Surviving Antarctica Read online

“That’s my next point. We select only one person in our crew to be the Voice.”

  “Why?”

  Chad met his gaze. “If we’re caught, that person takes the fall for the whole group. Are you interested?”

  “Me?” Steve looked away. This sounded dangerous. He must not have understood. Chad couldn’t be asking him to be the Voice, could he? Steve was new to the night shift. He had no family. No one to take care of him if he lost his job. He decided to change the subject. “What did you talk to the Alamo survivor about?”

  “We never told him who we were, but we relayed to him where the Mexican line was weak.”

  “So that’s how he cut through. I had wondered. How did you choose the Alamo survivor?”

  “He seemed like the strong, silent type who would be so embarrassed by hearing voices that he would never mention them. Basically we were right.”

  “If the Voice is caught?” Steve answered his own question. “Court TV for sure.”

  “Or worse,” Chad said.

  Steve shuddered. What could be worse than Court TV? Court TV was the highest-rated show after Historical Survivor. After a quick trial, the punishment phase was carried out on television. Viewers voted. Common punishments were near drownings, beatings, occasionally even crucifixions. When critics objected to the inhumanity of the punishment, they were reminded that criminals were all terrorists, and as such had no rights. No one in America wanted to be a defendant on Court TV.

  “Did you understand my question?” Chad said.

  “Not really,” Steve replied. His voice trembled.

  “I asked you to be the Voice.”

  “But that sounds dangerous,” Steve protested.

  “You just need to be careful. I was the Voice for Alamo Historical Survivor,” Chad said proudly. He looked Steve in the eye. “Jacob pointed out that you seem attached to these kids. When bad things happen to the contestants, sometimes it’s easier on the Voice. He feels like he’s doing what he can to help. If you want, you could have this series.”

  Steve was silent. He had stared at the screen so long that the waves were starting to make him feel seasick, but he didn’t look away.

  Chad looked at his watch. “Well, you don’t have to decide tonight.”

  Steve felt relieved. The topic made him uncomfortable. He wanted to help these kids, but not enough to risk his own future.

  “Go ahead and cut Andrew from the footage. The Secretary won’t be interested in twenty minutes of a kid standing at the rail.”

  Steve’s fingers started flying over the computer keys, but his thoughts were stuck on their strange conversation.

  “Andrew, you don’t even have a coat on.” Grace walked up to him.

  Grace had on a parka and matching hat. Her face shone with good health, and when she smiled at Andrew, her dark eyes sparkled. Yet from the way she held herself, Steve could tell she didn’t know that she was pretty.

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  “No.”

  “It’s freezing out here.” Grace shivered. Steve looked at Grace’s screen and saw Andrew hatless, coatless, leaning against the rail, his face to the wind.

  “Is something wrong?”

  Andrew shook his head.

  “Why don’t you go to bed?”

  “I will,” Andrew said.

  Grace turned to go below, but Andrew lingered on deck for a moment. The spray from a wave splashed his face, and he didn’t bother to dry it.

  “Time to view today’s episode,” Chad said. He turned to rouse the crew in the basement.

  Before Chad had a chance to order Steve to the screening room, Steve spoke up. “May I stay and watch the cameras until the kids go to bed?” he asked hopefully.

  “No, you stayed last night. I’ll stay tonight,” Chad said.

  Disappointed, Steve turned away from the screens.

  “Let’s go!” Chad called down to the basement.

  The rest of the crew began clambering up the stairs.

  Steve followed Jacob, John Matthews, Raymond Chiles, and the others down the dark hallway to the screening room. When he entered, the Secretary had already appeared on the screen. She began every episode by putting her hand on a tall stack of Bibles.

  “We abide by the rules in this program,” she said. “There is no outside intervention. You will see real people here make decisions that will cause them to live or die. Lean back in your armchairs and enjoy yourselves. You are watching the best programming in the world.”

