In Cold Pursuit vw-1

by Sarah Andrews

  Valena wanted to change the subject, too. “What would anyone be doing bombing along here in a snow machine by himself in a blizzard?”

  “Wouldn’t I like to know.”

  “You think that man at the dive shack was hallucinating?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see something where you found Steve that fit with that?”

  “It was still blowing. Some of the time I couldn’t see my own feet.”

  Valena said, “I notice that some… tradesmen here wear a big red parka instead of Carhartts.” She forced herself not to look at Dave’s red parka.

  Dave glanced at her. “At Clothing Issue, we’re given our choice,” he said. He drove onward, his face set in silence.

  He knows what I was thinking, thought Valena.

  They came back onto the flagged route and rounded Cape Evans. The route swung toward shore again, leading them up into a shallow cove that held a splendid view of Mount Erebus in its embrace. Dave pulled the Pisten Bully to a stop at the edge of the ice, where it formed a shallow heave against the land, and parked it next to another tracked vehicle that was painted a soft ocher. “This is as close as we can get,” he said, climbing out.

  “To what?”

  “The hut.”

  “There’s another dive hut here?”

  He turned and smiled quizzically. “You are new here. This is the hut Scott lived in the winter before he headed to the pole. His Terra Nova expedition.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  Dave’s smile widened into a grin. “Why do you think I took a day off to come with you guys?”

  “Can we go inside?”

  “Let’s find out!” said Matt, who had already climbed out of the passenger compartment and was heading toward the shore.

  Valena tumbled out of her side of the vehicle and skidded across the ice. The wind had blown the snow off the ramp of frozen ocean where the expansion of freezing had shoved it onto the land. It was as slick as glass. Gingerly, she corrected her course to climb the ramp where there was still an armoring of snow.

  Dave moved past Valena and probed the snow. “Here’s a crack,” he said, as his pole jerked down into the snow. “Just follow my footsteps.”

  Valena stepped along behind him, watching his shoulders roll with the effort of finding his footing in the drift. Tucked into a hollow on the land, a roof was visible now. As she walked higher up the drift, she could see the walls below its eaves. It was a much bigger hut, taller, wider, longer. Clearly, Scott had learned from his first attempt at Hut Point and had come back better prepared with a structure that would house him and his men for as long as necessary. Snow had drifted in scoured tongues around the entrance, and as they approached, Valena saw the rusted metal of spare skids for long-gone sledges leaning against its sides, as if still waiting for Scott’s return. “This is magic!” she cried. “And look—the door is open!”

  At the sound of her voice, a man dressed in yellow ECWs stepped out through the doorway. “Greetings,” he said. “Want to come inside?”

  Valena clapped her hands together in delight. “Yes!”

  “Step this way. We were just locking up to head over to Cape Royds, but we can certainly delay a few minutes. Be sure to brush the snow off your boots with that brush in there,” he said. “And don’t step beyond any black lines. Here, you’ll need this.” He handed Valena a flashlight.

  She stepped inside and found herself in a vestibule that led to an inner door. An ancient snow shovel rested against the jamb to one side, and beside it, a row of long, wooden skis and a wheelbarrow. Behind her stood a rusted bicycle, crazily bent by some mishap.

  Valena cleaned the snow from her boots and then stepped cautiously toward the inner door, letting her eyes adjust to the lowered light. It had no lock, only a rope pull with a wooden handle. As she reached out to grasp it, she realized that the hand of Sir Robert Falcon Scott had touched it also…

  She pulled. The catch eased. The door swung inward.

  She stepped into a world lost in the age of heroes, when men crossed Antarctic ice on foot, hauling sledges. Inside, it was dim—the only light coming from a few small windows far inside the long room—but Valena did not turn on the flashlight. Instead, she let this world envelop her.

  The trusses of the room arched high above her, with equipment stored in the rafters. A sledge. A ladder. There was a cast-iron stove, and shelves made of packing crates filled with tins and jars of food stores. Mustard, ketchup, cocoa, biscuits, oatmeal. Down the center of the room stood a long table sparsely laid with crockery, and to either side, crude bunk beds.

