Cold War

within the hour.”

Cold Corners Base, Antarctica

“Diamond dust,” Megan Breen said. “Something to see, isn’t it?”

Nimec looked where she was pointing. Arcs of iridescent color chased across a glittery veil of ice crystals wavering above the helipad despite a total absence of clouds. In the far distance, sun dogs teased the horizon at opposite sides of a solar halo, the circle’s violet inner rim bleeding away into faint rainbow bands of green, yellow, tangerine, and primary red.

“It’s easy to appreciate,” he said. “Harder to enjoy under the circumstances.”

Megan turned to face him. She was in minimal ECW gear, her parka’s hood down, snow goggles raised above her brow, no balaclava. The comm tech had notified her of the arrivals just ten minutes ago, but she could already hear the choppers rumbling in, and expected to be out of the cold before too long.

“And wood sprites in the gloom weave magic secrets,” she said.

“Nice line. Yours or borrowed?”

“You know I’m not that poetic.”

“Nice anyway,” Nimec said. “What’s the message?”

Megan gave him a shrug.

“Our astronomers and field photographers throw conniptions when diamond dust settles on their optics,” she said. “They spend weeks preparing to observe an event of some sort or another, use the finest equipment available, and a little ice shoots the works. It wastes time, effort, and lots of money. People get upset, accuse each other of negligence, incompetence, all sorts of idiotic things. And naturally I wind up having to referee. It’s worse than a nuisance. But the sky. That’s the other side of it for me.”

Nimec frowned. “This time it isn’t about telescopes,” he said. “It’s about three missing human beings.”

Megan was quiet for several moments.

“I don’t need to be reminded of that,” she said then.

Nimec instantly regretted his snappiness. He studied her features. Her gaze was direct, penetrating, but showed no sign of anger. Somehow that made him even more regretful.

“Guess that wasn’t one of my smartest remarks,” he said.

Another pause. “Probably not.” She took in a slow breath. “Pete… one thing I’ve learned from my stay on the ice is that there can be magic secrets in the gloom. Don’t close your eyes to them. They help you learn how to live.”

He was silent. They both were. Colors slipped and tailed through the suspended ice motes overhead. Still out of sight, the two approaching helicopters knocked away at the air.

Nimec supposed he really was on edge. Some of it was a carryover from those tumbling boomerangs aboard the Herc. Some of it was his impatience to get going with his search for Scarborough and the two scientists. But there was more besides, and he knew it involved Annie Caulfield’s imminent landing aboard one of the choppers. The news that Annie was already in Antarctica with the Senatorial delegation had made him feel nothing less than ambushed.

He rubbed his face with a gloved hand, thinking. How had Meg originally alluded to their presence? We’re short-handed as far as pilots go, but I’ll explain that later. Just a passing comment as she’d tapped a number into her cell phone. It had gone right by Nimec. But when she got around to her promised explanation, he had learned that one of the base’s three chopper pilots was grounded because his bird was in for repairs, that another was on emergency loan to a French station because their only resident pilot had shipped out for civilization due to illness, and that the third had been to assigned to give the distinguished visitors — DVs, as she called them — a lift from Amundsen-Scott station, the first stop on their tour of the continent. It’s the storm that’s being predicted, Pete. Bad weather’s nothing abnormal around here, but once it hits, there’s a chance it can last for days. The Senators pushed up their schedule to get here before it grounded them at the South Pole, and we were obliged to make accommodations, go ahead with our hosting duties. Incidentally, did Gord happen to mention that Annie Caulfield’s been nannying them?

Ambushed, Nimec thought. Why feel that way, though? Why should the prospect of seeing Annie again have so much guilt attached to it? They’d made an effective team in Florida, but that was in connection with the Orion probe. It was a working relationship. Well, mostly. There was that movie afterward. Dinner and a movie. A nice evening. Annie had introduced him to her kids when he’d picked her up… Chris and Linda. Nice. But their date, say you wanted to call it that for lack of a better term, their date was collegial. More or less. At best they were casual friends unwinding after a tough shared assignment. And once it was over they’d gone their different ways. Again, more or less.

Nimec wasn’t denying he’d felt an attraction to Annie at the time — who wouldn’t, after all? — but he’d known there had been no sense pursuing anything even if she were the least bit interested in him. Which was itself an unrealistic thought. She’d been widowed only a year or so before. Lost her husband to cancer. She wasn’t ready. Also, he had his responsibilities in San Jose, and Annie had her own at NASA’s Houston space center. Texas. Things wouldn’t have worked out long-distance. Yes, he’d phoned her a few times, just to see how she was doing. And sure, they’d talked about getting together in indefinite terms, the way people often did. But nothing firm was ever discussed. The last time they’d spoken was last October or thereabouts, and it was true she’d mentioned that he was welcome to visit if he had any time off around the holidays, stay in a spare bedroom at her place, but he’d considered it one of those polite gestures rather than a serious invitation. And say he had made the blunder of taking her offer at face value? It would have been asinine. An awful imposition. He’d meant to get back to her anyway, but those weeks before Thanksgiving had turned into hell. Pure hell. With Gord in danger everything else had fallen by the wayside. And there had been so much catching up to do since…

Annie had no reason to be insulted. Why club himself over the head with irrational guilt?

Nimec stood there outside the base, steam coiling from his nose and mouth. His cheeks had started to burn and he made himself stop rubbing them. Five degrees above zero out here, and Meg had described today’s weather conditions as mild, a calm before the storm. Since when was five above mild?

The thump of the copters grew louder. Nimec searched the sky, spotted one of them to the west, flying fast, the UpLink logo becoming visible on its flank. That would be the DVs, he thought. Not the first bird he would have liked to see. But the good thing was that he’d get the formalities with those pols out of the way. Plus his foolish nervousness about Annie. His main focus now was making arrangements with Granger. Seeing if he could take him out over Bull Pass ahead of the snow.

The helicopter came in, reduced speed, landed about a hundred feet from him, the downwash of its rotors stirring a cloud of snow off the ground. Then its blades stopped turning, its cabin door slid back, and its passengers came hopping out.

Megan glanced at her wristwatch.

“Right on schedule,” she said. “Special delivery from Washington by way of the Geographic Pole.”

Nimec didn’t comment. There were three Senators in the delegation: Dianne Wertz, Todd Palmer, and Bernard Raines from the Appropriations Committee. Obviously unaware of Meg’s affirmative characterization of the weather, they were wrapped head-to-toe in CDC orange bag garb. Still, it wasn’t hard to tell them apart. A former basketball pro, Palmer towered above the rest, and had reflexively hunched as he emerged from beneath the chopper’s slowing rotors. Wertz would be the one scrambling to keep pace at his side — Nimec had met the Senator from Delaware at an UpLink function, and remembered her as kind of slight. That left Raines to bring up the rear. Almost seventy-five years old, the committee chairman carried himself like a man whose senior rank qualified him as beyond having to match strides with anyone, almost diverting attention from the fact that in many instances he no longer could. The fourth member of the party had stayed back to help him across the snow, a tactful hand on his elbow.

Nimec took a quick glance at Raines’s companion, unwillingly tightening up inside.

Annie.

Megan leaned close, interrupting his thoughts.

“Time to officiate, Pete,” she whispered, and then hurried to greet their visitors.

Nimec followed a step behind her, suddenly aware of the NSF copter clattering toward the landing zone. About a quarter mile away, it would be touching down in minutes.

Megan whizzed through the obligatory formalities.