by Rosie Thomas
Apart from the nine people currently occupying the two huts on a small bluff that made up Kandahar Station, the nearest human habitation was at Santa Ana, a Chilean base that lay 120 miles further up the peninsula. The Chileans maintained a snow ski-way for fixed-wing aircraft, and the Kandahar personnel had flown in there and then been transferred by helicopter to Kandahar. In partnership with the Chileans, Lewis Sullavan had leased for the summer season a pair of New Zealand-owned Squirrel helicopters with two Kiwi pilots and a mechanic. The machines and their crews would be based up at Santa Ana, but they would be available to transport Kandahar scientists out to field locations too remote to be reached by skidoo and sledge. Rooker envied the pilots. He would have liked to fly over the wilderness of glaciers, watching and trying to secondguess the extreme weather, but there was no chance of that. His fixed-wing licence was out of date and he had only flown a helicopter a handful of times.
The silence expanded and thickened around him. He could feel it almost as a physical mass pressing inwards against his eardrums. In the ten days since they had arrived here, the peace had soothed him. He escaped outside as often as he could.
The hut was crowded. He found it difficult to live at such close quarters with the disparate group that Shoesmith had assembled here. Dr Richard Shoesmith was the expedition leader. Rooker had taken an instinctive and immediate dislike to him, but the rest of them were mostly all right. It was the mass function that he recoiled from. People were always talking, trying to make themselves heard above the hum of the other voices. They wanted to make their mark, all of them. Even the jokes were often about scoring points off someone else, or about forming miniature alliances. Sometimes the spectacle touched him, at other times he laughed with everyone else, but he found it impossible to join in properly. The layers that protected him had thickened to the point of impermeability.
Since he had left Edith behind he had grown accustomed to being alone. Before that even, a long time before that, he had stopped looking for company, except for sex or for someone to drink with. He drank on base, of course, although Shoesmith didn’t allow private supplies of alcohol. There was always drinking company, as there was everywhere else in the world. Neither Phil nor Valentin took any notice of the prohibition either. But Rooker didn’t want to know about their lives outside Kandahar, or to know what they dreamed of or hoped for. They didn’t ask him about his life and that suited him perfectly.
Outside, alone, he felt comfortable. The play of light constantly amazed him. The quality of it could change ten times in an hour, going from milky translucence to blade-sharp clarity to a thick yellow glow. He would sit on a rock with his hands hanging loose between his knees, almost oblivious to the cold, just watching.
McMurdo, the American base on the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, had been nothing like this. In the summer season McMurdo could house over a thousand people. It had bars and buses and a constant round of parties, and he looked back on it now as just a more boring and much harsher version of Ushuaia. It had been too populous and insulated for him to feel the powerful presence of the ice, and because he had been working as a shuttle-bus driver he had had few reasons ever to go beyond the base and the airfield. Unless it was over to drink with the Kiwis on Scott Base a couple of miles away. But it was lucky that he had worked that meaningless long-ago season, because it was the magic phrase ‘previous experience’ that had secured him this job. He had been taken on by Sullavan and Richard Shoesmith to manage transport, and to act as base mechanic and maintenance man.
That was easy enough. Rooker was good with machinery. He had almost five months ahead of him now, and all he had to do was drive the Zodiac, fix skidoos, and keep the water and the generators running. He felt, at long last, that he had travelled far enough. No one would try to reach him or come pushing up against him here, nudging him for reasons or responses. At McMurdo, planes were constantly landing or taking off. There was always the lure of other destinations. But here, unless a helicopter came in from Santa Ana or a ship arrived in the bay, no one could arrive or leave. Including himself.
He could keep a certain distance from the eight other people. He had a corner that he could curtain off in one of the men’s four-bunk pit rooms, and outside there was always the mercurial light and the silence that was only ever shattered by the wind.
No, he suddenly remembered, it would soon be nine, not eight.
Nine people, because there was another scientist arriving today.
Shoesmith had made one of his ponderous announcements over breakfast: ‘As most of you already know, Dr Alice Peel, from Oxford, will be arriving later today. Please do everything you can to make her welcome.’
