My Last Continent (4 page)

Outside, I glance around for Dennis, but he's not in camp. I make coffee, washing Thom's cup for him to use. I drink my own coffee without waiting for him; it's the only thing to warm me this morning, with him gone and the sun so well hidden.

I sip slowly, steam rising from my cup, and take in the moonscape around me: the edgy rocks, the mirrored water, ice sculptures rising above the pack ice—I could be on another planet. Yet for the first time in years, I feel as if I've reconnected with the world in some way, as if I am not as lost as I've believed all this time.

I hear the sound of a distant motor and stand up. Then it stops. I listen, hearing agitated voices—it must be Thom, coming from Palmer, having engine trouble. He is still outside the bay, out of sight, so I wait, rinsing my coffee mug and straightening up. When the engine starts up again, I turn back toward the bay. A few minutes later, Thom comes up from the beach with one of the electricians at Palmer, a young guy named Andy. I wave them over.

They walk hesitantly, and when they get closer, I recognize the look on Thom's face, and I know, with an icy certainty, where Dennis is, even before Thom opens his mouth.

“We found a body, Deb,” he says. “In the bay.” He exchanges a glance with Andy. “We just pulled him in.”

I stare at their questioning faces. “He was here all night,” I say. “I thought he just went for a walk, or—” I stop. Then I start toward the bay.

Thom steps in front of me. He holds both of my arms. “There's no need to do this,” he says.

But I have to see for myself. I pull away and run to the beach. The body lies across the rocks. I recognize Thom's sweater, stretched across Dennis's large frame.

I walk over to him; I want to take his pulse, to feel his heartbeat. But then I see his face, a bluish white, frozen in an expression I don't recognize, and I can't go any closer.

I feel Thom come up behind me. “It's him,” I say. “I gave him your sweater.”

He puts an arm around my shoulder. “What do you think happened?” he asks, but he knows as well as I do. There is no current here, no way to be swept off this beach and pulled out to sea. The Southern Ocean is not violent here, but it is merciless nonetheless.

ANTARCTICA IS NOT
a country; it is governed by an international treaty whose rules apply almost solely to the environment. There are no police here, no firefighters, no medical examiners. We have to do everything ourselves, and I shrug Thom off when he tries to absolve me from our duties. I help them lift Dennis into the Zodiac, the weight of his body entirely different now. I keep a hand on his chest as we back out of the bay and speed away, as if he might suddenly try to sit up. When we arrive at Palmer, I finally give in, leaving him to the care of others, who will pack his body for the long journey home.

They offer me a hot shower and a meal. As Andy walks me
down the hall toward the dormitory, he tries in vain to find something to say. I'm silent, not helping him. Eventually he updates me on the injured man. “He's going to be okay,” he tells me. “But you know what's strange? He doesn't remember anything about the trip. He knows his wife, knows who the president is, how to add two and two—but he doesn't know how he got here, or why he even came to Antarctica. Pretty spooky, huh?”

He won't remember the woman he was fooling around with,
I think.
She will remember him, but for him, she's already gone.

BACK AT CAMP,
I watch for the gentoos who lost their chick, but they do not return. Their nest remains abandoned, and other penguins steal their rocks.

Thom makes a few attempts to ask about Dennis, and when I meet his questions with silence, he stops asking. We both know what lies ahead—an investigation, paperwork, corporate lawyers, questions from the family—and I don't want to go through it any more than I need to.

Six days later, Thom and I break camp and ready ourselves for the weeklong journey back. Once we are on the boat, the distractions are plenty, and the hours and days fly past in seminars and lectures. The next thing I know, we are a day away from the Drake Passage.

I wander around the ship, walking the passageways Dennis walked, sitting where he must have sat, standing where he may have stood. I'm with a new group of passengers now, none of whom would have crossed his path. A sleety rain be
gins to fall, and I go out to the uppermost deck, the small one reserved for crew. As we float through a labyrinth of icebergs, I play with Dennis's wedding ring, which he'd left on the floor of my tent. I wear it on my thumb, as I did when I'd first found it, because that's where it fits.