  Steve settled in to watch the kids’ third day on the ship.

  “Hello,” someone said to him.

  When Steve turned to see who had spoken, he saw Jacob. Oddly enough, the cleaning woman, Pearl, was sitting next to him. Her eyes drooped as if she were half asleep. Steve realized that he had never seen her before without a broom.

  “Did Chad offer you the Voice?” Jacob said.

  “Yeah,” Steve said. “He talked to me about it.”

  “I intervened seven times in the Egyptian series.”

  Steve needed to ask the question that had been gnawing at him. “Do you think that you made a difference?”

  “I saved a woman’s life. No question about that. Just to have someone who cares, even a Voice, means so much to the contestants.”

  “I can understand that,” Steve said. On many lonely occasions in his shack, he would have loved to have had a Voice to talk to.

  “Of course, Pearl started it all,” Jacob added.

  Steve stared at the old woman. A bubble of spit rested on her lip. It was hard to imagine her doing anything but sweeping and sitting. Jacob must have guessed Steve’s disbelief, because he asked, “You haven’t heard Pearl’s story?”

  Steve shook his head.

  “She was a camerawoman on one of the early Historical Survivor shows, the one about World War I. She was filming a battle and didn’t notice a soldier crawling toward her. He had been badly injured and was dragging one leg. He begged her for water.

  “Pearl stopped filming, bent over, and gave the dying man a sip from her canteen. The problem is a camera picked up her act of kindness, and the Secretary saw it.”

  Steve had heard this story before—everybody at the Department seemed to know it. But no one had told him the camerawoman’s name.

  “Pearl didn’t make it home that night. She got beaten up, then locked up, and they tried to break her spirit by starving her for a while.”

  “How do we know that the Secretary was responsible?”

  “I didn’t work here then, but Chad said that the Secretary bragged that bad things would happen to anyone who intervened.”

  Steve looked over at the old woman.

  “Chad’s taken care of Pearl ever since,” Jacob explained.

  “I see,” Steve said. So that’s what Chad had meant when he’d hinted at a fate worse than Court TV.

  “She’s only twenty-nine.”

  Steve stared at Pearl. Although he didn’t have a view of her face, he noticed for the first time that her skin wasn’t wrinkled. It was just her gray hair and hunched posture that made her seem old. To be a young person living inside an old person’s body must be torture.

  The Secretary was a truly horrible person. Steve looked up at the screen. She was talking again.

  “On board the ship today, we had quite a bit of excitement,” the Secretary was saying. “Billy was bitten by a ferocious dog, but wait and see”—she put her finger to her lips—“I don’t want to give anything else away.”

  In the production room, only fifty feet down the hall, Steve could be watching the kids in real time. He fidgeted in his seat. He was too preoccupied to pay attention to the show.

  Steve closed his eyes. When he really concentrated, he could hear Pearl breathing. Her raspy breaths sounded like her straw broom raking the floor. He didn’t even know these kids. But if Steve got caught helping them, he could turn into an old person, like the woman sitting two seats away from him.

  “Did you see the ratings fo
r this episode?” Jacob asked him.

  Steve looked up and caught the end of a commercial for instant palm trees. “No.”

  “Seventy-eight percent,” Jacob said. “Understand why she likes a little blood?”

  “Yeah,” Steve said.

  “Have you decided?” Jacob’s voice was low.

  “Why me?” Steve whispered. “Why not one of the other guys?”

  Jacob sighed. “It’s hard to keep watching these shows year after year. If you want to know the truth, it’s only you, me, and Chad who still care.”

  “So that’s why the others spend so much time in the basement?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do I need to decide today?”

  “Soon,” Jacob said. “Remember, they’re landing tomorrow.” He turned away.

  Steve closed his eyes again and found Pearl on the screen of his eyelids. He quickly opened them.

  Another Fair Society commercial was playing on the big screen.

  To take his mind off Pearl, Steve watched the dumb commercial. He’d watch anything to try to forget about Pearl.

