South Pole Station

by Ashley Shelby

  As soon as everyone was seated, bishop’s hats unfurled on their laps, Tucker took his place at the front of the galley, flanked by Pearl and Kit. “Working against the political odds, and a dire shortage of freshies due to the current difficulties, tonight’s Equinox Feast is the work of two dedicated Pole civilian contractors who are so famous they need not be named.” The room shook with applause and cheers. “We are here tonight, honoring Pole tradition, to mark the coming equinox, when we probably won’t have the kinds of provisions we have here tonight.”

  “Or the fuel,” Floyd grumbled.

  “After dinner, we will go outside to move the flag and unveil the new Pole marker. There’s a menu under your plates. All the artwork is courtesy of our fearless artist Fellow Cooper.” The synchronous sound of plates being shifted arose from the table, followed by appreciative murmurs. Cooper watched as Sal looked over the menu card she’d designed—there was a sketch of the South Pole Telescope in the left-hand corner, the skyline of the Dark Sector in the right-hand corner, and an outline of the entire Antarctic continent in the middle. At the bottom were three images of men trekking through a blizzard—Wilson, Cherry, and Birdie. Sal smiled for the first time all night and pulled her in for a long kiss, which was met with applause completely devoid of sarcasm.

  “Excuse me.” Cooper looked down the long table and saw the interpretive dancer was on her feet, her Afghan tribal coin belt tinkling. “These momentous circumstances are so personally inspiring, that I’d like to perform a segment of the dance I’ve been working on since I’ve been here, a piece of nonverbal storytelling that encapsulates my experience at South Pole. I call it the ‘Dance of the Anxious Penguin.’” Perhaps it was the wine, or the twinkling blue lights, but Cooper—and, to her surprise, everyone else—could not take her eyes off the interpretive dancer as she spun wordlessly around the room.

  Once the performance, and dinner, ended, the Polies swapped their dining clothes for their ECW gear, and gathered around the geographic Pole for the ceremonial moving of the marker. With the sun hanging low in the sky, a pale compass rose, the Polies fell into line and one by one passed the American flag hand to hand from its former position to the new, drifted, but true South Pole. At the end of the human chain, Bozer removed the stake and installed the flag next to Sal’s sheet-draped marker.

  The Polies crowded around it, expectant, with cameras raised. Sal and Marcy each took a corner of the sheet and, at the count of three, pulled it off the tiny Terra Nova. Cooper remained on the fringes of the group, watching while everyone pushed and shoved to get a better look. Her heart was full. Above her, parhelions flanked the slowly sinking sun.

  * * *

  The next morning, everyone arrived at breakfast with their letter from NSF, which had been slipped under the doors in the Jamesways, Hypertats, and El Dorm overnight like hotel bills.

  The exodus began almost at once. That evening, Cooper said goodbye to the literary novelist and the interpretive dancer, and even helped them bag-drag with her good hand. The historical novelist had been forced onto an earlier flight after an unfortunate incident with his manuscript. Cooper had heard the summons over All-Call that afternoon, and was halfway up the entrance tunnel when she saw the commotion. The historical novelist was wild-eyed—Rove in a rage—and pressed a huge manuscript to his chest. Polies began to appear from various parts of the station, and soon they had made a ring around him. Birdie approached Cooper and asked what had happened. She shrugged and the two watched as the historical novelist lifted the manuscript above his head.

  “It’s done,” he shouted hoarsely.

  Tucker took a step forward. “May I see it?” The novelist abruptly turned and began speed-walking down the tunnel, the pages peeling off the manuscript in his wake. Cooper and Birdie scrambled to catch them, but the wind blowing up the tunnel sent the pages skyward. As Floyd and Tucker tackled the historical novelist, Cooper managed to grab one of the pages before it flew away. It was blank. She snatched another one from the air as it gently fell, swaying side to side. It, too, was blank.

  She looked over at Birdie—the pages in his hands were blank as well.

  * * *

  Lisa Wu told Sal her team was going to comply with Stanford’s directive to follow the evacuation order and return stateside, and would have to abandon the joint experiment. Upon hearing this, he disappeared to the Dark Sector, kicking even Alek out. Cooper knew Sal had received the same directive from Princeton.

