Blood and Ice

CHAPTER TEN

December 2 to December 5

THE FIRST FEW DAYS at Point Adelie were difficult to sort out. Not only because so much was going on, but because there was no sense of the time passing. With the sun perpetually shining, its rays beaming through the cracks in the blinds at night, the only way to tell what time it was at all was to look at your watch, or perhaps ask someone, if you were still confused, if that was 11:30 in the morning or 11:30 at night. Followed by, what day of the week? It wasn't as if you could check the morning newspaper, or the TV listings for that night. All the ordinary markers by which you measured and regulated your life-when you went to bed or when you got up, what time you exercised at the gym or attended the yoga class, when you left for work or came home-were all useless. It didn't even matter whether it was a weekend or a weekday, since you weren't very likely to find a date, or go to the movies, or sleep over, unexpectedly, at someone else's place, or have to take the kids to a soccer practice. All of it was moot. You were in a time and a place where none of that quotidian stuff mattered. In the Antarctic, everything existed in a free-floating state, and you either learned to impose your own kind of order on it-any kind of order-or you slowly went bonkers.

“The Big Eye is what we call it,” Michael was informed over his first meal in the commons. (That college quad notion had even extended to some of the nomenclature at the camp.) The guy in the orange parka and goggles, who'd turned out to be the research station's Chief of Operations-Murphy O'Connor, by name-had eaten with the new arrivals, and taken that opportunity to run down some of the camp's rules and regulations, among other things.

“If you work too hard, for too long, you lose all track of time, and before you know it you're walking around with the Big Eye.” He made his eyes bulge out in his face, while sucking in his cheeks, making himself look gaunt and demented.

Charlotte smiled, and Darryl laughed, as he ladled another pile of baked beans onto his plate.

“Won't be so funny when you get it.”

Darryl stuck the serving spoon back in the beans.

“For a little guy, you sure can shovel it in,” Murphy observed.

Michael wondered if Hirsch would take offense at that, but Murphy's manner was at once so plainspoken and open-handed that Darryl didn't seem to mind at all.

“So,” Murphy resumed, “try to stick to some kind of schedule while you're down here. Make it up yourself, but try to keep on it. The kitchen's always open-you can always rustle up a sandwich- but if you flip out, we don't have a psych ward on the premises.” He glanced over at Charlotte. “Unless Dr. Barnes is planning to open one.”

“Not if I can help it,” she said.

Then he proceeded to offer them a long list of other Point Adelie pointers, including the most important of all.

“You never leave the base alone,” he said, staring at each one of them to emphasize the point. His eyes were big and brown, behind aviator-style glasses that barely cleared the black stubble covering his chin and cheeks. “A year ago, we had a guy-a geologist from Kansas-who just wanted to go out and grab a few quick specimens. Went out alone, didn't leave word where he was going,” and at this, Murphy raised a cautionary finger, “and we didn't find him for three days.”

“What happened?” Michael asked.

“Went down a crevasse and froze to death.” He shook his head sadly and sipped his coffee from a mug with a picture of a penguin on it. “Sometimes you can't see the crevasses for shit.” He pointed back in the direction of his office. “That's why we've got a blackboard in the hall; if you are leaving the base, you write down who's going, where you're going, and when you're planning to return.”

Michael had already seen the board-the last entry said something about a ground terrain exploration in Dry Valley One.

“And when you get back-safely-check it off on the board. I do not appreciate having to do a bed check to make sure everybody's tucked in for the night.” He paused, then smiled at the thought of something. “You'd be surprised what I find.”

Michael couldn't imagine anything too salacious. Looking around the commons, which was sparsely populated just now, there were a couple of tables where the service personnel were sitting- all youngish men in blue uniforms-and a couple of others where the scientists were concentrated. It wasn't any harder to spot them there than it had been to pick out Darryl at the Santiago airport. They were a small eccentric crew, one with a long gray ponytail and wire-rimmed specs halfway down his nose, and a couple of stout blond women with broad shoulders who looked like bit players in some Norse legend. Murphy must have been following his gaze, because he said, “We call the scientists beakers.”

Michael got it. Beakers, as in lab equipment.

“But they don't mind. They call us grunts.”

“And you don't mind?” Charlotte said.

“We sure as hell do,” Murphy said, in mock protest, “but we are slow to take offense.” Then, more seriously, he said, “We all have to rely on each other down here, and we all know it. Without us grunts running the place, keeping the diesel generators going and the lights on, and the meals cooked, and the U-barrels removed-that stands for urine, by the way; all human waste has to be contained and transported out of the Antarctic-the beakers wouldn't be able to get a thing done. And without them…” he paused, as if unsure how to complete the thought. “Oh, yeah, without them, the rest of us wouldn't be stuck out here in the back of beyond in the first place.”

“Sounds like the perfect arrangement, if you ask me,” Darryl said.

