Chapter 1 Terra Australis
Terra Australis
The descent into Antarctica takes Laurel by surprise. There are no windows on the plane, so she can’t see the ice rise to meet her.
Across from Laurel, a Black woman crosses her arms over her stomach, her short Afro behind a headband.
A white man dozes into his scarf; little more than his brown curls are visible.
He opens his eyes just before they touch down.
During spring and summer—which take place, at the bottom of the world, from October to February—the Ross Sea is still eight feet thick, strong enough to serve as a runway.
Passengers shoulder into their jackets and begin to deplane: the old-timers sure-footed, the newcomers waddling in their government-issued boots.
Cold sweeps over them in waves. The sky reminds Laurel less of Earth than of some gaseous planet, streams of indigo and violet and shocking pink, the setting sun layered between them.
The mountain ranges glint behind a haze of blowing snow.
A giant red vehicle trundles toward them; “IVAN” THE TERRA BUS is painted on one side.
Ivan’s driver, a cheerful man in a balaclava, tells them that the bus weighs seventy thousand pounds.
Laurel takes a seat beside the woman who sat across from her on the plane.
After fifteen minutes, the driver announces that they’ve crossed the transition point where ice gives way to solid rock, and Laurel’s hands unclench.
Soon she sees the drab mid-century buildings that make up McMurdo Station.
The woman sitting next to Laurel snorts. “I didn’t think Antarctica would look like February in Wisconsin.”
Laurel smiles. “Crusty slush? Check. Giant Caterpillar machines?”
“Check.” The woman pushes her sunglasses on top of her head and holds out a hand. “Charlie Morrison, from Milwaukee.”
“Laurel Salter, from Madison.”
“We could have carpooled to O’Hare.”
“Should have. I’d have been a lot less nervous,” says Laurel. “Is it your first time, too?”
Charlie nods. She looks to be near Laurel’s age, thirty-six. Her eyes are perceptive, and her broad cheekbones taper to a delicate chin.
They walk together as the experts lead the newbies to the dorms. Laurel doesn’t ask what brought Charlie to McMurdo, and Charlie doesn’t ask her.
Beyond the dirt roads of the base, the landscape is cratered, white, and endless.
Pale yellow ribbons weave between clouds; mist swirls with the body of dust.
Laurel’s tendency is to observe. When foraging for fungi, she looks for aberration: fleshy folds against wood, roundness amid angles.
Here, something interrupts the line of the horizon.
A small dome of light appears to sit over the ocean.
It reminds Laurel of a bubble cut in two: faintly pink and translucent, with an iridescent skin.
The sight pulls her. It looks not of this world. Even from miles away, it seems to make a sound: a crackle, low but generative, constant.
But when she blinks, it disappears.
“Did you see that?” Laurel asks, stopping. In its absence, the sky looks innocuous, like a theater after a play.
“See what?” asks Charlie.
Laurel shakes her head. “I haven’t slept well in forty-eight hours. I think I’m losing my mind.”
“You wouldn’t be the only one. Have you heard what they say around here? ‘When you shake the world,’ ” Charlie says, “ ‘the oddballs fall to the bottom.’ ”
It was Laurel’s mother, Clare, who told her about the job in Antarctica. In July, Laurel was describing her trouble at work—how she moved robotically through tasks; how even nature’s miracles were stripped, for her, of awe—when Clare put a hand on her wrist.
“Do you know,” she said, as if this were related, “where Julie Javurek is living at the moment?”
“Jules?” asked Laurel. They sat in folding chairs in Laurel’s backyard. She hadn’t spoken to Jules Javurek, her childhood neighbor, in fifteen years. “Where?”
“Guess,” said Clare.
Laurel had always thought of her mother as ruthlessly practical.
During Laurel’s childhood, Clare had not allowed herself to sit until the entire kitchen had been cleaned, or the last apple tree pruned.
In older age, though, she had adopted a playfulness that aggravated Laurel, if only because it had come after—and therefore seemed related to—the death of Pete Salter, Laurel’s father.
“I don’t know,” said Laurel. “Chicago?”
“Chicago!” Clare laughed. “No, a little further south. Antarctica.”
Laurel had brought an ice pack outside, to counter the heat, and now she put it behind her neck. “Antarctica? What’s she doing there?”
