Jørgen—who’s supposed to be securing the supplies on the back of the sled but seems to be too busy being a humbug to tie even a slipknot—grumbles loudly under his breath toward Oates. But when Oates turns to face him, the sourpuss goes back to work.
As Cole makes his way back to Oates, I shoot Ducky a worried look. “If that xenophobic douchetard of a Swede so much as sneezes in Livvie’s direction—” I hiss, but he cuts me off.
“Clark and Rupert have my back,” Ducky assures me quietly. “Besides, this little lady’s round-the-clock security guard is sporting some serious guns.” One arm still grasped tight around Olivia, he flexes his pathetic bicep in a clear effort to make me laugh, and dammit, it totally works. If there’s anyone I’d trust my baby with, it’s Ducky, pathetic biceps or not. I know he’ll care for her like she’s his own child.
“Thanks,” I say genuinely. “And . . . sorry. You know. About yesterday.”
He shrugs off the apology. “I was just being a grump.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “You were. But you weren’t wrong, either.”
The cabin door opens and Zee heads out, carrying the last of the ice-climbing gear. Three hybrids follow her outside—hanging on every word she says, like she’s the mama duck and they’re her obedient little ducklings.
Ducky snuggles Olivia close as he watches them. “I still can’t believe that’s your mom.”
“That makes two of us.” I tickle Olivia’s chin as I watch Zee. I wonder if Ducky thinks we look alike at all. We have the same chin, same severe eyebrows. But I definitely got Dad’s cheekbones.
I turn back to Ducky to ask if he sees the resemblance, but he’s not looking at my mom anymore. A certain skinny redhead is occupying far more of his attention.
I laugh, poking him playfully in the side. “She’s cute,” I tell him honestly. “You should, I don’t know, ask her to tea or something.” His face turns into a beet. Like an actual beet you could chop up and serve on baby spinach with a nice vinaigrette.
“Why should I do that?”
“Like, duh. You clearly love her.”
“No, I don’t,” he counters artfully. “You love her.” And then, not one second later: “You really think she’d go for me?”
“Of course she will,” I assure him.
No way she’ll go for him. She’s five years older, at least, and pretty, and she seems, well, worldly. And Ducky may be Ducky, but he’s still . . . Ducky. But like a good PIP, I challenge him with a wiggle of my pinkie finger till he finally gives in.
“All right,” he says, sighing, as our fingers lock in the unbreakable bond of pinkie oaths. “But if you come back and find me a shattered shell of a man, it’ll be on your head.”
“I accept all the consequences,” I tell him.
Oates finally finishes up with Rupert and makes his way to me. “Enough with the long good-byes,” he says gruffly. “This is a brief foray into the wilderness, not a yearlong trek. We must head out now if we hope to make the first leg by nightfall.”
I nod and gulp. “Okay,” I say. But I can’t tear myself away from my baby. She’s still sleeping so soundly, curled up in Ducky’s arms. She doesn’t even know I’m leaving. When she wakes up and someone besides me is holding her, will she totally freak out? Will she writhe and wail when Ducky tries to feed her from a bottle instead of a boob? Or by this time tomorrow, will she completely forget I even existed?
“Now, child,” Oates says again. I dart my eyes in the direction of the two sleds. My dad, Cole, and Bernard are already climbing on board.
“One sec.” Oates nods brusquely, then heads to the sled to harness the dogs.
“Hey, Elvie?” It’s Ducky again. I think he’s going to give me one last reassurance about my daughter, but he does not. Instead, he says: “Be careful out there, all right?” And for the first time he looks deadly serious.
I smile, glad to finally have the chance to reassure him. “I’ll stay well away from Yetis, I promise,” I say.
“No, I meant . . .” He shuffles his feet. “You remember those freaky Jin’Kai heavies that nearly lopped off all your heads back on the Echidna? The, uh, Devastators?”
“The Almiri aren’t great with nomenclature,” I admit.
Ducky shifts Olivia up on his shoulder for a better grip. “I know you never actually saw them, but I did, on your phone . . .” I can’t tell if his face looks so pale because of the reflection off the snow or because of something else. Whatever it is, I don’t like it. “I know there probably isn’t anything left alive after the crash, but . . . just be careful.”
