“Oh, the old dome, yeah. Good idea.” Meaning not a good idea; meaning there were better ideas. “Did they show you the utilidor?”
“No.”
She shook her head. She looked at him curiously; she wanted to help him, he thought. Either just to show him their place, or something more, he couldn’t tell. She had been noticeably blank-faced about Keri. “We’ll have to show you the utilidor, at least.”
Then the door to the coms room burst open and the other woman said “Viktor’s here, Viktor’s here,” pronouncing the name in a way that somehow made the k spelling clear.
“Who’s Viktor?” Wade asked.
“Oh, he’s our Russian friend,” Andrea said. “He lives out here and comes by occasionally, he’s great.”
“He lives out here?”
“Yeah, come on,” and as she headed down to the rec room Wade followed. She explained over her shoulder: “He skis around the polar cap between Vostok and Dome C and the Point of Inaccessibility, and here and the oil stations. Wherever. He’s got his sled filled with everything he needs and just skis around, or puts up his sail and sails.”
“Where does he resupply?” Wade asked, thinking of the disappearances.
“Well, there are ways. You know Vostok is closed now, but they left everything behind, and so he drops in occasionally and takes things.”
“Ah ha! I’d like to meet this Viktor.”
“Yes you would.” She leaned her head into the rec room and shouted, “Viktor is here!” and there was a cheer from inside. “Come on, he’ll be down at Spiff’s place.”
She led him to the outer door of the first module, and Wade followed her outside with his parka barely zippered and his hood still on his back; the cold’s snap to his head almost knocked him down the stairs. Andrea was running ahead of him toward the quiet zone, and Wade saw she wasn’t wearing a parka at all, but was in the same light clothes she wore in the office. “Aren’t you cold?” he cried out as he followed her.
“Why?”
She led him to a pickup truck and unplugged it from its battery warmer and drove him across the runway to the Dark Sector, where a little rectangular building stood on stilts in the midst of a network of poles and lines. They went up stairs and into one of these buildings, Andrea shouting, “Is he here yet?”
“I am here!” boomed a voice from inside the room.
“Viktor!”
In the room, walled everywhere with big machines, a group of people stood around a tall bulky man, dressed in blue photovoltaic clothing the same color as the new station’s exterior. Several conversations were going on at once, but most were listening to Viktor give his news:
“Yes, I have big new project going! Hello, Andrea! Hello! And here is the senator we have visiting, I see! Hello, Wade! Yes, a new project with the Sahara mitigation people. You know they have a very great problem with spread of the Sahara, and I have designed a plan to help, and have just gotten a grant to start. You know,” he said to Wade, “how there is Lake Vostok underneath Vostok Station—a freshwater lake at the bottom of the ice, with as much water in it as your Lake Ontario.”
Wade said, “No, I didn’t know that.”
“Yes, it is one of the biggest bodies of fresh water in the world. And under four kilometers of ice, so the water down there is under most enormous pressure. Drilling through the ice cap is of course no problem these days, and now the materials scientists at Chevron are making flexible pipelines, a Kevlar and soy plastic mesh, very strong, very light, and very cheap! And so we are going to drill down to Lake Vostok, and pipe the water in a direct pipeline to sub-Sahara desert border!”
“No!” several exclaimed. “You’re kidding!”
“Impossible!” one of them declared, with a grin that said he was only egging Viktor on.
“No, Spiff! Is possible! Is quite possible! The height of the ice cap and its pressure on the water will be such to drive it all the way to the equator. Just a few pumps near the end to keep the flow going. The pipe will sink to a few hundred feet under the sea, and come up in Gabon. After that, fresh water for free! The Saharan mitigation group is very excited.”
“Then when the lake is drained the weight of the ice will melt more water,” Spiff suggested, again egging him on.
“No, no. Is not possible, I’m afraid. Not possible. But it will take years to spread Lake Vostok over the Sahara, years.”
Spiff extricated little tumblers from a cabinet of scientific equipment. Viktor pulled a large glass bottle of vodka from his backpack and poured shots all around. Everyone gulped down a toast, except for Wade, who sipped his. Viktor explained the details of his new project to Spiff, who was saying things that would force Viktor to say either “Is possible” or “Is not possible.” Wade had heard other people around the station using these two phrases earlier, and now he heard someone else insisting to a man sitting on the desk, “Is possible, is very possible.”
Viktor came over to Wade. “So you work for Senator Chase. That is good, I admire him very much. The nomads will inherit the Earth, this is what I say.”
Wade nodded. “Sometimes it seems so.”
“What is it like to work for him? Do you ever see him?”
“I very rarely see him,” Wade admitted. “Perhaps twice a year.”
“Twice a year! Very good! This is like an equinox.”
“More like the solstices,” Wade said, which caused Viktor to grin and nod very rapidly. No doubt he was more aware of the difference between solstice and equinox than anybody on the planet.
Spiff came over and joined them, and Viktor gave him a hug with one arm. “My crazy astronomer friend. You are jealous because finally there is a project on the ice crazier than yours!”
“I think I still win,” Spiff said, smiling.
Viktor laughed: “Indeed so.” He looked at Wade: “Do you know Spiff’s work?”
“No.”
“He is the greatest astronomer in the world.”
Spiff rolled his eyes.
“Is not possible,” someone else around them said.
“Exactly,” Spiff said.
“From here Spiff studies the northern sky,” Viktor told Wade. “He is part of famous AMANDA project. They use the whole body of Earth to catch neutrinos. The neutrinos that fly through Earth from the north mostly miss everything completely and fly right through without obstruction, am I right, Spiff? Weakly interacting particles, like me. But sometimes they hit atoms from Earth and knock off muons, and muons fly into this ice cap from underneath and cause a particular blue light, Cherenkov light, yes? So they use the planet for their filter, and the ice cap for their lens, and they record the blue lights with strings of photomultiplier tubes extending one, two kilometers down. These tubes are like lightbulbs in reverse—they take in light and put out electricity—but what lightbulbs! They amplify incoming signals by a hundred million times, isn’t that what you said, Spiff? And from that they determine how many neutrinos, and even where in the sky they came from.”
“You’re-kidding,” Wade said. “Impossible.”
“No, no! Is possible, is quite possible!”
Spiff was laughing at Wade. “Andrea,” he said across the heads in the room, “isn’t the dance starting soon?”
“Yeah!”
“You know me,” Viktor said to Spiff, “I always arrive in time to take a shower.”
“Oh yeah, of course. Here, here’s my key. I’ll see you at the dance.”
Viktor took the key and left. The party in Spiff’s office went on without him; people were getting ready for the dance, Spiff explained to Wade.
“The dance?” Wade asked.
“Hadn’t you heard?” He shook his head. “Keri probably didn’t think to tell you. It’s October 12th, you know.”