Good Morning, Midnight

NINE

AUGUSTINE WALKED DOWN to the hangar alone. Iris stayed behind, packing. The hike was difficult for him, but that felt right somehow, like penance for his many sins. At the hangar, everything was as they’d left it. The bay doors were open, the snow piling up inside in wind-carved slopes, the constellation of ratchet heads still strewn across the oil-stained concrete. The two snowmobiles were uncovered, and the flashlight he had carried with him on their last journey out here lay exactly where he’d left it. He tried to start the snowmobile he’d gotten running the last time, but during the commotion he had left the key in the On position and now the battery was dead. Augie tried the other snowmobile, and after some coaxing he got it going. He fed it a little gas every time the engine slowed and eventually it hummed peacefully, its sleek gray body vibrating and a fog of white smoke rising off the tailpipe, no longer needing his ministrations.

Augie slid onto the seat and took stock of the controls. He was accustomed to being a passenger on this particular machine, but after a few moments he decided he’d figured out the main features. As a young man he’d ridden motorcycles—how hard could a snowmobile be? No double yellow line, no traffic, nothing to run into, just forward movement across the vast, empty tundra. He backed it up out of the hangar without much trouble and retrieved some of the full fuel canisters while it idled, lashing the containers to the luggage rack with a bungee cord. He thought of the pink-stained grave just a few yards away, marring the pristine runway. He had avoided looking in that direction, had kept his gaze trained on the hangar, but now, as he prepared to ride away, he found he couldn’t leave without at least casting a glance toward the fallen staircase and the mound of bloody snow.

The unlocked wheel of the staircase still spun lazily in the wind, while a thin layer of powder on top of the hard-packed tundra moved across the ground in intricate wind-driven spirals. Swinging his leg over the seat of the snowmobile, Augie turned away from the grave and felt the vibrations of the vehicle enter his bloodstream, shaking his organs as he lay on the gas and sped away from the hangar, back up the mountain.

Iris pushed open the control room door and came bounding down the stairs to meet him halfway. “Are we riding?” she asked, out of breath. It was a reaction he’d never gotten from her before, this kind of delight. Her entire face seemed to change, to become more childish and less feral. He remembered that she was only a little girl, and that recollection kindled emotions he didn’t quite recognize. Tenderness, perhaps, but something else as well, something darker—fear. Not of her, but for her. Was the journey safe? Had he thought it through? Should he be more careful with this tiny spark of life that had somehow ended up in his care? He wondered what her father would do in his place, and the thought was so outlandish, so incomprehensible, that he pushed aside the fear and the tenderness and occupied his mind with other things.

In the control room, they went over the packing. There was so much they needed to bring, so much they had to leave behind, so little they knew about the weather station on the lake. There was no way of knowing what they would find there. They made a pile of necessities: the tent and the subzero sleeping bags, food and water, extra fuel, one very warm set of clothing each, helmets and goggles, a camp stove, a map, a compass, and two flashlights. Everything else was deemed luxury items that they would take only if there was room: Iris’s books, spare clothes, extra batteries, and a second fuel canister. They hauled the luggage down to the snowmobile and strapped it all on. With a passenger and all this gear, the load was heavy, but Augie was shrinking in his old age and Iris had been pocket-sized from the start. The vehicle was rugged, built for steep, roadless terrain and substantial weight. It might not handle perfectly, but it would take them where they needed to go.

They shut the observatory down, leaving just enough heat on to keep the pipes from freezing and the telescope from cracking. As Augie adjusted the furnace, he wondered whom he was leaving it on for—perhaps them, if they had to turn back, or perhaps no one if Lake Hazen proved to be a more hospitable home. The furnace would run out of fuel eventually, of course. The cold would creep into the building, the pipes would freeze, the giant telescope lens would crack. Frost would creep across the windows, and eventually it would consume their cozy control room sanctuary, just as it had the rest of the outpost. Soon enough, winter would live here for good.

