Whiteout

by Sage Walker

“We’ll be finding phraseology for Tanaka’s legal staff to sell in Lisbon. That’s the job, basically.”

  “What phraseology, Paul?” Signy asked.

  “Tanaka would like to see limits set on the krill harvest. Tanaka didn’t come up with the proposal; a bunch of scientist types did. Tanaka likes the concept and so does a majority of the voting members of the Treaty Commission. All we have to do is keep a favorable climate for the proposal.”

  “What do we have to do?” Signy asked. If the job was doable, if Pilar wasn’t too ticked off, maybe Edges was still in business.

  “We are to convince the Antarctic Treaty Commission’s members to go for yearly, variable take-out quotas on krill, tonnages based on some theories set up by marine biologists,” Paul said. “The fishing fleets are worried about depleting the take. There’s considerable support for limits, at least in the countries that aren’t starving. We’ll have to make sure the members don’t get distracted by other proposals if they come up, and that the majority remains a majority, at least until the votes are in.”

  Janine could help handle the biology; Janine was trained as an environmental engineer. She’d know if the figures on the biomass made sense. Signy wondered if Janine was home yet; if she’d gone to soothe Pilar. Janine could settle Pilar down if anyone could.

  “Paul, hold, would you? I want to check something.” Signy vanished the room and called up a scan of the Seattle house. Janine wasn’t in it and Pilar hadn’t picked up her message.

  “Okay,” Signy said. “I’m back.”

  Paul looked slightly miffed at Signy’s interruption. “There are fifty-six delegates from fifty-six separate nations, each of them with different agendas, political needs, and personal foibles. Just steer an international commission the way we want it to go. Simple, wouldn’t you think?”

  “What about the Russians?” Signy asked.

  “At the moment, they’re for the plan,” Paul said. “The Russians have been in the Antarctic business from the beginning. They still think they found the place first, actually.”

  “Simple, right,” Signy said. “If we’re lucky, and some lobby or the other doesn’t get a flap going about something else. Seems like Tanaka has handed us something that sounds a little too easy, whoever Tanaka is. I never heard of them. And I thought the krill situation had been settled years ago.”

  “Think of krill as kilotons of edible, self-replicating protein,” Paul said. “Think of it as an endangered food source, one that is diminishing. Tanaka has some concerns about the amount that’s coming out of the water. They are willing to give up part of their share to keep the harvest in limits they think are safe. Enough for the whales, enough for profit, but not too much for safety. I like caution, Signy.”

  Cautious Paul Maury and his legalese, his deliberate sense of time. Sometimes Signy thought Paul was determined to dot every i and cross every t on Earth.

  “It’s risky work,” Paul said. “We’ve messed with lots of things, but we’ve never played with what’s left of the world’s food supply.”

  “Terms?” Signy asked.

  “Oh, very good terms,” Paul said. “Tanaka has diversified interests—circuits, manufacturing, shipping, and so on. He’s agreed to pay expenses, of course, plus ten percent of the income from one year’s harvest at the new limits; if we can get the new limits set for him. And residuals, but that’s a complicated—”

  Paul would run Tanaka’s profit-and-loss statements for the last decade if she didn’t stop him. “He?” Signy asked.

  “One man, yes. Who seems to want to start a dynasty. Yoshiro Tanaka, that’s his name,” Paul said. “Signy, I don’t know what we’re getting into here; not precisely. The corporate structure is convoluted; there are blocks of data that have some unusual features. It might be an okay job but I’ll need some time to fit these people together.”

  “They’re listed on real stock exchanges, aren’t they?” Signy asked.

  “Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. Tanaka stock has been doing quite well over many years; solid, slow growth. The company is quite legitimate in that regard. Certainly.”

  “Take some earnest money and we’ll sort them out later,” Signy said. “We can always bail out if we don’t like what we find.” Take it. Tell them we’ll do it, Paul, whatever it is they want done. “We’re in a bind, Paul. We can’t get too picky.”

  His image tented its fingers under its chin and stared at her. “I didn’t know you were this upset.”

  “I’m upset. The prospect of starvation upsets me. I admit it,” Signy said.

  “All right, Signy. I’ll sign us on.”

