“But as you saw, leopard seals can on occasion attack,” Brigid went on. “We recommend staying at least twenty meters away from them at all times. But if you do find yourself confronting one again, I’d recom —”

“Flying away from it?” Really, this was too easy. I was bad.

By this time the flock were suppressing smiles.

“Blizzards,” said Brigid firmly. “Katabatic winds. Sometimes upward of eighty miles an hour. They blow snow and ice particles around, and it can feel like needles.” She paused, as if waiting for me to say I’d fly out of it.

Which I didn’t. You’d have to be a complete moron to fly in a storm like that. Last time I looked, I wasn’t a moron.

“Hunker down,” said Brigid, relieved to finally be able to give us advice. “Dig a hole for yourself in a snowbank. Stay together. Don’t eat ice for hydration — it’ll only lower your core temperature. Stay put and wait for help. We will come find you.”

“Aye aye,” I said, and saluted.

Brigid gave me a faint smile, and then we all suited up to brave the great outdoors. Brian Carey watched us gather our equipment. He was staying behind to type up some reports.

Ordinarily, Sue-Ann would have taken the ice samples we brought her and put them through her chromatograph. Now it was Melanie’s job. She would analyze how concentrations of carbon dioxide and other chemicals had changed through the centuries. Basically, they were finding that carbon dioxide levels — primarily a by-product of burning fossil fuels — were the highest they’d been in the past 800,000 years.

Being completely objective here, I could see how that would seem like a bad thing.

Chapter 48

48

“KNOWING THAT THERE ARE EVIL, bloodsucking corporations out there willing to spend a bazillion dollars to create machines whose only purpose is to kill us mutant bird kids is depressing,” said Nudge. We were kneeling on the ice, helping Melanie and Brigid drill their core sampler down into it. “Knowing there are evil, bloodsucking corporations out there who are knowingly and willingly destroying the only planet we have to live on just to make bazillions of dollars is worse.” Nudge sighed and looked bummed.

Okay, I totally admitted that there were evil corporations out there who were complete bad guys and were polluting everything in sight. I got that. But I still wasn’t sure that it was all causing global warming, or that having a slightly warmer earth would be that bad.