Out of the Ice Read online

  ‘Dinner’s at eight,’ said Travis as he presented me with my electronic babies and a printout of the access code. ‘See you there.’ He grinned, shutting the door with a loud click.

  I plugged my phone into the docking station on the desk in the corner and put on Beethoven’s piano sonatas. The soft tones of Moonlight lilted out, which fitted the mood perfectly. I was starting to feel at home. I fluffed the pillows, lay back on the bed, nestled the computer on my lap and looked up the esteemed Professor Harold Connaught. He was attached to a new, regional university in the Midlands in England. That was my first surprise. I’d assumed he’d be from Oxford or Cambridge. Reading further, I saw that he had indeed been at Cambridge, and also for a short time at Harvard. Why then, and how, had he ended up in the university equivalent of a desert? And yet, to head Alliance Station was a prestigious job. He was a puzzle. After I’d read everything I could on him, I punched in History of Alliance Station. Nothing came up. It took many tries tapping in every conceivable way of asking the question before I found what I wanted. Finally I saw, buried deep in British Antarctic Survey documents, that the base had been opened in 1975 – two years after the Fredelighavn whaling station had become an Exclusion Zone. There were no photos, but in any case it had been completely rebuilt since then into this modern masterpiece, which could be no more than a few years old. Intriguingly, whatever buildings had originally been here had been demolished and taken away. When? The pristine quality of Alliance was so unusual.

  I kept looking for more details but couldn’t find anything, so I moved on to Norwegian sites to try to find information about the history of Fredelighavn. The first hour was fruitless and left me with throbbing temples. I turned off Beethoven, frustrated. It was growing cold in the room, so I found the heating control unit, fired it up, and then went back to my search, feeling cosy and a little bit sleepy.

  My eyes were drooping and my back hurting from not sitting properly at a desk when I came across something useful. The English translation was a bit strange, but through the wonky grammar I could ascertain that by the turn of the twentieth century, when the Northern Hemisphere whales had been hunted almost to extinction, the whalers turned to the Southern Ocean for its plentiful bounty. In 1908, a Danish geologist in a voyage under Norwegian Captain Hans Jensen surveyed South Safety Island, and the calm waters in an eastern bay did not go unnoticed; he called the bay Fredelighavn – Peaceful Harbour – and viewed the remains of sealers’ huts, scattered along the beach, as a positive sign. In the same year, the British claimed South Safety Island as British territory.

  In 1909, Captain Jensen returned with thirty men and started to build the Fredelighavn Whaling Station, set just back from the beach. Jensen applied to become a British citizen in 1911, the same year the British renamed the bay Placid Bay in a show of empire, but the whaling station retained its name of Fredelighavn due to the British having given the Norwegian financiers a fifty-year lease to run it.

  Fredelighavn was accessible by boat from November until March, after which the sea ice came in and closed it until the following November – then the sea ice melted again and granted passage. The surrounding ocean was full of whales and the station thrived, killing more than a thousand whales each season.

  I had to stop reading and take a walk around the room, looking out at the ice-mountains to try to calm down. I remembered Lev as he swam past, the attention he paid not to collide with me – he cared. And his singing, his guttural notes swirling through me. Whales’ communication skills are more efficient than ours. They are intelligent, evolved mammals, who would have cried as they were slaughtered, like children. They would have known what was happening as they were tortured and killed, and their songs silenced. I needed alcohol. There was nothing.

  I checked the time – still an hour before dinner. I forced myself to read on. The article was written with a ghastly excitement. It treated the whole history as a great endeavour carried out under extremely difficult conditions. Fredelighavn was further south than most other whaling stations, and was the most productive.

  Whale oil was initially sought after for candles and lights. The whalers ate the whale meat, rendered the blubber for oil and let the carcasses wash back into the sea, where many skeletons were soon brought back onto the beach by the tide. In later years the whalers extracted oil from the meat and bones, too, and then ground the bones into meal for fertiliser and pet food, wasting nothing. The beautiful creatures – southern right whales (named because their carcasses produced the most oil, making them right), sperm whales and killer whales were hunted ruthlessly, and then in time the largest of the baleen whales – rorquals – blue whales, humpback whales, fin whales, Antarctic minke whales and sei whales were all harpooned from steam-powered catcher boats and hauled to the shore of Alliance Bay.