  Paul vanished his construct of the New Hampshire room, and Signy, in real time, stared at the Taos studio, where the fire had just about gone out.

  Signy thought about letting the fire die, about closing the heat-sucking flue, leaving the heating to the furnace and the solar arrays. But credits were coming in. Edges had a job.

  She built up the fire, a nice cheery fire for Jared when he came back down the mountain.

  THREE

  Signy heard Jared coming down the hall, a pad of snowboots on the hardwood floor. He brought smells of snow and pine with him. A chill of clean air brushed against the back of Signy’s neck, cold air that clung to Jared’s clothes and brought some of the winter day inside.

  “We have a job,” Signy said.

  “Good.” Jared braced his gloved hands on the desk, trapping Signy where she sat working, and leaned down to kiss her. His cold lips brushed her cheek.

  “Hey!” She ducked away from him. “How was the snow?”

  “Superb.” Shrugging out of his parka.

  “There’s a pot of posolé in the slow cooker,” Signy said.

  Jared went off toward the kitchen.

  On Signy’s monitor, a list of Antarctic species scrolled by. Euphasia superba, that was krill, the king bug, the basis of all the wealth. There were more kinds of penguins than Signy had ever thought about. Emperors, kings, macaronis.

  “Macaronis?” Jared asked. He carried a bowl of posolé to his desk and sat down, his hands loaded with the bowl, a spoon, and a couple of rolled flour tortillas.

  “Penguins,” Signy said. She transferred the display to his monitor and windowed up Seattle. Still no Janine, and no Pilar. “We have a job.”

  “Is that why you look so worried?”

  “I’ve pissed Pilar off,” Signy said. “Seriously.”

  “How?” Jared asked.

  “I told her she was a spendthrift. I told her she’d put our asses in a bind.”

  Jared smiled. Ah, so beautiful, Jared’s face darkened with a day of snow and sun, a big man comfortable in his strength.

  “Signy, my sweet, you’ll never learn. You can’t just blurt out truth like that and not hurt people’s feelings,” Jared said.

  “Yeah. I threw a fit, I guess. Now Pilar’s disappeared, and Janine isn’t around.”

  Paul’s crab sigil appeared on Signy’s monitor.

  [Paul] Pilar’s at a cafe in the Pike Street Market. Janine’s with her.

  “Oh, great,” Signy said. “Oh, damn it! Jared, I’ll have to figure out what to say to her when she gets home. I mean, I’m sorry I blew up, but you’re right, I was stating a rather obvious fact or two.”

  “You’ll think of something,” Jared said. “Now, what’s this about a job?”

  [Paul] Antarctic Treaty Commission work. Signy, we’re going to need some new bits from there. Everything in the archives comes from the days before the tourist ban. Old. Dull.

  “So I’m going to Antarctica?” Signy asked.

  [Paul] No. Jared’s going to Antarctica. Signy, you’ll go to Houston.

  “Antarctica?” Jared looked absolutely delighted at the idea.

  “Houston?” Signy asked. “Paul, Houston is not my favorite place.”

  [Paul] Data sets, my dear.

  A waft of steam from Jared’s posolé drifted toward Signy’s nose, the scent of simmered fat kernels of lime-wa
shed corn, pork, green chiles, and oregano.

  “Okay. I’ll go. You can tell Pilar a trip to Houston is my penance for losing my temper.”

  [Paul] Silly.

  Signy typed a message back to him.

  [Signy] Out to lunch. Later.

  Jared was already immersed in some project; addresses marched down his monitor screen. Signy went out to the kitchen and got her posolé. Munching a tortilla, she dumped the stale coffee and noodled around with a few dirty dishes.

  Happy. Because Jared was home, because the Sangre de Cristos were pale red in the sunset light and there they were, snow-clad serene peaks in full view from the big window in the kitchen.

  Jared’s voice came from the studio, the timbre of it, just far enough away that Signy couldn’t pick out individual words. Jared was talking to somebody but he wasn’t sending the conversation to the kitchen speakers.

  We’ll be fine, Signy thought. Paul is an old maid. He’ll nose around until he gets this Tanaka company dissected and laid out for inspection. Whatever he finds, we’ll deal with it.

