"When do I stop being the fingie?" he asked, knowing full well that no one newer was coming until October.
"When you're so cold that your face is beginning to frostbite, your balls have shriveled to peas, and your hands feel like shovels," Carl Mendoza, an astronomer, told him.
"I think I've got an inside job."
"I know what you do. Wait until you commute to work."
"But you get acclimated, right?"
"You get frozen so many times you're incapable of thaw." Mendoza pointed with his head. "Like our Russian aurora expert."
"What cold?" Alexi Molotov said, reaching for the butter.
"Or when you join the Three Hundred Degree Club," said the medic, Nancy Hodge. She was in her late forties, a thin and once-pretty woman with the kind of lines that suggested she'd seen a little too much of life. Her welcoming smile had a twist to it. No ring, but a white mark where one had been.
"What's that?"
"You'll see."
The others were excited about the fresh food, loud about their plans for the winter, and excited by the new responsibility of being cut off. Lewis picked at his own food but as he tired he realized he couldn't fully share the mood. He was exhausted from his journey, and in his weariness the crowd became cloying and the galley air hot and steamy. His appetite had deserted him and he couldn't concentrate. The plan after the meal, he was told, was to watch The Thing, a perennial Polar ritual.
"It is this American movie about an outer space being infecting the bodies of Polar scientists and killing them, one by one," Molotov summarized with relish. "It is very funny. They fight back with guns and flame throwers. Boom! Boom! Yet this"-he held up a butter knife- "is as wicked as it gets at real Pole." He laughed. "Everywhere else in life your body is taken over, by bosses, by advertisers, by government, by nagging wife. Here, no."
"Yet you watch it anyway."
"It is, what you call it…" He made a squeezing motion on his arm with his fingers.
"Inoculation," Nancy Hodge said.
"Yes! Yes! Inoculation against the fear. The scare of being left here, for the winter. You know? The veterans know all the lines by heart. You will see. It is lots of fun."
But Lewis was so weary he felt in danger of falling into his plate of food. The thought of enduring a movie appalled him. After embarrassing himself twice with dull responses that made him sound like a half-wit, he finally excused himself to bed.
The others nodded without surprise. It took time.
"If you wake up and you are the last one left," Molotov called after him, "don't be surprised. Then you know the outer space being, the creature- it is you."
CHAPTER THREE
Lewis's sleep was ragged, his body periodically jerking awake as he gasped for breath. Each time it did so he'd have to roll out of bed to urinate, ridding himself of bloat. By morning his soup can was full and his breathing was easier. He felt his body beginning to adjust, his red blood cells multiplying, but when he went to the galley all he wanted for breakfast was toast and coffee. The maintenance worker sitting next to him looked at his plate with disbelief.
"You'll starve on that bird feed." The man shoved more food into his mouth, talking as he chewed. "George Geller, G.A. I'm serious, you gotta eat more."
Geller was consuming a four-egg ham and cheese omelet, hash browns, two steaks, a bowl of cereal, and three tumblers of orange juice. The gluttony renewed Lewis's nausea.
"How can you hold all that?"
"This? Hell, I still lose weight in the cold. You better have more than that, man. The Pole devours calories. You eat against it."
Lewis put aside the last of his toast. "Not today."
Geller shrugged. "You'll see."
"I'm just not hungry."
"You will be."
Geller attacked his meal with a steady industry, like a steam shovel excavating a foundation. Lewis was half hypnotized by it. "You came here for the food, then."
The maintenance man broke his pace enough to smile. "Pulaski ain't that good. I came here to get away from it all. So did everybody."
"The urban stress of turn-of-the-millennium life?"
Geller speared a piece of steak. "The Minnesota stress of a fucked-up marriage, nowhere job, and pressing debt. Same problems as the guys who went with Columbus."
"I've got a Visa balance, too."
"My creditors are a little heavier than that, man." He chewed. "Truth be told, this is the Betty Ford Clinic for me. Cold turkey from the track and cards. I had an affair with Lady Luck and the bitch dumped me, so these loan sharks who looked like the missing link came calling and said highly disturbing things about accumulating interest. Down here they can't reach me. I'll make enough this winter to start over."
Lewis nodded. "You're here for the money."
"Fuckin' A." Geller nodded. "Everybody needs money."
"Is the money good down here? For you guys?"
He shrugged. "Same as a beaker. A long work week and no expenses. The wage scale's no better than back home but it's like forced savings: There's nothing to buy. I might even save enough to not go back. Keep my money for myself and chill out on some tropical island. Buy a boat. Who knows?"
Indeed. The Pole offered possibility.
Cameron came into the galley and stood over them, assessing. His air of authority had come back but there was also a hesitant uncertainty to it, Lewis thought, the betraying experimentation of someone new to command, never quite sure how the others would react, still caring what they thought. Cameron was in his late twenties, younger than many of those he supposedly supervised. "How's it hanging?" the station manager asked.
"Didn't freeze," Lewis said.
"You ate?"
"A little."
Cameron looked dubiously at the toast. Fingies. They all had to learn. "All right, then. Looks like you're ready to see the homestead. Let's saddle up."
"Yippie-ki-yay."
Suiting up to go outdoors was as laborious as donning armor. Heavy long underwear and two pairs of socks. Sweater. Fleece vest, pants, and insulated nylon bib overalls. Neck gaiter, goggles, stocking hat, white plastic "bunny" boots, glove liners, mittens, ski gloves in case dexterity was required, and finally down parka with hood. Lewis felt as padded as the Michelin Man and awkward as an astronaut. He was roasting.
"Up to a point, there's no such thing as cold," the station manager said. "Just inadequate clothing."
"Up to a point?"
"If you put too much on when you're working you can actually sweat," Cameron said. "That's dangerous when you cool down, or because of dehydration. At the other extreme, nothing will keep you warm when the wind comes up."
"What do you do then?"
"Tough it out. Up to a point."
"I can't walk in these things." Lewis pointed to his boots, inflated with air for insulation. They looked like white melons.
"You'd be walking on frostbitten stubs without them. Dorky, but they work."
Lewis clumped along the floor. "Like wearing weights."
"One year some pranksters started pouring sand into a guy's bunnies where the air goes. Little bit each day. By the end of the season they weighed about seventy pounds. Pretty funny."
Lewis shook a boot, listening. "Ha."
Stepping out of the berthing unit into the gray light of the dome was like stepping into a freezer. Lewis was jarred again at the nearness of such cold, just outside the door. The icicles hung overhead from the dome as before. And yet he was so hot from the dressing that the change felt good at first. Refreshing.
The snow ramp from the dome exit led upward to the plateau surface and a bright cold that was more telling. This was a chill that wasn't confined to an enclosure but was the single salient fact of his new world. He stood a moment, letting himself adjust. The sky was overcast, the light flat. Even with a mild breeze he could feel the temperature sucking at him, trying to drain him of heat. The cold got into his lungs and palpated his heart.