The Big Bang Symphony: A Novel of Antarctica

46

46 It didn’t take long for Rosie to lose her senses. She hadn’t seen a flag in a long time. They were planted to withstand storms, that was the whole point, but the wind today was pretty damn fierce. Maybe they had been uprooted like trees and blasted across the polar plateau. The picture of tangled sticks and red nylon flags flying through space pleased Rosie. Such letting go. Such giving in to the forces. But . . . maybe this route had never been flagged in the first place. It disturbed her that she couldn’t remember this simple fact, that when she tried to focus on remembering, her thoughts tossed about as freely as the flags might have. Eventually, she forgave the flags—whether they existed or not—for abandoning their posts. They were supposed to guide her, as were her thoughts. But she didn’t need them. She would just keep walking forward, following the tracks. Rosie checked her watch. She had been walking for over an hour. Or maybe it had been two hours. She should have gotten there a while ago. She glanced down to make sure she was on course and realized that she was walking across frozen waves of snow, undisturbed by boot tracks. Okay. The blowing snow had covered them. Forward, that was all. It wasn’t that cold today, well over zero. The storm insulated. A blanket. Snug. As long as she walked briskly, her body heat filling the jacket and hat and mittens and boots, she would be fine. She decided it would help if she faced the facts, admitted that she had been very stupid to come out here without a radio. Larry 284 hadn’t wanted them to check out from Pole Ops because then station officials would know they had gone out to the hut together. There would be a written record of the event. Or, as it turned out, the nonevent. Thinking of his no-show made her feel more tired and more cold. Alice said all animals mate. They also all die. Maybe biology was a bad guide for life. Ha. Biology was life. Still, a person might get more mileage staying focused on Mikala’s cosmology, the gorgeous swirling mass of energy, the aching beauty. Yeah, the aching beauty. In spite of Larry not coming, in spite of Rosie having to say no to Mikala, we all still swirled around in the cosmic soup. Looking for love and beauty. Rosie fished an energy bar out of her pocket and sucked on it as she walked, warming each bite to make it chewable. She needed water, too, but the only way to get that would be to put snow in her water bottle and melt it against her skin. That didn’t seem like a good idea. She was growing tired and getting colder. She needed to keep walking. She sang—in her imagination only, because opening her mouth would dehydrate and cool her body—every song she remembered from her father’s repertoire. Mostly the Dead, of course. But some Janis and Jimi. Even the Beatles and Dylan. Then when she moved on to nursery rhymes, she went ahead and freed her voice, opened her mouth and throat to the elements. She’d be fine, as long as she stayed on her feet, kept walking. But the cold. It was like knives. Rosie stopped and rolled up a pant leg to see if the knives had drawn blood. Getting the wind pant and fleece pant and long underwear pant all rolled up was difficult, but she managed to find some skin on her shin. She saw no blood. She carefully pushed all the layers back down over her leg. But as she walked, the sensation of being stabbed intensified. Someone was breaking her joints. She supposed she should return to the station. Oh, but that was what she was doing. Returning to the station. 285 She really needed to check her skin, though. Her clothes felt so binding and restrictive. She wanted, more than anything, to shed her down parka. She imagined tossing it into the wind, and then her purple fleece jacket, too, and watching the patches of tan and purple fly away, the colors so pretty against the tiny white snow- flakes. She took off a mitten but couldn’t get hold of the jacket zipper . Even her...