Desire Provoked

by Tracy Daugherty

  “It never did much for me,” he says. “The only time I had it was in Alaska. This was ‘67, height of Vietnam, all that. Most of us on the field trip were just out of graduate school, thrilled to be making money. Thought we were real radicals sitting out in the middle of nowhere passing pot.” He takes a short puff.

  “I’ll be glad when we get back to Barentsburg.”

  “So will I,” Adams says. “I can’t do a thing until the weather clears.”

  “Based on what I saw today, there’s a good chance of activity here. Those core samples have good permeability.”

  Adams smiles.

  “What?”

  “How’s your permeability?”

  “If you don’t mind a little frostbite, you can check.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “We should probably join the others for supper.”

  “I guess.” He strokes her arm. “But don’t eat too much. We’ve both got to squeeze into your sleeping roll.”

  Clear skies. Up in the Cessna, Adams snaps the terrain. The sunlight reflecting off the snow is blinding, and for a second Adams wonders if the glare, like concentrated light through a lens, might set the wings of the plane on fire.

  The pilot circles the snowy rifts seven times before Adams says he has enough pictures.

  Back at the camp, Carol’s frying bacon and slicing cheese for lunch. She has a cut on her lip.

  “What happened?” Adams says.

  With the knife she points out one of the men sitting beside a Coleman stove. “He tried to kiss me. When I pulled away, he bit.”

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  She flashes him an impatient look. “Eat your lunch. We don’t need any macho scenes out here.”

  Bacon grease spatters over the pan and sizzles in the snow.

  “Halloo!” someone calls.

  Behind the camp, at a distance of two or three miles in the direction of the coast, there’s a line of hills. Against this backdrop seven or eight men are walking toward the camp carrying backpacks. One of them raises his hand. “Halloo!” he calls again.

  “Russians,” says the man who kissed Carol. “They checked us out the day we got here.”

  To the very last man, the Russians are big, bearded, ruddy. Carol offers them coffee. The leader, a redhead, smiles, nods at Adams. “American?” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “How do you like our island?”

  “It’s very cold.”

  The Russians laugh as if he’s made a joke.

  “You are here for oil?”

  “I’m here to draw maps.”

  “Maps? I thought Norwegians gave you Americans maps?”

  “The Department of Industry won’t release any cartographic information.”

  “Ah, that’s what they say.” He motions to Carol for another cup of coffee. “But we hear American oil companies get whatever they want.”

  “You hear wrong.”

  Carol’s eyes widen. Did he say that?

  “Is that so? We are, at any rate, forced to work in the dark. In this area in particular our charts are inaccurate. We have not been able to explore the region to our satisfaction. Could you supply us with information?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t,” Adams says. “Beyond preliminary sketches, we have nothing as yet.”

  The Russian spreads his arms. “You have committed all these people and you have no information?”

  “We have scouting reports,” Carol says, stepping close to Adams.

  “As I said, preliminary information is all we have to go on. I’ve only been here two days. This morning was the first time the weather cleared enough for me to take accurate aerial photographs and trigonometric measurements.”

  The redheaded man tosses his coffee into the snow. “Do you mind if we have a look at your preliminary information?” he says.

  The Russian team rummages through backpacks, bedrolls, crates. A clatter of cooking utensils. Carol blushes when the redheaded man opens a bag containing her personal belongings. He carefully unfolds her long johns.

  Satisfied, he extends his hand toward Adams. “We are working in the vicinity,” he says. “I am sure that when you obtain your information, you would have no objections to sharing it with us?”

  “Not at all,” Adams says.

  “Good.”

  At night he develops photographs with clumsy portable equipment. The red bulb above the fixing tray lights crystals in the diamonds of the plastic bubble. He is fortunate that the sun was low when he took the pictures. The stakes he had set out as markers are invisible in the glare, and the long shadows create relief in what would otherwise have been grainy white fields.

  Meanwhile Carol studies core samples and rocks supplied by the engineers. She is encouraged by the signs. “Get me a map soon, will you?”