  Signy heated a tortilla, spread sinful real butter on it, and sat down at the table, mesmerized by the look of the icy blue shadows marching east, by the colors fading away from the mountains.

  * * *

  [Signy] Apologies. Contrition. I love you.

  The message glowed on Pilar’s monitor in the Seattle house. Pilar, with Janine looking over her shoulder, read it and shrugged.

  “I think she means it,” Janine said.

  Pilar tapped her keyboard and Signy’s words disappeared.

  “She shouldn’t apologize. I was careless,” Pilar said.

  That’s what a person said, wasn’t it? Admit it and go on. Yeah, Pilar thought, I was careless. But would anyone have said it if we’d made megabucks from my tour?

  Outside the bay window, fog hid the January world. Pilar shivered, missing, just for a moment, the Southwest, dry air, summer heat.

  “Are you going to talk to her?” Janine asked.

  Janine’s blue eyes got so wide when she worried. She looked like one of those kewpie dolls that sometimes showed up in antique stores, except kewpie dolls had dimples and Janine didn’t. A somewhat bedraggled kewpie doll, her blond hair dark with mist, her cheeks red from the wet breeze outside.

  “Sure. In a minute.” Pilar tapped idly at her keyboard, scrolling through some of the backlog of messages that had piled up for the past two weeks. A price for coming home.

  “I’ll make tea,” Janine said.

  Pilar read through chatter from friends, jumped past some routine stuff that shouldn’t have gotten through the barriers she left in her mail. Maybe Paul could reset the guards.

  A note from her agent, reporting some royalties on an old, make that ancient, song. That little piece went back ten whole years.

  And then Paul and Signy, earlier today, talking about a job. Pilar skimmed through the conversation, keyed up the full virtual from Paul’s studio when it began to get interesting.

  Pilar heard the clunk of a mug on the desk near her hand.

  “Janine, we’ve got work,” Pilar said.

  “Hoo!” Janine said. “That was fast.”

  Ignoring the noises Janine made settling at her own console, rustles and a couple of indrawn breaths, Pilar let her fingers play through controls. A phrase from a song she had started before the tour floated to her earphones. Not bad.

  Let Signy wait, Pilar was thinking, but she found she’d pulled up the view from the kitchen cameras in Taos. The twilight softened the shapes of the massive vigas, the peeled logs that supported the ceiling, the primitive textures of adobe walls, old oiled wood.

  Watching Signy watch the dark square of glass where the mountains had just faded into night. Broad shoulders, narrow hips, Signy always looked so strong. Signy blended into the colors around her, a woman camouflaged in a taupe skinthin, her hair the color of old oak. She was twisting a strand of it, just sitting there.

  I love you. That’s what Signy had left flashing on the screen.

  Don’t challenge me that way, Pilar thought. I—need—you, Janine and Paul and Jared, and you too, Signy, because you give me the space to play. Because I can do my stuff around you guys and you piss me off less than anybody else I ever knew. Love? I’m not sure I know what that means.

  Pilar windowed Signy away and looked in at the Taos studio. Jared paced around the stage, talking to a travel agent.

  Pilar sighed and sent her voice to the kitchen mike in Taos.

  “I hear we’re solvent,” Pilar said.

  Signy jumped and twisted around to blink up at the speaker over the sink.

  “Pilar, I’m sorry—”

  “Forget it.” Pilar said. “It’s okay, Signy.”

  That’s done, Pilar thought. She exited Taos, pulled off her headset, and stretched out her muscles.

  * * *

  That’s a beginning, Signy thought. Pilar still has some snit to get through, and I need to figure out better safeguards for her, I guess, so she can’t hurt us, or hurt herself. Paul can fix up a system that gives Pilar access to funds but doesn’t break us. We should have done it years ago. But at least Pilar’s not off somewhere pouting. It’s a beginning.

  Signy grabbed a sweater from a peg in the hallway and pulled it over her skinthin. The night was clear and the nights got really cold.

  “I got a flight south,” Jared said as Signy walked into the studio. “You have to have a job to go down there. No tourists. Tanaka could have fudged that, but it turns out there’s an old buddy of mine working as a ship’s doc for Tanaka. Saigo Kihara, the guy from the river trip. I’ll do a locum tenens for him while I’m there.”

