The Kingmaker

by Ryan, Kennedy

  Winter will be setting in, and the long Antarctic night is coming. There will be times when it’s so cold, breathing outside for any amount of time would make the lungs hemorrhage. We’re relatively safe as long as nothing goes wrong. That sounds self-evident, but we’re on our own until summer. No one can get to us, and we can’t get out. We have a doctor in our group, but his medical reach is relatively limited. We are past the PSR—point of safe return.

  Grim walks up to join us, wrapped in the extreme cold-weather wear uniform we all sport. He has one of those faces that never tells you anything until he’s royally pissed over something stupid you’ve done. His face is like the rest of him—stern and austere. He doesn’t say much, but there’s no one I’d rather have at my back if things ever go to hell.

  “Men shut their doors against a setting sun,” he mutters, gazing unflinchingly at the last rays illuminating the sky.

  “Shakespeare?” Peggy asks, brows lifting. “You’re a hard man to figure out, Grim.”

  “Don’t try,” I advise her. “It’s like banging your hand against a brick wall.”

  Grim grunts and takes the lid off the thermos he’s holding. He flings his arm out, tossing water over the side. The liquid literally crystallizes in the frigid air, turning to ice and falling to the ground in frozen spikes.

  “This is the most amazing place on Earth,” Grim says, the closest thing to wonder I’ve ever seen on his face as he watches the sun’s swan dance. “Like living on another planet.”

  He’s right. The perfectly flat, lifeless plateau appears so starkly white you forget color. The quiet rests in a well so deep you don’t remember sound. And the loneliness some days grows so thick, it’s impenetrable and you forget how it feels to be touched.

  Those are the times I think of Lennix most. Of how she’s moving on with her life. It’s May. She’s graduated and is probably on the campaign trail for Mr. Nighthorse. She’s a launched missile now, deployed and doing what she was created to do. Maybe she’s met someone. Kissed someone else since me. Slept in someone else’s bed. I cage a growl behind the bars of my teeth. The thought of someone else touching, having Nix . . .

  “Doctor Larnyard was looking for you, Kingsman,” Grim says, slanting me a wry look. “Man doesn’t take two steps without consulting you.”

  I nod and start toward the stairs that will take me back inside. I allow myself one last glimpse at the final sunset.

  It’s spring in the States. Flowers and sunshine and lengthening days. For some reason, I think of the map I sketched in Lennix’s hands. In the span of her palms, we were separated by only inches. On the scale of real life, we’re separated by thousands of miles, by epochs. And with the austral winter swallowing up all the light, I’m not sure how or if I can find my way back to her.

  26

  Lennix

  “These numbers look good,” Jim says, tracking the columns of data with one finger. “Your plan’s working, Lennix.”

  “Well instead of trying to get all the people we can’t convince to vote for you,” I say with a broad smile, “we’re building a coalition of all the people who have every reason to vote for you. We need every black and brown vote, the woman vote, the gay vote. If they’re marginalized in any way, they need to know you’ll be their voice, but they have to put you in power before you can speak for them. That’s our message and we just keep saying it.”

  “Nice,” Mena says from the couch, her long legs folded under her. “Are you the speechwriter now, too?”

  I shake my head, smiling and poking at the cold pizza boxed on Jim’s desk. The team often teases me about all the hats I wear on the campaign team. Truth is, turns out I’m damn good at politics. I feel like one of those infants people toss in the water, and they just start swimming. It all feels intuitive; people and their needs make sense to me, and politics should be about meeting the needs of people.

  “Hey,” Portia, the campaign finance director, says from the doorway to Jim’s office. “The sheriff’s out here and needs to speak with you, Jim.”

  “Maybe he’s interested in that town hall on the MMIW issue we proposed,” Mena says, eyes alert.

  “You may be right.” Jim re-knots the tie he loosened hours ago and drops a tender kiss on top of Mena’s head when he passes on his way out of the office.

  Well alright now!

