EDEN (3 page)

Cody stared down at the ice for a moment as he walked.

‘I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,’ he replied finally. ‘We need more time to get into a routine. It’s only been a few days.’

‘A few days is all it takes for people to get pissed at each other up here,’ Jake pointed out. ‘They don’t realise it, it just happens.’

‘You think we’re already cracking up?’

‘Sure we are,’ Jake insisted. ‘We just pretend we’re okay but it’s happening already, little by little. There’s no way to adapt to this place, we just get dumped here and have to acclimatise to it while on the job. Permanent darkness, crippling cold, storms that last for days and leave everybody cooped up inside to get on each other’s nerves? You name it, it’s going to happen. Hell of a location.’

Cody nodded as they walked. ‘How come you keep coming back up here then?’

Jake chuckled.

‘I guess I just figure that this is a unique place to be. There are not many places on Earth this remote and pristine with a permanent presence. We’re lucky to be able to witness it, and if the military were not here nobody would see this place.’

Cody looked up at the distant twinkling lights of the Canadian base. ‘What are they doing up here anyway?’

‘It’s a listening station,’ Jake explained. ‘They built it during the Cold War to keep an eye on the Soviet Union and China.’

‘Security seems pretty tight,’ Cody observed, ‘seeing as the Cold War is over.’

‘Probably something to do with equipment, classified stuff I’d imagine. On rare occasions they let civilian companies fly supplies into Alert. The crew of the aircraft are not allowed more than three metres away from their airplanes.’

Cody nodded and then scanned the horizon beyond the base. Although geographically he was looking south, the magnetic North Pole was in fact somewhere out to his right. But the glow of the distant, hidden sun told him that he was looking in about the right direction as they came to a halt on a low ridge of snow.

‘Boston, eh son?’

‘Sorry?’

‘You’re from Boston, like the rest?’ Jake asked.

‘Yeah,’ Cody confirmed and looked back at the sun’s distant glow, ‘Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You?’

‘Cali,’ Jake replied.

‘Jesus, that’s an environment change.’

‘Your file said you’ve got a daughter?’ Jake asked as they stared at the distant glow.

‘Three years old,’ Cody replied, and felt a smile tug at the corner of his lips despite the cold. ‘Maria.’

Jake nodded slowly as they stood together. ‘And you came here?’

‘This was a once in a lifetime opportunity, to get to Alert and do this research.’

‘Ice is getting thinner,’ Jake replied. ‘Ice breakers are getting through easier. There’s no reason to believe that the science is urgent.’

‘Climate change isn’t urgent?’ Cody almost laughed.

‘Your presence isn’t,’ Jake replied.

Cody turned to look at the older man, letting his hood conceal his expression a little. ‘Why are you giving me a hard time about being here?’

Jake smiled. ‘I just like to know who I’m working with is all.’

‘You’re working with a bunch of people who like being stuck a couple of thousand miles away from pretty much everybody else. That should tell you something.’

‘It only tells me the how, not the why,’ Jake countered. ‘I’ve worked in places like this plenty of times before and believe me it can be hard on folk. Sooner or later there’ll be a bust-up of some kind. Just make sure it’s not you, okay?’

Cody looked at Jake for a long moment before replying. ‘Sure.’

Jake gave Cody a thick gloved pat on the back, then turned and trudged away toward the observatory.

Cody let out an irritated breath onto the frozen air and watched the cloud of vapour spiral away from him. The last thing he wanted was to babysit everybody else. Christ, escaping company was half the reason he’d travelled all the way out here. The vast, empty expanses of the Arctic plains seemed to draw away from him as his brain began to calculate just how far away civilisation was. How much he had done. Why he had done it. Whether or not he should have.

‘Yo’, Cody!’

The voice rolled across the ice from far behind him and Cody turned to see Bethany standing in a pool of light on the observatory steps with her thumb and forefinger pressed to the side of her head as she pointed at him. Then she tapped her wrist and gestured to the observatory.

Cody gave her a thumbs-up and started off through the snow.

***

‘She’s beautiful.’

Bethany walked past Cody as she left the observatory’s communications room, smiling broadly.

