Warming Trend by Karin Kallmaker Page B

happy to see you.”
    “Which is a definite plus.”
    “It is. But to treat them as anything less than a crucial piece of equipment endangers them and you. My dad could do three or four nights with almost no notice. He was amazing, and he taught me how important it is to be prepared. He lived closed to his team, I mean—nothing against the scientists at GlacierPort. They were okay to my dad, but one of the things they looked down their noses about was that he kept his own dogs instead of hiring them. Like…he couldn’t be a good scientist at the same time. Someday, when I’m all official and tenured and all of that, I’ll have my own team and be just a little bit eccentric.”
    “This is Alaska. Eccentric is normal here.” Eve found herself intrigued by everything Ani said. It wasn’t as if she was interested in ice touring, but the way she talked about her father, their adventures, every bit of it was a little more light on who Ani the little girl and teenager had been, and who Ani the grad student was. It illuminated who Ani the woman might become. “Eccentric won’t mean you’re not careful, will it?”
    Ani licked her fork with an appreciative sigh before answering. “Earlier this week we were doing our usual rounds checking the metering stations on the ice. It takes about four hours to do each of the loops and we do three every week. Me and the other two incoming grad students, that is. The guys aren’t idiots but they’re so into showing off how great they are on the ice that they don’t use all the gear. So on Tuesday we’re gearing up and they take off before I’m ready, saying they don’t need the full crevasse kit and it’s too warm to add liners under our jackets. I never do catch up to them and they take all the measurements and get back to GP a good five minutes before I do.”
    “How foolish,” Eve said. “I would imagine warm or not, the liner is there if you get stuck. Didn’t those two really experienced climbers die in a crevasse accident last year?”
    “That’s just it.” Ani sipped her wine and scraped up a last hearty bite of pie. “The good thing is that they were five minutes ahead of me and Professor Tyndell was still ripping them a new one when I came in. Lack of gear and they’d left me behind.”
    Monica Tyndell went up in Eve’s estimation. “Good for her.”
    “Well, she chewed on me a little bit too. Given the lead they had on me, I should have known I wouldn’t catch them and stayed put. I’m fast on the ice, but not that fast. The only time someone should be out solo on the ice is with a sled. The weight distribution means less chance of opening a crevasse, let alone falling in.”
    Eve gestured at her mostly empty crock. “Does Tonk get people food?”
    “It’s the only way to feed him enough, but never directly from the table.”
    They both set their crocks on the floor and a snap of Ani’s fingers brought Tonk to investigate. Eve had to laugh at the content woof.
    “I do like the way Tonk enjoys life. I wish everyone who ate my food was so vocal.”
    “It was really good,” Ani said, seemingly alarmed. “I’d have licked my plate if I’d known that would reassure you.”
    Immature puns sprang to mind and Eve struggled to control the sudden arrival of an inner teenager with raging hormones. She would not say, “Skip the plate.”
    “You cooked, I’ll clean. I’m really good at dishes,” Ani said. “I’ve been babbling, too. What’s your favorite kind of catering job?”
    “Any job where the client has a reasonable view of cost and benefit. It doesn’t matter what the budget is, as long as they’re realistic about what it’ll buy. The worst ones are the clients who tell you they could have made the same thing themselves for less because they got all the ingredients on sale. Couple weeks ago a client insisted no one could really tell the difference between canned and fresh tuna once it was cooked—if the cook knew what she was doing. And