“Good.” He clapped his hands together and rubbed them like he was attempting to warm them. “Well, I hope this hasn’t been too much of a burden.”
“No, it’s fine,” Cass lied. The meeting was over and she was obviously free to go, but she hesitated, left with the feeling that she hadn’t defended herself very well. Keene raised his eyebrows, but she had nothing, really, to say. She got to her feet and turned to leave.
“Cass?”
She turned back.
“Historically, the people who weather crises the best are those who adjust their expectations to fit the reality of the situation.” He paused and his eyes flicked over her face. “And life at the South Pole is nothing more than a potential disaster held temporarily at bay. Isn’t it?”
CHAPTER NINE
Keene sat at his desk long after Jennings had left, listening to the bubbles rising in the aquarium and doodling ever-widening circles on a notepad.
He’d like to believe that the girl wasn’t who he’d thought she was. He’d run her through a series of confrontational and ambiguous questions prepared in advance and she’d responded to all of them as obtusely as one could expect from someone completely out of the loop. She’d looked like a duck and quacked like a duck, so he very much wanted to believe she was a duck. But—and he couldn’t shake the but —a well-prepared graduate psychology student who’d taken a turn in a summer theater could’ve done as well.
Keene knew he was a first-rate psychologist, but he was also a realist; psychology wasn’t mind reading and for every victory his field had made in behavioral prediction, it had accumulated a thousand failures, especially in the perilous field of individual predictive analysis. Groups were relatively easy to manipulate. Assess the synergies, conduct a few probing questions to test the water, and it was likely you could prod a mob into doing just about anything you wanted it to do. But put your figurative thumb on a single individual and it was like pressing down on a watermelon seed. They could go shooting off anywhere.
He grunted and put the pen down next to the pad with intentional precision, resisting the urge to throw it across the room. One individual’s behavior he could definitely predict was his own, and what he saw in his immediate future wasn’t good. He would stew and steam over all of the possible contingencies and tangents until he’d worked himself into knots. None of it was constructive; on the contrary, it was psychologically destructive. If he wasn’t careful, Shackleton’s station psychologist would be halfway to barking mad by midwinter. Not good.
He sighed and stood. Tanto monta, monta tanto . He could sit in his office for the next week and try to unravel the tangle of his suspicions, or he could just go and get the answer from Hanratty. And since he didn’t have any more information after the interview with Jennings, he might as well go beard the lion in his den. If the station manager didn’t like what he had to say, he could send him home. A disappointing end to his Antarctica career, perhaps, but he wasn’t going to be played for a fool.
He pushed through the door of his office and went out to the hall, turning right to head for the administrative offices. On the way, he passed four or five of the scientists and staffers. A few gave him the standard Polie nod in greeting—eyes sliding off to one side, a flat-lipped bob of the head, a lengthening of the stride to discourage conversation—but most of the expressions he received were universally flat and blank. No one cozied up to the guy who held everyone’s mental and emotional secrets.
Ironically, aside from a few exceptional cases, he rarely had cause to read any histories or, frankly, give two whits about them. On the other hand, he couldn’t forget what he already knew, and he couldn’t help but do a quick analysis of a few of those he passed in the halls.
“Dr. Keene,” Biddi said as they passed each other at the entrance to the B2 wing.
“Biddi,” he said, nodding, then did a double take, but she was already past him and heading down the hall. For a split second, he was sure she’d stuck her tongue out at him.
Frowning, he continued down the corridor. Hanratty’s office was past the labs on the second floor of the B3 wing, the administrative heart of the station. Communications, base management offices, and the station’s only conference room took up most of the wing.
He opened the door to the admin suite, nodding to Elise Simon, the station’s only comms specialist, who had looked up from her console as he walked in. She turned away, ignoring him, and he smiled thinly at the back of her head. Elise had not reacted well at their first encounter when he’d suggested—after she’d admitted to insomnia and latent hallucinations about her work—that she apply for a less stressful position at McMurdo.
“Is Hanratty in, Elise?” he asked unnecessarily.