***
After the Otter had passed overhead, it was only moments until the three riders on the Alpines could see the wreckage of the once tidy caravan strewn across the ice. It was clear to them what had happened, and that none of their fellow travelers were amused. Jake was.
“Funny place to hold a yard sale,” he heckled Geoff as he glided to a stop beside him. “How much for the dog?”
Jake gestured towards an exceedingly unhappy Husky that was trying to free itself from the tangled leads and was biting at Geoff’s hand as he tried to get it loose.
“Don’t you begin any of your nonsense, or you’ll be in it also,” Geoff said menacingly towards Jake, who ignored him and continued to chuckle at their plight. “Bloody bastards better hope I never catch them.”
“Well, you’re going to have to move faster than this if you’re ever going to. I suppose we’d better get you straightened out.”
“What happened?” Susan asked. She had never met Geoff, but she knew Frodo of course, and her momentary meetings with Sokolov had produced memorable results. But for the moment she addressed herself to the New Zealander. Things had proceeded so rapidly, culminating with her sudden estrangement from Lt. Richards, with whom she was barely communicating in a forced and frigid monotone, that she found herself disconnected from her own thoughts, unsure of how to engage these two very different people whom she felt that she had propelled towards whatever it was they were approaching. Only Jake seemed to be in high spirits, as if the more screwed up things got, the happier he was.
“That Italian Rat-bag put a fright on the dogs. Now we’re all balls-up. And this Dag,” he said pointing at Jake and not being able to contain a chuckle of his own despite trying very hard, “thinks it’s a bloody laugh.”
“Tell me how it’s not,” Jake replied, and the two of them began to argue the merit of finding humor in their situation. Susan was grateful for the distraction. Lieutenant Richards went to help Frodo right the sled, while Sokolov collected the scattered flotsam that had been ejected in their fall. She looked in wonder at each of these men, all of whom she had managed to become engaged with in various degrees of complexity. Geoff she did not know, but she had arranged for his becoming an accomplice in her schemes. Frodo would have been doing what he was doing anyway, but it was her actions that brought him up to the camp. She couldn’t take responsibility for Thumper, but now Frodo was a fugitive, and she felt she had a hand in that. Sokolov, despite being where he was for the moment was at least free, also for the moment, and she felt some degree of vindication in that. She looked at Lieutenant Richards with an overwhelming sadness. Was Jake right, that the forces of nature were working against her, that no matter how hard she tried to align them they would always be shifting on their poles, sometimes finding an inexorable attraction, at others creating an unbridgeable gap?
And then there was Jake. Jake, whom she had taken for granted as someone who was only there for her to use as she saw fit. There was some truth in that for which she felt little remorse, his job was to do what he was told, up to a point. But to be co-opted into her plans or to be treated as an amusing, though inconsequential tool was not part of the job description. Even so, he not only bore with her, he encouraged her, and took her often abrasive handling of him and of their working together with an unfailingly good humor. And it wasn’t because he was some simpleton who only colored his world in favorable hues, he chose his demeanor deliberately, seemingly having examined the reality in which he found himself living, and deciding that taking life too seriously was giving it too much credit. He made his world into what he wanted it to be.
As she watched the two guides going about their verbal joust, she realized that she was not so different from him; she too tried to create her own reality as well. The difference was that when she looked at the two versions side-by-side, there was no comparison. His seemed enchanting in its simplicity and compelling in its appeal. And hers now felt self-centered and mean.
And now all of these people were caught-up in events that she had set in motion, but which she could not control, nor could she predict their outcome.
“So,” Frodo asked with exaggerated politeness, “how is it we are again graced with your company?”
“Trying to help you,” Susan said. Then, gesturing towards Sokolov, she added, “and him.”
“I see,” Frodo said, without actually seeing. “What makes you think we needed your help? From what I can tell, what we needed most was to be left alone to disappear.”
“Well, that’s what we thought too, until we found out that Thumper gave you away, told the Captain you were headed to Terra Nova.”
“Thumper!” Frodo said. “All Thumper knows is that he’s lucky we didn’t hand him over and ask for forgiveness ourselves. Of course, that was before the rest of the crew threw me under the bus with him. Thumper. So, he got caught, huh? Damn. He knew the girls went there. He knows we weren’t with them. He must have told them that to put them on the wrong track. What do you know about that?”
“You mean he didn’t know?”
“He knew we could be almost anywhere but there.”
“Interesting. Anyway, we managed to make the Captain and the Russians think he was lying, and that you guys were headed for South America by appearing to come this way with you.”
“Is that a fact?” Frodo asked, turning to see where the sudden engine noise was coming from. As all of the people of both the dog team and snowmobile expeditions looked skyward they saw the unmistakable outline of a navy C-130 as it flew overhead on approach into Terra Nova Bay.
“Well done, then,” he said, disbelieving sarcasm not disguised. “Well done. You’ve come through in the pinch once again. I don’t know how we can thank you enough.”
Susan stood with her eyes rolled back under closed lids, letting out a long and agonized groan. She shook her head once before walking back to the Alpine where she sat down, resolving not to speak or in any way try to influence anyone, on any point, ever again.
The Pole of Inaccessibility Page 60