  Over the first few years at Fredelighavn the settlement sprang up as men came for the summer kill. They built the church with pride and vigour. Every few weeks a boat arrived bringing supplies for the whalers, and shipped the oil away to be sold at high prices around the world.

  In 1915 the demand for whale oil increased as the First World War raged. Captain Jensen left to fight in the trenches, and was replaced by Captain Lars Halvorsen, from Larvik, Norway, who brought three young sons and an unusually pretty wife, Ingerline, who set about making improvements. It was Ingerline who raised the money for the gleaming orb atop the church steeple and, in 1925, organised for a cinema to be built. She encouraged men to bring their families with them each summer. The settlement grew, and Fredelighavn prospered, killing whales in ever-increasing numbers, now more than three thousand each year; whales that came, as they had done for millennia, to breed peacefully in the clear waters. It was nothing short of mass murder.

  I checked my watch again. It was finally time for dinner. But now I wasn’t hungry.

  I took a quick shower, needing to cleanse myself after reading the violent history. No amount of scrubbing could help.

  I rugged up in my best trousers, cream woollen jumper and matching scarf, hauled on a golden-yellow windproof jacket that I hoped set off my dark hair and eyes – I wanted to make a good impression meeting my fellow scientists – and went into the mellow light. The sun wouldn’t set for more than a couple of hours at this time of year, but the long evening twilight was deep, an exquisite shade of blue. My boots crunched on the clean ice as I tried to get the images of the bloodied whales out of my head.

  • • •

  The mess hall was another work of art, with its huge picture windows on all sides revealing the mountains and the glowing steel buildings of the base. Down lights cast soft pools of illumination onto the pale timber floor and leather chairs surrounded cutting-edge glass tables, around which sat about fifty men. It was much busier than I had expected. The room was buzzing but the sound ebbed for a moment as I walked in and people glanced my way. Then the noise quickly picked up again as the men resumed their conversations. I tried to establish the scientists from the tradespeople. Usually it was easy to tell but here they all looked similar, and everyone was well groomed. There was no long hair and sloppy clothes like I was used to, and I was relieved that I’d dressed for dinner. Professor Connaught seemed to have set the style and standard, although thankfully no one else was wearing a bow tie. I looked around for Rutger Koch and was disappointed when I couldn’t see him.

  Connaught sat at the far end of the room, close to the bar, with two men in their fifties, no doubt scientists. At a table near him was a group of men in their mid-forties. I picked them for scientists too.

  ‘Here you are.’ Travis, looking decidedly attractive in a blue shirt and blue jumper that matched his eyes, took me by the elbow and steered me over to sit with his friends, none who seemed older than twenty-five. So, I was to be at the children’s table; had Connaught arranged it? As I sat down Connaught glanced up. When I took a proper look his way he turned to have a deep discussion with his neighbour.

  Before I could ponder the man’s
petty unfriendliness, Travis launched into introductions. The youngsters momentarily stopped eating their chunks of gravy-dipped bread, having already finished most of their meal.

  ‘This is Jack Dixon and Simon Huxtable.’ They shook my hand with sweaty palms – Jack was short and chubby, with a mop of curly dark hair, brown eyes and a large nose. He wore a T-shirt with a moose on the front, which bore a strange resemblance to him. ‘Jack’s an electrical engineer like me,’ said Travis. ‘And because we’re short-staffed, we both work on the Häggies too.’ Travis stopped and looked at Jack with mock intensity. ‘But we never call you Jack, do we?’

  Jack made shy eye contact with me. ‘You can call me Moose, I guess,’ he said in a quiet American accent, blushing. Travis slapped him on the back approvingly.

  Simon Huxtable was tall with neat, short-cropped black hair. Well-toned muscles bulged beneath a white shirt that was carefully rolled at the sleeves.