It's probably because of this vantage point that I see her—an emperor penguin in the distance, standing alone atop an enormous tabular iceberg. It's uncommon to see an emperor this far north, and a good field guide would announce the sighting on the
PA
—the passengers aren't likely to get another chance to see an emperor.

But I don't move. I watch her as she preens her feathers, as she senses the sounds and vibrations of our ship and raises her head—an elegant, gentle pirouette in our direction. It feels as though she's looking directly at me, and in that moment we are mirror images of each other, lone figures above the vastness of all this sea and ice. She's so far from her breeding grounds that for a moment I wonder whether she's lost, but when she looks away and turns back to her feathers, I sense instead that she is feeling leisurely, safe, enjoying a rare moment of peace before returning home.

ONE WEEK BEFORE SHIPWRECK

The Drake Passage
(59°39'S, 61°56'W)

T
hom and I stand together on the rear deck, watching the
Australis
moving in the distance like a time-lapse image of a drifting iceberg: slow, massive, inevitable. In one of the articles I'd read about the ship, a spokesman for the parent cruise company had bragged about how the
Australis
would cruise to every last inch of the planet, that no place was off-limits to a ship this invincible. It reminded me of what people once said about the
Titanic
.

The last disaster down here happened a few years ago, when a small tourist ship sank fourteen hours after colliding with an iceberg. That ship was lucky enough to be within an hour of another boat, and small enough that all her passengers could be rescued—but of course thousands of gallons of fuel were spilled, coating the penguins, destroying their waterproof feathers.

I tighten my grip on the railing. “It just drives me insane to see that ship down here. Maybe Glenn can nail them on some
IAATO
violation or something.”

“I doubt it,” Thom says.

I sigh. “What good is an association that's supposed to protect this place from cruise ships if membership is voluntary?”

Thom doesn't answer; this conundrum frustrates us all. Back in the early nineties, when the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators was founded, only six thousand travelers a year visited Antarctica—now it's closer to forty thousand. That alone makes our instincts to protect the continent seem futile—not to mention the fact that there's no such thing as an Antarctic coast guard.

And nothing yet has prevented the cruise-bys: the ships that come down just so their passengers can say they've been. I'd complained about it to Keller the last time I saw him, which wasn't long after I'd read yet another story about the fancy new
Australis
. He'd tried to make the point that our
Cormorant
passengers are no different—they are simply able to pay more for the luxury of a small expedition with scientists and Antarctic experts on board, and all passengers sign liability waivers no matter what ship they're on. We'd argued about it, but in a way, of course, he's right. We're all at risk down here because every day we venture into the unknown.

Thom pushes away from the railing. “I'll go up to the bridge,” he says. “See what I can find out.”

I nod. A nausea spreads through me that is far worse than seasickness, far worse than the guilt of taking our own hundred tourists to shore. Down here, ships look after one another—but how do you look after a ship that's more than ten times the size of your own?

Thom doesn't return, and after a while I assume he's been detained by a tourist or given a task. I step inside, to
the lounge, where small groups of passengers gather around tables drinking coffee; a few sit alone in chairs, reading or gazing out the view windows. My roommate, Amy, is setting up the afternoon slide show. As a full-time employee of the tour company, Amy travels from Antarctica to Alaska, from Mexico to the Galápagos, and she's often with the
Cormorant
during the entire Antarctic season, late November through early February. This is her fifth year in Antarctica, and we always bunk together when we can.

“What're you showing later?” I ask.

“Just some footage from the
ROV
,” she says.

The ship's remotely operated vehicle reaches depths of up to a thousand feet, far deeper than Amy herself can dive—and her video of the ocean floor is alive with colorful and intricate corals, ghostly icefish, pale sea sponges, graceful brittle stars.

“Any footage of the yeti crab yet?” The existence of a blind, hairy Antarctic yeti crab is a new discovery, first seen in the Southern Ocean just a few years ago, and I'm always teasing Amy because it drives her crazy that she hasn't captured it on film yet. Last season, Keller helped me Photoshop images of the elusive crab into places on board the
Cormorant
—on a table in the dining room, next to a glass of beer in the lounge—and throughout the voyage we'd e-mail them to Amy, writing,
Did you see the yeti crab?

