started, with Shackleton's ship trapped and sinking in the ice, the Germans launched a massive attack through Belgium toward France. They did so even though they knew, mathematically, that their attack couldn't succeed. Their own planners had calculated they could not move enough troops on Belgium's dirt roads in the time available to beat the French once they got there. The whole idea was doomed. But they did it anyway, producing a monstrous four-year stalemate that slaughtered millions, and do you know why?"
"Why?"
"Because it was the best plan they had at the time." The psychologist waited, watching Lewis. Did Norse believe a thing he was saying, or was this a calculated game to elicit reaction? He tossed another cup of water on the hot stones, obscuring himself with steam. "That's human motivation for you. The best plan we have, given our tangled past, messy emotions, confused logic, and vain hopes. My issue is, is that good enough? Can we rely on each other, becoming stronger than the sum of our parts? Or does it all fall apart somewhere on the way to Pluto?"
Lewis thought back to the argument in the weight room. "Your conclusion?"
"Would be premature. That's why I'm spending the winter. But corporate and government America worships groups. Teamwork. The committee. Modern historians have abandoned the importance of the individual leader and embraced economics and sociology and biological instinct. They worship the anthill. One of my questions is whether that worship is appropriate in extreme circumstances. When does a team become a herd, and then a mob? How important is the individual and self-reliance? Can a single person, like yourself, or Buck Tyson, change the chemistry of an entire community? Were Pericles and Caesar and Napoleon and Lincoln the product of their times, or the creators?"
"How the hell are you going to tell that down here?"
"By watching what happens to us, when the first real tests come."
***
Lewis was acclimating to the Pole. His first nights in his "Ice Room" hadn't frozen him to the wall as he'd joked but they'd been uncomfortably restless as his body adjusted to the dryness and altitude. His dreams were turbulent and he'd jerk awake suddenly, gasping for air, alternately parched or prodded by a full bladder. Yet slowly his breathing and pulse slowed. He found himself regularly using lotion on his hands and face for the first time in his life, fighting the dryness. Pulaski told him to smear his nostrils with Vaseline before venturing outdoors to protect the lining of his nose, and he began to associate the smell with the snow. Inside the dome he noticed the rarity of smell. When he took one of the last fresh oranges from the galley to the computer lab and peeled it, Abby was drawn from a machine she was fixing like a moth to a flame. Each strip of skin released a puff of scent, intoxicating and tropical, that drifted on the currents of ventilated air. Hiro Sakura came, too, sniffing, and so did Nancy Hodge. He playfully offered them sections of fruit, juicy and elastic. Together they bit and sucked with wistful glee. Ambrosia.
Abby was becoming a friend. He told her about the drift of the continents, and how Antarctica had once had forests and dinosaurs.
She talked about the history of communication, and how the Internet was like a melding of brains, an accelerator of thought, as potentially revolutionary as the printing press. How machines might outsmart them all.
Once she took him to the garage and they checked out a snowmobile, Abby demonstrating how to use it on a runway that was beginning to drift. In the coming dark it would be too cold to use them. They skittered around the Quonset huts of summer camp, her arms around his waist, shouting directions into his hood, the air cutting so fiercely that they had to give it up after half an hour.
His "nights" had turned deep and dreamless, his body sapped each evening by the toll of cold. He set an alarm to keep on schedule and when
"Why?"
"Because it was the best plan they had at the time." The psychologist waited, watching Lewis. Did Norse believe a thing he was saying, or was this a calculated game to elicit reaction? He tossed another cup of water on the hot stones, obscuring himself with steam. "That's human motivation for you. The best plan we have, given our tangled past, messy emotions, confused logic, and vain hopes. My issue is, is that good enough? Can we rely on each other, becoming stronger than the sum of our parts? Or does it all fall apart somewhere on the way to Pluto?"
Lewis thought back to the argument in the weight room. "Your conclusion?"
"Would be premature. That's why I'm spending the winter. But corporate and government America worships groups. Teamwork. The committee. Modern historians have abandoned the importance of the individual leader and embraced economics and sociology and biological instinct. They worship the anthill. One of my questions is whether that worship is appropriate in extreme circumstances. When does a team become a herd, and then a mob? How important is the individual and self-reliance? Can a single person, like yourself, or Buck Tyson, change the chemistry of an entire community? Were Pericles and Caesar and Napoleon and Lincoln the product of their times, or the creators?"
"How the hell are you going to tell that down here?"
"By watching what happens to us, when the first real tests come."
***
Lewis was acclimating to the Pole. His first nights in his "Ice Room" hadn't frozen him to the wall as he'd joked but they'd been uncomfortably restless as his body adjusted to the dryness and altitude. His dreams were turbulent and he'd jerk awake suddenly, gasping for air, alternately parched or prodded by a full bladder. Yet slowly his breathing and pulse slowed. He found himself regularly using lotion on his hands and face for the first time in his life, fighting the dryness. Pulaski told him to smear his nostrils with Vaseline before venturing outdoors to protect the lining of his nose, and he began to associate the smell with the snow. Inside the dome he noticed the rarity of smell. When he took one of the last fresh oranges from the galley to the computer lab and peeled it, Abby was drawn from a machine she was fixing like a moth to a flame. Each strip of skin released a puff of scent, intoxicating and tropical, that drifted on the currents of ventilated air. Hiro Sakura came, too, sniffing, and so did Nancy Hodge. He playfully offered them sections of fruit, juicy and elastic. Together they bit and sucked with wistful glee. Ambrosia.
Abby was becoming a friend. He told her about the drift of the continents, and how Antarctica had once had forests and dinosaurs.
She talked about the history of communication, and how the Internet was like a melding of brains, an accelerator of thought, as potentially revolutionary as the printing press. How machines might outsmart them all.
Once she took him to the garage and they checked out a snowmobile, Abby demonstrating how to use it on a runway that was beginning to drift. In the coming dark it would be too cold to use them. They skittered around the Quonset huts of summer camp, her arms around his waist, shouting directions into his hood, the air cutting so fiercely that they had to give it up after half an hour.
His "nights" had turned deep and dreamless, his body sapped each evening by the toll of cold. He set an alarm to keep on schedule and when
Similar Books
