Blood and Ice

CHAPTER NINE

December 1, 11:45 a.m.

The storm raged for hours, and only let up by late morning the next day. The damaged aloft con had been abandoned and sealed off for the duration of the voyage.

Dr. Barnes had helped the ship's own medic to remove the ice and glass shards from Lieutenant Kathleen Healey's face, but her eyes were still severely compromised and Charlotte thought she should be taken back to civilization-and a first-rate ophthalmologist-as fast as possible.

“She could permanently lose the sight in one or even both of her eyes,” she told the captain in his private cabin. Purcell didn't say anything, but looked down at his shoes, thinking hard, and when he looked up again a few seconds later, he said, “Start packing.”

“Come again?”

“I'd planned to get you closer to Port Adelie before launching the chopper, but I think we can make it from here.”

Charlotte really didn't like the sound of that “I think.”

“We'll just have to jettison some of the provisions and supplies, in order to lower the cargo weight. Then we can board you and Mr. Hirsch and Mr. Wilde, with your gear, and take off from here. The chopper should be able to carry just enough fuel to drop you there, and then get back to us while we're already heading back north. Lieutenant Ramsey!” he called out as the officer passed through the corridor outside.

“Sir?”

“Prepare the helicopter. Who are our pilots on this trip?”

“That would be Ensigns Diaz and Jarvis.”

“Order them to fuel it up and be ready to deliver our three passengers to Point Adelie ASAP.”

“From here, sir? Won't-”

But the captain cut him short, completed his instructions, then dismissed him. Returning his attention to Charlotte, he asked if she'd tell Wilde and Hirsch to get a move on, too.

“How long should I tell them they've got?”

The captain glanced at his watch, then said, “Let's shoot for 1300 hours.”

Charlotte still had to do the quick math-that meant 1 p.m. And that meant she had about fifty-five minutes.

Darryl she knew where to find-he was still lying in his cot, less green than he'd been the night before, but still a color no human being should ever be. When she told him the news, he closed his eyes, clearly willing himself to get up, and did.

“You gonna be all right?” she asked, watching him move, like a sleepwalker, toward his bags.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “Go on, get Michael.”

“You know where?”

“Where else? On deck.”

Charlotte did not have time for a concerted search-she had her own stuff to get together-but she quickly went up on the main deck, looked toward the bow, and saw nothing, then looked aft, where several crewmen were wrestling the dark green tarp off the helicopter fixed to its raised pad. The wind was still strong, and the tarp whipped around like a monstrous cape. Getting a photo of the undertaking was Michael.

“Did you know we're supposed to be on that helicopter,” she said, “in less than an hour?”

“Yep,” he said, still kneeling to get the shot he wanted. “The crew told me. Most of my stuff never came out of my duffel. I'm ready to go in three minutes.”

“Aren't you Mr. Smarty Pants,” she said. “Well, I got things to do. When you go below for your stuff, make sure you bring Darryl with you. That boy still doesn't look all that steady on his feet.”

As Charlotte headed below, Michael finished taking a couple of shots, then hastily stowed his gear. He had finally gotten his sea legs, and could pretty well anticipate-and correct for-the rolling and rocking of the boat. But he wouldn't be sorry to leave it. Ever since his stroll on the deck the night before, not to mention his disastrous visit to the aloft con, he'd felt himself to be persona non grata and had studiously avoided bumping into any of the senior officers. Even Petty Officer Kazinski had looked at him like a bad-luck charm. When the accident had happened, he'd done everything he could think of for Lieutenant Healey helping her down the ladder like a fireman-which meant staying on the outside and one step below her-then going back up top to try to remove the dead albatross and somehow seal the conning tower window. But there wasn't much he could do-the bird's body was so tightly wedged into the broken window, with the edge of the Kent screen slicing into its breast like a scalpel, that he decided it was best to leave it where it was. At least that way there was something to keep the battering waves from flooding the con again.

No, he wouldn't be sorry to leave the boat and get to Point Adelie. That's where he could begin his work in earnest.

After the tarp was removed, Michael, who'd been on a pretty fair number of helicopters in his time, could see that it was one of the Dolphin class, a sturdy, twin-engined, single-rotor chopper that was routinely used for missions like drug interdiction, ice patrol, and search and rescue. Like the ship they were on, the helicopter was painted red, a common safety measure in icy climes where a spot of color could make all the difference between discovery- and survival-and being lost forever. As he looked on, several seamen began to run fuel lines and prepare the craft for departure; a couple of others began to off-load some crates. They reminded him of a pit crew at a NASCAR race, each one of them going about his business with practiced hands and almost no words exchanged. He collected his camera gear and went back down to his cabin.

