Tremaine wondered how happy he was with his life as a whole. Probably not very. A few years after the survey, when Walter failed—deservedly—to gain tenure, he had moved to Alaska, first to take an undemanding teaching position at a community college in Barrow, a school whose chief (only?) distinction was that of being the northernmost institution of “higher” learning on the North American continent. From there he had found his way into state government and a lackluster career in the Department of the Environment. Now it was rumored that the governor, apparently no judge of competence, was about to appoint him head of the department, a highly visible, cabinet-level post. Well, good luck to the Alaskan environment, was all Tremaine had to say.
Anna barely waited for Walter to finish before she got in her two cents’ worth. “As for me,” she announced in that contentious way of hers, “I
She flicked a glance at the shiny-faced Walter but didn't bother to explain that it was his bungling and incompetence she was talking about. Well, no surprise there, Tremaine thought; it was
Turning, she stared at Shirley with stolid condescension. “Is this satisfactory to you?'
Just like Anna, Tremaine thought. Never pass up an opportunity to make waves.
Shirley smiled glassily. “Well, if it's all right with you, it's certainly all right with me, dear.'
Now there. That was an example. Had that been a gossamer-cloaked jab of some kind? Had some electric current imperceptible to the masculine nervous system passed between them? Had Anna—unthinkable idea—been bested in some mysterious female clash of personalities? Anna herself seemed to think so. With a sulky shrug she fished in her bag for her pack of cigarillos.
Tremaine almost chuckled himself. This wasn't something that happened to the formidable Dr. Henckel very often.
And on this pleasant note their breakfast meeting came to an end. Arthur Tibbett, the assistant superintendent who was to accompany them to the glacier, made his appearance.
'Tibbett, Tibbett,” Tremaine mused aloud. “Do I know you?'
'I don't think so,” the administrator said.
'We haven't met?'
'Not to my knowledge.'
Rather a stuffy sort, Tibbett; every inch the minor functionary. Well, well, no matter. Tremaine was not about to let the puffy manner of a petty bureaucrat affect his sunny mood. On to Tirku Glacier.
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Chapter 3
* * * *
Tirku Glacier is hardly one of Glacier Bay's great attractions. The cruise ships that ply the waters so majestically do not stop near its foot to view it. It is not one of the famous tidewater glaciers fronted by a vertical, spired facade of blue-white ice from which skyscraper-sized chunks split off and crash slow-motion into the bay with booming, spectacular explosions of water. Its receding, grimy snout is now half a mile inland on a gritty plain of its own making, and it is not a gloriously photogenic wall of ice at all, but a squat, humped protrusion one hundred and fifty feet thick, black with dirt and boulders, and shaped something like an enormous bear's paw laid flat on the ground.
On a low, rocky moraine at the northeastern edge of this ugly, imposing paw, seven people stood shivering in a freezing miasma that oozed from the glacial face like carbon dioxide from a lump of dry ice. They had walked, speaking little, from the catamaran beached on the barren gray shoreline. Tremaine had expected some emotion from them, but there seemed to be only a bored restlessness. Now they began to wander off individually, poking spiritlessly at rocks and chunks of gray ice that had fallen from the glacier face. Anna, who affected a six-foot ebony staff, like some ancient Watusi queen, was using it to prod the glacier itself.
'Well,” Tremaine said, perhaps a little too heartily, “I suppose we'd better go ahead and pick a spot for the plaque. That's what we're here for.” No one replied. Silence, awkward and uncomfortable, hung over the little group. The raw fog—not quite the “mist” Tremaine had had in mind—was sharp in their nostrils, smelling like cold iron.
Gerald Pratt, lighting his pipe, presently looked out from behind hands cupped to protect the flame from the dank wind. A blue woolen guard cap jammed down over his ears made his skeletal face look like a death mask. “So this is where it happened,” he said conversationally.
'Not quite,” Tremaine said, for once glad to hear even from Pratt. “We were on the glacier itself when the avalanche struck. We were crossing this tongue of it, oh, a few hundred yards back. Over there somewhere. It's difficult to say. The snout's moved back quite a bit since then.'
Pratt followed his gesture and nodded slowly. “There, you say.'
'Of course I don't know about these things,” Shirley Yount said in that maddeningly arch way, as if implying that of course she knew everything there was to know about them. “But if that's where it happened, why don't they put the plaque there?'
'I'm afraid that wouldn't work,” Arthur Tibbett told her. “Glaciers move, you see. In ten years nobody would know where it was.'
'And where would you suggest?” Tremaine asked.
The assistant superintendent started. “Me? Well, it's up to you, of course. I wouldn't want to say.” He had been that way all morning.
'Nevertheless,” Tremaine said, “we would value your opinion enormously.'
'My opinion? What about here on this ridge, right on that big boulder with the notch? That's going to be here
