“Deidre’s got a dance recital next Sunday. And Toby’s been pretty calm.”
“Tell them I love them.”
“I will.”
“I have to go now.”
“All right. Sam?”
“Yes?”
“They miss you, too.”
Fitful sleep. The room is cold, the bed hard, the pillow too soft. For extra support he places The Philosophy of Hegel under his head. He lies awake listening to the wind scratch the wire-and-glass windows.
Carol’s in the next room. He can’t help feeling that their attachment is temporary, dependent on the circumstances, yet when the other men look at her he feels possessive.
He misses Jill.
Forty-one years old. Incredible.
He clutches his legs to his chest and tries to sleep.
The following morning the scientists are divided into groups and flown to designated points along the coast to begin exploratory work. Than is scheduled to fly to a valley forty-five miles west of Barentsburg. “See you here in a few weeks,” he says.
“By then I’ll have mastered Hegel.”
Adams and Carol are flown to the same spot — a site near Ny-Alesund, northwest of Barentsburg. There are only a few temporary buildings — a generating plant, a fuel depot, a maintenance shop, and three plastic bubbles, geodesic domes. Behind the bubbles, two metal tunnels, like corrugated sewer pipe, large enough to shelter six horses.
“The company’s too cheap to give us snowmobiles,” says one of the scouting engineers. He has been here two weeks. “A horse is handy if you’re traveling more’n a mile.”
Carol’s assigned to check a series of core samples that the drilling engineers have already collected. The men are obviously delighted to see her, and she stays close to Adams.
Adams must go up in a Cessna to take some aerial photographs. The sky is overcast, thick at intervals, and condensation forms on the windows of the cockpit. The pilot says, “That’s it for now.”
When they try again in the afternoon, the same conditions prevail. Adams can’t see a thing out the cockpit window. A sudden change in pressure jolts the plane. Adams’ stomach turns over. When the-pilot lands, the craft skids several yards, spinning sideways on a sheet of ice. Adams opens the door, steps unsteadily onto the snow.
“I’ve had several offers already,” Carol tells Adams. They are sitting inside a plastic bubble, warming themselves by a portable heater. The plastic wriggles with the wind. “These two guys hung around looking over my shoulder while I worked. I barely got anything done.” She picks up a small leather bag. “They gave me some pot. I don’t have the stomach for it anymore, but it’s better than beer and I gotta have something out here. Want some?” She rolls a cigarette, lights it, inhales, and offers it to Adams. He takes it from her.
“It never did much for me,” he says. “The only time I had it was in Alaska. This was ‘67, height of Vietnam, all that. Most of us on the field trip were just out of graduate school, thrilled to be making money. Thought we were real radicals sitting out in the middle of nowhere passing pot.” He takes a short puff.
“I’ll be glad when we get back to Barentsburg.”
“So will I,” Adams says. “I can’t do a thing until the weather clears.”
“Based on what I saw today, there’s a good chance of activity here. Those core samples have good permeability.”
Adams smiles.
“What?”
“How’s your permeability?”
“If you don’t mind a little frostbite, you can check.”
“I don’t mind.”
“We should probably join the others for supper.”
“I guess.” He strokes her arm. “But don’t eat too much. We’ve both got to squeeze into your sleeping roll.”
Clear skies. Up in the Cessna, Adams snaps the terrain. The sunlight reflecting off the snow is blinding, and for a second Adams wonders if the glare, like concentrated light through a lens, might set the wings of the plane on fire.
The pilot circles the snowy rifts seven times before Adams says he has enough pictures.
Back at the camp, Carol’s frying bacon and slicing cheese for lunch. She has a cut on her lip.
“What happened?” Adams says.
With the knife she points out one of the men sitting beside a Coleman stove. “He tried to kiss me. When I pulled away, he bit.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
She flashes him an impatient look. “Eat your lunch. We don’t need any macho scenes out here.”
Bacon grease spatters over the pan and sizzles in the snow.
“Halloo!” someone calls.
Behind the camp, at a distance of two or three miles in the direction of the coast, there’s a line of hills. Against this backdrop seven or eight men are walking toward the camp carrying backpacks. One of them raises his hand. “Halloo!” he calls again.
“Russians,” says the man who kissed Carol. “They checked us out the day we got here.”
To the very last man, the Russians are big, bearded, ruddy. Carol offers them coffee. The leader, a redhead, smiles, nods at Adams. “American?” he says.
“Yes.”
“How do you like our island?”
“It’s very cold.”
The Russians laugh as if he’s made a joke.
“You are here for oil?”
“I’m here to draw maps.”
“Maps? I thought Norwegians gave you Americans maps?”
“The Department of Industry won’t release any cartographic information.”
“Ah, that’s what they say.” He motions to Carol for another cup of coffee. “But we hear American oil companies get whatever they want.”
“You hear wrong.”
Carol’s eyes widen. Did he say that?
“Is that so? We are, at any rate, forced to work in the dark. In this area in particular our charts are inaccurate. We have not been able to explore the region to our satisfaction. Could you supply us with information?”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” Adams says. “Beyond preliminary sketches, we have nothing as yet.”
The Russian spreads his arms. “You have committed all these people and you have no information?”
“We have scouting reports,” Carol says, stepping close to Adams.
“As I said, preliminary information is all we have to go on. I’ve only been here two days. This morning was the first time the weather cleared enough for me to take accurate aerial photographs and trigonometric measurements.”
The redheaded man tosses his coffee into the snow. “Do you mind if we have a look at your preliminary information?” he says.
The Russian team rummages through backpacks, bedrolls, crates. A clatter of cooking utensils. Carol blushes when the redheaded man opens a bag containing her personal belongings. He carefully unfolds her long johns.
Satisfied, he extends his hand toward Adams. “We are working in the vicinity,” he says. “I am sure that when you obtain your information, you would have no objections to sharing it with us?”
“Not at all,” Adams says.
“Good.”
At night he develops photographs with clumsy portable equipment. The red bulb above the fixing tray lights crystals in the diamonds of the plastic bubble. He is fortunate that the sun was low when he took the pictures. The stakes he had set out as markers are invisible in the glare, and the long shadows create relief in what would otherwise have been grainy white fields.
Meanwhile Carol studies core samples and rocks supplied by the engineers. She is encouraged by the signs. “Get me a map soon, will you?”
Tracing lines across the pictures, Adams imagines his own world sectioned off into patterns. Carol nearby, tethered to him with a tight elastic band. Carter at a very sharp angle, difficult to watch. Far off, so far he can barely see them, Pamela and the children. Their lines are slack. When he tugs, he sometimes gets a faint response.