Page 23 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

Without thinking about it, she’d gotten out of bed and was lacing up her boots. Her body was making a decision as her mind was still catching up, and she followed as it took her down the warren-like hallways she knew so well, past the cafeteria, the gym, the medical clinic, to the suite of offices where she could count on someone to be sitting at the metal desk in front of the enormous computer, stamping proverbial paperwork and approving requests.

Today it was Harry, an older man with a kind, leathery face, who listened, dismayed, as Esther explained her position: her father had died and she’d been asked to go home to her family immediately, statements that were both true enough it was easy to deliver them with real emotion. The tears in her eyes, too, were not hard to conjure.

It was just a safety measure, Esther told herself, after she’d secured a spare seat on the next supply plane headed back to Auckland. She had two days to figure things out, to assess the actual level of danger and deal with it appropriately. Harry had sent paperwork to her inbox, a termination of contract, but until she signed it, she was not officially leaving. There was still time. She still might stay.

Afterward, simply because she didn’t know what else to do, she went to sit in the greenhouse. She’d spent so many of her lunch breaks here, reading on the shabby, always-damp couch someone had dragged between pots of pepper plants and tomatoes. The greenhouse was small and square and always smelled soul-revivingly delicious, like healthy dirt and the promise of a self-regulating world, though the couch itself smelled like moldy basement. Mingled, the scents comforted her. If humans ever made it into space, bright boxes like this would keep them alive, as it had kept a part of her alive these past months. She popped a piece of tiny, jewel-like lettuce into her mouth and flopped down on the couch to stare up at the ceiling. The lights were a collection of approximate suns.

Esther herself had been responsible for maintaining these lamps, for keeping the station at least occasionally supplied with the taste of life. She remembered her first weeks here, pulling cable hundreds of freezing feet from the generator to the main building, stumbling over ice and loose rock, clumsy and uncomfortable in her insulated suit like a child in a too-snug jacket. Days spent in the oppressive beige of the underground interior hallways, the mess of wiring in the walls, some of it installed last week and some that hadn’t been updated since 1968. Lying in her shoebox bedroom and watching the lights on her ceiling flicker, knowing she’d be the one to fix them. A sense of isolation so complete it was almost a sound, a grim buzz, the way she imagined magic sounded.

It amazed her, how once the unfamiliar became well-known you could never go back. What would it be like not to know the sucking, howlingsound of a door opened into a Condition One snowstorm? The texture of frozen rubber, the unmistakable fishy cigarette reek of penguin shit? What would it be like not to viscerally understand the particular thrill of driving across roads of carved snow, knowing that if your radar sensor failed, you’d plummet into the ice? If she left—when she left—Antarctica would be a memory, then a memory of memory, and eventually it would be just a story. Pearl would be just a story, a swirl of remembered feelings, someone she’d talk about at bars to strangers who would become friends and then strangers again.

All these stories, what did they add up to?

A life?

She stayed in the greenhouse until past lunch, waiting.

Waiting for what? She didn’t quite let herself articulate the answer, didn’t quite let herself make a choice, because if she’d confronted it, she might have found it was a bad one. She was here for calm, she told herself. She was here because the greenhouse was quiet, removed. There was low foot traffic at this hour.

If someone wanted to talk to her, say, or to confront her... or even attack her... well, this was the perfect opportunity. An excellent chance for a threat to show its face and let her confront it, dispatch it, move on.

But nobody came.

Eventually she stood, stretched her tight muscles, and went back into the main station. She made her way through the halls, trailing a hand across the beige paneling. This place was such a neat, closed system of human necessity. Every job supported every other job, and every job supported the continued functioning of life. It was so much messier out there in the rest of the world.

But that was all right. Esther could handle mess.

Lost in thought, tense with unfulfilled adrenaline, she turned the corner of her hallway in time to see Pearl backing slowly out of her room. She almost called out a hello, but something stopped her. Pearl’s face was turned away, glancing down the hall in a peculiar, almost furtive mannerthat raised Esther’s hackles. No, Esther told herself, no, you’re paranoid, you’re on edge, Pearl has nothing to do with this.

Pearl turned and saw her then, face moving between surprise and relief. “There you are,” she said.

“Hi,” said Esther, smiling despite herself, despite everything. Usually, her face was like her trustworthy hands, completely under her control, but Pearl’s presence seemed to be connected to the little muscles in her cheeks that pulled her mouth up at the corners.

“You weren’t at lunch,” Pearl explained, “so I brought you a bowl of soup. I forgot a spoon though, so you’ll have to slurp it, sorry about that.”

“That was thoughtful,” Esther said. They were both standing in front of her closed door now. Pearl was in a pair of overalls and a bulky sweatshirt. Her hair was up so her neck was visible, long and slender and expressive like the rest of her body. Esther resisted the urge to touch it.

“You know me,” said Pearl. “Always thinking. Where were you just now?”

“Bathroom,” said Esther, and Pearl glanced in confusion toward the restroom, which was in the other direction. Esther said, “That one was full.” She faked a yawn. “I’m gonna keep sleeping it off, but thanks for the soup.”

Pearl reached out and slid two fingers into the neckline of Esther’s sweater, tugging her closer. “D’you think you’re contagious?”

Esther felt bitterness rise in her throat. That was one way to put it.

“Better to be on the safe side,” she said, tangling her fingers with Pearl’s to soften the gesture of moving her hand away from her throat. It didn’t work. Pearl stepped away, nodding.

“Right,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

Esther’s every instinct was shouting at her to say or do anything to relax the strained set of Pearl’s mouth, a kind word, a kiss, but until she knew whether or not she was staying, those instincts had to be suppressed. If she was leaving it was better for Pearl that she start the process now.

“Thanks again for the soup,” she said.

She didn’t go back into her room until she’d watched Pearl disappear down the hallway. As promised, a bowl of soup sat steaming on her bedside table, and though she was quite hungry she sat on her bed staring at it, unable to eat. In the office she had forced herself to cry, and her eyes and chest seemed to want to reprise their earlier performance. They might have, too, if something hadn’t prickled her senses.

Something about the configuration of her nightstand—with its clutter of books, lotion, hair ties—seemed different, as if things had been rearranged.

Or as if something were missing.

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