Alex Archer - Polar Quest

“I feel like I’m being worked over for a mob debt here.” She looked up as Dave came back and set a fresh drink in front of her. “Thanks, Dave.”

“You bet.” He slid into the booth. “What’d I miss?”

“Zach here telling me how he likes sending government agents to my home to strong-arm me into coming down to the bottom of the world.”

Dave looked at Zach. “You did that?”

“Not me. Them.”

“Oh,” Dave said knowingly.

Annja sighed. “If I don’t get some answers soon, I’m hopping the next plane out of this ice cube.”

“You’re better off swimming,” Dave said with a slight belch.

“Why?”

He examined his beer bottle. “No more flights are expected here for weeks.”

Annja frowned. “They told me I’d be back within ten days. I’ve got work to do back home, you know.”

“Yeah, well, they lied,” Dave said. “Unless it’s a vital emergency, no one is going anywhere.”

Annja slumped back in her seat. Great, she was trapped down on the coldest continent on Earth, with no clue as to why she was there and no real chance of getting home for quite some time. “This day just keeps getting better.”

Zach looked at her. “Annja, listen, I’m really sorry about this. I didn’t know who else to turn to, though, and you’re the best person I know for this kind of job.”

“Now it’s a job?” Annja frowned. “I’ve already got a job.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen the show. I think it’s a waste of your talents.”

Annja smirked. “Yeah, well, thanks.”

Dave took a long drag on his beer. “It’s not so bad once you get used to the place. There’s bowling. You like to bowl?”

“Not particularly,” Annja said. “But I guess I could be persuaded, you know, if it’s between that and say, freezing to death.”

“Darts league, too,” Dave said. “We compete against the other stations. But we have to call in the results by radio. I think the other teams cheat.”

Annja smiled. “All right, whatever. I guess I can make the most out of this. After all, isn’t this the last great unexplored region on Earth?”

“Land-wise, yeah,” Dave said.

“So what gives, Zach?” Annja said.

He smiled. “I’ve found something amazing.”

“That’s not exactly illuminating. I want details and I want information. And I don’t want to think that you’re holding anything back.”

Zach shifted in his seat. “There’s kind of a lot to tell.”

“Great. Well, I’ve apparently got a lot of time to spare. So if there’s any way to rustle up some food in this joint, then let’s do it and then sit back and hear you tell me what was so damned important I had to get kidnapped from my nice Brooklyn loft, herded around the world and dropped into the freezer here.”

Dave slid a menu in front of her. “The wings are good.”

Annja glanced at him, cracked a smile and then looked at Zach. “Spill it, pal. And don’t stop until you’ve told me everything.”

Zach took a long pull on his beer bottle and then slapped it back down on the table. “As I said, I’ve found something.”

Annja sipped her drink. No one was paying attention to them anymore, which made her feel at least somewhat protected from prying eyes. “All right. What did you find?”

Zach put his hands to his neck and reached inside his turtleneck. With a great deal of maneuvering, he managed to slide a necklace over his head. He rested it on the tabletop in front of Annja. “This,” he said simply.

Annja looked at it. It was a simple design of three snakes lying parallel to each other, the curves in their backs suggesting motion. She could see the elaborate work done to denote scales, eyes and parts of forked tongues. She reached for it, but looked at Zach first. “May I?”

“Of course.”

Annja hefted the piece and found it surprisingly heavy. “I thought it looked like a piece of aluminum almost, but it’s far too heavy.”

Zach nodded. “Exactly. And you see how thin it is?”

Annja turned it over. It had the thickness of a soda can. “Incredible. Is it lead or pewter or something?”

“No. We ran it through a battery of tests. We can’t figure out what it is. The metal doesn’t register.”

Annja eyed him. “You’re telling me this has no basis in science?”

“Yes.”

She turned it over in her hands. The metal seemed to catch any available light and change colors as she moved it in her hands. The illusion made her think that the scales on the snakes could actually ripple. “This is incredible,” she whispered.

“I thought you’d say that.”

Dave looked over her shoulder as she studied it. Annja passed it to him. He was as shocked as she had been at its weight. “Wow.”

Annja looked at Zach. “How old is it?”

“That’s the other curious thing.”

Annja leaned forward. “Well?”

“According to the carbon dating we did, it’s over forty thousand years old.”

No one spoke for a moment. Annja was acutely aware of the silence hanging between them all. She heard the clinks of glasses and the low murmurs of conversation at other tables. Even the music that had resumed playing seemed hushed now.

“Forty thousand?”

Zach held up his hand. “I know. It seems crazy.”

“It seems impossible. There’s no way humans could have made this forty thousand years ago. I mean, I’m not a metallurgist, but this is pretty complicated stuff. It would take some seriously skilled people to pull this off given what conditions were like on Earth back then,” Annja said.

Zach didn’t say anything but kept staring at her as if he wanted her to take the next leap on her own. Annja took another sip of her gin and tonic and felt the liquor slide down her throat.

After a moment she set the glass back down. “You’re not, no, there’s absolutely no way…”

Zach’s eyebrows waggled. “Why not?”

Dave handed the necklace back. “Why not what?”

Annja sighed. “Extraterrestrial? You can’t be serious.”

“It’s possible, though, you have to admit,” Zach said, sounding excited.

Annja shook her head. “I’m not admitting anything. You’ve got something curious here, sure, but to think little green men from Mars planted this here is a bit far-fetched, don’t you think?”

Zach frowned. “If you’ve got any better theories, I’d be more than willing to entertain them.”

“I don’t have any theories. I just got off a plane. I can use some good sleep. Maybe a few pleasant dreams. And in the morning, maybe we’ll be able to look at this in a more logical light.”

Dave pointed at the necklace as Zach slid it back on. “Where in the world did you ever find that?”

“I’m on a dig at the base of Horlick Mountain.”

Dave whistled. “You’re out on that one, huh? I heard some whispers that some sort of secret dig site was going on somewhere in the Transantarctic Range, but no one had any idea where it was.”

Zach nodded. “Well, do me a favor and don’t tell anyone now that you know. We don’t need the publicity.”

They took a moment to get their order of wings from the bar. Annja tore into one of them and her mouth watered as the hot sauce hit. She wiped her mouth on a napkin and then glanced around. “Why no publicity? Have there been problems?”

Zach shrugged. “Sort of. Down here, you’ll find a lot of different camps on the whole idea of how Antarctica should be used. The scientists want to study it because it’s a fascinating look back at our own history. We can learn a whole lot from this place. Antarctica used to be warm and lush, connected to Africa, India and Australia through the Gondwana supercontinent. When the continents broke apart, the land started to cool, which is why we don’t have fossil records dating later than twenty-five million years ago.”