The Curiosity by Stephen Kiernan Read Free Book Online Page A

and the other a cascade of stars.
    It’s true with ice, too. A century ago a man in Vermont named Bentley invented a method of photographing snowflakes and enlarging the images. That’s where the no-two-alike idea originated. I’ve seen his photos, in a book my high school physics teacher lent me years ago. There is beauty beyond doubt, one amazing hexagon after another. But that’s just one kind of interesting ice. There’s the groan of slabs grinding one another in springtime river melts. There are filigrees like ferns on the bathroom window on frosty evenings after your shower. There are icicles, glaciers, jinglers in your cocktail. There is hard-ice, the secret ace of water’s countless forms.
    Of course it’s important to know what H2O is, what its uses may be, how it sustains life, what pollution or neglect can cause. There is a whole lexicon on the physics of ocean waves, the potential to generate electricity using tides, the nutrient depletion of soil erosion, the natural irrigation of rain. But my science, if I ran the world, would never lose sight of the other part of the equation. The beauty.
    Squad Three is ready to dive. I stand with them on deck. Dawn came hours ago, as it does this far north in August. I’m in my black scuba suit, insulation layers beneath, I’ve poured warm water down the neck opening to make my body heat last longer. The dive team is all work, underwater saws and drills strapped to the rusty, red platform, lights and regulators, checking their masks to make certain no bit of skin, however small, is exposed. They are as fidgety as horses before a race.
    Billings paces on deck in his parka. Normally after an all-nighter he’d sleep through extraction, but not this time.
    â€œDon’t play any games with calving,” he shouts over the arctic wind. “You do not want to deal with fragments.”
    Communicating this way reminds me of college parties, bellowing over the stereo. I nod in answer. “Don’t worry about me.”
    â€œAre you taking small samples, too?”
    Half listening as I review the crew’s preparations, I shake my head.
    â€œWon’t Carthage shit himself, though?” Billings leans in. “He could do decades of work with the other veins in this berg.”
    My regulator hisses, I tap the mouthpiece silent. “I can’t risk losing a unique find just to collect trinkets.”
    â€œThere are a good fifty studies in this iceberg, all priceless. If not for this seal or whatever, you’d be ecstatic over those trinkets.”
    I tug my gloves on snug, snapping the fabric at my wrists. “Are you saying we let this go so we can collect the little stuff?”
    â€œBloody hell, Kate, listen to me.”
    I turn to him then, unaware that he was growing angry. “Go ahead.”
    â€œYou know perfectly well how much I have carried that twit over the years, how many times I dove in freezing water to extract samples he took credit for, how many bloody papers I’m listed as third author even though I did all the work.”
    It is the longest speech I have ever heard on deck. “We all know Carthage. What’s your point?”
    â€œThe seal will be his. He’ll hog it all. But that could leave the other work for me. If Carthage wakes a large animal, he won’t care about shrimp anymore. Maybe I could claim my own bit of terrain.”
    I look down into my face mask for an answer. In any lab on land, Billings would be in charge instead of me. I am in his debt, too, for helping me throughout this voyage. Even this reach of ocean was his idea, when I was inclined to chart a course west. But if I screw up the primary extraction, Carthage will destroy not just me but the career of every person on the dive team.
    â€œHey, campers,” Gerber squawks in my earpiece. “What’s the holdup out there?”
    â€œNothing,” I say. “We’re fine.” Then I face