�Pshaw! Nothing to fear from that quarter,� Sinclair said, even though Fitzroy had been demanding satisfaction ever since he'd been thrown through the brothel window. �What would you say to some cold meats, cheeses, and a much finer port than anything Frenchie's club could provide?�
Eleanor didn't know what to say�events were galloping on again, with her barely clinging to the reins.
When no one lodged an objection, Rutherford declared it a fine idea and rapped hard with his knuckles on the trap behind his head.
When it opened, and the coachman's head leaned down, Rutherford said, �Pall Mall�the Longchamps Club.�
The coachman nodded, the trap was closed, and the carriage wheels rattled loudly over a wooden bridge.
Eleanor, her shoulder pressed close against that of Lieutenant Copley sat back on the plush seat and wondered how this marvelous dream might end.
���
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
December 7, 8 a.m.
THE FIRST THING IN THE MORNING,
as soon as he was dressed and before he'd even had his coffee, Michael checked on his baby skua, whom he'd named Ollie, after another unfortunate orphan, Oliver Twist.
It hadn't been easy deciding what to do with him (or her, as there was really no easy way to determine its gender at that point). But adult skuas were devious birds, and had a nasty way of preying on the weak�he'd seen a pair of them work to distract a penguin mother from her brood, just long enough for one of them to snap up a chick, drag it away, and rip it, screeching, limb from limb. They just might do the same with Ollie if the bird didn't grow a bit and get its wings.
But after consultation with several of the others at the base, including Darryl, Charlotte, and the two glaciologists Betty and Tina, it was decided that the best place for Ollie was in a protected environment, but still somewhere outdoors.
�If you raise him in here, he'll never be able to fend for himself,�
Betty had said, and Tina had vigorously agreed. To Michael, with their blond hair braided into coils atop their heads, they looked like a pair of Valkyries.
�But if you kept him in the core bin behind our lab,� Tina had suggested, �he could have the best of both worlds.�
The core bin was a rough enclosure behind the glaciology module, where the ice cylinders that they had not yet had time to cut up and analyze were stacked like logs on a graduated metal rack.
�I just unloaded a crate of frozen plasma,� Charlotte said, �and we could use the empty box to give the little guy some cover.�
It was sounding more and more like a grammar-school class working together on a biology project.
Charlotte retrieved the crate and they tucked it into a corner of the enclosure, then Darryl went next door and brought back some dried herring strips he used to feed his own living menagerie. Even though he�she?�was clearly starving, the baby bird didn't immediately take the food. He seemed to be waiting for the bigger bird to descend from somewhere and peck him away. He'd already been programmed, as it were, to die.
�I think we're all standing too close,� Darryl said, and Charlotte agreed.
�Just leave the strips near the crate, and let's go in,� she said, with a shiver.
They had all gone back to their separate rooms, fallen into the uneasy sleep of people with no day or night to mark their time, and in the morning Michael had immediately gone to check on his ward.
The herring strips were gone, but had Ollie been the one to eat them? Looking around the frozen ground, where wisps of snow skidded around like wispy white feathers, he couldn't see Ollie either. He lifted his dark green eyeshades away from his face, knelt down, and peered into the back of the crate. Charlotte had left some of the wood shavings, used to cushion the plasma bags, inside the box, but snow and ice had already blown into it, too. He was just about to give up when he saw something black and shiny as a pebble tucked into the far corner. It was the bird's tiny unblinking eye, and now that he looked more carefully, he could make out the tiny gray-and-white fluff ball of its body. Curled up, the bird looked like a dirty snowball.
�Morning, Ollie.�
The bird stared at him, with neither fear nor recognition of any kind.
�You like the herring?�
Not surprisingly, Michael got no reply. He took out of his pocket two strips of bacon that he'd smuggled out of the kitchen on his way to the core bin. �I hope you're not keeping kosher,� he said, leaving the bacon just inside the crate. He saw Ollie's eyes flick, for just an instant, to the food. Then Michael stood up and headed back to the commons for his own breakfast. It was dive day, and he knew it would be important to fuel up before taking what the grunts and beakers alike referred to as �the polar plunge.�
Darryl was already halfway through a stack of blueberry pancakes, smothered in maple syrup, and a pile of veggie sausages, when Michael sat down. Lawson was sitting across the table. Contrary to any fears Hirsch might have had, his vegetarian status had done nothing to undermine him among even the grunts. In fact, nobody had turned a hair. As Michael had quickly learned, eccentricities of any sort were as common in the Antarctic, and as blithely accepted, as penguins squawking. People came to pole�Michael always had to remind himself to say it that way�to do their own thing. In the real world, they'd already been cast as loners, oddballs, and kooks, only down here nobody cared. Everybody had his own quirks to deal with, and being a vegetarian didn't even rate on that scale.
�The first year that you come down here,� Lawson confided, speaking for the government personnel, �you do it for the experience.�
Michael could buy that.
�The second year,� he went on, �you do it for the money.�
�And the third year,� he said, grinning, �you do it because you're no longer fit for anything else.�
There was some uneasy laughter, except for one of the grunts, Franklin, the ragtime piano player, who swiveled toward them and said, �Five years, man, I've come down here for five years in a row. What the hell's that make me?�
�Beyond repair,� Lawson said, and they all laughed, including Franklin. The put-down was the lingua franca of base life.
