“Dr. Wallace, please sign the agreement so that we may speak freely. And if your wife insists upon participating in our discussion, she must also sign. Nothing personal,” she added as she met Brandy’s glare.

I glanced at Brandy. As she liked to say, it was a “shyte or get off the bowl” moment, only it had nothing to do with Liao’s pitch. If Brandy signed the non-disclosure now, it meant she cared enough about our marriage to be concerned where this journey might take me, assuming I was even interested. If, however, she walked out, then our marriage was as good as over.

“Give me the bloody paper.” Using Liao’s pen, she signed the document without reading it and slid it over to me. “It’s your life. Do as ye will.”

I reviewed the agreement and then signed it above Brandy’s signature. “Okay, Dr. Liao, both Wallaces have anted up. Make your pitch.”

“Please, call me Ming. As I said, the discovery is located in Antarctica. What do you know about the continent, other than it’s the coldest, most desolate place on Earth?”

“I know it wasn’t always that way.”

“Correct. Before it was covered by ice, Antarctica was fertile land with lush forests and fresh-water lakes and streams. That was during the Miocene, a period of time that began about twenty-five million years ago. The climate abruptly changed about fifteen million years ago, leaving most of the continent covered with a dome-shaped glacier two-and-a-half miles thick. Gravity is actually pulling the ice into the ocean by way of the continent’s ice shelves. As these ice shelves reach the coastline, their bottom sections hit seawater and melt faster, causing sections of the flow to crack—a natural process known as rifting.

“Global warming has accelerated the process. Last year alone, Antarctic ice sheets lost a combined mass of 355 gigatonnes, which is enough to raise global sea levels by 1.3 millimeters. That may not seem like a lot, but combine that with Greenland’s melting ice sheet, diminishing mountain glaciers, and the polar caps—all multiplied by the present rate of acceleration—and your winter home in sunny Florida may be underwater by the time you are ready to retire.”

“Actually, my wife and I winter here in Drumnadrochit.” I smiled at Brandy, who rolled her eyes.

Liao returned to her briefcase and removed a thick accordion file sealed with a combination lock. “The photos I am about to show you were taken eleven days ago by scientists from Beijing University. The preserved remains of these two creatures were found frozen within a twenty-nine-kilometer-long rift nicknamed Loose Tooth. The fissure is part of the Amery Ice Shelf in East Antarctica.” She quickly maneuvered the lock’s numbers to the correct three-digit sequence and opened the file, removing several glossy color photos, which she laid out before me.