Antarctica

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  “No. I think I can make it there.”

  “Okay. How about another dinner, though.”

  “Fine. Sounds good.”

  And this time he wolfed down a whole pot of stew. A very quick adjustment, Val thought as she repacked the gear.

  The S-375 camp consisted of four colorful small dome tents surrounding two Scott tents, which were tall four-sided pyramids of heavy canvas, looking archaic in the early twilight; one was lit from within like a yellow lantern, and wisps of steam escaped the tubular vent at its top. As they approached this one Val called out, “Hello in there!”

  They were expected, so the shouts from inside were not surprised: “Come in!” “Come in!” “But take your boots off first, it’ll be crowded in here!”

  It was. Even with their boots off they were bulky in their parkas, but the men inside were shifting around while they pulled them off, and Wade wedged into a corner while Val dropped into the gap between Misha, the group’s mountaineer, and the Coleman stove. Both burners were alight under big pots of water, and the heat felt good against her side. Wade would be crushed in his corner, bent forward like a tailor, but that would be his first lesson in the ergonomics of a Scott tent. One of the main reasons Scott’s group had perished, in Val’s opinion, was that their Scott tent was designed for four people and a stove, and not five. This one was bigger, but six was still more than it could accommodate comfortably, and it was crowded, stuffy, even hot; still, after the frigid barren expanse of the darkening valley, a very welcome refuge.

  “Leave the door open for a bit,” the man on the other side of the stove said. He was bearded, and perhaps twenty years the senior of the other men in the tent; no doubt the P.I. that Wade had come to see: Dr. Geoffrey Michelson, a British veteran of over forty years of Antarctic geology, who had taught in the States for almost that long. Introductions were made: Michelson’s team consisted of a younger colleague from UCLA, Harry Stanton; a Kiwi glaciologist named Graham Forbes; and Misha Kaminski, with whom Val had worked on some memorable SARs. It was quite a melange of accents, and Val noticed for the first time the touch of Virginia in Wade’s speech as he said Hi to the others. He and Val were offered mugs of Drambuie, the traditional liquor of the Antarctic Kiwis, and they both accepted gratefully. Val’s feet were throbbing, and she imagined Wade’s were worse, though he had never complained about anything. And the day’s hike had totaled almost thirty kilometers.

  “Where are you off to next?” Misha asked Val.

  “Footsteps of Amundsen,” she said.

  “Dogtracks of Amundsen, you should say!”

  “True. But we’ll pull a sledge, as usual.”

  “That’s so crazy. These people come down here and pull a sled across the ice cap for a month—”

  “Six weeks.”

  “—when they could be climbing in the Asgaards, or wherever, somewhere really spectacular. And all because someone did it a century ago.”

  “History buffs,” Michelson suggested.

  “Fools! People who are in love with ideas rather than real places.” Misha was an Australian who had grown up in Switzerland with Polish parents, and his accent was an odd mix of Aussie and Central Europe.

  “It’s a fun trip,” Val said. But they only laughed.

  “What about you?” Michelson asked Wade. “What brings you to our special Site of Special Scientific Interest?”

  “Well,” Wade said. “I’m down to look into this situation with the African oil exploration that’s going on, among other things. I work for Senator Phil Chase from California, and he’s gotten interested. So, I’m curious to know just how—how realistic these people’s expectations of hitting oil are.”

  “Not my field,” Michelson said.

  “No,” Wade conceded.

  Val saw that he was thinking hard how to gain the older man’s confidence.

  “But I was told by Sylvia that you know more about the Transantarctics than, than most people, and that you might be able to tell me something about the geological situation.”

  “Yes, I know about the Transantarctics, but there’s no oil there. That’s not where they’re drilling. They’re out on the polar plateau, from what I understand.”

  “Yes, but near the mountains?”

  “Two hundred kilometers away.”

  “Yes … but I thought you might be able to, to extrapolate out—to tell me what you think about the likelihood of oil. Your contention is that East Antarctica had no ice sheet in the past, isn’t that right?”

