Her studio people got on pretty quickly to say that it was hypothesized that the Antarctic ocean looked black because the bottom was very deep, even close inshore; also there were no minerals or organic material in it, so one was seeing very far into the water, down to where no sunlight penetrated. So one was seeing down to the blackness of the ocean depths!
“Oh my God that’s just soo trippy,” Amelia exclaimed. This was one of her signature exclamations, controversial back in the studio, as being either a cloying old-fashioned cliché or else an endearing Amelia-ism, but in any case Amelia couldn’t help it, it was just what she felt. Black ocean under blue skies! Sooo trippy! They weren’t in Kansas anymore. Which was another useful phrase. As they were very seldom in Kansas.
And indeed that was just the beginning of it. The closer they got to the peninsula itself, the bigger and wilder it appeared. The cliffs and exposed peaks were far blacker than the ocean, while the snow was painfully white, and lying on everything like a meringue. The foot of the cliff was coated with a white filigree that looked as if waves had broken there and then frozen instantly; apparently this was actually the result of many waves being dashed into the air, each adding a thin layer of water that then froze to what was already there. These arabesques were a grayer white than the smooth meringue coating the land above the cliffs. Inland, by some difficult-to-determine distance, maybe ten kilometers, black peaks thrust out of a white-and-blue surface, the snow there creamy white, the icefields blue and shattered in curving patterns of crevasses. These blue patches were the exposed parts of glaciers, ever more rare in this world, and yet here still vast in extent.
This was their destination, Amelia was told. She flew inland to get a better look at the black peaks, neck deep in ice. They looked like a line of degraded pyramids. There were horizontal striations of red rock in these black triangles, and the red rock had some holes in it. “The black rock is basalt, the red rock is dolerite,” Amelia repeated from her studio feed. She listened to them for a while longer and then said what they had said, but in her own words, this being her usual method. “These peaks are part of the Wegener Range, named after Alfred Wegener, the geologist who pointed out that South America fit into West Africa, which suggested some kind of continental drift must be happening. I always thought that when I was a girl. People laughed at him, but when tectonic plate theory came in he was vindicated. It was like, Duh! Trust your eyeballs, people! So I guess it sometimes pays to point out obvious things. I hope so, since I do it all the time, right? Although I don’t know if I’ll get a mountain range named after me.”
The land reared up before them like a black-and-white photo taken on some colder and spikier planet. “These peaks are about five thousand feet tall, and they’re only a few miles in from the coast. The hope is that our polar bears can use the caves in those dolerite layers. They’ll be at about the same latitude they were in Canada, so the seasonal light cycle should be about the same. And there are Argentineans and Chileans on this peninsula reintroducing the ancient beech forest on the newly exposed land. Mosses, lichens, trees, and insects. And of course the sea is absolutely chock-full of seals and fish and crabs and all. It’s a very rich biome, even though it doesn’t look like it. Which I mean, gosh, actually it looks completely barren! I don’t think I would do very well here! But you know. Polar bears are used to getting by in a polar environment. Pretty amazing really, when you consider that they’re mammals just like us. It doesn’t look possible that mammals could live down here, does it?”
Her techs reminded her that the Weddell seals were also mammals, which she had to admit was true. “Well, mammals can do almost anything, I guess that’s what I’m saying,” she added. “We are simply amazing. Let’s always remember that.”
Having looked at the potential winter dens from as close as the airship could come, Amelia turned back toward the coast. A little bit of katabatic wind pushed them along, and as they floated downslope the airship rocked and quivered. From behind her in the gondola came the muted low roars of bears in distress. “Just hold your horses!” Amelia called down the hall. “We’ll have you down in just a few minutes. And are you going to be surprised!”
Very quickly she was over the coastline, and with some shuddering she was able to turn up into the wind and then descend. This area looked promising; there was an open black lead in the sea ice, clogged with icebergs, then beyond that more sea ice and finally open water, black as obsidian. The sea ice was covered with Weddell seals, their pups, and their blood and pee and poop. Meanwhile the land rose from the sea ice not in cliffs but in lumpy hills, giving the bears places to hide, to dig dens, to sneak up on the seals, and to sleep. It all looked very promising, at least from a polar bear’s perspective. From a human perspective it looked like the iciest circle of hell.
She brought the airship down to the ice, fired anchors like crossbow bolts into the snow, and winched down on them until the gondola was resting on the snow. Now the time had come. She checked the camera array to reassure her techs, and then could not keep herself from gearing up and jumping down onto the snow. After two seconds of thinking it wasn’t so bad, the cold bit deep into her and she shouted at the shock of it. Her eyes were pouring tears, which were freezing on her cheeks.
“Amelia, you can’t be out there when the bears are released.”
“I know, I just wanted to get a shot of the outside.”
“We have drones getting those shots.”
“I just wanted to see what it felt like out here.”
“Okay, but go back inside so we can release the bears and get you back in the air. It isn’t good for the ship to be tied to the ground in a wind like this.”
It wasn’t that windy, she felt, although what wind there was easily cut through her clothes and rattled her bones. “Yikes it’s cold!” she cried, and then for the sake of her audience added, “Okay, okay, I’ll come in! But it’s very invigorating out here! The bears are going to love it!”
Then she climbed the steps back into the little antechamber of the gondola, like an airlock, and with some stumbling got back inside. It was insanely warm compared to outside. She cheered herself, and when she was back on the bridge she informed her crew up north and got to the windows on the side where the door to the bears’ enclosure would open.
“Okay I’m ready, let them out!”
“You are the one controlling the door, Amelia.”
“Oh yeah. Okay, here they go!”
And she pushed the double buttons that allowed the exterior door of the bears’ quarters to open. Between the wind pouring into the door and the bears pouring out, the ship got quite a shaking, and Amelia squealed. “There they are, how exciting! Welcome to Antarctica!”
The big white bears ambled away, foursquare and capable-looking, their fur slightly yellow against the snow, and riffling on the breeze, which they sniffed curiously as they trundled seaward. Not too far offshore, just beyond a narrow black lead, the sea ice was covered with a whole crowd of Weddell seals, with many moms lying around nursing their pups. They looked like giant slugs with cat faces. Alarming really. And yet they didn’t look alarmed by the bears, as why should they? For one thing the bears were now nearly invisible, such that Amelia only caught glimpses of them, like a crab made of black claws, or a pair of black eyes like the coal eyes of a snowman, glancing back her way and then winking out. For another thing the seals had never seen polar bears before and had no reason to suspect their existence.