A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe) (16 page)

Dad just blinks. I wonder if his brain’s short-circuiting from the idea of setting out on a voyage with such a half-assed plan. But he says nothing. Personally, I’m feeling pretty overmatched in general out here. Even on the
Echidna
, when all hell was breaking loose, I felt like I could get a handle on things. ’Cause even with all the crazy around me, it was my world and my stuff. You need something rewired? I’m your girl. But down here a hammer counts as high-tech. It’s very primal, and your biggest concerns aren’t some malfunctioning gravity generators or misbehaving fitness equipment, it’s Mother Nature. That bitch is a whole lot rougher, and she doesn’t come with an override switch.

Suddenly we hear a whine from Pontius, who leaves his doggy dish to climb the sled and nuzzle into Oates’s armpit.

“What is it, boy? What do you see?”

I squint off into the distance, where Pontius and now the other dogs are sniffing and barking, and my stomach tightens into a knot.

There are dozens of them, far off in the distance, little black specks.

“Jin’Kai!” I scream, jumping to my feet.

“Elvie?” my dad says, setting a hand on my arm. “Are you okay?”

“Over there!” I shout. I point in the distance, so they’ll all see them too. I blink. I’m not hallucinating. They are certainly
there—the Jin’Kai, making their way toward us on foot . . .

Or rather,
waddling
toward us.

“Uh, Elvs?” Cole says. “Those are penguins.”

And hey, sure enough, they are. I will my heartbeat to slow, assured that we will most likely
not
be murdered by penguins.

Although Pontius seems less sure about that. He keeps growling and whimpering as the funny-looking birds waddle ever closer.

Curious about the only change in scenery in the past several hours, Oates, Dad, Bernard, Zee, Cole, and I all hop down from the sled to greet our visitors. They sure are silly-looking. Smaller than the Emperor penguins I’ve seen at the zoo, and with pointy, nubby beaks, white rings around their tiny eyes, and short little wings. “Adélie penguins,” Oates informs us. “Also,” he warns, although not quite quickly enough, “they bite.”

Cole sticks his injured finger in his mouth.

I have to say, the penguins are a welcome distraction. They dance around us, curious, and then run away all at once, sliding on their penguin bellies—only to turn around and head back seconds later for another look. I hear a giggle and look up to see my dad and Zee, laughing as one of the bolder penguins tries to yank a protein gel pack from my dad’s pocket. Zee manages to snatch it away from the little guy before he figures out how to rip it open. “Not for you,” she tells him sternly. “You’ll just have to find a fish somewhere, like all the rest.”

Watching them share this moment, I can almost imagine what it might have been like to grow up with two parents. Almost.

My dad laughs again as he takes back the gel pack. “I would’ve thought you’d let him have it,” he tells Zee with a grin. She cocks her head to the side, clearly not sure what he’s getting at, but Dad doesn’t seem to notice her confusion. “Are these the same type of penguins you fed when you were here all those years ago?” he asks. “What did you say they were called, Captain?” he calls over. “Adélie?”

“Adélie,” Oates confirms.

Zee is frowning now. “Oh, Harry,” she says, as though she’s afraid to disappoint him. “I’ve never been to Antarctica.”

Dad’s mouth drops open. “But . . .” He looks at me, but I’m just as bewildered as he is. Dad told me the story of my mother’s globe-trekking ways only recently, and they’re stories I know he held on to for a long time. To suddenly have them disputed by the woman who told them in the first place . . .

“How else was I supposed to explain that book of maps? Did you really want me to tell you that it was from my previous life as a half-alien hybrid resistance fighter?”

And looking at my dad, frozen into silence, I wonder if in fact this is
exactly
what it would be like to grow up with two parents.

I’m not sure if Cole is with it enough to understand that he’s breaking the awkwardness, but somehow he does anyway. “Where are the polar bears?” he asks loudly. And even though he’s being doof-tacular, my heart could not be more bursting with love for him, if only for giving my dad a second to recoup.

“No polar bears here,” Oates replies, giving Pontius a soothing scratch behind his ears. The husky’s clearly still on edge with all the birds around. The other dogs are up on the
sleds, growling down at the penguins like elephants whimpering at mice in an old cartoon. “Wrong Pole.”

“Oh, right,” Cole replies.

