The Big Bang Symphony: A Novel of Antarctica

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313 54 Alice returned to the Pivot Peak camp to finish out the last days of the season. As she flew up the valleys, she looked down on the rock striations, the beautiful layers, the embedded complexity . Rocks are the ultimate timepieces, earth’s most accurate clock. If one needed time to be something literal, as Alice did, then rocks were the answer. Antarctic rocks trumped everything. Even human life. All life, for that matter. The rocks had been here a long, long time, resting in perfect inert peace, before any creatures came along with their lust and longing. As the helo descended into the great basin below Pivot Peak, Alice looked out the window at the three yellow tents, the wooden crates of samples stacked in the center of camp, the lone portable toilet. Bits of human desperation scattered like debris on earth’s crust. Soon she’d be swinging a pick and stabbing a shovel into that frozen soil. Alice was surprised to realize that some part of her relished the return to hard labor, bitter cold, the slab bed. Rasmussen was right about that part: there was always the work. When the helicopter touched down, he was standing in front of the kitchen tent, in almost the exact same spot as he’d been when she left, as if he’d not moved these two days. The barren brilliance suited Rasmussen perfectly. He got her bags out of the cages himself and carried them to her tent. They went right to work that day and worked late into the evening. At dinner, Robert was sullen. No more jokes and pleas for conversation from him. He looked glazed, his golden curls limp, as if the landscape of rock and ice were fossilizing him. After wolfing down two plates of food, almost angrily, he said, “Bed,” and pushed out of the kitchen tent. Rasmussen insisted that Alice stay for dessert. He assembled the ingredients for the same chocolate pudding he’d made her first night in the field camp. He whipped the powdered chocolate and powdered milk into cold water and set the pan on the Coleman burner. This time he didn’t read as he whisked the pudding, but neither did he talk. Alice, who felt especially cold tonight, even wearing her fleece hat and down parka in the tent, watched him cook. He wore only a T-shirt and jeans, but his silence wrapped around him like a blanket. It obviously comforted him. To speak would be like yanking the blanket away. The pudding thickened and he piled far too much in a clean plastic bowl for her. She cradled the bowl in two hands and looked at the heavy mass. Finally, she said, “Rosie’s okay.” He stopped scooping pudding into his mouth and looked up, surprised, as if he’d completely forgotten about Rosie. But then he said, “Good.” “I can’t eat this.” Alice set the bowl on the canvas cot and stood. Rasmussen stood, too. He took hold of her shoulders and said, “Stay.” Alice averted her eyes, shook her head. “You’re a crackerjack geologist.” She said, “I know.” “Don’t throw it away. Look.” Rasmussen took her jaw in his hand. “You’re young. A lot of silly things might seem important to you. But what matters most is your work.” Again, she said, “I know.” She was afraid to look at him. His leanness in the navy blue T-shirt and dusty denims. The rock steady face with ageless eyes and mysterious smile lines. What if she never looked away again? He said, “I’ve never known you to make rash choices.” 314 Then he put his arms around her and crushed her to him. She might sleep there, with her face pressed against his chest, the mineral smell of his skin. He a cliff and she a cliff dweller. Holed up in the rocky cave of him. Forever. “I can’t,” she said and pushed against his chest. She ran back to her sleep tent and crawled in. There she dug the Dalai Lama’s vase out of her duffel and held it in her lap. Slowly she unwrapped the tissue until she got to a hard plastic, well-sealed box. Jennifer said that the vase contained finely ground precious stones which had been mixed with seawater, formed into small balls, and then dried. They had...