Thoughts sweep through my mind—whether we might actually see each other, whether Keller does have a future with this program—and a moment later he says, “Look, we’ll figure it out. Let’s talk later, all right?”
I’m not ready to let him go; I want to ask, When? How? But before I can get the words out, the line goes dead. I’m not sure whether we’ve been disconnected or Keller has simply hung up.
AS I HEAD toward the dining room to pick up a quick bite before our scheduled landing, I’m still arguing with Keller in my head, changing words and sentences, hoping for a different outcome. Our voices rising. The line going silent.
Then I stop—the voices are real, and they’re apparently coming from a couple just inside one of the hatches to the outer decks. I don’t want to listen, but I can’t pass without interrupting, so I wait, hoping they’ll move on, or at least reconcile quickly.
After a moment, I recognize the voices—Kate and Richard Archer.
“If you don’t want to do the landing, why on earth did we come down here?” she’s saying. “Why come all this way if you don’t even care?”
“For you,” he says. “You wanted this trip.”
“I wanted something for us. To get reacquainted, Richard. Not just to be on a boat with a hundred other people. To go for a walk, to see the penguins, to see their chicks, to—I don’t know, share a moment together.”
“Do you remember how we met?” he asks.
“What are you talking about?” She sounds exasperated. “Of course I do.”
“That day in the café, when your computer crashed. You had a memory leak.”
“Richard, can we talk about this later?”
“Let me finish,” he says, his voice louder.
“Okay, okay.” She speaks in a whisper, as if she might be able to quiet him by example.
“The software was eating up your laptop’s memory,” he continues. “That’s why it crashed. It was an easy fix, but you didn’t know that. I wanted you to think I was a hero.”
“What are you saying? You don’t think I value you enough?”
“No, I’m saying that this trip, this sudden obsession with the penguins and the melting ice, it’s like a memory leak,” he says. “It’s consuming your mind, our plans—”
“Richard—”
“To retire early. To start a family.”
“No,” she says. “You wanted to retire, not me. And you’ve earned it. About the baby—I never said never. I just wanted to talk about it some more, that’s all.”
There’s a pause, and then Richard says, “I thought we’d already made the decision.”
“We aren’t like your computers, Richard. Our life is not a software program. We’re allowed to change our minds, to change our plans.”
“Except that you’re the only one changing,” he says. “I’ve held up my end of the bargain. What about you?”
“What about me? You’re bargaining with yourself, Richard. You’ve left me completely out of it. And that’s not my fault.”
He doesn’t answer, and I hear the slamming of the hatch, which means that at least one of them has gone out to the deck. I wait a little longer, until I’m certain they both must be gone, and then I continue on to the dining room. Breakfast is in full swing, but I don’t see either one of them.
LANDINGS ARE METICULOUSLY organized in order to -appear efficient and seamless. Glenn and Captain Wylander find a spot to anchor, a place to land the Zodiacs. Glenn gives us a timetable, since he has to coordinate everything with the galley as well; due to the ever-changing weather, the chance to go ashore takes precedence over scheduled mealtimes. A few naturalists set off to scout trails for hiking, to make sure there are no leopard seals napping nearby. We find the best place to bring passengers ashore—preferably a shallow beach where we can haul the Zodiacs as close to dry land as possible.
The passengers, meanwhile, line up in the B Deck passageway leading to the mudroom, where they’ll sterilize their boots and move magnetic tags with their names and cabin numbers from an ON SHIP to an OFF SHIP position. It’s low tech, unlike the Australis-style ships that have electronic swipe cards for everything, but it helps us make sure every passenger who leaves the ship eventually gets back on.