  I’ve a photograph of men dining here, she realized. A holiday feast, with pennants hanging from these beams. And I’ve seen a picture of the men lying in these bunks.

  Valena moved quietly into the room, almost afraid to breathe. She switched on her light now, letting its thin beam search in among the shadows of the bunks. In the picture of the men lying in these crude beds, their faces were tired and grimed with oil from their food and soot from their lamps. How patient they had looked, as they survived the long winter they must endure before their leader headed toward the pole. Or was that photograph taken as they waited, praying for a return that would not come?

  How they must have suffered!

  Suddenly feeling a strong need for companionship, Valena turned to the door. Matt and Dave had followed her inside and were absorbing the magnificence of the living relic in silence, eyes roaming, mouths agape. The New Zealanders followed close behind them.

  They wandered here and there, leaning carefully over books left open on a table—a headline on an Australian newspaper declared, SPRING HAS COME!—and shaking heads in amazement over the reindeer-hide sleeping bags that rested on the surprisingly short bunks.

  These men were smaller than I am, thought Valena. And yet they endured.

  “This was Scott’s bunk,” said one of the New Zealanders, moving up beside her. ‘And here’s his desk.” A penguin collected for study lay across the table, as fresh as if it had been left the day before.

  In another corner of the room, a set of chemist’s glassware rested on a wooden bench, awaiting the scientist’s return.

  “We should get going,” said one of the archaeologists.

  Valena thought, I don’t want to leave, but I’ve absorbed all I can for now, it’s that overwhelming. After thanking the archaeologists for the incomparable treasure of visiting the inside of the hut, she turned to follow.

  BACK OUT ON THE ICE, DAVE, MATT, AND VALENA climbed back into their Pisten Bully and followed the archaeologists’ Haaglund as it left the flag route from McMurdo behind and continued on a less-traveled track to the north, rounding Barne Glacier, a wall of ice that glowed a neon blue. They were no longer in the Antarctica of jet aircraft and flush toilets but the one of lone huts and little-used trails.

  Valena rode in silence, her world far away, an abstraction.

  Dave broke the quiet. “So you came down here to work with Emmett Vanderzee.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know I was up there last year when it happened.”

  She turned and looked at him. “Yes.”

  “If there’s anything I can do to help… You know, I’d hate for you to have to go home.”

  Valena thought, He’s going to make this easy for me. She studied the angles of his profile. He was a fine-looking man, handsome in a gentle, kind sort of way. Unassuming. A comforting presence. “I need to know as much as I can about how it went down,” she said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like… well, like did you hear the plane? That sort of thing.”

  “Sure. It was low overhead. You could hear it even through the wind.”

  “Where were you when you heard it?”

  “In the cook tent. I was keeping the stove going so Emmett and Sheila and Manny could concentrate on the patient. They had him up on the table on top of a couple of camp mats to keep him as warm as possible. I had the stove on a pack
ing crate underneath. I wanted to keep an eye on it so it didn’t melt its way down into the ice and go out, or ignite the tent fabric.”

  “Who else was there with you?”

  Dave thought a moment, conjuring the scene in his head. “Willy was there eating cookies a lot. Bob and Dan were in their tent, and Cal was in the one he shared with Emmett.”

  “You’re sure that they were in those tents, and not somewhere else.”

  “I checked on them when I went to the latrine once. Bob was sleeping, or just lying there with his eyes shut, and Dan was reading. And Cal was alone in his tent. Then the plane came over, and we took a look but the wind got so bad Emmett was on his belly using an ice axe to hold on, so he made us return to the tents until it let up. He went out again after a while but couldn’t find it.”

  “Did Cal go with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when the plane first made its drop, did you have radio contact with the pilots?”

  “Yeah, through Mac Ops, we did. They reported seeing the chute open, but they couldn’t see our tents. And we couldn’t see a damned thing.”

  “You needed the ropes to find your way ten feet from tent to tent.”

  “Right. That or that GPS they had.”

  “Who had?”

