Beneath the Dark Ice

Two

A band of warm Connecticut sunshine bathed Aimee Weir as she sipped her drink and looked up from her latest project results to stare evenly at her co-worker. With jet black hair and soft blue eyes, Aimee lived up to her Scottish bloodline. She was the first of her family of shopkeepers and boat builders to become a scientist, and her brilliance in the field of fossil fuel synthesis made her a sought-after commodity by resource-hungry corporations around the world. She was a tall woman of twenty-nine, with a way of setting her jaw and making her eyes go from soft to piercing that her friends referred to as the “Weir lasers.” She was able to stare down the most fearsome university faculty or boardroom member and when push came to shove, she usually got her way. She finished her soda and directed that stare at Tom now.

“It won’t do any good, Aimee; I’m not even going to look at you. I don’t need to be blinded so early in the morning.” Tom chuckled and continued to pour himself a coffee. Aimee could tell he knew she was looking at him and guessed he was playing it cool, hoping she would just blow off some steam for a while before giving him her blessing to go on the field trip. Tom stirred his cup noisily and continued, “Besides, I know you hate heights and we have to ropesail or something down into a frozen cave on, or rather I should say under, the Antarctic ice.”

“Ha! It’s called ‘abseiling’ or ‘rappelling.’ There is no such word as ‘ropesailing.’ And that heights thing happened a long time ago. It’s not a phobia, Tom.”

Tom sipped his coffee, making an exaggerated slurping sound. Aimee mouthed OK then, to his back. She tore a small fragment of paper from her computer printout and rolled it into a ball which she popped into her mouth, working it around a little more with her tongue. She lifted the straw from the small bottle and placed it in her mouth, took aim and fired the wet projectile at the back of Tom’s head. Satisfyingly, it stuck to his neck.

“Yee-uck. I hate it when you do that.” Tom wiped his neck with his hand and turned around. Aimee sat smiling with her left eyebrow raised and the straw dangling from her bottom lip.

She had known Tom for ten years, ever since he had been at her university spotting on behalf of his company. Even as a gangly, or as her father said “coltish,” nineteen-year-old, her grades and natural scientific talent in the areas of biology and biogenic decomposition made her stand out from a crowded and impressive field. Her potential was a magnet to companies looking for the most valuable of corporate assets: intelligence. Tom had made her laugh till tears ran down her cheeks and humanised science more than any dry professor ever had. He was like an older brother and could still make her laugh today like that kid at university a decade ago, yet over the years he had looked out for her and guided her career and now she was one of the most respected petrobiologists in the world.

Tom Hendsen was the lead scientist working for GBR, a small research company that specialised in geological and biological research into fossil fuels, their discovery, use, synthesis and hopefully one day, replacement. He was forty, slim and tall, with an easy laugh. Though they all had an informal working relationship within GBR he was the natural leader due to his maturity and encyclopedic knowledge of deep earth petrobiology.

Aimee loved Tom, but as with all sibling relationships there were flare-ups — rare, but they happened; just like now. Tom had been urgently requested by the government to accompany a rescue mission to the Antarctic. A private jet had gone down on the ice, or rather, through the ice. A large cavern had been opened up and initial data received indicated a large body of mid-crust liquid that could be surface petroleum and natural gas. It was probably nothing more than screwy data or some illegal dumping ground used by the numerous nations that visited the Antarctic for everything from research to mining — nations that eyed the continent hungrily as the last great unexplored, or rather unravaged, continent on earth. However, it could also be something significant; the Antarctic wasn’t always covered in snow and ice and about 150 million years before, when Gondwana began to break up, what was now the Antarctic coalesced around the South Pole. A number of species of dinosaur were known to have existed and the lush plant life became dominated by fern-like plants which grew in swamps. Over time these swamps became deposits of coal in the Transantarctic Mountains and could have decomposed into reservoirs of oil below them.

“But you hate the cold, and you don’t like field work. I’m more than qualified to at least assist you down there.” Aimee hated the whining tone creeping into her voice. She knew Tom was the best person to go, but she had been working on her current project now for eighteen months and was looking for any sort of interesting diversion — and this sounded like just the sort of thing that she’d like to do.

“Aimee, someone has got to front the board on Wednesday and discuss our results on the viability models for synthetic fuel production or we won’t get the additional funding,” Tom responded in his most patient tone. “You know you’re better than I am at twisting those board members around your little finger.” Aimee could tell Tom was deliberately flattering her and she gave him a fake “gosh, thanks” smile.

“I’ll be back in a week, probably with little more than a cold to show for it,” he said without looking up from his packing. “I’ll take some electromagnetic readings and map the near-surface alteration effects of any hydrocarbon migration and then we can turn the results into some nice 3D models for our friends in the boardroom.”

“Well, make sure you use plenty of colour and description and lose all the jargon or you might as well show them pictures of your auntie’s knitting for all those board members will understand,” Aimee responded half-jokingly, knowing Tom was the best in the business at making complex subjects easy to understand and accessible to even the dullest bureaucrat. “And bring me back some snow.”

“I’ll bring you a penguin, no two, to make a pair of slippers,” he said, both of them now laughing at their silliness.

Her eyes had once more returned to the soft Aimee blue. As usual he had managed to disarm her with a sense of humour that was more at home in a schoolyard than a laboratory. Knowing Tom, he’d spend his time in the tent hunched over his computer and be cold and bored by the end of the first day.

Next time, she thought, it would be her turn, no question about it.