For the old-timers the very idea that fresh fruit and meat could be almost (not quite) year-round was astonishing, and it caused quite a bit of grumbling about how easy things had gotten.
It was nearing summer in Antarctica, and there in McMurdo Sound the thermometer showed a pleasant twenty-nine degrees Fahrenheit. The wind was a noticeable but manageable eighteen knots. The sun was shining. This time of year it shone pretty nearly all day. All in all about as pleasant as you could ask for at McMurdo.
The Jade Monkey floated over the water and up onto gravel, its big black rubber skirts all puffed out and vibrating like a trumpet player’s cheeks. Suarez powered down, and the vehicle came to rest with a disgruntled wheeze of engines and a long, slow fart as the air cushion bled out.
Imelda Suarez was twenty-eight years old, five feet seven inches tall, dark-skinned, weather-beaten but pretty in the right light. She had worked for Cathexis Inc., owner of the Celadon and her two LCACs, for three years, two as skipper of the Jade Monkey.
It was grueling, brutal, often boring, but occasionally terrifying work. Suarez had never lost a cargo, she had never lost a crewman, and she had kept that spotless record by never underestimating the A-factor. The Antarctic factor. The capacity of the most alien of all continents to complicate or obliterate the schemes of Homo sapiens.
Antarctica was always out to kill you.
But the advent of the Cathexis era had changed life on the ice. In the old days the bases that dotted the rim of the continent had been cut off for as much as ten months out of the year. Aircraft get a bit unsafe in high crosswinds. LCACs do, too, but these specially modified versions could make a forty-mile run from the Celadon in all but the worst conditions—and in emergencies, even then.
All of which was extremely useful, because McMurdo Base—MacTown, as it was known—was growing more rapidly than just about any place on Earth. There was oil under the ice and offshore. With the Middle East in turmoil even the greens admitted that oil exploration on the ice was a better option than fighting wars to maintain supplies from volatile countries.
MacTown, which had once been full of nothing but scientists, academics, and support staff—generally from cold lands like Alaska and Montana and Maine—was now home to a whole lot of people from Texas and Louisiana. The same evolution was occurring at British, Russian, Aussie, Kiwi, Chinese, Japanese, Chilean, and Argentinean bases. The effort to locate oil and develop the technology to survive the harsh environment was big, well financed, and in a hurry. And they could afford oranges that cost fifteen bucks apiece to bring in from Wellington or Tierra del Fuego.
Suarez stepped out of her cockpit, nodded at her chief who was in charge of matters from this point, stretched up onto her toes, hefted a rather heavy shoulder bag, and headed up the long gravel slope into MacTown. Solid ground, ground that was not bucking and vibrating like the deck of the Jade Monkey, felt oddly uneven and unsteady. She headed toward the new admin building where Cathexis Inc. had a small wing of cubicles—nothing but a bunk and an electrical outlet, really. This was her third trip of the day, and Suarez was required by company policy to grab a minimum six hours of sleep. LCACs did not want to be steered by sleepy pilots. LCACs steered by sleepy pilots had a tendency to flip over.
She was intercepted on her way up the road by a tall, not-bad-looking man with a full beard, sunglasses, and a big grin. Jim Tanner was Lockheed security. Lockheed ran McMurdo. But it was well known that Tanner was former Naval Intelligence. And it was widely assumed that he was the U.S. government’s eyes and ears on the base. Or at least, one set of eyes and ears.
“Well, hello there, Suarez. Whatcha got in the bag?”
“What, this bag?” Suarez asked innocently.
“Wouldn’t be contraband booze, would it?”
Suarez stopped, unzipped the bag, and pulled out a bottle of scotch. “Huh,” she said. “I wonder how this got in there? And look, it has a twin. You here to help me destroy the evidence, Jim?”
Alcohol was sold at McMurdo, but it was also rationed. Nobody begrudged you a drink, but there were supposed to be limits.
“I would like nothing better.” Tanner took one of the bottles, held it up to read the label. “Ah, the Macallan Sixteen. You’ve grown and matured, Suarez. You have grown and matured.”
“If you’re nice to me and let me get to sleep eventually, I’ll share.”
Tanner handed her back the bottle, grinned, looked away a bit sheepishly, and said, “Sadly, I am here in an official capacity.”
Suarez’s eyes narrowed. “Your official official capacity? Or your unofficial official capacity?”
His smile thinned out. “This will be a conversation that involves your signing a legal document promising not to disclose the nature of the conversation. The document in question is not a company document. It’s a company document.”
The company was Lockheed. The company was the CIA.
“What the hell did I just step in?” Suarez demanded, no longer in a joking mood.
Tanner’s office was tiny—space was always at a premium in a place where Home Depot was ten thousand miles away. It was overheated, so neat that no piece of paper could be found, and seemed to have been furnished entirely with the kind of office furniture that a self-respecting Goodwill store would reject.
The document he had for her was on an iPad. If it had been printed out it would have taken up four pages. Pages full of threats and requirements and official language. The long and short of it was that if she spoke of this meeting to anyone not properly cleared for top secret or better, she would go to jail.