  Tracing lines across the pictures, Adams imagines his own world sectioned off into patterns. Carol nearby, tethered to him with a tight elastic band. Carter at a very sharp angle, difficult to watch. Far off, so far he can barely see them, Pamela and the children. Their lines are slack. When he tugs, he sometimes gets a faint response.

  Adams requests recent American satellite photographs of the Arctic. Three days later the pilot returns with a stack of pictures. Adams compares them with the more detailed shots he had taken earlier.

  He wishes he had a gravimeter and a set of seismic probes, but must be content with metal pillows to record topographic shifts. Lead-shielded packets of Cobalt-60, emitting gamma rays, help define the terrain, as do the tellurometer (a two-way microwave system) and theodolite (a sighting tube with horizontal and vertical scales).

  None of the instruments is completely reliable by itself, and Svalbard is so heavily glaciated that it is difficult to determine the island’s actual topography. He must record a number of observations and test them against one another. There is no room for misinterpretation; faulty mapping could encourage drilling on a precarious site.

  He produces a rough map for Carol.

  “It’s amazing how glaciation has smoothed out most of the terrain,” she says, “but overall, the structure’s what I expected. This, with the core samples, ought to be enough to lay in a claim for a drilling permit.”

  “Good,” Adams says. “We’ve got to run the sound tests on the shelf. Then we can head back to Barentsburg.” “And privacy.”

  At night around the fire the engineers drink beer and challenge one another to run naked into the snow. The one who goes farthest gets to sleep late the following day. Tonight there is a tie; the two men shiver near the fire and the Coleman stove, their faces blue. Adams and Carol join them for supper.

  “I saw a polar bear this morning,” one says. “Mile or so from the hills.”

  “Big?”

  “You bet. Thick yellow fur … spooked my horse a little, but it wasn’t much interested.”

  “Shoulda shot it. I’m getting tired of bacon.”

  “I don’t have a license to carry a gun here.”

  “You know they don’t let the Russians carry weapons?”

  “Damn straight. I don’t want those bastards poking around here with rifles.”

  After several more beers it is generally agreed that if the Russians return to camp, they’ll get their asses kicked.

  Carol is asleep. The camp is quiet. Adams lies awake inside the plastic bubble, listening to the wind whip snow around the embers of the fire, the equipment, and tents. The horses chuff and stamp. Ice breaks.

  Manscathers. Walkers in the waste.

  Old English words for fear.

  Gog and Magog.

  He wonders where the Russian camp is. Perhaps Redbeard is awake, listening to the ice.

  In a geologically active world, what does territoriality mean?

  Vyduv: a Russian tribal word for “wind-swept plain.” The man who kissed Carol taught him that.

  In two weeks on the island he has seen seven different types of snow: star, plate, needle, column, column with a cap a
t each end, spatial dendrite, irregular.

  One day, pacing out distance on a plain, he paused by his horse to listen. The ground bristled. Worms by the thousands surfaced in a snowbank: Mesenchytraeus, a distant relative of the earthworm. Ladybugs, too, insulated in deeply packed drifts.

  He’ll take some to Carter.

  He gazes through the plastic bubble at the stars. In the daytime the sky becomes a map. The sun is so intense in the thin air that it glares off the ground, making shapes on the clouds. Reading shadows in the sky, Adams can determine if there is water or rough terrain ahead. At night he’s blind. Light travels so slowly through space. The star at the end of the Dipper appears to him tonight as it was when the first American colonists plotted revolution. What’s up there now?

  Carol turns over in her sleep. A thunderous crash along the coast: another block of ice has broken free.

  From the U.S. Army manual on survival: “On exceedingly cold nights, dig a hole in the ground, place your weather balloon in the hole so that half of it rests in the snow. Cover the other half with snow a foot deep and let it set for an hour. Tunnel into the balloon, deflate it, and leave the snow dome standing free. Snow, packed tightly, provides sufficient warmth for short-term survival.”

