Valena slapped it up to the top gear and gave it the gas. The great machine hurtled forward. “How fast are we going?”
“Flat out with a tail wind, nineteen miles per hour.”
“Oh, feel the acceleration!”
Again Dave laughed. It was a wonderful sound.
Valena wanted him to laugh again. “So where was that little town?”
“Which town?”
“The town where you got that ticket?”
“Oh, upstate a bit from where I grew up.”
“Where was that?”
“Another little town. Whoa! There’s your right! Hit that decelerator pedal!”
Valena hesitated a fraction too long, and the Challenger slewed around the bend. “Did I clip any more flags?” she asked. Nineteen miles per hour this high off the ice felt like flying. “You get to do this all day long? You lucky dog!”
“That’s me, ol’ lucky dog.”
Valena asked, “Don’t you get lonely?”
“Not much. I listen to the radio, and there’s the view …”
She could see the aircraft parked by the sea ice runway now. The C-17 had returned, waiting to take her back to New Zealand, en route to the States. They were almost to McMurdo. It was time to question him about Emmett’s camp or there would be no time. It’s safe now, she rationalized. I can walk from here if I have to, and it’s broad daylight from now until March. “Dave, last year …” Her words stalled in her mouth. How could she ask this of him?
Dave turned his soft brown eyes in her direction. “You got troubles down here, I hear.”
The broad, white roadway kept hurtling past them. The end of their trail was coming. Now they were crossing the fuel line, heading for the transition onto the land. She could see the Delta up ahead. Edith had finished parking her snow machine and was climbing into the cab of the Delta with Hilario. Now the communications radio squawked into life as Edith made her arrival announcement. “Mac Ops, Mac Ops…”
Dave said, “I’m sorry to ask.”
“It’s okay.”
She hit the decelerator, cutting their speed in half. She wanted him to talk to her, to say most anything. Two other men—Jim Skehan and Cal Hart—were waiting in McMurdo and wanted to talk to her immediately, and for all she knew she would be hauled into George Bellamy’s office for a good dressing down—You’ve been where? he’d ask her, And under whose authority?—and then she’d be marched straight up the hill to have her duffels loaded onto the C-17 for an early morning departure.
She took a breath to speak, only to find her lungs jammed against tensed stomach muscles. “It’s just… well, I got here and things sort of got all snarled up,” she said. “I’m trying to figure out what happened at Emmett Vanderzee’s camp last year. And you were there, right?”
Dave’s face went blank. He opened his mouth to say something, but in the next instant they both heard her name spoken in the middle of Edith’s check-in conversation. The woman at Mac Ops was saying: “Is Valena Walker with you?”
Valena and Dave both stared at the radio.
“Affirmative,” said Edith.
“I have a message for her. Can you get it to her? Over.”
“I’m sure she is listening to this call, but I will double-check, over.”
Dave grabbed the microphone and handed it to Valena. “Just press this key to talk,” he said.
Valena slowed the tractor to a stop and pressed the key. Was this the bad news she had been bracing against? “This is Valena,” she said, and managed to add, “Over.”
The radio operator said, “Message reads: ‘Meet Jim at Crary if back by eighteen hundred hours. If not, phone number will be on his door.’ Do you copy? Over.”
“I copy. Over.”
“Thanks for your help, over and out,” said Edith.
“Mac Ops over and out.”
Dave gave her one of his smiles. “You look like your pet dog just died.”
Valena hung her head in misery. “I’m afraid they’re going to send me home tomorrow.”
Dave put a hand on her shoulder.
She looked his way.
He smiled softly. Used one finger to slide a stray lock of her hair away from her eyes. He said, “Come on, things are always bound to get better.” He pointed toward the line of snow machines. “Just park it right over there and I’ll drop the goose.”
She longed to drive up through the main street of McMurdo Station in this towering tractor with this handsome man at her side, smiling his smile, but she pulled up at the end of the line near the Delta and stopped.
