Michael knew that he’d been pushing it—photographing everything, making endless notes in his journal, trying to master all the polar skills from igloo construction to, right now, dogsledding—but he was conscious of the limited time he had at Point Adélie, and he didn’t want to overlook anything. On New Year’s Eve, the supply plane would carry him back out, and he didn’t want to find himself back in Tacoma, wondering why, for instance, he hadn’t taken some photos inside the old Norwegian church—already he was planning to get back there—or how he’d failed to solve the mystery of Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming.
Even now, he knew, the block of ice was slowly thawing. He’d have to go and see it as soon as they got back to base and get some more photos of that stage in the transformation. It was funny, but that was how he’d come to think of it—as a metamorphosis. The ice was the chrysalis, from which the two lovers would emerge—for lovers, he felt certain, was what they must have been. Who else would have been so yoked together, with coils of chain, and consigned to a watery grave? He tried to imagine the scenario, any scenario, that would make sense of it all. Were they captured and thrown into the sea by a jealous husband? Or was it done at the orders of a spurned wife? Had they violated some code of conduct—a code of the sea, or, given the gold braid on the man’s uniform, of the military? What crime could they have committed that such an awful crime would have been committed in turn against them?
The dogs made a wide circle to skirt some uncommonly high sastrugi—windblown ridges of snow and ice—and Michael was reminded again that the dogs knew the route better than anyone. And they were heading home, to their comfortable kennel, with its straw-lined floor and food bowls. All he had to do, most of the time, was hang on to the handlebars and stay on the runners. He hadn’t heard a peep out of Danzig, and he had the distinct impression that the man was asleep, his chin resting on his chest, his hood gathered close around his face. Whether that was a sign of his confidence in Michael, or in the dogs, wasn’t clear, but Michael hoped he could make it all the way back to the base without waking him.
Far off on his left, out on the ice floes, he saw a tiny red light flash, and a few minutes later he saw it again—the beacon, he realized, on top of the dive hut. Michael had witnessed some of the traps being hauled up from the bottom, several of them containing stunned and gasping fish, with translucent gills and white eyes, and he’d watched as Darryl transferred the ones that had survived the trip to specimen buckets. But how, he wondered, could such a confirmed vegetarian and animal rights activist do this kind of work?
“Rationalization is the key,” Darryl had said. “I tell myself that, by studying the few, I can save the many. The first step in getting the world to conserve natural resources is to remind the world that they are imperiled.” He’d lifted one dead fish by its tail and gently deposited it in a separate bucket, packed with ice. “And if I work fast, I can still get an interesting blood sample, even from this one.”
As the sled drew parallel to the dive hut, the dogs turned inland, several of them yelping in gleeful anticipation. The blades swished through the snow as the sled surmounted a low hill, and now Michael could see the camp. The various modules and sheds and storehouses looked, from here, like the Lego blocks he’d played with as a kid, strewn about in only the rudest semblance of order. A collection of black and gray structures, with huge yellow Day-Glo circles painted on their roofs so that the camp could be spotted by the supply planes in the long, dark austral winter.
Hard as it was to live there in the summer, with the unending light, Michael could barely fathom how anyone withstood a winter at the South Pole.
Danzig stirred in the shell and raised his head. “We there yet?” he mumbled.
“Almost,” Michael said.
Now he could see the American flag, so stiffened by the wind that it looked flat.
“But since you’re awake,” Michael said, “what do you say to get the dogs to stop?”
“Try whoa.”
“Try it?”
“It doesn’t always work. Pull back on the lines, hard, and step down on the brake.” Michael glanced down at the metal bar, with two claws, that served as the brake, and prepared to step on it as soon as the sled got within a hundred yards of the kennel. He didn’t anticipate a swift stop.