EDEN (2 page)

From beneath is thick hood Bobby Leary looked up at the officer. ‘How often do dancing girls visit?’

The officer glanced at Leary, his eyes as glacial as the ice fields outside. ‘I’m assuming you’ve all been made aware of the dangers of frostbite, snow blindness and local predators?’

Cody’s team all nodded inside their hoods. Each of them had attended a two day course to prepare them for the extreme environment, including the dangers presented by polar bears, which were more than willing to hunt humans.

‘We’re as well prepared as we can be,’ Jake said, his breath puffing in thick clouds as the vehicle rattled along.

‘Any of you worked up here before?’ the officer asked them.

‘Kind of,’ Jake responded. ‘I spent two years down at McMurdo Station in the Antarctic.’

‘Good,’ the officer replied, ‘you’ll be site liaison and can contact me with any issues you might have.’

The journey across the ice fields took half an hour, most of which was passed in silence. Cody stole glances at his new colleagues and tried to recall their names. There had been little time back in Boston for him to get up to speed with their studies before the departure, so hurried had his application been.

The BV pulled up and the officer turned, opening the door once more to reveal the Air Chemistry Observatory building, Alert Five. Bathed in the glow of a series of lights reinforced against the polar weather, it consisted of a square two-storey building with a multi-tier metallic tower and steps attached to one side where atmospheric measurement equipment was attached along with a communications dish and an antenna that quivered in the gusting wind.

Cody jumped off the vehicle and with his companions hauled their gear onto the snow. The officer checked that the rear of the vehicle was empty, then turned to Jake McDermott and handed him a chunky set of keys.

‘Only set you’ll get, so don’t lose them and as you know never, ever leave any doors open.’

As Jake took the keys, two soldiers clambered from the vehicle’s cab and marched over, each cradling an assault rifle. Cody glimpsed within their hoods and behind eye shields the faces of a Canadian and somebody who looked like they might be an Arctic native, an Inuit.

‘Your escort,’ the officer introduced the two soldiers. ‘They’ll be your guard for the duration of your stay.’

Without another word the officer turned away and climbed into the BV’s cab. With a belch of diesel fumes the truck rumbled its way past the observatory and turned about before growling away into the inky darkness. Within seconds the glow of its tail lights vanished into the gusting snow.

‘Nice to meet you too,’ Cody heard Jake utter as he turned to the door of the observatory.

It took a few moments of fumbling with the keys in his thick gloves before Jake got the door open and the group hustled inside. Cody helped drag their kit in through the door as Jake turned on the interior lights, the two soldiers ambling inside behind them without interest. Cody hauled the last bag through and then leaned on the door until it slammed shut, abruptly cutting off the wind.

The observatory building was large enough to house six scientists and was equipped with living quarters, small bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen. The laboratories were down the far end of the main hall. Cody looked around at the Spartan layout of the living quarters and wondered what the hell he’d gotten himself into.

‘Home sweet home,’ Charlotte Dennis uttered as she pulled back the hood of her jacket and revealed thick tresses of auburn hair that reached half way down her back.

Cody yanked his own hood off, and in the blackened square of a triple-glazed window he saw his reflection. Just like the barren wilderness outside, there was little of interest. A plain face, nose a little too large, hair that kind of did its own thing no matter what he tried. Only thing in his favour was that he’d never smoked and drank only socially, a lifestyle that shaved a few years off his appearance. He looked like he was just out of college and ready to take on the world but for the shadows haunting his eyes.

Cody turned away from his reflection as he pulled his gloves and stole a covert glance at his colleagues. Jake McDermott, with his salt and pepper goatee beard, was checking the fuse box on the wall to make sure nothing had blown out since the summer team had left a few days previously. Charlotte Dennis was checking her reflection in the darkened window nearby, pushing her thick hair back further on her head and fussing with her collar. Bobby Leary was shaking off his jacket and whipping snow from his head with one hand, bright young eyes hunting for something to do. Bethany Rogers, her dark hair in a neat pony-tail, was struggling to haul her kit up onto a table as Jake stepped in to help her. And at the back of the room, Reece Cain quietly unpacked his belongings and avoided eye contact, hiding behind a long black fringe that belonged more to a teenage Goth than a middle-aged scientist.

