He made a wide circuit round the jumbled mass of rock and roared down the slope towards the huts. He could see a little red-jacketed figure crossing the isthmus of snow between the living quarters and the lab hut.
Rooker swept the skidoo in a circle and left it under a makeshift shelter at the rear of the huts. One of his extra assignments was to build a proper housing, using the wooden frame materials left by the supply ship at the beginning of the season. The sky had darkened to solid slate-grey and he noticed that the wind was rising now. Tiny eddies of snow chased around his feet.
‘Ah, there you are,’ Shoesmith said superfluously. He was sitting at the oilcloth-covered table in the middle of the living area with a mass of papers spread out in front of him. The only other work area at Kandahar was at the narrow benches in the chilly lab and most people preferred to do their less demanding work in the warmth of the communal area.
At the far end of the room, where a pair of windows looked out on the snow hill, the base manager, Russell Amory, and Niki were crowded in the kitchen. Niki was peeling potatoes in a metal bowl and Russ was making bread. Rooker thought that one of the best features of life at Kandahar was Russ Amory’s bread.
The two men looked like one another’s opposites. Niki was immensely tall and cadaverously thin. He had long, unkempt hair and a wispy beard that didn’t hide his hollow cheeks, and when he laughed his honking laugh the tight skin and thin lips pulled away from bad teeth that looked as if one more headshake would jerk them loose from the gums. Russell was short and suntanned and completely bald except for a band of fuzz above his ears. Today a white apron was stretched round his middle, emphasising his broad belly.
Russ and Nikolai didn’t pause in their peeling and kneading. Niki twitched his wrist and sent a long coil of potato peel spiralling down into the bowl.
‘Where is Laure? Is she ready?’ Rooker asked from the doorway. He didn’t want to spend time getting out of his boots and outer clothes if he was going straight outside again, and Russ never appreciated people trampling snow and grit over the linoleum floors.
As if to answer him the Frenchwoman, Laure Heber, emerged from the door of the women’s pit room. She had a full backpack in one hand and a pair of insulated boots in the other. The other three men all looked up.
‘Merci, Jeem,’ she smiled. ‘Tout prêt.’
Laure’s shiny dark hair was cut in a tidy bob. She wore pearl studs in her ears and even her fleece tops were flatteringly shaped to show off her long neck. Compared with the eight men on the base she was a miracle of personal grooming. She didn’t talk very much, but her tendency to raise one eyebrow whenever anyone else was speaking gave her an air of detachment and scepticism. There was a rota for everyone to take a day’s responsibility for cooking meals and cleaning the living areas, and on Laure’s day she had served boeuf bourguignonne garnished with chopped herbs and a tarte tatin. The men had wolfed it all down. Jochen van Meer had kissed his fingertips at her. The big Dutchman had also made a point of helping her with the washing-up afterwards while the others drew up their chairs to watch a DVD of The Matrix.
Now she took her windpants and red parka off the hook by the door tagged ‘Heber’ and began pulling them on. She said to Rooker, ‘Jochen is coming to the rookery as well. He will help with netting the birds. You can take two of us?’
‘Sure,’ Rooker answered. Laure was tiny. It would mean squeezing up a bit, but he didn’t think Jochen would mind that.
On cue, van Meer popped out of the opposite bunk-room door. The living area at Kandahar was very small. Someone was always crossing purposefully from bunk room to bathroom or from kitchen to front door. It was like one of those stage farces, Rook thought, but without the comedy.
Beside the front door was a whiteboard, with a list of surnames and a box beside each name. A tick in the box indicated that you were safely on the base. If you were going beyond the immediate environs you wrote down your destination and estimated time of return. It was Phil’s job, and also Rook’s as deputy safety officer, to monitor the status of the board. He ran his eye over it now, thumbed out the line that declared he was assisting on the Spaatz Glacier, scribbled ‘transport SW rookery’ instead and added his initials. He would be back, he estimated, within the hour.
At the bottom of the list there was a new name: ‘Peel’.
Laure and Jochen followed suit. Jochen picked up a radio from the shelf next to the whiteboard. ‘TBC’ on the board indicated that they would need return transport, time to be confirmed by radio link.
‘You’ll be back, Rooker, to make the pick-up from the ship?’ Richard reminded him. The two scientists, heavy with packs and boots and outer clothes, were clumping out of the door.
‘Barring accidents,’ Rook said flatly and followed them.
Niki whistled softly as he tipped potatoes into a pan.
Thick black clouds had massed right across the sky. The snow was now the same luminous pearl as Laure’s ear studs, and it looked almost as smooth. Ridges and hollows were robbed of their contours and the wind was whipping an opaque shroud off the soft surface, making Rook frown through his goggles and lean forward in concentration as he brought the skidoo round. Ducking their heads against the stinging air, Laure and Jochen piled their rucksacks into the rear pannier and Laure climbed on behind Rook. He felt her slither along the seat, and the light pressure of her hips and thighs closing against his as Jochen swung on the back. The skidoo settled under their weight. Rook checked over his shoulder. He twisted the throttle grip so they surged forward, and he felt Laure pressing closer still as her arms fastened round his waist. She dipped her head behind the shelter of his back to keep the wind out of her face, resting her cheek against his spine.
‘Hold tight, won’t you?’ The touch of warning sarcasm was wasted as the wind tore the words out of his mouth and hurled them away.
They had made the fifteen-minute journey to the Adélie penguin rookery several times before. Rook accelerated, with tiny snowflakes driving pinpricks into the narrow band of skin left exposed between his goggles and hood.
The Adélie colony consisted of more than a thousand breeding pairs. The males had come ashore first, hopping and sliding on their long journey from the outer margins of the ice where they had spent the winter, all of them heading for the exposed rocks where a nest of stones could be built. The females had followed them for the brief mating season, and their pairs of eggs would soon be deposited amongst the stones. Rook stopped the skidoo a hundred yards short of the rocks, and first Jochen and then Laure dismounted. Jochen shouldered his bag but Rook hoisted Laure’s and carried it for her. It was extremely heavy, he noted. She gave him a quick smile of gratitude from under the peak of her parka hood.
As they crested the rise, the noise of the rookery burst on them. It was a solid and constant chorus of guttural chirring. The rocks seethed with a black-and-white tide as late arrivals searched for last year’s mates or for new partners, and new nest builders tried to thieve stones from established pairs. There was a flurry of flippers and beaks everywhere, covering every inch of rock. The smell was as powerful as the noise. It was a piquant mixture of fish and oil and guano, and it permeated the clothes and hair and even the skin of anyone who ventured near. One night at the base, after a day’s work at the rookery, Laure had buried her face in her gloves and exclaimed ‘Parfum de pingouin’ with as much delight as if it were Chanel No. 5. She loved everything about penguins and Rook liked her for that. He could hardly distinguish what the other scientists specialised in. Especially Shoesmith. Shoesmith was the most bloodless man he had ever met. He sat over his papers as impassively as if he were carved out of wax.
Rook carried Laure’s pack to the point a few yards from the colony’s edge where a hump in the snow made a small vantage point. He was happy to help her, but he also liked seeing the penguins. There was a whole miniature universe of greed and ambition and devotion and determination crowded on this expanse of rock at the bottom