South Pole Station

When she walked into the galley, the ceremonial equinox haircuts were already under way. Four Beakers sat in chairs, Sal among them, while their research techs lopped off their unruly locks with crafting scissors. Cooper grabbed a glass of Pearl’s hot wassail and watched as Alek roughly shoved his hands into Sal’s nest of tangled hair. He pulled on it mercilessly in order to straighten it for an even cut. Once Alek started cutting, Sal stared at the wall unblinkingly as his auburn hair fell to the floor in clumps.

Denise stepped next to Cooper, blowing on her wassail. She was wearing a rhinestone-encrusted headband, magenta lipstick, and a leather mini-skirt. Cooper nodded at her approvingly. “Ceremonies are so important,” Denise said. “They are the social glue that keeps a community intact—especially one under duress.” She gestured toward the crowd of Polies gathered around Bozer’s portrait, which Pearl had hung the day before. “That’s social glue, too.” She looked over at Cooper. “I hope you don’t underestimate how important you’ve become to the group.”

“I’m important?”

Denise nodded. “There are two things you possess which are valuable to this particular group. One, you are a survivor. Two, at times of extreme anxiety, your paintings will remind the people here that they are not just cogs in the machine.”

Cooper gestured toward the portrait of Bozer. “What did he think, by the way? Bozer, when he saw it.”

Denise surprised Cooper by dissolving into giggles. “Oh, he executed the best Goffman-esque display of faux outrage I’d ever witnessed. You should have seen him—he was raging around like King Kong.”

“Oh no,” Cooper said, glancing around.

Denise put her hand on Cooper’s arm. “No, you don’t understand—his response was strictly impression management, basic maintenance of expressive control. He and I came back to the galley late last night, after he was sure everyone else was gone, and he just stood in front of it, staring.”

“How did you know he didn’t hate it?”

“He didn’t put his fist through it.”

A freshly shorn Sal stood up and placed a bowler hat over his head. He did a little dance for Alek as the other winter-overs gathered around him, but Cooper could see it was an effort for him. Denise left to take her seat next to Bozer, so Cooper wandered around the table until she found her place card. Sal sat down beside her and reached across to steal an extra wineglass. He set it next to his and looked at Cooper. “You look pretty tonight,” he said.

Before Cooper could reply, Pearl leaned over her shoulder, bearing wine. “Red or white?” she said.

“Both,” Sal said dully, tapping both of his glasses. “And leave the bottles here.”

From across the table, Doc Carla—dressed in a peasant shift and long feathered earrings—lifted her wineglass to Sal. “Bottoms up to the bottom of the world, Doc,” she said. Next to her, and dressed in a beautiful blue tuxedo, Alek raised a glass of samogon. “To our lady doctor,” he said, “may you heal pain well.” He turned to Cooper. “And to you, artiste, who completed lovely paintings with no penguins.”

As soon as everyone was seated, bishop’s hats unfurled on their laps, Tucker took his place at the front of the galley, flanked by Pearl and Kit. “Working against the political odds, and a dire shortage of freshies due to the current difficulties, tonight’s Equinox Feast is the work of two dedicated Pole civilian contractors who are so famous they need not be named.” The room shook with applause and cheers. “We are here tonight, honoring Pole tradition, to mark the coming equinox, when we probably won’t have the kinds of provisions we have here tonight.”

“Or the fuel,” Floyd grumbled.

“After dinner, we will go outside to move the flag and unveil the new Pole marker. There’s a menu under your plates. All the artwork is courtesy of our fearless artist Fellow Cooper.” The synchronous sound of plates being shifted arose from the table, followed by appreciative murmurs. Cooper watched as Sal looked over the menu card she’d designed—there was a sketch of the South Pole Telescope in the left-hand corner, the skyline of the Dark Sector in the right-hand corner, and an outline of the entire Antarctic continent in the middle. At the bottom were three images of men trekking through a blizzard—Wilson, Cherry, and Birdie. Sal smiled for the first time all night and pulled her in for a long kiss, which was met with applause completely devoid of sarcasm.

“Excuse me.” Cooper looked down the long table and saw the interpretive dancer was on her feet, her Afghan tribal coin belt tinkling. “These momentous circumstances are so personally inspiring, that I’d like to perform a segment of the dance I’ve been working on since I’ve been here, a piece of nonverbal storytelling that encapsulates my experience at South Pole. I call it the ‘Dance of the Anxious Penguin.’” Perhaps it was the wine, or the twinkling blue lights, but Cooper—and, to her surprise, everyone else—could not take her eyes off the interpretive dancer as she spun wordlessly around the room.

Once the performance, and dinner, ended, the Polies swapped their dining clothes for their ECW gear, and gathered around the geographic Pole for the ceremonial moving of the marker. With the sun hanging low in the sky, a pale compass rose, the Polies fell into line and one by one passed the American flag hand to hand from its former position to the new, drifted, but true South Pole. At the end of the human chain, Bozer removed the stake and installed the flag next to Sal’s sheet-draped marker.

The Polies crowded around it, expectant, with cameras raised. Sal and Marcy each took a corner of the sheet and, at the count of three, pulled it off the tiny Terra Nova. Cooper remained on the fringes of the group, watching while everyone pushed and shoved to get a better look. Her heart was full. Above her, parhelions flanked the slowly sinking sun.

*

The next morning, everyone arrived at breakfast with their letter from NSF, which had been slipped under the doors in the Jamesways, Hypertats, and El Dorm overnight like hotel bills.

The exodus began almost at once. That evening, Cooper said goodbye to the literary novelist and the interpretive dancer, and even helped them bag-drag with her good hand. The historical novelist had been forced onto an earlier flight after an unfortunate incident with his manuscript. Cooper had heard the summons over All-Call that afternoon, and was halfway up the entrance tunnel when she saw the commotion. The historical novelist was wild-eyed—Rove in a rage—and pressed a huge manuscript to his chest. Polies began to appear from various parts of the station, and soon they had made a ring around him. Birdie approached Cooper and asked what had happened. She shrugged and the two watched as the historical novelist lifted the manuscript above his head.

“It’s done,” he shouted hoarsely.

Tucker took a step forward. “May I see it?” The novelist abruptly turned and began speed-walking down the tunnel, the pages peeling off the manuscript in his wake. Cooper and Birdie scrambled to catch them, but the wind blowing up the tunnel sent the pages skyward. As Floyd and Tucker tackled the historical novelist, Cooper managed to grab one of the pages before it flew away. It was blank. She snatched another one from the air as it gently fell, swaying side to side. It, too, was blank.

She looked over at Birdie—the pages in his hands were blank as well.

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