After powering through his own breakfast, though with a lot less
coffee than usual��You really don't want to have to pee once you get into a dry suit,� Lawson had advised him�Michael went back to collect his camera gear. He sealed up his Olympus D-220L in its watertight Ikelite housing, made sure it had a brand-new battery, and said a silent prayer to the god of technical fuckups. Hundreds of feet under the polar ice cap was no place for even a minor glitch to crop up.
Like just about anything in the Antarctic, a dive was a complicated production. The day before, Murphy had sent a work crew out onto the ice with a huge auger, mounted on the back of a tracked vehicle, to bore two holes through the ice. The first hole, which would be covered by the rudimentary dive hut, was the hole the divers would use to get in and out of the water. The second hole, maybe fifty yards away, was the safety hole, just in case anything from shifting ice to aggressive Weddell seals made the first one temporarily inoperable. (Weddell seals could get very territorial about a nicely drilled breathing hole.)
Murphy also insisted, den mother that he was, that anyone diving get a once-over from Dr. Barnes first. Michael had to prop himself up on the edge of her examining table, let her examine his throat and nasal passages, clear out his ears, take his blood pressure. It was odd, having to let someone whom he'd come to regard as simply a friend treat him suddenly in a professional capacity. He just hoped she wouldn't have to give him the hernia test, by holding his testicles and having him cough.
She didn't. Nor did she seem the least bit uncomfortable in this different role. Charlotte, he discovered, could put on the dispassionate face of the physician and go about her duties in a purely clinical manner. Not that it stopped her, when the exam was done and she had declared him fit as a fiddle, from asking, �You sure you want to do this?�
�Absolutely.�
She was taking her stethoscope off and slipping it into a drawer. �Going under that ice, in a face mask and all that gear � you don't have any claustrophobia?�
From something in her voice, he suddenly had the thought that she was talking about herself, not him.
�No. Do you?�
She tilted her head to one side, without looking him in the eye, and he thought back to the snow-school night, when they had had to sleep in the hand-carved domes.
�How'd you make it through the igloo training?� he asked.
�Darryl didn't tell you?�
�Tell me what?�
�That boy
can
keep a secret,� she said appreciatively. �I never did go inside.�
Michael was puzzled. �Tell me, please, that you did
not
go back to camp, by yourself.� He was appalled at the thought of such recklessness.
�Nope. I slept in eighteen layers, inside the sleeping bag, with just my feet inside the tunnel. I was afraid if I wedged any more of me in there, Darryl might suffocate inside.�
Once he knew about her phobia, and how she'd toughed it out without ever letting on, he admired her even more.
And Darryl, too, for being able to keep her secret.
�I'll be on the walkie-talkie all day,� Charlotte said, �if you need anything out there.�
He expected no less.
�Now you and Darryl be careful, and watch what you're doing. And don't you let Darryl boss you around too much.�
�I'll tell him you said so.� Then he started piling on all the outdoor gear again and left the infirmary for the dive site.
To get there, he had to board a Spryte�a humble cross between a tractor and a Hummer, which in turn dragged a Nansen sledge weighted down with some of the extra diving equipment. Darryl sat beside him, looking like a kid on his way to Disneyland. Their caravan made slow progress on the ice, and it was about ten minutes before Michael saw the prefab dive hut, built along the lines of a garden shed, sitting out in the middle of nowhere, with a black-and-white flag flying. The hut itself was an improbable pink, like a pale summer rose, and a couple of the base personnel were piling up fresh snow all around its foundation to keep out any wind; its floor actually rested on cinder blocks a foot or so above the ice.
Darryl craned his neck out the side of the Spryte as they approached, and his fingers drummed nervously on his knees. They
would have to undress, then suit up for the dive inside the hut, because once you were encased in all the waterproof gear, you would pretty much suffocate from the heat unless you were quickly able to immerse yourself in the ocean; the open water itself, regardless of the depth or season, kept to a fairly steady 33 degrees Fahrenheit.
It looked like Franklin, whose handlebar moustache was all you could see poking out from under the furry hood, who waved them to a halt.
�Nice day for a swim,� he said, jerking open the cranky door of the Spryte. Darryl tumbled out first, slipping on the slick ice, and Michael followed, as Franklin started to off-load some of the gear from the sledge. They went straight into the hut, which felt like walking into a kiln after being outside. Space heaters were mounted on metal brackets, and an impressive rack of gear hung from cluttered racks along all four walls.
But most noticeable was the round hole, maybe six feet in diameter, sitting like a big Jacuzzi in the center of the floor. A steel grid had been placed over its top to prevent any accidental or premature entries, but Michael couldn't help but gaze down into it, into the deep blue water, frazzled with shimmering ice platelets, that awaited him below.
Calloway, a wry fellow with a pronounced Australian accent, said, �G'day mates, I'll be your divemaster for today's activities.� From what Michael had heard from Lawson and others, Calloway wasn't really an Aussie, but had adopted the persona as a ploy to get girls, many years ago, and somewhere along the way had forgotten to give it up. �Now, let's strip down to our skivvies and get started. There's a lot to do.�
That turned out to be the understatement of the year; Michael had dived many times before, and was used to the lengthy process of suiting up, but this outdid anything he'd ever been through before. Under Calloway's expert instruction, he and Darryl first put on expedition-weight polypro long underwear, and over that a Po-lartec thermal jumpsuit. On their feet, they wore the U.S. Antarctic program's own issue socks, and Thinsulate nylon shell booties. Darryl, at that point, looked suspiciously like a red-haired elf.
Calloway next handed them each a light purple dry-suit undergarment to haul on over all the underclothes.