The heat in the interior of the building felt almost tropical as Cody pulled off one of his three sweaters and walked into the room. He glanced up at the clock on the wall, which read just after three in the afternoon as he sat down in front of a monitor and looked straight into his daughter’s big, brown eyes.

Maria Ryan was the cutest bundle of perfection that Cody had ever laid eyes on, and now the sight of her after just a couple of weeks away caused sharp needles of pain to pierce the corners of his eyes as his throat twisted upon itself.

‘Hi honey,’ he managed to rasp as he reached out and touched Maria’s face on the screen.

‘Daddy!’

She was sitting in her mother’s lap, writhing and giggling as she saw her father’s face. A satellite relay-connection to a base called Eureka, several hundred nautical miles to the south, allowed researchers stationed at Alert to make video-calls to their families once a week, provided adverse weather didn’t scramble the transmissions. Now, with clear skies outside he could hear Maria’s laughter and excitement as she scrutinised his image on the screen in their Boston home. They spoke for a few moments until he heard his wife’s voice.

‘C’mon Maria, wave goodbye to daddy now.’

Maria shook one hand at the screen in a gesture that could as easily have been a threat as a wave but for the broad smile between her bright red cheeks. ‘Bye daddy!’

‘Bye honey,’ Cody waved back, his own features aching with the smile plastered across his face.

His wife, Danielle, lifted Maria out of shot and then reached out to the camera, tilting it back slightly so that he could see her face.

‘Hi,’ Cody said as the ache faded away.

‘Hi.’

There was no passion in the response, as if she were reading from a script. Cody waited for more words to come forth but Danielle stared at the monitor as though she were looking at a painting.

‘How’s Maria been?’ he asked.

‘She’s good,’ Danielle replied, ‘been to her Gran’s this morning. She says hello.’

The sound of Maria running up and down and singing to herself out of shot stretched another smile across Cody’s features. On the monitor he saw Danielle’s expression soften as she glanced at their daughter.

‘She asks after you every day.’

Cody nodded and ducked his head as fresh waves of pain stabbed at his eyes. He dragged a hand across his face and took a breath that shuddered through his chest. Words spilled from within him as though escaping of their own accord.

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come out here.’

Danielle glanced down into her lap but said nothing. Her long brown hair fell over her face and she swiped it aside.

‘You’ll miss her birthday.’

Cody felt a surge of anger seethe through his belly but somehow he managed to beat it back down.

‘I know I’ll miss her birthday. If I could change things, I would.’

Danielle glared out of the monitor at him and bit her lip but said nothing. Cody took another deep breath of cold air.

‘Pack ice is building up and the winter storms are starting here. Communication might get difficult. Can you do me a favour?’

Danielle stared at the screen. No movement or words.

‘Can you video Maria, maybe just a few minutes a week, and e-mail it to me? I know I can’t be there but I don’t want to miss too much.’

Danielle nodded once. ‘Maybe you should have thought of that?’

Cody felt his fists ball in his lap and felt his jaw aching again, this time for all the wrong reasons.

‘The military flights are rare and civilian aircraft even more so. Chances of me hitching a ride out of here early are zero. Besides, it wouldn’t do us much good, would it?’

Danielle gave a dismissive flick of her eyebrows as she looked away from the camera. Cody’s anger finally spilled over.

‘You think that I chose this? You think that what happened was somehow my fault? You think I want to be stuck up here freezing my ass off?’

‘I don’t know what I think.’

‘Then how can you judge me?’

‘I’m not goddamned judging anybody!’

Danielle’s voice was a harsh whisper as she tried to prevent their daughter from hearing the anger in their exchange. Cody reined himself in.

‘Five months,’ he said finally. ‘Five months and this will all be over, okay?’

Danielle looked at him for a long moment.

‘This will be with us forever, no matter what we do or where we go. We’ll never escape it, Cody.’

Cody lost patience. ‘Better that, than the alternative.’

Cody reached out and terminated the connection on the computer. He dragged a hand down his face as though trying to wipe the slate of his life clean and then got up and walked out of the room.

The lights in the living quarters were on, the windows black as though it were midnight. Cody mentally reminded himself that it was barely past three in the afternoon. This far north the pale twilight that passed for day lasted only a few hours, the pink and gold glow on the horizon swiftly fading.

