Ice Reich (9 page)

The men took a bearing toward Africa and flew off in that direction, the blue bowl they navigated through featureless and hazy. Hart felt the sheer exhilaration of being in the air, cut free from the earth and sea.

"Do you want to fly her?" Kauffman inquired.

Hart nodded happily and took the controls. The seaplane was not nimble but steady, a high-powered workhorse that should perform well in the cold Antarctic air. He began flying in a broad loop back toward the ship. The vessel was lost for a while in the dazzle of the sun and then became visible again, drawing a dark line on a platter of silver. It looked so slow and stately from this height! Then, toward the horizon, there was a puff of mist. Kauffman pointed excitedly. "Whales!"

Hart brought the plane down to three hundred feet and roared over the leviathans, awed by the spectacle. The beasts were huge, barnacled and battered like jetty rocks. They broke the surface, exhaled with a powerful sigh, and then slid underwater to become racing blue shadows. When he flew over again at only fifty feet the whales sounded, tails flashing in the sunlight as they headed for the abyss. Hart realized he'd been holding his breath. "Magnificent!"

The German pilot held his thumb up in approval.

"I'm not sure I'm happy to be helping hunt them," the American added.

Kauffman shrugged. "God put them there for us."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because he gave us the skill to kill them. Harden yourself, Hart. Those are dumb animals. It's no different than a slaughterhouse."

"It feels different, seeing them in the wild like that."

"Bah. They're beasts. Glorious creatures, but beasts nonetheless."

"No, they're more than that. Greta Heinz should be here. She'd tell you."

Kauffman grinned. "Then let her. Have Heinrich radio the ship. We'll pick her up and chase them. By the time we turn the plane around they should be back to the surface. We can spot their blow for miles."

Hart surrendered control of the plane again to Kauffman for the landing. The German pilot betrayed no anxiety, only intense concentration. He let the pontoons clip the top of one swell, then another, and finally settled on the third like a great seabird. The plane sledded down its gentle slope and came to a halt in the wave hollow. Then they were bobbing on the ocean. The
Schwabenland
came up to create a lee pocket and the cargo crane rotated out. Kauffman scrambled out on top of the wing to catch the hook and attach it to the engine housing. The Dornier was lifted, twisting a bit like a dripping ornament, and then rose swiftly up, over, the crewmen grabbing the wet, slippery pontoons... and they were back aboard.

Greta came running up as soon as they dropped from the plane's hatch. "Yes, the whales, I must see them!" She grabbed Kauffman's arm. "Reinhard, please take me up!"

Drexler had trailed her. "What's all the excitement about?" he asked warily. Kauffman was already issuing orders to the crewmen to ready the plane again.

"We spotted a pod of whales," Hart explained. "I thought Greta might like to see them. It's really an extraordinary sight."

"Jürgen, you must come too," she said. "To observe them from the air is an amazing opportunity."

The German looked doubtfully at the still-dripping aircraft. "I think I'll see them well enough from the ship."

"The
Schwabenland
will never catch them," Kauffman warned. "They're too far."

Drexler looked distinctly uncomfortable. "I think it would be too crowded..."

"We have room..."

"Please come, Jürgen. It will be so much fun." He smiled weakly at her pleading. "Come, this may be a once-in-a-life-time chance."

Hart suddenly realized the man didn't relish being launched into the air. He was afraid of flying.

"Yes, come on up, Jürgen!" the American joined, unable to resist. "We could dive right on them and get a real closeup view."

Drexler's mouth set in a thin line. Hart's voice had decided him. "All right." Roughly grabbing a life jacket, he pushed past the American to jerk open the hatch.

"You can take Lambert's spot," Kauffman called after him. "The navigator's seat. Greta can be co-pilot next to me." Nodding wordlessly, Drexler crawled inside.

"I'll replace Heinrich on the radio," Hart said.

They followed Drexler, Greta peppering Kauffman with questions about the instruments as he buckled her in. Hart sat on the rear-facing radioman's seat opposite Jürgen. The German was staring straight backward, refusing to glance out the porthole at the sailors making final preparations. Then the engine coughed to life, spun, and roared. The plane rattled again, eager to go. Drexler's hands gripped the underside of his seat and Hart watched the knuckles whiten.

"Ready!" Kauffman's voice came over the earphones.