“Duck,” I say seriously. “If you want to worry about me, pray I don’t get attacked by an Emperor penguin along the way. I hear those guys can be real bastards.”
He gives me a tight smile, but I know I haven’t eased his worry much. That’s when Zee passes us on the way to the sled, zipping her thermal up to her neck. “Come on, Elvan,” she calls. “You can gab with Dino when we get back.”
“It’s Donald,” I reply, annoyed. But really, what’s the point? The lady can’t even seem to get my name right. So I swallow down my exasperation, and instead squeeze Ducky and baby Olivia up in a baby–best friend sandwich, hugging them hard. “I’ll see you in less than a week,” I tell them.
• • •
The twelve dogs make such light work of the snow that their little puppy paws barely dent the crust of the slick, icy ground as our sleds cruise along. Every once in a while we hit a squishier patch, where the snow has begun to melt in the sun and slush over, but for the most part our first few hours are smooth sailing. Or smooth mushing. Whatever. I’m still learning the lingo.
The good thing about snow travel is that there are no real paths, so you can go pretty much wherever your heart desires. The bad thing is it’s hellaciously monotonous. Bernard has taken it upon himself to become the crew’s onboard entertainment, “amusing” us all with road-trip games.
“I spy . . . ,” he shouts to us, over the whish of the sled runners across the snow, “something white!”
“For serious?” I mutter to my dad. In my sled it’s just me, Cole, and Dad. Cole’s in front, in control of our six dogs, which would probably freak me out, except that he’s the only one of us who can stand that much wind in his face, so he won the position by default. Dad tugs the zipper of his thermal suit so that it covers a fraction of a millimeter more of the skin at his neck. This suit is good for warmth, but still, with this much wind, it’s pretty bitter. And as the only purebred human on this little voyage, Dad must be absolutely freezing.
“Bernard’s just trying to keep our minds occupied,” Dad replies. I don’t really get how Dad can defend the guy. Me, if I found out my long-lost spouse had actually been living a totally separate life somewhere else and canoodling a doofus like Bernard, it would be all I could do to not punch them both in the face. But here’s Dad, being the bigger man and stuff. Still, I notice he doesn’t play along.
Someone does, though.
“Ummmmmm . . . ,” Cole calls over to the other sled, where Oates is at the helm, with Bernard and Zee curled up behind. “Is it that snow cliff?”
“Bingo!” Bernard shouts back. “You’ve gotten every one! Who’s up for State Names?”
The voyage is quite majestic, scenery-wise, but is not one for the easily bored. Looming straight ahead of us, but not appearing to grow any closer, for all the hours we travel, is an enormous cliff. It must be at least a thousand meters high, and it’s pure ice. The sun glints off it, turning the ice a sparkling blue, then silver, then gold. It’s amazing how many colors ice can be. And the structure of it is beautiful too. If I squint, I can see faces in the various crevasses and dents—some menacing, some kind. Round about lunchtime, though, it just starts to look like a giant block of Parmesan cheese. Nothing else changes. Ice, snow, ice, snow, jingle-jangle, every here and there a dog poop. I’ve had more riveting afternoons counting my own teeth.
I wish I had my phone so I could call Du
cky and find out about Olivia. Of course, that would necessitate that Ducky had a phone too. But I’d build a cell tower myself if it meant I could hear that precious girl smacking her baby lips just once today. She’s probably eating right around now. I hope that’s going well. Olivia’s never used a bottle before. Is she spitting up? Is she gassy? I hope Ducky remembers the technique I showed him, leaning Livvie forward in one hand and rubbing her back slowly with the other. Dad taught me that trick just a couple days ago, and it’s made a world of difference.
I glance over at Zee, sitting straight as an arrow in her sled, staring off at the ice cliff. Did she wonder what I was doing, minute to minute, after she left? And how long was it until she stopped?
“Elvs?”
I snap out of my trance and turn to Cole in front of me. “Yeah?” I say.
He looks at me like I’m a geometry quiz he forgot to study for. “We’re stopping for lunch. Didn’t you notice we stopped?”