“Piss off,” Amy says cheerfully as she taps at her laptop's keyboard. She leans over to attach the laptop to the projector, then accidentally tangles the cord around her arm and pulls the projector off the table. She catches it just before it hits the floor.

Amy is small, with a soft, pale beauty, as if she herself had emerged from the unblemished depths of the sea, and when
she puts on a dry suit and scuba gear and descends into the water, she disappears below the surface seamlessly, as if she belongs there. When she's not under the water or on board a cruise vessel, she writes picture books for kids.

A blast of cold air comes through the lounge, and I turn to see Kate and Richard Archer walk in. I let my eyes linger on them, curious. Kate's hair is windblown, curling into ringlets from the moist air outside, and her skin is flushed with cold. She stands close to Richard; he's more than a head taller, with wheat-colored hair and a thin build. As they walk toward a table, I realize from his slower gait that he's at least ten years older than she is. After they sit down, he looks at Kate, then reaches out and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. Her round face breaks into a smile as the curl bounces loose, back into her face, and then she leans forward and gives him a kiss.

“So where's Keller?”

I turn back to Amy and shrug.

“I thought he'd be here,” she says.

“So did I.”

“So what happened?”

“Wish I knew.”

Amy is looking over my shoulder. “Well, there's Glenn,” she says. “Ask him.”

Glenn is talking to the bartender, and I walk over, standing a bit behind him until they finish.

“Hey, Glenn,” I say as he turns around. “Do you have a second?”

Glenn looks at me, waiting. He has a smooth, unblemished face partially hidden by a perfectly trimmed goatee. His physical youthfulness is belied by a consistently somber
expression and dark, serious eyes. I try to remember the last time I saw him smile, and I can't.

“I wanted to ask you about Keller.”

“What about him?”

“Why isn't he on board?”

“He didn't tell you?”

I feel my face redden. “If I knew, I wouldn't be asking you.”

“Deb, I'm not sure I should be talking about this. It's technically a human resources issue.”

“Really?” I say. “You're going to hide behind human resources?”

Glenn sighs. “You remember that last voyage,” he says. “It shouldn't come as any surprise that Keller is no longer welcome on this ship.”

I shouldn't be surprised—but I am. While I knew Keller had pushed Glenn's limits, neither of them had given me any indication that Keller wouldn't be here when the season began.

“Why didn't you talk to me?” I say. “I would have vouched for him. Kept an eye on him.”

“This isn't child care, Deb. And clearly he didn't want you to know.” I sense that Glenn is censoring a snide remark. “He came to see me in Seattle. He lobbied hard to come back, I'll give him that.”

I'd nearly forgotten about Keller's quick trip from Eugene to Seattle. About a job, he'd said. But he'd never mentioned Glenn.

“I did consider it,” Glenn continues, “for the sake of the
APP
and the fact that he's a good worker. But I can't take any more drama.”

“He was only telling the truth.”

“People come on this trip to be entertained,” Glenn says, “not accused.”

“They also come to be educated. What about awareness? Isn't that part of it?”

“You know as well as I do that you can't raise awareness if you don't have any passengers,” Glenn says. “And those who do come here—well, they deserve better.”

“It was that one guy who started it,” I say. “I remember—”

“That passenger,” Glenn interrupts, “demanded a full refund, or he threatened to sue. I can't afford to employ Keller. Simple as that.”

I try to process what this means.

“So I take it he didn't tell you where he is now?” Glenn says.

I look at him, waiting.

“He's on the
Australis
.”

“What? That's impossible.”

“He asked me for a reference,” Glenn says. “Wisely, it was for a position with minimal passenger interaction. I just spoke to the HR manager last week.”

“But he would never—” I stop, the nausea I'd felt earlier suddenly surging back.

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine.”

Glenn looks as though he's about to say something more, but the nausea overtakes me, and I push past him to the nearest lavatory. I lean over the toilet, and even as I tell myself it's just seasickness, maybe a minor stomach bug, I can't help but remember the last time I'd felt this way, years ago, after Dennis—the caustic feeling of having been left out, left behind.