luckily, Victor Valenza interrupted us before Ava could give anything away. He was warming up for the contest. Unfortunately, he made us listen to him rap. To spare you the pain, I won’t repeat his rhymes in full, but here’s a sample:

  I love deep divin’

  Ice water jivin’

  No matter how cold

  I’m always survivin’.

  And, yes, it was as bad as it sounds.

  Besides the rapping diver, everything was moving along smoothly. Ava and I had already stuffed together several emergency packs in case we got stuck out there in the Herbie. We had a few dozen chocolate bars, several days’ worth of dried food, and twelve cold slices of leftover pepperoni pizza. We’d amassed a collection of sleeping bags, tents, shovels, and almost every other kind of survival gear you could imagine. Plus we had Shelly and Fred all ready to go. The only problem? We hadn’t seen Hank or Matt for hours, so we still didn’t know if we had a vehicle.

  13

  SNOWGOING

  Dinner was over a little before nine, at about the same time the contest was set to start. Ava and I remained at our table until the cafeteria was empty. The door to the kitchen opened, and Sophie leaned out. “Commençons-nous maintenant?” she asked.

  “Oui,” Ava replied. Then she looked at me. “Operation La Baguette is a go.”

/>   That’s not what we’d agreed to call it. And I wasn’t thinking of it as a French mission, but I let it slide, since Hank and Matt had finally returned. My brother’s face was pale; he was scratching at his hip and standing awkwardly. Hank was jittery.

  “Are we all set?” I asked. “Did you find us a ride?”

  “More than a ride,” Hank replied with a wink.

  “So . . . yes?”

  After a brief pause Hank answered, “Yes, yes. We are ready.”

  The four of us just stood there. No one smiled, and there was a heaviness to the moment. If we were in a movie, music would’ve been playing. A quiet, steady beat building in intensity. What were we doing? What were the four of us, exactly? In a strange way, we were starting to feel like a family. A really unusual, multicolored, mixed-up unit, but a family all the same.

  Someone should’ve said something.

  Instead, I lifted my wrist and tapped the face of an imaginary watch. “Okay,” I said, “it’s go time.”

  We split up to finish our jobs, and at eight minutes past nine o’clock, Ava and I arrived at the entrance to Gallagher’s Pub, the regular site of the karaoke wars. Already the room was so crowded, you couldn’t squeeze inside. The heat flowing out of the space was intense, and it reeked of sweat. Ava grabbed a chair from just inside and stood on the seat, peering into the audience. “Golding?” I asked.

  “Yep, he’s there,” she said. “Levokin, too.”

  “And the director?”

  “That should be taken care of in a minute. The baguettes are baked.”

  I smiled. What she’d said sounded like some kind of coded message, you know? The eagle has landed. The train has left the station. The baguettes are baked. That sort of thing. Only we were literally talking about loaves of bread, and a moment later my nose picked up the otherworldly aroma bursting off their golden crusts. Down the hall, Sophie was pushing a cart loaded with her creations, four or five dozen loaves in all. Each one was kicking off a scent that would make a man who had just won a hot-dog-eating contest wonder if he had room for a few more bites. Heads turned. Nostrils flared with delight. Oohs and ahs arose from the crowd. And, most important, behind the cart stalked the silver-haired director, following in a trance.

  “Bingo,” Ava said. “Her eyes aren’t even open.”

  Sophie paused at the doorway. “Now?” she whispered.

  “Go, go. Lead her inside.”

  The crowd in the doorway moved aside as Sophie pressed forward, making room where there was none, and she squeezed through into the middle of the tavern. An engineer reached for a loaf. She slapped away his hand. An oceanographer tried from the other side. A stare from Sophie’s green eyes frightened him into retreating to a table. And still, there was the director, right behind her. Sophie looked back at me through the crowd. I nodded. Slowly she handed the director a loaf of bread.

  On stage, the massive Russian engineer sat at a keyboard, while Golding, Valenza, and the other contestants stood waiting to one side. Levokin’s eyes were closed. His head hung loosely forward, as if he were entranced. A song began to play. The Russian started to strike the keys with delicate expertise. The crowd became quiet. The director slumped into a chair with her precious bread.

  And we ran.

  We grabbed our Big Reds, pulled on our boots and gloves, and pushed outside into the strangely bright night. The wind was stronger than it had been earlier in the day, hitting my cheeks like a thousand tiny pinpricks. Huge swirls of snow were gathering around the mountaintops in the distance.

  Down the hill, Matt and Hank stood waiting. My brother was shifting awkwardly from side to side. Our packs were there, jammed with the tents and shovels and ropes and food—enough survival gear to last a week or more. And on the snow between Matt and Hank was . . . a sled. Were they serious? Was this really the big surprise? At the very least I was hoping for a few snowmobiles. “This was your plan? A sled?”

  “This is not a sled!” Hank said.

  Ava’s expression changed into a skeptical sneer. “This is our ride?”

  “You haven’t seen it in action yet,” Hank said. He reached down and started fidgeting with a set of switches. A green light flicked on.