  “Well, but we are studying the Pliocene, about three million years ago. The oil, if there is any, would have been formed a couple hundred million years before that.”

  “Ah. So it was warmer down here then?”

  “Indeed it was, although at that time Antarctica was not down here, but up nearer the equator. Part of Gondwana.”

  “Ah!”

  Wade was being toyed with, and he knew it, Val judged. But he was keeping his cool, going along with it, playing the game. A quick learning curve must have been a necessary job skill, after all. “So oil deposits might have been established then, when it was up near the equator?”

  “Possibly. Yes, almost certainly. One sees coal deposits right on the surface in parts of the Prince Charles Mountains—”

  “Giant coal deposits,” Misha interjected.

  “And so oil is quite likely. The Wilkes Basin, under the ice cap on the other side of the Transantarctics, is a possibility, certainly.”

  “Out where this southern group is looking?”

  “Well, up until now there has been no one looking out there, because it is forbidden by the Antarctic Treaty. Most of the oil assessment for the continent has been done by matching up the Antarctic craton with the continents it abutted when it was part of Gondwana, and going by analogy to those places. But there have been seismic tests done to try to determine other things, and no doubt some tests might have given people clues about where to look harder.”

  “Why have they started now, do you think?”

  Under his moustache a little smile tugged up the corners of Michelson’s mouth. “That’s for you to explain to us, right?”

  “They want oil,” Misha said with a grin, and the others laughed.

  Wade nodded, smiling easily. “So it may be there.”

  “It may very well be. I don’t think they know yet.”

  “But it’s not, you know—unlikely.”

  “No no. Given the coal deposits, and the continent’s position in the Triassic, it’s more likely than not to be somewhere down here.”

  “What about recovering it from under the ice cap?”

  “It should be like ocean drilling, eh?”

  “Except the ice cap is moving,” Graham said. He was washing dishes in a big bowl of steaming water, and listening to the conversation; but he was not the kind to add much to it, except when a point being overlooked forced him to say something.

  “True. Their drilling holes would have to become slots over time, I suppose. Or they might be drilling in stable areas of the ice sheet.”

  “In the lee of nunataks,” Graham suggested.

  “What about transporting the oil out?” Wade asked.

  They all looked at each other. “Pipeline, eh?” Michelson said.

  “So there would be the danger of a spill.”

  “Yes. As in Alaska. Which didn’t stop people there, as I recall.”

  “No. But a spill on the ice plateau …”

  “Messy. But perhaps they could use these bacteria that have been developed for cleaning spills on water. They eat the oil, die and are blown away. Or so the drilling cartel will claim, I’m sure.”

  Michelson leaned over and picked up the Drambuie bottle, offered it to them. “More Drambers? You’ve had a long walk. How about a midnight snack? Chocolate bars?” He indicated a box which held perhaps a gross of wrapped chocolate bars. “Camp crackers?”

  “Just the Drambers, thanks,” Val said. Wade nodded his agreement; the
n tried one of the camp crackers.

  “What about shipping the oil out?” Wade asked.

  “Tankers.”

  “Dangerous?”

  “They ship a big load of oil down to McMurdo every summer.”

  “But if there was an accident, like the Exxon Valdez …”

  “Very messy. The Bahia dumped a big load of oil off the peninsula some decades back, and it was years and years before the coast cleaned itself. It did, however, eventually. The environment is pretty good with oil, if you take the long view.”

  “And add bacteria,” Misha said.

  “Yes, those bacteria.”

  Wade said, “We’ve heard rumors that the next generation of tankers might be submarines. Remotely operated submarines, with no crew on board.”

  “Probably safer than staying on the surface, at least in this ocean.”

  “Probably safer than sailing with sailors,” Misha noted.

  Wade nodded, watching them all closely. Val felt herself getting drowsy in the warmth of the tent, but Wade showed no signs of it. “What about your work here?” he asked.

  The geologists looked at each other.