  “Emmett and Cal.”

  “I see. So what was it like when Emmett couldn’t find the bundle?”

  Dave shook his head. “He was frantic. He kept pacing up and down in the cook tent, looking out every few minutes to see if it had let up.”

  “Did you tell all this to the feds?”

  He shook his head. “They didn’t ask me.”

  “What? They came down here and arrested Emmett but didn’t speak to all the witnesses?”

  “I hear they talked to Willy once.” He smiled at the thought. “I guess they decided us Fleet Ops guys aren’t too smart.” He chuckled. “Anyways, I suppose they meant to question me, but I was doing my shift at Pegasus, and about then they got their weather window to fly up to the high camp, and…well, that was the last I saw of any of them, including Emmett.” His smile faded. “I wished I had spoken to them, now. Maybe I could have helped.”

  Ice surrounded them on every side.

  “Anything else you need to ask me?” asked Dave.

  “Yeah,” said Valena. “Why did you come here?”

  Dave pondered her question a moment, then, with his usual easy smile, said, “Well, I was at something of a cross-roads,” and left it at that.

  They reached another point of land, one less shrouded with snow or ice. Black volcanic rock protruded everywhere through shallow drifts of snow. The Haaglund drove a short distance up the rocky slope and pulled to a stop. Dave parked the Pisten Bully next to it.

  The landscape was humpy and confusing, a maze of lava flows. They unloaded Valena’s gear and started up a steep hill over knobs of black volcanic rock all knotty with dark crystals the size of Valena’s fingernails. Far away to the left, she could hear a strange chattering noise. “What’s that sound?” she asked.

  “Penguins,” said Matt. “Come on, let’s get your gear stowed, and then if it’s okay with Nat, we can go see the birds.”

  “You need a permit?”

  “You most definitely need a permit,” said Matt. “Nat Lanthrope’s your man, so you’d better smile prettily and convince him you’re not out to mess with his birds.”

  At the top of the rise, a small valley opened out among the naked rocks, facing north toward the Ross Sea and the Southern Ocean. Endless ice rolled out before them, for the winter’s pack ice had yet to break. It was a landscape of contrasts: white on black, snow and ice on darkest rock. To the south, the slopes of Mount Erebus rose toward a steaming summit, their own private Fujiyama.

  Tucked into the lee of a curl of crumbling rock stood a large tent with a wooden frame. To one side of the entrance stood a large solar collector mounted on a staff with cables running off it into the tent.

  “Ahoy, Nat!” called Matt.

  A young woman stepped out to greet them. “Hey there. Nat’s out taking his afternoon constitutional. I’m Jeannie Powers, Nat’s assistant. I know important things, like where the chocolate bars are hidden.”

  Matt returned to the Pisten Bully to unload the drill. Dave and Jeannie helped Valena pitch her tent on a broad patch of disintegrating lava, fighting a nattering wind that wanted to take it off the cliff onto the pack ice. Jeannie showed them how to scout first the least abrasive rocks to use as dead men inside the tent and, next, rocks of just the right size to hold down the guylines and secure the rain fly.

  “It doesn’t rain here,” said Jeannie, “but you’ll need the fly for the warmth, and to make it just a little bit less bright inside, so you can hope to sleep. The latrine is that drum-and-bucket arrangement up against the side of Nat’s tent. Dry Valley Protocols here, which means liquids in the fifty-five-gallon drum and you-know-what in the bucket. They gave you a pee bottle?”

  Valena produced the quart Nalgene bottle Nancy had given her that morning. It had PEE written in several places around the sides of the bottle and a large letter P boldly emblazoned on its cap. “I guess they want to make sure I don’t confuse it with my water bottle.”

  Jeannie nodded. “You’ll get the hang of it. Superior bladder control is the key to Antarctic survival. That, and good aim.”

  Valena stared at the latrine with concern. The right side of the bucket was up against the bank of lava and the back was to the tent, but the front and left sides faced the view.

  “We don’t get many visitors,” said Jeannie dismissively, turning her attention to Valena’s sleep kit. “It really hasn’t been that cold out at night, only down to about ten Fahrenheit.”

