“Three million years,” Forbes said.
“Well, you see,” the V under the moustache, “there you have it! Just as thick as expected.”
Much later they crawled out into the blaze and bite of the frigid brilliant midnight, and Val and Wade went to their tent. Already they had a little domestic routine, he noted; he peed outside, she peed inside; when he crawled in she was already in her bag, on her side of the tent. Their second night together; and in the weird yellow overexposure she was as beautiful as before. It was ridiculous what a little pitter-patter of the heart he got from lying next to her. Even as exhausted as he was—from the day’s fight with the cold, he assumed—it still kept him awake for a while; at least ten minutes; then he followed her into slumber.
Sometime in the bright yellow night, however, Wade woke to find that he was on his side, and wedged against Val’s backside. And something about the pressure of the contact, or the warmth, or the contents of a dream, or simply the physiology of the REM state, had given him an erection. If it were not for their thick sleeping bags it would be pressed firmly against her bottom.
This comfortable snug was a position he and his girlfriend Andrea had often taken. She too had been a big woman, taller than he. She had hated Washington, D.C., however, and their relationship had not long survived the move there. And after that Wade had been too busy to start any other relationship, or so he told himself; it had been a hard thing, having Andrea leave.
Now that was not what he was thinking about. He felt he should move; he did not want to be misunderstood. The sleeping bags were extremely thick, however, so that nothing could be felt through them. And the tent was quite small. And bitterly cold; though the sky was still bright, the sun seemed to have dipped behind the Apocalypse Peaks. So it made sense to snuggle for warmth. In any case Val was asleep, breathing deeply. He couldn’t see anything of her face from where he lay, but he could remember it. She had been really good in the Scott tent, very easy in the company of those men, trading banter with Misha, pressed unselfconsciously against people, joining the conversation when she felt like it, listening when she didn’t. Everyone at ease, even with this big beauty in their midst. The men might have been even happier than on an ordinary evening, more alive and on their toes, as if the Drambers had an extra fire in it; but nothing more than that, nothing to draw any notice. It was skillful; as a diplomat Wade admired it. Not everyone could have ensured that the situation be so normal.
And the same with sleeping with a strange man in a small tent. Except now she was stirring. Quickly Wade rolled over in his bag.
But now it was she who was pressed up against his back. Hard against him, in fact, from his head to his heels; and she was so much taller than he that she enfolded him entirely, the back of his head down against her chest. More than ever before he realized he liked being smaller than the woman he was with. It was ravishing. No chance of that REM erection going away. He turned his head ever so slightly, and there was her face, inches from his; again the surgical glare of tent light; again her disconcerting beauty. The weathering of an outdoor life made her face look fiftyish, though asleep of course she also looked like a child, as everyone did. Mouth open, deeply asleep, breathing smoothly, pressed against him hard. He turned his head back and snuggled it into his parka hood, and after a long while his heart rate returned to something like normal, and after another while he fell asleep again.
The next day, after breakfast and taking down their tent and packing their backpacks, Wade followed Val down the piebald snow-and-rock valley toward Lake Vida, which from certain high points along the way was visible as a white line on the valley floor. Again, it looked only an hour’s walk away, but now Wade knew better. Professor Michelson was accompanying Harry and Graham down to look at the striated cliffs above Lake Vashka, and so for the first part of the walk they kept Wade and Val company. Wade and Michelson lagged behind to talk.
As they conversed, a red fly appeared in the distance over Lake Vida. No sound; but it was a helicopter. It descended on Lake Vida, and then flew up again and away, toward Wright Valley.
“Were we late, or they early?” Wade called down to Val.
“Not for us,” Val called back.
“That was one of the NSF trekking groups,” Michelson said. “Starting an expedition, or ending one, or both.”
“I’m surprised NSF has gotten into that.”
“Are you?” Michelson glanced at him, once again in his Breughel nose guard. “They need money like anyone else.”
“But here they are, in charge of this whole continent …”
“On a budget smaller than that of most universities. Besides, they are not really in charge. I mean they control the American presence here, which is in itself amazing, I agree. I’m astonished some of your State Department colleagues haven’t taken it over.”
Wade gestured at the brown-and-white desolation around them. “They probably don’t see the point.”
Michelson laughed. “Well, so NSF keeps control. But with an ever-shrinking budget. It’s Mars that is the hot place these days, scientifically speaking at least, and that’s where all the money is going. This is a kind of backwater now, scientifically. Anyway, your NSF is just one player down here. There are about thirty national groups in the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research, and that’s the group that decides how things are run down here. NSF generally just goes along with SCAR. And within SCAR there’s the old boys’ club, of the countries who were down here from the beginning in the IGY, and then the new countries that have joined since, to make sure they have a say in case resource extraction ever starts. There used to be conflicts between those two groups, but all that has been forgotten because of the conflicts between SCAR and the UN, and SCAR and the non-Treaty nations. And now that the Treaty renewal is being held up—by people in the American government, as you know, though there are others who are not unhappy about that—it’s more uncertain than ever. There are people in the UN who would like to be running Antarctica, because then the votes in the General Assembly could overwhelm any scientific advice, and the UN bureaucrats involved would be in charge here.”
“Complicated.”
Michelson laughed. “Very complicated. Land without sovereignty! That’s too odd not to be complicated, in this world. The Antarctic Treaty held in its time, but now it’s a new world.”
“The Treaty always seemed fragile.”
“Fragile, idealistic—all those things. And even when it was in effect the Treaty nations broke its rules all the time. France, Russia, they did what they wanted, more or less. Now that the stakes are getting higher, the Treaty is revealed as the house of cards it always was.”
“I see.”
“So the NSF running trekking expeditions down here is actually a very small matter. It preempts the private companies, so that NSF can keep control of the visitors—keep them from coming up here, for instance. Keep them clean and neat, and so on. It’s a good idea, I think.”
“Interesting.”
“Yes. The conflicts are endless. Not unlike your turf battles back in the Senate, I would guess.”
“Yes,” Wade said absently, watching Val’s backside as she hiked down the valley with Graham and Harry. She walked like someone who had hiked a million miles, and no doubt she had. Now it was a kind of boulder ballet, a very graceful flow. He pulled back out of his distraction: “Very much the same. In fact it’s the same battle, I’m afraid. Different parts of the same battle, everywhere. This is only the outermost edge.”