In Cold Pursuit

by Sarah Andrews

  “Good morning to you,” he said. “What can I get for you today?”

  “I want three fresh eggs with tomatoes, black olives, mushrooms, green peppers, and jack cheese,” she said.

  “It’s yours,” he said, cracking the eggs onto the griddle. He chopped the yolks expertly with the edge of his spatula and started adding the toppings.

  “I wonder if I could ask you kind of a personal question,” she said.

  “Shoot.”

  “The other day, how did you know I needed privacy?”

  The omelet man continued to stir and fold the eggs, indicating not a flicker of change in the tenor of the conversation. “I’m in the room next to your friend Matt in the dorms,” he replied. “There was a discussion out in the TV lounge.” He turned the eggs, flicking a runaway bit of cheese onto the heap. “It had been quite a day for news, as you’ll recall.”

  “I’m not used to this place yet. I don’t know how people do business.”

  He scooped the eggs onto his spatula and slid them onto the plate. “There’s good folks down here, by and large,” he commented. “Everybody’s got their reason for being here and not somewhere else, but once they get here, they usually find a place here. Those that don’t, you seldom see. They hide.”

  They hide, thought Valena. “Thanks for the omelet,” she said. Completing the circuit of the service area, she poured two glasses of water and one of orange juice, grabbed a muffin, and headed toward a table under the windows.

  She was four forkfuls of egg into her meal when a woman with gray hair and gentle blue eyes appeared with a tray at the opposite side of the table. “May I join you?” she inquired.

  “Certainly.”

  “You’re Valena Walker, am I right?” She settled into a chair and arranged her breakfast in front of her. She moved methodically, removing each item from the tray and laying it out as Emily Post might have done.

  “Yes,” she said, “Emmett Vanderzee’s student.” She tried to sound cheery as she added, “Why, am I wearing a sign on my back?”

  “No, it’s on your big red parka,” said the woman. “It’s my job to know who all the grantees are.” She extended a hand. “And how rude of me to not introduce myself. I’m Nancy Saylor. I’m in charge of Berg Field Center.”

  Valena shook her hand. “Well, what luck, then. I need to come see you this morning to check out some equipment.”

  Nancy set about consuming a large bowl of the homemade granola topped with yogurt, canned peaches, and milk. “No need to. When George told me to reinventory the gear Emmett had checked out, I sent someone to fetch it but simply put it back into Emmett’s cage. Like you, I am hopeful that he shall return this year.”

  “His cage?”

  Nancy smiled. “It’s a system we have so that people can come and go at whatever hour to work with their field gear. In the back of BFC, we have a series of screened alcoves with combination locks on them, and you can get in there and get your gear anytime you want. That way I don’t have to lock the whole place up or be there twenty-four hours a day.”

  “I see.”

  “Before he came south this year, Emmett filled out a request for the equipment. That way we know we have enough, and if we don’t, we can order more.” She waved her spoon concisely in the air to describe things shuttling back and forth. “At any rate, when he arrived this year I already had his order waiting for him in his cage. He took his part of the kit when he went to the high camp last week and left it in his office. They weren’t planning on spending the night”—she gave Valena a look that said little do they understand this place—”but of course they had all the equipment they might need, including sleep kits, tents, stove, food, and a Gamow bag.”

  “A Gamow bag.”

  “Of course, I don’t handle that gear,” she said. “The Gamow is issued through Science Support Center, I believe, but for some reason, it was returned to me last year instead of going directly to them.”

  “You mean the one that was airdropped?” Valena asked. “But I thought—” she managed to stop herself before saying, they only found that this year.

  “I mean the one Emmett had with him when he first went up to the high camp last year.” She paused from her eating to study Valena’s face. “You don’t think that Emmett would go to high elevation without proper precautions, do you?”

  “I… to tell you the truth, I don’t know Emmett all that well.” She paused, then stated, for what felt like the fiftieth time, “I was brought onto the project just a short while ago.”

  Nancy went back to her granola. “Of course. Yes, I heard about that. His other fellows decided to come down with a different event this year.” She shook her head. “Irritating fellows. You’re much more pleasant. What were their names?”

