by RJ Corgan
***
The bar shut at eleven. Kea loaded her band of miscreants into the back of the jeep and took them back to camp. Jon drifted off on the ride home, either due to jet lag, too many beers, or both. For that, Kea was thankful, as she had enough to think about right now without fending off any invitations to his tent. Or rather, she wasn’t certain that if he asked, she would be able to say no.
She dropped them off at their tents before parking the jeep. The campsite was very still this late at night, although the perpetual twilight that inhabited the Arctic gave the world a dreamlike quality. The haunting cry of snipe, once alien and unnerving, she now found familiar, comforting.
Going native, her mother would have said.
She spied movement coming from Zoë’s tent, the telltale glow of a computer screen. It gave Kea an idea. When she arrived at the tent flap, she realized she didn’t quite know what to say. Finally, she whispered, “Knock, knock.”
There was the sound of rustling, then zippers being fumbled. Zoë’s face peered out, her eyes alert, but wary. “Hello?”
“Hiya,” Kea said awkwardly. A second ago this had seemed like a better idea. “I was just, um, I was just wondering, could I have a look at yesterday’s footage?”
Zoë looked at her oddly but nodded. “Cole’s over at the visitor center using the Wi-Fi.” She pulled open the flap to allow Kea to crawl into the tent and shoved her sleeping bag out of the way. “I already showed it to the inspector. He took a copy with him, but there was nothing to see.”
Zoë’s laptop was open, its screen filled with a paused frame of a television show or movie. “One sec.” She shunted the window away with the mouse and flicked through some folders. “We lost Romulus pretty quick, but Remus got some great airtime. But nothing about Bruce, other than, you know, the body...”
Kea winced. “Can you pull it up now?”
“That’s what I’m doing,” Zoë replied curtly. “Here we go.”
A close-up image of grimy boots appeared on-screen. The view shuddered and jerked as the drone shifted into position. Zoë fast-forwarded the video, and the drone suddenly spun upward into the air. On the glacier below, the rest of the drone team was gathered around Zoë. As the craft lifted higher, the edge of the glacier sprawled out beneath them, its irregular surface rumpled like a dirty blanket. The drone rose farther up before crawling across the outwash plain, mapping the muddy edge of the glacier margin with its invisible lidar.
Zoë pointed on the screen to an area to the north, off camera. “I had Romulus heading up to that lake you asked about-”
“Lake Grænalón,” Kea corrected.
“Yeah, that one.” Zoë fumbled for the clipboard with the flight plan taped to it. “I think Romulus must’ve got caught in an updraft and bought it. I sent Remus on the other transect across the margin like you asked, but at a higher elevation... seemed safer, anyway.” Zoë turned away from the screen. “What really happened up there with Gary?”
Kea rubbed her temples. “He was a diabetic and lied about it. Had a seizure.”
“You look severely pissed off.” Zoë frowned. “You don’t think he intentionally went into insulin shock, do you?”
“What?” Kea blinked rapidly. “No. I mean, yes, I’m upset... Upset that he didn’t tell us he had the condition. That he put the team in danger. And then at Bruce. For the same reason and more. To do this to us... I just don’t get people sometimes, you know?”
“No comment,” Zoë said quietly, turning back to the screen. “Remus’s about to enter the second pattern you asked for-”
“That there!” Kea yelped, jabbing a finger at the screen. “What’s that?”
Zoë paused the smears of brown that were displayed on the screen. “Dirt?”
“Yes,” Kea grinned. “Pay dirt! Come on, let’s go tell others!”
Chapter 8
Day Four
The next morning, the main tent was swollen with the ranks of volunteers as they loaded up on breakfast. Kea stood at the rear, watching Lexie pack an Iceland-style field lunch: slices of cucumbers, tomatoes, and pepperoni on buttered bread. Bonnie and the two cousins were eating breakfast, giggling conspiratorially. Julie sat with her head bent over her laptop, no doubt preparing for the day’s work. Across the heads of the volunteers, Kea saw Gary lingering at the open-door flap, staring out at the mountains, a mug of coffee in hand. Jon, eating breakfast, caught her eye and his face lit up with a big goofy grin.
