by Karen Dionne
“You’re lucky,” the pilot remarked as he angled for another pass. “Last time I brought someone up, the winds were so bad, it took four tries to land.”
Ben acknowledged his good fortune by gripping the armrests and clamping his mouth shut. After three days at sea, his equilibrium couldn’t take much more abuse. As a youth, he’d navigated Lake Superior in all kinds of weather, but nothing the meanest of the Big Five had thrown at him had prepared him for the rigors of the Southern Ocean. When the Polar Sea wasn’t battling waves the size of small mountains, she was dodging icebergs almost as large. Punching through pack ice up to twenty feet thick required a terrifying combination of inertia and gravity, the ship’s bow pointing impossibly skyward as they rode right up onto the ice until her weight tipped the balance and they came crashing down. While the Chilean cooks served the Norwegian crew a volatile mix of hot salsa and lutefisk, Ben fed the fishes.
When the helicopter settled inside a nest of orange flags, he pulled on his mitts and climbed out, steadying himself against the door frame while he waited to see if his stomach contents were going to accompany him. In every direction, the iceberg spread out as flat and as featureless as a wheat field in winter, giving the winds plenty of room to build into the kind of breath-sucking gusts he hadn’t experienced since he was a child. Ice pellets stung his cheeks, making his eyes water. He shielded his face. Off to his right, six silver biodomes clustered behind a Quonset bristling with solar panels and a satellite dish. Six tiny silver huts. The sudden comprehension of the puniness of the earthly half of their operation and their complete and utter isolation made his knees weak. It was one thing to tout the glories of their water-making scheme at a press conference in Los Angeles; another to experience the reality firsthand. Ben couldn’t decide if the men who had volunteered to pioneer their process were incredibly brave, or astonishingly foolish.
His my-God-what-have-I-done, I-must-be-out-of-my-freaking-mind moment ended when the door to the largest hut opened and Eugene came running toward him, bare-headed, and minus an overcoat even though the temperature couldn’t have been above zero.
“You made it!” he boomed and scooped Ben up in an enormous man-hug. “It’s great to see you here, buddy!” He slapped Ben on the back and slipped an arm around his shoulders to march him toward the Quonset.
After a ten-hour red-eye to Punta Arenas, Chile, three days in a city where few people spoke English and the idea of public order seemed to be a soldier with an automatic on every corner, topped off by a voyage on the icebreaker from hell, the absolute ordinariness of a roomful of metal office furniture and computers made Ben blink. He shook it off and exchanged greetings with the crew: Philip Patecki, thermal engineer; Susan Hunter, systems engineer, and of course Toshi and Quentin. The latter Ben knew quite well, the others only peripherally, but as he looked around the crowded room he conceded he was no doubt going to get to know them all very well before long. No wonder Eugene and Quentin were at each other’s throats.
Quentin crossed the room to shake Ben’s hand, his knobby skull tinged Frankenstein green from the overhead fluorescents. “Good to see you again, Ben. How was the trip?”
How was the trip? “Let’s just say it was an experience.” Eugene laughed and reached for Ben’s coat. “Let me take that for you, buddy. These wimps keep it so hot in here, you must be sweating like a pig.”
Ben handed it over, then shivered and turned up his shirt collar. Quentin caught Ben’s eye. He pointed to himself, and then to the others. The rest were wearing jackets, and Susan had on earmuffs and a scarf. Ben noted the dark circles under Eugene’s armpits, the face shiny with sweat, and shook his head. Eugene was definitely an original, though Ben supposed that on the iceberg, it could be argued that eccentricity was practically a job requirement.
He pulled out the chair next to Toshi and sat down. Tomishi “Toshi” Kenjo was Soldyne’s MIT wunderkind, the twenty-two-year-old who’d written the software program that controlled the satellites’ direction and output—a program that had worked flawlessly every time they’d tested it in L.A. With his slender build, straight black bangs, oversized glasses, and anime baseball cap, Toshi looked every bit of sixteen.
“How’s it going?” Ben asked.
“Great,” Toshi answered. “In fact, I think I found the problem. You see this line of code here?” He pointed to the screen, then rolled his chair out of the way so Ben could have a look. “That ampersand should have been a semi-colon.”
“Good man!” Eugene muscled his way in and clapped Toshi on the shoulder. “I knew if you stuck with it long enough, you’d figure it out.” He turned to Ben. “I’ve been telling this kid for weeks his code’s wanky, but would he believe me?” He jabbed Toshi with his finger. “Maybe now you’ll listen to your old Uncle Eugene, hey? As for this . . .” He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped Toshi’s monitor. “If you’d just keep your workstation clean, maybe you wouldn’t have so many problems. You got enough cobwebs here to knit a sweater.”
“There aren’t any—” Toshi began, but Quentin shook his head.
