A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe) (6 page)

But when I turn to look again at Cole, he’s wearing that same life-is-my-oyster expression on his face he always has. Even the thought of banishment, it seems, can’t faze this guy. “Who needs a plan?” he says seriously. “I’ve got my two ladies.” He hitches up Olivia, kisses me on the cheek. “We’re a family now, Elvs. That’s all that matters. We don’t have anything else to worry about.”

That’s a beautiful sentiment and all, and I really wish I could wrap myself up in it like a blanket, and be as warm and content in the whole idea as Cole, but . . . well, that’s not
all
that matters, is it? Sorry, but
somebody
has to be the voice of reason here. “We’ve actually got a
lot
to worry about,” I tell him. “Like food.”

“Food?” Cole asks.

“Olivia hasn’t eaten all day. We have to find something for her soon, or—”

And that, of course, is the instant Olivia wakes up, wailing again.

“Shit,”
I snap. I pull her from Cole’s arms and do my best to calm her down, the way my dad did. But the girl for
serious
hates my singing.

“I can help,” Cole tells me, wrestling something out of his pocket. “I know a couple things about babies. You just got to distract them.” And he produces two long bright blue tubes of some sort of gel, which he proceeds to jiggle in Olivia’s face. “There you go, widdle Wivvie. You like that, don’t you?”

She
does
like it, actually. Olivia’s mesmerized by Cole’s distraction, having been brought down from Code Red to a mere gurgle in two seconds flat.

“Nice job,” I tell him, surprised. “You know, you really
have a knack for this whole parenting thi—” I stop short, as suddenly the words on the side of one of Cole’s tubes focus in my vision.
“Cole.”

“What?” he says as I snatch the tubes out of his hand. “What’d I do?”

I push the tubes in front of his eyes and read him the label.

“Infant Pablum Formula.”

Cole just shrugs. “Yeah,” he says. “Byron snuck them into my pocket after they cuffed me. He said they were for the baby. Good thing, too, huh? ’Cause they really came in handy.”

I roll my eyes as I rip off the top corner of the foil. “I’m thinking Byron probably meant for us to
feed
her with them,” I tell Cole as I lift the tube to Olivia’s lips, giving it a little squeeze. She suckles hungrily, her lips smacking with the effort. I let out a breath of relief, and it feels like I’ve been holding it all day.

“Huh,” Cole responds, watching. “You’re probably right. Although my way worked too.”

“God, you’re a doofus,” I tell him. But I can’t help but laugh. My baby is eating. It’s the best thing that’s happened in a very crappy day.

Cole kisses my cheek once more. “I love you, Elvs,” he tells me.

“I love you, too,” I say back. Because I can tell he needs me to.

And, you know, because it’s true.

“Look at us!” he shouts suddenly. “Officially making it happen. You and me?” His grin grows wider. “Hottest couple in Antarctica, hands down.”

“I don’t know,” I say, laughing. Man, that goofy grin of his is contagious. “I’ve heard they’ve got some pretty hot penguins down there.”

“We’ll be okay, Elvs,” Cole assures me as I squeeze the bottom of the gel tube to get as much food to my baby as possible. “They’re not going to hurt us, I promise. These are the good guys.”

“I’m not so sure about that anymore,” I reply.

I look up when he bumps his shoulder into mine affectionately. “Come on, babe,” he says, flashing those prize-winning pearly whites at me. “Trust me. Everything’s going to be just fine.”

Famous last words, I think, as Olivia—with timing worthy of a professional comedienne—yacks a little blue spit-up onto her daddy’s gray jumpsuit.

Yeah, I think. Me and the kid are going to get along just fine.

So I realize the following thought isn’t going to help my application for the MacArthur Genius Grant any, but it bears relaying anyway:

Antarctica is cold.

Like, balls cold.

The Almiri don’t seem to be feeling it, obvi. Alan and the rest of them have their thermals unzipped and their heads uncovered. Heck, their cheeks aren’t even rosy. Cole, now that he’s finally been uncuffed, has his thermal tied around his neck, and despite the fact that he’s wearing nothing more than a T-shirt underneath, his arms show no sign of goose-pimpling.

