Surviving Antarctica (12 page)

“Uh,” Billy hesitated, “I’ve never been to Antarctica, so I don’t know about conditions there.”

Weak answer. Disappointed, Robert looked at Billy.
Polly’s eyes were big. She was leaning over the table toward Robert, trying to get his attention. Robert knew that if he asked Polly, she would have lots of information, but he didn’t feel like listening to her.

“Well, if nobody has any questions, I think we should finish up our jobs,” Robert said quickly. “I want to be ready to unload as soon as we land.”

Chad and Jacob walked over to Steve and looked at the screen.

“The kids aren’t in bed yet?” Chad asked.

“No, they’re finishing up some chores,” Steve explained.

Chad checked his watch. “Jacob, why don’t you go check that the screening room is ready.”

“Sure,” Jacob said, and walked out of the production room, leaving Steve and Chad alone.

“If you want to intervene,” Chad began slowly, “there’s no set formula. You just look for opportunities to help.”

“So if the kids don’t need help, the Voice stays silent?” Steve asked.

“That’s right,” Chad said.

This was good news. It was possible, wasn’t it, that Steve wouldn’t have to make up his mind after all?
As if Chad had read his thoughts, he reached underneath Andrew’s screen and pulled out a snaky mike. “The long-range mike is simple to operate.”

Steve’s fingers were drawn to the shiny metal. He fingered the
ON/OFF
switch.

“Let me know when you’re ready,” Chad said.

Steve pushed the mike back under the screen. “The kids don’t need me yet.”

“True.” Chad paused. “But at some point, they
will
need you.”

Steve couldn’t ignore the certainty in Chad’s voice.

Polly stared out the porthole at the seagulls flying above the calm dusk sea. She held Scott’s diary, which was open to the last chapter, loosely in her lap. They had crossed the equator three days ago, and according to Billy they were on schedule to arrive in Antarctica sometime tonight.

The back cover of her book referred to the “fatal” Antarctic expedition of Robert F. Scott. Fatal. Final. Scott and four of his men had reached the Pole over 170 years ago and had never returned.

Sixteen men had started for the Pole. On
Scott’s direction, eleven had turned back. Five men had continued on to march the last 150 miles to the Pole. On the way back, one, the strongest, had fallen into a crevasse and hit his head. He died a few days later. Another, one of the younger men, had gotten frostbite. He had purposely limped out into a blizzard to die. If he hadn’t, he would have slowed the group down and endangered them all.

That left three: Robert F. Scott, Robert Wilson, and Henry R. “Birdie” Bowers. They were only eleven miles away from a depot of food when a blizzard hit. They set up camp and waited. They had two days’ supply of food and water. Captain Scott started writing good-bye notes. They never once felt sorry for themselves.

Polly skipped several pages and forced herself to read Scott’s last diary entry, dated March 29,1912:

Polly dropped the book onto her lap. What must it feel like to starve to death in a tiny tent, with a blizzard going on outside? She rubbed her sweatshirt just to prove to herself that she was sitting in a warm cabin on a ship. She was safe, but that didn’t make her feel better.

She wanted to bring Scott and his men back. If only they could step out of the pages, across time. She would give them a cup of hot tea and share her warm blanket with them. She would ask them questions and seek their help. If they were on this trip with her, she wouldn’t be scared at all.

But Scott and his men were frozen in their icy graves, and soon she, a fourteen-year-old, would be attempting a march that this smart and committed group of adults had failed to survive.

Of course, Polly’s group had some advantages, but she guessed that many of the dangers would be the same. As she read the
descriptions of the steep crevasses covered by ice and snow that the members of the Scott party plunged into from time to time, she shuddered. The sharp icy waves called sastrugi would certainly slow them down. One or more of the kids was sure to go snow-blind. Then, of course, there was the treacherous weather. Even if Antarctica was twenty degrees or so warmer now than it had been in Scott’s time, blizzards would still blow in without warning and fill the air so completely with snow and ice that a traveler couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.