  “Hey! Fast work,” Signy said.

  “Yes. I’m leaving at five A.M.”

  “In the morning? Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” Jared said. “Paul says he’s already talked to the Gulf Coast people in Houston. You get the lunch slot in two days. All you need to do is schedule your flights.”

  “Joy.”

  “Joy. I’ll go pack.”

  Signy woke her screens and scheduled a flight to Houston.

  That done, she looked in at New Hampshire. Paul was barriered behind his crab sigil, his “don’t bother me” sign.

  In Seattle, Pilar and Janine tossed word lists back and forth between their monitors. They were doing a sort of free-association contest, words that might or might not bring up emotional responses from people who worked at Gulf Coast Intersystems, a multinational group that conveniently happened to work in Houston, Texas, U.S.A. Pilar and Janine were on a roll, intent, laughing now and then, absorbed in what they were doing. Signy didn’t interrupt them. And besides, Jared was leaving in a few short hours.

  Time, however, could be very subjective. Very subjective. It’s bedtime, Signy decided.

  * * *

  Signy lay bathed in Jared’s heat, stretched out next to him. She felt as relaxed as an overfed housecat. She felt a little too warm, but she didn’t want to move away from him.

  “Just don’t freeze anything important when you’re down there chasing penguins,” Signy said.

  “I’ll pick up a fur jockstrap first chance I get,” Jared said.

  “You do that.” She was almost asleep. Jared wiggled up against the headboard, disturbing Signy’s perfectly comfortable position, and settled a pillow behind his neck.

  “I think I’d better tell you something,” he said.

  “Now what?” Signy moved one leg to the colder part of the bed. The chill felt okay.

  “I know you don’t like to be surprised when my long-lost loves call in.”

  “I certainly don’t.” She really didn’t. As open as this relationship was, Signy never quite knew what to say—Oh, hello, nice to meet you; Jared is good in bed, isn’t he?

  “There’s a girl I met in Canada. Her name is Susan. Susanna.”

  “I’ll bet she hates her name.”

  “I don’t know if sh
e likes it or not. I never asked her.”

  “Uh-huh. What about this Susanna?” Signy asked.

  “It seems she’s living with my brother these days.”

  Well. Indeed. Signy wished she didn’t feel hurt. She felt hurt. “Does Mark know about your, uh, involvement with her?”

  “Sure. Anyway, Susan sent a video. A sort of Christmas letter, I guess. You might want to look at it. Since she’s sort of family, and all that.”

  The hell she wanted to look at one more of Jared’s prior lovers. Jared was free, but Signy would rather not know about it. She had affairs of her own, when she chose. It was just that she didn’t choose, or hadn’t for the past couple of years.

  But she might, someday. She just might. “Did you introduce her to your brother?”

  “I certainly did. I thought they would get along,” Jared said.

  “You just couldn’t desert her, I guess.”

  “Maybe. Something like that.”

  Jared wasn’t coming across as if this Susanna had been just a casual fling. Well, Jared had had a life before Signy met him, and that’s just how things were.

  Jared shifted in bed so he was looking directly at Signy’s face, and he looked like he didn’t want her to be angry. Okay. She would forgive him, any minute now.

  “Do you have anything else to tell me before you leave?” Signy asked.

  He frowned as if he were reviewing the past month. “I don’t think so.”

  Damn him. “Tell me you’ll miss me.”

  “I’ll miss you.” He looked so worried. He pulled her close and his lips were soft against her throat, and she wasn’t that sleepy after all.

  “Prove it,” Signy said.

  He did. Jared knew her so well, down to the last possible synapse of her multiorgasmic self.

  Wonderful.

  * * *

  Jared left quietly, so quietly that Signy roused a little when she heard the muffled thump of the closing hallway door.

  High above her, one of the vigas creaked in the predawn cold.

  Signy was left in the solitude of kisses not taken, goodbyes missed, in a room so dark, the cold outside so terrible, the house so empty. All alone, everyone gone.

  Alone, with Edges dissolving away from her. Signy knew Edges was lost, knew with the truthful clarity that comes before waking when reason displaces truth with facts.