Meanwhile, I can’t hear myself think over the chattering of my own teeth. I’ve got my thermal zipped up to my chin and my hood pulled down tightly, but every centimeter of skin that’s exposed to the air burns with cold. I snuggle Olivia tightly against my chest. She’s well-protected in her little papoose,
but I think the shock of the cold has taken some of the fight out of her lungs. Silver linings, and all that.

Alan and his cohorts shuttle us off the train and down a flight of stairs toward the small depot that sits at the end of the mag-rail line that must serve as the staging area for the transfer of goods and prisoners headed to the Cape Crozier facility. It’s not much more than a station house and a long, low-lying extension that I’m assuming is a kennel for the dogs. The stairs are icy slick, and I have to catch myself more than once on my way down, navigating the rail with one hand and balancing Olivia with the other. No fewer than three times Ducky tries to offer me his hand, but I shake him off.

“I’m okay, I swear,” I say. “Just need to take it slow.”

I’m on the second-to-bottom step, though, when I lose it for real, and I know—in that way you do when the ground just slips out from under you completely—that no amount of scrambling is going to stop my fall. I let out a startled yelp, because I don’t have time for anything louder, but it’s too late. Me and my baby are ice pancake—

“Gotcha,” Cole says.

I look up at him, stunned. Sure enough, I’m lying, almost horizontally, in Cole’s arms. Olivia is fine too, curled up at my chest, none the wiser for my clumsiness.

“Uh, thanks,” I say.

Cole is grinning. Seeing as he was in front of me on the steps, he must have done some pretty epic ice-dancing moves to spin around quickly enough to catch me. I’m kind of sad I missed it.

“Doesn’t the hero get a kiss, at least?” Cole asks.

I grin back. “Of course.” I’m moving in for the kiss when I feel the tug at my side. Looking down, I see Ducky’s fingers gripped tight around the side of my thermal. Clearly he was doing his best to rescue me too, but all
he
got for his efforts was a handful of pocket lint. When he sees me looking at him, he clears his throat and tugs his hand away.

“You okay, dearheart?” Dad asks from the top of the steps.

My eyes dart from Ducky to my father. “Uh, yeah,” I say, although I’m still feeling a little dazed. “Just fine.” I straighten up and give Cole a quick peck, which obviously disappoints him.

There are three large sleds waiting for us at the staging area. One has space free for passengers, while the other two are already packed high with huge crates and sacks. Supplies for the prison, I suppose.

I pile onto the first sled, and Cole squeezes up close beside me. “She looks cold,” he says, peering down at Olivia. Which, okay, is not exactly trending news, but still, at least he’s working on the whole “observant” thing. Actually, Olivia still seems too shocked by the temperature to cry. She’s just rapid-baby-blinking in this way that’s, like, disconcerting, to say the least. “Here,” Cole continues, undoing the thermal from around his neck. “This might help.” He drapes the thermal around Olivia and over my shoulders, so that it warms both of us.

“Thanks,” I say, a little surprised. Here I thought Cole was going to jingle the jacket in her face to distract her from the chill. “That was good,” I tell him, smiling. I give him a teasing elbow to the side. “What’d you do, read a baby book or something?”

Cole is very clearly pleased with himself. But: “She’s still blinking all weird,” he says. I glance down. Olivia is, in fact, still “blinking all weird,” her cheeks scrunched up as her lids rapid-fire open-closed-open-closed. “What is that, like, Morse Code?” Cole continues. “You think she’s trying to tell us something?”

“Her hood,” Ducky says as he slides into the seat behind us. “Pull down her hood.”

I oblige and tug down on the little baby lid so that it comes down to her nose. Instantly Olivia seems calmer. She lets out a satisfied baby sigh and wraps herself more comfortably into my curves. Within seconds she is asleep.

I crane my neck to look at Ducky without disturbing the baby. “How did you . . . ?” I begin.

“The light off the snowdrifts,” he tells me. “Her developing eyes aren’t used to such brightness.” He crosses his arms over his chest and shrugs. “I read a book or something,” he tells us before staring off into the distance.

And that’s the last thing he says for the next two hours.

Before long we’re underway,
shushing
and
whooshing
on our high-tech puppy-powered toboggan hurtling toward our gloomy destination. The sled jostles slightly as we zoom across the ice, jingle-jangling in this way that’s fairly Christmas carol-y and would be lovely and romantic if not for the fact that, like, we’ve just been banished to imprisonment, perhaps for the rest of our lives, simply because my baby doesn’t have a dongle.