Iris wrapped her little arms around Augie’s waist and they rode down toward the tundra, veering east before the hangar came into view. Iris tightened her grip, clinging to him as snow-covered rocks jolted them this way and that. Her helmet was a few sizes too big and he had insisted that she wear three hats to pad it out. The goggles were also too large—the single wide, yellow eye engulfing most of her face—but she wore them with a safety pin to tighten the elastic band around her tiny head. Once they made it down to level ground, the ride became smoother, and Iris relaxed her grip. The journey was already under way—no point second-guessing things now. After four or five hours riding into the white stare of the distance, Augustine let the snowmobile roll to a stop.

They climbed off to have a drink of water and eat a few crackers. Iris’s face was a vigorous red, imprinted with the white outline of her goggles, wisps of dark hair escaping her many hats and curling wildly around her cheeks. She seemed thrilled by the adventure so far. Augustine looked back the way they had come, but the outline of the observatory was no longer visible. The air around them was opaque, shimmering with a curtain of snow that rippled in time with the wind. He had been on edge since they left, counting the miles as they passed, resisting the urge to make a U-turn and speed back toward the safe haven they’d left behind. He clung to the faint hope that lay ahead, that they were doing the right thing. The empty stillness around them felt ominous.

After they finished eating, Iris put her goggles back on, and then her hats, one by one. Augustine crumpled the plastic wrapper the crackers had come in and tucked it into the pocket of his parka as Iris climbed back onto the snowmobile. He pressed the starter button, but nothing happened. He pressed it again. Nothing. His heart began to beat faster and he inhaled a long, slow, icy breath. Stay calm, he thought. It was working five minutes ago. He tried again, then fiddled with the key, the throttle, back to the starter button. He pulled his goggles down to rest around his neck, staring at the silent snowmobile in disbelief. He got off and took a step back, as if he might see the problem better from there, but all he saw was a machine he didn’t understand. A sour panic rose in the back of his throat. They were stranded, miles from the observatory, even more miles from the weather station. There was nothing in between—no oasis, no shelter, nothing but empty, endless tundra. They would probably freeze to death if they tried to walk. Iris was shifting on the pillion seat of the snowmobile, waiting to see what he would do next. Augustine collapsed down into the snow—not because he decided to, but because his legs would no longer hold him. He’d been so foolish to leave the one sanctuary on this forsaken island. He leaned his head back against the flank of the snowmobile and stared up into the white swirl of sky. Already the wind was erasing their tracks. This was it: the quiet, cold death he had only just decided was unacceptable. Iris’s tiny foot tickled his shoulder, and without thinking he reached up and took her boot in his mittened hand, holding it against his cheek.

“I’m sorry,” he said, but the wind snatched his words away before he could be sure he’d spoken them. He closed his eyes and felt the sting of the snow-heavy wind against his exposed skin. Behind his eyelids he watched prickles of light sparking across darkness, and when he opened his eyes the intense white of the snow momentarily blinded him. It would be a quiet end—they could either trudge onward, trudge back, or stay here beside the motionless snowmobile. In every direction Augustine saw the same conclusion. The same outcome. He imagined Iris’s eyes sewn shut with frost, a bruised blue seeping into her cheeks. It was his fault. He had brought them here, taken them away from the safety of the observatory into the white, menacing wilderness.

He’d been staring at the fuel valve tucked beside the right footwell for some time before he realized what he was looking at: a switch turned halfway between Off and On. Augustine got on his knees and brought his face up to the valve. The lettering was unmistakable—perhaps Iris had kicked it when she climbed down? He twisted it all the way to On and slowly got to his feet. He said a silent plea as he reached for the power switch. The snowmobile roared to life and relief flooded his body. His hands shook as he placed them on the handlebars, and he tightened his grip to ease the tremor. He felt the menace of the landscape more keenly than ever, but he guided the snowmobile forward despite it—into the blank distance, covering finite miles disguised as infinity beneath a low, indifferent sun.