  Adams was issued an Army manual at Barentsburg. But not a weather balloon.

  The Russians return. Redbeard offers them a nearly frozen bottle of Scotch, looks around shamelessly, asks Adams what progress he has made.

  “I know the area pretty well,” Adams says.

  Redbeard is discomfited. “You have numbers,” he asks.

  Adams shows Redbeard his map.

  “You have accomplished no more than we have.”

  Adams pours himself a cup of Scotch.

  “You expect to find oil?”

  “I’m not a geologist,” Adams tells him.

  Redbeard turns to Carol. She says nothing.

  “There is not enough oil here to make it worth your while.”

  “We’ll see,” Adams says. He passes the bottle to Redbeard, who pours himself a cup. Then, to his own astonishment, Adams begins to remove his parka. “Care to join me in a race?” he says.

  Ten minutes later, naked Russians run around him in the snow. The bottle is tossed to and fro until it shatters on a sheet of ice. Adams tumbles wildly into a snowdrift—the shock stuns him for a moment. The bare-assed burly men, chests heaving, follow him with prancing steps. The hair on their legs is frozen. They point to one another’s white bodies, laughing with painful abandon.

  Adams loads a pack, saddles a horse with help from one of his colleagues. “I’ll be back after lunch,” he tells Carol. “I want to check the coast.”

  Forty minutes later he has reached the base of a small snowy cliff. He stops to rest. In his heavy coat he feels warm. The horse is warm. He can see no passage through the cliffs to the sea. He shoulders his pack, dismounts.

  He finds a manageable spot on the face of the cliff and digs in his hands. Halfway up, the snow gives out beneath his feet. A low creaking noise. He tumbles backwards.

  The slab of ice in his hands disintegrates. Fragments spin about him as he falls, glittering needles shattering in front of his face. Snow swirls into his eyes. A sudden rush of wind knocks the breath out of him.

  He feels pressure on his back and legs. Ribs ache. He didn’t fall too far. That probably saved his life. He is pinned, not by ice but by several feet of snow. When the temperature warms and the snow melts a bit, he’ll be able to move. Nothing, he thinks, is broken except one of his bicuspids, upper right. He can wiggle it with his tongue.

  Stupid, trying to climb pure snow.

  His backpack lies within reach of his left hand. The horse has wandered off a few yards.

  His watch shattered in the fall, but he figures someone’s looking for him by now. A light snow has begun—the first in days. If it turns heavy, his tracks will be obscured.

  He twitches the muscles in his legs and toes. He can still feel his extremities. The snow is getting heavier.

  His tooth aches. He wiggles it, spits blood. His gum throbs—pain in the back of his neck, at the top of his head. He presses the tooth with his tongue, trying to stop the throbbing. The tooth comes loose and he spits it onto the snow.

  The discomfort comes from not moving. The snow is actually warm, much warmer than the wind. He doesn’t know how long it takes to get frostbite.

  They won’t come after him until the snow lets up.

  He digs a shallow hole beneath his head, shoves the backpack in it, and rests his cheek against the cloth. He can feel the circulation in his head.

  The main thing is not to straggle. Stay calm, wait for a bit of clearing. Move only enough to stay warm.

  He remembers hearing that polar bears have a nictitating membrane in their eyes, to wipe the slush away. His own eyes sting. He can barely see his hands.

  For an hour or so the blizzard clears. It’s warmer—the snow on his back breaks up a bit. He moves slowly, deliberately. If he overexerts, he’ll start to sweat and his clothing will grow damp.

  Soon the snow begins again, visibility is reduced once more. Still, he doesn’t rush. Dimly, he sees his horse lie down in the snow.

  Assuming the blizzard continues, what method will his colleagues use to find him? Rescue systems are well coordinated in resort areas and major scientific outposts; though Comtex has not yet made a commitment here, surely the engineers came equipped.

