Alexandr climbed into the front seat, next to the pilot. Apparently they knew each other from previous expeditions, and they settled down and started chatting in Russian. Nina scrambled into the back, then Fatima followed her in and the door slid shut behind them and locked with a clunk.
"I'm glad you're in with me," Fatima said, buckling her safety belt. "I thought for sure that you'd be sharing with Purdue. What's the deal with him, anyway? I mean, I know he's trying to impress you and all, but… is it working? Do you like him?"
Nina sighed. "Ugh, it's a hell of a way to get what I want, isn't it? I know it seems really sleazy, but he's not all that bad. He's always been upfront about the fact that he wants to get me into bed, but he's been equally clear that he doesn't expect sex in exchange for funding this trip. He's always been disarmingly straightforward — I never told you about the first time I met him, did I?"
"You mentioned him, I remember. Wasn't it at some college thing?"
"That's right. It was last year's benefactors' ball. You know what I think of those. Anyway, I got chatting to him for a while and he was getting all excited about some kind of microscopic medical camera he'd been working on. I thought he was just another boring rich guy, albeit a slightly younger model than the rest. You know what it's like, usually they just ramble at you for a while and eye you up, but they never have the nerve to say or do anything. Well, he did. I had just about zoned out when he told me he had a suite at the Balmoral and wanted to know whether I would be interested in joining him there, since I seemed to be, and I quote, 'the perfect encapsulation of intellectual and erotic fascination.' No, seriously, that's exactly what he said! Stop laughing!"
Fatima could not help herself. She shoved her gloved hand against her mouth and tried to stifle the giggles, but her eyes were screwed shut and her shoulders were shaking. Nina smiled. She had fond memories of these giggle fits. Fatima felt everything very deeply, and when something amused her, it kept her entertained for ages. Hours, sometimes.
She remembered a particularly fraught time during finals fortnight when she and Fatima had been revising into the early hours. Having reached a point where even black coffee wasn't keeping them alert any more, they had each taken a handful of caffeine pills. Far from aiding their revision, the intense caffeine hit had sent both of them spinning off into such a wired, jittery state that neither of them had got any further work done. They had, however, spent the rest of the night laughing hysterically at a number of inconsequential things, while chain-smoking in an attempt to calm themselves again.
At length, Fatima's hilarity subsided and she let out a long sigh and settled back into her seat. "I needed that," she said. "I'm getting too old for all this expedition stuff, Nina."
"Bollocks. You're thirty-five."
"Yeah, but you know what I mean. I feel too old. I've done seven trips out here in the past nine years, and I've overwintered twice. That's a lot of time to spend in the Antarctic. I'm beginning to think that maybe it's time for me to hang up my cleats and maybe spend a whole year in one place. I think I'd like to work in a lab that's not in the middle of nowhere. Somewhere I could finish work at the end of the day, get in my car and pick up a pizza on the way home, you know? And I could make plans to hang out with my friends in Starbucks instead of on Skype. Wouldn't that be amazing?"
"I suppose," said Nina, picking at the skin around her fingernails. "Although I've got the opposite problem. I kind of envy you being out here, getting to do work that you actually care about. You're actually making a difference to your field. People take you seriously. I'm still spinning my wheels. Honestly, if I have to write one more stupid fucking conference paper on some bullshit topic that no one actually cares about but everyone writes about because it's fashionable… I will break something. Or someone.
"I don't mind teaching, but my schedule's so heavy most of the time that it doesn't leave a lot of room for writing anything that's important to me. I can hardly even remember the last time I got to do some proper, in-depth research rather than just rehashing part of my doctoral thesis and smearing it with a thick layer of whatever bullshit theoretical stuff happens to be popular at the time." She tipped her head back and stared at the roof of the hovercraft, watching the black canvas shudder as the vehicle whirred along. "It sucks. I'm actually considering getting out of academia altogether."
"What?" Fatima stared incredulously at Nina. "You can't be serious, Nina. You're good! You know you are! And you've come so far."
Nina laughed. "Have I? I don't know. Remember when we used to talk about how our lives were going to be, and you were going to be off unlocking the secrets of the permafrost and I was going to be writing books that would change the way the world thought about the past? God, I sometimes wonder what happened to those girls. I barely recognize myself these days."
"Everyone feels that way, Nina," Fatima said.
"Do they? Do you?" Nina shook her head. "I don't see why you would. You're actually doing the stuff you said you'd do. You get funding, you publish work that actually makes a meaningful contribution to your field… While I, apparently, can't even scrape together one lousy field trip unless some billionaire decides he's got the hots for me and bankrolls the whole thing. I just feel so… I don't know. Undermined, I suppose. I mean, I should be elated, right? We're here! We're in Antarctica!"
She gestured expansively at the whiteness beyond the narrow windows. "This is just the kind of research trip we all dream of, isn't it? The places we'd never have got to go if we'd had different jobs. This is supposed to be the payoff for all the hard work, the crap pay, and the constant neck pain from living behind a laptop screen. Our reward is that we get to make new discoveries and breakthroughs, right? And that when we do, we know it's because we worked so hard and earned the right to be there. Well, that's not how I feel just now. Right at this moment, I feel as if the only reason I'm here is because I've got nice tits, which makes me feel like a huge failure professionally."
"Hey now," Fatima chided. "Don't you talk like that! So you're finding that life isn't working out exactly the way you thought it would when you were young and naïve, so what? Mine isn't either. I was going to be Miss independent, remember? I was going to overwinter every winter because I could deal with the isolation and I didn't need other people in my life. Now look at me! All I want is to get to a point where I can settle down, stabilize my life, marry Evan, and live a happy, boring life. It's just what people do, Nina. There's nothing wrong with it." She glanced out of the window and caught sight of a familiar handful of buildings on the horizon. "Now lighten up — we're nearly at Novo, and if you're going to stay all whiny I'm going to switch places with Purdue. Ever had sex in a hovercraft?"
"No!"
"Me neither. It probably wouldn't be that great. My first boyfriend's car had a bigger back seat than this. But, you know, you and Purdue could find out what it's like. Totally out of academic interest, right? What was it again? A perfect combination of the erotic and the intellectual? You see? He didn't buy you into this trip just because he's hot for you — he's into your intelligence as well!"
Nina pulled a face as they slowed down and the buzzing of the hovercraft diminished. "Well, that makes it all better," she said. "Thanks, F. You're a real help!"
There are telephones in this building here—" Alexandr gestured at one of the handful of tiny prefabricated structures behind him—"and you may use them while we refuel if you wish. I believe Mr. Purdue has supplied a phone card in each of your packs, and this will be the last opportunity to telephone home before we reach Neumayer, where there is not yet a terrestrial phone connection. The satellite phone is not ideal for chit-chat calls, it is for emergencies only."