She hesitated. She’d met Vox—real name unknown—during an unexpected hiatus at the Christchurch base on the last leg before the flight to McMurdo. The layover was usually a no-nonsense twenty-four-hour pause before the crew shoved off, but a surprise storm along the coast had grounded aircraft for a week. With hundreds of scientists, workers, and other Polies trapped in a mid-sized New Zealand city with nothing to do except indulge in bouts of epic drinking, every bar in the city had turned into an intoxicated, impromptu United Nations. Cass had met Vox, a shaggy-haired, gap-toothed, thirty-something radio astronomer in the company of six Swedish physicists en route to borrowing time at the Lyubov Orlova station.
The lot of them had been amazed to meet a female engineer who didn’t have “a face like a wrench,” as Vox put it, and had challenged her to prove her bona fides. Grinning, she dove into a description of Lami’s theorem and the basic principles of kinematics until their eyes glazed over and they begged her to stop. She did shots of vodka and aquavit the rest of the night, then gave herself permission to follow Vox back to his hotel and screw him until they both passed out. The next day, mortified, she’d tried to slip out, but he’d stopped her, laughed at her discomfort, and told her he wanted to stay in touch.
“How the hell are we supposed to do that?” she’d asked. “We’re going to be at the South Pole for the next nine months. What do you want to do, meet for coffee?”
Which was when he told her, if she were half the engineer she claimed she was, it should be a snap to build, borrow, or steal a shortwave that could reach across the fifty klicks separating Shackleton from Orlova. She laughed, told him he was crazy, but they agreed—if they each managed to get their hands on the parts—on a time, date, and frequency. They’d had their first broadcast less than a month after she’d gotten to Shackleton and had managed a radio “date” every week or two since, whenever their schedules would allow.
So, aside from radio contact, she’d known this guy a total of twelve hours. Severe and threatening, Hanratty’s face appeared before her again, warning her not to shoot her mouth off. Then she remembered Biddi’s theory that Hanratty was counting on her to keep her mouth shut, just because of her so-called rank.
Her lip curled. Screw it and screw him . She launched into a description of the situation around Sheryl, starting with Hanratty’s orders to help retrieve the body and ending with the strange interview with Keene.
“Jesus P. Christ!”
“H,” she corrected.
“H? H what?”
“It’s Jesus H. Christ,” she said. “Not P.”
“Why is it H?”
She paused. “I have no idea. Use P if you want.”
Static ate up part of his reply. “. . . are you feeling?”
“Better than I thought I’d be.” Better than I have a right to be . “It’s a terrible thing, but I wouldn’t be dwelling on it so much if Keene hadn’t acted so strangely.”
“Keene is your psychiatric officer?”
“Yes.”
“Tell him nothing. He will only use it against you. The thought police are always the same. Believe me, this is something we Russians know about.”
“I thought the Soviet era was over,” Cass said with a small smile. “The wall came down decades ago, didn’t it?”
“Same play, different cast,” Vox replied. “But about this man Keene, Blaze: remember. No one wants in your head if they don’t plan to use it for themselves.”
She snorted. “He can dig around all he wants. He’s not going to find anything of value.”
“A painful memory to you is an item of value to him. We all have skeletals in our closet.”
“Skeletons,” she corrected absently, her mind dwelling on remembered forms and shapes different—yet not so different—than Sheryl’s. There will be some survivor’s guilt, as well. You’ve had some experience with that, I believe?
“Blaze?”
“I’m here,” she said. “Vox—why do I have to call you that, anyway? You know my name.”
“Maybe I like mysteries. I am dating you, no?” He paused. “That is joke. My name is Alexander Mikhailovich Krestovozdvizhensky.”
“What the hell? I can’t pronounce that.”
“That is why I pick Vox, no? Simple. Elegant. Latin. You can call me Sasha if you want, is short for Alexander. Though, I prefer if you call me Vox.”
“Sasha,” she said. “I like it. It’s dashing.”
“No one has ever called a Russian radio astronomer dashing before, but I accept your compliment.” He laughed. There was a short pause, then, “Blaze, I’m sorry, I have to go. Comrade—excuse me, First Researcher —Konstantinov is thundering up and down the hall, looking for me.”
“Same bat channel, same bat time?”
“Yes, whatever that is. Poka .”
And, suddenly, he was gone.