Wade on the other hand was very slim and lithe. Now swimming around the hot bath like an otter. A good-looking man. Lars too was very attractive, in Norse god style; a face that reminded her of Sting. No fat on him. The ferals’ bodies showed they worked hard out here, which did not surprise Val in the least.
Mai-lis stood in the center of the bath, round and wrinkled, listening to Carlos and Ta Shu. The big mama. The three of them were circulating slowly, and coming toward Val and X through other knots of conversation. Living out here. Making their living out here. X leaned into Val, gestured at the three approaching them. “We’re so damn lucky. Here’s a Chilean and a Chinese and a Laplander talking, and they use English to do it.”
“You can thank the Brits for that.”
“I guess so.”
“It’s true,” Carlos was insisting to Ta Shu and Mai-lis, “and if it is true in Antarctica then it is true everywhere, this is what I say!”
Ta Shu squinted, uncertain. “Colder here. People cannot so easily live off land.”
“True,” Carlos said, “but people can’t easily live off the land anywhere! So true here, true there, just like I said! Where in the world could a person be put outdoors and find an easy time living off the land? It’s not so easy!”
“I suppose not,” Ta Shu said, thinking it over. “Savannah, maybe.”
“But if we can do it here,” Mai-lis said, “then everywhere else it can only be easier. That’s why I don’t agree with the fundies that we should use only things we can make down here. There is no reason for an artificial exercise like that. It’s the latest technologies that make what we do here possible. When your clothes are your house, and your tent is your farm, then you can go where you please. Even Antarctica can be inhabited, as you see.”
Higher voices cut through the clangor, and Carlos looked at the door. “Are those kids I hear? Hey, look! Some boys and girls!”
Indeed it was true; a pack of kids like wild animals crashed down into the water and started splashing each other, oblivious to the adults in the bath.
“I did not know this!” Carlos said. “You didn’t tell us about this!”
“Oh yes,” Mai-lis said. “We have quite a few families down here, and they tend to clump together so the kids will have company. This refuge is a big family camp.”
“Now this is what you need!” Carlos exclaimed. “These are Antarcticans, you see? This is all they know. This is how I was brought up—we didn’t have a spa like this of course, I wish we had, but there were fifteen kids in Bernardo O’Higgins when I grew up there, I could name them all to you and tell you everything about them, right up to this very day! They are my brothers and sisters, I tell you. X, X, this is how I grew up, look at them!”
“I am,” X assured him.
“You must have many memories of that place,” Ta Shu said.
“Oh my God. My God yes. One time in Bernardo,” Carlos said, talking to them all now, including Jim, who had joined them and was regarding him very closely: “One time I was four years old, and I was fascinated by the bulldozer we had for snowplowing, I liked to sit with the driver and drive it, you know. And one day I went out there by myself and climbed up into it, just to pretend, and you know how a bulldozer will start with just a push of the ignition when the key is left in—well, I pushed the button and the engine started, and it had been left in low gear, and it took off. I didn’t know what to do, I was too scared to move. And the bulldozer had been parked pointed toward a cliff that fell directly down into the sea ice, which was thin. So the bulldozer ran toward that cliff, and I could see it coming but I couldn’t figure out what to do, and someone inside the dining hall saw me out the window and they all came running out, and they were running for me as hard as they could, my father in front, I saw his face so clearly, I can still see it. And yet they would not have reached me in time, because the bulldozer was very close to the cliff. But then the bulldozer stopped. The engine conked out, you know, it misfired and died. They looked at it later, and it had fuel and ran smoothly and everything. But it stopped at the edge of the cliff! And everyone carried me back inside. It’s practically the first thing I can remember.”
“You are a true Antarctican,” Ta Shu declared.
“Yes, yes yes yes yes. Antarctica said to me, Okay, you can live, Carlos. But you must remember. You must serve me.”
Then a bunch of people from the sauna were rushing through the pool toward the lock at the end of the tent, the lock leading outside. “Come on!” Addie said to them as she passed (stuffed in a flowery swimsuit, pink, sexy), “come on y’all, it’s a hundred fifty Fahrenheit in the sauna and fifty below outside if you count windchill! You can join the Two Hundred Club with an asterisk, not quite the Three Hundred Club but very exclusive nevertheless!”
“Oh God,” X said, not moving.
“I’ve heard of this,” Val said. “It’s like the polar dip at Mac Town.”
“A heart attack waiting to happen.” He glanced at her. “You want to try it?”
“No…. Ah hell, why not. I’m so spaced, it might wake me up.”
He grinned. “If it doesn’t then nothing’s going to.”
They stood, and in that movement Val saw suddenly that he was relaxed. As they sloshed down the pool she thought disjointedly about this. It had been true pretty much since she had run into him and the others at Roberts. Not hangdog and accusatory as in McMurdo. Not that he hadn’t had cause! Because he had. And still did. But he seemed to have forgiven her. And she hadn’t even apologized. She clutched his arm for balance as they kicked into cold tennis shoes next to the lock, clutched it hard as they crowded into the lock with others. “Keep a hand on the safety line,” Val said to him. “It could be extra windy in the slot between the tent and the ice.”
“Do you think they’ll have a safety line?”
“Shit.”
They crowded out the door with the others.
Instant cold, a brutal slam of it everywhere at once. The wind poured right through her and her skin snap-froze. Everyone was shouting, and she realized she was too. Steam was erupting off them and flying downwind; they were pink firecrackers, exploding steam! The cold was astonishing. Val felt a moment of pure fear, as it occurred to her that this is what the end would feel like in Antarctica; this was death; then she was laughing at the insanity of it, people trying to dig snowballs out of a snowbank hard as concrete, screaming, all the steaming pink skin glowing in the dim omnidirectional light; seeing it all without sunglasses, through a torrent of tears freezing on her cheeks; her underwear and jogger top freezing solid. Brass bra like an amazon. Amazed laughter.
Then all at once they were jostling back into the lock, then crashing desperately down into the water and shrieking even louder at the heat. Val’s skin was blasted all over again by the hot/cold assault on her stunned capillary system, the two sensations of freezing and boiling merged into a single burn. Shrieks and hollers all around. She had to laugh. “What a rush.”
After that sensory detonation everything was rendered hyperlucid. Her skin needled and burned; she saw everything in a kind of twenty-ten vision. Sleepiness had vanished utterly, she felt like she would never sleep again. All her muscles were melting inside her but her mind remained alert, as hypersensitive as her skin.
And so a very strange state indeed, as she observed the ferals and their refuge. She got out of the pool before she melted entirely, and put on undershirt and pants, and wandered around just looking, free from all responsibility. All the rooms were warmer now, and people were dressed in various degrees of clothing, many still in their drying long underwear. Some rooms looked like they were shooting a special Antarctic issue of the Victoria’s Secret catalog, and Jack had found one of these, and was telling a couple of the Scandinavian women about something. Jim was at the dining room table conversing with Ta Shu and Carlos, intent about something or other: I do social law, but that’s where you can see that unless the system itself changes … Jorge and Elspeth were back talking to the cook, Jorge taking notes on a little pad of paper. Recipes for an article. The ferals were not going to be hidden very much longer.