Another bang and with a lurch and a rush they were off. "It's so quick!" Greta exclaimed with delight. The plane banked, bouncing a bit in the warm air. Drexler shut his eyes.

Kauffman's voice crackled in Hart's ears over his headphones. "I'll get a bit of altitude and start looking where we saw them before," he announced. Hart began peering out his own porthole, searching for telltale spouts.

It was Greta who first saw them again. "Look!"

"Amazing!" Kauffman exclaimed. "How far they've moved."

Hart unbuckled his seat belt and poked his head up into the cockpit. He could see dissipating mist ahead and a flash of foam as if the sea was breaking over rocks.

"Jürgen," Greta called. "You must come and see."

There was a long pause.

"Jürgen?"

Finally there was a click of an unfastened belt and Hart was roughly pushed to one side. The political liaison put his head between Greta and Kauffman and squinted at the ocean. He was pale, his skin glistening. "I see them," he managed. "And yes, they're impressive."

Kauffman passed over at three hundred feet again so as not to spook the animals. As the whales rose and fell, breathing rhythmically, their backs darkened and lightened with the depth of the water, making it look like they glowed with variable light.

"So beautiful," Greta enthused.

"Look at the slow, slow beat of their swim," Hart added. "It's like music, but to a different, longer, deeper time."

"I wonder how long they live?" Kauffman asked, swinging the plane around. The whales came in view again. "How long does it take to grow to such immense size? Nearly forever?"

They roared over again, the whale spouts shimmering with solar rainbows.

"Just remember that what we're seeing is Germany's next resource."

Greta looked at Drexler with exasperation. "Jürgen! Look!" Their peeling skin was like a worn hill, testimony to epic survival. "They're just oil to you?"

Drexler took a deep breath. "My personal reaction is irrelevant," he said, exhaling to battle his physical unease. "It's not that they're without beauty. It's that such beauty has no practical use."

"That's an awfully prosaic view of nature," Hart objected.

"It's a
realistic
view of nature." Drexler regained some self-assurance as he talked. It took his mind off where he was, suspended in air above the ocean. "You pilots never ask where the machine that carries you comes from. It comes ultimately from nature, from resources like those whales. To think otherwise is pleasurable but naive."

Hart frowned. He liked the man better when he was quiet from fright. Next would come a lecture on Nazi destiny. "Reinhard, let me fly again," Owen suggested. "I need the practice."

The German pilot hesitated. He'd been enjoying showing off for the woman but it would look piggish to refuse. "All right."

There was a laborious shifting of bodies, both pilots brushing against Greta as Drexler leaned back unhappily. Then Hart was at the controls. He banked again, steeper this time, and headed back toward the whales. "I think we should get closer," he said over his shoulder to Drexler. "If we can find some mark that identifies individuals— like the colors of ponies— maybe you'll think of them as more than bags of oil." He put the ponderous seaplane in a dive.

"Oh my!" Greta slapped out her hands to brace herself. The Dornier rapidly closed with the water until it looked as if the mammal spouts would spatter their canopy. She managed a laugh, anxious and delighted. Then Hart pulled up. "My stomach!" she exclaimed.

The seaplane zoomed upward as if climbing a hill, slowed, hesitated, and rolled to the left, banking steeply. Then it dove again. "Hart, stop it!" Kauffman snapped. "This isn't a barnstormer!"

"Of course." He pulled back and leveled, then banked a bit to peer down. The whales had sounded again. "Damn. They're gone."

Greta laid a hand on the muscles of his forearm. "You frightened me!"

"Just trying to get a good look." He glanced over his shoulder. Drexler was gone.

Kauffman ducked down to look back along the interior of the fuselage. Jürgen was on his knees, his head inside the plane's cramped lavatory. "Our political liaison is sick."

* * *

"How was your maiden Dornier voyage, Hart?" Heiden inquired over tea in the galley.

The captain was in a pleasant mood. It was the day after the whale sighting. The weather was still fine, progress good, and the airplanes appeared in excellent working order. They'd crossed the equator that morning and were entering the southern latitudes. There'd been a ceremony on board with Heiden as King Neptune, christening those who hadn't yet made the crossing. Drexler had recovered his equilibrium and was determined to take his dousing with good humor. He even seized the bucket to spray Greta, who laughed and hurled water back, Neptune backing off hurriedly. The seamen craned to look at the clothes plastered on her body before she ran below to change.