  “Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” Michelson suggested. “It’s after midnight, and everyone is tired. Come out with us tomorrow to one of our field sites, and we’ll show you what we’re up to out here in this bitter wilderness.” And he sipped his Drambuie with a little smile.

  Outside the Scott tent the midnight sun was blinding, and the cold like a hard pinch all over. Wade’s eyes spilled tears, and the details of getting on his sunglasses while wearing mittens occupied him through the first gasps of adjustment to the cold. He followed Val to their packs, his stiff legs aching with every move, and watched as she pulled a tent and tent poles from her backpack. “Help me get this up,” she said. So he crouched and held down a corner of the tent while she clipped a maze of poles to its exterior. “Nice tent,” he offered, beginning to shiver. It felt like the tears were freezing to his cheeks.

  “Not bad. Light, anyway. One of the monster winds off the plateau will tear it to pieces, though.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yeah. I’ve been in them when they come apart. Very loud. Here, tie the ties around rocks. Big rocks, no, like this one.”

  “What did you do?”

  “When? Oh. Well, once when it happened we had a helo. Those are really cold though, the metal sucks the heat right out of you. Then the other times there have been Scott tents to retreat into.”

  “Those are stronger?”

  “Oh yeah. Bombproof, as long as you set them right. Here, throw the sleeping bags in to me.”

  Wade pulled bulky but light sleeping bags out of their stuff sacks and tossed them in to her, realizing for the first time that they would be sharing a tent.

  “Now the pads.”

  “The what?”

  “The sleeping pads. In the long red sacks.”

  “Ah.” These too were very light. “All this gear is so light.”

  “Yes. The new aerogels are fantastic. Here, blow it up.”

  “It’s an air mattress?”

  “Not exactly, it’s like a Thermarest. An air and foam combination, but in these the foam is incredibly light.”

  “Why not just an air mattress, wouldn’t that be even lighter?”

  “Yeah, but air mattresses are as cold as helicopters. They’re always just as cold as if you were sleeping on the ground, or even colder—the ground you could maybe warm up a little with your body, but the air in an air mattress keeps moving around and sucking the warmth away from you. The coldest I’ve ever been was on an air mattress my dad bought for us when I was a girl. I ended up sleeping on my pillow. Okay, all ready in here, come on in.”

  “Ah, I guess I’ll use my pee bottle one last time first.”

  “Good idea. I’ll do the same in here.”

  Wade thought about that for a bit as he walked a few feet away and tried to pee; those images and the cold impeded him a bit. To distract himself he looked at the brilliant white glacier pouring down from the head of the valley. It was the middle of the night, and yet the mass of ice was glowing in the sunlight like an intrusion from some brighter dimension.

  When he was done he regarded dubiously the yellow fluid in the plastic bottle. Apparently he was dehydrated. Then he got on his knees at the tent entrance and crawled inside. Val was already in her bag, apparently fully clothed except for her parka, which rested on her boots and served her as a pillow. It was brilliantly lit inside the tent, everything tinted the yellow of the nylon: Val’s blue eyes looked green, and her blond hair was as luminous as the glacier outside. Wade hauled off his bunny boots, feeling the white rubber flex in his hands. They had been surprisingly comfortable on the hike in, and quite warm. It was too cold for his socks to be smelly; nothing smelled at all down here, except the steaming food in the Scott tent. He lay down in his bag and closed his eyes. It was like trying to sleep with your face six inches from the headlights of a car. “How do you sleep when it’s this bright?”

  “You get used to it.”

  “Nobody uses those black sleep goggles that people wear on planes?”

  “I’ve never seen anyone do it. Not a bad idea, though. Especially if you’re on ice or snow. Then it’s a lot brighter than this.”

  Her voice was drowsy. The idea of sharing a tent with a strange man was obviously not of concern to her. Done it a thousand times. Already asleep, it appeared.

  And soon after that, so was he.

  He woke and it was still light. He had no idea what time it was. He checked his watch: 7:04 A.M. Val was not in her bag; it lay pulled down toward the door, a suggestively Val-shaped hole still in it.

