"I think everyone respects that."
"Do they?"
"Sure."
"I used to think respect was enough." He sat down, looking at the rock.
"They'll probably name something for you."
"When I'm dead." He picked up the meteorite. "They scoff at me now, you know. Geezer Mouse. Don't think I don't know."
"They're jealous. Academic rivalry."
"They don't understand my project has to have priority. Priority! To justify the Pole. To justify the new South Pole station."
Lewis waited.
"I'm just saying that I've paid my dues."
"I'm not arguing, Doctor Moss."
The scientist turned the meteorite over in his hands. "I've made no decisions," he said softly. "It's just that I'm getting old. I had to fudge my medical exam to get down here last time. I don't have endless time anymore. I haven't put a lot away. My family…" He glanced up. "Are you surprised to find me human, Lewis?"
"No." Lewis shifted uncomfortably. He was surprised, actually. It didn't fit his stereotype of a grand old man of science. "It's just that Jim Sparco wanted a rough evaluation. He didn't talk about keeping it."
"Nor have I! Nor have I." He looked at Lewis warily. "Don't jump to conclusions. Don't start rumors that aren't true. I've got a reputation, and in the end a reputation is all a scientist has. Thirty years in this place, and that's all I have. And then at the end a missive from space, a stroke of luck… Why?"
Lewis couldn't answer.
"Well. The first step was to get your opinion, correct? Now we've got some thinking to do. What's best? What's right? What's fair? That's always the question, isn't it?"
"The unanswerable one, sometimes."
"Yet you must choose an answer." Moss stood and put the rock back in his filing cabinet. "The funny thing is, there're almost no locks on this base. That's why you can't breathe a word of this to anyone."
"Don't you want to kick this around with the other scientists?"
"No." He looked depressed. "Word would leak, misinterpretations would be made. They're jealous, like you said. They'd use this against me."
"I could be wrong about the meteorite, you know."
"I understand that."
"It really needs some tests."
"Of course. But in the meantime I'm going to put this where others won't find it." He looked intently at the young geologist. "And then decide the right thing to do."
CHAPTER FIVE
Jed Lewis had a theory about life. Life was hard. Complicated. Life was a long, meandering slog up a very steep mountain and if you didn't have good friends to help point out the way, it was pretty easy to choose the wrong path sometimes. (Lewis didn't think Mickey Moss had many friends, just admirers. Rivals.) And even after choosing, you could go miles, years, before knowing whether your path was wrong or right. Moreover, everybody had their own route and their own schedule. So Jed was slow to judge how people made it up the slope. You didn't know where they were coming from. Couldn't know, as Moss had said. Didn't know where they were going. Lewis had examined the meteorite and would probably test it, but the fate of the rock was really none of his concern. Let the old scientist make his own lonely way up the peak.
Lewis himself was tired of being alone.
By the time he got back to the dome he was ravenous again. Geller was right: The polar cold almost snatched food out of your mouth. When Lewis yanked open the freezer door and stepped into the galley vestibule, he was salivating.
The galley was crowded and a table of beakers was almost full. Lewis, curious to sample the station's social spectrum, decided to sit with the some of the support staff who kept the place running. He plopped next to Geller, who was working on another mountain of food. Next to him was a smaller, quiet, mouselike man he'd noticed earlier, keeping his head down as he ate.
"A beaker joins the rabble," Geller greeted.
"Just trying to meet everyone."
"And your appetite's improved." He nodded at Lewis's tray. Stroganoff, fresh green beans, cobbler, all heaped high. Pulaski and Linda Brown could cook.
"I was on tour. The cold really burns up your reserves."
"That ain't cold. Sitting out eight hours in the wind trying to fix equipment some moron beaker busted-that's cold."
"Are there always no scientists at this table?" Lewis asked.
"Mostly. We get along great but they tend to eat with their own, we tend to eat with our own. They bitch about us, we bitch about them. Works better that way."
"I thought segregation was against the law."
"It ain't segregation, it's fucking high school." It was the growl of a new voice and Lewis looked up. The grump from the shower, Tyson. He sat heavily, spreading his arms and legs to claim a substantial portion of the table. His manner was one of fingie instructor. A heavily muscled forearm boasting a tattooed snake pulled his tray against his torso. A fork was held upright in his other fist like a flagstaff. He'd unconsciously made a tiny fort of his food. "Like the jocks and the nerds, remember? We got more cliques here than Hot Pants High."
"I think you're exaggerating a little, Buck," Geller said mildly.
"The hell I am. You got us, and you got the beakers, and you got the smokers, and you got the singles, and you got the women. The science side is all rank and show-off, with know-it-alls like Mickey Moss lording it over grad students and postdocs. And then even the tweezer twits get snobby when they want something done."
"Yeah, but everyone gets along. Better than anyplace I've ever been."
"We gotta get along, or we fucking die. But that don't mean people don't cluster with their own. Look around this room. Planet of the Apes, man. We're monkeys." The phrase jogged a memory. Hadn't Norse said something similar?
"Buck Tyson, resident sociologist," Geller introduced.
"Yeah, me and our new shrink." He nodded to Lewis.
"We met at the shower."
"Yeah, I remember. That wasn't about you. That was about Ice Prick."
Not exactly an apology, but not hostile, either. Maybe Tyson was okay. "You like to analyze?"
"I just see things like they really are. My day job is master mechanic. I make our go-carts go. You need a snow Spryte, a D-6 Cat, you come to Buck Tyson. But at night I think about our loony bin. Me thinking for myself makes some of the beakers nervous. You nervous?"
How to respond to that? "You like Doctor Bob?" Lewis deflected.
"I like where he's coming from. I like that he stays in shape. I talked to him already and I think he sees through the bullshit like I do. We're into the same shit: self-reliance. The importance of Numero Uno and thinking for yourself. He's got all these ideas from NASA about whether this place suggests what you need to make starship troopers. It's cool, what he's trying to do. Not the touchy-feely crap of the other shrinks that come down to The Ice." He turned to Geller. "You know what they did to a shrink at Vanda, over in the Dry Valleys?"
"No, what?"
"Ran over his gear with a tractor." Tyson laughed.
There was a silence, the others digesting this.
"I guess Buck is your nickname," Lewis finally said. "What's your real name?"
"James," Geller quickly interjected.
"Jimmy, you dumb fuck. You know I hate James. English faggot name."
"James Bond ain't a faggot."
"James Bond is the biggest goddamned English pansy there is! He carries a girl's gun and dresses like a fucking bridegroom! I like big guns, and big guys. I like guys who go it alone and kick butt. Like Clint Eastwood. And John Wayne. And Bruce Willis. And Rambo. And Ahhhnold. Except he married the fucking Kennedys."