“Simon?” Ross was beside him. He knew. Ross knew!
Quick swung towards him, face blazing. “What?”
“Look. I’ve been looking over this floe. It’s huge; maybe twenty acres. It would be better if we moved further down it. It’s wider, the ice is thicker, it would be a better place for a camp.”
The change of focus temporarily disorientated him. He had not yet got round to thinking about the floe; had not even looked it over to get a full idea of their predicament. It angered him that Ross had had the forethought to spy the land and begin to make a plan. It was what he should have been doing, if he was going to function credibly as leader; instead of standing here trying to get a look at that blonde tart flaunting herself in the tent.
“I see,” he said. “Well, I’m glad to see you’ve been making yourself useful after all. It’s not a bad idea; I’ll think about it.” He turned away, safe in the knowledge that his outrageous behaviour would disarm Ross.
“Don’t be bloody silly, Simon. This is no time to regress to our old fourth-form days. We could die up here; for God’s sake try to act like a grown-up!”
“Don’t tell me how to behave! Good Christ, I’ve been on the ice now for ten years. I’m chief of the camp we’re going to. I haven’t been hiding behind a desk for the last five years; I haven’t got eleven deaths on my slate. Where did you get the arrogance to think that I should listen to your advice rather than looking at the problem and making up my own mind?” His voice had risen, but not in hysteria: in the righteous anger of an offended man who has been grievously misjudged by one who should know better. The others had gathered around now.
Ross gave his lopsided shrug, and moved off. Job followed him.
Kate came out of the tent. “What was that all about?” she asked.
Warren and Preston looked away.
“It’s very simple, Miss Warren; Ross believes we should all do as he says, whether we want to or not. He supposes himself to be so much better equipped to survive than us, that we should consider his words gospel.”
“And is he? Is he better equipped to survive?”
“My dear Miss Warren! I understood you had been in cold climates before?”
“So I have. In Iceland and Norway.”
“And your father?”
“Of course.”
“Mr Preston?”
“Yes; I have been in Greenland and Iceland.”
“Well there you are! We all know our way around; why should we take orders from someone who’s been sitting behind a desk for the last five years because the last time he was in a position anything like this one, everyone who was with him died?” He could see he had scored a telling point, and was willing to leave it there.
He turned again to the crate of sleeping bags and a quiet voice interrupted.
“So,” said Job, “you all know your way around. You, Doctor Warren, when was the last time you were on the pack?”
He waited a moment or two for an answer.
“Miss Warren?”
“I’ve never actually . . .”
“Mr. Preston?”
“Me neither.”
“Simon; I don’t have to ask you. Unless you’ve been doing it in secret, you have never survived off land either.”
“It makes no difference, Job . . .”
“A moment, please, Simon. Let us take it a slightly different way. Look around you, please, and tell me what you see.”
Quick, feeling the incentive slipping away, thought desperately, shading his eyes and looking around. “I see the ice, the ice hills, the sea, the sky, the sun . . .”
“Quite right, Simon. There is nothing else to see. But it is understanding what you see that counts. When you look around, you must not see sea, ice, hills, sky and sun, but enemies bent entirely upon your destruction.”
“Oh. For Heaven’s sake!”
“No, Simon . . . Although the sea is seven feet beneath our feet on average, we are in fact only inches above sea level; and the water is our enemy. This current is cold. It is several degrees below freezing because it is salt. If you have a weak heart the simple shock of falling in means instant death. If you are fit and well, you might last for a couple of minutes.”
Kate moved a little closer to her father.
“The sky. The sky is either clear or cloudy. If it is clear, it drives the temperature down; if cloudy, it heralds a storm. The sun. The sun will send you blind if you are not very careful. And the ice. The ice once again is an enemy; perhaps our greatest enemy, because it masquerades as a friend. I have said that it is about seven feet thick. This is the average thickness of a pack. It varies. In many places, on the hills for instance, it is very much thicker; here it may be thinner: it may be only a crust over a hole reaching seven hundred feet down to the bottom of the ocean. You will not be able to tell the difference until it is far too late. It feels as firm as a mountain-side, as safe as the sidewalk; but it is not. When you walk you must never trust it to support you, for as sure as you do so, it will let you down, and you will fall through, drown and die. Remember this: no matter what happens, no matter how good things seem to be, even if there is the promise of imminent rescue, you must think of it as yet another trick of the pack to try and fool you into dropping your guard. Whatever the pack does to us, it is part of its plan for our destruction.”
He looked around them. “Now you think I have gone too far. You begin to doubt me. Well; it may sound paranoid, but that is how you must think, or you will surely die.”
The Eskimo turned and walked away from the quiet group, following his friend down the massive tongue of the floe. He soon caught up with Ross, and they walked on in silence for a while. A gentle wind whipped flags and streamers of ice crystals off the top of the reassuring wall of the ice hills to shower like tiny diamonds all over them. The floe widened here, and the sea was almost a hundred yards away on their left on the far side of a slightly undulating plain.
“What did they say?” asked Ross after a while.
“They said nothing. They are frightened and confused, Colin; you must give them time.”
“I’m not giving them anything! They’re no responsibility of mine.”
“Colin . . .”
“No, Job. In Antarctica I allowed myself to be swayed by a man whose judgment I didn’t trust, and I’ve been carrying that guilt for five years now. I’m not looking for any more. Eleven people. And Charlie.”
He lapsed into a morose silence, and tugged distractedly at the black kid glove which was all he wore, even now, on his left hand.
Job knew better by now than to interrupt, and after a while Ross shook himself out of it.
“Well, what’s the next step? I vote we just take a tent and move down here.”
“Colin, that is not charitable, wise, or practical. We would only alienate these people; we would be too far away to help them if anything went wrong; we would be so far away the food would be cold when we got it. You know as well as I do that the best chance is if we all stick together.”
“The best chance for them, perhaps; but our best chance is to stay well clear of them until they have all managed to kill each other off, then move in.”
“Colin!”
“It’s true, and you know it! If we join them, we risk our lives automatically, because if they’re not going to take perfectly reasonable advice, then they’re going to start having accidents, and we’re going to have to start getting them out of whatever they fall into.”
“You are right. And can you think of a better reason for going back?”
Then Ross gave a brief bark of laughter. “No, dammit; you’re right; I can’t.” He turned, and started back up the floe. “Come on; let’s go and save them from themselves.”