Dave opened the door and stepped out onto the fender.
“We’ll ride up in the Delta with the others,” he said, then hurried down the steps. The cab door swung shut behind him.
The constant daylight of Antarctica shone all around her, but Valena felt darkness closing in. Once again, she was alone.
29
VALENA RAN STRAIGHT FROM THE SPOT WHERE THE Delta left her to Crary Lab. She did not stop in her dorm room to drop her gear or take a shower. She did not stop in the hallway nearby to look at the flight manifests to see if she was scheduled to leave in the morning. She did not stop in her office in Crary or look for Jim’s number, nor did she go looking for Cal Hart. Instead, she ran down the ramp all the way to phase 3 in search of Michael.
“What? Whoa!” he said, as she burst through the door into his shop and threw her arms around his neck. “What’s going on? Hey! There, now. Hey …” As he realized that she was crying, he put his arms around her, taking in the great volume of her big red parka. “Slow down, little one. Tell me what’s happened.”
Valena could not say a thing for several moments. She was crying too hard. The sobs came with racking jolts from the very center of her soul. Finally, she began to relax against his body. “I don’t know, Michael, it’s all just so difficult…”
“What’s difficult?”
“I’m trying to do the right thing, and …”
Michael quit asking questions and waited, swaying slightly to soothe her. He said, “I have it on good authority that the reason they made the cuffs as long as they did on the sleeves of your big red parka is so you can blow your nose on them.”
Valena immediately put one to her face.
Michael went on talking stuff and nonsense to give her an anchor in the storm that was tossing her. “Really, it’s true.
I’ve been here long enough now that I’ve finished the initial training in the use of big red. Did you know that there are fourteen pockets in the damned things? Enough that you can load way too much into them. If you filled each one up to full capacity, you’d topple over onto your face.”
“You’re making this up,” said Valena, beginning to smile through her tears.
“No, I’m not. First, there are the two big pockets at the sides, where you warm your hands and keep your gloves, right? There are four patch pockets on the front, and multiply that by two, because there’s a hand warmer pocket behind each one of them. So that’s eight. Then of course there are two inside breast pockets. That’s ten. There’s a double pen and pencil pocket on your left sleeve, just below the shoulder, and it comes with its own built-in pocket protectors.” He patted it. “That’s twelve. There’s a bigger pocket in the same position on your right sleeve for your sunglasses.”
“That’s thirteen,” she sniffed. “Where’s the last one?”
“Ah, this is the extra-special one that you only get to know about when you’re really, truly an Antarctican.” He gently stood her back up onto her feet and helped her out of the parka, then turned it inside out and lifted the snow skirt that was built into it below the waist cinch. There was one more pocket there on the left. It was very large, just a panel of nylon. “See? This one’s for your water bottle.”
“Why down there? That’s so hard to get to.”
“Ah, yes, but it puts your water inside the parka where your body will keep it from freezing, and you can always unzip from bottom up to
get it out. Sort of awkward, but I wouldn’t want to have to chew my bottle open and lick ice in order to get a drink.”
Valena smiled raggedly. “You’re a pal, Michael.”
“I’m pleased to be of service.”
She looked at her feet, suddenly embarrassed. “You must think I’m nuts.”
“No, I think you’re under a lot of stress.”
“It was a nice trip out to Black Island, really.”
“Is that where you’ve been?”
She rolled her eyes. “I thought everybody in this town knew where I was. Heck, the omelet cook knew what was up.”
“You know what I like about this town? As cranky or quirky as everybody is, they all look after each other. You heard about Steve, right? Well, it’s like we’re all one big organism that’s lost an arm. People are grieving together, looking after each other. And even before that happened, I noticed that every person here, whether I know them or not, and no matter how quickly we happen to pass each other in the hallway or out between buildings, they look you in the eye, they smile, and they say hello. And there’s always someone to eat a meal with. Which reminds me, it’s past six. Would you like to join me?”