Bethany Rogers sat at a dining table with a series of charts in her hands, and tapped one with a pencil.

‘Best place for the new CO2 monitors is definitely out at the ice camp,’ she said. ‘There’s a slim chance that aircraft activity at the airbase could contaminate our measurements here.’

Cody nodded vacantly as he peered out into the darkness. ‘Sure. Reece will do it.’

Bethany snorted in amusement. ‘Be quicker for us to take them out. Reece hasn’t set foot back in the observatory since we set the camp up.’

Cody nodded.

‘You okay?’ Bethany asked.

Cody blinked out of his glum reverie and turned to her. ‘Yeah, sure. Sorry. Just spoke to my wife and daughter, kind of brings it home how far away they are.’

Bethany smiled. ‘You should have got this assignment out of the way before playing happy families, Cody.’

‘You got a boyfriend?’ Cody asked.

‘Are you hitting on me?’

‘No, not at all, I meant that… ’

Bethany giggled. Cody picked up a pair of winter gloves and tossed them at her.

‘I’m not attached,’ she replied as she ducked the missiles. ‘I was, but we split up a couple of months back.’

‘Sorry to hear that.’

‘It wasn’t serious.’

‘What about the others? They got families, partners?’

‘Why do you ask?’

Cody shrugged. ‘Jake seems interested in getting a feel for everybody’s status, for want of a better word. Says it helps figure out how well people will cope up here.’

‘You think they’d tell me?’

‘Maybe,’ Cody replied.

Bethany shrugged.

‘Well as far as I know Bobby Leary is either single or a serial adulterer because I can hardly hold a conversation without him checking me out. Reece seems like the kind of guy who has only ever had a relationship with a petri dish, and Charlotte probably only mixes with other senator’s children.’ Bethany thought for a moment. ‘She’ll suffer the most.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Bobby will chase me around the whole time here, Reece will stay on his own, you’re married, I’m happily single and Jake’s too professional to play kiss-chase with anybody. Charlotte’s the fish out of water. It can’t be easy spending your life mixing with politicians and movie stars and then getting dumped out here on your own.’

‘I thought she said she wanted to do her research while she was young enough.’

‘Bull crap,’ Bethany snorted. ‘She’s only at home with caviar, champagne and chauffeurs. This is probably something her father arranged to bring her back down to Earth. You can tell she doesn’t want to be here and doesn’t like any of us.’

‘What about the two soldiers, Brad and Sauri?’

‘What about them?’

‘I figured they’re on some kind of punishment detail, getting stuck with us here instead of with their team over at the base.’

‘Makes sense I guess,’ Bethany agreed. ‘None of the military seem interested in us.’

Cody nodded and looked out of the darkened windows at the distant lights of the base.

‘Not exactly a comforting thought,’ he said.

***

Crystallised.

That was the only word that described the Arctic for Cody as he guided one of four heavy duty snowmobiles across the bleak terrain. It felt as though he were in a vast dome of glass, the icy plains frozen in time and glistening as they reflected the starlight in the soaring vault of the heavens above. A thin sword of light glowed across the horizon ahead, keeping distant hills in silhouette. A few thousand miles away, down in Boston, it was midday and people were bustling out of their offices for lunch.

Here, it seemed like they were traversing the surface of the moon.

The snowmobile’s engine growled as Cody guided it toward a series of small prefabricated buildings erected out on the lonely plains, the headlights reflecting off sparkling particles of ice whipped up by the powerful belts of Jake’s snowmobile a few yards ahead.

Behind Cody followed Bradley Trent and Charlotte Dennis on two more vehicles. Jake guided them in to the camp and slowed. Ahead, Cody could see Reece Cain about a hundred yards away out on the ice erecting a tower of aluminium tubing some ten feet tall. Nearby, Sauri stood guard with a rifle cradled in his grip.

Cody shut off the snowmobile’s engine and revelled in a deep and frigid silence broken only by the sound of boots crunching on the ice as they dismounted.

‘He’s still building that?’ Charlotte asked, her voice muffled by the thick mask and goggles she wore.