Lewis nodded. 'You're here for the money.'
'Fuckin' A.' Geller nodded. 'Everybody needs money.'
'Is the money good down here? For you guys?'
He shrugged. 'Same as a beaker. A long work week and no expenses. The wage scale's no better than back home but it's like forced savings: There's nothing to buy. I might even save enough to not go back. Keep my money for myself and chill out on some tropical island. Buy a boat. Who knows?'
Indeed. The Pole offered possibility.
Cameron came into the galley and stood over them, assessing. His air of authority had come back but there was also a hesitant uncertainty to it, Lewis thought, the betraying experimentation of someone new to command, never quite sure how the others would react, still caring what they thought. Cameron was in his late twenties, younger than many of those he supposedly supervised. 'How's it hanging?' the station manager asked.
'Didn't freeze,' Lewis said.
'You ate?'
'A little.'
Cameron looked dubiously at the toast. Fingies. They all had to learn. 'All right, then. Looks like you're ready to see the homestead. Let's saddle up.'
'Yippie-ki-yay.'
Suiting up to go outdoors was as laborious as donning armor. Heavy long underwear and two pairs of socks. Sweater. Fleece vest, pants, and insulated nylon bib overalls. Neck gaiter, goggles, stocking hat, white plastic 'bunny' boots, glove liners, mittens, ski gloves in case dexterity was required, and finally down parka with hood. Lewis felt as padded as the Michelin Man and awkward as an astronaut. He was roasting.
'Up to a point, there's no such thing as cold,' the station manager said. 'Just inadequate clothing.'
'Up to a point?'
'If you put too much on when you're working you can actually sweat,' Cameron said. 'That's dangerous when you cool down, or because of dehydration. At the other extreme, nothing will keep you warm when the wind comes up.'
'What do you do then?'
'Tough it out. Up to a point.'
'I can't walk in these things.' Lewis pointed to his boots, inflated with air for insulation. They looked like white melons.
'You'd be walking on frostbitten stubs without them. Dorky, but they work.'
Lewis clumped along the floor. 'Like wearing weights.'
'One year some pranksters started pouring sand into a guy's bunnies where the air goes. Little bit each day. By the end of the season they weighed about seventy pounds. Pretty funny.'
Lewis shook a boot, listening. 'Ha.'
Stepping out of the berthing unit into the gray light of the dome was like stepping into a freezer. Lewis was jarred again at the nearness of such cold, just outside the door. The icicles hung overhead from the dome as before. And yet he was so hot from the dressing that the change felt good at first. Refreshing.
The snow ramp from the dome exit led upward to the plateau surface and a bright cold that was more telling. This was a chill that wasn't confined to an enclosure but was the single salient fact of his new world. He stood a moment, letting himself adjust. The sky was overcast, the light flat. Even with a mild breeze he could feel the temperature sucking at him, trying to drain him of heat. The cold got into his lungs and palpated his heart.
He pulled his gaiter over his nose and mouth, the moisture of his breath immediately starting a growth of frost. Goggles shielded his eyes and forehead. His hood kept a thin cocoon of slightly warmer air near his face. He took a moment to practice breathing, as if he were underwater.
Okay. He wasn't going to die.
Lewis looked around. The snow was flat and, beyond the cluster of human structures, utterly empty. Nothing moved. There was no natural feature to catch the eye.
'First of all, stay close to the base,' Cameron lectured, leaving his neck gaiter down so he could be heard clearly. 'Even when it's not snowing the wind can kick up surface powder into a blizzard six or seven feet high. The blowing snow is just high enough to put any human who isn't in the NBA into whiteout conditions. So, if you do go somewhere, sign out, take a radio, and take some bearings. Pay attention to where you are, where we are. Start memorizing the layout. People have died in Antarctica a dozen feet from shelter. Temperatures can drop fifty degrees in ten minutes.'
Lewis nodded.
'Second, we're marking the most frequently used routes with flags.' He pointed to long poles with pennants on the end. 'In the dark that's coming you just follow one flag to another to get back to a building. One route goes to astronomy, which the beakers call the Dark Sector because lights aren't allowed out there: It screws up their telescopes. Everyone else calls it the Dark Side. Another goes to Clean Air, where you'll work. It's away from the generators and any air pollution. A third goes to Summer Camp, which is shut down now.' He pointed at distant buildings. Summer Camp was a row of Korean-War-vintage canvas Quonset huts. 'A branch goes to Bedrock, those little blue huts there. That's our emergency shelter if anything goes wrong in the dome.'
'Goes wrong?'
'Fire. Generator failure. Battery explosions. Well poisonings. The usual.' He smiled.
Cameron also pointed out antenna towers, telescopes, construction materials, supply crates, drifted-over vehicles, and random jetsam, everything raw and jutting from the snow like the debris of some midair collision. Lewis thought the place looked like a dump but wasn't surprised. All the treeless places he'd worked in had the same look: Where could you hide the mess? The chaos represented logistical evolution.
'Third, pay attention to your body. It's sort of like being an astronaut where you pay attention to your air. Are you staying warm? Are you still alert? Are you losing energy? If you start to feel frozen, get back inside for a while. Capisce?'
'Yeah. Common sense.'
'You'd be amazed how quickly that can disappear around here.'
Lewis looked out at the foggy horizon. 'How far can we see?'
'About six miles, three in each direction. A few more if you get up on a tower.'
The sun was low, a white disk behind fog like a dim headlight. It circled the horizon every twenty-four hours, each day settling lower, like a marble rolling down a funnel. On March 21 it would be gone.
'You been to The Ice before, Rod?'
'Four times.'
'So you like it.'
'I love it.'
'Even the Pole?'
'Especially the Pole. It's like no place else on earth. Come on, I'll show you.'
They started walking toward the astronomy complex that squatted three-quarters of a mile away, crossing the ice taxiway. Just beyond was a stake jutting two feet out of the snow.
'Here it is. Go ahead, walk around the world.'
'This is the South Pole?'
'Yep. Bottom of the planet. When it gets dark I come out here sometimes on a clear night and lay down to watch the stars and the aurora. Sometimes I do feel upside down, like I'm about to float off and drift into the sky. It's spectacularly beautiful then, and the vertigo makes me high.'
'I thought the Pole would look like something more.'
'In summer there's a ceremonial pole over there.' Cameron pointed vaguely. 'We took it down for the winter a couple weeks ago. It looks like a Santa Claus pole- you know, with barber stripes and a silver globe on top? We put the flags of the Antarctic treaty nations around it and the VIPs who fly in for a few hours pose for pictures. But this stake is the real pole. The ice cap moves, flowing toward the sea, so every January we have to drive a stake about ten meters from the last one to keep pace.' He pointed out a line of older stakes marching away across the snow, marking where the Pole had been. 'Eventually the dome will roll right over it, except maybe we can win funding for the new base and the dome will be dismantled.'
