Blood and Ice

CHAPTER FOUR

November 24, 10:25 a.m.

Michael had spotted the little red-haired guy getting off the plane at Santiago and knew he was a scientist right off the bat. There was something about scientists that gave them away, though he'd have been hard put to say exactly what. It wasn't something easy, like the smell of formaldehyde or protractors sticking out of their pockets. No, it was more a matter of their mien; with scientists-and Michael had been around plenty of them while photographing and writing about the natural world-there was something both detached and highly observant. They could be part of a group, and not part of a group, at the same time. And hard as some of them might try to fit in, they never really did. It was like that massive school of sunfish that Michael had photographed underwater in the Bahamas; all of the fish, for safety's sake alone, tried to move toward the center of the swarm, but some of them, for whatever reason, were kept to the margins and never made it.

And of course they were the easiest for predators to pick off.

During the layover before he could catch the prop plane to Puerto Williams, Michael dragged his duffel bag into the crowded cafe area of the airport. The red-haired guy was sitting alone at a table in the corner, his head lowered toward his laptop. Michael got close enough to see that he was studying a complex chart littered with numbers and arrows and intersecting lines. To Michael, it looked vaguely topographic. He stood for only a second or two before the guy in the chair whipped around; he had a small, narrow face, and pale red eyebrows, too. The guy sized Michael up, then said, “This can't possibly be interesting to you.”

“You'd be surprised,” Michael said, approaching him. “I didn't mean to disturb you. I'm just waiting for my connection to Puerto Williams.”

He was waiting to see if that worked, and it did. “Me, too,” the guy said.

“Mind if I sit down?” Michael said, taking the empty chair at the table-the last empty chair in the whole place.

Dumping the duffel on the floor, with one foot through the strap (a habit he'd gotten into on lots of late-night travels in foreign locales), Michael extended his hand and introduced himself. “Michael Wilde.”

“Darryl Hirsch.”

“Puerto Williams, huh? Is that your last stop?”

Hirsch clicked the keyboard a few times, then folded up the laptop. He looked at Michael as if unsure what to make of him yet.

“You're not some kind of government intelligence agent or anything, are you? Because if you are, you're doing a terrible job.”

Michael laughed. “Why would you think that?”

“Because I'm a scientist, and we live in an age of idiots. For all I know, you're tracking me to make sure that I don't prove the earth is getting warmer-even though it plainly is. The ice caps are melting, the polar bears are disappearing, and Intelligent Design is perfectly designed for dolts. So go ahead-you can arrest me now.”

“Relax. You're sounding a little paranoid, if you don't mind my saying so.”

“Just because you're paranoid,” Darryl observed, “doesn't mean you're not being followed.”

“True enough,” Michael replied. “But I like to think I'm one of the good guys. I work for Eco-Travel Magazine, doing photos and text. I'm going down to the Antarctic to do a story on life at a research station there.”

“Which research station? A dozen countries have planted stations there, just to stake their claim.”

“Point Adelie. About as close to the Pole as you can get.”

“Oh,” Hirsch said, digesting the news. “Me, too. Huh.” He sounded like he still hadn't given up on his conspiracy theory. “That's really something.” His fingers tapped on the closed lid of his laptop. “So, you're a journalist.”

Michael detected that first glimmer he had seen before, a million times. When people found out he was a writer, there was that first mild surprise, then acceptance, and then-a nanosecond later-the dawning realization that he could make them famous. Or at least write about them. It was like watching little lights go on in their heads.

“That's great,” Hirsch said. “What a coincidence.” With studied nonchalance, he opened his laptop again and started tapping at the keyboard. “Let me just show you something.” He turned the screen so that Michael could see it. The same elaborate chart appeared. “This is the seafloor of the continental shelf, under the ice around Point Adelie. You can see here where the shelf extends, and here”-he put a nail-bitten finger to the screen-”where it drops off precipitously, into what we call the abyssal range. I'm planning to go down maybe a couple of hundred meters on this trip. I'm a marine biologist, by the way. Woods Hole Oceanographic. I'm particularly interested in the notothenioidei — Antarctic icefish-as well as sea snails, eel pouts, rat tails. You know what those are, right?”

Michael said yes, though, privately, he'd have to concede his knowledge was extremely sketchy.

“-and how their metabolisms function in this incredibly hostile environment. A lot of what I do, now that I think about it, would offer some great photo opportunities. These creatures are fantastically adapted to their ecological niches, and to me at least, they're phenomenally beautiful, though some people, I gather, have trouble seeing it. But that, I think, is just because they seem so foreign at first…”

There was no stopping him. He didn't even need to take a breath. Michael glanced at the espresso cup next to the computer and wondered just how many of those his new travel pal had imbibed.

“… and many of these animals, no matter how small or simple, carry a veritable world of parasites, in everything from their anal glands to their eye ducts.”

He said it as if he was describing the array of wonderful rides at an amusement park.

“And as I'm sure you know, the parasite's best bet, in order to ensure its own survival, is to make sure that the host it's devouring is in turn devoured by something else.”

Michael wondered if this was the guy's usual small talk.

“Did you know, for instance, that the larval acanthocephalan deliberately drives its amphipod host crazy?”