She put the book down. She needed some air.

Grace stood on the deck and watched for signs that they were closer to the continent of her dreams. Billy had told them that they would cross the Antarctic Circle soon. She didn’t need a map to know that they were going farther and farther from people, and from cities with their lights and confusion.

She had turned her face to the sky when she felt the first snowflake. It was like a cold, wet kiss. She brushed it off with her mittened hand and stuck out her tongue. Snow pattered away on it. She drew her tongue in and swallowed the icy drops.
The reservation had suffered floods and droughts from the messy weather that ruled the planet. One year winter had skipped them entirely, while the next year winter was longer and colder than anyone could remember. But the Hopi Indian reservation in Arizona had never gotten snow. Just as her grandfather had promised, the snow on her tongue, the first she had ever tasted, was sweet.

“Ayayay!”
She stamped the boat deck with her feet, and her fingers stroked the air.
“Ayayaa!”
On the reservation she and her cousins had danced to celebrate the rain, and now she improvised.
“Ayayay,”
she sang. “Bless us with this force of life; make these beautiful white drops fall faster and faster until I am covered in snow.”

Polly stepped carefully onto the slippery deck. She watched Grace hop around. Was this some kind of dance? What did those eerie howls mean? What was going on in Grace’s head? “What are you doing?” Polly asked finally.

Grace looked at the girl. Her trance was broken.

On the reservation all the Hopi kids made fun of Grace and her cousins except when an outsider came in, maybe the son or daughter of a doctor or a government official who had come
to inspect the reservation. Then the Hopis and the Eskimos banded together to stare at the outsiders and make fun of them. The Hopis called these kids “zombies” because with their love of television, computers, and movies, they seemed like the living dead.

“I’m sorry,” Polly said. “I didn’t mean to bother you. I just came up here to get some air and”—she hesitated—“to escape some ghosts.”

“Ghosts?” Grace said. They had plenty of ghosts—or spirits, as the Indians called them—on the reservation.

“When I read a book,” Polly said, “it’s like I’m in a different world. I love the characters, and when something bad happens to them …” Her voice trailed off.

Grace had never experienced a book that way, but she had lived an imaginary life in the snow and ice, so she understood.

Polly examined the empty deck. “Do you sometimes get lonely?” she asked.

“No.” Grace looked at Polly curiously. This girl’s head held so many books, but it contained no friends. Grace had her grandfather inside her head, and she could talk to him whenever she wanted.

“You don’t talk very much,” Polly said.

“It’s snowing.” Grace pointed at the sky.

“I hadn’t noticed,” Polly said. She couldn’t focus on anything but the tragedy of Scott and his men.
“But this I know: we on this journey were already beginning to think of death as a friend,”
she mumbled.

“What?” Grace said.

Polly couldn’t hold back her tears. “That’s what one of Scott’s men wrote. Oh, Grace, I don’t think any of us are going to make it.”

“Is that what your books tell you?” Grace said.

Polly nodded.

“Then throw them away.” Grace had been wrong. Polly did have friends in her head, but they were dying friends.

“I can’t.”

“Why not? Didn’t your mother tell you? You can know too much.”

Polly shook her head. She believed without any doubt that her knowledge of what had happened to Scott could make the difference in whether they survived or not, but watching her book friends die was hard. “I won’t bother you anymore. I’m going to go back in.”

Grace had opened her mouth to the snow. She acted as if she hadn’t heard Polly.

Polly settled back in her bunk with her book on her lap. She dared herself to flip the book
open. She looked down at the page. It was Scott’s journal entry for March 3, not thirty days before his death:
Amongst ourselves we are unendingly cheerful, but what each man feels in his heart I can only guess.

She forced her eyes to move down the page. March 4.
We are in a very tight place indeed, but none of us despondent
yet.

She scanned another entry near the end of the journal:
Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman.

And again she read Scott’s last entry:
For God’s sake look after our people.

