"Knew what?"
They were interrupted by the pilot's voice on the intercom. "Good news," he said. "The weather's broken over Weddell, and we will land in ten minutes. For those of you who have never made a landing on ice, seat belts should be low and tight, and all your gear safely stowed. And we really mean it."
The plane began a slow, curving descent. Sarah looked out the window at a crusty expanse of white, snow-covered ice. In the distance she saw a series of brightly colored buildings--red, blue, green--built on a cliff, overlooking the gray and choppy ocean.
"That's Weddell Station," Kenner said.
WEDDELL STATION
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6
11:04 A. M.
Trudging toward structures that looked like oversize children's building blocks, Evans kicked a clump of ice out of his path. He was in a grumpy mood. He felt relentlessly bullied by Kenner, whom he now recognized as one of those perpetual contrarians who argued against all conventional wisdom, simply because it was conventional.
But since Evans was stuck with this lunatic--at least for the next few days--he decided to avoid Kenner as much as possible. And certainly not engage him in any more conversations. There was no point in arguing with extremists.
He looked at Sarah, walking across the ice airfield beside him. Her cheeks were flushed in the cold air. She looked very beautiful. "I think the guy is a nut," Evans said.
"Kenner?"
"Yeah. What do you think?"
She shrugged. "Maybe."
"I bet those references he gave me are fake," he said.
"They'll be easy enough to check," she said. They stamped their feet and entered the first building.
Weddell Research Station turned out to be home to thirty-odd scientists, graduate students, technicians, and support staff. Evans was pleasantly surprised to find it was quite comfortable inside, with a cheerful cafeteria, a game room, and a large gym with a row of treadmills. There were big picture windows with views of the choppy, restless ocean. Other windows looked out over the vast, white expanse of the Ross Ice Shelf, stretching away to the west.
The head of the station greeted them warmly. He was a heavyset, bearded scientist named MacGregor who looked like Santa Claus in a Patagonia vest. Evans was annoyed that MacGregor seemed to know Kenner, at least by reputation. The two men immediately struck up a friendly conversation.
Evans excused himself, saying he wanted to check his e-mail. He was shown to a room with several computer terminals. He signed on to one, and went directly to the site forScience magazine.
It took him only a few moments to determine that the references Sanjong had given him were genuine. Evans read the online abstracts, and then the full text. He began to feel a little better. Kenner had summarized the raw data correctly, but he had drawn a different interpretation from that of the authors. The authors of those papers were firmly committed to the idea of global warming--and said so in the text.
Or at least, most of them did.
It was a bit complicated. In one paper, it was clear that even though the authors gave lip service to the threat of global warming, their data seemed to suggest the opposite of what they were saying in the text. But that apparent confusion, Evans suspected, was probably just the result of drawing up a paper with half a dozen authors. What theysaid was they supported the idea of global warming. And that was what counted.
More disturbing was the paper on the increase in ice thickness in the Ross Ice Shelf. Here Evans found some troubling points. First, the author did say that the shelf had been melting for the last six thousand years, ever since the Holocene era. (Though Evans could not remember reading, in any article about melting Antarctic ice, that it had been going on for the last six thousand years.) If that were true, it wasn't exactly news. On the contrary, the author suggested that the real news was the end of this long-term melting trend, and the first evidence of ice thickening. The author was hinting that this might be the first sign of the start of the next Ice Age.
Jesus!
The nextIce Age?
There was a knock on the door behind him. Sarah stuck her head in. "Kenner wants us," she said. "He's discovered something. Looks like we're going out on the ice."
The map covered the entire wall, showing the enormous, star-shaped continent. In the lower right-hand corner was Weddell Station, and the curving arc of the Ross Ice Shelf.
"We've learned," Kenner said, "that a supply ship docked five days ago bringing boxes of field material for an American scientist named James Brewster, from the University of Michigan. Brewster is a very recent arrival who was permitted to come at the last minute because the terms of his research grant were unusually generous in their allowance for overhead--meaning the station would get some much-needed money for operations."
"So he bought his way in?" Evans said.
"In effect."
"When did he get here?"
"Last week."