When the light began to fade they stopped and unpacked the tent for the night. Augie had been on the lookout for a boulder, a small tree, even a tall snowdrift to block the wind and make their camp feel less exposed, but there was nothing in any direction, so he pitched the tent beside the snowmobile. The tent was tepee-shaped, a cone of orange in the middle of a white vista. The fluorescence of the fabric brought out the bluish tones in the snow. As they settled in for the night, Iris took off her helmet and two of the three hats, keeping the emerald-green cap with the pompom and her yellow goggles on throughout dinner. There was nothing to make a fire with. They huddled together inside the tent while the wind howled around them, pulling the orange fabric taut against the aluminum poles. The tent pegs squeaked in their shallow holes. Augustine hoped that they would hold through the night, that the tent wouldn’t go skittering across the smooth, slippery expanse of the tundra as they slept. He had pounded the pegs as deep into the packed snow as the can of baked beans he’d been using as a hammer had allowed. They heated those same beans over the little kerosene stove, the tent flap open for ventilation. Darkness fell.

Iris hummed along to the sound of the wind against the tent. There was no need for words, nothing to say. Augustine chewed and listened to the desolate moan of the wind, which suddenly seemed ominous, and he wondered again if they should turn back. If he had made a mistake taking Iris away from the known safety of the observatory. After dinner, they crawled out the flap of the tent to look up at the stars. The sky was full of them, but on that night the constellations were only a homely backdrop for the rippling river of the aurora borealis that flowed through the air, green and purple and blue streams of dancing light. The two of them walked a little way from the glow of the electric lantern that burned in their tent, transfixed by the aurora, ready to follow one of the shimmering paths of light—to climb right up into the sky. After a while, the lights dimmed and slipped away. Augie turned, not sure how long they’d been watching, and saw the illuminated orange shell of the tent and one last thread of green glowing above it, gradually fading from view.

They slept soundly that night, their breath rising from their nostrils as steam, their thickly bundled bodies curling toward each other, unconsciously searching for warmth as the wind continued to howl and sing around them.

IN THE MORNING they ate another can of beans, this time one with pieces of pork mixed in, then took down the tent. They wiped the tundra clean of their night and rode east once more. The day spread out before them, pale and infinite. It seemed as if they weren’t moving across the distance at all, but riding on an invisible treadmill. Late in the day they saw an Arctic hare bouncing across the tundra, jumping vigorously on its hind legs like a pogo stick, more interested in height than distance. When they made camp again that night they saw another hare, or perhaps the same one, bouncing nearby. Augie pointed it out as Iris slurped a mouthful of creamed corn, heated on the kerosene stove.

“It’s so they can see farther,” she said. He was speechless for a minute. She spoke so rarely that it always took him a moment to respond. Her knowledge of the Arctic wildlife would be extensive, he realized, and thought back to the field guide she’d reread so many times she probably had the whole thing memorized. He felt a small twinge of regret that he had never bothered to learn a single thing about this environment he’d spent the past few years living in—not on purpose, anyway. The child beside him knew about the wolves, the musk oxen, the hares. Augustine knew only about the distant stars, billions of miles away. He’d been moving from place to place his entire life and had never bothered to learn anything about the cultures or wildlife or geography that he encountered, the things right in front of him. They seemed passing, trivial. His gaze had always been far-flung. He’d accumulated local knowledge only by accident. While his colleagues explored the regions of their various research posts, hiking in the woods or touring the cities, Augustine only delved deeper into the skies, reading every book, every article that crossed his path, and spending seventy-hour weeks in the observatory, trying to catch a glimpse of thirteen billion years ago, scarcely aware of the moment he was living in.

There had been other camping trips, other nights spent stargazing, but whether it was because of the liquor that fueled him in those days or his preoccupation with the sky above him rather than the moment itself, Augustine barely remembered those trips. He had always craned his neck up to the heavens, had always looked away from so many incredible vistas on Earth. It was only the data he gathered, only the celestial events he recorded that had made an impression on his memory. When he considered how long he had been alive, it seemed remarkable how little he had experienced.

