Nimec sat a moment, glancing around the office. It was a small, well-ordered cubicle with bluish soundproof paneling and recessed overhead fluorescents. No windows. No decorative touches to enliven it. Two big maps covered nearly the entire wall to Megan’s right. One was a satellite image of the Antarctic continent. Shaped like a giant manta ray. The other showed the rugged topography of the Dry Valleys. There were three colored pins—red, yellow, blue—marking different points in the latter.

Nimec turned back to Megan. The last time he’d seen her, she had been the embodiment of corporate chic, letting the world know she was playing to win with a pricey designer suit and a smart wedge-cut hairstyle that just brushed the tops of her shoulders. Now her hair went tumbling loosely down over bib overalls and a maroon twill shirt, framing her face with thick auburn waves, highlighting her large emerald eyes like the deepest of sunsets over a wood of Irish pines. Nimec supposed she could dress herself in sackcloth and still be as lovely as ever.

He sat there a while, looking at her. He could think of a dozen matters they had to discuss, every one of them pressing, every one relating to the incidents that had brought him so far from home. But he was uncertain how to approach the subject he really wanted to talk about first.

“So,” he said. “How’ve you been?”

She shrugged, her hands on the desk.

“Cold,” she said. “And generally busy.”

“How about when you aren’t busy?”

“Cold and lonely.”

Nimec gave her a little nod. There had been photographs in her San Jose office. Vases with fresh flowers from the shop down the street. And abundant sunlight.

“I hear people come to Antarctica to find themselves,” he said. “Or reinvent themselves. It’s being away from everything they know. And the emptiness. I suppose they must feel like they’re filling it in. Writing their lives over on a blank page.”

Megan shrugged again.

“That may be true for some,” she said.

“And you?”

She paused a beat, but otherwise did a good job of seeming unaffected by the question.

“There’s no place else like this on earth. It’s magnificent. Beautiful in its way. It gives you the room and time to contemplate. But I’m doing this because Gord needed me here to get our operations off the ground.”

“So if not for his asking you to stay . . .”

“I’d scoot back to California like a kitten jumping onto a warm lap,” she replied, looking directly at him. No hesitation this time.

Nimec considered asking her what was actually on his mind. Instead he decided to change the topic. He cocked his head toward the map of the Dry Valleys.

“I figure those pins have got something to do with the missing search team,” he said.