"That's the Space Station?" Sam was incredulous. "How is that going to keep us safe from a snow storm?" He lifted the canvas and rubbed it between his gloved fingers. "I've been to a T in the Park festival in sturdier tents than this."
"I doubt it," Matlock scowled. "Didn't you do any research before coming on this trip, Mr. Cleave? Ah, forgive me, that's a silly question to ask of a journalist."
Jefferson handed Sam a pole. "Here. Link this up with the other ones of the same color. You're looking at the last word in expedition technology, son. These tubes are reinforced scandium. You could drop an avalanche on this sucker and we'd all be safe inside. It's coated with titanium oxide, too, so you're safe from radiation down here where the ozone layer's at its thinnest. Trust me, if we're not going to make it to Neumayer today, there's nowhere I'd rather be than in a Space Station."
Not even the pub? Sam thought. All he needs to do is grin into the camera and let the light flash off his teeth and he'd be the perfect commercial for whoever makes these tents. With clumsy hands he fitted the poles together while Jefferson and Matlock laid out the canvas and prepared the guy ropes. Within a few minutes they had been joined by Alexandr, Nina, and Fatima, and between the six of them they made short work of getting the tent up.
Sam had to concede that it looked a lot more impressive once it was up. The strange apricot color was a little incongruous with the white surroundings, but it was comforting to see something so obviously built by humans in the vast expanse of nothingness. As the wind began to pick up around them, the little group filed gratefully into the tent. It was spacious inside, with more than enough room in the semi-sphere to accommodate everyone's sleeping bags, and although Sam did not relish the prospect of sharing a communal sleeping space with so many near-strangers, he was glad of their body heat as the air temperature inside began to creep upward.
Alexandr had just set up the little Jetboil stove and began to heat some water when Purdue, Blomstein, and the old man arrived. It made sense to Sam that the old man had waited in the hovercraft while the tent was erected, but he thought it was a bit rich that both Purdue and his bodyguard had not come over and helped. Still, any animosity was quickly dispelled by the prospect of food — he was beginning to realize how quickly he was burning off calories in the Antarctic, and it felt like a long time since the PowerBar he had snacked on at the start of the hovercraft journey. He never would have imagined that rehydrated macaroni and cheese could smell so appealing, but as soon as the boiling water hit the sachet of dried food, his mouth began to water and he gripped his spork tightly in anticipation. Alexandr passed the sachets around, followed by steaming metal mugs of tea, and for a while the tent was silent apart from the sounds of titanium cutlery scraping silicon dishes.
"Well, that might not be the fanciest New Year's Eve dinner I've ever had," Nina commented as she drained the last of her tea, "but it was certainly the most welcome."
"You get used to the high-fat, freeze-dried stuff pretty quickly," said Fatima. "It's when you get home and have to go back to a normal diet that the trouble begins. The first time I came here I prepared by drinking pints of extra thick cream to get my weight up, then when I got back to British Columbia, I didn't have an excuse to down four thousand calories a day anymore."
Sam thought back to the diet he had been on for the past few weeks, prior to their departure. He had received a delivery the day after he had agreed to join the expedition — Purdue's doing, of course — full of high-fat, high-calorie foods, a diet sheet and a note reminding him that the harsh conditions they would face would require him to bulk up. Although he was a wretched cook and disinclined to eat anything other than cereal at home, Sam had a policy of never turning down free food. He had devoured everything Purdue sent with a will, but his metabolism was still swift and he had not managed to gain more than few pounds by the time they set off.
He had also been instructed to lay off the whisky, but that was never going to happen. A period of few weeks was nowhere near enough for Sam Cleave to quit smoking or drinking. He had made the decision that he would just have to take his chances. Of course, when he had done that he had imagined the Antarctic to be more or less like Scotland but with more snow. Here in this frozen wilderness, where the snow did not lie in fluffy drifts but whistled like bullets around the outside of the tent, he began to wish that he had had more time and inclination to prepare. Looking around the group, he wondered whether any of them — with the exception of the seasoned Antarctic explorers — were anywhere near tough enough to be making this crazy trip.
Chapter 11
Sam had never really cared for Hogmanay. Seeing in the new year, bidding farewell to the old… it seemed so arbitrary to him. The first of January never felt all that different to the thirty-first of December, except that his hangovers were usually a little worse on the first. Patricia, in her endless optimism, had loved it. She said that the Scots knew how to celebrate properly. On the one New Year's Eve that they had spent together, two years earlier, she had insisted on honoring as many traditions as she knew. They had waited for the bells, toasted the new year with whisky, then she had made Sam open the living room window to let the old year out while she opened the door to welcome in the new. Sam had tried to persuade her to come to bed and spend the first hours of the year making love, but she had recently learned about first-footing and was determined that they must take coal and shortbread around to Paddy's to ensure a lucky, prosperous year for them all.
So much for that little bit of superstition, Sam thought, shaking his head to rid himself of the images of Patricia, glowing with happiness at the prospect of starting the year with him, lying dead on a mortician's slab with most of her beautiful face missing fewer than six months later. He forced himself to concentrate on what was happening in front of him. Alexandr was making his way around the tent, weaving through the piled backpacks and sleeping bags spread out on the groundsheet, a small flask in his hand.
"For you, for you, for you," he said as he poured tiny nips of clear liquid into each person's mug. "Yes, we are not supposed to be drinking alcohol out here in such cold places, but what is a celebration without a little vodka? And not just any vodka. This is such pure, such perfect vodka as you have never tasted, distilled by my cousin, Ivan Yevgeny Ivanovich, who anyone will tell you makes the best vodka in all Siberia — and in Siberia is the best vodka in all Russia. Tonight we celebrate the dawn of a new year, but also the beginning of an adventure!"
As the minutes ticked away, getting ever closer to midnight, Alexandr began to regale the group with tales from his native Siberia. "There is a tradition which is, as far as any man knows, unique to my family," he half-whispered, forcing his companions to be silent and lean in to catch his words. "For where I grew up, deep in the remotest parts of Siberia, the Ke'let is known to walk. When I was only a small boy, perhaps five years old, my father explained to me that as the New Year was being born, the Ke'let would make his rounds. He walks surrounded by his pack of dogs, built like wolves with sabre-sharp fangs, their eyes glowing green in the black night.
"To look on the face of the Ke'let is the end of a man's life, for he is death to all who cross him. On the night of the New Year he goes out to select those who will die in the year to come, scratching his mark into the wood of their house with his long fingernails. So my father taught me that when the Ke'let walks, we must defy him. We must seek him out, him and his dogs. We must run bare-chested in the snow until we see the green glow of his hounds' eyes, and when we find him we must call out 'I am here, Ke'let! I claim my life for another year!'