  ‘Simon’s our chief pilot,’ continued Travis happily. ‘He’s who you need if there’s a sudden whiteout. He’ll bring the bird in every time. Flies with Stan over there, his co-pilot.’ Stan gave a broad, toothy grin and a little wave from a nearby table.

  ‘If I need to fly I’ll certainly have you, then,’ I said to Simon and he smiled warmly.

  ‘We have four pilots. But Reg over there,’ Travis pointed to a man in his late fifties with greying hair, a neat beard and a bulbous nose a strange blue-red in colour. ‘We wouldn’t fly with him.’ They all grinned.

  ‘I wouldn’t either,’ I said for solidarity, and Travis reached down and squeezed my thigh. I needed to talk through the little-brother rules with him sometime.

  ‘Vino?’ Travis poured a large glass of white wine. ‘Hope you don’t want red? We’re out of it.’

  ‘Too many theme nights,’ said Simon in a polished Australian accent, laughing.

  ‘White’s perfect. Has Professor Koch arrived yet?’ I asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Travis. I sipped the wine, which was rough to the point of undrinkable. ‘So what do they research down here?’ I said.

  Travis answered casually. ‘A few clinical experiments. High tech.’

  ‘What in?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not my area.’

  I nodded, trying to think of a way to join another table to learn more about the local research. Across the room was a group of men in their mid-to-late thirties. I stood. ‘Better get some food before it’s all gone.’

  ‘We’ll keep your spot warm,’ called Travis as I walked over to the servery, where a very large and unfriendly-looking cook was dispensing a choice of two meaty roast dinners with frozen vegetables that had been boiled limp. I chose the beef awash in gravy and headed for my chosen table. The men looked up in alarm. They were dressed like triplets in dark blue polo-neck jumpers and matching trousers. They were thin, tall and clearly worked out in the gym. Up close, their clean-shaven skin was pale.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ I said, sitting down without an invitation. Their conversation stopped abruptly. ‘Laura Alvarado,’ I said, offering my hand.

  Each shook my hand tentatively. Adam and Matthew were English, and Bruce was Australian. I waited for their surnames but none were given.

  ‘Scientists down for the summer like me?’ I took a stab.

  ‘Yep,’ said Bruce.

  ‘Where are you from?’ I asked brightly. Their eyes were shifting to each other, clearly annoyed at the interruption.

  ‘Sydney,’ said Bruce.

  ‘Sydney Uni?’

  Bruce grunted assent. I weighed up whether to ask him if he knew my father but, as it turned out, he didn’t want any conversation at all.

  ‘Sorry, Laura,’ he said politely. ‘We were just discussing something we need to sort out by tonight. Would you mind?’

  The others looked at me impassively, and I could feel Connaught’s eyes upon me. I stood, dinner in hand. ‘No problem.’ I nodded goodbye, trying to keep my chin up as I walked across and sat down beside Connaught, who nearly choked.

  ‘Good set-up you’ve got here,’ I said, turning to his dinner partners. ‘Laura Alvarado. Down here for the summer.’ These at least had the decency to pretend to be interested. After my previous humiliation I was grateful, and I was determined to seem confident and undeterred, despite feeling the opposite.

  The men introduced themselves, again by their first names only – Jacob and Ewan. Neither shook my hand.

  ‘Anyone know the weather forecast?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s meant to be fine,’ said Jacob politely.

  ‘Excellent.’ I turned to Connaught. ‘I was hoping to organise transport to Placid Bay.’

  Jacob and Ewan sat forward attentively. ‘That’s where I’ll be doing my EIA,’ I said to them.

  ‘Why?’ asked Jacob.

  I shrugged. ‘It’s just a preliminary report.’

  ‘What’s being planned?’ Ewan looked at me curiously.

  ‘Nothing yet.’

  ‘She won’t tell us anything, and we won’t tell her anything,’ said Connaught, yawning. ‘But unfortunately, Laura, your fellow team member Professor Koch has a problem with his gallbladder. They had to turn his plane back to Argentina. He’ll be operated on tonight in Ushuaia. He assured me he’ll be here as soon as he can.’