Valena sighed heavily. Jim Skehan was waiting for her, and so was Cal Hart, and for some reason all she wanted to do was go back to her dorm room and hide until it was time for her flight north. She was in over her head, she knew that now. No adventure or master’s thesis or ethical principle was worth risking her life. She had cried it out now and was ready to concede the game. Something about riding over the snow with Dave had snapped everything back into proportion for her. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. But thank you. For everything.” She threw another bone-crushing hug on him, this time without the voluminous parka. Then she grabbed her things and headed out of the room in search of the note that would give her the number for Skehan’s beeper.
She did not need the note. Skehan was standing in the middle of the hallway, waiting for her.
He crooked his finger for her to follow him and headed up the ramp. He wasn’t smiling.
30
MICHAEL SAT FOR A MOMENT ON HIS LAB STOOL, TRYing to collect himself. Valena’s young and so … beautiful is the only word, though her beauty is as unconventional as … Words escaped him. He reached up a hand and rubbed the back of his neck, trying to loosen a knot that had not been there before she tumbled into his laboratory. The skin felt hot and moist.
He turned and looked out the window toward the ice runway, taking in the view of neatly parked aircraft and distant mountains. He liked his life tidy. Valena’s visit had been as wild as … If she ran in here and knocked what I’m working on here onto the floor, scattering all the little clips and fittings, that would not have been quite as disruptive, he told himself. And yet he wanted her to come right back and do it again.
He shook himself, trying to knock loose the urges that were running up and down his body. It’s one thing when I hug her, he decided, but when she threw that one on me …
I’m almost old enough to be her father, for Christ’s sake!
Michael, he told himself, you thought you could hide out here in Antarctica, but for all the scarcity of people, it’s wound up being more intimate than any place you’ve ever been, and it’s telling you something: you’ve been alone too long!
He hopped off his stool.
Quickly, he turned off his oscilloscope and unplugged his soldering iron, then grabbed his parka from its hook on the back of the door, switched off the lights, locked the door behind him, and headed up the ramp. Maybe she’s still there, he told himself. Please, let her still be there.
He took the ramp in long, hearty strides, and at the top, turned right. Ah, good, her door is open! He closed the distance quickly and burst through into Brenda Utzon’s office. She was sitting at her desk. She smiled tentatively when she saw him. The little crow’s feet around her eyes and the first few gray hairs on her head looked dear, and very, very welcome. “Brenda,” he said. “I was wondering if you were on your way to dinner. Would you join me?”
Her smile broadened, and a bright light came into her eyes. They were lavender, he noticed. Why had he never seen that before?
A snorting sound from the farthest desk in the room alerted him to the fact that they were not alone. He looked up and only then saw that Doris was at her desk, leaning forward into her laptop computer. She was fighting back a hearty smirk. To hell with you, he thought merrily, I’ve finally made my move.
Turning his attention back to Brenda, he waited confidently for her answer.
“Sure,” she said, moving her mouse around to close down her computer for the night. “I’d be delighted.”
“MAC OPS, MAC OPS, THIS IS CAPE ROYDS,” CAME THE call.
The woman on shift at Mac Ops reached for the microphone. “Mac Ops,” she replied.
“Hey, I need you to pass a message for me,” said Nat, his voice garbled by the radio and the wind.
“Standing by for message. Over.”
A second voice, this one with a New Zealand accent, came over the air. “Hi there, Mac Ops! We’ve been having a little cocktail hour up here in Nat’s tent, and … over.”
“What’s your message?” she asked.
“Tell Bellamy I think whoever pinched the penguin eggs also stole some artifacts,” Nat said. “We need to have a council of war on this.”
The New Zealander added, “And tell him that if he’s coming out here tomorrow, he should see if that girl who worked for Emmett Vanderzee still wants to join us. Nat says she’s kind of cute. Oh … over.”
“Mac Ops copies. You boys behave yourselves. Over.”
