Hannah Ross - The Last Outpost - An Antarctic Dystopia

“I wish I were there right now.”

“No, Buck, you don’t. You want to be right where you are, on the edge of the world. Right now, I kind of wish we were all there.” Knowing his sister, he realized she was suppressing a burst of tears, to which she would probably give way as soon as the conversation was over.

“I wondered if I should call Brianna, but didn’t want to risk waking her.”

“I wouldn’t bother. Brianna is probably asleep, and will know nothing about the whole thing until tomorrow. And she has nobody to really worry about. She has no brothers, and her husband is safe in Antarctica.”

“Laura, you hang in there. Give Harry and the kids my love.”

“Thanks, bro,” she said, pulling herself together. “Well, I’d better go and help Harry pack up his things.”

Scott wasn’t feeling very hungry, but following the evening routine, and to calm his nerves, he got himself a sandwich from the vending machine in the hall, and made a cup of cocoa in the kitchen. He ate and drank mechanically, took a shower, brushed his teeth, and stretched out on the bed. The blinds were drawn and the night lamp was on, but outside it was still almost as bright as day. This must have wreaked havoc with his melatonin, because he wasn’t feeling remotely tired. His head was buzzing with dark and ominous suggestions. Strangely, he was shaken, but at the same time unsurprised. He rather expected something like this for a while.

He got a few hours of restless sleep that night, and was among the first to breakfast at the galley at 5:30 in the morning. Having mechanically consumed his portion of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and marmalade, he went straight to his office. He started on some routine work, answering emails about shipment times and supply orders, but it felt fake, surreal. He longed to take some time off to have a call or a chat with Brianna, but decided that, in good conscience, he couldn’t permit himself such a distraction until after lunch.

Victor Nash knocked about 7:30, looking rested and refreshed. His thick dark hair was, as always, combed to one side, and unlike Scott, he was clean-shaven.

“Well,” he said with obvious reluctance, after a feeble ‘good morning’, “it sure looks like you were on to something. Not quite doomsday yet,” he gave an affected little chuckle, “but it’s an emergency situation in the States, no doubt about that. Not that I would break the station’s supply budget ordering a mega-shipment of canned beans, but still.”

Scott rubbed his tired eyes, feeling the lack of sleep more now than he did when he first woke. “I agree with you here, Nash. No mega-shipments… but we need to make sure all our supplies are in good order. Do you have the latest report ready?”

To his surprise, Nash didn’t give a quick, efficient reply, as was his custom. Instead, he sat unmoving in the chair opposite him, looking in a cool and inscrutable way through the lenses of his glasses. “You had gone to see the Anai again yesterday, didn’t you?”

Scott did not like his tone. He also recalled a curious detail — though Nash had access to all the information about the Anai, he had no clearance to visit Camp AN-85. When he had tried to probe Lindholm for reasons, he got no reply beyond, “safety considerations, Buck — just plain bureaucracy. Put this out of your mind.”

“What if I did?” Scott replied.

“Oh, I know you did. You joined that research team to AN-85. Not being a geologist or anything of the sort, you had no real reason to.”

“I’m an environmental scientist.”

“Not here. Here you manage shipments, orders and the logistics of the largest research station in Antarctica.”

Scott frowned. “Look, Nash, I don’t see how this is any of your business.”

“Well, as your assistant, I naturally have to pick up the slack when you are gone.”

“I flatter myself that I left everything in good order before going away. And it was only for a few hours. I’m not a slave, you know. Neither are you. You can take some time off if you need it. And, just so you know, it is stipulated in my contract that I am to have some time for independent research.” A defensive note crept into Scott’s voice, and he hated himself for it.

Nash smiled. It was not a pleasant smile, or a friendly one. “Oh, I don’t blame you for wanting to go there again. It’s a nice place. Warmer than anywhere else on this goddamn frozen slab of a continent. And those wild people, they are fascinating.”

“I wouldn’t call them wild,” Scott said, his irritation mounting.

“Whatever you say. They’ve got a curious thing going on, anyhow. But they sure look well. The men are all over six feet tall. And the women are beautiful,” he added in an off-hand way, but Scott was not fooled. Alarm bells began ringing in his mind at once.

Nash had visited the Anai Valley, but he no longer has clearance to go there. Who arranged that? Probably Lindholm. And he was the one who didn’t want Nash to succeed to his place. Why? Could it be that Nash did something to overstep the boundaries? But what, exactly? Beautiful women. Why does it sound so unpleasant, coming from him?

“I’m more interested in specimens of the local fauna,” he said coolly.

“Well, and aren’t people specimens of fauna? The most interesting of all, I’d say,” Nash got up to leave, and had his hand on the door handle, when Scott called after him.

“Nash.”

The man turned around. “What is it?”

“If I go to AN-85 again, would you like to come too?”

Nash was no fool. He knew this was a test. “I don’t have the clearance. Don’t you know that?”

“Why, though?”

“Old Lindholm didn’t consider visits to AN-85 as part of my duties,” Victor Nash said, coldly and succinctly. “The supervisors of the U.S. Antarctic Program appeared to share this opinion. I will email you the report in a little while,” Nash concluded, and got out of the office.

Days passed, and the workers of McMurdo went on about their business as usual, disregarding the disturbing news from the rest of the world. The turbulence was growing. The U.S. army had dispatched troops to North Korea, India and the Middle East, and the deep and, many said, hasty American involvement in the worldwide conflict created mutiny. Whenever Scott called home, he finished the conversation with an incomplete feeling of relief. His parents, being older and wiser and having seen a great deal, were cautiously optimistic. “Things will calm down,” his father said time and time again, “though I do wish we didn’t have this idiot sitting in the White House right now.”

Harry, Laura’s husband, was deployed to North Korea, but was able to get in touch with his family on a pretty regular basis, and Laura, it appeared, had things under control. As for Brianna, she was fine, as usual, not too worried, but ‘she did wish her husband were home’. Given that the window for booking a trip to Antarctica was narrowing, and the non-emergency routes would be closed throughout the winter, Scott kept hinting at the possibility of Brianna joining him at McMurdo soon. His wife dodged these hints, however, until he resigned himself to the possibility that they might have to remain asunder throughout the winter, after which he would reevaluate his position and the continuation of his contract.

Anders Lindholm did not neglect to keep in touch. “ Dear Buck,” he wrote in an email that reached Scott about three weeks after Lindholm’s going away, “ I’m now settled in my little beach house in California, and never want to leave it again as long as I live. The dead of winter here is like paradise to a Swede toughened by thirty years in Antarctica, and I swim every day. My children and grandchildren have come to visit, and left the house in shambles, which I immensely enjoyed. Every fine afternoon, and most afternoons are fine here, I enjoy a good cigar on my porch, and have a drink of Aquavit without any twinges of guilt. I watch the sunset coloring the sea in a thousand splendid hues, and there’s not a bit of ice to be seen anywhere. I don’t see how heaven can get any better than this.