Story 4
From the science fiction novel Antarctica, by Kim Stanley Robinson.

blue sky
white snow

The South Pole was cold. At first when Wade climbed out of the Herc and saw the white glare and the dark-blue sky, it was familiar enough to make him think it was going to be like McMurdo or the Dry Valleys. Then the cold shot up his nostrils into his head and his snot froze, with a tickling sensation that was only a little painful. After that there were icicles inside his nose. This seemed to stabilize the nasal situation, and after that his nose stayed relatively warm - warm, with icicles inside it! - and the sensation of cold shifted elsewhere, to the various joints in his clothing: between boots and trousers, and at his wrists neck and eyes. Cold!

By this time he had rounded the nose of the Herc, and was walking across the smashed snow of the runway. He passed a little glass-walled booth topped by a sign: 'South Pole Pax Terminal.'

Beyond it stood the new Pole Station, gleaming in the sun like a new spaceliner stranded on the snow. Actually like three spaceliners, all standing on thick blue pylons, and linked by blue passage tubes. At the end of the leftmost module a cylindrical blue control tower stood overlooking the scene. Farther across the glittering white plain, past heaped mounds of snow and a line of yellow bulldozers, he could see just the tops of a little sunken village of antique Jamesways. Farther still, a pale-blue geodesic dome stuck out of snow that appeared to be in the process of burying it entirely; the old station, apparently.

A man approached Wade and introduced himself: Keri Hull, NSF rep for the Pole. He led Wade to the spaceliner and up metal grid stairs like those Wade had seen at ski resorts. From here the new station looked like a segmented flying wing, aerodynamic in the polar winds. They went through the usual meat-locker doors, inset into the curved blue wall.

Keri led Wade down a hall to a bright warm galley. They sat down at a long table with a few other people; one of them got him a mug of hot chocolate, and he held the mug in both hands gratefully. The inside of his nose began to defrost. The room was full of people eating and taking. It was steamy.

'First a few words about the situation.' Keri said. 'We're supposed to do this for everyone. We're at nine thousand three hundred feet here, and because of the earth's spin the atmosphere is thinner at the poles than at the equator, so our nine three is the equivalent of about ten thousand five hundred feet at the equator. It's a hard ten thousand, too, because of the cold and the dryness. So stay hydrated and don't run around too much in the first few days of your stay. And if you have a persistent headache or loss of appetite, see the station doctor and she'll fix you up. Officially we recommend avoiding caffeine and alcohol, but, you know - moderation in all things.' He grinned and sipped from a giant coffee mug with his name painted on it. 'Just pay attention to your body signals and behave accordingly. Okay? Good. Now - how can we help you down here at ninety degrees south, Mr Norton?'

'I'd like to have a look at the whole station, with the idea of going through the various, um, incidents that have been reported, kind of step by step.'

Keri frowned. 'You mean going into the old station?'

'Yes?'

'Oh. That's against regulations, I'm afraid.'

'Of course. But it seems that it will be necessary, given that some of the, the removals, have been happening there.'

Keri raised his eyebrows. 'Necessary?'

'I'm down here to investigate the incidents,' Wade said firmly.

The other man's look made it clear he thought this was a waste of time. 'It's potentially dangerous,' he warned. 'The snow accumulation is crushing down the dome.'

'But the archway nest to the dome is still in use, as I understand it?'

'Yes.'

'So the approach is safe.'

'Yes, but-'

'So we could go down the archway, and just have a quick pop in to see under the old dome, and hope that it won't collapse at that very moment.'

Keri didn't appreciate that way of putting it. 'You've talked to Sylvia about this?'

Wade nodded.

'All right. We'll take you in tomorrow, okay? We'll have to get some gear and people together to do it safely.'

'Fine.'

So he had a day to kill. Keri appeared to have finished with his orientation, and for some reason seemed miffed at him. A young woman named Lydia took him down the hall and showed him what would be his room - like a nice hotel room, greatly miniaturized - and gave him his room key. He was free to do what he wanted.

But it quickly became clear that the South Pole was not a place where there was much to do. He went back outside to snap some photos of the station. There were not many places he was allowed to walk, as the snowy plain surrounding the station to all horizons was forbidden ground in three of four quadrants: the dark sector for astronomy, the quiet sector for seismography, and the clean sector for incoming air from the prevailing wind, which almost always came from that particular north. He was left with the area between the station and the runway, where a short barber pole with a mirror ball on its top stood inside a curve of flags. This was the ceremonial South Pole, there for photo purposes. He walked over to the mirror ball and looked at the bulbous reflection of his hooded face. In the tiny reflected image of his mirrored sunglasses he could make out two little mirror ball-topped poles, marked by even tinier reflections of himself. In infinite regress of person and place. He tried to take a photo, but nothing happened; it seemed his camera battery had frozen.

Reproduced with kind permission from Kim Stanley Robinson and HarperCollins

Kim Stanley Robinson was born in 1952 and, after travelling and working around the world, has now settled in his beloved California. He is widely regarded as the finest science fiction writer working today, noted as much for the verisimilitude of his characters as the meticulously researched hard science basis of his work. He has won just about every major sf award there is to win and is the author of the massively successful and lavishly praised Mars series.