William Dietrich - Dark Winter

"And you began to question what you were doing."

"No…" he said slowly. "It was like there was never any question, and then suddenly there was no question about quitting. The tundra did that to me."

She waited for him to explain.

"It's a place something like this one. Not snow-covered, not in summer, but treeless and stark with this low, everlasting light that seems to reach inside you. And yet it took me a month before I really noticed that. My mind was underground. Finally there was a rainstorm late one afternoon, dark and furious, driving us into camp, and then rainbows, and finally a plume, like smoke, curling over one ridge under that prism of light. At first I thought it was a fire, but how could a fire burn in a place that damp? Then I realized it was caribou. A drift of life in a place so empty that suddenly everything hit me like adrenaline. All my senses suddenly came awake. Do you know the feeling?"

She nodded, cautiously. "Maybe. Like falling in love?"

The analogy hadn't occurred to him, and he cocked his head. "Maybe. Anyway, what I was seeing was the Porcupine River herd. I'd seen animals, of course, but never animals in numbers like you see numbers of people- never animals to make you question everything you thought you knew about whose world this truly is. They came over a ridge and down to the Kavik River. I stood there in that light watching them for hours. And that was it. Suddenly the idea of spending my life looking for a pollutant struck me as profoundly unsatisfactory. Sneaking onto a refuge seemed wrong. People told me my dinner was getting cold, but I ignored them, and then that I would get cold if I stood out there all night, but I ignored that, too. It wasn't even night, of course, the sun never fully set. I didn't feel the cold at all. Everything just got rosy and soft. Finally, when everyone else was asleep, I pulled together some gear and started walking after the herd. I left a note so they wouldn't worry about me."

"What did it say?" she asked. She was looking at him appraisingly, finding herself liking a man who could be affected so profoundly by caribou.

His smile was wry. "I quit."

"I'm sure that did reassure them."

"One of the things I realized is that I didn't truly know a single person in that camp. Had never thought deeply about what I was doing."

"Nothing to hold you, like you said."

"Nothing to care about. Nothing to be proud of. I walked two days before I hit the Haul Road that runs from Fairbanks up to Prudhoe Bay. It was the loneliest two days I've ever had, and two of the best. They turned me inside out. Then some scientists came by in a Bronco and gave me a ride. I stayed at an ecological research camp at a place called Toolik Lake and that's where I met Jim Sparco. He was doing climate measurements in the Arctic and he's one of those rare omnivores interested in all kinds of science. We hit it off, talking about weather, geology. Climate and oceans come from rocks, you know. Volcanoes run the planet. We stayed in touch while I bummed around Idaho. I was running out of money, deciding what to do next, when I got a package from Sparco's lab in Boulder. It had a T-shirt inside that read, 'Ski the South Pole. Two miles of base, half an inch of powder.' Plus his telephone number. I called and the rest, as they say, is history."

"He sent it to a geologist."

"Yes, because he knew me."

"And because of Mickey's rock."

He was surprised. "How'd you know about that?"

"I told you there're no secrets here. It's a small place. Mickey went weird at the drill site one day last fall, evasive, and people have wondered ever since if he found something unusual. He seemed pretty excited for a guy whose project is over budget and behind schedule. Then a geologist? It's not hard to put two and two together. What else could he find in the ice but a meteorite?"

"He told me no one knew."

"People guess. There's always a lot of buzz about everything because there's nothing else to do. The question is, why did you come all this way to see it?"

"It's more like I agreed to see it in return for getting to come all this way."

She leaned forward, looking expectant. "And?"

"And what?"

"Is it significant?"

He stalled, wondering what to say. "Don't I get seduced first?"

"Sorry. Just twenty questions."

"You're the worst spy I've ever seen." He knew she was pumping him and that he should muster some annoyance, but he actually enjoyed the attention. "The fact is, he asked me to keep quiet about it. I'm not supposed to talk."

She nodded, her interest confirmed. "He wouldn't bring you down here if it wasn't important."

Lewis smiled like a sphinx. "Women are so snoopy."

"Women listen."

"Sparco is a friend of Moss's. Our astrophysicist wanted an opinion from a rockhound. I was unemployed. That's all there is to it. I haven't even done any tests yet."

"But what you saw is worth testing."

"We'll see."

"If it's the right kind of meteorite it could be big."

"For Mickey's reputation."

"That's not what I mean. You know that's not what I mean."

"What?" She was too damn smart, and he liked smart women.

"If it's a meteorite, it could be worth a lot."

The wind came up as evening approached. When Lewis walked back to the dome from the Clean Air Facility he felt the first true bite of winter. The temperature still hovered at sixty below but a rising wind pushed the windchill to minus one hundred. Dry snow undulated in ragged sheets across the ice, the flakes rasping at the fluttering nylon of his windpants. They stung the bits of skin that were exposed, his upper cheeks and temples. The wind made a low moaning sound as it blew, a discomfiting change from the earlier quiet, and when he followed the fluttering route flags to the dome he found the big bay doors had been closed against the first drifts. He yanked open a smaller door to one side and the wind pushed him as he stepped in, so that he had to lean back against the door to shut it. As he caught his breath he regarded the gloom of the dome with new gratitude. Inside felt safer. He could still hear the hoarse scratching of Antarctica. The blowing snow made it sound as if the aluminum dome were being sanded.

Lewis didn't see Norse at dinner and so went looking for him afterward, guessing the weight room attached to his berthing module. The psychologist was the kind of guy who would try to stay in shape. Norse wasn't there but Harrison Adams said he'd just left, heading for the sauna. The astronomer was working out in faded trunks and gray, baggy T-shirt, grunting as he lifted with his white, stringy muscles. Adams was a sharply intellectual man, obsessed with the sky, and it was odd to see him like that. "Can you take a minute to spot me, Lewis?"

Lewis wasn't anxious to. He found Adams prickly, the kind of scientist who did not suffer fools gladly and who thought everyone who wasn't interested in what he was interested in was a fool. "I need to find Doctor Bob."

"He'll cook for a while. Come on, spot me first. Tyson certainly won't."

The big mechanic was lifting in a corner, an enormous weight across his back as his knees bent and straightened like thick hairy pistons, his lungs whooshing like a surfacing whale. He looked at them balefully, as if offended by their mere presence. For a man who claimed a crushing workload, he seemed to have plenty of time and energy to lift weights.

"What do I have to do?" Lewis asked Adams.

"Stand over me on the bench here, while I press. Just so I don't pin myself."

"Why can't Buck do it?"

Tyson pushed himself erect, exhaling. "I'm busy."

"He's always busy," Adams said, moving to the bench. "Too busy to grade the trail to the Dark Sector. Too busy to fix the Spryte. Too busy to move the cargo for my scope repair before this wind came up. Too busy to give me any hope of meeting schedule."