Dinah wasn’t sure how she felt about Ivy looking to her doomed family as a source of casual amusement, but as they were only some 433 days away from the end of the world, she didn’t really think there was much point in getting shirty about it.
The situation did breed a kind of coarseness toward those stuck on the ground. It was humanly impossible to extend to seven billion people the full sympathy that each of them deserved. Dinah had begun to hear instances of dark humor over the radio, and had noticed herself being at least a little bit amused by it.
Nor was that dark humor restricted to Arkers, as Dinah’s family demonstrated. They were intelligent people—you had to be, to do what they did—but they went in for a certain brand of mining-camp humor, heavy on the practical jokes and novelty items that you’d never see in a boardroom or a faculty lounge. And once they’d latched on to something that they thought was funny, they’d never let go of it. A half-serious Morse code message about planting a flat of potatoes, transmitted by Rufus shortly after the Crater Lake announcement, had sprouted into a whole subgenre of running jokes about the preparations that the MacQuarie clan was making for the Hard Rain. In her occasional care packages from the ground, Dinah was now accustomed to finding fingerling potatoes, still with real dirt on them, or plastic parts for Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead toys. She even had a rusty old Idaho license plate duct-taped to the wall of her shop now, emblazoned with the slogan FAMOUS POTATOES, courtesy of Rufus, who’d gotten it from a mining industry pal in that state’s silver-rich panhandle.
“Is that a no?” Ivy asked.
“Oh, I have potato shit all over the place now,” Dinah said. “I’m just no longer sure that they’re joking.”
“What do you mean?”
“At first I thought it was their way of saying, ‘We know we are screwed, no point in being babies about it, let’s laugh it up until the end.’ But now I’m starting to ask myself what it is they’re doing. I mean, they’re up there in the Brooks Range with all of this equipment. They could drive down to Fairbanks any time they feel like it, and from there go anywhere in the world. Check out the pyramids. See the Mona Lisa. Visit old friends and family. Instead they’re up in the most godforsaken place I’ve ever seen, doing what?”
“Prepping?” Ivy said.
“That’s the only thing I can think,” Dinah said. “Prepping for a five-to ten-thousand-year stay.”
“They’re not the only ones,” Ivy said.
It took Dinah a few moments to catch her friend’s meaning. Then it was clear, just from the look on Ivy’s face. “Are you shitting me? Cal?”
Ivy made just a suggestion of a nod with her eyes. “Mixed in with the stuff you’d expect from a fiancé—which is none of your business—he asks me questions about things like the comparative merits of lithium versus sodium hydroxide scrubbers. He requests copies of Luisa’s PDFs about the sociology of persons confined in small places for long periods.”
“He can’t think you’re not going to notice that.”
“Sure. I’m going to read between the lines.”
“What do you suppose he’s thinking?”
“Well,” Ivy said, “he does have sole authority over a huge submarine designed to ride out global thermonuclear warfare. And when the United States ceases to exist, I guess there’ll be no one above him, chain-of-command-wise. What’s a commander to do?”
“But how would it work?”
“I think a lot depends,” Ivy said, “on whether the oceans boil dry. If I were him, I’d make for the Marianas Trench and keep my fingers crossed.”
“I would think it would be even harder than staying alive in space.”
Ivy looked at her friend with dry amusement.
“What?!” Dinah said.
“Staying alive in space is going to be a piece of cake, remember?”
“Oh yeah, sorry. I forgot . . .” To put on my makeup. “It would present some fascinating challenges,” she corrected herself, switching to her best NASA PR voice.
“I think it’s like what we are doing,” Ivy said. “You have to break it down into a lot of little things and solve them one at a time, or you get overwhelmed.”
“Is that what we’re doing?”
“Yeah.” Ivy rolled her eyes.
“What’s on your mind? Other than the need for comic relief?”
“You. How you’re doing. Your health,” Ivy said.
“Oh my god, is this an actual meeting? Are we on official business here?”