“Emily,” she said.
She touched one finger to the side of Emily’s cheek on the screen. Gave herself a few moments, then hit Play, and Emily started talking again.
“This is such an amazing place. It’s dark twenty-four hours a day and cold as hell — seventy-one below outside right now, according to the intranet. Makes Alaska seem almost tropical. Everything is just … extreme. I can’t wait to look around more. It’s like being out in space, totally alone. There’s even a greenhouse where they grow vegetables. Somebody said they grow pot in there, too.” She frowned, shook her head. “The vegetables are a good idea, anyway.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I’m going to keep a record of my time here. I can record footage of other things in the station and here in the room and outside with my video camera and produce something later when I have time.”
Emily stopped, yawned again, rubbed her face. “But right now I need to get some sleep. I am just about out on my feet. Nap time. More later!”
The image faded.
Hallie jumped to an entry from July, seven months into Emily’s stay. Dark circles had developed under her eyes. The freckles, brighter against pale skin, looked like little scabs. Her lips were cracked, and when Hallie hit Play, Emily came to life, but her smile did not.
“Let’s see. It’s July twenty-ninth. About halfway through my stay. What’s the big news? Not much. Unless you count the partying. I’ve never seen so many people walking around drunk and high. Pot, of course, but not just. You wouldn’t believe the booze they stockpile here. I mean, gallons and gallons, all top-shelf — Chivas, Jack D, Stoli, you name it. And they make moonshine! Some of the Beakers built a still. The stuff is clear like vodka, but it’s about 160 proof and tastes like I think jet fuel would if you drank it. They call it Poleshine.
“I’m tired. No, exhausted. Everybody said this is a hard place to be, and it is. The disgusting food, being dirty all the time, annoying people, so much darkness. And getting sick. If you don’t have Polarrhea you have a cold, and vice versa. There are scientists from so many different countries, who knows what kinds of bugs are floating around this place? I’m the only one from North America this year. Pure luck of the draw, the way grants shook out. We just keep swapping germs back and forth.”
She looked into the camera without talking for several moments. “Need to get some sleep,” she said, and the screen went blank.
Hallie jumped ahead again and opened a video from early in the January just past. Emily’s appearance last time had been disturbing. Now it was shocking. Weight loss had sharpened her face to points and edges. Her hair looked dirty and uncombed, and her teeth were yellow, with little wedges of plaque between them. There was a scabbed scratch on one cheek and blue-black circles under her bloodshot eyes. Her lips were chapped and cracked.
Emily stared blankly at the camera for several moments after turning it on. Her eyelids fell and rose slowly. She ran her tongue over her lips, grimaced, and then did something that struck Hallie as odd: she half-turned and looked over her shoulder. Was someone in the room with her who the camera wasn’t showing? Had someone knocked on the door? After a moment, Emily turned back.
“The New Year’s Eve party. Unbelievable.” She rubbed her face, ran fingers through greasy hair. “Ambie got totally fucked up again.” Her eyelids drooped and she nodded forward in a microsleep. Then she came back.
“It’s getting harder to think straight. At first, when I heard people talking about being crisp I thought they were exaggerating to freak out a fungee. They weren’t. I can’t wait to get out of this goddamned fucking place.
“But it’s important to record what’s happened while I’m here and it’s still fresh.”
15
Again Emily stopped talking and stared, eyes vague and distant, seeing something Hallie could not imagine, or perhaps seeing nothing at all. She came back, sipped from a dirty white mug, and her hand trembled as she brought the mug down from her mouth.
“Okay. Have to focus. I need to talk about Ambie. We started really hanging out after Thanksgiving. In the world, I don’t know. There’s a saying here: ‘The odds are good, but the goods are odd.’ Ambie’s okay-looking and he can be funny. He has a really amazing mind. He is a little odd, true, but nothing compared to some of what slouches around this place. So, okay, we hooked up.
“He’s great at some things, but holding his liquor isn’t one. He got really totally shit-faced at the New Year’s Eve party. Plus, he mixed Ecstasy with the Stoli and beer. Offered me some, too. I told him, yet again, that I don’t do drugs. I had to almost carry him back to his room. Usually when he gets that drunk, he rambles for a few minutes and passes out. This time was different. He was all jazzed. The Ecstasy.
“He kept babbling about triage, which was odd. I thought he was hallucinating about a disaster or something. I told him nobody was hurt. He said triage was about saving people. He said some other things, just making no sense at all. Then he passed out. We didn’t even have time to make love. Better living through chemistry. Right.
“The next day we were here in my room. He had a horrible hangover. I felt fine. I said, ‘What was all that stuff about triage last night?’ Incredible. He turned white as the ice sheet. For a second I thought he was going to faint. He looked terrified! I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ and he snapped at me, like, ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ So I explained about the night before, the things he kept saying. He just freaked. ‘What else did I say? What else?’ He actually grabbed me by the shoulders and tried to shake me. I told him to get his hands off me and shoved him away, but it scared me. I’d never seen him like that. Then I thought he might cry. Totally bizarre. He went, ‘Please tell me what else I said.’ I actually felt sorry for him then, so I really tried to remember and got some of it back. I told him, “You said triage is coming. Then I said nobody was hurt, why would there be triage? And you said, No, no, you don’t understand, nobody is going to die, because it won’t kill them and they won’t even know they have it.’
“It took me a long time to convince him that this was all I remembered. I said that he had been stumbling drunk and high on Ecstasy, and that you can’t hold somebody responsible for stuff they say when they’re so messed up. I don’t think he even heard that. He sat down and squeezed my hands and made me promise not to tell anyone else. I said, ‘Okay, I won’t tell anybody. It didn’t make any sense anyway. You were drunk out of your mind and all drugged up. Why would I?’ ”
Emily rubbed her face, and when she looked up again, tears filled her hollow eyes. The monitor screen went dark.
She made her next video entry on January 26: “I’m not sure what’s happening. After that last talk with Ambie, I didn’t say anything to anyone. Didn’t mention it to him again, either. He left it alone, too. A week went by. But it was just too weird. I couldn’t get his reaction out of my mind. I thought, Okay, I promised not to tell, but it would be okay to ask, wouldn’t it? So over the next ten days I did — Agnes Merritt, Doc, two or three others. Not all at once. Everybody said basically the same thing: triage is an emergency medical protocol they use in war and disasters.
“Ambie has changed. Before, he couldn’t get enough sex, at least when he was sober. Now he could care less. But even without sex, it’s been like he doesn’t want to let me out of his sight. Even weirder, right? So I told him to back off, leave me alone. He wasn’t happy, but it got me my space.”