  He took his boots from under his head and put them on; then, as he was quickly chilling, his parka. He rolled forward with a stiff groan, and crawled out into the brilliant frigid morning. The sun was standing over a different ridge, no doubt the east ridge; he had given up trying to orient himself in McMurdo, but out here it might be possible, if you stayed put long enough. He needed to use his pee bottle again, and there was a rock outhouse up the hill, away from the white surface of the lake. Yellow hair shone over its top rocks. He looked away, down at the lake. It was cold, but in his parka he felt comfortable. Hungry, however. Very hungry.

  He joined the group, which had already reconvened in the Scott tent, and they ate oatmeal and crackers and chocolate bars hastily, as if oppressed by the very same crowded tent that twelve hours earlier had been such a comfy refuge. Then it was outside again, where they occupied themselves filling backpacks, and taking turns up at the rock outhouse.

  “Can I carry anything?” Wade asked Professor Michelson.

  “No, thank you. But bring your pack, and you can help carry samples on the way back.”

  Val and Misha took off ahead of the scientists, who followed them up the valley. Distant red dots, bobbing in the rock rubble under the white mass of the glacier.

  “Why are the Dry Valleys dry?” Wade asked Michelson as they hiked along.

  “It’s not entirely understood. But people usually agree that the mountains at the heads of these valleys are so high that they choke off the ice sliding down from the polar cap. In places some ice spills over, but the winds ablate the ice faster than it pours through the passes, and so you have the hanging glaciers you see—” gesturing ahead “—steep-sided because of the ablation, and fairly static in position. At least they have been since their discovery. Now, however …”

  “The global warming?”

  “Well, yes. There’s no doubt the climate has warmed in the last century, because of carbon dioxide that we’ve put in the atmosphere.”

  Wade nodded sharply, intending to say that this was a fact known even to Washington bureaucrats.

  “Yes yes,” Michelson acknowledged, “you know about that. But the effects of this warming on Antarctica aren’t entirely clear. At first, you see, the warming increases precipitation down here, in the for
m of more snow, it not being so warm as to rain. And so the ice caps and the glaciers and the sea ice actually tend to grow. At least that is one force involved. So the Dry Valleys could be iced over again, as they have been before, if that were the only thing going on. In fact this snow you see on the ground here—this would have been very unusual at this time of year, thirty years ago. Now the valleys are snowy more often than they’re bare, and they’re never less than piebald, if you see what I mean. Which is no help at all to people trying to study them.”

  “What about the big ice shelves breaking off?”

  “Well, those turned out to be very sensitive to slight temperature increases. They’ve broken off because of their own dynamic with the ocean temperatures and currents, or so we think. Then as they detach and float off north, the ice coming down from the polar cap has nothing to slow it down, and so there are the immense ice tongues that we’re seeing, and very fast ice streams and glaciers, and even a slight sinking of the polar cap itself, if the Ohio State people’s results are correct. But with more snow up there as well, it’s hard to know what the upshot will be.”

  Wade nodded again, more agreeably. Establishing the ground of understanding with experts who were explaining things to him was his responsibility; nod too often, and the expert was likely to give up entirely; but in the absence of any sign of response, some of them would begin to explain everything. Michelson appeared to have a tendency in the latter direction, so Wade said, “But if global warming takes things up to the point where it’s above freezing down here for periods every summer?”

  “Well, then things start melting.”

  “Uh huh …”

  “And with the ice shelves already substantially gone, and the ice streams, which are like ice rivers within the West Antarctic ice sheet, speeding up—then the ice sheets themselves will begin to detach. The western Antarctic ice sheet is grounded on land that is well below sea level, so it comes off very quickly. The eastern sheet is much larger, and more of it is grounded above sea level, so it will hold longer, but still, the warmer it gets the faster it will go, more precipitation or not. And if the eastern sheet goes, then sea level will be some sixty to seventy meters higher than it is now.”