  “Downright balmy,” said Valena. She knelt down and unrolled the mats and sleeping bag into the tent, then shoved her personal duffel over into the windward side to supply additional deadman weight. She then gathered up her camera and climbed out of the tent. “Thank you,” she said.

  “You’re welcome. I’m going to get back to my work,” said Jeannie. She headed back into the frame tent, leaving Valena and Dave alone together.

  Valena faced into the wind that was blowing off the frozen ocean. “Lovely day.”

  “Care to take a walk?” said Dave. “Maybe visit another archaeological treasure?”

  Valena nodded, and they began their stroll down among the odd volcanic rocks of Cape Royds. “It’s weird walking between lava flows,” said Valena.

  “Is that what this is? Lava flows? Why are these so black? They’re darker than the rocks over by McMurdo.”

  “Different flows. The darker lavas have more minerals that are rich in iron and magnesium—olivine, amphibole, pyroxene. The lighter-colored ones, like you’d get in the Andes, or the Cascades, have more feldspar and even quartz, which lack the iron and magnesium.”

  Dave laughed. “Really? It minds me of double-chocolate cookie dough. What are those big crystals sticking out all over the place? The chocolate chips.”

  Valena leaned down and picked up a handful. “You mean the phenocrysts.”

  “That’s a pretty big word. What’s it mean? Big crystal?”

  “Pretty much. It means, ‘crystal big enough to see with the naked eye.’ So much for trying to boggle the imaginations of wandering tractor drivers. But they’re nice phenocrysts, eh? And it’s interesting…they seem to crumble out to an even size, about like peas.”

  Dave gave her a saucy grin. “It’s cute the way you scientists get all wound up about grit and critter glue and things.”

  Valena took a playful swipe at him. He dodged.

  They continued down the narrow pathway between the knots and lumps of rock, now following the increasing sound of birds as much as footprints. The trail zigged and zagged and finally opened up into a natural amphitheater. Beyond it, along the sea cliffs, the rocks were peppered with black birds with white bellies. The few who were standing upright were less than two feet tall. The othe
r birds all lay on their nests, bellies down, beaks pointing south into the wind.

  They stopped and watched the birds for a while at a line of do-not-pass signs that announced the boundary of the penguin colony. Dave said, “They look like two-tone rugby balls.”

  “And how about that ruckus they’re making,” said Valena.

  “Like a couple thousand squirrels screaming at someone who’s trying to steal their nuts.”

  “There you are,” said Matt, striding up from their left. “Let’s check out the hut.”

  Valena had been so taken by the birds that she had hardly noticed Shackleton’s hut. It was smaller than Scott’s, a humble gray structure nestled against a particularly large snow drift. Unlike Scott’s hut, the ground downwind from it was naked of snow, revealing a heap of broken bottles and twisted strips of rusted iron.

  Dave’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Matt likes Scott, but Shackleton was my man.”

  “Why?”

  “He always got his people home alive.” Dave walked over to the entrance to the hut and followed Matt inside.

  Valena took a moment by herself to absorb the panorama of black rock and its towering mother, Mount Erebus. The hut looked inconsequential by comparison, a pale afterthought of human habitation. At last she stepped inside and was once again lost in a world of men who sailed on tiny ships across wild oceans in search of dreams.

  It was soon time for Matt and Dave to leave. Valena followed them to the Pisten Bully to say good-bye. To her surprise, she found herself fighting off tears. She didn’t want them to leave, especially Dave. What’s happening to me? she wondered. I’m not used to caring this much.

  “Are you okay?” Dave asked. He waited, a hand resting lightly against the back of her neck.

  She could feel his hand even through her parka. She no longer tried to choke the tears but let them slide down her cheeks.

  “Isn’t it amazing,” said Dave, his voice soft and soothing, “to be in a place where all day long, the sun goes from east to west but in the northern sky, and all night long, it goes back west to east in the southern? I can’t get over that. I really like it, but it’s kind of confusing, just the same.”