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‘No, not like that! It’s not straight,’ Wally complained. Simon bit his tongue and swung the tip of the tent post a millimetre to the left.
‘Hold it now! There. That’s got it. No … not quite …’
Standing back for a better view, Simon thought it looked fine, but Wally still wasn’t satisfied.
‘It tilts to the left and we’ve put the doorway on the outside of the circle. We’ll have to fix it.’
‘No way,’ Simon protested. ‘It doesn’t lean and I want the door facing the scenery, not the neighbours.’
‘But it’s facing into the prevailing wind.’
‘Then we’ll keep the flap down.’ Simon stretched his cramped arms. ‘I’m going to unpack my equipment, Wally, so if you want to change the tent around, do it yourself.’ Simon made his way back to the mound of supplies.
‘Hey, you, Hollingford!’ Jeff, his disapproving scowl glued to his face, loomed up behind him. ‘How about helping with the supply tent?’
‘Sure thing.’
‘Put it here.’ Jeff let the tent bag fall at his feet and walked away.
‘You’re welcome,’ Simon said under his breath as he bent to unroll the kit. He struggled for some minutes to do the impossible before he heard a chuckle in his ear.
‘Need some assistance?’ Viola asked. ‘Joan and I finally got our tent up so I’ll help you while I’m still in practice. I forget from year to year how to erect these damn things …’ In minutes the tent stood taut and tall.
‘There.’ Viola smiled. ‘Teamwork. Now let’s move the food into the second supply tent.’
By eleven that evening some semblance of order had been established and Eric called a halt for the night. Although the sun still rested along the southern horizon they were tired and anxious for sleep.
‘Who’s for cocoa?’ Anne asked as the activity level died down.
‘Me,’ they chorused. Every sleeping tent had a single-burner Coleman stove and she and Jeff each brought one out into the circle and lit it with practised skill. As they waited for the water from the nearby stream to boil, everyone found something, a collecting pail or sample crate, to sit on. Simon felt the cold penetrating through his windbreaker now that he’d stopped moving about. He donned the government issue green parka and white mittens. Others did the same and they looked like a chorus of green frogs perched on their respective logs.
‘Just like last year,’ Viola commented with satisfaction.
‘Not quite,’ a nasal voice intoned. ‘Dear Phillip isn’t here to annoy us.’
‘Wally!’ Anne said, shocked.
‘Don’t give me any of that “don’t speak ill of the dead” crap, Anne. You can’t tell me you miss the bastard.’
‘That comment is in very poor taste, Wally.’ Eric spoke with authority. Wally spat between his boots, following the script of a ‘B’ movie.
‘Phillip himself was in poor taste,’ Joan declared with characteristic vitriol. ‘Thanks to his stupidity, I lost three weeks of field time.’
‘You can’t accuse him of stupidity,’ Viola put in quietly. ‘No one knew that storm was coming up. It could just as easily have been you lost out there in the blizzard.’
Joan tossed her head. ‘Not me.’
Anne shivered. ‘Poor Phillip. Do you suppose we’ll find his body?’
Her husband snorted. ‘The RCMP spent three weeks last year looking. If they couldn’t find him then, we’re sure not going to find him now!’ He shifted around so that his back was towards her.
‘They didn’t even find his pack …’ Anne murmured, red-faced.
Joan sprang up from her crate and planted herself in front of Eric. ‘I think Phillip came to a fitting end. It’s appropriate a man willing to sell out this land to an oil company should end up having his body here. Maybe in a few million years he’ll be oil!’ She stirred her hot chocolate so savagely that it slopped out on to her parka. ‘Shit.’
‘You’re exaggerating,’ Eric protested. ‘Besides, he was my son. Have a little consideration for my feelings.’
‘Your stepson, Eric, there’s a difference,’ Wally said in a voice hollow with pain.
‘A technicality.’
Joan put her hand on her hip and pointed her finger at Eric. ‘Don’t try to con us. We all know you couldn’t stand each other!’ Eric shifted his feet, ready to spring up but Anne leaped into the breach. ‘Have some more cocoa, Eric,’ she urged, waving the pot of water and a drink packet between the potential combatants. Eric hesitated momentarily, but relaxed again. Joan laughed harshly and headed for her tent. Simon felt a twinge of disappointment—the conversation was just getting interesting.
Before turning in, Simon decided to uncrate the radio—his major charge. The tent farthest from the circle contained the scientific stores and doubled as the communications centre, a grandiose name for one short-wave radio. The instrument was well wrapped in bubble pack inside a heavy crate. Colonel Fernald’s radio operator had provided instructions but basically the radio was idiot proof. Twice daily Simon was to check in with the army camp, once at 0800 and once at 2000 hours, starting the next morning. He’d have to be up early to erect the aerial in time for his first report.
