Antarctica (66 page)

This effect, result of the complete but residual preponderance of yang, perhaps accounts for the coarsening of their culture as the years passed. The walls of all the American Antarctic stations were plastered with photos of naked women. The tabletops in the galleys where they ate were covered with pictures of naked women. The thoughts of the sailors stationed there, as far as one can judge by the few records they left, were somehow limited. Their traditions were simple and brutal. One custom had groups of men descending on newcomers, tearing off their clothes and depositing them in a hole in the snow. The Three Hundred Club, where people rush from a two-hundred-degree sauna into a hundred-degree-below-zero night, also dates from this period, as do the ritual swims in holes cut in sea or lake ice. The best parts of this culture no doubt include these attempts to ritualize the experience of the cold; also to celebrate the experience of isolation, as when the winterover crew at the Pole lined up waving on the runway to welcome the first Herc of the spring, every one of them naked and stained bright purple from a bath of tincture-of-violet crystals. But for the most part the record of their lives is a sad litany of Peter Pans become Rip van Winkles.

Then came a bifurcation point, where the balance of the pattern tipped in a new direction. This moment began as a symbolic gesture of the Cold War. The Russians had sent one of their women into space, and we in China included six Tibetan women in our summit team on Chomolungma. In that geopolitical context, then, six American women were flown to the South Pole station, thus becoming the first women to go there. November 11, 1969. A day of peace in a year of conflict. For some a political gesture, yes—a symbolic gesture. But the meaning of the symbol bifurcated because of what the women did.

Recall the wrestling boatload of men who first made landfall on the continent. Farce—lovable in its way, but still farce. On Armistice Day of 1969, however, these six American women had a different solution; they joined hands and walked from the plane to the Pole together, so that no one of them could be called first. This struck them as the best way to do it. This was their new story. And thus they began the end of the yang dominance of Antarctica, so militarized and peterpanized; thus they began the start of Antarctica’s entry into the fully human world, a balance of yin and yang, of men and of women, together surging dynamically this way and that, yes even at the very moment we speak.

Those six women were Lois Jones, Eileen Mc-Saveney, Kay Lindsay, Terry Lee Tickhill, and Pam Young. Wait, that’s only five. What was the name of the sixth woman? I can’t remember. It will come to me. Even if I don’t remember she is still out there.

In any case, the continent then began to enter what some have called its golden age, the age of the “continent for science,” when Antarctica must be understood as one version of the scientific utopia—a golden age
lasting from the arrival of women and the corresponding withdrawal of the military, until the recent nonrenewal of the Antarctic Treaty, just two years ago. The Treaty was an attempt to describe a scientific and utopian relationship of humanity to land, a relationship in which there was no sovereignty but rather a
terra communis
, a return of the concept of the commons and of commonality, with scientists of all nations, including nations that were at each other’s throats back in the North, cooperating in peace for the good of all. That was indeed a golden moment in history. And though it was very top-heavy in men at first, as was science itself, it became more balanced in men and women every year that passed.

Of course the balance is not yet here. Nor is there balance anywhere in human affairs, or in the universe at large. Indeed, if ever you are asked to choose between fixists and mobilists, as the two sides were called during the plate-tectonics controversy—or between the stabilists and the dynamicists in the current Sirius debate—always choose the dynamicists. History is on your side.

And so here and now, in the relentless surge of time, we confront another bifurcation point in history. They come so often! The people gathered in the Chalet discuss what to suggest to the world, after the events of this unusual week. We will try to tell the world how better to live. An empty exercise, you say! Kick the world, break your foot! But everyone does it anyway, I notice. And this is little America, and America is very big. And as you have heard our new friend Carlos say, whatever is true in Antarctica is also true everywhere
else. So we must attend very closely to what we do here now.

I think it is an open question whether Americans can learn the habits of cooperation and sufficiency quickly enough to avoid catastrophe. We in China, so crowded into our middle kingdom, have had to learn long ago that life is cooperation, that life is helping each other for the good of all, including oneself. We have the experience of thousands of years of history, coherently compiled, to guide us; and we have the direct experience of the last century, both good and bad, in making a communal society work. Much of this last century we owe to the example of Chairman Mao, great master of feng shui that he was. Now I know what everyone says—I say it myself—that what Mao did was sixty percent good, forty percent bad. And I have heard the recent joke of the wags in Beijing, that this slogan will keep juggling the figures downward until it reaches 50.1 percent good, 49.9 percent bad. And I know the other saying too, that what is good in Mao all comes from Tao. We will tell this story in all its different ways forever. Whichever version you believe, it is still true that in part because of Mao we have started a bit earlier than the rest of the world in structured cooperation, and this has given us our great power in the twenty-first century. It has also prepared us to change ourselves for the sake of the Earth; we have lived through three one-child family campaigns already, and are slowly reaping the benefits of the resulting stable, even shrinking population. And we are working at making cleaner technologies; we are aware of the problem of the overshoot as few others can be, seeing it every day so clearly in our jammed streets. This is not to say that we never make mistakes. The dam at Three Gorges on the Yangtze, for instance, is a terrible mistake. We must take that dam down and
allow the great Yellow River to flow again, or else the ecology as well as the feng shui of our country will never again be right. That dam poisons our land and clogs our thinking.

And of course we must give Tibet back to the Tibetans, and let them live on their high plateau in peace. That is worse than a mistake; that is a crime. As I have already told you during our walks together on that sacred roof of the world, we add a hundred karmic lives to our atonement every day that the occupation of Tibet continues; already it will take millions of karmic generations for us to atone for what we have done to them. The sooner started the better.