“You know,” Bernard says, waddling around with the penguins like he’s one of them. I’m pretty sure that at any moment he’s going to start squawking. “Fifty years ago we would have been swimming instead of standing right now.”

I wrinkle my nose. “Huh?”

“Climate change, man,” Bernard replies.

“He’s referring to the Summers That Weren’t,” Dad explains, and I nod quickly to let him know that he does
not
need to fill me in (again) on one of his all-time favorite history lessons.

“What’s the Summers That Weren’t?” Cole asks.

I groan, faking my own heart attack as Dad starts in on the story (and the general state of our current educational system, and blah blah blah . . .).

Basically, about sixty years ago, the environment was in real rough shape, thanks to the pollution given off by pre-fusion-tech fossil fuels, among other things. The seasons started to fluctuate, really strangely, and climate change in general was getting to be a real pain in the ass. Then, starting in 2031, the winter actually lasted for four years. Four straight years with nothing but cold. It snowed everywhere—from Philadelphia to Sydney—at the same time. Frozen pipes became the bane of the beach bums in Santa Monica. I think the main reason my dad likes this particular bit of history so much is that a few weeks after he was born, the temperature in Philadelphia climbed above 10 degrees Celsius for the first time in four
years, and within a month there were actually blossoms on the trees. All over the world the climate began to resume its regular cycles. According to most scientists, this “mini Ice Age” was finally halted because of the Universal Energy Reform Act and the overhaul of tech thanks to breakthroughs in fusion power, but Dad likes to refer to himself as the “Sun Baby.”

“Wait,” Cole says, slowly taking in all this new information. “So we’re, like, walking on ice right now? Like,
just
ice, and then water? Is that safe?”

The guy has a point. Suddenly I’m more panicked than Pontius with the penguins.

“It’s at least two meters thick,” Zee replies dismissively, climbing back onto the sled, “and hard as shale rock. Not to mention”—she reaches for one of the huskies, who growls at her—“that we don’t have much of a choice. So let’s get going, shall we?”

I roll my eyes as I gather my things. “I suppose we shall,” I mutter before hoisting myself up onto the sled. “You okay, Dad?” I ask, leaning over the seat back to resecure the supplies. Tuckered out from his history lecture, he’s standing beside our sled quietly, watching my mom and Bernard across the ice.

“Just thinking,” Dad says with a quick, not-so-convincing smile.

“Thinking how ludicrous it would be to leave for a thirteen-day walking tour of the frozen tundra without a plan?” I say with a smile.

Dad smiles back, slowly wrenching his gaze from the other sled. “Maybe I’ve been putting too much stock in plans,” he tells me.

Which, coming from the King of Planning, is perhaps the most disheartening thing I’ve ever heard.

•  •  •

My father seems to want to be alone with his thoughts, so I climb up to the front seat, snuggled next to Cole for warmth as he mushes our dogs, following the path laid out by Oates. Honestly, he’s not too bad at it. My Coley may just have a future in dogsledding.

I guess all this wind and sun is really getting to me, because before I know it, I’m waking up from a nap I didn’t realize I’d taken. Cole’s left arm is wrapped around me tightly and my head is on his shoulder. We are still mushing.

I may or may not have drooled a little.

“How long was I out?” I ask Cole, straightening up to relieve my achy back. He loosens his grip around my waist to give me some wiggle room but doesn’t reposition his arm.

“About an hour, probably. I figured I’d let you sleep, since you’ve been getting up so much with O-Co lately.”

I blink, surprised. “That was really sweet, Cole, thanks.” He’s smiling off into the distance, a happy, thoughtful smile I’ve never seen before. It looks nice on him. “What are you thinking about?” I ask as I snuggle into him a little closer.

He shakes his head. “It’s silly.”

“Tell me.”

He looks down at me, and I set my chin on his shoulder so that I’m looking up into those gorgeous blue-green-blue eyes, and that constellation of freckles on his left cheek that I’ve always been so smitten with. “It’s just . . . ,” he begins. “When I was a kid, I knew exactly what kind of car I wanted. A red
Apple Caracal. I was, like, five,” he says defensively when I start to laugh. I bite my cheeks and nod, urging him to go on. “And, anyway, I had it all figured out—I mean, what color the car would be, and what I’d look like when I drove it, and even where everyone in my family would sit. And while you were sleeping, I . . .” He scrunches up his face, like he knows what he’s about to say is ridiculously goofy. Which, of course, only makes me want to hear it more. “I realized,” he finishes, gesturing to the sled around him, “that I pretty much have exactly what I dreamed up when I was five.”

