“You took away the generator with a blimp?”
“Yes. We have salvaged equipment from Siple Dome, Vostok, the Byrd stations, the Point of Inaccessibility station, and so on. All abandoned and buried in the ice. But the new ice borers are very powerful. Also the new remote sensing devices. We even know where the tent is that Amundsen left at the Pole. That we have left in place. Other things, more useful and less—less historical—we have dug.”
She took another bite, swallowed. “But all of this is salvage. And salvage is not theft. Theft we do not like. The people down here who steal say it is all the same. They call everything we salvage and they steal ‘obtainium.’ But this is just their insolence. They defy us all.” She scowled, looking ferocious for a moment. “And so they endanger us all. Because it very well might happen that some military come down here to clear up this matter of the ecotage, and kick us all off the ice because of these people. And we cannot allow that to happen.”
“But how can you stop them?” Wade asked.
“Well, this is the question. We have very little political organization down here. This is what they have endangered also. To the extent that we have any at all, we are a pure democracy.”
“Mai-lis thinks it’s a democracy,” Lars interjected from behind her with a jagged grin. “Actually it’s a matriarchy, and she is the high priestess.”
“And Lars is court jester,” Mai-lis said, without looking at him. “Actually I am just the doctor, but that is enough power out here. Anyway, we try to agree on everything. And a few seasons ago, we agreed together that if any feral hurt any other feral, or anyone else in Antarctica, then they could be judged in absentia by the rest of us.”
“So these are the people who sabotaged my camp?” Carlos asked.
Several of the ferals sitting around listening shook their heads, and Mai-lis said “No,” though she looked uncertain. “We don’t know who did the ecotage. I wish we did, but we don’t. Oil camps took most of the attacks, and the communications system was disrupted. And McMurdo’s fuel tanks were contaminated. But who did this, we do not know. We know it was not the anarchist ferals we are quarreling with, because we have informants among them. So we know this was not their idea. But some of them were in contact with these ecoteurs, apparently, and they did help the ecoteurs to empty the oil camps of people before they were destroyed. They think we do not know this. They think that they are free to do what they want. But we know, and we know where they are. And we have judged them and voted, and agreed that they are to be punished, to the maximum in our system.”
“Which is?” Wade asked, in a serious silence; this was the first some of the ferals had heard about the decision, Val could see.
“Exile from Antarctica.”
Mai-lis looked around at all the members of her group, as if to defy any challenge to this judgment.
“About time,” Addie opined. “They’ll kick us all out if we don’t get rid of these jokers soon.”
Mai-lis nodded. “We have been listening to McMurdo, and from what we have heard, we know the U.S. Navy is coming. We want them and the NSF to be clear about what has happened up here. That we are not the ecoteurs nor the thieves. And that the thieves among us are gone.”
“Who do you think the ecoteurs are?” Val asked.
Mai-lis shrugged. “I suppose some radical environmentalist group from the north. People who have gone beyond Greenpeace-style protests to direct resistance, like Earth First! or Sea Shepherds. People who think Antarctica should be a pure wilderness, with no people at all. Many world park advocates don’t even like scientists down here.”
“So your group would not be something these people approve of,” Val said.
“Not at all. We have very little in common with them.”
“Deep ecologists,” Lars said scornfully. “Very deep! And we are so shallow!”
Mai-lis shrugged. “Their philosophy is good. There should be fewer humans on Earth, using fewer resources. We try to do that ourselves. But to make some parts of the Earth precious wilderness, while the parts we live on can be trashed as usual—no. There is not sacred land and profane land. It is all just land. All equally valuable.”
Ta Shu, watching Mai-lis closely (to Val they looked like cousins) nodded at this. “All sacred,” he said.
Mai-lis shrugged. “We try to find a different way here,” looking at Ta Shu. “We say the land is sacred, yes. Then we live on that sacred land. And theft is no part of that.”
Lars shook his head vehemently. “To glorify property like this, to kick people off the ice just because of property—”
“Their thieving will get us all kicked off the ice,” Mai-lis said sharply.
Lars got up and stalked away, which drew some supporters in his wake.
“And the Antarctic Treaty?” Wade said.
“Yes?”
“Aren’t you breaking it by being here?”
Some rude noises from the ferals still listening.
Mai-lis shrugged again. “Aren’t you too breaking it by being here?” She stood up. “We don’t bother anyone, and we live very lightly on the land. We don’t change Antarctica even one-tenth as much as McMurdo Station alone. So we will argue the particulars of the Treaty before the World Court, if you like. But now we have to clean our own house.” She glanced after Lars: “Because I am a pragmatical, and I want to be allowed to stay here.” She scowled. “So I want you to witness this.”
Sometimes life gives us such opportunities. In moments of pressure things flow quickly in a new direction. Through a mountain opening, and here we are in a new land. Source of the peach blossom stream, green valley in an ice world, like our pale blue dot in space. My friends, I hope I am reaching you now, but cannot be sure. I am saving often just in case. If you are with me, note please how quickly we leave this little refuge notched in the rock, where people were making a home in the ice. It seemed to me a cave from the paleolithic. The minds in there were fully engaged. They were no longer sleepwalking. I could have stayed there a long time, and never wanted for anything else. And yet my companions have agreed to leave, and I am going with them. Perhaps there was no other choice.
Cloud-mountains, mountain-clouds. It is the gift of the world to offer such winds, it is a gift to travel in such a storm. How the blood races! How the mind awakes! Sometimes it seems that only in storms am I truly alive, as if the winds indeed carried my spirit, and filled my body with joy.
Onward we move, cast on the wind. How eerily this voyage resembles the experience of the Endurance expedition. I think of those men so often now. Like them we have had a leader who has held true through all. Like them we have been lucky; taken all in all, circumstances have been kind to us. They have allowed us our opportunity!
For Shackleton’s men, when the pack ice under their camp finally began to break up, they were forced into their three boats, as we into three blimps. But they were in seas crowded with ice, sailing in narrow leads, and hauling the boats back onto floes when it seemed they would be crushed between colliding bergs. Frantic days of insane effort, with never a moment’s sleep; inspired seamanship, and always do or die. Sometimes life is like that!
And at the end of that week’s sail, they landed on Elephant Island. Better than drowning, for sure; but it was an uninhabited ice-covered rock at the end of the Antarctic Peninsula, rarely visited by anyone. No one would look for them there, and in the winter they would likely die of starvation. So after some time to rest, and do carpentry on their biggest boat, Shackleton and Worsley and four other men sailed for South Georgia Island, where the Norwegians manned a year-round whaling station. It was twelve hundred kilometers away, roughly downwind, and in the direction of the prevailing currents—but across the ocean in the high fifties of southern latitude, where there is only water the whole world round, and the great rollers of the perpetual groundswell are gnawed and chopped by the windiest storms on the planet.