Jochen van Meer, the station’s medical doctor, had raised his thick blond eyebrows and grinned across the table at the other men. ‘It will be a pleasure.’
Eight, nine, Rooker thought. It made no difference.
A shadow flicked over his closed eyelids and he sat up to see what it was. A big brown skua gull had landed a yard away, and now it cocked its head and gazed at him. The skuas ringed the rocks outside the door of the base, scavenging for scraps of food, and they quickly learned to follow the sledges further afield. He rummaged in the zipped pocket of his parka, found a lint-coated square of chocolate and threw it to the bird. There was a snap and the fragment disappeared into the hooked beak.
The radio crackled in his inner pocket. Shoesmith’s voice broke out of the buzz of static. ‘Base, this is Kandahar Base, Base to Rooker. Over.’
‘Copy you,’ Rooker replied.
Everything about Shoesmith, including his radio manner, was irritating.
As soon as they met, at the hotel in Punta Arenas before the flight south, Rooker knew that Shoesmith had the English public schoolboy’s conviction that what he did was right because it was always done that way. He had confidence, it seemed to Rooker, but it wasn’t rooted in competence or insight.
The trouble was that his voice, his manner, even his pink, handsome face, reminded Rooker of Henry Jerrold of Northumberland, England, whom he wanted to forget for ever.
Rooker listened to the leader’s instructions. While the glaciology team was working, Richard wanted him to come back to base with the skidoo and ferry the French biologist to one of her penguin colonies. After that, the supply ship was due. Rooker was to take the Zodiac out through the loose ice to meet the new arrival and bring her ashore.
‘Roger,’ he said.
He fired up the skidoo and the skua launched itself away in a long, confident glide. Rook nosed his way back along their outward ski tracks until he reached the point closest to the others, then dismounted and plodded across to tell them where he was going. His boots sank almost to the ankles in the soft snow cloaking the ice.
‘You are not leaving us out here the whole night with no more than one sandwich?’ Valentin laughed.
‘Don’t you fret, Val, we can walk home, no problem. It’s Rook who’ll have to worry when we do get in,’ Phil threatened.
He left them to their flagging, uncoupled the sledge and raced the skidoo back to base. The outward journey had been slow because he and Phil had stopped to test the snow ahead with a long probe wherever there was a shadow or a dip. Too many dogs and sledges and even men had vanished from history into the bowels of the ice for it to be worth taking any risks. But now he drove at full speed, bouncing along with the cold stinging his cheeks and the front skis skimming in the safe tramlines of their exploratory journey. The trail stretched ahead, a thin smudge winding into the blank distance. Exhilaration curved his mouth into a wide grin.
The base was six miles away. As he came over the last rise Rooker saw it lying ahead of him in a sheltered bay, two tiny carmine-red dots against a sweep of snow with the pack ice and a tongue of inky water as a backdrop. Escarpments of exposed rock rose on either side, and behind the base the sloping snowfield was crowned with a towering rock outcrop that marked the margin of the glacier. At the closed end of the bay another tongue of the
glacier tumbled in vicious blocks and gashes down to sea level.
He made a wide circuit round the jumbled mass of rock and roared down the slope towards the huts. He could see a little red-jacketed figure crossing the isthmus of snow between the living quarters and the lab hut.
Rooker swept the skidoo in a circle and left it under a makeshift shelter at the rear of the huts. One of his extra assignments was to build a proper housing, using the wooden frame materials left by the supply ship at the beginning of the season. The sky had darkened to solid slate-grey and he noticed that the wind was rising now. Tiny eddies of snow chased around his feet.
‘Ah, there you are,’ Shoesmith said superfluously. He was sitting at the oilcloth-covered table in the middle of the living area with a mass of papers spread out in front of him. The only other work area at Kandahar was at the narrow benches in the chilly lab and most people preferred to do their less demanding work in the warmth of the communal area.