“Washing dishes, apparently,” said Clare. “Before that, she was bartending in Buenos Aires. I suppose she’s some kind of professional traveler.”
That night, unable to sleep, Laurel Googled “dishwasher Antarctica.” The correct term, she learned, was kitchen steward.
Stewards at McMurdo Station were tasked with cooking and cleaning for the base’s eclectic group of residents: scientists, construction workers, engineers, janitors, firefighters, administrators, employees at the world’s southernmost post office.
On shift six days per week, she would have little time to think.
It was work she could do, might even enjoy doing—manual work, meditative in its way, and useful.
Researchers on base studied solar physics and ocean systems, climate change and geology.
She could support these efforts, even if she wasn’t working as a scientist herself.
At three in the morning, she put the computer away. Crazy, she told herself.
But the next day, Laurel thought of Antarctica again.
The landscape was nothing like the one she knew: she would trade Wisconsin’s pastures and fertile prairie for volcanic rock and ice.
There would be almost none of the fungi she studied, which associated with plant roots.
Children weren’t allowed on base. Even the light—six months of sun followed by six months of darkness—would fool her, make her think she was living someone else’s life.
She found an old email address for Jules.
One month later, Jules replied with the name of a recruiter to contact in the States.
The tone of the email was friendly, but Jules asked no questions.
Maybe she knew what had happened, and this was a gesture of kindness—a mercy, not making Laurel explain.
Or maybe Jules was surrounded by the people Clare had described, these professional travelers.
Maybe she wasn’t surprised to hear from someone who wanted to escape.
Laurel told no one she was applying. It was a lark, a double life she was only fantasizing about—until she received a call from the recruiter.
He was intrigued by her application, a scientist submitting to be a dishwasher.
Had she applied for the right position? Laurel shut the door to her office.
She babbled about the value of a break. He asked if she had experience living remotely, or communally.
The conversation stalled. She imagined the recruiter tossing her résumé in favor of twenty-five-year-olds with restaurant experience, young people whose applications made sense.
“The truth is,” she said, “I need to change my life.”
Two days later, she received an email with an alternate contract.
There was no guarantee of a job—those came with primary contracts—but Laurel should get physically qualified as soon as possible.
There was a medical check, a dental check, shots.
The recruiter wrote again: if Laurel completed additional work, she could be cleared for the winter season, too, when the population shrank and healthcare was scarce.
She had an EKG and a gallbladder ultrasound.
Her dentist removed two wisdom teeth. The next day—drifting on oxycodone, her mouth full of gauze—her cell phone rang.
A steward had failed the physical qualification.
Laurel could fly out in October, when the Antarctic summer began.
It was surprisingly easy to prepare. She applied for an extended leave of absence from the university; she had no spouse, no dependents.
She had already begun the process of selling the house, which was too big for her alone.
In late September, the Realtor called with an offer, young parents moving to town for professorships.
Negotiations went quickly, and Laurel found herself packing the rest of her belongings, as well as the two suitcases she was allowed to take to Antarctica.
She sent three emails: one to her mother; the second to Maisie O’Brien, her best friend; and the third to Gloria Albert, the graduate school advisor who had become her mentor.
The next morning, she found a package on her front stoop, wrapped in penguin-patterned paper.
On top was a note in Gloria’s scrawl: For some reason, I feel that you’re meant to have this.
It belonged to my mother, Olga, and kept her warm on the opposite pole.
Laurel uncovered a fur hat, Soviet in style, with ear flaps that could be fastened at the crown or the chin. The golden fur was impossibly soft, and the leather felt like butter. As she packed it in her duffel, her mother called twice.
“Laurel?” Clare said, in the breathless tone she used when talking about Walter. “I just wanted to tell you that Walter will be joining us for dinner.”
Clare had met Walter three months earlier on Our Time, a dating website for seniors.
Since then, she had talked of little else.
Almost everything reminded her of him: elevator music (“Walter works for the orchestra”), the nonfiction book on Laurel’s couch (“Walter prefers novels”), even a parked Mini Cooper (“Walter”—over six feet—“would never fit”).
Laurel felt as though her mother were progressing in reverse—as though she’d become a teenager after seventy years on earth.
Now she wedged the phone between her ear and shoulder. “But this is the last time we’ll see each other.”