  “You saw Anna’s map, right?” I asked. “We’re talking about fifty miles!” I held out my hands, motioning to the endless desert of snow that stretched out in front of us. “Fifty miles over that! With a storm on the way! How is this thing supposed to help?”

  Ava turned back toward the station. “I am not going to get stuck out there in the middle of nowhere and be forced to eat cute little penguins.”

  The sudden whine of an engine should have been enough to draw her back to us, but the wind drowned out the sound. I called out, “Ava?”

  “I told you, I’m not—”

  “Ava?” I repeated. “You might want to take a look.”

  That ridiculously lame sled? Well, it wasn’t a sled at all. The bottom was rigid. But when Hank powered it up, that hardened shell unfolded itself several times, then snapped together again so that it doubled in length and width. Then a flexible, silvery material unfurled from the middle and began to inflate. “Is that—”

  “The same material that broke your fall outside my building,” Hank said with a smile. A bubblelike vehicle slowly took shape in front of our eyes, with windows all around and a flap in the back, held in place by Velcro.

  Matt started to walk around the contraption. For some reason he was limping. “This is amazing,” he said.

  Ava was paralyzed with wonder.

  “Go ahead,” Hank said. “Check it out.”

  Inside, there was room in the back to stow our gear, plus four inflatable seats arranged in two rows. Between the two front seats was a control panel about the size of an iPad.

  Hank pointed to a large, wide, oval-shaped opening in the rigid bottom, saying something about a turbine.

  “That looks like a big mouth,” I said.

  “And it is! Sort of,” Hank said. “Remember that snowblower in the lab?”

  “I was wondering what you were doing with that,” Ava said.

  “That old machine was my inspiration. The vehicle sucks up the snow here, through the mouth, then spits it out the back. That’s how it propels itself.”

  “You call it the Snowgoer, don’t you?” I asked.

  The look of disappointment on his face was as clear as a glass of water. “Yes . . . You don’t like it?”

  “I love it,” Ava said. “Now let’s see if it really goes.”

  Once inside, we fought over seats. Ava won. She reached down and held up one of my missing Xbox controllers. “Look what I found!”

  “Hey!” I said. “How’d that get in here?”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Hank said. “I borrowed it. These are very impressive little remotes. Now, keep your Big Reds zipped up—there’s no heater in here—and buckle into your safety harnesses, everyone.”

  Next to me, Matt was scratching above his knee. “What’s wrong with your leg?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  I clicked into my harness, which was like five different seat belts coming from all directions. The combination of the straps and my Big Red was uncomfortably snug. “I can barely move,” I groaned.

  “Perfect!” Hank said.

  He flicked a few switches on the control panel. Something beneath us hummed to life. Ever so slightly the Snowgoer started to vibrate. The subtle pulsing built to a steady roar.

  “Is this supposed to happen?” I yelled.

  Hank pulled a pair of earmuffs on over his hood. “Yes, yes, there are a few fine points I still need to work out in the design, but she’s working well. That noise is only the beginning. It’s going to get LOUD!” he shouted. “Everybody, put on your earmuffs!” The three of us looked at one another and shrugged; none of us had earmuffs. “Ready?” he shouted.

  The Snowgoer sucked up the soft white powder in front of us. The vehicle lurched, then found what must have been
a perfect mouthful of snow, because it accelerated as if it were cruising downhill, racing smoothly out across the ice. Our progress was slow at first, then ramped up to about the pace of a bicycle, and on up to that of a subway train. Hank was whooping. Ava was hollering. A smile cracked through the terror frozen onto Matt’s face. And the excitement was pulsing through me in bolts, warming me against the frigid air.

  The Snowgoer did not just go; we sped across that frozen terrain like we’d been launched from the world’s largest slingshot. And for a while I just kicked back and enjoyed the ride.

  Then, after we’d been cruising for at least half an hour, I noticed a small problem.

  Far ahead on the horizon a white lump was growing larger as we approached. I leaned forward, pointed, and yelled, “What’s that?”

  Hank held up the Xbox controller. Over his shoulder, he cried out, “Don’t worry! I’ll steer around it!”

  The Snowgoer veered left, but the lump stretched too far in either direction. And I knew what it was without having to see any more. In the summer, the ice shelf thinned, and cracks appeared in places. Then the plates on either side of the crack would push together, grind against each other, and crumble upward, creating mounds of ice and snow that could stretch for miles.

  The lumpy and jagged ridge ahead of us now was no minor speed bump on the ice. The obstacle looked to be about as high as a basketball hoop.

  “Maybe we should hit the brakes?” I asked.

  “Ah, but that’s one of the finer points I’m still working on,” Hank called back.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She doesn’t exactly have brakes!”

  To our left was a smooth spot, the ice sloping gently upward from the surface, forming a ramp. I pointed. “There!” I shouted.

  Was this good advice? Not necessarily. But one suggestion was all Hank needed. He aimed our unstoppable craft at the ramp.

  At the last instant, just before we hit the base, I closed my eyes. The front of the Snowgoer rose, pushing me into the back of my seat. My stomach spun. Someone shouted. And as the engine roared and the yells grew louder, we became weightless. I opened my eyes. Smooth snow lay below us, clear ice ahead.