  I wait until the door closes behind him before springing into squealing action.

  “Oh, my God!” I throw myself onto the sofa beside her. “What was that all about?”

  She presses her lips together, fighting a smile. She’s not fooling me.

  “Auntie, out with it. You and Jim? Tell me everything.”

  “Lenn, don’t be silly. We’re just friends.”

  “Yeah, he and I are ‘friends,’ too, but he’s never kissed my head like that. I haven’t seen him kiss anyone’s head like that.”

  An irrepressible light enters Mena’s eyes and her smile isn’t far behind. “Okay. We’ve gone out a few times.”

  “How have you managed to keep it a secret? This campaign is so tightly knit, I gain five pounds when anybody eats ice cream.”

  “We’ve been discreet, but I think it could lead to something serious.” She pauses, giving me a speculative look. “Speaking of something serious, have you heard from that guy you met in Amsterdam?”

  I swallow the knot thickening in my throat. “Who? Maxim?”

  “Right, him.” Mena studies my face. “He seemed like a great guy from what Kimba said.”

  I make a mental note to keep my auntie and best friend apart in the future. “You can’t believe a word she says.”

  “So he isn’t handsome, thoughtful, sexy and a PhD?”

  “Oh, yeah. He actually is all those things.” And more.

  “And?” she persists.

  “And . . . he’s in the wilds of Antarctica and I’m here.” I shrug and stretch out on the couch, laying my head in my godmother’s lap. “He told me from the beginning it would be just that week.”

  “But he left you a voice mail that kind of propped the door open, right?” she asks, brushing through my hair with her fingers.

  “Wow. Kimba is more thorough than I thought. Yeah. He said when he gets back, he’d like to talk and see where things could go. I’m not getting my hopes up.”

  “We need to talk about you and hope, young lady.”

  “Hope is hard.” I close my eyes to block out her persistent concern. “Hope hurts when it doesn’t deliver.”

  “I know you’re thinking about your mother, but—”

  “Don’t.” I sit up and push my hair back. “I don’t want to hear about how I’m still holding onto that. How I can’t open myself up to anyone because I’m afraid to fully feel.”

  I just fully felt with Maxim, and look where that got me. Probably nowhere but “deflowered” and with my heart cracked.

  “Sounds like I don’t have to tell you,” she says softly, “because you already know. You should see a counselor, honey. I told Rand when it happened years ago.”

  “I talked to someone . . .once.” I twist the hem of my shirt between my fingers and eye the door. As much as I love Mena, I want out of this conversation.

  “You were so young, and a situation like that—”

  “Auntie, please,” I groan. “Can we drop it?”

  She sighs, resignation on her pretty face, and nods. Jim comes back into the office, and his face is ashen, his mouth grim. As soon as he’s close enough, he reaches for Mena’s hand. She stands and presses into him, her anxious eyes fixed on his face. There is obviously more than just a “few dates” between them.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks.

  “The sheriff,” Jim says, shaking his head and closing his eyes briefly before opening them, meeting mine. “He had bad news.”

  “What kind of bad news?” I ask, but somehow I already know. Before he even says it, I know that hope has let me down again.

  “It’s Tammara,” he says hoars
ely, sorrow etched into the lines of his distinguished features. “They found her.”

  27

  Maxim

  I’ll never take the sun for granted again. We spent four months cloaked in darkness. Every day without the sun, it’s harder to lift your spirits. Depression, seasonal affective disorder, Vitamin C deficiency—whatever you want to blame or call it, it’s real. We ate the dark like nightshade, and it was poisonous. Melancholy with every meal. The weight of the endless night can suffocate you if you’re not careful. I know now why men have gone mad in the Antarctic. I understand the rigorous psychological testing for those who winter over. We aren’t built to live this way.

  Just as I’m sure I’ll lose my mind, one day, the faintest glow illuminates the horizon and we at least don’t need head torches to see and move around.

