V-Wars

The mountains were in Ruksana’s blood, as integral as iron. Even though both her parents had died while climbing, caught in an avalanche when she was three, she had not been dissuaded from developing the same skills. If anything, it had impelled her. On some unacknowledged level, she had likely thought that she would find them one day, on some mountain top. Them or their ghosts.

In the end, a lifetime of climbing had won her a place on the USAP team.

Vincent called out to her, and she dug in her sabertooth crampons and waited for him to reach her on his lead. He stopped beside her. Though he was smiling coolly, his face was flushed. It wouldn’t be from the exertion; more likely he had bulked up with too many layers of clothing. It was a balmy 40 degrees Fahrenheit here in Antarctica and he was overdressed for the occasion.

Vincent was tall, thin, and fashion-model handsome. The only thing he lacked was humility. He’d been raised to be a god, and it was his opinion that he had succeeded. During the first month here, he’d managed to convince her of the same. Their affair had lasted about as long as it had taken her to realize that she was convenient and discardable, and that she had made a terrible mistake giving into need, inveigled by Vincent’s smooth self-assurance. From collaboration to sex to truculence in a month with another three to go. She’d spent a lot of her time climbing. And now her tour of duty was nearly at an end — just a few more days until they and the other fourteen members of their group rotated out.

“We should drill here now,” Vincent called down to her. “According to the altimeter, this is the median.” He tapped the dial on his wrist.

Lost in thought, she replied automatically, “Desigur.” When he just blinked at her like a gecko, she sighed and called out, “D’accord.”

Of course he had selected a spot that required her to climb back up to him. She unclipped two axes and in short order had pulled herself up the ice face to where he wanted to drill. She swung off to the side, away from him, and tied off the line to suspend her there.

Vincent leaned out from where his crampons were dug into the ice, and let the double figure-eight knots keep him in place on his super-dry Mammut line. He unslung the core drill. The cylindrical saw attachment was a good half-meter long. It didn’t really matter if he went in straight or not, so long as he carved out a cylinder of ancient ice around which she could slide her tube, fill it up and cap it. It was a slightly perilous suspension, with both of his arms engaged in drilling. The fundamental rule of climbing was to maintain three points of contact.

She glanced far below, at the black sea water speckled with ice like oyster crackers. A zipper fall from here would either plunge you into the water where you would die from hypothermia before anyone could rescue you, or else you would strike one of those chunks of ice and die much quicker. No worse than a fall off a mountain.

The drill whined to life above her, sounding like a circular saw, and in a matter of two minutes Vincent had punched in the full depth of thecylindrical bit. He backed it out, looked at his handiwork then at Ruksana as if to say, “I made it perfect for you.”

He shouldered the drill again, careful to keep the hot bit away from his body, took hold of the line and swung away from the sample, giving her access.

Ruksana swung over to it. She pulled the rucksack to where she could get a hand into it, pulled out the first tube, unscrewed the cap, then slid it into the drilled ice. His cut angled slightly up, and she wrestled the end of the tube up to snap off the plug of ice before she slowly withdrew the container, now filled with the sample. The ice in it was speckled with dirt and other organic matter that had probably been washed from the surface of the earth a thousand years ago. She capped the sample and slid it back into the rucksack.

While she worked, Vincent had taken off his jacket and tied it to the back of his harness. His face shone with sweat. He kicked loose and dropped below her on his way to the second sample as though she didn’t exist.

A hundred feet away, Harry and John had descended to a different height, staggering the samples. They were just getting ready to drill their first sample.

Ruksana put away her axes, placed her left hand between the anchor and rappel device, her braking hand against her hip, and let herself continue to follow Vincent down.

— 2 —

At a height of a hundred feet above the ocean, they collected their final sample. The chunks below now resembled pancake ice, as if individual chunks were partially freezing into a wider temporary formation. The water remained dark and turbulent in the aftermath of the calving, even though the huge mass that had broken away had already drifted out of sight. The surface was playing tricks on Ruksana’s peripheral vision. She kept almost seeing something moving under the ice, but when she looked directly, there was nothing. Thus distracted, she paid little attention to Vincent as he started the drill.

He went in at a steeper angle than before, and when he withdrew the bit, a dark viscous fluid began seeping out after it. Ruksana felt the ice shavings sprinkle onto her helmet. She looked up to find a syrupy greenish liquid oozing down the ice face. A few drops spattered off Vincent’s boot onto her cheek. Furious, she swatted at the stuff, feeling it smear. It was on her gloves now, looking like some ancient health drink made from mushed kelp or algae. No doubt the drill had heated up the ice in the hole, liquefied some of it. Vincent, you idiot.

