“It must have been quite the forty-eight hours here.”
“Yes.”
“The FBI’s going to be here for a long time.”
“Yes. They’ll have several avenues of investigation, of course. The satellite hardware, the bombs, the bacteria, these exiled ice pirates wandering around Chile, Mr. Smith himself … I wonder if he’s right to be so confident his clients will remain anonymous. It’s clear they were being careful, but still …”
“Yeah. Depends how careful they were. I could imagine a group with experience and forethought making it difficult. And since no one got killed, and the FBI’s plate is overfull with more violent and lethal terrorist activities back in the States, they may not put years of effort into this case.”
“Hmm.”
The two of them sat there, staring at the desk. The amount of sleep they had gotten between them in the last week wouldn’t have covered a single night. Wade found himself blinking out unexpectedly and then coming to with a start; he stood up abruptly before he fell asleep right in front of her. “Thanks for all the information. I’ll convey what I’ve learned to Senator Chase, and we’ll do what we can to help.”
Sylvia nodded, still thinking things over.
Back outside Wade cringed at the raw sting of the wind through the Gap, then stumbled over the muddy wasteland toward the galley and a few mugs of coffee. Just outside the big building he ran into Professor Michelson, going the same way.
“Professor! Hello!”
“Ah hello,” Michelson said, recognizing him. Then after a closer look, he said, “You’ve visited us during interesting times, I see.”
“Very interesting. What did you think of the meeting in the Chalet?”
“Well, obviously it’s important to discuss these matters. There will be many such discussions in the wake of what happened this week.”
“Including within SCAR?”
“Oh, most definitely.”
“Yes. I suppose that makes sense. So … How did your work go in the Dry Valleys?”
“Well, we continued to work.”
They stood in the sun, protected from the wind by the galley itself. Michelson stared at him curiously. Finally Wade said, “My friend X spent a day out with your team working for Graham—he tells me that Graham told him that you made a significant discovery out there.”
“Did he? Well, yes, I suppose. All discoveries are significant really, aren’t they? When you consider the vast realm of nondiscovery?”
“Yes, I’m sure. But—” Wade tried to figure out how to say it. “But if you’ve made a discovery that will confirm the dynamicist position unequivocally, then that will demonstrate that the East Antarctic ice sheet is unstable, and wasn’t there three million years ago, and possibly will go away again if global warming continues. Right? So it’s important, and, you know. Maybe if you have a kind of smoking-gun piece of evidence then you should share it immediately, so that policy can begin to take it into account?”
That little V of a smile, under the moustache. “I don’t think we need to be quite as dramatic as that.”
Maybe you don’t, Wade thought.
“I’m not sure there is even the possibility of what you call a smoking gun. What we found has to be studied and interpreted, and fitted into a much larger pattern. It means nothing by itself. Its meaning can be disputed, and will be disputed, believe me. Dating Sirius is no easy thing. Particularly since different Sirius outcroppings may in fact date from different warm periods. So we must proceed cautiously.”
“So it’s not really a smoking gun.”
“No, it’s a mat of beech leaves. Beech leaves and other associated litter, from a forest floor.” He shrugged. “It’s more evidence, we hope.”
“But you’re becoming more convinced, yourself, that the ice sheet was gone in the Pliocene?”
“Oh yes, you can say that. What we’re finding now in Sirius formations resembles the coastline biome of southern Chile. The beech forests, the insect life, the microscopic life, it all fits together. And it becomes clearer that it can be dated to around two to three million years ago. So we will toil on, and see what happens.”
“So no press conferences about this season’s discoveries.”
Michelson laughed briefly. “No, no press conferences. Not much drama, I’m afraid. Just evidence.”
“Which you will introduce when?”
“Oh, pretty quickly, pretty quickly.”
“Two hundred years?”
“Ha, no, not quite that long. Preliminary reports next year, then see how the lab work is going … full publication a year or two after that, perhaps.”
“It’s so slow.”
“It is rather slow. The samples themselves are going north by ship, you know, and won’t be available for study until next spring.”
The discipline itself was beginning to imitate geological time scales, Wade thought irritably. While politics whizzed on ever faster, science was slowing down; making the two match was like trying to catch neutrinos with the Earth. Little sparks of blue light, that was all. “But—but, you know—people need to know this stuff soon! It needs to be part of the policy debate that’s ongoing right now.”
The professor gave him a kindly glance. “But that’s your job, right?”
Wade thought it over.
“Listen,” Michelson said, looking at his watch, “I’m supposed to be meeting Mai-lis inside. I haven’t seen her in about twenty years.”
“Oh, sorry. Of course. I’d like to talk with her too, actually. Her group saved us from the midst of all this, up there on Shackleton Glacier.”
“Is that right? You were in need of salvation?”
“Yes. We were pinned down by the superstorm, with one of our group sick. Mai-lis’s people picked us up and took us in.”
“That sounds like her.”
“You knew her twenty years ago?”
“Yes. She was a doctor and biologist in the Norwegian program. Unusual. Sylvia knew her too. Let’s see if we can locate her.”
They went in the galley. The hallways and dining rooms were all crowded, people in a hurry but moving clumsily, like manic zombies. Mai-lis was at one of the round tables in the main galley. It took a long time for Wade to get a chance to talk to her, but at one point she got up to refill her bowl at the soft ice-cream machine, and Wade followed her over. She greeted him pleasantly and handed him an empty bowl.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Thank you for calling me about this meeting. Out of habit I wanted to keep our distance, but on reflection I think it’s a good idea to have come in, to make our own case for ourselves.”
“Oh good, good. I agree completely. We need your input here if we want to have more than some kind of stand-off, or a partial, what you might call technical solution.”
“Yes.” She looked at him closely. “And so …”
“I’ve been thinking about the situation, and I think Senator Chase might be able to do some things for you, concerning the Treaty renewal and so on, making allowances for the kind of thing you are attempting. As part of that effort, to give him more leverage so to speak, I was wondering if you would put me in contact with the satellite photo analyst you mentioned at your camp—you know, the one that was helping you too.”
“Tell me what you want from him.”
He explained his reasons, encouraged to see that Mai-lis was nodding as he spoke. When he was done she continued to nod, thinking it over.
“I’d especially like to talk to him if it’s Sam,” Wade ventured. “In that case he’s doing analysis for Sylvia as well, and I could come to him with a double reference.”