China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh Page A

they’re paying my inflated salary for.”
    He grins, relieved. He’s a nice guy, big and wooly as a bear. “It won’t take you too long,” he says. “Just break up the top stuff and be careful not to cut too deep, remember there’s water underneath. I’ll be on the first level.”
    “Meishi, ” I say.
    “What?”
    “Meishi, you know, ‘no problem,”’ I say.
    “Is that Chinese?”
    I guess it is, I never thought about it. Everybody says meishi. Except Canadians.
    I hoist the hammer, brand-new, just like the cutter, but a little more used, and climb back up the steps with it. When I open the hatch the wind is still going and the ice is still groaning and creaking and my shoulders bunch up again. I close the hatch behind me and wonder if people get accustomed to this. Man is an adaptable animal, I tell myself, you’ll get accustomed to this. I sling the hammer across my back with the shoulder strap and climb down. How am I supposed to use a hammer on a substance I have difficulty standing on? Cleats would help. Remember when back at the base to ask someone about ordering some kind of mountain-climbing boots. I wrap the contact round my wrist and jack into the hammer. Ice is freaky stuff, it’s not like concrete because it’s got a weird surface and the density is different. It’s hard to judge how much headway I’m making, first I think I’ve done a lot and then when I look I haven’t done anything. Then
I really whale and suddenly I’ve cut the surface too deep and the hammer is skipping all over the place.
    Someone who knows what they’re doing would finish a lot faster than I do, but in an hour I’ve cut away a lot of ice. I don’t know how close I am to water and that makes me nervous, there are all these cracks on the ice and I’m not sure it’s safe, don’t people get killed out here? I walk away from the tower out on the groaning ice—I almost think I can feel it move—to the floater and pull the cutter out of the back. I walk farther out, about thirty meters away from the tower and jack into the cutter. I focus the beam as tight as it will go and aim straight down and in no time I’ve cut a hole straight through the ice to water. One meter before I register a change in density. The ice is about a meter thick. Well, a meter of ice isn’t likely to dump me into Lancaster Sound. But if it stress fractures it would shatter spectacularly and I’d.hate to be there when it happened.
    When we get back to the base I’m going to do some reading about ice.
     
     
    In the evenings I study engineering, and a letter to the Bureau of Education brings back the information that workers under thirty-five years of age who take hardship jobs for one or more years get preferential treatment when applying for school in China and qualify for loans to help with their education, if needed.
    To go to school in China. Chinese citizens can take the entrance exams, and ten percent of the seats are open to overseas Chinese and foreigners by competitive exam. If I could get a B.A. Engineering in China I’d be set. I’d be able to get good work anywhere, in New York, maybe even in China. I could probably get a job and stay in it, I’d be assigned good housing, maybe after a couple of years I could live in Manhattan. Talk about luck, like winning the numbers. I begin to request math texts from the library so I can prep for the entrance exam.

    Most days I spend at Halsey Station doing construction while everyone else checks recordings and makes observations. Maggie Smallwood tells me everything is going to happen in the spring, when the belukha and the bowhead mate. She says the Sound is just constant activity then. Even now the lights attract plankton and the plankton attract all sorts of fish. Everyone is nice, everyone is friendly, but distant. They’re scientists, they have a mission. I’m a six-month techie, and although no one would say it, working class. Muscle rather than brain.
    Still I hang around