Ship of Fools - A Flat-Earth Interlude (3)
[Start at the beginning of the novel: Prologue.]
[Go to the Table of Contents.]
Welcome back to Ship of Fools, my satire about a science journalist trying to make sense of conspiracy theorists, flat-earthers, moon-landing deniers, New Agers, and more.
Having received funding from Jareth and the US Treasury, Sam and Geraint approach the North Pole (Center Point) with a team of American scientists who don’t seem happy to have a quirky Brit and a Druid priest along for the ride.
“DAMN this fog,” Sam yelled over the roar of the C-47’s engines.
“Sure, it’s the féth fíada.” Geraint’s voice faintly crackling over the headphones from the back of the plane.
“What’s that, old chap? It’s hard to hear with all this infernal racket.”
“The féth fíada, the mist of invisibility,” Geraint repeated. He went into an explanation, but it was lost in the general noise.
“No worries,” said Max, the pilot, seated next to Sam in the cockpit. “These babies have the brand new Inertial Guidance System.” He patted the control panel. “We’ll find the Center in this fog, no problem.”
“But what about landing?”
“Now that’s another story.”
Wasn’t this simply perfect! Between ancient divination methods and modern navigation systems so new and top secret they hadn’t yet come into general aviation use, Sam wasn’t sure there was much to choose.
Three hours earlier, they’d taken off from a large ice island in the drifting pack where they’d established their forward base. If luck was with them, they’d be at the pole within the hour. But it would be for naught if this fog didn’t lift so they could land. If they didn’t get onto the ice near the pole, there would be no scientific research for this mission, no planted British and American flags; more important for his own purposes, no chance to discover the doorway to Antarctica, or whatever Geraint thought was up here. And the Druid had been especially insistent that they arrive at the pole today, the summer solstice, or risk missing their chance altogether. At this point, praying for Danu’s divine intervention didn’t seem out of the question.
The truth was, Geraint’s increasing references to Celtic arcana were beginning to grate on Sam’s normally rational nature. But who was he to talk? The idea of a round Earth had come to him in a dream, of all things. Upon awaking, he’d become obsessed with discovering the true shape of the Earth. He spent hours and days poring over old texts and conducting experiments, all of which had failed. (He knew they failed because they consistently proved Earth was flat.) Convinced that finding the South Pole was the only way to prove Earth’s sphericity, he’d mounted his failed expedition. Upon his return, idly paging through the back of the Times one day, he’d come across a notice for a meeting of the Society for Geomantical Investigations. He didn’t know what “geomantical” meant, but it had “geo” for a prefix, so he reckoned he’d pop round to the meeting, held in the basement of a former church just off Piccadilly Circus. Maybe the group had some arcane knowledge of the shape of the Earth that could aid his own investigations.
And that’s where he’d met Geraint. The cloaked and hooded fellow approached him, no doubt drawn by his newcomer’s look of confusion as he gazed around the drab room at people apparently engaged in some sort of stick-throwing game — or was it dominoes? When Geraint found out the reason for Sam’s visit to the society, and further, the source of his belief in a round Earth, he clapped him on the shoulder.
“At last!” he exclaimed. “I thought ye’d never show up. I had a dream, too, and it showed me a red-headed fellow such as yourself, and a fellow seeker. And here you are! I don’t know how much more o’ this stick throwin’ I could’ve stomached.” He clamped a hand on Sam’s shoulder and steered him up the steep stone steps and out onto the street. “But now we must get to work mountin’ an expedition to the Pole.”
“The Pole? Which one?”
“The North, of course.”
“But I want to find the South Pole.”
That fazed Geraint, but only for a second. “Well, it’s all the same, more or less.”
And with that, he’d gone into some hocus pocus about power points, convergences, and ley lines. The gist seemed to be that one could get to the South Pole by first going to the North. Sam had been so excited by the prospect that he’d perhaps failed to pay enough attention to the details. Throughout the planning of the expedition, including Jareth’s surprising acquiescence to their funding request, Geraint had remained cagey on the finer points of how such trans-polar travel might work.
It was only after the three planes had taken off from Longyearbyen — the other two carrying the actual scientists Jareth had added to the expedition — that the volume and frequency of mysticism began to mount.
First it was the revelation that Geraint hoped to find a portal to the Land of Tír na nÓg, complete with Aos Sidhe, or elves, on the other side. No wonder the scientists didn’t want to share a plane with them. Then there was mention of Manannán mac Lir, “Son of the Sea.”
“But what about the portal to Antarctica?” Sam had protested.
“Perhaps there’s a passage through the center of your round Earth connecting the two?” Geraint said, a twinkle in his eye.
“And how did you expect we’d travel through this passage? On foot, it would take years.”
“I’m not sure. Maybe Manannán will loan us his self-driving boat.”
Sam could only shake his head and look back with fondness on the days when his biggest challenge was acquiring the funding to hire a ship.
As they’d moved north, out came the dowsing rod at each stop, to make sure they were still headed in the right direction, earning them odd looks from the pilots and scientists. It was a wonder Max had let Sam sit up front on this last, most important day.
At last the fog bank broke, and an expanse of white extended before them all the way to the horizon.
“Just in time, too,” said Max. “The Center should be just a few minutes ahead. It’s time to let George have the co-pilot seat.”