Darryl was slumped on the edge of his bunk, gnawing on a protein bar.

“Why don't you go to the mess?” Michael said, stuffing his shaving kit into his duffel, “and get something warm? They've got sloppy joes going.”

“Can't,” Darryl replied.

“You can't make it?” Michael said. “I could go get you one.”

“Can't, because I don't eat meat.”

Michael stopped packing.

“You haven't noticed?” Darryl said.

And now that Michael thought about it, it struck him that no, he hadn't ever seen Darryl eat any meat. Lots of fruits and veggies, tons of bread, cheese, crackers, corn chowder, cherry pie, spinach souffle. But no burgers or pork chops or fried chicken.

“For how long?”

“Ever since college, when I majored in biology.”

“What's that got to do with it?” Michael asked.

“Everything,” Darryl said, rolling the foil down another inch on the protein bar. “Once I started to study life in earnest-in all its countless permutations and manifestations-and I saw that all of it, no matter how large or how small, had one thing in common, I couldn't find it in my heart to interfere anymore.”

Michael thought he got it. “You mean the urge to live?”

Darryl nodded. “Every species, from the blue whale to the fruit fly, will struggle, with every fiber of its being, to preserve its own existence. And the more I studied them, even the single-celled diatoms, the more beautiful they all appeared to me. Life is a miracle-an absolute fucking miracle-in every form it takes, and I just never felt right again about taking any of it unnecessarily.”

While Michael was not about to give up his baby back ribs or his porterhouse steaks, he did understand Darryl's point of view. But there was one thing he didn't get.

“So why haven't you mentioned it before? In the Officers’ Mess, or the wardroom? They could have made you vegetarian plates or something.”

Darryl gave him a long look. “Do you know what sailors, and military types in general, think of vegetarians?”

Michael had never considered the question, and Darryl could see that.

“I'd be better off telling them that I was a child molester.”

Michael had to laugh. “What are you going to do at Point Adelie? Try to keep it a secret again?”

Darryl shrugged, finished the protein bar and crumpled the foil into a tiny ball. “I'll cross that bratwurst when I come to it.” He got up from the bunk and started pulling a sweater over his head. “As for the other scientists there, they won't notice a thing or care either way.” His head popped up again out of the hole. “Give a glaciolo-gist a fresh ice core to inspect, and he's the happiest man on the planet. As long as you don't mess around with their experiments, scientists couldn't care less what you do.”

With that, Michael had to agree. He'd covered a few of those guys-a primatologist in Brazil, a herpetologist in the Southwest- and they lived, totally absorbed, in their own weird little worlds. At Point Adelie, there'd be a prize collection of them.

When Darryl had finished his packing, they dragged their bags up to the aft deck, where Michael could see that the pilots had already boarded the chopper and were going through some routine instrument checks. Petty Officer Kazinski showed up, carrying Dr. Barnes's bags; she was right behind him, in her long green down coat, pulling her braided hair into one big knot.

Captain Purcell approached them before boarding, but he seemed to be addressing everyone but Michael. “On behalf of the United States Coast Guard, I'd like to wish you well on the remainder of your journey to Point Adelie. We're glad to have been of service, and look forward to helping out again whenever we're needed.”

Charlotte and Darryl thanked him profusely, they shook hands, and finally the captain looked directly at Michael. “Try not to get into any trouble between now and then, Mr. Wilde.”

“I hope Lieutenant Healey is okay. Could you keep me posted on her progress?”

“I'll do that,” the captain said, in a tone that made it clear he would not.

A couple of seamen came up, gathered their bags, and started to load them into the cargo hold.

The captain glanced off to the west, then added, “Better get going. We've got more weather on the way.” Then, he gave a short wave toward the helicopter pilots, turned, and headed back to the bridge.