“Spoken like a true beaker,” the chief said. “Now, get settled in your quarters for the night. Tomorrow, you've all got a long day at snow school.”

Charlotte and Darryl and Michael exchanged puzzled looks.

“And don't forget to bring your mittens.”

Murphy moved on to join his grunts at their table-several of them had turned around to get a better look at the newcomers- and Michael and Charlotte and Darryl were left like the new kids in the high-school cafeteria. The beakers were absorbed in their own conversations, or ate intently with their heads hung low over their plates of franks and beans and corn bread (one had a sheaf of computer printouts spread across the table in front of him).

“Weird, isn't it?” Michael said, indicating the scientists. “We're now in a universe where they're the cool kids.”

Darryl laughed and said, “I've waited for this my whole life. If you'll excuse me,” he said, getting up, “I believe I heard someone say ‘isopod’ over there.”

As Charlotte and Michael looked on, Darryl fearlessly traversed the linoleum floor and made a seat for himself at the picnic-style metal table where the blond women, wearing untucked flannel shirts, were debating something. For several seconds, the conversation seemed to stall, and Michael started to wonder if he should go and rescue his friend. But then Darryl said a few things Michael couldn't make out, hands were shaken, credentials loudly declared, and as if he had passed some secret initiation process, Darryl was immediately welcomed into the club. For the next ten or fifteen minutes, Michael and Charlotte gave him time to bond with his new buds, then got up and dumped their trays. Michael caught Darryl's eye, and Darryl quickly wrapped up some entertaining anecdote about a nematode-to much laughter-before rejoining them.

“Great bunch,” Darryl said, as the three of them buttoned up for the brief journey back to their quarters.

“You looked like you were a hit,” Michael said.

“It was a new crowd,” Darryl replied, with a modest shrug, “so I could trot out my best material.”

Once they stepped outside the commons module, which also housed the chief's office, they had to cross about a fifteen-foot-long, exposed wooden walkway. The modules were like wide railroad cars, laid out in a big square, with braided red nylon ropes strung along both sides of the connecting walkways. Michael knew that the ropes were there for more than helping you to keep your balance; in the event of a whiteout-and he'd been caught in one-the ropes could provide the only means of finding your way to refuge; even if that refuge was only a foot or two in front of you, you might not know it. Men had died in polar climes, frozen to death just yards from their unseen tents.

In the next module over, where the infirmary was located, Charlotte had that rarity, a single room, if you could call it that. It was a tiny cell about eight feet by ten feet, and it had been occupied, until the moment their helicopter arrived, by the previous medical resident. Judging from the posters on the wall, he'd been a fan of three things: surfing, sailing, and Jessica Alba. But he was now on his way back to the world, by way of the Coast Guard Cutter Constellation. Charlotte's bags were still on the bunk.

“That's some decor,” Michael said, poking his head in.

“Never occurred to me to pack my own posters.”

“Next time you'll know,” Darryl said.

“Next time,” Charlotte said, “I won't be here.”

Michael and Darryl were in the next module over, reserved for the beakers and other transient types-and they had to share a room not much bigger than Charlotte's. There was one narrow window, more of a louver really, and a two-tiered bunk bed, with flimsy blackout curtains around each berth; the floor was covered with the kind of industrial-strength carpeting, in maroon and yellow, that you might see in a hotel banquet room. But the single closet, behind a slatted plywood door that had trouble remaining on track, revealed a surprising bounty inside.

“Whoa,” Michael said, “check this out.”

Darryl looked over.

“Either the previous tenants left us a lot of presents…”

“Or the NSF has made damn sure we're properly outfitted.” Darryl pulled out the sleeve on one of the two orange anoraks hanging on the bent rod. “I wondered why they kept asking for my sizes on the application forms.”

In addition to the two anoraks, their hoods lined with coyote fur, there were two goose-down parkas, wool shirts, and wool “wind pants,” with enough pockets to carry a whole hardware store. On the shelf above, Michael found and handed down to Darryl polypropylene underwear designed to wick sweat away from the body furry mittens big enough to wear gloves inside of them, wool socks, leather gloves and liners, and, finally, woolen ski masks to cover the head and neck and most of the face.

“It's like Christmas!” Darryl said, examining the various items as Michael handed them out.

“And we're not done yet.”

On the floor, there was an assortment of boots, all neatly aligned and separated by size. There were bunny boots-two layers of rubber, with insulation in between; soft, Eskimo-style mukluks; and fireman's boots, tall and black, for water work and wet ground.

“Looks like they've thought of everything,” Darryl said.

“Yeah,” Michael agreed, surveying the cache. “I'm just wondering where they've parked our snowmobiles.”