  “Schwartz and Lindemann.”

  “Ah, yes; Schwartz and Lindemann. I always thought of them as Rosencranz and Guildenstern, only with attitude.”

  “And Emmett is Prince Hamlet?”

  “Very good. Yes, the one with the conscience.” Nancy shook her head again. “He gets himself so wound up. But that shouldn’t be your problem. You are here to do research and get your degree.”

  “I’m here to get my degree, yes, but also do something worth doing and to see Antarctica.”

  “We all like to feel that we are making a contribution down here. That’s why we’re all here, you know. To support science. It takes this whole support staff”—she lifted her spoon and made a circle in the air to encompass the entirety of McMurdo Station—”to send you scientists into the field each year. I forget what the ratio is, but there must be four or five of us to send each one of you into the field. But it’s worth it. Do your best to preserve this place, Valena. Help keep the ice from melting. It’s so special. No, that’s trite. It is an extraordinary place, and I personally believe that our continuance as a species depends on humbling ourselves before such mighty and fragile places as this.”

  Valena could think of nothing to add to that.

  Nancy set down her spoon and took a sip of her tea. “You know how quickly it’s melting, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t know. Not for sure. That’s part of what we’re here to study. But there are indications that it is accelerating, and that scares me.”

  “Good. Pay attention. I am pleased to support you in your work.”

  Valena felt like she had received a benediction from a priest. “Thank you. You remind me of my high school history teacher.”

  Nancy smiled more broadly. “Perhaps because I was one, before I started coming here.”

  “What an interesting change of jobs. How did you come to make such a change?”

  Nancy smiled sadly. “One has one’s reasons.”

  Valena took several more bites of her eggs before her mind swung back to an earlier part of the conversation. “Tell me more about this Gamow bag that came to you. The one that Emmett took up originally. How did you get it, and why wasn’t it at the camp when it was needed?”

  Nancy shook her head. “I’m not sure why, but it came back with some field gear they weren’t using. The guy who unloads the Twin Otters down on the flight line brought the load up. It had apparently gotten put into the plane … by mistake.”

  “But how could that happen? What do these things look like?”

  Nancy continued to consume her breakfast with utmost serenity. “You’re talking about a bundle about a foot and a half square, rolled up. It’s made of a flexible material, rather like an overlarge sleeping bag. You open it up, put your patient inside, zip it shut—special zippers that don’t leak air—and then pump it up to pressure, simulating sea level or even below. But it doesn’t work if it isn’t there.”

  “Did it look like it had been stuffed in with the other gear intentionally?”

  “Perhaps it had merely been placed inside the wrong duffel. A poor arrangement, obviously, the duffels looking so much alike.”

  “No one’s mentioned this to me before.”

 
“Interesting. I suppose they were all rather embarrassed.”

  “Embarrassed? There’s not a bigger word than that?”

  Nancy took another sip of tea.

  Valena had finished her eggs and muffin and was working to get enough water down her throat.

  Doris arrived at the table and set down a tray full of food, her lascivious boyfriend in close pursuit. “Hey, guys,” she said. “So, Valena, you got everything you needed off of Emmett’s laptop?”

  Valena gagged on her water.

  Doris continued, “Hey, you got to watch that stuff. It’s got a kick. Just come and see me if you’re having any trouble getting into anything you need,” she said. “You got me?”

  “Thanks,” said Valena.

  Nancy said, “Oh, did Emmett have books on disc or something?”

  “No, just scientific gobbledygook,” said Doris. She gave Valena a sly wink.

  Valena stared in wonder. Everybody seemed to know her business, a sensation that had her strung between relief and paranoia.

  Nancy had finished eating. “I’m heading over to BFC right now if you’d like me to show you how to get into that cage,” she said.

  Valena hopped up and grabbed her tray.

  Doris offered a casual wave, as if nothing of importance had been said.

  Along the road that led toward the Berg Field Center, Valena asked, “How many seasons have you come to the ice?”