So, okay, yeah, our lives may be rapidly going to hell in a dog-pulled handbasket, but at least the view is spectacular. Honestly, I didn’t realize how beautiful ice could be before
I came to this place. The dogs pull us down the makeshift path—which is just a slightly more trodden patch of snow, marked with neon-painted bamboo poles—and it’s just snow, snow, and more snow, as far as the eye can see. A desert of snow, really. But it’s not mundane, not in the slightest. Oh no. There are ice cliffs, soaring fifty feet or more into the sky, ice formations sprinkled here and there that look like giant mushrooms poking up out of the ground, hills and valleys and, puckered beside the path, cracks in the ice. Every once in a while we pass a patch that’s broken free from the rest of the ice mass, and the ice floes don’t drift gently out to sea like I’d imagine, but rather crash into each other with the force of the waves below them.

Far in the distance, there is a loud
Crack-BOOM!
of thunder, followed by another.
Crack-BOOM!

The sky is crystal clear.

A shiver crawls up my spine, less from the pervasive chill and more from the eerie thought that that roar of thunder must’ve traveled for miles, and yet it sounds like it’s right on top of us. I guess it’s easy to make yourself heard when you’re surrounded by so much . . . nothing.

After an hour or so, Olivia takes up her wailing again. Full-throttle screaming that’s so loud, I’m startled when I look around and
don’t
see an avalanche forming. And even though I have a tiny bit of the blue gel left in my pocket, I’m afraid to use it up so soon. Who knows what food they’ll have for her at the prison? So I try singing again. (Alan, at the front of the sled, starts spasming like my voice is giving him a stroke, but he can just shove it.)

“I love you, a bushel and a peck.

A bushel and a peck, and a hug around the neck.

A hug around the neck, and . . .”

Olivia is having none of it. She’s screeching louder than ever. From the seat behind me, Dad leans his head over my shoulder. “Hold her closer,” he instructs. “Closer. So she can hear your heartbeat. Good. Now try again.”

I do as told, but Olivia won’t stop howling. I’m growing more and more shaken. Any second
I’m
going to be the one crying. I break the song off midlyric. “What am I doing wrong?” I ask over the rush of the wind. My voice is a quiver of nerves. “Why won’t she stop?”

Dad reaches out a hand, but it’s not Olivia’s head he pats soothingly—it’s mine. “Your baby feels what you’re feeling,” he tells me. “You’re anxious right now, worried, so she is too. The only way to calm her down is to be utterly calm yourself.”

“How am I supposed to be calm when she’s
screaming
at me?” I call back to him.

Even over the wind, I can hear my dad chuckle. “Welcome to parenthood,” he tells me. And then, slightly more helpfully: “You’ve got to find your own inner peace, dearheart, and then give it to her. Channel it to her in your voice, your muscles, everything.”

“Wouldn’t it just be easier to get a vaccine or something?” I mutter. But I try again.

“I love you, a bushel and a peck.

A bushel and a peck, and a hug around the neck.”

And okay, no, I definitely
don’t
manage to channel my inner peace, but after a good twenty minutes of my terrible singing, Olivia finally tones the screaming down to a quiet sob. I think she just ran of steam, but hey, I’ll take it.

“Where are all the penguins?” Cole asks suddenly, leaning so far over the sled that I might worry for his safety, if not for the fact that he is, you know, a rapidly-healing super alien.

“Emperor penguins don’t surface until they mate,” Dad informs us. Apparently space elevators aren’t the only thing he boned up on in Useless Factoid School. “And they only mate in the dead of winter. Until then, they spend much of their time at sea.”

“But it
is
the winter,” Cole replies. “It’s like”—he does the math, which based on the look on his face, is fairly painful—“December sixth. Unless we were drugged without realizing.” He scrunches his nose. “Could we have been held for six whole months?”

“We’re at the South Pole,” I inform him, and goodness, all that singing must have really tuckered me out, because there is not even a trace of snarkiness in my voice. I bob Olivia at my chest and let out a sigh of pure exhaustion. “The Antarctic winter starts in, like, June.”

“Wait,” Cole says, like his mind has been
totally blown
. “So this is
summer
? But there’s
snow
in it.”