I was actually in a good mood that morning. I still had a life. The sky was pinking. The Cascades were turning from black to deep blue shadow, and we could see the glint of the cities along the Sound. The air was cold and so clean it washed you out, laundered your brain, and I could taste the top, we were so close. Clouds were building in the west, an approaching storm, but I thought we could beat it. I was ready to forgive Fat Boy anything if we could just finish and be done.
But then there was a shout and the party came to a jerking, unsteady halt, the students gasping gratefully for breath in the respite, confused calls running up and down the line.
I unroped and sidestepped down the snow, trying to find out what was the matter. Minutes ticking on. The sun approaching to the east. Overcast from the west. The summit waiting. We had a tight window. We had to summit and get down.
Of course, I knew what I'd find before I even got down to the last team. Fleming pointed in the light of the dimming moon and I followed the rope with my eye to where its end trailed on the snow like a dead snake, empty of anything.
He'd spoiled it, of course, for all the others.
He'd spoiled it for me.
Fat Boy had untied himself and was gone.
CHAPTER SIX
Lewis sniffed Abby Dixon's approach before he saw her. Not perfume. Her breath.
His new instruments at Clean Air alerted him. So sensitive was the carbon dioxide sampler at detecting changes in the surrounding atmosphere that the tracking pen jumped from the contribution of her lungs. Other meters logged the dying sunlight, chlorofluorocarbons that could attack the earth's ozone layer, ozone itself, and water vapor. It was like gaining new senses. He'd come back inside after a brisk thirty minutes of collecting snow samples and was still warming up in front of his machines when she stamped her boots in the vestibule by the door.
'Gearloose,' he greeted her.
'Rockhead,' she replied cheerfully, pulling off her parka.
'I'm thinking of a nickname a little less descriptive,' Lewis said. 'Vaguely heroic, perhaps. Like Stormwatcher. Skywalker.'
'It will never catch on.' She hung up her coat. 'Too nice.'
'Doesn't anyone have a flattering nickname?'
'Neutral is the best you can hope for.'
'How did the tradition get started?'
She plopped into a chair, shivering slightly as the tension of being in the cold outside was shed, her cheeks pink, her dark eyes bright. She seemed confident in this environment and he liked that. Her strength. Her energy. 'I don't know. The Navy, maybe. Or the parkas. When we're outdoors it's hard to tell who's who: Everyone looks like an orange traffic cone. So they came up with name tags, except people didn't like that- it felt like we were at a convention- so some put them upside down. Names seem part of the world we've left behind. So people got tagged for their occupations. And it evolved, in the perverse way things do around here. You have noticed how perverse this all is?'
'Wade Pulaski told me it's paradise.'
She laughed. 'Cueball would say that.'
'That's his nickname? He called this place Planet Cueball. I thought he was referring to the terrain, not his head.'
'Rod says he looks like Queequeg in Moby Dick. I'd go with Jesse Ventura, or an old Yul Brynner movie. He's actually ex-military, which he doesn't talk much about except to hint he was into some extreme stuff. Scuba, climbing, biting the heads off chickens. Whatever. Apparently he didn't fit into ordinary life very well so he came down here.'
'Odd alternative.'
'Better than winding up a mercenary in Angola. I guess you could say that about all of us.'
'The South Pole saved you from Angola?'
Abby smiled. 'The South Pole saved me from being ordinary.'
There was silence as he considered this. Of course.
'It's interesting I could detect your approach by your CO2,' Lewis finally said. He pointed to his sampler. 'It's like I have superpowers down here.'
'By the end of the winter you'll wonder if the instruments are an extension of you or if you're an extension of your instruments.'
The observation seemed to echo what Norse had said about machines. Had he made the same ramblings to her? 'To what do I owe this visit?'
'The official reason is that I wanted to check to make sure the broken computer is performing okay.'
'Wow. Every technician I've ever spoken to- after forty-five minutes on hold with excruciating music- wanted to get off the line as rapidly as possible. None ever called back to see if things actually worked.'
She smiled again. 'You're in paradise, like Cueball said.'
'And what's the unofficial reason you've come for a breath of Clean Air?'
'I wanted to check how you're getting along. It isn't easy being the fingie, and everyone's curious about you. So…'
'Curious?'
She looked at him wryly. 'It's unusual to come down on the last plane like you did. And you're a geologist, not a meteorologist, which is kind of odd. And you quit some oil company, apparently. And…'
'You came for the gossip.'
'I came for the truth. It's a small town, Jed. People talk. Speculate. If they don't know about a person, things just get made up.'
'Ah. So they send a comely lass to worm my secrets out of me. A spy. A temptress. A- '
She wrinkled her nose. 'Please.'
'But it's more than your undeniable fascination with me.' Lewis grinned disarmingly. He was enjoying this. 'You're an emissary of espionage. You were elected. Someone sent you.'
She looked disappointed. 'It's that obvious?'
'I'm just used to being ignored by women.'
'I doubt that.' She paused to let him mentally log the compliment. 'Actually, Doctor Bob suggested I visit. He said he's trying to write up a sociological profile of the base: who we are, why we're here. Then he'll track our attitudes over the winter. At the end- '
'We're all toast.'
'Yes.'
'The good doctor already asked me to explain myself, you know,' Lewis said.
'He told me that,' she admitted.
'And?'
'He said men will tell things to women they won't tell to men.'
Lewis smiled as he looked at her, her neck high, ears as fine as shell, eyes large and guileless. He could guess why Norse had recruited this assistant- she could attract any man on base- and wasn't surprised she'd agreed to be recruited. It was indeed a small town. People would make fast friendships, and they'd rupture even faster. He'd noticed the undercurrent of flirting and competition almost immediately. What was it Cameron had said about women? We're more civilized now. Well, maybe.
'For a spy, you're pretty blunt. You might want to work on that.'
'The truth is, I'm not very good at the whole human interaction thing.'
'Who is?'
'I guess that's what Doctor Bob wants to know.'