  “Ten,” said Nancy. “Not every year, but most. I took a few off. There aren’t many who have been here more than I have. I’d say Dorothy has me by a season or two.”

  “Dorothy? You mean Cupcake?”

  “People call her that, yes.”

  Valena’s pulse quickened. “Is she kind of …”

  “A shit-stirrer?” asked Nancy.

  “Yeah.”

  “Valena, this is an unusual community. Of course you’ve noticed that. People who come here like the wildness of the place, and yet most are all but cooped up on this island. I dare say Dorothy’s never been past the runways. The rec department tries to arrange Sunday outings for people, but once you’ve been out to Pegasus packed into the Delta with twenty other people to see the wrecked plane, you’ve done that. People get to living out of each others’ pockets. There are people you’ll never see do essential jobs, like running the power plant, or keeping the trash sorted out. Just imagine if it was allowed to stack up. They’re like troglodytes. They don’t want to talk to anyone, so they don’t. They eat their meals in their rooms. And then there are others, like Dorothy, who get overly involved with each and every person. Dorothy gets particularly personal with grantees. Forgive me if I speak plainly. This is not a classless society.”

  “Please explain. I thought I understood things, but obviously I do not.”

  “If you scientists don’t come here, then we can’t be here. We aren’t exactly your servants, but if you don’t come here, we don’t either. We are dependent on you. And then there are the military. It used to be that this whole place was a Navy base; that’s why there are so many terms that hang over—galley for kitchen, pax for passenger—but they stay separate. They’re more conservative in their politics than us townies. They call us liberals.” She laughed. “In fact, we’re Marxists. Have you noticed? There’s almost nowhere to spend money down here, and we all do our parts as little cogs in a big machine. The ultimate in mutual support.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  They had reached the large Quonset that housed the field equipment, and Nancy opened the door and showed Valena in. Inside, she found a large work area in front of a forest of folded Scott tents, and behind that, a series of wire cages. Nancy unlocked the door to Emmett’s and led her inside. “Here’s your sleep kit,” she said. “And you’ll want this tent.” She pulled out a yellow stuff sack about a foot and a half long and ten inches in diameter. “It’s intuitively easy to set up, and quite comfortable. It’ll be hard to figure out how to tie it down out at Cape Royds, but Nat’s assistant will help you get settled. Will you need a set of skis up on Clark Glacier?”

  Valena shook her head in amazement. “You already know everywhere I’m going.”

  “It’s my job to know these things. And Kathy Juneau found me at dinner last night. I’ve said that this is a Marxist society. That’s not exactly true. There are others who use their position to …”

  “Play power games?”

  “Aptly put. It is inevitable in such a close, paranoid setting.”

  “Paranoid?”

  “Again, inevitable. It’s us against Nature. Us against each other. Imagine what happens when you get someone down here who is confused.”

  “You mean, someone who feels isolated.”

  “You’re catching on quickly. One never needs to feel alone here. In fact, few ever get that luxury. Well, here’s your gear. Do you need a pair of cross-country skis? Take these. They’re pretty beat up, and bindings aren’t much, but they’ll work with the FDX boots. Can you get it all? No, of course you can’t, and you won’t need the skis until the helicopter takes you out to the continent anyway. Take the sleep kit and the tent now—and here’s your pee bottle and water bottle; I’ll just tuck them inside the duffel—I’ll call a shuttle to take you and the gear down to the helo pad. Have them tag the skis so they’ll be on that load when it picks you up tomorrow at Cape Royds. Don’t forget them, now.”

  Valena smiled. “I won’t.”

  AFTER CARRYING HER GEAR DOWN TO THE HELICOPTER pad to be weighed and tagged and stepping on the scales herself, Valena left the skis in a bin marked with Naomi Bosch’s event number and carried her duffels over to her office in Crary. She then went to the library and looked for e-mails. There was one informing her that she should present herself in ten minutes’ time for a briefing on the Dry Valley Protocols, which would teach her how not to damage that delicate cold desert ecosystem. The only other message was from Em Hansen:

  Valena

  I don’t mean to encourage you in any way, but I have opened a line of communication with a friend at the FBI lab just in case. I understand you have some sort of lab facilities there. Do you have basic petrographie microscopes? Anything else?