  14

  FROM WHAT STEVE had seen since he’d arrived at work, day five had been an uneventful blur of activity.

  Grace had finally gotten the dogs attached to the dogsled. But they had moved two steps and the traces had knotted.

  It had taken Andrew only an hour to get all eight snowshoes on the ponies.

  As if he were a pro at arctic travel, Robert had finished stowing the gear in bags.

  Polly had spent the time in her cabin, fitfully reading and staring out her porthole.

  Billy had carefully packed the maps.

  In just an hour or so, the kids would be in bed, and Steve would have to begin editing. Steve dreaded this time of night, when the kids’ day was ending. He liked working with the live footage best, as he felt closer to the kids.

  The kids sat around the mess table, eating a late-night snack of chips and juice.

  “We should be landing tonight,” Robert said. “Anybody have any comments or questions?”

  Nobody said anything.

  “How’s your hand, Billy?” Robert said.

  “It hurts,” Billy lied.

  “The dogs’ food is moldy,” Grace said.

  “We need to shoot the dogs,” Billy said.

  “Please, don’t let’s start that again,” Polly said sharply. “We haven’t even seen the motor sledges.”

  “Maybe we can shoot a seal for the dogs to eat,” Robert said. A friend had told him that there were seals in Antarctica. He hated to admit it to himself, but that was about all he knew about the wildlife there. “Why don’t you brief us on ice and snow?” he asked Billy.

  “Uh,” Billy hesitated, “I’ve never been to Antarctica, so I don’t know about conditions there.”

  Weak answer. Disappointed, Robert looked at Billy. Polly’s eyes were big. She was leaning over the table toward Robert, trying to get his attention. Robert knew that if he asked Polly, she would have lots of information, but he didn’t feel like listening to her.

  “Well, if nobody has any questions, I think we should finish up our jobs,” Robert said quickly. “I want to be ready to unload as soon as we land.”

  Chad and Jacob walked over to Steve and looked at the screen.

  “The kids aren’t in bed yet?” Chad asked.

  “No, they’re finishing up some chores,” Steve explained.

  Chad checked his watch. “Jacob, why don’t you go check that the screening room is ready.”

  “Sure,” Jacob said, and walked out of the production room, leaving Steve and Chad alone.

  “If you want to intervene,” Chad began slowly, “there’s no set formula. You just look for opportunities to help.”

  “So if the kids don’t need help, the Voice stays silent?” Steve asked.

  “That’s right,” Chad said.

  This was good news. It was possible, wasn’t it, that Steve wouldn’t have to make up his mind after all? As if Chad had read his thoughts, he reached underneath Andrew’s screen and pulled out a snaky mike. “The long-range mike is simple to operate.”

  Steve’s fingers were drawn to the shiny metal. He fingered the ON/OFF switch.

  “Let me know when you’re ready,” Chad said.

  Steve pushed the mike back under the screen. “The kids don’t need me yet.”

  “True.” Chad paused. “But at some point, they will need you.”

  Steve couldn’t ignore the certainty in Chad’s voice.

  Polly stared out the porthole at the seagulls flying above the calm dusk sea. She held Scott’s diary, which was open to the last chapter, loosely in her lap. They had crossed the equator three days ago, and according to Billy they were on schedule to arrive in Antarctica sometime tonight.

  The back cover of her book referred to the “fatal” Antarctic expedition of Robert F. Scott. Fatal. Final. Scott and four of his men had reached the Pole over 170 years ago and had never returned.

  Sixteen men had started for the Pole. On Scott’s direction, eleven had turned back. Five men had continued on to march the last 150 miles to the Pole. On the way back, one, the strongest, had fallen into a crevasse and hit his head. He died a few days later. Another, one of the younger men, had gotten frostbite. He had purposely limped out into a blizzard to die. If he hadn’t, he would have slowed the group down and endangered them all.