On crampons, she maneuvered to the side, got out her axes and climbed spiderlike up the face again.

Vincent, shouldering the drill, swung on his line beside her. The arm and back of his jacket glistened with the stuff, but clearly he didn’t see it. He said, “Well?”

Ruksana drew out another tube and shoved it up into the slot he had carved. The fluid continued leaking out, onto her gloves and sleeves. When she withdrew it, the tube was slimy with the stuff, too. She screwed the cap back on and pushed it into the rucksack. She tried wiping her gloves against the blue wall of ice but to little effect.

“What’s wrong? You all right?” Vincent asked.

“Cred cˇa da,” she answered, angry and unthinking, and again had to translate for him. “I think so. Sure.” She spat even though the goop wasn’t in her mouth. “I need to wash off this stuff you dripped onto me.” She gestured at him. His jacket, tied behind him, had goop all over it. “You have it, too.”

He looked over his shoulder at the shiny smear. “Must be Pleistocene escargot. As big as this.” He held his hands up as if to hold a human head. A string of slime hung between his gloves. He ignored it, grinning in that cocky way that had first persuaded her to make a mistake with him.

She unclipped her ice axes once more, took one in each hand. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. She started up the wall.

“You don’t need to climb, you know!” he shouted up at her in French. He drew the small walkie-talkie from his harness and ordered Martin McCabe above to start the winch.

A moment later, Ruksana found herself tugged along. This should have been her final climb and she had looked forward to scaling the vertical ice face. Now she was annoyed, sticky, and helpless as the winch pulled her up. The only benefit, she supposed, was that she remained above him the rest of the way up.

Where the stuff was on her skin it itched, although the sensation was likely psychosomatic. Finally, she admitted it was her inattentiveness and not his that was responsible. Usually she was very attentive, very focused; and the one time she wasn’t, this happened.

She clipped the ice axes to her harness again and watched the shape of her reflection, like a dark doppelgänger, rippling along the deep blue ice.

— 3 —

“I don’t want you to tell anyone what happened,” Vincent said.

They were standing beside the Range Rover, waiting now for Harry and John, who were being winched up by Martin and Brian Childs. In her hand was a rag she’d taken from the vehicle to wipe her face and neck.

“What?” Surely, she hadn’t heard him correctly. Her French wasn’t all that reliable.

“I don’t need a black mark on my record because you didn’t get out of the way.”

She had conceded already that it was her fault she’d been below him. But his insistence got her back up. “But you did start drilling without checking to see. You stopped following procedure.” She gestured at her cheek with her bare hand. “For all you know, I’ve been poisoned.”

“Really?” He leaned in close as if he saw something on her skin, then at the last moment kissed her. His hand was on the back of her head and kept her from pulling away. Then he tilted his head away. “You taste okay to me. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you, and anyway, if you’ve been contaminated, so have I.” He licked his lips, then wiped his fingers across his wadded up jacket, held them up. “Maybe the escargot came from outer space, eh? If it did, I can tell you they won’t let you go home in two days or even two weeks. You’ll be a lab rat at the NSF’s pleasure for a long time. More to the point, so will I.” He snatched the cloth from her hand and wiped it over the jacket. “You will have to decide. If it reflects badly on me, it does on you, too. And Henderson is a former Marine. He will believe me if I tell him you and I had a relationship that went sour and you’re just trying to get back at me with a parting shot. Gordon knows about us, as well, so if asked he will have to agree. You see, you gain nothing and lose almost everything. Anyway, all you did was get dirty.”

She couldn’t believe it. Her opinion of him could not have sunk any lower.

“Fuck you, Vincent,” she told him. She turned on her heel and circled around the Range Rover.

“You did,” he called after her.

— 4 —

Despite his behavior, when they returned to the base, she said nothing about the incident beyond turning in her Polartec jacket and gloves so that Kwasi Nkrumha, a biologist from Tanzania, could take samples. Vincent followed her lead and handed over his jacket. There was more of the stuff on the last tube and, it appeared, inside it as well. Kwasi wouldn’t lack for samples. The true focus of concern was as to whether the stuff had contaminated the other core samples. But she had sealed the first two tightly. They were safe from the greenish sludge. It did seem to be a localized phenomenon — Harry and John had encountered nothing akin to it.