Sam was unbuckling when Max said, “Wait, what’s that?” He pointed to three dots on the ice, slightly to the left of their course.
As they came closer, the three dots grew into airplanes, ones not too different from their own, at least to Sam’s inexperienced eye.
Max used a pair of binoculars to get a closer look. “It’s the Russkies!”
“Are they at the Center?”
“A few miles off, according to our IGS. And look, they’ve cleared a runway. Seems too good to pass up, unless you think it will cause an international incident.”
“No, no, by all means, do whatever you think is safest.”
As he climbed out of his seat, the pilot radioed the other planes to communicate the change of plans.
After a bumpy landing, which made Sam glad they hadn’t tried their luck on an uncleared stretch of ice, they disembarked to find a group of Soviets waiting to greet them.
“I am Aleksandr Kuznetzov, leader of this Glorious Soviet Scientific Expedition to the Center Point for the Enlightenment of the People. What are you doing here?”
Sam gulped. He hadn’t counted on international diplomacy being one of the requirements for leading this expedition.
“Like you, we are on an expedition of scientific exploration. I’m Samuel Rowbotham, of England. We also have American scientists with us. A joint expedition demonstrating the benefits of international cooperation, don’t you know. Speaking of which, ta for the use of the runway. Ruddy useful, that was.”
Kuznetsov gave him a grim smile. “Da, the landing on the virgin ice was, how you say, no picnic. It took us two days to clear the runway for our take-off, in addition to all the scientific work we have done. In recognition of these efforts, you will acknowledge we were first to the Center, da?”
“Oh, by all means. At any rate, it’s just a chunk of useless ice, right? In a month it will have drifted somewhere else.”
“Of course. Now, we were just preparing to depart.”
Soon the Soviet planes were roaring into the sky, leaving the fifteen members of the US/British expedition feeling somewhat more lonely at the top of the world, or Sam was, at least. The pilots and scientists had been busy unloading equipment and supplies, while two of their number occupied themselves with a sextant, determining a bearing to the geographic Center Point.
“Will you be joining the rest for the walk north?” Max asked. As lead pilot, he’d be staying behind with the planes.
“It depends on what Geraint determines,” he said, nodding to the druid, a hundred meters off, fiddling with his dowsing rod. Max gave him an odd look.
In truth, it was difficult not to feel embarrassed by the monk. The rest of the expedition, including Sam, all wore puffy polar suits, similar to those used by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on Everest, but Geraint had simply added a fur cloak and hood over his woolen ones. Sam couldn’t help looking forward to the party splitting up.
At last, Geraint returned.
“Have you divined our direction of travel?” Sam asked.
“I have, sure.” He pointed off into the blank distance. Sam got out his Brunton dampened compass. He had to jiggle it to keep the needle from pointing down, but after a moment he realized that Geraint was pointing toward the magnetic north pole. Perhaps that was coincidence — or perhaps not! At any rate, from this point near the geographic North Pole, they were pointing south. You have to go north to go south, Geraint had said. Now they had to go south to go north. It was all very confusing.
“Are you sure that thing isn’t being affected by the magnetic pole?” he asked.
Geraint waved the forked divining rod at him. “It’s hemlock, isn’t it? I have no truck with these modern rods fashioned out of metal.”
“How far do you reckon?”
“A couple of hours walk in normal conditions.”
These were far from normal conditions. Where he’d envisioned a featureless plain of white, snow-covered ice, what they actually confronted were jumbled ranks of ice mounds, something like frozen waves. Pressure ridges, he’d been told. That meant they’d have to leave the skis behind and use snow shoes in case the snow got deep. But here it was firm enough they could simply walk when they weren’t scrambling up and down over ice blocks.
“If you can get there and back in a day, you should set up camp here,” Max suggested.
Sam imagined the pilot wanted company for the three days the expedition would be on the ice, but Geraint protested. “If we find a portal, we’ll have to take food and drink, at least.”
“Why?” Sam asked. “Is there no food in Tír na nÓg?”
Geraint turned a shocked eye upon him. “There is, sure, but every child knows you can’t eat the foods of the fair folk, not unless you want to stay with them forever.”
Sam tried not to roll his eyes and gave the pilot an embarrassed look. “No, that wouldn’t do at all. Jareth will be wanting a report, in the first place.”
He politely rejected Max’s suggestion, adding that their investigations might take more than a day. “Look for us on the third day,” he said. “You know which direction we’re headed.”
“I’ll keep an eye out,” the pilot said, a bit forlornly.
The Americans appeared hardly to notice as they shouldered their packs and left the planes behind.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this chapter, please give it a like, a share, a restack, or a comment. And if you really enjoyed it, I hope you’ll buy me a coffee or upgrade to a paid subscription.
Fun fact: though students of my generation were taught that US Navy Engineer Robert Peary was first to reach the North Pole in 1909, he probably never made it that far. Credit for being first to set foot at the spot, over which sea ice is constantly shifting, goes to Aleksandr Kuznetzov, the real-life counterpart to the character we meet briefly in this chapter, and leader of the Soviet Sever-2 scientific expedition.
Next up: Part III, Investigations, begins with Chapter 25, “Murder Penguins,” in which Liz makes alternate plans to reach the South Pole and bonds over satellite internet with the expedition company leader.