“Oh,” I say. “Oh yeah.” We have indeed stopped. Oates is unhitching the dogs. “I guess the, uh, ice glare is getting to me.”
While I help Oates with the dogs, Bernard and my dad unpack our lunch rations, and Cole powers up the electric heating pod so we can melt some ice for drinking.
“Watch it,” Zee scolds him. “We want water, not steam.” Chagrined, Cole dials the temperature on the pod down by half.
“I still can’t believe you walked all the way to the camp,” Cole tells Bernard as we’re digging into lunch. We’ve all perched atop one of the sleds, chowing down. I’m trying to make my food last, since there isn’t much of it, but all I want to do is shovel it into my gourd. I cut myself a thin strip of pemmican from the tin, then squeeze a line of brown protein gel on top like frosting.
Yum.
“Sure did, friend,” Bernard replies. “Hoofed it all the way from the Iceberg Hotel on McMurdo Sound, with nothing but the shirt on my back. Well, the parka, that is.”
“And a knapsack full of food you stole from the hotel cafeteria,” Zee adds. I can tell she’s still pissed that she followed his ass here. “Not to mention the book of maps you stole from me to find the place.”
So that’s the big book he’s always losing.
“Oh yeah,” Bernard says. “And that. But mostly I lived off the land. Like one of the first humans. Just me and the ice. I carved out ice caves to sleep in. Took me almost two weeks, all told. It was crazy.”
Dad just blinks. I wonder if his brain’s short-circuiting from the idea of setting out on a voyage with such a half-assed plan. But he says nothing. Personally, I’m feeling pretty overmatched in general out here. Even on the Echidna, when all hell was breaking loose, I felt like I could get a handle on things. ’Cause even with all the crazy around me, it was my world and my stuff. You need something rewired? I’m your girl. But down here a hammer counts as high-tech. It’s very primal, and your biggest concerns aren’t some malfunctioning gravity generators or misbehaving fitness equipment, it’s Mother Nature. That bitch is a whole lot rougher, and she doesn’t come with an override switch.
Suddenly we hear a whine from Pontius, who leaves his doggy dish to climb the sled and nuzzle into Oates’s armpit.
“What is it, boy? What do you see?”
I squint off into the distance, where Pontius and now the other dogs are sniffing and barking, and my stomach tightens into a knot.
There are dozens of them, far off in the distance, little black specks.
“Jin’Kai!” I scream, jumping to my feet.
“Elvie?” my dad says, setting a hand on my arm. “Are you okay?”
“Over there!” I shout. I point in the distance, so they’ll all see them too. I blink. I’m not hallucinating. They are certainly there—the Jin’Kai, making their way toward us on foot . . .
Or rather, waddling toward us.
“Uh, Elvs?” Cole says. “Those are penguins.”
And hey, sure enough, they are. I will my heartbeat to slow, assured that we will most likely not be murdered by penguins.
Although Pontius seems less sure about that. He keeps growling and whimpering as the funny-looking birds waddle ever closer.
Curious about the only change in scenery in the past several hours, Oates, Dad, Bernard, Zee, Cole, and I all hop down from the sled to greet our visitors. They sure are silly-looking. Smaller than the Emperor penguins I’ve seen at the zoo, and with pointy, nubby beaks, white rings around their tiny eyes, and short little wings. “Adélie penguins,” Oates informs us. “Also,” he warns, although not quite quickly enough, “they bite.”
Cole sticks his injured finger in his mouth.
I have to say, the penguins are a welcome distraction. They dance around us, curious, and then run away all at once, sliding on their penguin bellies—only to turn around and head back seconds later for another look. I hear a giggle and look up to see my dad and Zee, laughing as one of the bolder penguins tries to yank a protein gel pack from my dad’s pocket. Zee manages to snatch it away from the little guy before he figures out how to rip it open. “Not for you,” she tells him sternly. “You’ll just have to find a fish somewhere, like all the rest.”
Watching them share this moment, I can almost imagine what it might have been like to grow up with two parents. Almost.