Polly put her head in her hands. Her tears came freely now. She pulled the pillow to her face. It was more than 170 years after Scott’s death, but Polly cried as if Scott and his men had died that day in her tiny cabin.

Steve glanced at his watch. It was about time for him to begin his editing assignment. Chad and Jacob were sending their reports.

Billy’s, Robert’s, and Andrew’s screens had gone dark. Grace’s screen was filled with a starry evening sky.
Polly’s screen looked like a windshield in a car wash.

“See you tomorrow,” Steve said to the five live screens before he turned away to begin his other work.

After passing through security, Steve pulled his pollution mask out of his pocket and covered his face with it. A low-lying haze had settled over Washington. The radio said that long periods outdoors, like the walk from the DOE to Steve’s home, should be avoided. But he didn’t want to waste his money on bus fare.

Steve turned the corner and started down the front walkway of the DOE. It was lined with statues of television stars. There was Jorna Morgaday, with her long hair and long legs and the trademark umbrella that she carried as protection from the newly discovered ultra-ultraviolet rays of the sun. Lyle Allen’s tough face was turned toward the street. Lyle, who had portrayed a policeman in a holomovie about the Urban Trash Wars, was holding an Urban Trash rifle. In his first film,
Food Fight
, he had battled the trash and food fights that had raged in cities across the country in the 2060s.

But the statues weren’t all of actors and
actresses. The display also celebrated teachers on EduTV.

In one prominent sculpture Tanya, one of hundreds of national teachers, held a pencil in her hand. She had been Steve’s first teacher. He still remembered Tanya’s refined accent and alphabet-patterned dress. “Now, class,” she would say, “today we are going to study the letter
D
.” Sitting in front of the television, four-year-old Steve would take out his pencil and his notebook and try to write a
D
.

The flashing lights of the Department of Entertainment brought him back to the moment. Its motto,
LET’S HAVE FUN,
blinked on a giant sign above the building.

I’m
not
having fun, Steve thought. Those kids are not having fun. “The Secretary is the only one having fun,” he muttered out loud. Then, remembering his poor dead parents and the debt his family owed to Chad, he swallowed his anger and tried to make his face a mask as he passed under the shade of an emerald green instant palm tree.

ROBERT HEARD A
loud bump. He guessed that it was around one
A.M.
After only five days, the
Terra Nova
must have docked. He wanted to go up to check, but his cabin felt cold. Over the next few weeks, they were going to have to haul equipment 150 miles in this same punishing cold. He needed his sleep. They all needed their sleep. He pulled the blanket over his head.

A couple of hours later, Robert awoke and immediately remembered the bump. It was time to get going. He was ready, had better be ready, to lead the expedition. He threw on his layers of clothes. After ringing the ship’s bell to wake the others, he walked to the mess hall.
When he punched the
BREAKFAST
button, the shelf slid forward.

Shipchef had made them bacon and eggs again. As Robert ate at the counter, standing up, he mentally checked and rechecked the supplies that they had packed for the journey.

Billy walked in, feeling sleepy and grumpy. “Hey,” he mumbled. In case the viewers had seen his outburst, he had been working harder in hopes that the television audience would forgive him.

“Hey.” Robert grinned.

Even though Robert hadn’t formalized it, he thought of Billy as his first lieutenant. Billy was a little temperamental, but sound. The rest of the kids … well, the rest of the kids were just kids. Not that they were totally worthless …

“How’s your hand today?” Robert asked.

Billy looked down at his hand and was glad that the bandage hid the slight wound. “It still hurts.”

“Watch it carefully. We can’t risk an infection.”

“Good bacon,” Billy said, ignoring him.

“Yeah, I’m going to miss these breakfasts.”

“Have you looked outside?”

“No, but I’m going to.” Robert shoveled down his last bite. “See ya up there.” He stopped at the
door. “If the others don’t show up in a minute, will you ring the bell again?”