At the Edge of Waking by Holly Phillips Read Free Book Online

through the ice-choked cracks in the widening passage. [The videographer sliding through too: how?] The host seeks out the highest places and at last comes up into the open air—ice still rising in towering walls but with nothing but the sky above. Gray sky, blue-white ice, a splash of red. What is this? Fluid, many-limbed, curious, the water-beings flow weightlessly toward the splash of scarlet [blood]. They taste [blood], absorb [blood], until each glassy creature is tinted with the merest thread of red.
    [And I close the file, my hands shaking as if with deadly cold, because these images are impossible. I’m awake, and my camera shows battery drain, and none of us, not even Andy, came prepared to dive in this deadly sea.]
    November 22:
    Miguel watched the impossible video and then walked out of the tent without a word. Andy sat staring at the blank screen, arms wrapped tight around her chest. And after a long silence, Del said calmly, “Nice effects.” I knew what he meant—that I was hoaxing them, or someone was hoaxing me—but I can’t buy it. Even if any of us had the will we don’t have the expertise. We’re explorers, not CG fucking animators. And who made us see what we saw in that inland crevasse? Who’s going to make the evidence of that disappear on the one hand, and then fake a school of aliens on the other?
    “Aliens,” Andy said, her face blank and her eyes still fixed on the screen. “Aliens? No. They belong here. They’re the ones that belong.”
    “Hey,” I said, not liking the deadness in her tone. “Andy.”
    “Screw this,” Del said, and he left too.
    Miguel’s not in camp. It took us far too long to realize it, but we spent most of the day apart, Andy in her hut, Del in ours, me in the big one brooding over my video files. We left the tents up for extra retreat/storage/work spaces and Miguel could have been in one of them—Andy assumed he was, since he wasn’t in the hut they share—but when Del finally pulled us together for a meal we couldn’t find him. And the wind is rising, howling through the satellite relay station’s struts and wires—wires that are growing white with ice. The wind has brought us a freezing fog that reeks of brine. If it were Del out there I could trust him to hunker down and wait for the visibility to clear, but does Miguel the sailor have that kind of knowledge? We all did the basic survival course at McMurdo, but the instructors knew as well as Del and I that there’s a world of difference between knowing the rules and living them. The instinct in bad weather is to seek shelter, and god knows it’s hard to trust to a reflective blanket thin enough to carry in your pocket. But it’s worse not to be able to trust your comrade to do the smart thing. We’re all angry at Miguel, even Andy. He’s put us all at risk. Because of course we have to go and find him.
    November 24:
    We’re back. McMurdo’s relay station is an ice sculpture and our sat phone, even with its own antenna, isn’t working. I don’t know what we’re going to do.
    We went after Miguel, the three of us roped up and carrying packs. Our best guess was that he’d gone back to the crevasse where we saw, or didn’t see, the buildings, structures, vehicles—whatever they were in the ice. So we followed the line of orange flags inland. Standing by one you could see the next, and barely discern the next after that, which put the visibility roughly at 6 meters. But with the icy fog blasting your face and your breath fogging up your goggles, the world contracts very quickly to within the reach of your arms. Walking point is hard, but it’s better than shuffling along at the end of the rope, fighting the temptation to put too much trust in a tiring leader. I was glad when Del let me up front after the first hour. Andy, who has the least experience with this kind of weather, stayed between us, roped to either end.
    A long hike in bad weather. The sun, already buried behind ugly clouds,