  I have asked around through other channels and have nothing to add regarding Emmett Vanderzee’s status. Sorry.

  I did manage to contact Morris Sweeny’s wife. She says Frink wooed her husband to go to Antarctica because he wanted him to cover the Senate subcommittee angle, hoping to blow the story up much bigger, but that Sweeny had no interest in taking the assignment until Frink showed him Emmett’s Web site. Sweeny thought he saw a man he was looking for, a guardsman who served during the invasion of Iraq with Morris’s brother Jacob. Jacob wrote home to ask his family to get him some of the new ceramic plates for his body armor. Early in the war there were not enough vests with this new kind of armor to go around, so they were issued to the soldiers with the greatest need. Jacob said that there was a guy in his unit who had a compulsion for stealing things, among other things the plates out of Jacob’s vest. The guy who stole them already had a set but had a reputation for selling all sorts of things on the black market, so Jacob knew it was him and said he was going to report him. It was Jacob’s last letter home. The unit was ambushed the day after the plates went missing and Jacob was killed because he didn’t have them.

  Watch your back and don’t be stupid.

  Em

  Is this the answer to the Edgar Hallowell question? Valena wondered. And yet it answers nothing, because I still have no idea which of the men he is.

  She opened an Internet browser on the computer and requested Emmett’s Web site, hoping for a look at the picture Sweeny had seen. The machine returned the answer that it could not load the site, please try later. Okay, I will, she told herself. Then, switching back to Em Hansen’s e-mail, Valena replied:

  Em

  Thanks for all. I shall investigate lab equipment. And will report a few days hence. And don’t worry, I am going to Cape
Royds and Dry Valleys, where I will be around scientists only. No sociopathic kleptomaniacs, I promise … or at least, I expect none there. Just the usual antisocial scientists and a lot of penguins.

  Valena

  Valena headed down the stairs to Brenda Utzon’s office. She found the woman humming a happy tune. “Oh, hi, Valena! Lovely day, isn’t it? That storm swung a different direction. Want some chips?”

  “Thanks, I just ate. So, I was wondering if you could tell me what kind of lab equipment we have here for doing petrographic analysis.”

  “Oh, you’d need to see Lennie about that, down the hallway.” She pointed. “He could help you.”

  “Thanks, Brenda.”

  Valena headed down the outer hallway of the western arm of phase 2 and eventually came across a laboratory with Lennie’s name on the door plaque. Someone had artlessly added, in Sharpie, LENNIE’S SPIDER HOLE. Ah, another ornate McMurdo personality, Valena mused. She knocked on the door. No one came. She turned the knob, rattling it. It was locked. She had begun searching through her pockets for a bit of paper to leave a note when the door was yanked open.

  “What?” barked the man who had opened it.

  “Lennie?”

  He continued to stare at her.

  “Okay,” she said. “Well, my name is Valena, and I am told you can help me with some lab equipment.”

  Lennie glared at her. “I’m really busy right now. Come back later.”

  “Okay …”

  The door slammed shut.

  Here to serve science, eh?

  Valena walked back down the hall to Brenda’s office. “Can you tell me where to find Ted the blaster this time of day?” she inquired.

  “Oh, he’d be up at the blast site, setting charges. Let me show you on this map.” She got out a little folding map of McMurdo Station and indicated how Valena could wind her way to the place where Ted was working.

  Valena zipped up her big red and headed out through the air lock. The breeze had died, and the sun felt warm in its northerly transit across the sky. She trudged happily up the labyrinth of gravel streets, soon leaving the land of scientists behind and achieving the realm of heavy equipment operators. She passed yards parked with tractors, loaders, and trailers of varying descriptions and ages. The older ones had names. A pair of small green airline tugs were labeled CLOSET CASE and BASKET CASE, FUEL MULE was a tank truck. A back-hoe was emblazoned with JECKLE, and she imagined that HECKLE was not far away, or would it be HYDE?