Michael followed Charlotte and Darryl into the side door of the chopper, ducking his head and flopping into a seat on the far side, next to a big, square window. The choppers were designed to afford maximum visibility, and it would give him a great view the whole way. Darryl, perhaps purposely, sat on the inside, next to Charlotte. The cabin was warm, and after Michael had quickly shed his coat and gloves, he strapped himself into the over-the-shoulder seat harness. Then, just as the pilots switched on the rotor, and the whole craft began to vibrate and hum, he put on the noise-deadening headphones, with intercom mike attached. A seaman slapped and latched the side door shut. There was a short aisle between the passenger compartment and the cockpit, and through it Michael could see the pilots-Diaz and Jarvis, as he'd learned from the sailors who'd removed the tarp-flicking overhead switches, checking dials and computer screens. It looked like a compressed version of the bridge on the ship.

The helicopter teetered on the platform, like a teenager in high heels, before suddenly gaining confidence-and power-and lifting straight up into the air, pointing toward the stern. Then, as the ship moved away beneath it, it banked to the southwest and swerved away. The last thing Michael saw, peering out, was the demolished window of the aloft con. The dead albatross had been removed, and a makeshift cover of wood, crisscrossed with aluminum bands and duct tape, had been used to seal the hole.

Below him was the Weddell Sea-named after the Scottish sealer, James Weddell, who was among the first to explore it in the 1820s-and the water was thick with floating ice and immense, seemingly stationary glaciers. From above, Michael could see straight down into the glaciers’ jagged crevasses; when the light was right, and a ray of sun just happened to hit at the proper angle, the inner ice glowed a bright neon blue. And when the light had passed, it was as if the electricity had just been turned off, and the crevasse became again a frightening scar, a black suture on a dead white face.

There was a crackling sound in the headphones, then Ensign Diaz came on to introduce himself and advise everyone that their flying time would be roughly one hour. “We hope it's a smooth ride,” he said, “but by now you know the score down here.”

Michael couldn't help glancing at Darryl, who'd already had enough turbulence to last him a lifetime, but his headphones were off, and he was blissfully asleep, his mouth open, his head listing toward Charlotte's ample shoulder. Charlotte had on her big round shades, and was looking down at the sea with a pensive expression.

Michael could guess at some of what she was thinking. When you were flying over the vast, barren waste of the Antarctic wilderness, it was hard not to dwell on some things-the insignificance of your own tiny life, the possibility, at any time, of one minor mishap leading to a series of events resulting in death or disaster. Despite the explorers and whalers and sealers who had plied these dangerous waters for centuries, the Antarctic continent was still the most untouched by humankind. Its very inhospitability was all that had saved it. When the economic cost of killing the remaining whales for oil and baleen had become too great, the industry had finally ground to a halt. When the fur seals had been so decimated by ruthless predation-hundreds and hundreds of thousands wantonly slaughtered on the ice, the mothers dead, the pups left to starve- that grim business, too, had gradually ceased to flourish. Wherever humans had set foot, the carnage had been so brutal, so extraordinary, and so quick that the very thing making the killers rich was nearly eradicated in a hundred years’ time.

The goose that laid the golden egg had been killed, over and over and over again.

But the icy fastness of the South Pole had, ultimately, worn out all its would-be invaders and made itself impervious to all but the most tentative intrusions. There were scientific bases and research stations, like Point Adelie, scattered around the shores of the Southern Ocean, but they were like little black pebbles on a vast white beach. Tiny dark specks in a world of blue sea and crystalline peaks. And most of them, as Michael had learned at his dinners in the Officers’ Mess, were less about the quest for knowledge than they were about making a claim on the land-and the limitless mineral resources that might lie beneath it.

“The Antarctic is the only continent on earth with no nations on it,” the Ops had pointed out over dinner one night, “and to keep it that way, the Antarctic Treaty was drawn up in ‘59. The treaty declares the Antarctic-which means any ocean or land south of sixty degrees-to be an international zone. Nuclear-free. Forty-four nations have signed on.”

“But that hasn't stopped the squatters,” Darryl had said, piling the potatoes au gratin onto his plate. “Come one, come all.”

Lieutenant Healey had smiled ruefully at that. “You're right. Many nations, including some unlikely newcomers like China and Peru, have set up so-called research stations. It's their way of asserting their rights to participate in any discussions about the Antarctic-or any exploitation of its resources that might later occur.”

“In other words, they're just getting in line, like us,” Darryl said, “for whenever the free-for-all really gets under way.” He shoveled another mouthful of potatoes into his mouth, and before quite swallowing it, added, “And it will.”

