Jesus.
The voice of reason, being me, gently pointed out that the pack of amateurs we were leading didn't have the skills to do this kind of Matterhorn macho shit. I told Kressler that he could go down there while Fleming and I took everyone else back down the glacier. But Kressler said he needed Fleming, and Fleming said Fat Boy was so heavy they really needed two more young studs to help, and no one wanted to break up the party, and so in the spirit of eternal togetherness the decision was made, over my quiet objections, to take fourteen kids down the hard way in hopes of saving one and avoiding any awkward questions.
I'm sure they'd tell you it made sense at the time.
The kids were frightened. "We need your help on this one," the other two instructors told me. I caved. With more camaraderie than sense I put on a happy face, announced we were all making a brief detour, and agreed to take Kressler's dubious route, picking up our overweight blubber baggage along the way. We'd look so smart when we reached the bottom!
Ah, togetherness.
A couple of the girls were weeping. A couple of the guys looked whiter than the snow. The sun was just cracking the eastern range.
We started down.
CHAPTER NINE
I think I need some help."
Lewis had found Abby in the greenhouse. It was little more than a closet with burbling hydroponic tanks, potted soil, and the smell of tomato vines, but it was brightly lit by grow lights and a refuge of steamy warmth. Lettuce, tomato, parsley, kale, and other greens struggled to maturity there, adding meager scraps of fresh chlorophyll to meals dominated by canned and frozen foods. While the greenhouse was more hobby than experiment, NASA scientists had visited twice to take notes on the facility as a model for future spaceships. Abby came regularly to help Lena Jindrova tend the plants and get an injection of artificial sunlight.
"I'm kind of busy, Jed," she told him. She was snipping dead leaves.
As he'd feared, his investigation was turning people cool. No one wanted a snoop. Lewis suspected Nancy Hodge had put the others on notice about his investigative efforts. Was their doctor the thief, trying to sabotage any inquiry? Or the enforcer of group propriety? Last night when he'd sat in the galley the conversation had muted. And this morning…
"Abby, I'm in a fix here and I don't know what to do."
She didn't look at him. "Why come to me?"
"Because you've been here longer than I have."
She took another snip. "So has everyone."
"Okay, because we're friends."
"A friend you said blabbed about the meteorite. That may have started this whole mess. That's what I heard."
Jesus. Ice Cream had turned hard again. "We were just discussing who knew about it. You pumped me."
She didn't reply.
"And I didn't come here to ask you about the meteorite."
"I'm disappointed I didn't make your list."
He stopped, exasperated. He'd crossed some unseen line at the station. Some unseen line with her.
At his silence she finally stopped trimming and turned to look at him, allowing some reluctant sympathy. "Maybe that wasn't fair," she allowed. "But I don't know about the meteorite, Jed."
"I came to ask you about something else."
"I don't have any suspects."
"No. Something else."
She let the shears drop by her side. "What, then?"
"Someone slipped this under my door this morning." He took a piece of thick paper from a pocket and handed it to her.
Abby unfolded a five-pointed star cut from yellow construction paper. On it were printed the words, "Deputy Dawg."
She frowned.
"I don't even know what it's supposed to mean," Lewis said.
She crumpled up the star and threw it in a recycling basket. The sorting of trash was a basic ground rule at the Pole. "It means to back off."
"Back off what?"
She looked at him impatiently. "Are you dense? You're the fingie, Jed. No one knows you yet. No one trusts you yet. But you're going around asking questions about Mickey's rock like a cop and implying that the rest of us are a bunch of crooks. Worse, you're doing Moss's dirty work for him. Nobody likes him, either, not really. It's the worst kind of way to try to fit in here, and somebody's trying to tell you politely to cut it out before you're toast for the rest of the winter. Why do you even care who took the meteorite? Nobody else does."
"Because he thinks I might have taken it."
She looked at him with impatience. "And what do you care what he thinks? He's not the person you have to eat with, we are."
"He's Sparco's friend and Sparco hired me and… I'm just trying to do the right thing."
"Well, this is a great community of good-hearted people and you're doing exactly the wrong thing if you want to fit in. Mickey can be a bully and Cameron always feels pressured but those guys aren't the group. We are. And we're not a bunch of thieves."
"I'm just trying to feel my way."
"So do your job, keep your mouth shut, and watch. Learn. Listen. There's a society here and your winter will be miserable if you don't fit into it."
"Tyson doesn't fit into it."
"And is he happy?"
Lewis didn't have to answer.
"In fact, Tyson is an example of the risk you run. I ran into Rod and he's so hot he's got steam coming out of his ears. I think he and Buck had some kind of run-in."
"They did. I saw it."
She looked at him in surprise. She was instantly interested, unable to mask her curiosity. "When?"
"I was in the garage when he told Rod to essentially go screw himself. That mechanic is unbelievable. He's nuts."
"He's got so much anger it's scary. It's not the Pole. There's something wrong with him. Some basic resentment of other people, or frustration with his own life."
"They should never have let him come down here."
She nodded. "I think Rod went to Doctor Bob for advice. Tonight he's called a meeting. And that's why it's not a good time to play Columbo, Jed. There's too much tension on station and the winter's starting poorly. Things are coming to a head."
"About the meteorite?"
"About water."
Amundsen-Scott station sat on a freshwater ocean, but it was frozen into ice that stayed a permanent sixty degrees below zero. Imported jet fuel ran a heater that melted a bulb of liquid water in the ice cap called a Rodriguez Well, but raising the temperature of the ice to the melting point was enormously costly. It took a gallon and a half of jet fuel just to fly in a gallon more for use at the Pole.
"Liquid water here costs more than gasoline at home," Cameron told the assembly in the galley that night. "Every drop we consume represents energy we can't use for heating or lights or to run our instruments. If we were on a nuclear submarine we could shower all day, but we're not. And we're using water faster than it's budgeted."
"How much faster?" Carl Mendoza asked.
"About fifty gallons a day."
Some of the others turned to look at Tyson, who was slouched in the shadows along a back wall. He looked determinedly bored.
"Are you listening, Buck?" Cameron called to him.
For a long minute the big man didn't answer. Then: "What? Hard to hear you, Rod. Might need to wash my ears out tonight."
There was an uneasy silence in the room. Tyson looked huge, surly, mean. Everyone was waiting to see what Cameron would do. What Cameron could do.