The communal bathroom was at the far end of the module, and was blissfully unoccupied when Michael took a hot shower- “Limit yourself to three minutes when bathing!” the sign warned- and padded back down the hallway. It, too, was done in the same carpeting as the rooms-they must have gotten it at a fire sale, Michael thought, when some Holiday Inn had suddenly gone out of business.

As soon as he got back to his room, and closed the door, he could hear the low snoring from behind the curtain in Darryl's lower berth. The floor was still littered with all their new clothing. Michael adjusted the black blind that came down over the slot that passed for a window, turned out the light, then climbed up to his own bed, where he plumped the foam-filled pillow against the head-board. A slant of cold sun still penetrated the room. He pulled the bed curtains closed, and by the time he put his head back on the pillow, he was already half-gone. Eight hours later, he awoke in the same position he'd fallen asleep in and, for the first time in months, he could not remember a single thing about his dreams. For that, he was deeply grateful.

Snow school was mandatory for all newcomers to the base. It was overseen by a lanky young guy named Bill Lawson, who wore a cotton kerchief, pirate-style, over his head. Michael thought he might have seen Pirates of the Caribbean one too many times. A civilian employee of the Navy, he taught the course as if it were a self-esteem seminar. When Michael was the first to demonstrate that he knew how to build a fire from scratch, Lawson said, “Way to go, Michael!”

And when Darryl got his tent erected in under ten minutes, Lawson let loose with a “Props to you, Darryl!” and more props when he was able to dismantle and stow it back on the sled in even less time.

Charlotte, who was failing to win any of the survival skills tests, was looking more and more disgruntled. It was plain that she was used to being the star pupil and that she didn't welcome the lectures on hypothermia and frostbite either. Those were topics she'd clearly already mastered, and while Lawson was talking, she would stare off into the middle distance, at the icy plains that surrounded the base on three sides and the ragged ridge of the Transantarctic Mountains, a muddy brown in those places where the snow had been blown away by the unrelenting winds. She looked even un-happier when Lawson announced that they'd be spending the night outdoors.

“In a tent?” Charlotte said. “My room isn't much, but at least it's got a bed, thanks.”

Lawson pretended to take it in good humor-or maybe, Michael thought, the guy really was impervious to any negativity- and said, “No, no tents. We'll be building our own igloos!” For a second, Michael thought Lawson was going to clap his hands in joy.

“Well, if that's how things are done at the South Pole,” Darryl started to say, before Lawson corrected him by saying, “Pole. Just pole.”

None of them entirely understood.

“No one says the South Pole down here,” Lawson explained, “or even the pole at all. It gives you away as a newcomer, or a tourist. Just say, for instance, ‘We're going to pole next week,’ and you'll sound like an old hand.”

While they all silently tried mouthing the new locution, Lawson produced four serrated ice saws from his rucksack, handed them out, and proceeded to show the class how to cut blocks of snow and ice from the ground as if they were slicing up a wedding cake. Then he went about demonstrating the proper method of stacking the blocks atop each other, though slightly cantilevered, in order to fashion a kind of sloppy dome. Even though the temperature was in the low twenties, Lawson was sweating profusely by the time he was done, and stood back to admire his little Taj Mahal.

“Didn't you forget something?” Charlotte asked.

“You must mean the door,” Lawson said, grinning. His teeth were as white as Chiclets. “I was just taking a breather.”

Then, with the saw, a shovel, and often his mittened hands, he started burrowing into the ground like a beaver. Chips of ice and snow, pocked with the occasional bit of gravel, flew behind him as if he were a wood chipper. As Michael watched in wonder, he dug a shallow, and very narrow, tunnel that ran down through the snow, then up into the igloo. Casting the shovel aside, he got down on his belly, and gradually, his whole body disappeared, one segment at a time, into the earth, until, finally, his boots, too, wriggled out of sight. Michael crouched down at the open end of the tunnel, and called out, “Everything okay in there?” and Lawson's voice, sounding winded and sepulchral, came back, “Snug as a bug in a rug.”

Charlotte looked like she'd like to squash that particular bug.

But when he reemerged, he managed to cajole them, under his close supervision, into making their own snow dome. Although he guided their every move, he insisted that they do the manual labor every step of the way, unaided. “You've got to know how to do this- and believe that you can do this,” he said, hovering above them as they chopped the blocks of snow. “It could make the difference between life and death.”

The close proximity of death, Michael reflected, was becoming a frequent refrain at Point Adelie.

That night, instead of repairing to the commons for dinner, they huddled behind an ice wall they'd built with the leftover materials from the snow dome, and thanked God for the NSF gear they'd found in their closets. They ate field rations that Lawson had brought along; they weren't labeled MREs, or Meals Ready to Eat, but Michael suspected that they came from the same fine kitchens that supplied the U.S. military. Michael's can said corned beef hash, but with his eyes closed, he wasn't sure he would have been able to identify it as such. When they were done eating-a quick and cold business-Lawson passed a plastic bag around and every scrap of refuse was gathered up and tossed inside.