“Why don’t you lend Toshi your handkerchief,” he said to Eugene. “That way he can keep those cobwebs under control.” He picked up a snowmobile helmet from a pile near the door and tossed it to Ben. “Up for a ride? Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour.” Under his breath he added, “We need to talk.”
The snowmobiles were Arctic Cat Thundercats, with double wishbone front suspensions, hydraulic disc brakes, a low center of gravity, and 999 cubic centimeters of pure, unadulterated horsepower. A good trail machine would have served their transportation purposes just as well, but Ben had always subscribed to the adage that happy workers were productive ones, and now as he raced along next to Quentin, he reaped the rewards of his own philosophy. With a heated helmet, hand and thumb warmers, a borrowed snowmobile suit, and massive Sorel boots, he couldn’t have been more comfortable as he sped across the ice, watching the speedometer attain speeds he’d never dared on Michigan’s trails.
When Quentin came to a stop, Ben pulled up alongside him and lifted his visor. “Man, that was great!”
“You handle that machine like a pro.”
“I haven’t ridden in years.”
“We have races on Sundays. You should enter.”
“Maybe I will.” Ben pulled off his helmet to admire the view. The 360-degree panorama was far and away the most dramatic he had ever seen. Thick, gunmetal clouds formed a low ceiling overhead while out over the ocean, the sun had punched a single hole and was shining through like a spotlight, turning the swells a luminous aquamarine. This far inland the winds were diminished, the air relatively balmy. Ben propped up his feet and leaned back against the seat. “Okay. I assume you brought me out here to talk about Eugene. Spill.”
Quentin nodded. “Eugene’s sick.”
Ben cocked an eyebrow. He had anticipated a laundry list of complaints, not this. “What do you mean he’s sick? He looked fine to me.”
“I mean he’s sick in the head. Stressed out. Out of it. You saw his performance back there.”
“You mean all that yukking and backslapping? That’s just Eugene being Eugene.”
“No, it’s not. I’ve known Eugene as long as you have, and trust me, that happy act was all show. He’s lost it. He can’t follow the simplest instructions, and half the time his orders are contradictory. I wouldn’t be surprised if he planted the bug in Toshi’s program himself.”
“That’s crazy. Why would he do that?”
“Because he’s sick. Because he’s not thinking straight. He’s also seeing things. You know as well as I do there weren’t any cobwebs on Toshi’s monitor. Come on. Spiders? In Antarctica? Please.”
“Then what about the rats? Don’t tell me he’s imagining them, too.”
“Oh no, the rats are real, all right, but they’re not the problem Eugene’s led you to believe. Tell me, how many have you seen since you’ve been here?”
“I haven’t seen any.”
�
�Exactly. I’ve seen a couple, is all, and Phil’s seen one or two. Eugene’s the only one who claims to have seen rats by the dozen. Listen, it’s tough down here; I won’t pretend otherwise, and the pressure we’re getting from Gillette is unbelievable. It’s obvious Eugene’s cracked because of the stress. He’s even drinking the water.”
“What? No one’s supposed to melt ice for drinking anymore until I’ve had a chance to test it. Eugene knows that. Why would he do that?”
Quentin shrugged. “Because I told him not to. Listen, I know he’s your friend, but if you want to turn this berg into water, you have to get rid of him.”
Ben had a sudden image of Quentin pushing Eugene off a cliff. “How am I supposed to get rid of my chief engineer? Go back and give him a pink slip?”
“His wife just had a baby. He misses her, and she wants him to come home. Tell him you’ll take over so he can go look after the wife and kid.”
“You think he’ll buy it?”
“Trust me. Eugene’s so out of it, he’ll believe anything.”
Chapter 17
Back at the operations hut, Ben parked his machine alongside Quentin’s and killed the engine. Still following Quentin’s lead, he pulled off his helmet and hung it over the handlebars, but that was as far as his subordinate role went. He was top dog on the ice; he was the one charged with getting water production up and running, and he wasn’t about to accept Quentin’s diagnosis and send Eugene packing without making his own assessment first. During the return trip, he’d had plenty of time to consider the information Quentin had handed him, and given what he had thus far, he could see it playing out equally both ways. Either Quentin was so set against their chief engineer he was willing to sabotage the entire operation in order to get rid of him (in which case the tables could well end up being turned), or their project was dead in the water as long as Eugene remained on the berg. As for which scenario was the correct one, time and Ben’s own observations would tell. No way was he going to make such a critical decision based on secondhand information. Truth was, he could ill afford to lose either man.
Quentin pointed. “Middle dome is the mess hall. Walk over with me and we’ll grab a bite. Our cook makes a mean rat stew. Joking,” he added as Ben’s head whipped around. “We’re not having stew today. It’s meat loaf.” He smiled. “Beef, of course. One hundred percent Argentinean.”
Ben returned the grin. Quentin had one stellar smile. Too bad the rest of his appearance didn’t measure up. “I’ll be along in a bit. I want to get the testing started first. The cultures are going to take time to grow.”