The two soldiers introduced themselves to Jake as Bradley Trent and Sauri, shaking hands briefly. Bradley was a tall, muscular soldier with a flat-topped buzz-cut. His companion was short, stocky and apparently the silent type.

‘Jesus, this one’s heavy!’

Cody turned to see Bobby Leary heft a steel storage box onto the table in the centre of the room. It was marked C. Ryan.

‘It’s okay,’ Cody said. ‘I’ve got it.’

‘What you got in there?’ Bobby laughed, ‘a cannon ball?’

‘Near enough,’ Cody replied with a grin. ‘I bought just about everything I could fit inside.’

‘You guys must all be totally insane.’

Cody turned to see Bradley Trent watching them with a disapproving gaze.

‘Why?’ Jake asked.

Bradley gestured with a wave of his gloved hand across the room. ‘Me and Sauri, we were posted here on orders. You guys have got the whole world to do your experiments in and yet you come here, to the boil on the ass of the world.’

Cody glanced at Sauri, the Inuit soldier who stood alongside his companion and watched the activity in silence. His face was carved with the same sharp angles as the glaciers that enveloped the bleak landscape that was his home, his eyes as black and dark as the night outside.

‘You agree with that, Sauri?’ Jake asked him.

The Inuit’s only response was to raise one eyebrow a fraction. Bradley laughed out loud and clapped his hand across Sauri’s back.

‘Old
Sorry
here doesn’t say much,’ he reported, ‘nothing wrong with his English, mind. He’s just not sociable.’

‘Great,’ Charlotte uttered. ‘Six months with a mute Eskimo and a gobby Canadian. You owe us all a drink Jake, come the summer.’

Bradley looked at Charlotte as though he’d been slapped. Cody thought he saw a glimmer of amusement in Sauri’s eyes.

‘Who’s the wench?’ Bradley asked Cody as he jabbed a thumb in Charlotte’s general direction.

‘Who’s the goon?’ Charlotte snapped back before Cody could reply.

‘Great start guys,’ Jake uttered. ‘We’ll have time for happy-clappy introductions later. Right now let’s just get our gear unpacked and get our heads down. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover in the morning.’

‘We?’ Bradley uttered as he turned away. ‘Sauri and I are done here. Don’t wake us up too early, ‘kay?’

Cody watched the two soldiers make their way out of the entrance hall, dragging their kit bags behind them.

‘Please don’t put me next door to either of them,’ Bethany muttered to Jake. ‘Trent gives me the creeps already.’

‘Same here,’ Charlotte agreed.

Jake sighed. ‘Fine, you girls go pick your rooms. We’ll follow you in.’

‘Looks like you’re too late,’ Bobby said as he gestured across the living quarters.

Cody looked up just in time to see Reece Cain vanish down a corridor toward the rooms and turn into the nearest one.

‘He always that friendly?’ Jake asked.

‘I have no idea,’ Charlotte said. ‘He’s barely said a word to me since we met.’ She turned and looked over her shoulder at Cody. ‘Nor have you, for that matter.’

Cody managed a grin and stuck his hand out. ‘Sorry. Cody Ryan.’

Charlotte took it as Cody introduced himself to the others.

‘Cody was late to the party,’ Jake said. ‘Jeff Dawkins was supposed to be up here with us, but he got sick. Cody here jumped in to replace him.’

‘Mighty brave of you,’ Bethany smiled. ‘And what possessed you to come up here?’

Cody looked at her for a long moment before he replied. ‘Once in a lifetime opportunity, I guess.’

‘Well, you sure as hell got yourself that,’ Charlotte uttered as she hauled her gear onto her shoulder and headed for the rooms. ‘See y’all in the morning.’

Cody watched her leave with Bethany close behind. Only Jake remained as Cody hefted his bag onto his shoulder.

‘You going to be okay up here?’ Jake asked.

Cody looked at the old man. ‘Sure, why?’

‘You’re the only team member with a young family,’ Jake said. ‘Kind of odd that you’d sign up for something like this.’

Cody twisted his lips into a grin again. ‘The things we do for science, eh?’

Cody turned away and walked out of the living quarters without looking back.

***

Dear Maria,

The crew have settled in and we’ve started work on both the atmospheric sampling and the extraction of ice cores. Jake has already proven himself an effective leader and is using our acoustic suite to measure ice density changes since the last team made their measurements in the fall. Workload is relatively high and we’re spending a lot of time out on the ice getting our experiments set up. Jake is keeping all of us busy and so far the lack of sunlight doesn’t seem to be creating any issues for me.