“Out here, we leave nothing behind,” he said. “Whatever humans bring in, we take out.”

The base itself was maybe a half mile off, and downhill; its bare white lights, illuminated even in the constant sunlight, were just visible by the shore of the Weddell Sea. Charlotte was looking off at them as if they were the lights of Paris. When the wind blew their way, they could faintly hear the howls of the sled dogs in their kennel.

“You sure we can't call it a night?” she said to Lawson. “I mean, we know how to build igloos now. Do we really have to sleep in ‘em?”

Lawson cocked his head, and said, “I'm afraid so; we're just following the chief's orders. Ever since that beaker-excuse me, I mean the geologist from Kansas-got lost and died out here, Murphy's required a full day and night of snow school for all new arrivals.”

Darryl stood up and slapped his arms around himself to get the heat going. “So, who's sleeping where?” he said. “It looks like one of the dorms will have to be coed.”

“Right you are,” Lawson said, in keeping with his apparent philosophy of complimenting them on anything, no matter how obvious, that they uttered. “Michael, why don't you share with me? I made this first one with extra leg room.”

Each one of them picked up a subzero, synthetic-fill sleeping bag from the sled, said good night, and while Michael waited for Lawson, flashlight in hand, to squirm his way inside, Charlotte, in her great big green parka, waited for Darryl to go into the other one.

“Least he won't get seasick in there,” Michael said, and Charlotte just nodded. Her eyes were fixed on the hole in the snow as she held the rolled-up sleeping bag.

On a hunch, Michael said, “Don't even think about trying to walk back to the camp. It isn't safe.”

She glanced over at him, and he could tell he'd read her mind-or at least her inclination.

“Come on in, anytime,” Lawson called out in a muffled voice.

“See you in the morning,” Michael said, before scrunching down, pushing the sleeping bag into the hole, and crawling in.

It wasn't a long tunnel, but it was a tight squeeze. Lawson was, like Michael, over six feet tall, but the guy was built like a rubber band, and Michael wished that he'd provided just a little more leeway. The ceiling grazed his head every inch of the way, and to make any progress he had to dig the tips of his boots into the snow, then shove himself forward with the front of his body supported on his elbows. He didn't suffer from claustrophobia but that would have been a terrible time to develop it; his entire body was stuck in the snow, his lips were wet with flakes, and the sleeping bag he was pushing ahead of him blocked out nearly all the light from Lawson's flashlight. When it finally popped through, it was like a new world; Lawson shoved the bag out of the way and helped pull Michael in.

“Best thing about it,” Lawson said, “is that you don't need a fridge.”

Michael crawled in and got to his knees; the roof was only a few feet high, but the walls-firm and already slicked with ice from the condensation of their breath-were wide enough apart that, if he let his feet protrude into the tunnel entrance, he'd be able to lay out his bag to its full length. Lawson had covered most of the floor with insulated sleep mats.

But it was the light inside that truly stunned him. The flashlight beam was angled upward, and it sent twinkling rays of light in all directions. The walls seemed to glow with a glistening blue-white sheen, and a few errant flakes of snow, fallen from the roof, idly turned in the air, like diamonds on display. Michael felt like he was caught inside a snowball.

“The roof will drip a bit during the night,” Lawson said as he shimmied down into his own sleeping bag, “especially around the blowholes. It's nothing to worry about, but I'd suggest you drape the waterproof flap of your bag over your face.”

Lawson lay back, and loosely threw his own flap over his head. “Like this,” he said, his breath puffing up the fabric.

Michael unrolled his bag, and even though he managed to bang his head on the ceiling three or four times during the process, laid it out. He took off his boots, leaving on the wool socks and boot liners, then scrunched his parka, as Lawson had done, into a pillow. But the hardest part was squinching himself down into the bag with so many other layers of clothing still on. In the closed space of the snow dome, he got a good whiff of himself, and it wasn't a pleasant smell. He wedged himself down, a little at a time, until his feet hit the bottom of the sack. Lawson had already stuck the end of his own bag into the tunnel, but there was just enough room left over for Michael to extend his legs without playing footsie. He put his head back on the balled-up parka and stared up at the curved ceiling, wondering if the whole thing might not cave in at any second. Instead, a big single drop of ice water dangled from the roof, then landed with a splat on his stubbly chin. He'd been shaving less and less in recent days, in anticipation of just such events as these, when any protection, even whiskers, might come in handy. He brushed the droplet away with the back of his glove, then fumbled for the sleeping bag flap to drop over his face.

“Lights out?” Lawson muttered.

“Right,” Michael replied, and groped for the flashlight lying between them. He found it, flicked it off, and the dazzling snow globe vanished in an instant, replaced by a blackness and a stillness as profound, Michael could not help but reflect, as the grave.