Virus: The Day of Resurrection (41 page)

The next problem was that of electric power. Though the amount of nuclear power being generated differed from country to country, it was estimated that power generation would hold out for four to five years on average for each nation, based on the number of uranium fuel rods they held in reserve. However, now that there would be no more supply ships arriving from their homelands each summer, it was clear that the nuclear power would need to be rationed out for as long as possible. Because they were working at the very ends of the earth, all of the reactors had been built to make refueling a relatively easy operation that could be carried out by remote control. However, the spent fuel rods constituted exceedingly dangerous masses of radioactive material, and there were no devices for processing them for reuse.

The same problem applied to the two nuclear submarines that had aligned themselves with Antarctica. It was fortunate that the nuclear submarines, which were now Antarctica’s only means of reaching the outside world, had both just had their fuel rods changed out, but even so, some years down the line, they would need refueling.
T-232
was impossible to refuel without special facilities, and only
Nereid
was equipped with both reserve fuel rods and a remote-control fuel-changing device. Even so, once those hundred twenty-plus rods of ninety-two percent enriched uranium had burned down to the point where they were no longer of use, no more would be coming. In Antarctica, there were no facilities for cooling these extremely dangerous fuel rods, for chemically treating them to remove the fission byproducts—the “ashes of death” produced by nuclear fission—or for reshaping the uranium once more. Naturally, it was not feasible to build a gigantic, remote-controlled factory. The shield of the ancient continent of Antarctica was rich in pitchblende that had a uranium content of over forty percent, but the large pieces of equipment needed to refine it to a high degree of purity, enrich it, and shape it into fuel rods were nowhere to be had.

One other issue was more pressing than even nuclear energy. Antarctica was dependent on fossil fuels—petroleum products such as heavy oil, light oil, and gasoline—to power a great number of dynamos, heaters, ground vehicles, and aircraft. Nuclear power generators were limited to the stations of only a few nations, and if the other stations ran out of fuel stocks, they would have to be abandoned altogether. And naturally, the long-term future of Antarctica depended on how well they could survive using indigenous resources.

As for coal, an outcropping of anthracite had already been discovered in the inner part of the continent. It was, however, buried under several hundred meters of ice. Even so, the Soviet Union was beginning trial digs in a part of this area. As for oil, a very promising oil field had been discovered in Adélie Land, where France’s Dumont d’Urville Station was located. The Supreme Council of Antarctica had for the present made its most important policy objective the full-on development of these Port Martin oil fields, and it asked each nation to contribute excavation equipment, pipes, pipe-laying equipment, and other machinery to the project. As for oil, it would be relatively easy to put together facilities for refining crude oil. A Clinton universal burner was redesigned to use crude for its heat source. Amid harsh conditions such as ice, snow, bitter cold, blizzards, and a tight work schedule, there were a number of casualties, but the Terre Adélie Oil Refinery was finally completed. It was a strange-looking, terribly makeshift sort of factory—a low structure built with the strong polar winds and the bitter cold in mind, located in a basin in the ice field and using many rows of fractionating towers. It was the summer of the following year when it produced its first gasoline.

In order to live in Antarctica, however, a number of other conditions also had to be met. What about machinery and communication devices? What about clothing? And shelter? In the harsh climate of Antarctica, these things wore out much faster than they had elsewhere. In minus-eighty-degree cold, metal parts used for long periods of time lost a great deal of their tensile nature. Plastics underwent devitrification, their clear surfaces becoming clouded and brittle. Power generators wore out, communications equipment—at least the equipment that didn’t use those nigh-eternal transistors—broke, and replacement parts would not be available.

Antarctica was the frontier of that generation—a vast continent that consumed much, but had itself not yet produced anything, supported by all the fruits of the entire world’s technology. All of the things necessary for survival had been brought over from another world, then simply consumed. Large quantities of supplies, machines, and materials had been brought over and consumed in bulk.

For what purpose?

If in the past you had asked them that question, the people of Antarctica might have blushed just slightly—or perhaps gone the other way and turned defensive. They would have answered in such a way because of the hundreds of times they had already been forced to answer that mean-spirited question in order to secure funding—funding from the miserly world—funding that never returned a profit in the short term.

“We’re doing this for science,” they would say. “To expand the scope of human knowledge.”

In some countries, what might have been considered a rather strange logic had swayed the minds of the VIPs and business leaders: “The whole world is doing this. It’s
embarrassing
for a first-rate industrialized nation like ours not to be involved. Even if we’re just going along with the others, it’s something we should be doing.”

And then from time to time, the researchers had had to employ deceit in order to make Antarctica sound important and promising, vaguely hinting at its “rich natural resources” and “strategic military value”—though in reality there was no chance whatsoever of either of these things being successfully exploited. However, along with outer space, the twentieth century’s “final frontier” was Antarctica, and the true meaning of that was gradually being revealed more and more.