"I felt free as a bird," the American now replied. "I think you've got an agile airplane there. Reinhard let me put her through some paces."

"Yes, I heard your flying was quite...
exuberant."
 

"My stomach is still up there, I'm afraid," Drexler said, trying to make light of his experience. "Hart is quite the stunt pilot." He poured himself some tea. "In good weather."

No one missed the allusion.

"I've had a lot of experience," Hart said evenly. "In
all
kinds of weather."

"The Dornier's a good plane," Drexler went on mildly. "Range of a thousand kilometers, ceiling of four." He didn't forget what the pilots had told him. "It's part of Germany's leadership in the air." He took a sip of Earl Grey from England and looked at Greta. "I expect someday all of us will travel by air, everywhere. Aircraft will be as commonplace as the auto."

As if everyone would want one, Hart thought. Sick as a dog and now an aeronautical visionary. The man didn't back down an inch.

"Well," Feder put in, "it will be interesting to see how the planes perform in Antarctica."

"I suppose you'd stick to dogs, Alfred?"

"It worked for Amundsen," Feder replied, referring to the first man to reach the South Pole.

"Ach, the Norwegians again. A nation living in the past."

"I think you need to take the best of the past and the future," Hart said. "In Antarctica, wood sometimes works better than metal. Fur better than linen."

"And a gun better than an arrow," said Drexler. "That's why the airplane will let us explore more territory in a day than the Norwegians or British saw in a year."

"I don't disagree with that," said Hart. "I'm a flier. But airplanes have their limitations too. You can only see so much detail. Airplanes break down. Some days they aren't usable. I respect bad weather."

"Yes, a prudent flier," Drexler said. "So we've heard."

"A
live
flier," Hart countered.

"Jürgen, for goodness' sake," Greta said. "Owen is helping us and you pretend there is some contest of views."

"I'm just making a point. After he made his."

"He agrees with you and you insult him. You need to get to an iceberg to cool your head."

Drexler looked truculent at this scolding but said nothing.

The first icebergs were huge flat chunks from the ice shelf of the Weddell Sea, looking to Hart like mesas rising from a watery desert. They gleamed as if lit from within, shining with pearly translucence under a pale gray sky. In the emptiness of the Southern Ocean their exact size was impossible to gauge but as the
Schwabenland
steamed closer their immensity became apparent. The white cliffs of their sides were taller than a fortress wall and their bulk was enough to produce a harbor of calm water on their lee side. To windward, ocean swells ate caves into their bulk. The white was veined with blue like marble and just below the slate-gray water the bergs shelved into brilliant turquoise. Their top was snowy and unmarked: the perfect face of snowfalls stretching back ten thousand years.

The days were growing steadily longer as they steamed south. Hart spent the twilight after dinner watching the bergs slide by, wrapped in his flying jacket and wool hat.

"They look like cake, yes?"

Hart turned. It was cold at the railing and Greta was bundled in her Antarctic parka, the fur ruff of its hood framing her face. Her eyes were the same blue as the fissures in the icebergs, but he didn't say that.

"You'll make me hungry," he joked lamely. He was pleased she'd joined him but he didn't say that, either. They seemed to have repaired the awkward dinner and he'd been secretly pleased at her defense of him at tea. Still, he was cautious.

"They're like wedding cakes," the biologist said. "Beautiful but sad. You know that something sublime is about to be consumed, or, in this case, melted. It heightens the beauty, I think— like leaves in autumn."

"Things are more beautiful when they're lost?"

"Yes, because the loss makes the feeling more intense. Sometimes life seems to me to be an endless slipping away."

"Well, things seem more beautiful when you can't have them," said Hart. "Sometimes life seems to me to be an endless anticipation of arrival. Like this voyage."

Greta smiled wistfully. "Ach, what a pair we are! Arriving, leaving, never in the moment! Perhaps we should take a lesson from the whales, who are
always
in the moment. It would be interesting to
be
them for a while, don't you think? To have every fiber of your being focused on the now, to drink in all the endless sensations, the colors, the feelings, the scents and tastes. It must be a comfort: not even realizing the inevitability of your own death."