At the far end of the room, where a pair of windows looked out on the snow hill, the base manager, Russell Amory, and Niki were crowded in the kitchen. Niki was peeling potatoes in a metal bowl and Russ was making bread. Rooker thought that one of the best features of life at Kandahar was Russ Amory’s bread.
The two men looked like one another’s opposites. Niki was immensely tall and cadaverously thin. He had long, unkempt hair and a wispy beard that didn’t hide his hollow cheeks, and when he laughed his honking laugh the tight skin and thin lips pulled away from bad teeth that looked as if one more headshake would jerk them loose from the gums. Russell was short and suntanned and completely bald except for a band of fuzz above his ears. Today a white apron was stretched round his middle, emphasising his broad belly.
Russ and Nikolai didn’t pause in their peeling and kneading. Niki twitched his wrist and sent a long coil of potato peel spiralling down into the bowl.
‘Where is Laure? Is she ready?’ Rooker asked from the doorway. He didn’t want to spend time getting out of his boots and outer clothes if he was going straight outside again, and Russ never appreciated people trampling snow and grit over the linoleum floors.
As if to answer him the Frenchwoman, Laure Heber, emerged from the door of the women’s pit room. She had a full backpack in one hand and a pair of insulated boots in the other. The other three men all looked up.
‘Merci, Jeem,’ she smiled. ‘Tout prêt.’
Laure’s shiny dark hair was cut in a tidy bob. She wore pearl studs in her ears and even her fleece tops were flatteringly shaped to show off her long neck. Compared with the eight men on the base she was a miracle of personal grooming. She didn’t talk very much, but her tendency to raise one eyebrow whenever anyone else was speaking gave her an air of detachment and scepticism. There was a rota for everyone to take a day’s responsibility for cooking meals and cleaning the living areas, and on Laure’s day she had served boeuf bourguignonne garnished with chopped herbs and a tarte tatin. The men had wolfed it all down. Jochen van Meer had kissed his fingertips at her. The big Dutchman had also made a point of helping her with the washing-up afterwards while the others drew up their chairs to watch a DVD of The Matrix.
Now she took her windpants and red parka off the hook by the door tagged ‘Heber’ and began pulling them on. She said to Rooker, ‘Jochen is coming to the rookery as well. He will help with netting the birds. You can take two of us?’
‘Sure,’ Rooker answered. Laure was tiny. It would mean squeezing up a bit, but he didn’t think Jochen would mind that.
On cue, van Meer popped out of the opposite bunk-room door. The living area at Kandahar was very small. Someone was always crossing purposefully from bunk room to bathroom or from kitchen to front door. It was like one of those stage farces, Rook thought, but without the comedy.
Beside the front door was a whiteboard, with a list of surnames and a box beside each name. A tick in the box indicated that you were safely on the base. If you were going beyond the immediate environs you wrote down your destination and estimated time of return. It was Phil’s job, and also Rook’s as deputy safety officer, to monitor the status of the board. He ran his eye over it now, thumbed out the line that declared he was assisting on the Spaatz Glacier, scribbled ‘transport SW rookery’ instead and added his initials. He would be back, he estimated, within the hour.
At the bottom of the list there was a new name: ‘Peel’.
Laure and Jochen followed suit. Jochen picked up a radio from the shelf next to the whiteboard. ‘TBC’ on the board indicated that they would need return transport, time to be confirmed by radio link.
‘You’ll be back, Rooker, to make the pick-up from the ship?’ Richard reminded him. The two scientists, heavy with packs and boots and outer clothes, were clumping out of the door.
‘Barring accidents,’ Rook said flatly and followed them.
Niki whistled softly as he tipped potatoes into a pan.
Thick black clouds had massed right across the sky. The snow was now the same luminous pearl as Laure’s ear studs, and it looked almost as smooth. Ridges and hollows were robbed of their contours and the wind was whipping an opaque shroud off the soft surface, making Rook frown through his goggles and lean forward in concentration as he brought the skidoo round. Ducking their heads against the stinging air, Laure and Jochen piled their rucksacks into the rear pannier and Laure climbed on behind Rook. He felt her slither along the seat, and the light pressure of her hips and thighs closing against his as Jochen swung on the back. The skidoo settled under their weight. Rook checked over his shoulder. He twisted the throttle grip so they surged forward, and he felt Laure pressing closer still as her arms fastened round his waist. She dipped her head behind the shelter of his back to keep the wind out of her face, resting her cheek against his spine.