“No,” Michael admitted. “Why would it do that?”

“So that the host will leave its hiding place, usually under a rock, and wildly gyrate through open water where it will surely be eaten by a fish.”

“You don't say.”

“Don't worry, I'll show you a lot of this when we get there,” Darryl said, consolingly. “It's thrilling to see.”

Michael could see that he was just about to launch into another paean on the glories waiting to be discovered on the ocean floor when a tinny loudspeaker announced-first in Spanish, then in English-that those passengers going on to Puerto Williams could board their plane.

Hirsch kept up his chatter all the way across the cold, windblown tarmac, and up the short flight of steps into the prop plane. He didn't even have to duck to enter, while Michael had to bend far forward to keep from getting bonked. The plane had just ten seats, five on each side, and with everyone wearing heavy coats and parkas, boots and gloves and hats, it was a very tight squeeze. All the others seemed to be rattling away in Spanish or Portuguese. Darryl Hirsch took the seat right across from Michael, but once the plane taxied down the windy runway, its props whirring and its engines growling, all attempts at conversation came to a halt. They'd have had to shout at the top of their lungs just to be heard across the narrow aisle.

Michael buckled in and stared out the small round window. The plane had some trouble lifting off, buffeted by strong headwinds, but once it did, it quickly veered away from the land, soared over a ridge of jagged cliffs, and turned south along the Pacific coastline. It was a minute or two before Michael's stomach caught up with the rest of him. Far below, he could see the white-topped waves rolling and cresting, chopped by fierce and incessant winds. He was heading, he knew, for the windiest-in addition to the driest, coldest, and most barren-place on Earth. It was early afternoon, but the light would last around the clock. It was the austral summer, and the sun would never go down. It appeared on the northern horizon like a sliver of dull coin, bathing everything in a muted luminescence, punctuated by passages of either glaring brightness, or storm-covered shadow. Over the coming weeks and months, the sun would travel slowly across the sky, reaching its zenith on the solstice of December 21, before departing altogether in late March. Then, the moon would rule just as unequivocally as the sun did now.

Although Michael wanted to stay awake, to remember every moment of the journey, it became harder and harder to do so. He had been traveling for what felt like days, from Tacoma to Los Angeles, from Los Angeles to Santiago, and now from Santiago to Puerto Williams, the southernmost town in the world. He lowered the plastic shade on the window and closed his eyes. The plane was warm, too warm really, and his feet were sweltering in their hiking boots. But he was too tired even to reach down and try to unlace them. He settled back in his uncomfortable seat-he could feel the knees of the guy behind him prodding through the thin fabric cushion and into the small of his back-but dropped off into sleep anyway. The constant thrumming of the engines, the closeness of the cabin, the never-changing light…

He started out dreaming, as he usually did, of Kristin-of some occasion when they were happy together, when they were kayaking in Oregon, or parasailing off the Yucatan-but the deeper he went, the darker and more troubling the dreams became. Too often, he found himself in this same weird state-asleep, but simultaneously, it seemed, aware of that fact-trying hard to marshal his thoughts and move them in another direction, but stuck all the same. Before he knew it, he was back on the barren ledge in the Cascades, huddling against the cold, with Kristin cradled in his arms. He was holding her so tight his arms ached, and pressing his feet against the rocky wall so hard that he lost all feeling below the ankles. He was talking to her, telling her how mad her dad would be, how her sister would claim she was being such a drama queen. But when he awoke, with the flight attendant shaking him to say he had to sit up for landing, he found that he was clutching his own backpack, and his long legs were entangled in the metal runners of the seat in front of him.

Darryl was wide awake-that's what a few espressos will do for you-and grinning. “Look out your window!” he shouted over the engines. “It's on your side!”

Michael sat up, rubbing the rough whiskers on his chin, and lifted the shade. Again, he was struck by that eerie light that made him want to close his eyes or look away. But far ahead and far below, he could see the very tip of the South American continent, tapering like the sharp tip of a shoe, winnowing itself down to almost nothing where the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans merged. And on the very tip of the shoe, he saw a tiny, black smudge.

“Puerto Williams!” Darryl cried, exultantly. “Can you see it?”

Michael had to smile-he kind of liked this guy, but he was definitely going to take some getting used to. He gave him a thumbs-up.

The pilot issued some instructions in Spanish, which Michael assumed meant something like return your seats to their upright position, and the plane banked steeply toward a long, spiky line of brown mountains. When it was parallel to them, and presumably protected from the easterly winds, it swiftly dropped altitude-Michael's ears popped like corks-and the pilot cut back on the engines. For a moment, it felt like the plane was in a free fall, before Michael heard the rumbling of the landing gear coming down and felt the nose of the plane coming up a bit. The engine noise subsided considerably, and the plane seemed to glide, like a seabird, onto the gravel runway, touch down with a bump, then roll, unimpeded, toward a couple of rusted hangars, a ramshackle terminal, and a control tower that Michael could swear was tilting ten degrees.

Several of the passengers applauded, and the pilot came on to say, “Muchas gracias, senoras y senores, y bienvenidos al fin de la tierra.”

That much Michael didn't need a translator for. Welcome to the ends of the earth.