Carefully he set the radio on a sturdy crate which had contained the emergency medical supplies. Joan, as the senior Red Cross graduate present, had taken these to her tent. As well as the usual disinfectants, splints, antibiotics and painkillers, there were several ice-packed vials of blood for emergency use. Duplicate medical histories of everyone had been provided—one copy Joan kept next to the medical supplies and the other Simon now hung on the side of the radio. He skimmed the medical histories—nothing interesting—and they showed an average cross section of North Americans with respect to blood type—three A’s, four O’s and a B.
Easing herself silently into her sleeping-bag, Anne tried not to disturb her husband who lay, similarly shrouded, on the far side of their tent.
‘So you finally decided to join me.’
Sighing, she answered. ‘Viola and I were completing the sanitation facilities.’ Why am I explaining, she asked herself? It’s my right to go to the toilet! But anything for peace.
‘I heard you. So did everyone in camp, I expect. Do you have to keep the rest of us up half the night with your stupid chatter?’
‘Good night.’ Anne wiggled farther into the down bag as if hoping it would shield her from her husband’s inexplicable anger and her own silent misery. Sleep was long in coming to both sides of the battleground.
Simon finished rigging the aerial before anyone got up. The wires drooped like a clothes line between the supports. Functional, if not artistic, he decided. When Anne appeared, Simon had just completed tying a series of makeshift red bows on to the thin wire.
‘What do you think?’ Simon asked, indicating his contraption.
‘Colonel Fernald would have you peeling potatoes for a year! Good thing you’re not in his outfit!’ Anne giggled.
Simon enjoyed the friendly banter they exchanged when Tony wasn’t around. ‘I’m anxious to see if it works. I wish Eric had let me set up last night.’
Yawning, Anne headed for the sixth tent where they’d stored the food boxes. ‘I hate the way the sun shines in the middle of the night. I have trouble sleeping when it feels like high noon, don’t you?’ she asked, stooping to enter the tent.
‘I can sleep anytime, anywhere I get the chance.’
‘Let’s see …’ Anne pried the lid off one of the crates marked BREAKFAST. It contained thirty-six white cardboard boxes, each labelled in bold red letters. The first layer read ‘mushroom omelette’, the second, ‘bacon and eggs’, and the last, ‘sausages’. ‘What takes your fancy, Simon?’
‘I’ll try the bacon and eggs.’
‘I’ll have sausages,’ Anne decided, removing two boxes. ‘I’ll boil some water.’
Simon bumped into Joan as he headed back to his tent.
‘What’s this rat’s nest?’ she jeered, pointing at the sagging aerial.
‘My “rats’ nest” is your only link with civilization,’ he retorted. ‘Be careful how you insult it!’
By the time the water was boiling, everyone was up. They all hovered around the two stoves set up in the middle of the circle.
‘Let’s see what we’ve got here.’ Viola ripped open her meal box and tipped out the contents. ‘One chocolate bar. One packet of instant coffee. One packet of orange crystals. Crackers—I’ll keep those for later. Plastic cutlery, napkin, cream and sugar packets. And this.’ She held up a slim foil package about eight inches by five. ‘This is bacon and eggs?’ She eyed it doubtfully but dropped it into the pot of water to heat.
While the eight foil pouches simmered in the water, the others sipped coffee or hot chocolate.
Jeff turned to Simon. ‘What’s your job in real life? Obviously you’re no scientist.’
‘I’m a policeman.’
Several heads jerked up.
‘Sylvester didn’t tell me that,’ Eric accused.
‘That’s where I learned how to operate a radio.’
‘Hell! Here I am, trying to get away from the Establishment, and who comes along but a damned cop!’ Joan shook her head in disgust.
‘I’m on holiday,’ Simon protested.
‘Once a cop, always a cop.’
‘Policemen aren’t needed up here,’ Wally mumbled. ‘Should stay where you belong.’
‘Breakfast must be ready by now,’ Viola interrupted, shooting Simon a pleading glance.
Simon’s lips thinned but instead of retorting he gingerly gripped the corner of his package and lifted it out of the hot water. He slit the top of the envelope and squeezed up the contents. His bacon and eggs emerged as a rectangular pressed grey mass with unidentifiable bits of brown embedded in it. He sniffed cautiously and nibbled a corner. He wrinkled his nose.
‘Well?’ Eric demanded.
‘Tastes like cardboard with a chemical aftershock.’
‘It can’t be that bad.’
They all reached for their pouches. Anne’s sausages were a suspicious reddish grey and laden with nitrates. Viola’s mushroom omelette resembled the bacon and eggs but had grey bits instead of brown.
‘We can’t live on this!’ Eric exploded. ‘No wonder the army used us as guinea pigs—there’d be a mutiny if they gave this stuff to their own men!’
‘They’re poisoning us with chemicals.’ Joan spat her mouthful back into the pouch.
‘Maybe the other meals are better …’ Anne ventured. Tony glared at her and her voice trailed off.
In the end, they ate chocolate bars and instant beverages for breakfast and didn’t linger over the meal.