  That evening, he burst into the Smoke Bar, where Tucker was comforting Alek and the rest of the remaining Polies. Sal locked the door behind him and looked at them.

  “I’m staying. I won’t abandon this project. I’m going to caretake the experiment for both teams.” He looked over at Tucker. “Lisa knows.”

  Tucker tugged on one of the low-hanging strands of fairy lights, loosening it so that it swayed just above the table. “Does the NSF know? Scaletta?”

  “No comment.”

  “I assume you understand the potential consequences of defying an evac order.”

  “I can always seek asylum at CERN.”

  Without thinking, Cooper said, “What if we all stayed? Like Alcatraz but in Antarctica.”

  Someone pulled at the door a couple of times. Tucker, who was leaning against it, reached behind him to unlock it. A new VIDS admin who’d been flown in the week before from Denver walked in, her brow furrowed.

  “Why’s the door locked?”

  “Sorry,” Tucker said. “Sometimes it sticks.” Cooper noticed the woman’s eyes were searching the room, as if she were looking for a fugitive. Distractedly, she handed Tucker a manila envelope and exited the bar.

  Everyone watched as Tucker opened the envelope and pulled out the caretaking roster—the names of those who would be allowed to stay at the station in order to keep basic operations running.

  “Floyd. Bozer. Pearl. Doc. Marce. The rest are on the last flight out.” Denise’s child-like sobs shattered the silence, and Bozer pushed all of the darts into Karl Martin’s face and went over to comfort her.

  Tucker handed the roster to Sal. “Scaletta wants me in Washington. Let me know what you decide.”

  As soon as Sal had locked the door behind Tucker, Floyd said, “If we do this, none of you will get paid. They’ll stop depositing your paychecks.”

  “I don’t care,” several people said at once.

  “Can’t they force you onto the planes?” Pearl asked.

  “They’re not going to walk us out at gunpoint,” Dwight said. “They trust us to follow the rules. By the time they realize what we’ve done, it might be too late.”

  “What do you mean ‘too late’?”

  “Every hour we delay, the closer we get to the event horizon,” Dwight replied. “Too cold to fly. No flights in, no flights out. If we can wait this out—”

  “And create enough confusion and administrative chaos,” Cooper added.

  “—if we can do that, then there will be no chance of flights to haul us away. It will be too late.”

  Cooper noticed Sal watching her closely.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You sure you want to stay?”

  Cooper rolled her eyes.

  “No, this is serious, Cooper,” he said. He looked around the room. “This has to be worth it to every single person here. If you violate this evac order, you probably won’t work here again. You may even face federal trespassing charges.”

  “And what about you, Doc?” Bozer said to Sal. “You’ve got more to lose here than any of us.”

  Sal shook his head. “Me? It’s this or nothing.”

  “When’s the last flight?” Pearl asked.

  “Monday,” Dwight replied.

  “That’s Valentine’s Day.”

  Dwight looked stricken for a moment. Then he shrugged. “So?”

  “I’m just saying that locking ourselves into the station and occupying a federal research facility isn’t exactly in the spirit of the holiday,”
Pearl said mildly. “It’s like getting a Dear John letter.”

  “Nah, Pearlie,” Floyd said. “You’ve gotta think of it more like a box of chocolates hand-delivered to the Congressional Budget Committee. Except instead of chocolates—”

  “We get it, Floyd,” Sal interrupted.

  Bozer turned to Cooper. “You didn’t answer your man’s question. What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “No finger, and no prospects after this is over. You good?”

  Everyone in the room turned to see what she would say. She looked from face to face. Floyd’s poorly groomed mutton chops and Doc Carla’s slightly askew Yankees cap. Bozer’s veiny nose and Alek’s Fu Manchu ’stache. Pearl’s white-blond eyebrows, Marcy’s laugh lines, and Denise’s frizzy curls. Sal’s beautiful but tired eyes. Here were the faces that would surround her for the next six months, the brains with which she’d have to contend.

