12
Transantarctica
Val followed their pilot through the wind, X and Wade on each side of her. Ahead of them a low escarpment of rust-colored rock loomed out of the needle mist shooting past. They were on a nunatak, or perhaps one of the larger rock ranges. What Val could see actually resembled Bennett’s Platform, as far as she could recall; she had visited the plateau once, with a team of paleontologists who had been using helicopters to pull fossil trees out by the stumps. The rock underfoot was like a rough parquet floor, part rock, part ice.
Ahead there was a kind of embayment in the rock, about the volume of two Jamesways set side by side. In the embayment the air was clear, and spindrift was bouncing over it and collecting at its foot; the empty space was covered by some kind of clear fabric, very taut and obviously very strong. Tented.
Inside this clear space, this room in the side of the storm, a number of people were seated on rocks placed like benches against the sidewalls. They were dressed in a great variety of styles, from the glossiest of client chic to thick fur jackets to ratty long underwear that reminded Val of Sherpa yak wool. She wondered again if these were the saboteurs.
Then she saw the rest of her group emerge out of the flying cloud, and she hurried over to see how Jack was doing. He was flat out in the banana sled, but conscious; trying to crane his neck around to see where they were going, a move which obviously hurt him; he looked cold and miserable. “They say there’s a doctor here,” Val told him, but he just stared at her.
Their pilot reached the tent and unzipped a zipper in the clear fabric next to the rock wall, and waved them into the gap. Inside there was a clear inner wall; they were in a clear lock or vestibule. Their pilots were taking off their parkas and then their boots; two women and a man. Val’s sunglasses were fogging up; she took them off, pulled off her ski mask, then her parka, then her boots. Everyone jostling in the vestibule’s little space. Then one of the other pilots zipped the outer wall, unzipped the inner wall, and they went inside.
Their arrival was greeted with indifference by most of the occupants. A glance only and then they were back to whatever they had been doing before: eating, working on clothing at a table covered with scraps of cloth and fur, reading, talking around a radio set that appeared to be turned off. The conversation by the radio sounded to Val like German.
“The doctor?” she said to their pilot.
“That’s May Lee,” she said. Later Val learned it was spelled Mai-lis. “Mai, we got a patient for you.”
“I know,” said a short elderly woman. Her round face was remarkably leathered and wrinkly, and Val took her to be an Eskimo. “Bring him over here.”
They followed the old woman, Jim and Jorge carrying the banana sled. They laid it down on a rough rock bench against the dolerite wall, and Mai-lis pulled over a wooden deck chair and sat down next to Jack. “How are you?” she asked him as she opened a large long bag and attached a monitor to his arm.
“Broke my collarbone,” Jack said.
“Ah. So you have. Are you hypothermic?”
“I’m cold. Not as cold as before. My lungs hurt.”
“I will check them.” She was getting his clothes away from his upper body; Jim helped her. It was warm in the tented chamber, so that would not be a problem. The wind was still loud, but it was muffled inside just enough so that they could hear each other talk. “I will inject anesthetics around the clavicle,” the old woman said, “then reset the bone. After that you cannot move that arm. We will get you a sling for it.” As she spoke she was unwrapping a hypodermic needle, and after gently swabbing the skin over the broken bone she injected a syringe’s contents into him. Then another one. Val was so happy to see this evidence of bona fide medicine that she could hardly stand.
After that the woman checked the readings on the monitor, and listened to Jack’s lungs with a stethoscope. “Your right lung is a little full. Have you coughed up any blood?”
“I don’t think so.”
“We’ll keep an eye on it. It may be a touch of pneumonia. Your temperature is low, but you’re not badly hypothermic any longer.”
“I’m cold.”
“No doubt. Let’s check your feet. Hmm … perhaps a little frostbite in the toes. We can help that.” She worked on his feet for a while, applying patches from her kit. “Now, can you feel your clavicle?”
“No.”
“Okay. I’m going to reset it. You will feel the contact for sure, but tell me if it hurts and we’ll give you another shot.”
“It’s okay,” Jack said. He stared at her face impassively as she put both hands to his shoulder. “Addie,” she said to Val’s pilot, “help me here.”
“Sure thing, Mai.”
“Hold his shoulder down, right there. Don’t look, young man. Head the other way. Twist your left shoulder to the left. That’s it. Okay. Now I’m going to inject some muscle relaxants. You will have a bump for good in your clavicle, but if you can keep it in this position, it will heal all right. Ah good, here is hot chocolate, for all of you. Now you should rest, young man. We will keep a watch on your lungs. If you have some pneumonia we will give you antibiotics. But we should wait and make sure. Sleep now, but stay flat on your back. Addie and Elke will help you into a sleeping bag. Be careful,” she said to the two women attending. Then she led Val and Jim to the back of the chamber, where delicious smells were steaming out of a big pot on an ordinary green Coleman stove. “Let’s eat,” she said.
They sat on doubled-up sleeping pads on the ground, staring up at the cook. The smells of cooking food struck Val and she realized she was ravenous. “We appreciate what you’re doing for us,” she said to Mai-lis.
“Oh, Addie and Lars and Elke, they enjoyed the opportunity. They like to do crazy things like flying the blimps in storms, but it’s a bit too dangerous, so in the ordinary course of things they don’t get to. So a rescue situation is just an opportunity to them. They loved it.”
“And you knew we were in trouble?”
“Well, we heard your radio, and looked and saw you coming down the glacier. And then the storm hit, and it didn’t seem like you had much in the way of shelter. So they went to get you.”
The cook, a big man with tattooed arms, tossed slabs of white fish steak into a giant frypan. As they sizzled Addie came over and laughed at Val and her companions’ intent expressions. “You got an appreciative audience, Claude!”
“I can see.”
“What’s cooking?” Ta Shu asked, coming over to look into the frypan. He appeared happy and comfortable, as if he had met these people before and was feeling at home already.
“Mawsoni,” Claude said. “Mawsoni fried in seal fat, and seasoned with herbs grown in local greenhouses. An all-indigenous main course, see? And local krill cakes too. Then vegetable stew, that’s not so local,” indicating the pot.
Killing fish and seals was illegal under the Antarctic Treaty, as Val recalled. But she decided it was not a good time to mention it.
“Mawsoni?” she said instead. She had heard of the big Antarctic fish, but never seen one. Now Addie opened a box and hauled out the head of a big gutted fish.
“Oh don’t show them that, it’ll spoil their appetite.” Claude laughed. And indeed the fish face was a monstrously spiked, big-eyed, misshapen thing. “Antarctic cod!” Claude said facetiously. “That’s what they call it in the grocery stores, even though it has no relation at all to real cod. They call all the real ugly fishes cod so they can sell them. No one will buy Dissotichus mawsoni or Pagotenia borchgrevinki, but Antarctic cod! Yum yum!”