me to tell you to be careful on your trip.”
Michael smiled. “I will.”
“No, really,” she said, with greater urgency. “I mean it. Be careful there.”
Michael put an arm around her shoulders to comfort her. “I solemnly swear to keep my mittens on and my ears warm at all times.”
She gently pushed him away. “If you don't, Krissy will be really mad at you… and so will I.”
Michael said, “I wouldn't want that.”
“No, you wouldn't.”
“Karen!” Mr. Nelson shouted, his face poking out of the door of the room. “Your mother wants to talk to you.”
Karen bit her lip.
“Now, Karen!”
Michael rubbed her shoulder, turned, and headed back past the nurses’ station. This time, nobody said a word to him as he went by.
CHAPTER THREE
1889
Green… deep, gleaming emerald green.
That was what she dreamt of.
The green of the grass in the Yorkshire pastures.
The green of the leaves on a sunny day in Regent's Park.
The green baize of the billiards table at the club in Pall Mall. (Women were prohibited from going upstairs, but Sinclair had found a way to sneak her past the porter and up the back service stairs.)
The green waters of the Bosporus…
So long as she could immerse herself in the green, she was content. She could remember the scent of the fields where she grew up
… the damp grass, as it lay flat in the summer breeze, the cows standing white and black against it… the rolling green hills at dusk, the sun gleaming like her fathers gold pocket watch…
She could feel the texture of the leaves, smooth and even and waxy, as she passed through the city park on her midday break from the hospital. It was only for half an hour, but in that time-and if the wind was blowing back toward the Thames-she could take a breath of fresh air, air that had no trace of blood or morphine or ether in it. Sometimes she would tuck leaves and sweet-smelling flowers in the pockets of her uniform before going back into the wards…
The green of the sea… she had never been at sea until leaving for Turkey. She had always imagined it to be blue, or perhaps gray-it had appeared so in every picture she had ever seen-but staring down from the deck, into the churning wake, she had been surprised by its greenish cast, like the dull patina on the statues at the Royal Museum (Sinclair had taken her there, shortly before his regiment departed)…
But there the reverie ended… as they all did, eventually… and a cold hand settled upon her heart. She had to struggle, once again, to fold herself into the green, to wrap herself in a bower of her own imagining… to warm the icy hand that had stolen beneath her clothes and frozen the very marrow in her bones. A thousand times she had come this way, and a thousand times more, she feared, she would have to come again, before she could awaken… before she could be released from whatever strange dream this was that still ensnared her…
CHAPTER FOUR
November 24, 10:25 a.m.
Michael had spotted the little red-haired guy getting off the plane at Santiago and knew he was a scientist right off the bat. There was something about scientists that gave them away, though he'd have been hard put to say exactly what. It wasn't something easy, like the smell of formaldehyde or protractors sticking out of their pockets. No, it was more a matter of their mien; with scientists-and Michael had been around plenty of them while photographing and writing about the natural world-there was something both detached and highly observant. They could be part of a group, and not part of a group, at the same time. And hard as some of them might try to fit in, they never really did. It was like that massive school of sunfish that Michael had photographed underwater in the Bahamas; all of the fish, for safety's sake alone, tried to move toward the center of the swarm, but some of them, for whatever reason, were kept to the margins and never made it.
And of course they were the easiest for predators to pick off.
During the layover before he could catch the prop plane to Puerto Williams, Michael dragged his duffel bag into the crowded cafe area of the airport. The red-haired guy was sitting alone at a table in the corner, his head lowered toward his laptop. Michael got close enough to see that he was studying a complex chart littered with numbers and arrows and intersecting lines. To Michael, it looked vaguely topographic. He stood for only a second or two before the guy in the chair whipped around; he had a small, narrow face, and pale red eyebrows, too. The guy sized Michael up, then said, “This can't possibly be interesting to you.”
“You'd be surprised,” Michael said, approaching him. “I didn't mean to disturb you. I'm just waiting for my connection to Puerto Williams.”
He was waiting to see if that worked, and it did. “Me, too,” the guy said.
“Mind if I sit down?” Michael said, taking the empty chair at the table-the last empty chair in the whole place.
Dumping the duffel on the floor, with one foot through the strap (a habit he'd gotten into on lots of late-night travels in foreign locales), Michael extended his hand and introduced himself. “Michael Wilde.”
“Darryl Hirsch.”
“Puerto Williams, huh? Is that your last stop?”
Hirsch clicked the keyboard a few times, then folded up the laptop. He looked at Michael as if unsure what to make of him yet.
“You're not some kind of government intelligence agent or anything, are you? Because if you are, you're doing a terrible job.”
Michael laughed. “Why would you think that?”
“Because I'm a scientist, and we live in an age of idiots. For all I know, you're tracking me to make sure that I don't prove the earth is getting warmer-even though it plainly is. The ice caps are melting, the polar bears are disappearing, and Intelligent Design is perfectly designed for dolts. So go ahead-you can arrest me now.”
“Relax. You're sounding a little paranoid, if you don't mind my saying so.”
“Just because you're paranoid,” Darryl observed, “doesn't mean you're not being followed.”
“True enough,” Michael replied. “But I like to think I'm one of the good guys. I work for Eco-Travel Magazine, doing photos and text. I'm going down to the Antarctic to do a story on life at a research station there.”
“Which research station? A dozen countries have planted stations there, just to stake their claim.”
“Point Adelie. About as close to the Pole as you can get.”
“Oh,” Hirsch said, digesting the news. “Me, too. Huh.” He sounded like he still hadn't given up on his conspiracy theory. “That's really something.” His fingers tapped on the closed lid of his laptop. “So, you're a journalist.”
Michael detected that first glimmer he had seen before, a million times. When people found out he was a writer, there was that first mild surprise, then acceptance, and then-a nanosecond later-the dawning realization that he could make them famous. Or at least write about them. It was like watching little lights go on in their heads.
“That's great,” Hirsch said. “What a coincidence.” With studied nonchalance, he opened his laptop again and