Our guards, Bradley and Sauri, remain aloof and disinterested in our work. In addition, Reece Cain prefers to sleep in the small ice camp that’s been set up five kilometres out from the observatory. This is causing some friction with Bradley, who resents having to send Sauri out each night to accompany Cain due to the threat from polar bears investigating the camp.

Charlotte hit it on the head though: Sauri and Reece both shun contact. They’re probably perfectly happy out there.

I miss you very much, and I hope that you’re behaving for your mother. Overall, I have no issues here so far and everybody is working well together.

*

‘You idiot!’

The shout rang out across the sheets of shadowy ice as though it had cracked the frigid air. Cody looked up from his work placing a sensor to see Charlotte Dennis storming across the darkened plain, one arm pointed across to where Bobby Leary was standing near an excavation. Although Charlotte was almost entirely encased in her thick Arctic clothing, Cody could tell it was her just by her strident gait against the pale sky on the horizon.

Bobby stood rooted to the spot as Charlotte raged up to him.

‘You drill an ice hole while I’m trying to calibrate acoustic sensors a hundred yards away?!’

Bobby raised his arms. ‘Do I look clairvoyant?’

‘It’s on the goddamned duty roster in the hall,’ Charlotte raged. ‘Calibration diagnostics from two until three! You can read English, right?’

‘Oh me, oh my,’ Bobby snapped, ‘I didn’t realise that Queen Charlotte’s experiments trumped everybody else’s! Maybe you should let us all get set up before you start dictating who’s doing what and when!’

‘You’ve had all week to drill your goddamned holes!’ Charlotte raged. ‘What the hell have you been doing all of this time?’

Cody watched as Jake set his sensor packages down nearby and began walking toward the pair as their voices echoed out across the lonely ice sheets. The horizon was awash with a faint glow of orange that drifted slowly from east to west during what passed for daytime at Alert. The sky above was a deep blue reflected by the ice, but for once there was no wind whatsoever. A pillar of steam from the observatory’s generator rose vertically up into the sky to touch a glittering veil of stars twinkling high above their heads.

Cody checked his watch. 14.32pm.

‘How about I drill a hole in that goddamned head of yours?’ Charlotte snapped and wafted her gloved hand across Bobby’s hood.

‘Take it easy,’ Jake said as he approached the pair and put himself between them. ‘Bobby, how many more sink holes are you planning on?’

‘Just one,’ Bobby replied, ‘right under Princess Pouty here.’

Charlotte’s eyes narrowed but she said nothing as Jake ushered Bobby aside. ‘Let’s just get this done, okay? You got a timetable for finishing?’

Bobby sighed. ‘Another hour I guess. It’s hard finding places where the ice is old enough. With the winter setting in it’s changing all the time.’

‘Fine,’ Jake said, ‘an hour. Get to it.’

Bobby stomped away through the snow as Charlotte snapped at Jake.

‘Couldn’t you have hired somebody who’s not just out of Kindergarten?’

‘Bobby’s doing fine,’ Jake said. ‘We’re not yet ready to begin measuring, Charlotte.’

‘I’m ready,’ she uttered. ‘I can’t help it if everybody else is dragging their heels.’

‘This is a team,’ Jake insisted. ‘A team requires compromise.’

‘I don’t have to compromise. One call and I’m on a plane out of here.’

Cody managed to swallow down the resentment that swilled like hot coals in his belly as he heard Charlotte’s words. Jake replied to her.

‘I know, but the rest of us can’t. Our careers depend on us being here, so if you’re not one of us then you’d better make that call right now, okay?’

Charlotte’s eyes flew wide. ‘Are you trying to tell me what to do?’

‘I’m not trying,’ Jake replied. ‘You’re either part of our team or you’re part of its history. Decide.’

Jake turned away from her and walked back across the ice toward his sensors. As he did so he drifted toward Cody and inclined his head as he looked at him. Cody fell into place alongside Jake, the old man’s beard laced with ice crystals. Their footfalls crunched in unison as they walked.

‘First crack in the eggshell?’ Jake asked.

‘You’re asking me?’ Cody replied.

‘You’re the oldest on the team except Reece and I,’ Jake explained, ‘and Reece is not exactly a social soul. I need somebody to rely on.’