“He was showing off,” Angel told me. “Like a teenager.”
“Are we missing something here?” Melanie asked. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m not just a weird little kid,” Angel told Paul, whose eyes widened. “Well, actually, I guess I am a weird little kid, but not in the way you’re thinking.”
“I’m not thinking —,” Paul began, but Angel shook her head.
“My file should have told you,” she explained. “I can hear what people are thinking.”
I decided not to mention that often she could also control what people were thinking.
Angel patted her pocket of poker winnings regretfully, as if realizing she wouldn’t be able to pull that again on this crew. “Not just people, but most animals too. I heard the whales thinking and came up to see them.”
Paul and Melanie were at a loss for words.
Get used to it, I thought.
38
IT WAS HARD HAVING to stay on the Wendy K., taking three days to get from Argentina to Antarctica, when we could have flown it in about five hours. We did go for nice, long flights a couple of times a day. The air was cold, but no colder than it was at 25,000 feet, which was well below freezing. We found out that frigid air didn’t bother us as long as we were moving, but standing around on the ship’s deck got pretty uncomfortable.
Total broke down and consented to wear a small down dog coat. Akila had worn it as a puppy. During a record-setting cold spell, when it was, like, eighty below zero.
“Land ahoy!” Gazzy shouted from five hundred feet in the air. He pointed into the distance, where I could see a white island sticking up out of the ocean.
Michael Papa squinted at the horizon. “It should be visible pretty soon,” he said. “The air is so clear here that we get great visibility.”
“It’s visible now,” I told him. “We have really good eyesight. Like hawks.”
He nodded, digesting this, and again I saw the look of almost envy that I’d seen on all these scientists’ faces from time to time. No one had ever been truly envious of our abilities before, and it was a cool feeling. The bird kid version of being a football captain or homecoming queen. Sort of.
“I see gray, like rocks,” I told Michael. “I thought everything was covered in snow.”
“Virtually everything is,” he said. “But along the coasts and some of the outer islands, there are thin strips of bare rock where glaciers have broken off. Also, it’s summer here now, since the seasons are reversed, so things aren’t as icy as they can be.”
“I see red buildings.”
“I don’t see a thing yet,” Michael said regretfully. “But, yes, the buildings are usually bright red or bright lime green, to stand out as much as possible.”
“Like if there’s a blizzard?”
“Uh-huh. Though here blizzards just mean ferocious winds blowing snow and ice around. Hardly any new snow ever falls. Almost never.”
“That’s so weird,” I said.
“What’s weird?” Fang asked, making me jump. I hadn’t heard him come up behind me, as usual. For the past two days I’d been kind of avoiding him. I’d stood back and watched as he and Brigid Dwyer struck up a mutual-admiration society. She didn’t flirt with him, but they hung out together a lot, and every time I saw their heads bent over a computer screen or map, it made my stomach clench. Also my teeth. And my fists.
“That it doesn’t snow here,” I said. “Not a lot of precipitation.”
Fang nodded. “Brigid says the air here is some of the driest on earth.”
“I guess you’ll be glad to get off the boat,” Michael said. “We’ll be staying in the guest quarters at the Lucir station. They get tourists there every year.”
“I didn’t realize we’d be around a bunch of other people,” I said slowly. I’d gotten almost — well, comfortable is a strong word, but somewhat less tense, which is about as good as I ever get — around the scientists on board the Wendy K. I didn’t want to start over with a bunch of strangers. Especially given the explode-o-pizza in Washington.
“There are twelve permanent families who live and work here,” Michael explained. “About forty people in all.”
Fang’s eyes met mine. Time to be back on guard.