They shoved all the combustible garbage, the boxes, paper packets, and napkins into one carton, and the foil and plastic into another. What they couldn’t burn, they’d take with them when they left.
As the others bustled in and out of the storage tent in search of stray equipment, Simon tried to raise the Cornwallis Island army camp on the radio.
‘This is Victor Echo 8735. Come in, Viking,’ Simon intoned.
‘Thinks he’s Lorne Greene,’ Jeff commented under his breath as he squeezed by the communications centre.
Loud static crackled in Simon’s earphones. ‘This is Victor Echo 8735,’ he repeated again and again, fine-tuning the frequency knob and fiddling with the other controls.
At last he removed the earphones and turned off the set. While he re-examined his antenna, Jeff stood to one side, pointedly examining his watch.
Simon went over to him. ‘Go on ahead, Jeff. I won’t be long once I’ve got the radio tent to myself. I’ll catch up.’
‘I doubt it. I travel fast.’
‘I won’t be long behind you,’ Simon said. ‘Surely you can start your sampling series without me.’
‘Certainly I can. You’re not conducting the survey, you’re carrying the specimens.’
‘I promise I’ll be there to lug your stuff around, Dr Jost,’ Simon responded through gritted teeth.
‘Do you know where the cliffs are, Hollingford?’
‘I have a topographical map. If you mark the spot, I’ll find it.’
‘OK, but I can’t say you’re off to a good start,’ Jeff commented, turning on his heel.
‘Don’t take any notice of the old fraud, Simon,’ Viola advised him with a friendly slap on the shoulder. ‘He talks that way to God. I’m heading north as well, though not with Mister Personality. Don’t scare my musk oxen!’
‘It’s more likely to be the other way round,’ Simon laughed.
An hour later Simon sat back on his heels, mission accomplished. He was free to haul rocks for the next twelve hours if he hurried after Jeff. But instead, he drew a small sketchbook from his pack and began a line drawing of a burst of fragile yellow flowers pushing up from a tuft of leaves in the gravelly terrain. The Almighty Jeff could wait.
A half-mile upstream, Anne Colautti marked off a tiny pond for the installation of a conductivity meter and a temperature probe. But her mind wasn’t really on the job at hand and this distressed her. Until recently her work could always take her out of herself, erasing any non-scientific problems from her mind, but not any more. Instead of taking careful notes describing why she’d chosen this site as representative of an ice-wedge polygon locale, she was sitting on the cold earth, hands tucked into her parka sleeves, on the verge of tears. At least she was alone.
Pull yourself together, woman. Anne hauled her hip waders out of her bulging pack and struggled into them. As usual, she hadn’t been able to find a pair small enough to fit and, even with layers of socks, her feet were lost in the boots. She hitched the straps over her shoulders, knotted them a few times to take up the slack, and then fastened them in front.
Now encased in unyielding rubber, she moved awkwardly and almost fell as she slid into the pool. ‘Damn.’ A gurgle and a slurp were followed by a rush of bubbles breaking the surface as her boots sank to the ankles in the ooze at the bottom. She leaned over to get her probes from the bank and then started forward. But the suction of the bottom marl held tightly and, when she lifted her foot, the boot stayed behind. Its rubber leg tripped her up and, fighting for balance all the way, she fell with a splash.
‘Damn! DAMN! DAMN!’ Her voice shrilled with an edge of hysteria, and as it echoed she caught the note. ‘Dear God. I’m losing control!’ Anne bit her lip hard. ‘Relax. Breathe. Be calm.’
She was sitting neck deep in frigid water. Her full boots weighed her down and her jacket floated up around her ears. But the shock of cold helped her focus and she soon wiggled out of the boots and stood up. She stripped off her sodden jacket, hurling it to the bank in a dripping arc. The probes followed. She felt around in the now murky water for the boots until her hand closed on the knotted straps. But the pond bottom didn’t release the boots without a struggle and her feet were again ankle deep before the boots pulled free with a rude burp. She swam the three strokes to shore, hauling the offending footwear behind and clambered up exhausted and shivering on to the bank.
‘Where are you, Tony?’ she sniffed. Other years he’d been there laughing at her awkwardness but ready to rub her dry and kiss her warm. Now, dripping water on to everything, she rummaged in her pack looking for the skimpy towel she’d brought. Her teeth chattered like a machine-gun as she stripped off her clothes. She had to get back to camp, but the urgency of the situation didn’t galvanize her as it should have.
‘So I freeze to death. So what?’ she muttered, pulling on the thin jumpsuit she’d packed as a precaution. Who’d care? Who? Not Tony. Not the university. Not anybody.
Hot tears coursed down Anne’s cheeks. But with a determined fist, she ground the salty pools from her eyes and hauled her mind back to the present. Only her hiking boots were still dry. She managed to pull them on but her fingers were too stiff to do up the laces. She’d just emptied her pack to use as a jacket when a voice hailed her.
‘Problems?’ Joan jogged up. ‘Fell in, did you?’
Anne nodded jerkily.
