stations that will monitor belukha whales. It’s under water in the summer, under the ice in the winter. “Why did you take this job, the chance to study in China?” he says.
“Nobody said anything to me about studying in China,” I say.
“That’s what the guy before you was out here for,” he says. “He said your government wrote it into a hazardous contract, if you renew your contract you get some kind of chance to study in China.”
I didn’t really read the contract. All right, so you should always read a contract. “I’ll have to look,” I say. I don’t believe it. They wouldn’t give somebody a chance to study in China just for spending six months here.
“So why did you come? You don’t seem very interested in the great outdoors.”
I wonder what I seem like to him. He’s a scientist, here because he wants to be, he must get pretty tired of techies who want to do their six months and go home. “It was my third alternative,” I say. “I had to take it.”
“You mean your government made you come here?”
“Not exactly.” I explain about alternatives.
“Were you at all, you know, interested?” he asks. “I mean I know it’s not New York, but like you said, it’s only for six months and it’s a change, you know.”
“Yeah,” I lie, “I thought it would be interesting. And I thought it would make me study for the engineering exam.” He doesn’t want to hear how horrible I think this place is, he chose to come
here. And I should study for the engineering exam. There isn’t much social life here.
“You should check out that education thing,” he says. “Dennis only had to work a year and now he’s in Guangzhou.”
Stay here a year? It would be worth it if I could study in China. But I’m sure that it’s more complicated than that, or that the regulations have changed. Madre de Dios, stay here a year?
“There’s the station,” Jim says. We coast out onto the ice and he points to something that looks like an old-fashioned lighthouse. The ice is run with cracks, long spiderwebs. And as we get closer to the station I can see how the ice has piled up around it. “Shit,” he says, “we ought to clear that ice.”
The ice has ground against the west side, mounting the side of the tower. We’d need a light-hammer. I mention that.
“There’s one in the station,” he says, “we have to clear ice every couple of weeks.”
We park the floater on the ice and walk across to the station. Without the blow of the floater I can hear the ice groaning all around me. It groans like metal under stress, but there’s hectares of it. Wind moan and ice groan, black sky and white-blue ice in the dark. We climb slabs of ice to metal rungs set in the side of the tower, and I follow Jim up to the top where he opens a hatch and we see the lit stairs curling down at our feet. He gestures for me to go first and closes the top after us. The wind stops and I realize I’ve been holding my shoulders tense. They ache. The stairs are a circular metal staircase in a reinforced concrete tower with a ribbon light down the wall, but ugly as it is in here it’s better than out there.
Our steps echo as we go down. Underneath is a large space, maybe twenty meters across, with windows for the outer walls. It’s bare unfinished concrete floor and ceiling except where someone has started finishing one of the walls in porcelain white. “The actual shell is raconite,” Jim says. “We’ve got this level wired so the lights come on whenever anyone enters but then there are two
more levels below us. The middle one isn’t as finished as this one, the bottom is labs. I need some help setting up some stuff for a lab, then there’s a building protocol you can use to do some work on the place while I run some tests. Ah, the hammer is under stairs, there’s only one.” He’s embarrassed that there’s only one, he doesn’t want to tell me to do the ice myself.
“Well,” I say, “that’s what
“Nobody said anything to me about studying in China,” I say.
“That’s what the guy before you was out here for,” he says. “He said your government wrote it into a hazardous contract, if you renew your contract you get some kind of chance to study in China.”
I didn’t really read the contract. All right, so you should always read a contract. “I’ll have to look,” I say. I don’t believe it. They wouldn’t give somebody a chance to study in China just for spending six months here.
“So why did you come? You don’t seem very interested in the great outdoors.”
I wonder what I seem like to him. He’s a scientist, here because he wants to be, he must get pretty tired of techies who want to do their six months and go home. “It was my third alternative,” I say. “I had to take it.”
“You mean your government made you come here?”
“Not exactly.” I explain about alternatives.
“Were you at all, you know, interested?” he asks. “I mean I know it’s not New York, but like you said, it’s only for six months and it’s a change, you know.”
“Yeah,” I lie, “I thought it would be interesting. And I thought it would make me study for the engineering exam.” He doesn’t want to hear how horrible I think this place is, he chose to come
here. And I should study for the engineering exam. There isn’t much social life here.
“You should check out that education thing,” he says. “Dennis only had to work a year and now he’s in Guangzhou.”
Stay here a year? It would be worth it if I could study in China. But I’m sure that it’s more complicated than that, or that the regulations have changed. Madre de Dios, stay here a year?
“There’s the station,” Jim says. We coast out onto the ice and he points to something that looks like an old-fashioned lighthouse. The ice is run with cracks, long spiderwebs. And as we get closer to the station I can see how the ice has piled up around it. “Shit,” he says, “we ought to clear that ice.”
The ice has ground against the west side, mounting the side of the tower. We’d need a light-hammer. I mention that.
“There’s one in the station,” he says, “we have to clear ice every couple of weeks.”
We park the floater on the ice and walk across to the station. Without the blow of the floater I can hear the ice groaning all around me. It groans like metal under stress, but there’s hectares of it. Wind moan and ice groan, black sky and white-blue ice in the dark. We climb slabs of ice to metal rungs set in the side of the tower, and I follow Jim up to the top where he opens a hatch and we see the lit stairs curling down at our feet. He gestures for me to go first and closes the top after us. The wind stops and I realize I’ve been holding my shoulders tense. They ache. The stairs are a circular metal staircase in a reinforced concrete tower with a ribbon light down the wall, but ugly as it is in here it’s better than out there.
Our steps echo as we go down. Underneath is a large space, maybe twenty meters across, with windows for the outer walls. It’s bare unfinished concrete floor and ceiling except where someone has started finishing one of the walls in porcelain white. “The actual shell is raconite,” Jim says. “We’ve got this level wired so the lights come on whenever anyone enters but then there are two
more levels below us. The middle one isn’t as finished as this one, the bottom is labs. I need some help setting up some stuff for a lab, then there’s a building protocol you can use to do some work on the place while I run some tests. Ah, the hammer is under stairs, there’s only one.” He’s embarrassed that there’s only one, he doesn’t want to tell me to do the ice myself.
“Well,” I say, “that’s what
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