  That left three: Robert F. Scott, Robert Wilson, and Henry R. “Birdie” Bowers. They were only eleven miles away from a depot of food when a blizzard hit. They set up camp and waited. They had two days’ supply of food and water. Captain Scott started writing good-bye notes. They never once felt sorry for themselves.

  Polly skipped several pages and forced herself to read Scott’s last diary entry, dated March 29,1912:

  We had fuel to make two cups of tea apiece and bare food for two days on the 20th. Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far.

  It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.

  R. Scott.

  Last entry.

  For God’s sake look after our people.

  Polly dropped the book onto her lap. What must it feel like to starve to death in a tiny tent, with a blizzard going on outside? She rubbed her sweatshirt just to prove to herself that she was sitting in a warm cabin on a ship. She was safe, but that didn’t make her feel better.

  She wanted to bring Scott and his men back. If only they could step out of the pages, across time. She would give them a cup of hot tea and share her warm blanket with them. She would ask them questions and seek their help. If they were on this trip with her, she wouldn’t be scared at all.

  But Scott and his men were frozen in their icy graves, and soon she, a fourteen-year-old, would be attempting a march that this smart and committed group of adults had failed to survive.

  Of course, Polly’s group had some advantages, but she guessed that many of the dangers would be the same. As she read the descriptions of the steep crevasses covered by ice and snow that the members of the Scott party plunged into from time to time, she shuddered. The sharp icy waves called sastrugi would certainly slow them down. One or more of the kids was sure to go snow-blind. Then, of course, there was the treacherous weather. Even if Antarctica was twenty degrees or so warmer now than it had been in Scott’s time, blizzards would still blow in without warning and fill the air so completely with snow and ice that a traveler couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.

  She put the book down. She needed some air.

  Grace stood on the deck and watched for signs that they were closer to the continent of her dreams. Billy had told them that they would cross the Antarctic Circle soon. She didn’t need a map to know that they were going farther and farther from people, and fro
m cities with their lights and confusion.

  She had turned her face to the sky when she felt the first snowflake. It was like a cold, wet kiss. She brushed it off with her mittened hand and stuck out her tongue. Snow pattered away on it. She drew her tongue in and swallowed the icy drops. The reservation had suffered floods and droughts from the messy weather that ruled the planet. One year winter had skipped them entirely, while the next year winter was longer and colder than anyone could remember. But the Hopi Indian reservation in Arizona had never gotten snow. Just as her grandfather had promised, the snow on her tongue, the first she had ever tasted, was sweet.

  “Ayayay!” She stamped the boat deck with her feet, and her fingers stroked the air. “Ayayaa!” On the reservation she and her cousins had danced to celebrate the rain, and now she improvised. “Ayayay,” she sang. “Bless us with this force of life; make these beautiful white drops fall faster and faster until I am covered in snow.”

  Polly stepped carefully onto the slippery deck. She watched Grace hop around. Was this some kind of dance? What did those eerie howls mean? What was going on in Grace’s head? “What are you doing?” Polly asked finally.

  Grace looked at the girl. Her trance was broken.

  On the reservation all the Hopi kids made fun of Grace and her cousins except when an outsider came in, maybe the son or daughter of a doctor or a government official who had come to inspect the reservation. Then the Hopis and the Eskimos banded together to stare at the outsiders and make fun of them. The Hopis called these kids “zombies” because with their love of television, computers, and movies, they seemed like the living dead.

  “I’m sorry,” Polly said. “I didn’t mean to bother you. I just came up here to get some air and”—she hesitated—“to escape some ghosts.”

  “Ghosts?” Grace said. They had plenty of ghosts—or spirits, as the Indians called them—on the reservation.

  “When I read a book,” Polly said, “it’s like I’m in a different world. I love the characters, and when something bad happens to them …” Her voice trailed off.

  Grace had never experienced a book that way, but she had lived an imaginary life in the snow and ice, so she understood.