Antarctica had a single, abstract kind of value.

It had no utilitarian value whatsoever, but it was exactly for that reason that it laid bare the perfectly opposing constructs of “material production” and “spirit,” showing them for what they were, and pointing toward a day when man could stop living for bread alone. In other words, Antarctica was a presence that hinted at the kinds of goals human beings would live for in the world of tomorrow, when bread would be as common as stones.

No one had been able to foresee, however, the unexpected role that had by unfortunate coincidence overtaken the continent of Antarctica.

We’re doing this for the survival of the human race
. . .

And so Antarctica, much like many another frontier before it, became a curious blend of harsh, primitive subsistence and the highly sophisticated things of civilization that its people had brought with them from the world they had left behind. But the gap between these two aspects—between harsh primitivism and high refinement—was greater here than on any other frontier. It would not be possible to close that gap—or to repair the cycle of reproduction—within ten years or even twenty.

Antarctica held rich natural resources, but aside from a scant supply of mechanical repair tools, the people living there lacked the productive capacity for making anything—least of all industrial products. Their complete lack of facilities for mining and refining metal was the last nail in the coffin. From this point forward, how much farther would they have to slide down the slope of decreased reproduction and encroaching poverty? In their present circumstances, what kind of outlook could be forecast for “production”?

From this point forward, how many years would they have to spend living cooped up in their stations? When would the day come that they could return to those northern lands, with verdant plains and the smiling sun? When could they go back to those pleasant continents steeped in the sun’s glory, in which a single day included both daylight and night? How long would the rest of the earth continue to be overrun with these microbes of death? Or would these last remnants of humanity, now exiles in this land, have to live like this forever?

Antarctica continued on for a time out of inertia. During that period, Admiral Conway, formerly of Navy Operations, sought the assistance of both the officers under his direct command and the scholars of the various countries and had the groups hammer out two types of plans. The first was a plan for what they should do in the event that ten thousand people ended up trapped in Antarctica forever. The second was a plan for survival in the event that it became possible to return to their homelands after the passage of several years. The various national teams were asked to make exhaustive lists of whatever resources they had at their disposal and to describe their outlook for developing and exploiting Antarctica’s various resources. After two months of work, when the plans put together by these two groups had been completed, they became the basis for operationalizing the possibilities in both cases into variables, expressing methods of resource distribution as mathematical functions, and turning the plans into sliding scale benchmarks that could be adjusted in accordance with actual conditions. Each of the figures that were elements of these plans were small, and McMurdo Station’s computer was used to the fullest, so extremely precise calculations were possible. Based on these calculations, twenty-six basic plan patterns were made. They immediately switched from the plan already under way to another plan, deciding upon the most advantageous course of action.

Admiral Conway had many years of practical experience and was possessed of a superior talent as a project manager—exceeding even his abilities as a soldier. He understood the suggestion of Professor Borodinov—the man in the highest position of authority for the Soviets—and aside from shepherding along their precise, detailed plan in its broad outline, he made it a point to generally refrain from consulting it except in emergencies, leaving the handling of most situations to dialogue between the various nations’ wintering teams, their proposals and suggestions, and their own discretion.

“Surviving in Antarctica,” said Admiral Conway, “will only be possible with the creativity and ingenuity of the ten thousand people here, backed by their effort and their eagerness to survive and thrive.”

The human problem arose only much later. The people who had been sent to Antarctica had all been chosen from the best and brightest of their respective nations. All of them were possessed of astonishing perseverance, tenacity, endurance, grace in the face of crisis, physical strength, adaptability to difficult environments, social acuity, and on top of that, high levels of intelligence and accomplishment. They were all people who could calmly handle a life in which six months of the year must be spent cooped up in night and snow—even if it continued for two or three years.

However, as it gradually began to sink in that they couldn’t go back … and that even if they could go back, they
would not see any of their loved ones
—a certain degenerate emotion began to creep in.

Its first appearance—though it certainly didn’t affect all of them—was among the journalists who had been dispatched to Antarctica on assignment. In general, they had planned to spend one year there to get a “peek” at life in Antarctica. The busy, lively world to which these people truly belonged was that of the roar of rotary presses, flashbulbs, ringing telephones, and voices shouting “Extra! Extra!”—where broadcast waves and gossip and information roared across the globe. As reporters on mountaineering and on the polar region itself, whether they liked this extreme lifestyle themselves was beside the point—their essential nature was that of the traveler roving from one end of the globe to the other. The journalist lifestyle was comprised of periods of rest cheered by reminiscences of prior journeys, followed by a move on to the next journey, impelled by the invitation of the unknown. Such people were from the outset not suited to a life of confinement and not knowing whether that isolation would ever end. They had come to Antarctica to be the eyes and ears of the world, but they were eyes and ears for the gently clamorous “mind” of the world that had now been lost.