The Winter Over(27)

Cass jumped as someone hammered on the door to her berth. Bang, bang, bang . Biddi’s voice came through, muffled but distinct. “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and . . . you bloody well better let me in, is all.”

Self-consciously, she closed the little, nearly blank diary and shoved it under her pillow, then swung her feet over the side of the bed to answer the door. Had the closet not been in the way, she could’ve reached the knob from the bed.

Biddi was standing in the hall on the other side, wearing an admonishing expression. “What are you doing?”

“I was trying to relax and get some reading done. What are you doing?”

“Bothering you.”

“I can see that,” Cass said.

“Actually, I’ve come to see why you aren’t out on deck to see the plane off.”

“I thought it wasn’t due to leave for a couple of hours yet.”

“It’s not, but that shouldn’t keep you from ogling it from the observation deck with the rest of the winter-overs.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because it’s a singular bloody occurrence, something we won’t get much of in the next few months. The station’s next big news item will be if Dr. Ayres farts in the galley during lunch. We have to enjoy these events when they present themselves. So, put down your bloody book”—she pronounced it booook —“come outside, and celebrate with everyone. You know I won’t take no for an answer.”

Cass made a face. “Biddi, that just isn’t my thing. I don’t go in for big parties or manufactured events—”

“Manufactured?” Biddi snorted. “Our whole fricking existence down here is manufactured, if you hadn’t noticed. We’d all be nothing more than a collection of sorry-looking ice crystals if not for some manufactured events .” Her face softened. “Cass, I’m a wee bit older than you and I’ve got my regrets. One of them is not making the most of every moment. Don’t let even the little things slip by.”

Cass looked at her friend’s face, trying to formulate an argument, some reason to say no. She didn’t need one, of course. She could simply utter the word “no,” shut the door, and forget about the whole thing. The morning with the irksome Senator Sikes and his groupies was already forgotten. She wouldn’t be missing a thing if she stayed in her room.

But Biddi was right. If she was going to reconstruct herself and her life, she needed to populate it with new experiences, not old habits. Ten years from now, if someone asked what she’d been doing when the last plane of the year left the South Pole that one time she’d worked there, her answer couldn’t be, I was in my room writing in my diary . It just couldn’t. Not if she had any hope of forgetting her past and making something of her future.

She sighed, then laughed at the victorious expression on her friend’s face. “Give me a second.”

Cass shut the door on Biddi doing a victory dance, switched out sweatpants for jeans, then grabbed her parka, mittens, and hat. Thirty seconds later, she was in the hall and following Biddi toward the observation deck that overlooked the skiway. A dull hum—no louder than a refrigerator or the buzz of a heat pump—reached her ears as she approached the airlock doors, but as they opened the second set, a colossal roar made it almost impossible to hear, let alone think. Why hadn’t she remembered the sound from her flight to Shackleton a few months before? Too excited to notice, maybe, or unimpressed after the flight from Christchurch—eleven bone-bruising, eardrum-shattering hours in a C-17, a plane so big it could hold the Hercules in its belly. Since then, she realized with surprise, she’d never had or made time to watch another flight.

Squinting against the glare, she looked at the Hercules, parked on the skiway like some temporarily grounded sway-bellied dragon. Its four turboprop engines were idling and ready to go despite the fact that takeoff was an hour or two away—engines were not shut off at the South Pole unless you were done for the day or had an affinity for futility; it could take forever to resuscitate a cold engine. Squatting on the skiway with engines going might blow a swimming pool of wasted fuel out the tail, but everyone involved considered the idling worth it.

After a moment, Cass’s attention slid away from the plane. The skiway was full of people: fuelies checking lines, staffers driving Skandics and snowcats full of gear and supplies out to the plane’s loading platform, a dozen people simply standing around with their hands in their pockets, talking.

Biddi tugged on her arm to get her to join a small knot of winter-over crew standing to one side of the ob deck. Thanks to the noise, conversation was limited to hand signals, so they all stood in a strange gaggle, side by side, but almost entirely unable to communicate. So much for getting out and interacting with friends , Cass thought. But she knew there were other events planned, old Polie traditions to mark the severing of the last thread connecting Shackleton to the outside world. There’d be plenty of time to catch up.

So, she gave herself permission to watch the prep for the last flight, looking on as scores of tiny workers bustled around the Herc like ants crawling over the carcass of a giant beetle. As much as the Antarctic ice and snow would allow, it was a smart, efficient operation, with snowcats and snowmobiles running supplies back and forth to the service arches, downslope, around the corner, and out of sight. She grinned as she saw that even the old LMC 1800, “Little Tug” painted on the side in white, had been pressed into service. With a top speed of eight miles an hour, no one took the little crate on tracks to make time, but it had enough torque to pull the station across the ice if you could find cables strong enough. And, sure enough, daisy-chained behind the Tug were six sleds stacked man-high, chugging along slower than a person could walk . . . but moving nevertheless.