Oh dear. She realized she, and the beer, may have led him on. Going to have to have a chat at some point…
Beside Kea, Amirah was tidying up some of the dishes, embracing her role as the unofficial team mother. The woman was wearing yet another fantastic silk scarf, as if, Kea thought, Amirah had a different scarf for each meal of the day. This one was steeped in dark maroon and glittering with flecks of gold. Was this a breakfast scarf?
Jon pushed aside a small carton. “Room temperature milk disturbs me more than a little.”
“It’s fine.” Bonnie pointed at the label. “It’s been irradiated.”
Erik shook his head. “That’s the opposite of fine. I’m not drinking nuked milk. And this yogurt...” He held up a small packet. “They drink it warm. Nasty.”
“Everyone,” Marcus bellowed, “your attention please!” He stood at the head of the long table, fully dressed for fieldwork, a clipboard in hand.
“First though,” Kea interjected. “We’d like to say thank you to all of you for offering to stay and help, especially given the circumstances.”
“Yes, absolutely.” Marcus positively beamed with excitement.
Kea wished Marcus would dial down his enthusiasm a notch. It seemed wildly inappropriate. Even worse, she wished she didn’t feel it too.
“Last night, we examined the drone footage, taken by our most excellent Zoë Forbes here.” Marcus waved to Zoë, who fixed her gaze on her bowl of cereal, visibly uncomfortable with the attention.
“From the images, it looks like there was a minor flooding event over the winter, near the western-most river, the Blautakvísl,” Kea explained. “It exposed a section of a cliff over a kilometer long which will provide us with a great exposure to map. However, this area is in danger of being washed away by the river, or by another flood.”
Marcus highlighted the area on a map clipped to a whiteboard at the head of the table. “The flood has exposed hidden layers of sediment, providing us with a rare opportunity that could help us unravel the secrets of previous flood events.”
“Basically,” Tony added, “we’re scrambling to action stations, and we need your help. The area is simply too big for us to map on our own with the time we have left.”
“That’s right,” said Marcus. “We need to map this section as soon as possible.”
“No glacier?” Nadia’s disapproving pout implied Marcus should consider his response very carefully.
Kea loved that the teenager said what all the other volunteers were thinking.
“No glacier,” Marcus replied, feigning disappointment. “But it should only take a day or two to map this section. I hope.”
Looking around the table, Kea could see that Nadia wasn’t the only one who seemed despondent. She sympathized. They’d come to see glaciers, not shovel mud. She was wise enough not to point out that in the first two days the volunteers had already been on two glaciers. Depending on the project, it was sometimes more than a week before most teams even laid a foot on the ice.
“We know it’s a huge undertaking,” Julie said, attempting to rejuvenate the team. “Each section will be photographed, sketched, and sampled. We’ll do a proper sedimentary workup on the samples back at the university’s lab.”
“Today,” Kea pressed on, hoping her enthusiasm was infectious, “we’re going to train you all on how to become stratigraphers!”
The team appeared less than thrilled. Several turned back to contemplate their coffee and toast, blinking sleepily.
“If that weren’t e
nough,” Kea continued, grateful she’d saved the best for last, “our friend in the Met office called this morning. There’s been increased seismic activity at Grímsvötn, which may signal an eruption!”
That got everyone’s attention. Excited murmurs flitted around the tent with several repetitions of the question. Are we safe?
“Yes, yes, yes.” Marcus was in his element now, Kea observed. An eruption, new project, and an animated crowd. It was better than Christmas.
“We’re perfectly safe. We wouldn’t take you out there if we thought otherwise. The seismic activity means that there is an influx of material into the magma chamber. It could melt the overlying ice in the Grímsvötn caldera, but remember, the caldera has to fill with enough water to lift the ice dam before water can flow out.”
