polar silence

On the 3rd of the Month of Mars (now Foon-Devvit):

Mayday and godspeed you to our site.  We arrived and set up camp on 9 November in all good health, not considering the six of us who threw themselves into the icy ocean rather than disembark the ship.  The remaining four and I watched the flat-mouthed sailors stare while the ship took them home.  They are godly men, sailors, and did not like the looks of we who had so turned away from Him.

The instruments are all in perfect working order.  There remains ample fuel for the heaters.  Our food store still overflows with rations, barely touched in the presence of unlimited, delectable penguin meat.  But we are running low on truth.

Dr. Arkani was the first to go through her supply, frivolously sharing tales of her childhood adventures in the Taurus mountains.  Her cheerful relation of the events of her past easily segued into meatier discussions of adolescence and early adulthood, which we devoured greedily.  Over the first few days of the expedition, she grew paler and more withdrawn as she started to realize she was running out of facts to be honest about.  And we, beady-eyed vultures that we are, drew them from her ever more strongly.

Within two weeks she was a husk.  Her hollow eyes failed to track our movements about the camp, and her strawberry hair grayed and frizzed in the terrible, empty cold.  It got to the point that she would open her mouth, and we would instinctively turn away.  Nothing good could come out of it.

We buried her a few days later, though it took Medjeye hours to find a spot that was permafrost and not just another ice sheet.  The backhoe put her under, and we pulled our greatcoats tighter, and we wondered how long we could sustain ourselves with the little morsels she'd shared at the end.  She had owned a dachshund once, and carried it when it fell ill.

It was Bresley who uncovered the green stone a few days later, when he went to check the gas in the backhoe.  There, in the middle of our camp, a stone had been placed.  He carried it to my desk, and we gathered around to examine it.  We found we could all read our own names in it, but no one else's.  It is still in my cabin.  I leave it to you.

The next month was a blur of sullen, scientific endeavour.  The war had produced so many new ways to sense things, and we actively engaged them all in seeking to understand the ice.  The cook, Ms. Maxwell, swore up and down that something was out there, watching us from the glacial floes.  She even came to believe it was waiting for us.  She was a madwoman, and I never saw anything.

Bresley was the next to crack.  Over breakfast one morning, he began to babble, and soon become like a spigot with the top knocked off.  Endless streams of memory flowed out of him, logorrhea in full swing.  I held him down, and Medjeye attempted to choke some sense into him, but Bresley continued to tell us about his Christmas memories even as he collapsed into unconsciousness.

I have never seen a partially asphyxiated man attempt to talk in his sleep.  Yet talk he did, and before long, we could not help but listen.  The day's work was forgotten as we sat a silent vigil in the mess tent, taking in his every word.  We grew warm, and removed our coats, as he grew colder.

He expired around dinner time, having spoken, in Medjeye's estimate, some two-hundred-thousand words about his life.  Not a single one of us was hungry, and we retired to our cabins with fond thoughts of wintry adventures in Dorset.

We buried him alongside Dr. Arkani.  We were sad to lose him, but we stood in the December sun and felt like we had come back to life.

The three of us discussed our plan.  It would not make sense to keep things bottled in.  One would break, as Bresley had done, and die.  Instead, on Ms. Maxwell's suggestion, we agreed to take turns sharing ourselves, one at a time, so all might be sustained.

It started out well.  I explained all about the years I spent working a trader between New Zealand and French Indochina.  Medjeye spoke, with a detached fury, of a wife he'd tried to forget, of the prison camps where he'd learned to make crepes.  Ms. Maxwell detailed her relationship with her high school history teacher, and how it had all gone wrong from there.

We were mistaken.  The strength and heat we'd felt as Bresley spilled his guts was nowhere to be found.  Instead, a sharp pain traced its way across each of our midsections whenever it was our turn to speak.  You give more of yourself than you receive, you know.  Remember that, for our sakes.

My eyes met Medjeye's, and we shook our heads, and shut our mouths.  But Ms. Maxwell could not stop talking.  We tried to shout her down, but she became hysterical, demanding that we allow her to go home.  She finally shut herself in her cabin, and we listened by the door until we were satisfied that she was quiet, but breathing.

The next morning was one of fierce hunger.  The mess stood empty, and I opened Ms. Maxwell's tent with some fear.  It was justified.  She had traced on the walls, in her own blood, a story about her history teacher, and the baby they might have had together.  She had told a story, but it was a supposition, and never true.  She sat at the foot of her bed, hugging her knees, sobbing to herself.

I bashed her skull open with a lantern, bashed until her damnable head full of lies was scattered all over the floor.  Medjeye came charging in, pistol in hand, but made no move to stop me when he saw what she had done.  Instead, he pocketed the gun and set to scrubbing the bloody deceptions from the wall.

She should have known better.  There was no room for stories here.

Our steady defense of the truth strengthened us, and Medjeye and I worked on in silence for the next several months, taking our careful measurements and staying out of each others' way.  Without Ms. Maxwell to do the cooking, we ate mostly raw penguin meat.  It smells awful, but tastes like savory, buttered steak.  Our teeth were stained red from the diet, and we stank of bird shit, but we have been satisfied.

This arrangement is over.  Last night, as I was reading my name in the green stone, Medjeye came upon me, a fiendish glint in his eye.  I stood, and made to give him my hand, but he spoke to me.  He spoke in his native tongue, and I am not a superstitious man, but his words frightened me.  There was truth in them, even if I couldn't understand, and the green stone gleamed.

His words were as angry as they were true, and when he was done with his tirade, white eyes and red teeth shining, I ran for it.  He grasped at me as I dashed past him, his clawlike grip tearing away my greatcoat, and I emerged into the frozen night with an awful gasp.  My lungs almost refused to function against the oppressive weight of that terrible cold.

I looked for some means of salvation, but there was none.  He always kept the only gun on his person.  There was no vehicle that could carry me safely among the floes, and without my coat, I would freeze within the hour.

I sprinted into the darkened mess tent, hid behind a heater, and waited for him to find me.

He never came.  The next morning, after a night spent uncomfortably wedged between cooking apparatus, I crept back to my cabin.  He stood there, frozen in place, in the pose he had adopted as he turned to snatch me.  His tongue was extended halfway out his mouth, and as I watched, it cracked and fell to the ground, shattering.

I knew, then.  It was not his words that had done him in.  He blamed me for our situation, and who could say he was wrong?  But his actions carried more truth than words ever could.  The green stone shone brightly in my quiet little cabin.  Perhaps it still does.

I have built a raft from tables and bags of flour.  I will take with me the little radio, the pistol, some rope, and enough food and water to last a few weeks.  I do not expect any to hear me, as we are far from the world.

I have dropped four such messages in bottles, in the hopes that one may be found, and someone may be warned off, before our site is rediscovered.  Beware the green stone.  Destroy it without speaking, before you read your name in it, before you learn the new ones, or the old.

Sincerely,
R. P. Mogger, Commander, Operation Tabarin
Captain, British Antarctic Survey
1944