“You going, Scott?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said reluctantly. “It is time. Thank you, Tahan, for everything.”
“You try to come back again soon? Will be here for winter celebration?”
“I will try,” he promised. “I’d like that very much.”
“Wait,” she said, “Egan and me walk with you a little.” She proceeded to the house and left the covered pots there, then rejoined him outside, and they began their way to the edge of the village and the trail leading up to AN-85.
“Where is your brother?” Scott asked as they walked. “Is he still dancing?”
“Yes,” Tahan’s eyes had a mischievous spark. “There is one girl — while she dance, Omrek dance as well. You never dance?”
“Not if I can help it,” Scott shook his head in horror, and she laughed.
“Winter feast, you have to dance. Special dance. I show you how.”
“I wouldn’t mind dancing so much if people weren’t looking,” he admitted.
“Not worry. Winter feast is almost dark. Nobody see very well,” she reassured him.
When it was time to say goodbye, Scott picked Egan up and mussed his hair, and said the word of farewell in Anai, as Tahan had taught him. The little boy laughed with delight at his pronunciation, and Tahan nodded and grasped his arm.
“When you come back,” she said, “You tell me more about your land, and about stars. I will keep learn drawings of stars. Want to understand.”
It was with a slight pang of something almost akin to homesickness that Scott made his solitary way up the trail leading to camp. He was met by a very sour expression on part of Sue Ellis, who clicked her tongue impatiently.
“You do realize all this is highly irregular, don’t you, Mr. Buckley? We were about to call you.”
“You should have. I lost track of time.”
“It is part of the policy to minimize Anai awareness to modern technology, and this includes portable radio signals,” Sue Ellis said with the air of one explaining that two plus two equals four. Scott bit his tongue to keep from uttering a sharp retort.
“Well, Ms. Ellis, here I am. When do we set out?”
“Almost at once. We have nearly done wrapping up the camp.”
Scott found lots of business awaiting him at the office, and routine kept him occupied until late in the evening when, checking the time, he realized it would be too late to make an Internet call to Brianna. He had a quick dinner of the leftover tortillas the galley had saved for people who didn’t make it to the regular meal, and then went up to his quarters and called it an early night.
The next day, phone and internet connection were unusually disrupted. Using the local network, he called Zoe in irritation.
“Zoe, what’s going on? I can barely get my emails to go through.”
“You’re not the only one,” she said, sounding exasperated. “With all the mess going on around the world right now, the net is under strain. People are calling their families non-stop, and though I’ve sent a message asking them to cut down the live chats and stick to emails for now, does anyone listen? Of course not. If things keep going this way, we’ll have to instill a limit on internet usage, and temporarily disconnect anyone who exceeds a certain number of megabytes.”
“Well, it so happens that I have to make an internet call a little later,” Scott confessed, a little embarrassedly. An email could work just as well, technically, but he really needed to speak to his wife face to face.
The long days gave an illusion of a never-ending season of light, but once darkness began to settle over the Ross Island area, the flip from summer to winter would come rapidly and, checking the calendar, Scott realized that tourist travel packages to Antarctica would soon be hard to obtain. Soon, he and Brianna would miss their last chance to get together before the winter. He had to make her aware of that.
“You can try to make your call,” said Zoe, “but don’t blame me if it fails.”
In the afternoon, Scott took a break from order forms and station reports, and went up to his quarters, where he plugged in his laptop and connected to the internet. The signal went on for some time, and Scott just about gave it up, deciding that Brianna probably can’t take a call right now, when the connection was made.
“Hi.”
Brianna was wearing a lustrous green turtleneck sweater that brought out the color of her eyes, and her highlighted hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail. She also wore some lip-gloss, which, Scott remembered, smelled like cherries. He longed for that smell and the taste of that lip-gloss.
“Hi, honey. How are you?”
“Oh, fine…” she trailed off, as if meaning to say something else, but changed her mind. “I’m fine,” she said again.
“I’ve been thinking…” Scott said. “You know, we have very few tourist ships and flights due to arrive by the end of the season. Soon, the tourists and summer workers will start getting ready to leave, and the station will start lowering gear as we prepare for winter.”
“Yeah, I would expect that,” she nodded.
“So… if there’s any chance at all you might want to join me here for the winter, honey, or even just to visit before the dark season, the possibility to do that might be over soon. I know what you said to me before,” He went on, cutting off whatever she was trying to say, “but won’t you reconsider, Brianna? I miss you so much.”
“Won’t you come home, then?” she asked softly.
“I can’t leave the station in the lurch,” he said. “Even if I decide to break the contract, in good conscience I can’t do it until the end of winter.”
She nodded. “It’s more than that,” she said. “You are happy there, I know.”
“It’s one of the most fascinating places in the world,” Scott said earnestly. “I know you wouldn’t regret coming down here, Brianna. It could be our great adventure.”
“Scott, a three-week hiking trip in Northern Canada could be an adventure. But moving to Antarctica for months, and just when an endless night is about to fall?” she shook her head. “I can’t do that. I will tell you straight, Scott, I will not come. Not now. Not ever,” she concluded, as if steeling herself for something unpleasant.
“Well, it won’t be before next spring that I can visit,” Scott said, feeling a little helpless.
“Visit… this isn’t the way a marriage is supposed to work, Scott, you know. I can understand that your sister copes when her husband is deployed — he’s a soldier, and she has no choice. But you? You just up and left and now sit holed up in some freezing research station, and talk about it as if it’s the greatest place in the world, expecting me to throw my whole life away and join you. Things don’t work that way,” Brianna’s voice broke, and though the image of the digital camera was a little fuzzy, Scott could not miss the tears glistening in her eyes. He felt a lump in his throat, and longed to take her in his arms and hold her.
“I understand, Brianna, I really do, but… we talked about it before I accepted the contract. I thought you were alright with me taking the position, though we both knew things wouldn’t be easy.”
“What could I say? Was I supposed to keep you on a leash? You are a grown man, Scott, and you have your ambitions, but you had to realize that this job was incompatible with having a family.”
“A lot of people here have families,” Scott said.
“Oh yeah? And how many of them stay year-round?” When he didn’t answer, she went on, “Just as I thought, very few. Not that I would be alright with my husband being away half the time.”