Slater’s jaw dropped, her hands trembled, as Aston approached, a nervous smile painting his face.
“Hi, Jo.”
3
Aston sat in his cabin on the ice-breaker feeling sorry for himself. His jaw still ached from where Slater had punched him. She had a hell of a straight right. When he had first emerged from the bathroom back at Cape Town she’d stared at him for a good ten seconds in utter disbelief, then turned and strode from the room. But she didn’t make it more than a yard past the door before she came hurtling back in and surprised him with a sock to the jaw that sent him reeling backward, seeing stars. As his head slowly cleared she had yelled at him, red-faced, something his ringing ears missed, then she stopped and stared again. As he hauled himself groggily to his feet, she said, “You let me think you were dead!” And the genuine hurt in her eyes had undone him.
He couldn’t blame her for her fury. He deserved every last atom of it. He had needed to hide, needed to avoid Chang, and get his life together again. He honestly believed she would be safer without him, but he knew, deep in his heart he knew, that he could have trusted Jo Slater. That he should have trusted her. She was honorable. She wouldn’t have sold him out. And he owed her better than this.
But at the time, head ringing from her blow, the rest of the team standing around agape, he had only said, “I’m so sorry. I know we need to talk about this, but please don’t walk away from this job. I know how much it means to you. To your career. If you can’t handle me being here, then I’ll walk away.”
Sol had tried to intervene and they had both turned on him, told him to shut up. Aston had warned Sol days ago that there would be fireworks. As soon as he had learned that Jo Slater was coming in, he had told Sol it was a bad idea to have him, Aston, along. In truth, he’d nearly backed out right then. But the knowledge she was coming had unlocked something inside him, releasing a torrent of guilt. He had to face her. It was time to come clean. Perhaps they could repair something of their friendship. If not, at least they knew they could work well together, if she could get past or ignore this betrayal. It was a lot to ask. Back there, in the meeting room, Slater had turned on her heel and stalked out. Aston told Sol to go after her and he had made himself scarce. Sol had convinced her to come back, reconvened the meeting, and collected Aston from the deck, where he sat in the sunshine rubbing his jaw.
Sitting on his bunk now, Aston sighed. What an idiot he had been. There was so much broken between them that he needed to repair, but she wouldn’t let him. Back there in the cabin in Cape Town he had seen something harden in her eyes, some shutter of defiance and self-preservation.
Back at the table, she had turned to Sol and said, “So, what’s this job?”
Sol smiled. “Each of you needs to sign your NDAs here, then we go to Alpha Base on Antarctica. You get the full story there.”
And that’s where Aston and Slater had come briefly together, both protesting stridently that being transported to the literal end of the Earth before knowing the job trapped them into doing it.
“You have a choice,” Sol had said. “Sign now, come along, and learn what there is to know. If you really want nothing to do with it, the ship will take you back again. But I’m sure you’ll want to be involved.” Then his face had hardened slightly and he’d added, “Besides, what choice do either of you really have? Your careers, your lives, pretty much depend on this expedition and what it can help you rebuild.”
Sol’s friendly veneer showed a crack then and Aston saw a hint of malice behind it. He had been affronted by the assessment, but also infuriated at its accuracy. Slater seemed to share his outrage. They looked at each other, him hopeful, her scowling, then both shrugged.
“Fine,” Slater said. “Give me the forms.”
She signed, had her cameraman and sound assistant sign theirs, then all three had left, Slater demanding to know where their cabins were. For more than a week, the time that it took to reach Antarctica, Slater had managed to prove that a ship could be a wasteland if you wanted to avoid someone. She had taken her meals in her cabin, insisted her crew do the same, and had avoided Aston at every turn. If she saw him coming, she simply turned and went the other way. If he managed to get close enough to talk to her, to apologize, to beg her to have a conversation with him, she blanked him, icy, and left.
She had every right to her anger, and he had no right to force her to talk with him. He supposed she’d have no choice but to interact with him eventually. Or he would get back aboard the ice-breaker and insist they return him to Cape Town. He’d leave her to have the job, the money, the career she deserved. It was the least he could do, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Sol’s voice over the PA interrupted his reverie, informing them that they were approaching landfall and Alpha Base. Whatever else, Aston was getting to see Antarctica. A rare experience. He headed up on deck to watch as the ship approached its destination.
Wrapped in a navy blue, fur — lined parka, Aston breathed deeply of the cold, salty air. The ocean all around them was slate gray under an overcast sky that merged seamlessly in the distance with the coast of Antarctica. As his eyes adjusted to the brightness, powerful despite the clouds, he picked out sharp edges of ice and snow, dark rock slicing through it here and there as the land cut into the sea. Then he noticed Slater standing at the rail not ten strides from him, her crew behind. The cameraman was Jeff Gray, Aston had learned, and the sound assistant was named Marla Ward. He got a lump in his throat, remembering Dave and Carly, counterparts to these two who had both died, horribly, at Lake Kaarme. What fate might await these unsuspecting folks? Then again, surely they had seen Slater’s Lake Kaarme documentary. Did they consider the whole thing a clever hoax too? Were they along for the money, assuming anything exciting would be added in post-production, which was the prevailing theory on the Kaarme film? He realized they had been filming a sequence, capturing Jo Slater, intrepid reporter, arriving at the Antarctic continent. Slater waved a cut and they hung up their gear. Slater glanced over and saw Aston watching and her jaw hardened.
“Jo, please,” he called over, not moving to get any nearer. “Can we talk?”
“What about?” she snapped. “The way you let me think you were dead? The way I tried to convince the world my film wasn’t a hoax without any backup from others who were there, because they’d all died? The way my career fell apart while you could have been there to help me? The way I grieved for you, you asshole!”
Aston swallowed, licked his lips, searching for anything to say. At least she was finally talking to him. “I’m sorry,” he managed, and it sounded weaker than saying nothing at all.
Slater turned and strode away around the deck, putting the bulk of the bridge tower between them. He wanted to follow, to try to smooth things over, but she was right. He was an asshole. What a total mess.
Jeff Gray approached him, smiling crookedly. The man had a way of being annoying, just by existing. The cameraman took a huge bite from a sandwich he had fished from his pocket and talked around the bulge of food in his cheek. “She’ll calm down. Give her time.”
Aston tried to ignore the enthusiastic mastication. “I don’t know. She’s got every right to be angry with me.”
Gray shrugged. “She loses her temper with me all the time, but she always comes around.”
“You worked with her for long?”
“A few months. I had my own production company but we… had a run of bad luck. The company was highly successful, just not profitable.”
Aston frowned. “How is that possible?”