Michael had no doubt he was right, although looking out the window at the frozen panorama below and the sun, squatting like a fat bronze ball on the horizon, it was hard to envision that coming cataclysm. The endless ice, and the rolling sea, looked as impervious as they did eternal.

To the west, he could see the first signs of the storm front the captain had hinted at. Wispy gray clouds were filling the sky and starting to fly in their direction, like strips of a shroud being torn by invisible fingers. The ocean, too, was starting to stir, the gentle swells growing higher, the waves frothing white. Flocks of seabirds were driven before the rising wind.

Darryl had come awake, and was sitting up straight; apparently, the seasickness was at long last behind him, and his skin, though pallid as any redhead's, was at least no longer green. He grinned at Michael and gave him a thumbs-up. Charlotte was studying a folded map in her lap.

In the cockpit, Michael could see Diaz and Jarvis conferring, surveying their scopes and monitors, and a few seconds later the helicopter gained altitude and, if he wasn't mistaken, speed. It was impossible to make out much but a vast undifferentiated tableau of ice below. And for the next twenty minutes or so, the chopper seemed bent on nothing but getting to its destination as quickly as possible. Michael wondered if the storm front wasn't advancing faster than they'd expected.

He put his head back and closed his eyes. He, too, was pretty tired; sleeping on board an icebreaker hadn't been easy. Between the constant rumbling of the engines and the grinding of the screws as they pulverized the passing growlers-chunks of ice as big as buses-not to mention the dank, dark quarters (he could still smell the odor of mildew on his clothes), it was doubtful he'd gone for more than a couple of hours without being jarred awake, or, more than once, heaved out of his bunk and onto the floor. No matter what his quarters were like at Point Adelie, he looked forward to sleeping in a bed that wasn't rocking, where the deadliest ocean in the world wasn't hammering away at him from just a few feet away, dying to get in.

He wondered if there had been any change in Kristin's condition. It was odd to be so out of touch, so far removed, in every sense, from all the concerns of his ordinary life. It was true that he'd been taking a sort of sabbatical from his friends, his family, his work; after the accident, he'd just kind of holed up with his misery, letting the answering machine field his calls and AOL keep track of his e-mails. But he knew that if anything dire occurred, he'd find out; the world-or at least Kristin's little sister-would breach his walls and get word to him, one way or the other. But where he was headed, regular communication of any sort was bound to be difficult, and his ability to respond in any meaningful way was nil. He could hardly race to a bedside, or worse, a cemetery, from the most inaccessible part of the planet, thousands of miles away.

The terrible thing about that, if he was being completely truthful with himself, was that it came as a relief. Ever since he'd embarked on this journey, he'd felt a lightening of his load, a reprieve from feeling he was forever on call. For months, he'd felt suspended, on a round-the-clock watch, unable to move forward without constantly looking back. There was something to be said, even if he couldn't say it, for the imposition of physical barriers. They had a nice way of taking things out of your hands.

The chopper was buffeted by the wind, and without moving his head, Michael cracked open one eye. The scene outside had changed entirely. The wispy clouds had become a ghostly army scudding across the sky. And even the ocean, far below, was almost completely cloaked by a swirling fog. The lines between sea and sky, ice and air, were becoming increasingly obscured, and Michael knew that this was one of the greatest hazards in the Antarctic-the whole universe, in a matter of minutes, could be reduced to a glaringly white photon soup. Ships foundered and explorers plummeted into unseen crevasses. Pilots, unable to orient themselves, crashed their planes into glacial peaks or straight down onto the pack ice.

“Guess you can tell,” Ensign Diaz said over the intercom headsets, “we've got some headwinds coming at us.”

Michael sat up in his seat and glanced over at his traveling companions. Charlotte was folding up her map and putting it away, and Darryl was craning his neck to see out her window.

“But we're almost at Point Adelie. We're tracking the coastline, and coming in from the northwest. If the fog breaks, you should be able to see the old Norwegian whaling station, or maybe even the Adelie rookeries.” He clicked off, but then, a few seconds later, came back on again. “Ensign Jarvis has asked me to advise you that our ground time will be minimal, so please be prepared to depart the craft as soon as you are advised that it is safe to do so. Don't wait for your bags and gear-they'll be transferred for you.” Then he clicked off again and stayed off.

