“So you don’t believe in the Antarctic Treaty either,” Wade suggested.
“We do. We live by the Treaty very specifically. We kill some animals for food, but we study them scientifically before we eat them, and thus we are in technical compliance with the Treaty. We agree with the goals of the Treaty. But most of us have no intrinsic objection to oil and gas extraction, if it is done with no impact to the environment. This is the question; how cleanly can these extractions be made? Can accidents be treated as criticalities? Can the engineering be made redundant to the point where the risks are negligible? And if that kind of engineering is applied, is the extraction still worth it to the extractors? These are questions that need to be answered. It is a matter of doing a true-cost true-benefit analysis, which is to say that all costs and benefits are included, including the so-called exterior costs, while the unpriceable aspects of the situation are also acknowledged and included. We are trying to do this in our own subsistence here, and we often talk about the feasibility of such accounting in the world generally. Environmentally safe technologies, green technologies, applied according to a humane green analysis of the costs and benefits of our various activities—calculating needs and wants, methods and technologies—this is necessary work for people everywhere. It occupies many an evening in our camps, around the table and at the computer. And most of us believe it can be done everywhere, if—and these are big ifs—if human populations were to decline, and if people were everywhere to go feral on the land.”
Sylvia sighed, and made a small steering gesture. “Let’s try to keep the focus on Antarctica in particular now. Just as an exercise, if nothing else. Perhaps it can serve as a kind of experiment, as you called it. In any case, it’s all we can concern ourselves with for now. It’s an open question whether we can even deal with that, obviously.”
In fact small muttered discussions or arguments were breaking out all around the circle, neighbors jabbering emphatically about permaculture or survival or what-not, and for a moment it looked to Sylvia like some sad red-eyed debate society in a mental ward, going nowhere.
She clapped her hands hard, and they went silent. “Let’s take a break,” she said. “We need to organize what we’re doing here a little more, I think. Go get something to eat, and we’ll reconvene in a while. What I want to do then is work out some specific protocols,” very heavy emphasis, “governing our conduct in Antarctica, that everyone represented here could abide by. Whether that’s possible I don’t know yet, but I want us to try, or this meeting becomes nothing but talk. And I want more than talk. I want a report”—glancing quickly at Wade, who was nodding—“and I want us to come up with a list of suggestions, perhaps even a full protocol. Do you understand me? Mr. Smith, can you speak for your clients here?”
“I can.”
“Please go have a meal with Carlos then, and let him describe for you the engineering of the oil and methane exploration technology. I’d like to have a few of our people at that meeting as well. The rest of you can perhaps meet with Mai-lis, and hear more about how they conduct their settlements. We’ll reconvene when we’re ready, but in any case by tomorrow morning. I’ll keep you informed on all phones and beepers.”
14
From the Bottom Up
X observed Sylvia’s meeting with a growing sense of alarm. He could see a potential settlement coming, in which the oil consortium altered its practices to conform to standards set by Mr. Smith’s ecoteurs, who became a kind of conscience to the project; and all would continue as it had been before; and no one would ever notice that in their debate both men had been attacking the practices of Götterdämmerung capitalism without seeming to notice the complementarity, and thinking instead that they were attacking each other. And X would be x’ed out of ASL forever, and therefore out of McMurdo, and no doubt he could get back on with Carlos and the oil crews, but then he would be an exile for good, a man without a country for real, and all the hierarchies would remain, and he would never see Val again. After all that he had been through, he might as well have been right back on the floor of the heavy shop. Exiled without having ever been anywhere—nowhere but Antarctica and America, and Antarctica was another planet, while America was a dream. He had no home; he had no country. If he didn’t want to become The Man Without a Country permanently, wandering the Earth forever exiled, he was going to have to do something about it. He would have to make his home.
So as people poured out of the Chalet into the brisk bright light, most heading over to Crary or the Everest View, he wandered the muddy streets of McMurdo, balked, frustrated, perplexed, at a loss.
Deep in thought, hiking up past the BFC, he ran into the beaker he had worked for in the Dry Valleys. Graham Forbes. X had seen Forbes’s older colleague in the meeting at the Chalet, so now he wasn’t entirely surprised. He remembered the day with Forbes vividly; in all his adventures since he had never been colder. “Hey,” he said, “how are you?”
“Fine. And you?”
“I’m okay. How did your research go out there?”
“It went well, thanks.”
“Make any big discoveries?”
“Well—” Forbes hesitated, looking puzzled as to what to say. “Yes, as a matter of fact.” He held up a hand quickly: “Not anything too definitive, of course.”
“No brass plate saying PLIOCENE FJORD SLEPT HERE.”
“No.” Small smile. “But we did find a mat of beech tree litter—leaves and twigs and other organic matter. It’s similar to mats found elsewhere, but new to this area, and very well-preserved.”
“So even the weirdo Dry Valleys were part of your story.”
“Yes, so it appears.”
“That’ll be big news, I guess. Will one of you do a Crary lecture about it?”
“Oh no. Not this season, no. That would be premature.”
X nodded, thinking it over.
Forbes excused himself; he needed to get over to Crary for a meeting. As he was turning away he stopped suddenly, and said “Thanks for your help that day, by the way. That was an awfully cold day.”
“Oh hey,” said X, startled. “My pleasure.”
Forbes veered off toward Crary.
X continued to walk around the streets, thinking harder than ever, but also taking the time to stop and look at what he was walking by. This had been his town, for a while. And in a lot of ways he had liked it. Right there at the mail building the Kiwis came over from Scott Base and held a hangi and haaka for Mac Town, barbecuing whole pigs and doing a ceremonial Maori war dance—twenty white Kiwi men stripped to the waist and dancing martially to the harsh shouted commands of a Maori woman Kiwi air force officer. That was the kind of thing you saw in Mac Town.
But he had burned his bridges, and now he felt the immense nostalgia of the exile seeing his old home again, briefly. Nostalgia, pain of the lost home; and physically painful, yes. A heartache.
He ran into Randi. “Jesus, Randi, you’re not in the radio shack.”
“They let me out for an hour now that we got everyone home.” Her voice was hoarse, and she had the same wild-eyed red-rimmed insomniac look as everyone else in town. “You look lost, X.”