  “Right before Halloween, I asked Sal why the station didn’t just replace Frosty Boy instead of sending techs in every season to rebuild it,” Cooper said. “He told me ‘We grow attached to these temperamental pieces of crap.’ Well, let’s just say there are a number of temperamental pieces of crap in this room that I’m oddly attached to.”

  Everyone laughed at this, and this laughter seemed to form an agreement. They’d do this thing, no matter the consequences. They agreed on a password to ensure secrecy: Occupy or Die.

  * * *

  Pearl went into a baking frenzy in preparation for the Valentine’s Day Exodus. She didn’t want the Polies who were being forced off the ice to go home empty-handed. She and Cooper stayed up all night baking trays of jam tarts, sheets of heart-shaped sugar cookies, raspberry linzers, a two-tier red velvet cake studded with fondant roses, and mini-cupcakes frosted in crimson and white. (Cooper had to talk her out of making pavlovas when she realized the effort would require almost all the eggs left on station.)

  The Valentine’s Day dessert buffet raised the morale of the departing Polies—the goodie bags filled with handmade pralines and Captain Morgan rum truffles almost made them smile. Birdie, who had been utterly broken since receiving notice that he was being ferried off the ice and who, thanks to Pearl’s fear of the repercussions of a naturalized citizen getting involved in a federal crime, knew nothing about the plans to occupy, received extra goodies, including an extravagant peach melba that brought him to tears.

  One other gesture of goodwill took place in the days before the evacuation commenced: Bozer had, according to Denise, “surrendered to the better angels of his nature” and challenged Sri to a game of pool before he left for Madison. Everyone crowded into Skylab, gorging on Pearl’s homemade delicacies, and watched as Sri entered the room. He stood on one side of the pool table and gripped the polished top rails. His eyes were full of emotion. Finally, Bozer tossed a cue over the table toward Sri, who caught it smoothly. “Rack ’em up,” he said.

  For the next hour, Cooper and the other Polies watched as Sri and Bozer traded wins on the felt—to their delight, each man was an accomplished player—and for those sixty minutes, it almost seemed like nothing had changed. It was as if the entire polar winter lay before them, uninterrupted.

  As Cooper finished off one of Pearl’s chocolate cupcakes, Tucker pulled her aside. The sunglasses were gone, and so was the Bell’s palsy. “You’re better,” she exclaimed.

  “Doc Carla has been giving me prednisone. Sometimes it helps with Bell’s palsy. Listen, I’m leaving tonight for Washington—Scaletta thinks I can help with the negotiations. Something about my cool gaze.”

  “I wish you didn’t have to leave,” Cooper said.

  “You are in very capable hands down here.” He took her bandaged hand. “Do you remember chasing me down the hall back in Denver to tell me why you wanted to come to South Pole?”

  Cooper flushed at the memory and smiled weakly. “Yeah, and you bought it.”

  “No, you told me the truth. You told me you were afraid. That’s when I knew you’d be okay here. For none but cowards need to prove their bravery, right?”

  Tucker’s radio crackled and Cooper could hear a tech sergeant barking orders, the sound of a plane’s engine roaring in the background. “I might not see you before I leave.”

  “So this is goodbye, then.”

  “As Jimi Hendrix once said, ‘The story of life is quicker than the wink of an eye, the story of love is hello and goodbye … until we meet again.’”

  “As Tucker Bollinger once said, ‘Quoting others suggests avoidance.’”

  “A wise man.”

  * * *

  The next morning, as the last LC-130 to land at Pole, the one that was meant to take the rest of them off the ice, idled on the skiway, Cooper climbed down a ladder into the Utilidors with the other occupying Polies. With each step down, the scream of the plane’s engines grew fainter. Above her, Floyd pulled the trapdoor closed and locked it. Below, the core group stood waiting, silent, their eyes wide above their balaclavas. Cooper reached the last rung and dropped down next to Sal. “Can’t they just open the door and find us?” she asked.

  Overhearing this, Bozer snapped, “Not where we’re going. Now follow me.” Silently, they made their way down the dark tunnel. It appeared endless, lined with corrugated metal and lighted by caged incandescents. All species of wire snaked across the ground, appearing to meld into a single cable in the far distance. Running along the walls of the Utilidor were the sewer, electrical, and data cables—Cooper imagined e-mails and fax messages coursing down this metal helix as she passed it.