Michael tightened the laces on his boots, and gathered up his coat and hat and gloves, even though he couldn't put them on again until he was out of the shoulder harness. The chopper was slowly losing altitude-he could feel it even if he couldn't see it-and cutting through the fog. Occasionally, a patch of rocky shoreline would become visible, and once or twice he saw great black swarms of penguins, massed on a snowy plain. Then he caught a glimpse of a patchwork of abandoned wooden buildings, the colors of soot and rust; what looked like a steeple poked up from the fog. But it was hard to say for sure, as the chopper was skimming along so quickly, rising and falling on the powerful air currents, bucketing from side to side. A few minutes later, it came up over a low ridge, slowing down and turning, the rotors whirring louder than ever. Michael leaned close to the window to look down; the chopper's blades were shredding the mist below, and through it he could see a man in a hooded orange parka wildly waving and sliding around on the ice. Splotches of gray and brown surrounded him, some of them moving, skittering across the snow and ice, others disappearing as if they'd spontaneously evaporated. The helicopter hovered, but a gust of wind hit it hard and set it rocking in the air. In the cockpit, Diaz and Jarvis were hunched over their controls; Diaz was speaking rapidly into his microphone.

The man below vanished from Michael's field of vision, then ran back across it, his arms still waving. The chopper rocked again, an air horn blasted twice, then, slowly, the aircraft descended. When its blades touched the ice, there was a grinding noise that reminded Michael of cracking open one of those old-fashioned ice-cube trays, and under it came the sound of the man in the orange parka shouting. He skidded past the window-Michael caught a glimpse of a bearded, weather-beaten face under dark goggles-and then he heard the gradual sigh of the rotors winding down. The pilots were flicking off switches and shucking their own seat belts.

Michael did the same.

Diaz turned around, and called out, “Last stop!”

Jarvis had already climbed out, and was yanking on the latch to the passenger compartment. The door jerked open, and a blast of Antarctic air blew like a gale into the cabin. Charlotte was still wrestling herself out of her seat harness, and Darryl was doing his best to help her.

“All ashore that's going ashore!” Jarvis shouted, extending a hand to Charlotte, who finally freed herself and stepped out gingerly onto the ice. Darryl tumbled out after her, and Michael followed.

The orange parka guy was shouting at the pilots, something about seals, Weddell seals, and pups. Michael was still a little deaf from the roar of the chopper, and much of what the guy was saying was snatched up and blown away before he could quite make it out.

Michael moved away from the helicopter, as several other men in parkas and goggles ran toward the tail of the helicopter, where Jarvis had already thrown open a cargo bay. Michael saw pallets of supplies sliding out, but then he almost lost his footing and had to focus again on where he was going. Where was he going? There was no sign of the research station, and the ice, he suddenly discovered, had holes in it, roughly a few feet wide. He stopped, and he could see that there was something on the ice, something red and pulpy and wet, and the orange parka man was shouting again, though now Michael could actually hear some of it.

“The Weddell seals, they're whelping here! Right now! Watch where you're going!”

Charlotte and Darryl, arm in arm, were frozen in place.

“Holes in the ice!” he cried, pointing at several spots around them. “They've chewed breathing holes in the ice!”

A few yards off, almost indistinguishable against the ice, Michael saw a pup. Then two. White, but smeared with blood, their black eyes open. A mother lay beyond them, like a gray barrel.

And then, as he watched, another seal-bigger, darker, fully grown-put its head down into a hole, and somehow managed to slither through.

“Keep going!” the guy in the orange coat shouted. “Get off the ice!”

Someone from the station, a guy with a frozen handlebar moustache, was guiding Charlotte and Darryl forward. Michael inched in the same direction, but sometimes the fog made it hard to see as far as your own feet. And the ice, slick under the best of circumstances, was even harder to navigate on, wet with blood and littered with afterbirth. When, finally, he felt the grit of rock and lichen under his boots, Michael breathed a sigh of relief. A burst of wind dispelled a patch of fog, and he saw, on a low rise not more than fifty yards away, a handful of muddy gray, prefab structures, raised a few feet above the permafrost, and huddled together like the ugliest college quad in the world. An ice-rimed flagpole stood in the center, with Old Glory snapping in the freezing wind.

The guy in the orange parka came up behind him and said, “We call it the garden spot of Antarctica.”

Michael stamped his cold, and bloodstained, boots.

“But I've got to warn you,” he went on, in a thick Boston accent, “it's not always this pretty.”