While activity under the ice cap was common, Kea knew the research teams always went to Iceland with their fingers crossed in the hopes that activity would coincide with their trip. Sometimes they got lucky and the dam lifted and there was a flood, although it was rare.
“It’s carefully being monitored,” Kea added. “We’ll have plenty of notice should something happen.”
“It does mean that we’ll have to move quickly to map this section,” Marcus pressed on. “Finish up your breakfasts, pack your lunches, and let’s head out!”
Kea watched the team exit the tent. She wanted to take Jon aside, explain that she couldn’t get involved, to just give her a week or so, but she found a hand on her arm. Julie steered her to the back of the tent away from the others. Unbidden, she poured Kea a cup of coffee and made a fuss of adding sugar and cream powder, talking softly under her breath the whole time.
“So, last night I downloaded the GPR data to my laptop.” Julie nodded discreetly to where her computer sat next to the main table. “This morning, dead.”
Kea frowned. “Dead as in you forgot to charge it, or dead, dead?”
“I plugged it in to charge overnight.” Julie poured herself a cup of coffee, her hands shaking. “But this morning, I can’t get the thing to boot up.”
Kea cringed. Dissertation death by laptop failure happened more often in the field than anywhere else. “What about the memory card from the GPR? Did you have anything else on the drive?”
Julie shook her head. “I have all my projects saved to an external drive. Three actually, plus I synch up to the cloud whenever I can. I wiped the card, though. I thought I’d need the space in case we did any more fieldwork today.”
Kea looked at the cup of coffee in Julie’s hand. “If I drink this, I’ll be bouncing across the sandur. I’ve already had two.”
Julie shrugged. “You can dump it. I just wanted to keep busy in case someone was watching us.”
“You really think someone would pull the plug on your GPR data?” Kea asked dubiously. “I don’t think any of these guys have any interest in the sedimentology of a melting esker.”
Julie looked at Reynard and narrowed her eyes. “I don’t trust meteorite boy over there. No one gets that excited about meteorites….”
“True,” Kea admitted. “Well, maybe Superman.”
“You’re not taking me seriously,” Julie growled.
“Trust me,” Kea said with a sigh. “Over the last two days, I’ve been taking everything far too seriously.”
***
It took an hour for the team to load up the vehicles and begin the long ride on the Ring Road across the sandur. In her rear-view mirror, Kea surveyed her allotment of volunteers. They appeared to still be half-asleep, not having expected to be working today. As she drove them through the campground, she was relieved to see that there wasn’t any sign of a press van. She wondered if the woman at EO HQ had been correct: what happened to Bruce would find its way into a few news blurbs and obituaries, but little else.
While the media loved tragedy, the EO woman said, they had little room in their headlines for suicides. At least, she admitted, when it came to regular people, seeming to imply that Bruce was no movie star.
Regular people. Kea found that the phrase stuck in her head as she drove. She still had a full team of regular people to look after, and she was paranoid about each and every one of them.
Today’s site lay near the western side of the glacier. The jeep trundled across Route One skirting along the front of the glacier, crossing first the Skeiðará and the Gígjukvísl rivers, then headed for the terrain tucked between the smaller, westernmost rivers, the Sula and the Blautakvísl. As they turned off onto a bumpy park track that shook and rattled the jeep as it bounced through the end moraines, the volunteers stayed quiet, sullen.
Kea was seriously concerned about the team’s morale. She knew they were weary, but if she were honest with herself, she expected them to be... well, not wailing exactly, but in some way depressed. Yet they gave no sign. It was very peculiar.
Hopefully, the new work would be enough to distract them. The new field site was a long hike, but since it was safe and they had so much work to do, all hands were on deck. Even Gary was permitted on this trip.
For better or for worse, she thought.
They situated the vehicles at the edge of the hilly moraines. The volunteers filed out the jeep and gathered their equipment before starting their march across the endless broken hills and pitted terrain. The ice in this area had melted out long ago, making it difficult to find an even path across the chaotic ground.
Marcus led them down a gentle slope into the proglacial depression, a shallow basin several kilometers wide. To the north, low black peaks pierced the glacier’s skin.