  She paused for Sal, and they allowed themselves to fall behind. He pinched the zipper of her parka between his fingers and pulled it up so it was completely closed, and took her face in his mittened hands—to his delight, Cooper had returned to him the dirty black Gore-Tex she’d found in skua, which she’d used to complete that triptych all those months ago. “I would like nothing more than to hole up with you for the next six months in a place where nobody can find us,” he said. “That being said, I have to ask you one last time: Are you ready to do this?”

  Cooper placed her hands on his. “This is like the Malibu Barbie Dreamhouse of unreachable civilizations,” she said. “Maybe it’s wrong to say, but I’m not upset this is happening.”

  Up ahead, the others were obscured by a veil of steam, which made them appear ghost-like as the pale light filtered through the vapor. For a moment, Cooper was startled; it was as if the image on David’s copy of Worst Journey, of the three men in a backlit ice cavern, had sprung to life. “Everything okay?” Sal asked. Cooper nodded, and together they headed toward the phantom figures.

  By the time they caught up, Bozer had already opened the metal door leading to the Tomb, where the Man Without Country lay hidden behind stacks of empty crates, wrapped in plastic sheeting. When they stepped inside, Bozer started to close the door, then stopped.

  “Last chance for losers,” he said. “You can still make the plane.”

  The group, huddled together in front of what Cooper knew was a frozen catafalque, blinked back at him.

  “Occupy or die,” Cooper said.

  “Occupy or die,” Marcy replied.

  “I refuse to shout slogans, but I’m in,” Doc Carla said wearily.

  “Then I will: Occupy or fucking die!” Floyd shouted.

  “Lower your voice, you dipshit,” Bozer said. “Come on, let’s go deal with the feds now. Marce, Pearlie, game-time. Dwight’s waiting in Comms.”

  Cooper watched as the officially approved caretaking staff—Pearl, Marcy, Doc Carla, and Bozer—stepped out of the room, leaving the rest of them in the shadows thrown by an electric lantern. “Once we’re sweet, I’ll come get you.” Bozer looked at Cooper, Sal, Denise, and Alek. “Last chance.”

  “Go,” Alek growled. Bozer pulled the door closed. A moment later, they heard the key turn in the lock. Sal pulled Cooper close.

  No one spoke for a while. The silence revealed the faraway roar of
the idling plane. Eventually, Denise cleared her throat. “Because of the unusual circumstances, no one underwent the mid-season psych exam. It’ll be interesting to see how a control group wintering over without the psych assessment functions under stress.”

  Before anyone could reply, raised voices could be heard echoing through the Utildors. “Here they come,” Sal murmured. Cooper tried to imagine the scene that would unfold if the tech sergeant and his minions found them in the Tomb, huddling behind a locked door, with a corpse for company.

  The voices grew louder, followed by the sound of heavy boots hurrying through the tunnels. Next to Cooper, Denise fidgeted, her hands like birds that couldn’t quite get settled. Cooper placed her hand on Denise’s knee, but this only seemed to make things worse.

  “Wintering-over exacts intense pressure on the individual psyche,” she said, her voice strained. “We rely on social contracts more than we would in any other scenario you can conjure. One study shows that after a winter in Antarctica, at least five percent of people on station can be deemed clinically insane.”

  The footsteps were getting closer.

  “Be quiet, woman,” Alek said angrily.

  But Denise seemed unable to stop. She stood up suddenly. “But of course that assumes a standard population, not self-selected potential felons.”

  “Sit down, Denise,” Sal said soothingly. “Everything’s going to be okay. Bozer will come get us once the plane is airborne. But right now you need to be quiet.” Denise didn’t seem to hear him. She approached the door.

  “The point of sharing that is not to scare you guys, but to remind you of the stakes, and to encourage you to invest in sanity.”

  The footsteps slowed down and the sound of walkie-talkies became audible. When Denise began pulling on the door, Alek and Sal both leapt up, but Cooper was quicker. She gently took Denise’s arm. “Just a little bit longer,” Cooper whispered. Denise was trembling, but she allowed Cooper to lead her away from the door.