She could hear a sea chantey being sung in the background as Nat toggled his mike one more time to say, “Royds over and out. Oh, and we’re doing fine, so don’t expect an eight p.m. check-in call.”
She said, “Mac Ops clear,” then switched off the microphone. She smiled, thinking what fun they were having out there. She knew the Kiwis had some good recipes for mixing Raro with various other beverages, but the sweetness in the mix made the drinks hit the brain even harder than it hit the liver.
She dialed George Bellamy’s phone number, knowing that he had already left his office, so when it rolled over to his assistant’s answering machine, she left the message there, not knowing that that woman had gone to her dorm room with a fever and would not find the message for two days. Then she sat back and tried to reason out how to reach “that girl who works for Emmett Vanderzee.” She felt sorry for Valena. She had really gotten hosed, coming all the way down here only to find that her professor was gone. Maybe there was something she could do to help, if only to tell her to watch out for inebriated Kiwis.
31
JAMES SKEHAN SIGNALED FOR VALENA TO FOLLOW HIM and led her up the ramp. His stride was long and he moved quickly. He opened the door to the stairwell and took the steps up toward the library two at a time. “Come on, hustle!” he told her. “We’ve got people waiting!” Once inside the library, he headed toward a group of people who sat drinking coffee on a cluster of couches arranged in a semicircle. Changing swiftly to a more congenial tone, he said, “Hey, everybody, I’ve found someone else to join our little party. Valena, I think you’ve met a few of these people. Kathy Juneau is a biologist, and Ted is a blaster. I think you’ve also met our own dear Cupcake and Cal Hart. We also have Julia Rosserman, geology; Ken Phelps, atmospheric science; Bill Williams, glaciologist.”
Valena did her best to look calm and collected. “Um, yeah. Kathy, nice to see you again. Cupcake? Cal?” she said, wondering why Cal was there. Hadn’t he been scheduled to fly north?
“Sit down, Valena,” Skehan said. “We’re all just having a little chat about what happened to Emmett. We’re rather concerned.”
Valena lowered herself onto the couch. Skehan’s trying to sound casual, but he’s wound up tighter than a watch spring, thought Valena, recalling one of her grandfather’s aphorisms. It was becoming an anachronistic aphorism,
because now most watches ran on batteries. Of course, if I’m going to be anachronistic, it might as well be over a timepiece, she decided, then realized, I’m starting to dissociate, focusing on the details instead of the way they fit together. This is not good. Something’s wrong here. Why is Cal still here? I though he was scheduled on the flight out yeasterday.
The man named Phelps sat with his shoulders held as high as Ed Sullivan’s. His skinny knees jiggled inside his baggy chinos.
Skehan said, “What went down out on the ice with the man from Fleet Ops really troubles me.”
Kathy Juneau tapped her pen against the pad of paper on her clipboard. “I’ll bet I’m not the only one who wonders if there’s a connection between what happened to Steve and what happened to that man in Emmett’s camp last year. I wish to hell we could get a flight up there and have a look ourselves.”
“That occurred to me, too,” said Cal. He sat sprawled back in his couch with both elbows over the back and one ankle crossed over the opposite knee.
Valena’s brain was running at high speed, picking up every detail and plugging it into position on a game board of infinite dimensions. Should I tell them everything I know? No, because the Airlift Wing could get in a world of trouble.
It occurred to her to wonder why they were including her in this gathering. Do they know that I was investigating this problem myself? But I’m done now. They can have it! And don’t they know that I’m being sent home on the next plane? She turned and looked at Cupcake. “What have you told them?” she whispered.
“Nothing.”
“What’s that, Valena?” Kathy inquired.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Nothing substantive or nothing at all?” asked Skehan.
She fidgeted with the zipper on her big red parka. “Nothing of much note,” she said cautiously.
Cal said, “You were on the traverse with two other people who were in Emmett’s camp. What did they tell you?”
In Cold Pursuit Page 26