  A device to trace his heartbeat (would it be muffled by snow?) or detect his body heat. No—the snow he upset when he fell is thick, temperature will vary wildly from mound to mound.

  X-ray fluorescence? Radar?

  In the seventeenth century rescuers set bowls of water on the rubble after an avalanche. In the water floated pieces of bread. Wherever the bread “pointed” the rescuers dug for victims.

  The wind howls like air inside a shell.

  He reaches into his backpack. A geologist’s pick. The Philosophy of Hegel. An extra pair of drumsticks.

  Whatever possessed him to pack these things? He longs for warm sand, tropical fruit. Coconuts, bananas, berries. The cold, sharp pang of juice.

  A man springs, fully clothed, from the snow where Adams spit the tooth. The tooth is gone. The man looks at Adams, picks up the backpack, walks away, pausing only to pat the freezing horse’s nose.

  Stop this.

  He’s hungry. He’s hallucinating.

  If he could send a new self into the world, how would he act? Take Carol home? Fight for his kids? Would he be a smarter man, stronger, more articulate than the one beneath the snow?

  Both his arms are free. He can move his legs. Sore but intact. He feels the pack beneath his cheek. For some reason he thought he’d lost it.

  He digs with the pick and the drumsticks—9A, thin, not much good in the snow. If only his hands were bigger. The snow is starting to harden, but he’s got room to wiggle.

  A half hour later he’s free.

  Standing unsheltered in the wind, he shivers. He tries to build a shelter of ice, but this proves ineffective. He can already feel the effects of hypothermia.

  The horse lies in the snow like something dropped from the sky. Not quite dead. Adams huddles near it for its body heat, but the temperature continues to drop.

  Without thinking, he lifts a heavy chunk of ice from the avalanche pile and brings it down on the horse’s skull. With his pick he slices the belly, hollows out a space inside, removing the internal organs. They are slippery, bilious, gray. He is nauseated, but his stomach is empty. He takes a deep breath and crawls inside.

  He can only stand lying inside the horse for a period of, he guesses, one hour. Then the smell gets to him and he has to crawl outside. His clothes are damp with snow and blood, the wind eats through him.

  He sits beside the dead animal, smelling of shit, clots of hair, bone, and blood. He rubs his face, balls of hard flesh stick to his lips. He opens his mouth, the crumbs fall onto his tongue; slowly he chew
s. The animal creaks like an old chair whenever he lifts the stiff flap of ribs and hair, icy now, to crawl in or out.

  From time to time he hears sounds. Looks around. Shouts.

  He’s afraid to sleep. His legs are numb. He stumbles out of the horse, walks a few steps to keep the blood moving, drinks water from a piece of ice, curls up again inside the horse.

  To stay awake he thinks of Pamela and the kids. Deidre, naked in the tub; Toby, naked on the floor of his room, doing sit-ups; Pamela, naked in his arms.

  Why are they all naked?

  His body has grown too stiff inside the horse. He crawls out and walks around, vigorously rubs his legs.

  He can’t find his tooth in the snow. It has become a man and walked back to camp. They won’t come looking for him now.

  The horse’s body is losing its heat. Soon it will be a rock, frozen.

  His cheek stings. He has fallen asleep on the ice. No snow. No wind. A rapidly clearing night sky. He pulls himself up, grabs his pack. He pauses, wondering what to do with the horse. He doesn’t have the strength.

  His lips are chapped. He licks them, feels a gap in his gum. Did he lose a tooth?

  His muscles relax as he walks. Feeling returns to his feet and hands.

  He imagines Carol, or tries to. He cannot picture her. He has forgotten what she looks like. Without touching his face he tries to recall his own features. High cheekbones, short nose, thick head of hair. Is that right? Yes, yes, his fingers confirm it. His skin is cold, like bone itself.

  His jaw aches. He’s hungry. He dreams of steak and wine, but his stomach constricts and he falls to the snow, heaving.

  The rule is, Stay where you are until they find you. Too late for that. But the polestar’s clear. He’s sure of his direction.