And of course there are many other disasters of lesser magnitude as well, some that face us specifically as Chinese, others that belong to all the world together. But we can face them. Everyone has at least part of the habit of cooperation; this too is part of lovingknowing; for science is above all else a community of trust. The true scientist has to be intent on cooperation in a communal enterprise, or it will not work at all. And to the extent that we know well, and love deeply, we are all true scientists. So we will keep inventing that community of trust.

When the next meeting convened in the Chalet, X still had not slept. A lot of the people there hadn’t, he could tell as they trickled in. There were not as many people as before, and many were still hunched together discussing specific issues, but after Sylvia got them seated in the big circle, and went through a description of some of the smaller meetings that had occurred since the session the previous evening, X raised a hand (sudden schoolboy nervousness, engendered by just that gesture alone).

When Sylvia called on him in her strict schoolteacher style, he said, “Sylvia, I want to emphasize that what we’re talking about here is not just a question of what technologies we use in Antarctica, or of whether we’re abiding by the strict letter of the Treaty or not. The treatment of Antarctica will never be respectful and environmentally aware if the people living down here continue to be organized in the same way they always have been—that is to say, in hierarchies where the majority of the workers have no power or responsibility, and are
merely doing what they’re told to do, for wages and nothing else. As it stands now, we’re hired and fired at the whim of people back in the world, and the people who love Antarctica the most end up suffering the most, because they keep coming back here when that wrecks the overall shape of their lives, back and forth with no continuity or security, no career advantage so to speak. So there’s a feeling of helplessness that creates a carelessness, which a lot of us wouldn’t have if we were more in control of our destinies down here. I know this because I was a General Field Assistant down here, and you can’t be more powerless than that and still be here. I know very well from that experience that ASL uses us to make their profits—we’re paid poorly and we have no job security, and if we don’t like it they just hire someone else. And, excuse me, but those employee practices have led to a hell of a lot of employee abuse here, right under the NSF’s nose, and to a certain extent with NSF approval—the suspension of the forty-hour work week, for instance, among many other such practices. NSF’s attitude has been to turn its head and let the contractor do whatever it had to do to keep the beakers running smoothly, while still making a profit for the contractor’s owners back in the world. And employees have taken the brunt of that kind of looking away for years. No way can people pay proper attention to Antarctica as a project or a life under those conditions. We can’t call our jobs ours, or this place home, so naturally we treat it like strangers.”

Sylvia was watching him very closely now, X saw; it had not been a bad thing to implicate NSF in ASL’s sweatshopping. “What are you suggesting, specifically?” she asked.

“The service contract comes up for bid again soon,” X said. “You could hire new contractors, either general
or sub. Hire a company made up of ex-ASL employees reorganized as an employee-owned co-op, dedicated specifically to enacting a really rigorous environmental policy. As Mai-lis said about her group’s efforts, it could be seen as an experiment—a scientific experiment in seeing how a co-op with no profit beyond salaries and so forth could compete with a standard company, in terms of the services provided down here, combined with environmental improvements and the like.”

“We already expect our Antarctic service contractors to conform to NEPA and all the specific regulations we’ve made,” Sylvia said. “As to the type of company, it would be less clear that we could decide that ourselves—I mean one type of company compared to another. Congress directs us there, I’m afraid, and the budgetary constraints are very tight.”

X nodded. “Sure, I understand that. But without the need to generate a profit for shareholders, an employee-owned co-op should be able to do the same job for less money. So Congress would have no objections there.”

Sylvia nodded doubtfully.

Wade said, “Some relevant laws are up for review by the Congressional ways and means committees, and by the administration. Government contract preferences for employee-owned co-ops is an idea that has been introduced by Senator Chase many times before, and while there is resistance to the idea, there is also considerable support. Growing support.”

Mr. Smith said, “Resistance from the owner class, support from the people. The idea that each corporation can be a feudal monarchy and yet behave in its corporate action like a democratic citizen concerned for the world we live in is one of the great absurdities of our time—”

“Yes yes,” Sylvia said, cutting him off before he got
rolling. “But in our situation here, specifically? With the contracts for service organizations coming up for renewal …”

Wade said, “NSF might be able to make their decisions based on their current environmental regulations, so that it won’t have to wait for the ultimate decisions Congress makes concerning private contractor preferences. Especially in situations where the infrastructure is owned by NSF, as is the case here. This would be an area where a new employee co-op might be able to avoid the problems of capitalization. And if they could include a solid plan for increased environmental sensitivity as part of their bid, at a lower price, I should think it would be easy for NSF to support the more socially responsible organization.”

“The two are the same,” X insisted, pounding his knee. “Social justice is a
necessary part
of any working environmental program.”

“Yes,” Sylvia said slowly. “Well. At least we can include that as one of the recommendations in our little report here.”

X sat back in his folding chair. His heart was pounding fast; it felt like a penguin was flapping its wings in there. Find those ruby slippers, put them on, click them three times together, and maybe then you’ll get to go back, to the home that has never yet existed.

Val found herself proud of X, watching him make his pitch to the Chalet meeting; he was serious, intent; it was hard to ignore him or what he was saying.

Nevertheless, she could see how things would be. Sylvia would try to broker a settlement, no matter how absurd that goal appeared in the light of the world. Washington and the other capitals would call the shots. The hunt for oil and coal and methane hydrates and fresh water would go on, buffered by all the latest hardware science could offer, with Mr. Smith’s invisible clients hovering offstage, watching, judging, no doubt striking again if they were displeased. McMurdo would go on, perhaps with new companies running the services, perhaps some of them co-ops that treated their employees right; but always the same, even as everything changed; still tour groups coming in on ships and planes, and adventure trekkers packaged and taken out into the back country to see things, guided by their guides.