  ‘The poor thing,’ I said, taken aback. ‘What are Ushuaia’s hospitals like?’

  Connaught stared at me. ‘As if I’d know that.’

  Ewan and Jacob smothered laughs.

  ‘You may still go to Fredelighavn,’ continued Connaught. ‘But as it’s an Exclusion Zone, I’m not able to send anyone in with you. It’s beyond my station to approve that. Speak to Travis – he’ll organise a Hägglunds.’ Connaught stood abruptly. ‘Goodnight all.’ He sauntered off.

  ‘That’s us too,’ said Jacob, rising with Ewan, who tipped his head in a mute farewell. I tried to become invisible as I was left to eat my dinner alone. When I glanced across to Travis’s table, Travis had left. I chewed on the tough beef and focused on the news about Rutger. Could I ask Georgia if I could go back until he arrived? I poured a large glass of white wine from the bottle that had been abandoned by my ex-tablemates. It was top quality. I downed it quickly and refilled my glass. Drinking copious amounts of alcohol in the Antarctic was a tradition, and one that I’d grown to enjoy.

  By the time I’d finished, the room had emptied and I was feeling stronger. It was like the first day in any new job: things always seemed foreign. There was a saying that went around among expeditioners: people who fell off the earth because they couldn’t fit in ended up together at the bottom of the world. We were probably all lovable misfits in one way or another. There was no normal in Antarctica. Although I knew that what I’d witnessed tonight had been genuinely nasty: the scientists were freezing me out. I certainly wouldn’t be putting in a good word for any of them back home. But I couldn’t say much at all because I didn’t know their surnames. And that meant I couldn’t look up their backgrounds either, which I was sure was intentional. It made me all the more curious to find out what it was they were researching in the main building.

  • • •

  Back in my room I Skyped Georgia, who, unlike anyone else I knew, looked great on screen and managed to talk directly to the camera, creating an intimacy like she was there with you. She’d already heard the news and came straight to the point.

  ‘The problem is it’s a big task, and there’s no room for movement. The clock’s ticking. I’ll see who I can authorise to get down there with you until Professor Koch arrives. Don’t worry, I’ve got your back,’ she said.

  The cop bible. They looked out for each other above all else. I blocked out thoughts of David White as quickly as they rose, and thanked her.

  ‘Koch is evidently very fit, and it’s keyhole surgery,’ she said, ‘so they’re not expecting this to take long. But I’d like you to start straightaway. Go to Fredelighavn tomorrow, if that’s okay?’

  Scientists are used to teams. We w
ould never usually go out into the field alone. I wished I could argue the point; say that we could catch up if we only missed a week or so.

  ‘Okay,’ I said instead.

  ‘I’ll send you the engineers’ report on the buildings. They were given a clean bill of health for safety last summer: they’re unusually well preserved. But with the winter storms things could have changed, so take care. You know what you’re doing. And Laura – it’s an honour Australia’s been chosen, and you in particular. It’s the right thing to do to go down.’

  I wished I felt the same. I spent the next few hours reading the report on Fredelighavn’s structures, which did seem extraordinarily intact. The report was very dry in its details and annoyingly did not include photographs. My stomach dipped. If the weather held, I would be seeing it for myself in the morning.

  4

  The air was still and freezing, the light a piercing blue as I crunched along the ice not knowing exactly where I was going. No one had bothered to tell me where I’d find Travis, and I hadn’t seen him at breakfast, where I’d sat alone. My head was pounding – my body still adjusting from the days of no sunlight in winter to now having constant sunlight with only a couple of hours of night, and even that wasn’t black night. I’d slept badly. And I wished Rutger Koch was here.

  There was no activity in the streets. No quad bikes roaring towards and away from the buildings, people returning, people going out, like my own base.

  I tried to take in everything about the main building as I passed: it was comparatively large, and the centre that dropped underground was sheeted with thick steel. It looked like a giant insect giving birth.