‘Hold tight, won’t you?’ The touch of warning sarcasm was wasted as the wind tore the words out of his mouth and hurled them away.
They had made the fifteen-minute journey to the Adélie penguin rookery several times before. Rook accelerated, with tiny snowflakes driving pinpricks into the narrow band of skin left exposed between his goggles and hood.
The Adélie colony consisted of more than a thousand breeding pairs. The males had come ashore first, hopping and sliding on their long journey from the outer margins of the ice where they had spent the winter, all of them heading for the exposed rocks where a nest of stones could be built. The females had followed them for the brief mating season, and their pairs of eggs would soon be deposited amongst the stones. Rook stopped the skidoo a hundred yards short of the rocks, and first Jochen and then Laure dismounted. Jochen shouldered his bag but Rook hoisted Laure’s and carried it for her. It was extremely heavy, he noted. She gave him a quick smile of gratitude from under the peak of her parka hood.
As they crested the rise, the noise of the rookery burst on them. It was a solid and constant chorus of guttural chirring. The rocks seethed with a black-and-white tide as late arrivals searched for last year’s mates or for new partners, and new nest builders tried to thieve stones from established pairs. There was a flurry of flippers and beaks everywhere, covering every inch of rock. The smell was as powerful as the noise. It was a piquant mixture of fish and oil and guano, and it permeated the clothes and hair and even the skin of anyone who ventured near. One night at the base, after a day’s work at the rookery, Laure had buried her face in her gloves and exclaimed ‘Parfum de pingouin’ with as much delight as if it were Chanel No. 5. She loved everything about penguins and Rook liked her for that. He could hardly distinguish what the other scientists specialised in. Especially Shoesmith. Shoesmith was the most bloodless man he had ever met. He sat over his papers as impassively as if he were carved out of wax.
Rook carried Laure’s pack to the point a few yards from the colony’s edge where a hump in the snow made a small vantage point. He was happy to help her, but he also liked seeing the penguins. There was a whole miniature universe of greed and ambition and devotion and determination
crowded on this expanse of rock at the bottom of the world.
As he watched, one bird turned its back on its perfunctory nest, and instantly two rivals filched a stone apiece and dropped them into their adjacent nests. The original owner turned back and made a threatening flurry in each direction, beak wide with outrage. As Rook stood there, three apparently unmated birds marched across the snow to investigate him. They came fearlessly up to the toes of his boots, then stood with their flippers slightly akimbo. They turned their heads to gaze at him, their white-ringed eyes unblinking. After a minute one of them sank down on to its front as if exhausted by the effort of curiosity.
Laure and Jochen unpacked the equipment. At this stage the task was to map the nest sites and ring-mark some of the birds. Later in the season, once the chicks were hatched and established, Laure would take feather and blood samples from her ringed birds for DNA analysis back in Paris. One of her studies, Rook had learned, related to the amount of heavy metals and toxic elements accumulated in the birds’ feathers. The annual accumulation of pollutants could be measured and so provide a precise bio-indicator of new pollution levels on the subcontinent.
This was the gist of what she had told him one night at dinner, in her perfect English. In spite of himself he was interested. To emphasise something about penguin behaviour that particularly intrigued her she would rest her hand lightly on his arm.
It had become accepted that everyone sat in the same places every night, so now Laure was always on his right and Phil on his left. Shoesmith presided at the table’s head, of course.
Laure had her net. She made a quiet circuit past the nests of birds she had already marked, then deftly swooped on a bird quietly sitting with its back to her. Once it was netted, she slipped a hood over its head. The extinguishing of daylight fooled it into lying still, she had explained to Rook, and she could either ring its leg or fire a microchip into a flipper. Jochen followed behind her, an eager assistant, and they moved deeper into the penguin universe.