“You dreamed that your Caracal would be pulled by dogs, and that my dad would be snoring in the backseat?”

Cole laughs.
“No,”
he says. “I dreamed that I’d be at the wheel, with a pretty lady at my side, and a
baby
snoring in the backseat. Driving to my mother’s for Christmas dinner.” He shakes the bittersweet memory from his head. “I told you it was silly. I was five.”

“I think it’s sweet.”

“You do?”

I nod. “I used to think about stuff like that too,” I tell him.

“Oh yeah?”

I settle my head back on his shoulder. “Yep. Only in
mine
it was a Mark VI, and I was heading to my job at NASA. And, obviously, I was the one driving.”

Cole grins. “That’s my Elvs,” he says. “I guess I’m fine with sitting in the passenger seat sometimes.”

“Cole?” I whisper, pulling away slightly.

“Mmm?”

And I’m just about to tell him, when I happen to glance
over his shoulder to the other sled . . . where Zee is glaring daggers at us. For some reason that stops me before I get started.

“Nothing,” I whisper. I lean my head back down on his shoulder. And I decide not to tell him. It’s not important anyway.

Only that . . . when I dreamed of driving my car around as a five-year-old, there was no guy in the passenger seat.

•  •  •

Oates declares that we should stop for the evening right around the time my large intestine feels like it’s ready to eat itself, but since I don’t have a watch and the sun is wonky round these parts, I have absolutely no idea what time it is. Eight o’clock, maybe? It’s certainly time for dinner.

We pitch our tent with relative ease, although I cringe every time Oates hammers one of the grounding spike thin-gees into the ice. I know the ice is hellz thick, but we’re still going to be sleeping
on top of nothing but a layer of flipping frozen water
. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have nightmares about drowning in a glass of iced tea.

Dinner is another scrumptious affair. This time I try spreading a little protein gel on top of my hardtack to give it a bit of flavor. The experiment is a failure. Meanwhile, Oates has a pot filled with water boiling over the heating pod to make his precious tea.

“Are you sure that’s safe?” I ask for, like, the umpteenth time. “We’re not going to melt through or anything, are we?” Oates looks up at me and, very seriously, gives me a shrug. I can feel a pit forming in my stomach, and then after giving me an appropriate amount of time to panic, he gives me a
smile. And I can’t help but chuckle in nervous relief.

“I’d just like to say, sir,” Dad says, chewing on a piece of pemmican, “that it is a great honor to be out adventuring with the great explorer Captain Lawrence Titus Oates.”

Oates’s smile fades, and he focuses again on the water for his tea.

“Were you, like, famous?” I ask, curious. Dad is a big buff on explorers and expeditions, like Columbus to the New World, Magellan circumnavigating the globe, Sergio Altair traveling through the volcanoes of Tharsis on Mars, and whatnot. I think he just got a kick out of reading all the manifests and journals detailing the explorers’ intricate plans to not die while doing something that, at the time, seemed absolutely crazy.

“Famous?” Dad says, as if I’ve just said the most insulting thing ever. “Why, Captain Oates is legendary.”

“Legends are tales told to make sense of the senseless,” Oates says. “And rarely do they hold much in the way of value or truth.”

“Word,” Bernard agrees.

I roll my eyes. Now my curiosity is piqued about this man—or Almiri, whatever—who keeps showing new layers itty bit by itty bit. But his face has grown dark, and I’m pretty sure he’s done talking on the subject. “Well, whoever you are,” I tell him, “I’m glad to have you on our side.”

“That’s
it
.” Zee slaps her can of pemmican down on the heating pod, knocking it from its snow perch.

“Careful!” Oates hollers, grabbing the pod at its base. “This is a vital piece of equipment, and if it breaks—”

“I’ve had enough of this Kumbaya shit,” Zee screeches. “Elvan.” She turns to me. “This man is not ‘on your side.’ Nor is this twit.” She waves a dismissive hand at Cole.

It’s my turn to slap down my food. “Oh, but
you’re
on my side?” I snap back.

“More than you know, Elvan.” Zee shakes her head at me sadly. “I’ve been trying to help you since the day you were born.”