“Can you guess what’s missing?” she asked.
“Police station?” Wade ventured. “Jail?”
“That’s true, very good. But that’s not it.”
“The Navy would come in and be police, if they needed them,” X said darkly. “And they don’t need a jail because they take you away.”
“Hmm,” Wade said. “So there’s no law enforcement here at all?”
“Sylvia is a U.S. Marshall,” X said. “She could deputize people if she needed help locking someone up.”
“There used to be a town gun,” Valerie said, smiling at the memory, “but they were afraid of some winterover going postal, so they had it disassembled and the pieces distributed around town in three or four offices. And now some of the offices have lost their piece.”
She and Wade laughed; X continued to brood. He would not be pleased by her, Wade saw.
“So what’s missing, then?”
“People,” X said.
Val nodded. “Nobody in sight, see?”
Wade saw. “Too cold.”
“That’s right. No one hangs out outdoors. McMurdo looks like that twenty-four hours a day. Occasionally you see people going from one building to the next, but other than that, it always looks like a ghost town from up here.”
“Interesting,” Wade said.
They sat and looked down at the empty-seeming town, which nevertheless hummed and clanked with a variety of mechanical noises. Some vehicles moved, up among the acres of lumber and container boxes.
“Where do you go next?” Wade asked Val.
“I’ve got a Footsteps of Amundsen to guide next week. But first I’m taking a DV out to the Dry Valleys.”
“Oh, that must be me.”
“Really! Well—nice to meet you. It should be a good trip. I’m glad to get the chance to see Barwick Valley, people don’t get to go there very much.”
“So I was told. I still don’t know exactly where it is.”
She pointed at the mountains across the flat sea of ice to the west. “Over there.”
Wade nodded doubtfully. X was now staring at him, and though it was hard to tell with the sunglasses and hood and scarf and all, it seemed he was glaring at him. Perhaps because of this trip with Val. Though of course that was not exactly Wade’s doing. “Where will you go next?” he asked, trying to defuse the look.
X snorted. “GFAs go where they’re told. Although I might be quitting, now that you mention it.” Looking now at Vaclass="underline" “I might be resigning from ASL, so I can take an offer to go out and work for the African oil people.”
“No!” Val exclaimed. “X, are you really?”
“Yes,” he said. “I really.”
“Oh X.” She pursed her lips, shook her head. Wade saw that she didn’t want to talk about it in front of him. X was looking glumly down at the town.
Finally she turned to Wade: “You’re still cold, aren’t you.”
“Yes.” He was shivering hard enough to give his voice a vibrato, almost a trill.
“Well, we should get down. I’ll show you where we’re going on the maps. Also, have you gotten your gear yet?”
“No.”
“I’ll see that you get the good stuff.”
“Great, thanks.”
They stood up. X remained seated, staring at Val with that impenetrable look. Val returned the gaze:
“See you around, X.”
He nodded. “See you around.”
“Nice meeting you,” Wade said awkwardly, aware that he was being used to get out of a confrontation of some sort.
“Nice meeting you too.”
And the big man sat watching them as they descended. Wade took one glance back and saw him there under the big wooden cross, hunched over and brooding.
X slouched down the ridge to Mac Town, his feet like two frozen turkeys attached to the end of his legs. His fingers were cold, his pulse sluggish, his heart numb. He went to the galley and caught mid rats. The night crowd was heavy, mostly the old iceheads done with the swing shift, plus some beakers done with their email. X took two Reuben sandwiches and a mug of coffee and sat at one of the empty round tables. First he downed the coffee, holding the cup in his fingers till they burned. Then while he was devouring the second sandwich Ron sat down beside him.
“So what do you say?” Ron said, leaning in toward X with an exaggerated conspiratorial leer.
X swallowed. “I’ll go for it.”
“Good man!” Ron nodded, first in surprise, then satisfaction: “I knew you would.”
“I didn’t.”
Ron grinned his pirate grin.
Abruptly X stood and grabbed his tray. “When do I go?”
“Day after tomorrow. They’ll drop by the Windless Bight station.” This was a private airstrip set beyond Scott Base, a kind of parasite on the two government bases, barely functioning these days. “Get yourself out there, and they’ll pick you up and take you out to their camp in the Mohn Basin.”
X nodded. “I’m gonna go resign.”
He left the galley and walked by Crary to the Chalet. Inside he told Paxman that he was resigning, and Paxman got him the forms to sign with no surprise or objection. It looked like he would not have to explain himself to Jan or Sylvia, as he had feared he would have to. Ever since Helen had resigned midseason and ASL had sued her for breach of contract and lost, it had become one of the options available to disaffected ASL employees. It was burning your bridges, because ASL would never hire you again, that was for sure. But they couldn’t stop you from doing it.
So he put his signature on the form, powerfully tempted to sign it “X.” But he signed his full name, to make sure everything was legal, and gave the form back to Paxman.
“What are you going to do?” Paxman asked.
“Work for the African oil people.”
“I’ve been thinking of doing that myself. Good luck out there.”
“Thanks.”
Then he turned, and there was Sylvia in the doorway, looking at him with a calm hard evaluative expression. She was NSF of course, and what an ASL employee did was in theory not her concern. But it was all connected down here. And the oil-exploration camps were the most visible sign that the Antarctic Treaty was in limbo, and in danger of falling apart forever. So X tried not to cringe under her sharp eye.
“Didn’t like general field assistance, I see,” she said.
“No.” He met her look and held it. “ASL doesn’t do right by its employees. We’re treated like it’s such a privilege to be in Antarctica that we can always be replaced. The hours are longer than is legal back in the world, there’s no security season to season, no retirement, no benefits beyond the bare minimum. Nothing that real jobs have, or used to have. And NSF sets the conditions, you let them do it. You could tell them what they can do and can’t do, and create better working conditions down here.” He kept his voice soft and calm; no fits here, just stating the facts.
Sylvia said, “There are legal limits to how much NSF can interfere with the contractors they hire.” She shook her head, turned toward her office. “Good luck, X.”
Back out into the wind, dismissed. He trudged up the torn snow and mud to the Berg Field Center warehouse. Ob Hill loomed behind the old building. There were things about Mac Town that he was going to miss. Joyce was in the BFC lounge, an area of the upper floor which had a few couches, a magazine rack, a table and a coffee machine.
“I came to say good-bye,” X said. “I’m off to one of the oil camps.”
“Oh X,” Joyce said, looking annoyed. “Not really.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it.”
She didn’t believe him. He wasn’t sure he did either.
“Anyway I’m off,” he said.
“Does Val know?”
“Yeah. I ran into her up on Ob Hill.”
“What did she say?”