As they marched, Kea watched with interest who broke into groups. Tiko, Reynard, and Fernando clumped together, while Lexie, Derek, Max, and the cousins ambled behind at a more sedate pace, as if on a bar crawl. She saw Jon trailing behind and she intentionally slowed down. Eventually, he took the hint and paired up with Erik.
Kea found herself catching up with the edge of their group and started hiking alongside Lexie. Usually, the woman was glued to Derek, but now he was further up the track, speaking to Max in hushed whispers.
“How are you holding up?” Kea asked the reporter.
“Fine, I guess.” Lexie shifted the weight of her pack and tightened its straps. “Busy couple of days, to say the least.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t had time to do a proper interview yet, what with everything...” Kea hoped she sounded sincere, even though she had been actively avoiding the woman. She needed time to get her own thoughts together, although she wasn’t sure if she was having any success. Sleep had been fitful at best.
“No problem,” Lexie said kindly. “We’ll catch up once things settle down.”
Kea nodded, scanning the terrain. “I haven’t been out here in several years. This whole area has changed dramatically.”
“Are you sure it’s safe?” Lexie asked. “You guys keep mentioning the volcanic activity in one breath, then dismissing it with another.”
“We wouldn’t take you out here if we thought it was dangerous,” Kea said, realizing too late she was parroting Marcus. “The Grímsvötn caldera is always fairly active,” she expounded. “If there’s any unusual activity, we’ll be notified by the Met office and evacuated.”
“If I recall from my article, it takes several days for the water to accumulate and breach the ice dam,” Lexie said. “Is that the only danger?”
“There’s always a chance that Lake Grænalón or other bodies of ice trapped within the glacier could suddenly be released due to an increase in volcanic activity or precipitation. However,” Kea gestured to the expanse of streams and lakes in front of them, “we’ll be perfectly safe where we’re going today.”
“Perfectly safe,” Lexie repeated. “By going to a site where a flood excavated large volumes of sediment?”
“If you get a whiff of sulfur, let us know.” Kea wrinkled her nose. “Hydrogen sulfide is often associated with a jökulhlaup, as well as acidity in the water. It’s a result of gases released in the caldera.”
“That’s very reassuring,” Lexie replied sarcastically.
“Doubtful though,” Kea added. “But it pays to be careful, we are in a dynamic environment. Expect the unexpected.”
As if on cue, a thunderous crack echoed from across the plain.
Lexie cocked her head, looking askance.
“Morsárjökull, dropping ice blocks,” Kea said firmly, hoping she conveyed intellectual confidence. “We’re perfectly safe, I swear.”
***
“Okay guys, here’s the exciting bit,” Marcus held a large staff, its length marked by short intervals of red and white. The team stood around him in a loose semicircle, a river at their backs. “Now that you all have measuring rods, we’re going to break this area into separate ten-meter sections. Everyone gets their own section to sketch and describe in your notebook. We’ll be going around photographing the sections and helping you collect samples.”
He stood before an embankment some four meters high that had been carved out by the flood. A wall of cobbles, sand, and ash, its face was characterized by numerous thin layers broken by large sections of boulders and gravel. The volunteers sat on small boulders, pondering the gray skies that loomed above their heads as he lectured about lithology, flood deposits, and fluvial processes.
“The techniques that we’re employing today fall into a specialization of geology called stratigraphy,” Kea continued. “This is the study of layers of rock or sediment, called strata. Stratigraphy examines the processes and timelines that deposited the material, whether by water, wind, or volcanic events.”
Julie handed out a series of waterproofed cards printed with graphics to determine grain size and sorting, then pointed to the cut-bank where shifting flood waters had exposed a variety of thin- and thick-bedded rock layers. “We’ll be examining the strata for layers that might be related to large flooding events and match them up to historic jökulhlaups that have been documented in this area.”
“This section here, for example,” Marcus pointed to a thick layer of strata. “See how this block has been ripped out from its section and embedded into the fine-grained section above? This is what we call a rip-up clast.”