“Tangent after tangent,” Garner said.
She nodded.
“Until it seems like I’m just running in circles.”
“It doesn’t look that way to the rest of us,” Garner said. “There isn’t a person on this ship who doubts who the boss is. They’re here because of you, not in spite of you,” he added, borrowing some of Victor’s philosophy.
“Then I must be a good actress,” Carol said.
“Or a good leader,” Garner countered.
“Then why do I feel so out of control?” Carol said. “Why do I feel like this ship runs no differently than the Explorer — drifting at the mercy of the currents with a stubborn, egotistical know-it-all at the helm?” She paused, trying to collect her courage once again.
“I can do this,” she said. “The numbers are a little bigger, the risks are a little higher, but it’s basically the same thing I used to do all the time when…” When I was younger.
“Things just aren’t the same as—” As they were with you, she wanted to say, but the words were lost. Garner took her face in his hands and looked at her. Even after all this time, his touch thrilled her. His compassion eased a world of hurt. He knew exactly what she wanted to say. He probably also knew exactly why she struggled so hard to say it. Bob, even Dex, would have pressed her to say it, if only to assuage their fragile male egos. Not Garner.
“Carol, the world isn’t turning the same way it used to,” he said. “If you need proof of that, think of Sergei and Junko making out two doors down.”
“Can you believe that?” Carol said, the surprise lancing through her sadness, instantly adding the frivolity of a slumber party to her morbid ruminations. “There must be fifteen years between them!”
“Fifteen years and fifteen inches,” Garner said.
“Hmmm,” she mused. “Maybe it isn’t such a bad deal for her after all.” She raised her eyebrows knowingly.
That was it. They both fell into a bout of laughter.
A crackling noise drew their attention. It was the raspberry tart, forgotten on the bookshelf. The candle had burned down to the topping, which began to burn.
“You’d better blow that out or we’ll set off the sprinkler system,” Garner said. “Hurry up make a wish.”
Carol closed her eyes with exaggerated tightness, then blew out the nub of candle.
“Did you wish?” Garner said.
“Uh-huh,” Carol said. “I said: I wish I may—”
“Shhh!” Garner scolded. “No telling.”
“—I wish I might ”
“I said: no telling.”
“—share this bunk with you tonight.”
Garner stopped protesting.
“Oh. That’s a little different then.”
Carol wrapped her arms around Garner’s neck and stared directly back at him.
“Yes, it is, isn’t it?”
“Change is good.”
“Change is very good.”
“So they tell me.”
They kissed again, lingering, becoming one. Garner joined Carol on the bunk and enfolded her in his arms. They held each other for the first time in longer than either of them could remember. There had been an intimate bond between them many times, before reality and inevitability intervened. There had been much time apart, but even separated across the miles, there had always been something. At this moment, the reasons for their parting seemed scarcely to matter.
Their lovemaking seemed so natural, so inevitable, that neither was sure who began it. Carol luxuriated in the pleasure of Garner’s touch and he, in turn, accepted hers. Clothing was slowly, purposefully pulled away and they were alone in their nakedness in Carol’s narrow bed. She was intoxicated with the comforting warmth radiating from Garner’s body. He emitted a passion and sincerity she had not known with any other man. That was it. She berated herself for ever forgetting this feeling, then realized it had never been forgotten, simply denied. Now, however, she succumbed to him, letting her body enjoy the waves of pleasure coursing through her, strong and reassuring, building to a pinnacle then slowly released in a series of delicious orgasms. They lay together for a long while afterward. Neither slept, neither worried about the consequences of this one moment or the crisis that continued to rage around them. There was only skin, warmth, and comfort, and a mutual desire for the moment not to end.
The intercom next to the bed squawked. Carol groaned, wishing she could ignore it. In a few seconds, the squawk repeated itself, longer this time. Then again.
Carol reached her hand from its cocoon and pressed the talk button, already dreading what the interruption meant, no matter who it was or what they wanted.
“Yes?” she said, then released the button to listen.
“Dr. Harmon?” It was Zubov’s voice, overly formal. He knew he was interrupting something. “This is Sergei Zubov! Of the deck crew! We’re having a bitch of a time with this Medusa sphere and we seem to have misplaced her father, Commander Garner.” Oh, yes, he knew he was interrupting something and was enjoying it to the fullest. “He’s not in the lab and he’s not in his assigned cabin.” He said assigned cabin with all the authority of an offended schoolmaster. “No one’s seen him since dinner and we believe he may have fallen overboard with a raspberry tart.”
It was Garner’s turn to groan. He lifted himself up and leaned toward the intercom’s speaker as Carol pushed the intercom button again.
“On my way, Serg,” Garner said.
“Thank you Dr. Harmon?” Zubov said, still deadpan. “You should take something for that throat of yours. You sound positively masculine.”
As Carol released the button, Garner kissed her goodbye in stages, starting at her navel, then addressing her breasts, neck, earlobes, and finally, her waiting lips.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“Don’t be,” Carol said. “Duty calls.” She resented the words the moment they escaped her lips. It was the selfless, blindly faithful remark of a doting mate a role she had intentionally given up long ago. Too long ago.
Yet as she watched Garner dress, watched him pull on his jeans and tug his turtleneck down over his dark head of hair and lean defined torso, the bitterness passed and the thought of his leaving no longer seemed like a personal rejection. Duty called it always called Garner but for Carol, the notion of being there for him when the duty ended had taken on a newfound appeal.
Damn you, Brock Garner, she thought as she watched his silhouette slip out of the cabin and into the corridor. She scarcely believed her own distracted thoughts. In the midst of the most crucial contract in the Nolan Group’s history, in the track of the most terrifying environmental disaster the world could imagine, she was falling in love with her ex-husband all over again.
11
From the base pad to the top of the flare boom, the structure was as high as a fifty-story building and three times as heavy, although barely a third of this elevation could be seen above the arctic ice. It stood defiantly in nearly three hundred feet of frigid water, balanced by the weight of nearly one million tons of subsurface ballast. The structure was designed to operate ceaselessly for twenty years. It could operate at minus eighty degrees Fahrenheit or in wind gusts of one hundred miles per hour. The ramparts along its legs were engineered to withstand the impact of six million tons of ice, an event statistically probable only once in ten thousand years. This margin of safety was neither wildly paranoid nor severely pessimistic. It was not necessarily massive waves or harsh winds that required such fortification, but the random, continual creep of the arctic pack ice.