  “I’m counting the days to the peninsula,” Grim says over a hand of poker one night in September. “After all this snow, I’ll take the water for a few months.”

  “Not sure how open the waters will be,” Peggy says, chewing on a cigar she never actually smokes. “We’ll be contending with ice floes and another set of challenges.”

  “I need another set of challenges.” I fold my hand. “I’m kind of ready to go home.”

  “Tulip girl’s waiting for you?” Grim asks, his eyes briefly flashing the humor his mouth doesn’t allow.

  “Shut up, man.” I shake my head and slide my seat back, not in the mood to be teased about Lennix.

  “I’ve seen you looking at the pictures of her in the tulip garden,” he says, his voice serious. “She’s pretty.”

  “Pretty is the least of what she is, but she is that, too.”

  I miss my parents, my brother, and my family. But what I’m missing with Nix is more somehow. Even after only having a week with her, it’s more. For every time Grim has caught me looking at that photo on my phone, there’s a dozen times I’ve pulled it out he hasn’t seen.

  I’ll never regret this trip. It’s been good experience and our research is valuable, but even with the part I’m most excited about still ahead, getting outside this summer and exploring the peninsula, I’m ready to go home. The quiet, the scope of this place changes your perspective on life. And if there’s one thing I know about my life after this trip, it’s that I want Lennix Moon Hunter, however I can get her, in it.

  * * *

  Being on the water breathes new life into my passion for this Antarctic voyage. Living confined and in the dark with limited human contact for so long felt like my hope was packed under ice as tightly and surely as the pre-historic snow we collect.

  We worked ashore the last few days, which took an enormous amount of preparation. Bureaucratically, because the area is so closely guarded and managed that it takes a machete to cut through all the red tape. We received our approval to gather data mere days before reaching shore. Now that we’re off the peninsula, and our ship The Chrysalis is floating alongside an armada of glaciers, I feel as buoyant as the ice floes bobbing around us.

  “The landscape looks different every day,” David says from beside me, his forearms leaned on the ship’s railing.

  “That’s part of what makes it so unpredictable,” Grim adds. “Glad we got some good work in before conditions changed.”

  “The birds were my favorite part,” Peggy inserts with a laugh, chewing on her ever-present unlit cigar.

  She worked with our seabird specialist to get population counts for various species, which will be compared with previous data, helping to identify any potentially endangered populations. They’ve been able to perform a thorough penguin census and collect blubber from the seals in the area. We also gathered several mud samples that will be analyzed and hopefully give us information on how carbon may be trapped under ice.

  “I think Larnyard may wish he’d listened to you,” Grim says, hitching his chin toward the sky. “Look at those clouds.”

  I recommended we make camp on shore for a few days and spend some extra time collecting much-needed data since it had taken so much time and effort to even access the area. Dr. Larnyard had disagreed and wanted to get back on the water for the next leg of our expedition.

  Sailing through ice is a treacherous, exhilarating prospect. The Chrysalis is ice-capable, but no vessel guarantees safety if you clip a ’berg the wrong way or get trapped out on the water in one of the Antarctic’s volatile storms. The clouds looming over our ship promise storms. We’re hundreds of miles from shore, thousands of miles from civilization, and a hairsbreadth from catastrophe.

  “I don’t like what the sky’s telling us,” David says, his brows rouching over concerned eyes. “Iceblink.”

  There are only a few places in the world where the phenomenon of iceblink, glaring white near the horizon reflecting light from ice, is even possible. Antarctica is one of them. Polar explorers and sailors have been using iceblink to navigate arctic seas for centuries. In contrast, water sky projects open lanes of water onto the clouds, showing how to avoid hazardous ice floes that could lock up a ship for days or even weeks. Hell, for months.

  When I saw water sky, it was the first time I could articulate the exact color of Lennix’s eyes. Dark, stormy gray, and seeing far. Seeing things no one else did.