“Okay. Join me whenever you’re ready. I had Phil stash your stuff in the op center. If you need anything else, you can raise me on the intercom.”
“Will do.” As Quentin headed for the mess hall, Ben knelt down and picked up a fist-sized chunk of ice. He planned to run several dozen samples from both the melt zone and from random places, but first he wanted to get a feel for the process, and for that, any old piece of ice would do.
He opened the door to the Quonset, stomped his feet in the vestibule, and opened the second door. Toshi and Eugene looked up as he entered. The other chairs were empty; Patecki and Hunter presumably gone to lunch.
Ben hefted his sample. “Got my first victim. Any suggestions on where should I set up?”
“How much space do you need?” Toshi asked.
“Not much. Just enough for an incubator, a hot plate, and a little elbow room.”
Eugene drained the bottle of water he’d been drinking, stuck a marker in the novel he’d been reading, and walked over to a utility table, where a swipe of his arm condensed several neat stacks of papers into one. He picked up Ben’s suitcase and slung it onto the table.
Ben pursed his lips. If Eugene was as sick as Quentin claimed, it certainly wasn’t physical. Ben had been lugging the case through airports for the better part of a week and could barely lift it off the luggage carousel. He clicked open the latches and took out the incubator.
Eugene leaned over his shoulder. “How does this thing work?”
“I’m doing a simplified version of the EPA’s test for total coliform bacteria,” Ben said as he traced the various electrical cords across the floor and plugged the incubator into an empty wall outlet. One advantage of working for a solar energy company, there was never any shortage of power. “Coliform is the name of a group of bacteria found throughout the environment. The full EPA test calls for some fairly sophisticated lab techniques, but we can get away with using the Dummies version because we don’t need to know what kind of coliform might be present, or even the degree of concentration; we only need to know if they’re there. This test checks specifically for fecal coliform, which are found exactly where it sounds: in the digestive tracts of warm-blooded animals. They aren’t dangerous to work with, but their presence in a water sample is considered a reliable indicator of more serious bacteria.”
“Such as?” Toshi asked.
“E. coli and a bunch of unpronounceables that are responsible for some of the world’s nastier waterborne diseases. You probably don’t remember the cryptosporidium outbreak in Milwaukee back in the nineties—heck, you probably weren’t even born then—but I do, because I was living in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula at the time. It was pretty bad. Half the city’s population—four hundred thousand people—got sick, and a hundred died from that particular parasitic infection, all because the city’s system failed to filter out animal waste.”
“Wow.”
“No kidding. Most people think contaminated water is a Third World problem. They have no idea that fifty million Americans are drinking from substandard systems.”
“What do we do if our water turns out to be contaminated? Pack everything up and go home?”
“No way. If the tests come up positive, we’ll notify Gillette, and he’ll pass the word on to L.A.’s water department. There are any number of disinfection methods that can treat our water before it’s absorbed into the city’s system: liquid chlorine, gas chlorination, iodine—even simple filtration goes a long way toward getting rid of the potential for disease. Believe me, it will take more than a handful of renegade rats to shut us down.”
Assuming they ever got started in the first place. Ben dropped his sample in a sterile glass dish and set the dish on the hot plate to melt. While he waited, he wrote the date, the time, and the source of the sample on two test tubes. Once a sufficient quantity of water had melted, he filled both tubes and placed them in the incubator. “And now we wait.”
“For how long?” Toshi asked.
“Forty-eight hours. Meanwhile, I’m counting on you to get that uplink fixed. We don’t need the test results in order to move forward.”
“With pleasure. You have no idea how frustrating this has been. I get everything working, and the system fails. I fix it, and it fails again. I don’t know—I’m starting to think this whole thing is jinxed. This is the buggiest program I’ve ever worked with, and that’s saying something, considering I’m the guy who wrote it.”
“So how does this thing work?” Eugene asked.
“How does what work?” Ben said.
Eugene pointed to Ben’s equipment. “Your water tests. What’s the procedure?”
He can’t understand the simplest instructions. Ben frowned. Was Eugene’s repetition evidence of confusion, or merely a request for more information? He decided to presume the latter. “It’s pretty simple, really. If the sample’s contaminated, the purple liquid in these tubes turns yellow.”
Toshi laughed. “This really is the Dummies version.”
Ben smiled. In fact, he’d ordered the kits off the Internet.
“I wasn’t asking how long it’s going to take,” Eugene said. “I want to know how it works.”
“I just told you,” Ben said. “There really isn’t any simpler way to explain it.”
“Damn it, Ben.” Eugene smacked his fist on the table. The box of test tubes rattled. “Don’t be so obtuse. Just
tell me—” He blinked and rubbed his neck. A line of sweat broke out on his forehead as his cheeks bloomed red.