There was another aurora that night, pure green, and it lasted for a long time. He and Iris sat in the mouth of the tent with their lantern turned off until the last ripples faded from the sky. When they finally crawled back into their sleeping bags, his mind was ablaze. The look of wonder on Iris’s face had been almost as incredible as the aurora itself. As he drifted off to sleep, he forgot about how far they’d ridden and how far they had to go. He thought only of the sound of Iris’s breath next to him, the moan of the wind, the tingling cold in his toes and fingers, and the sharp, unfamiliar sensation of being alive, aware, content.

THERE WAS ANOTHER full day of travel, one more night out on the tundra, and then, on the morning of the fourth day, they came to the edge of the mountains. The terrain had grown progressively rugged around them, Paleozoic rock erupting from the snow cover in dark, jagged shards, and by mid-morning it was difficult to find a path for the snowmobile to traverse. On the other side of the mountain range, Lake Hazen would be stretched out beneath the craggy peaks. Having never made the journey before, Augustine was surprised and dismayed by the terrain. Was there a mountain pass? An easier route he had missed? The way forward was treacherous, but they forged on, the sharp studs biting into the snow and ice as they made their way up the mountain. They made cautious progress on the snowmobile for hours, and when they found a straightaway, the ground evening out into a gentle slope, Augie let out a sigh of relief and allowed the machine to gather momentum, whipping past the scenery as if they were back on the smooth, empty tundra. The skis sliced through powder, sending up a crest of white in front of them, like the froth of a wave. Both the relief and the momentum were short-lived. When the terrain grew rough once more, Augustine couldn’t see beyond the snow in the air. It wasn’t long before a hidden boulder caught them by surprise and threw both passengers from the saddle of the snowmobile. As he hurtled through the air, over the handlebars, Augustine wondered if his body could take the landing, wondered if they should have turned back, wondered if he would ever get up again. The impact knocked the wind out of him, but as he waited to recover his breath he moved all his limbs one by one and was relieved to find nothing amiss. Turning his head, he saw that Iris was nearby, already on her feet and inspecting the snow angel she’d made where she fell. As he sat up and took stock of his surroundings, he realized that the snowmobile was totaled. The machine was on its side and one of the skis had shattered. He got to his feet slowly and went to see if anything could be done, but the engine only croaked when he tipped the snowmobile over and tried to start it again. There will be no return trip. Where had Augie heard that before? He struggled to remember. Gathering what gear they could carry and leaving the rest, Iris and Augie continued on, stumbling over exposed rock and sheer ice with heavy loads and sore limbs.

They hiked for hours. The terrain steepened once more, and by the time they reached one of the lower peaks of the range, they were exhausted and the day was ending. But there, at the top, they caught their first view of the lake below them—an enormous sheet of ice. Beneath a setting sun, they could see the weather station down below, at the foot of the mountain, just a few huts and a tall antenna array, but an encouraging sight nonetheless. Their new home—no turning back now. They camped for the last time, and in the morning they began their descent. Hours later, when they finally stumbled across the plateau to the camp, the light was just beginning to fade.

The camp wasn’t much. A low half-cylinder-shaped tent of green canvas next to two larger white tents of a similar shape, each with a little stovepipe chimney, nestled by the lake on a flat, snow-covered terrace. To the right of the huts rose a garden of tall, slender antennae and a little radio shelter. The shores of the lake were still snowbound, but the rocky earth was beginning to poke through. In the middle of the lake was a small island, and even from where he stood, Augie could see a few Arctic hares leaping high into the air, staring back inquisitively over the frozen lake. The ice creaked and chimed like frozen bells scraping against each other. It was a new and welcoming sound to replace the ravaging howl of wind sweeping across the tundra. The frozen gusts they had lived with for so long were absent at the weather station. As Augustine surveyed the tiny camp beside the vast lake, a warm, gentle breeze ruffled his frozen beard. Spring was on its way. The thaw had begun.