  “What I wouldn’t give for a water sky,” I say softly, only giving the situation half my focus. What I wouldn’t give to see her. To tell her I was a fool to think I could walk away from eyes like that.

  “Right,” Grim says, frowning at the gathering clouds. “We need open water. You see all this ice crowding around the ship?”

  He’s right. Even just an hour ago, our path was clear, but now tessellations of ice have interlocked around the ship, a tundra jigsaw puzzle that, if not navigated skillfully, could strand or even sink our ship. Beyond skill, we’ll need a lot of luck.

  That night, I fall into a dead slumber after all the work we’ve done over the last few days. It’s not a loud boom or crash that jolts me out of my sleep. It’s another sound that sends a shiver down my spine.

  Absolute silence.

  The engine of The Chrysalis is quiet. The steady throb that’s become so much a part of the ship’s environment is gone.

  David and Grim jerk up in their bunks, too, and we stare at each other for a few seconds absorbing the quiet together before, leaping out of bed and dragging on our sweats and down jackets.

  On the bridge, there’s a forced calm to the energy as the captain and crew study satellite feeds and maps. They say for every iceberg, the visible ice comprises only ten percent of the whole. The other ninety percent lies below the surface. That’s what this is. The ten percent the captain shows us is controlled, but an icy panic rules the atmosphere from beneath. Dr. Larnyard sits on a bench with his head buried in his hands.

  “What’s happening?” I ask Captain Rosteen, a former Australian naval officer who has negotiated this planet’s roughest seas for decades.

  “We’re locked in,” he answers, deep lines around his mouth and eyes showing distress from the typically unruffled Aussie. “Rudder’s blocked by ice.”

  “What’s that mean?” David asks.

  “Means we aren’t in control of this ship,” Grim says with a dark frown. “We got no steerage, right, Cap? The ice is steering us.”

  “Right.” Captain Rosteen gives a terse nod. “According to our satellite projections, a powerful storm’s coming, blowing westerly winds.” He pulls up an image on one of the radar screens.

  “What’s that big blue thing?” David asks.

  “An iceberg,” Dr. Larnyard answers, his voice muffled behind his hands. “It’s on the move and headed for us.”

  “Dammit!” I link my hands over the tensed muscles behind my neck. An iceberg of eighty thousand tons will easily break through the ice floes that have us trapped and crush our ship.

  “Should we evacuate?” Peggy asks. “We have enough lifeboats to get off before the ’berg hits.”

  “That storm that’s coming,” Captain R
osteen says, shaking his head. “Being caught in a lifeboat in the middle of that with no land for miles could be as much a death sentence as a sinking ship.”

  “We’ll call for help,” I say quickly. “Planes should be able to get in now that winter’s over.”

  “Already called,” the captain says. “They’ll try.”

  “They’ll try?” Grim asks, anger showing through on his usually impassive features. “What the hell do you mean they’ll try? We have sixty-five people on this ship, in addition to your crew. Students. Teachers. Women. They need to do more than fucking try, Cap.”

  “The closest team that could help is a Japanese ship that can only break through ice that’s three to four feet thick,” Captain Rosteen explains. “It’s impossible. Everything around us is at least twice that now.”

  “And the storm that’s closing in on us,” Dr. Larnyard says wearily. “It’s already all around. The visibility in the surrounding areas is too low for anyone to fly in safely.”

  Even as he says it, wind whistles violently beyond the porthole, rocking the ship. The Antarctic shows us what a capricious bitch she can be—placid one moment and violent vengeance the next. A thump jerks the ship dramatically.

  “Shit,” Captain Rosteen says, moving over to check the tilt meter. “Ship just went three degrees to the right.”

  He runs from the cabin and we follow. Dread sinks to my belly like an anchor dropped overboard. The wind, silent just hours before, wails high-pitched screams all around. Up on deck, the three degrees on the tilt meter is more obvious, setting the ship slightly askew. A cluster of ice floes jostling for position have formed a pointy steeple and pierced the side of the boat.