My dad laughs again as he takes back the gel pack. “I would’ve thought you’d let him have it,” he tells Zee with a grin. She cocks her head to the side, clearly not sure what he’s getting at, but Dad doesn’t seem to notice her confusion. “Are these the same type of penguins you fed when you were here all those years ago?” he asks. “What did you say they were called, Captain?” he calls over. “Adélie?”
“Adélie,” Oates confirms.
Zee is frowning now. “Oh, Harry,” she says, as though she’s afraid to disappoint him. “I’ve never been to Antarctica.”
Dad’s mouth drops open. “But . . .” He looks at me, but I’m just as bewildered as he is. Dad told me the story of my mother’s globe-trekking ways only recently, and they’re stories I know he held on to for a long time. To suddenly have them disputed by the woman who told them in the first place . . .
“How else was I supposed to explain that book of maps? Did you really want me to tell you that it was from my previous life as a half-alien hybrid resistance fighter?”
And looking at my dad, frozen into silence, I wonder if in fact this is exactly what it would be like to grow up with two parents.
I’m not sure if Cole is with it enough to understand that he’s breaking the awkwardness, but somehow he does anyway. “Where are the polar bears?” he asks loudly. And even though he’s being doof-tacular, my heart could not be more bursting with love for him, if only for giving my dad a second to recoup.
“No polar bears here,” Oates replies, giving Pontius a soothing scratch behind his ears. The husky’s clearly still on edge with all the birds around. The other dogs are up on the sleds, growling down at the penguins like elephants whimpering at mice in an old cartoon. “Wrong Pole.”
“Oh, right,” Cole replies.
“You know,” Bernard says, waddling around with the penguins like he’s one of them. I’m pretty sure that at any moment he’s going to start squawking. “Fifty years ago we would have been swimming instead of standing right now.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Huh?”
“Climate change, man,” Bernard replies.
“He’s referring to the Summers That Weren’t,” Dad explains, and I nod quickly to let him know that he does not need to fill me in (again) on one of his all-time favorite history lessons.
“What’s the Summers That Weren’t?” Cole asks.
I groan, faking my own heart attack as Dad starts in on the story (and the general state of our current educational system, and blah blah blah . . .).
Basically, about sixty years ago, the environment was in real rough shape, thanks to the pollution given off by pre-fusion-tech fossil fuels, among other things. The seasons started to fluctuate
, really strangely, and climate change in general was getting to be a real pain in the ass. Then, starting in 2031, the winter actually lasted for four years. Four straight years with nothing but cold. It snowed everywhere—from Philadelphia to Sydney—at the same time. Frozen pipes became the bane of the beach bums in Santa Monica. I think the main reason my dad likes this particular bit of history so much is that a few weeks after he was born, the temperature in Philadelphia climbed above 10 degrees Celsius for the first time in four years, and within a month there were actually blossoms on the trees. All over the world the climate began to resume its regular cycles. According to most scientists, this “mini Ice Age” was finally halted because of the Universal Energy Reform Act and the overhaul of tech thanks to breakthroughs in fusion power, but Dad likes to refer to himself as the “Sun Baby.”
“Wait,” Cole says, slowly taking in all this new information. “So we’re, like, walking on ice right now? Like, just ice, and then water? Is that safe?”
The guy has a point. Suddenly I’m more panicked than Pontius with the penguins.
“It’s at least two meters thick,” Zee replies dismissively, climbing back onto the sled, “and hard as shale rock. Not to mention”—she reaches for one of the huskies, who growls at her—“that we don’t have much of a choice. So let’s get going, shall we?”
I roll my eyes as I gather my things. “I suppose we shall,” I mutter before hoisting myself up onto the sled. “You okay, Dad?” I ask, leaning over the seat back to resecure the supplies. Tuckered out from his history lecture, he’s standing beside our sled quietly, watching my mom and Bernard across the ice.
“Just thinking,” Dad says with a quick, not-so-convincing smile.
“Thinking how ludicrous it would be to leave for a thirteen-day walking tour of the frozen tundra without a plan?” I say with a smile.
Dad smiles back, slowly wrenching his gaze from the other sled. “Maybe I’ve been putting too much stock in plans,” he tells me.
Which, coming from the King of Planning, is perhaps the most disheartening thing I’ve ever heard.
A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe) Page 12
