Ship of Fools - Chapter 24
The Ice Wall
[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.
Sarge, Liz, and their companions have transferred from the Fool’s Gold to a leased icebreaker and have now arrived at a wall of ice in the Weddell Sea. Sarge is certain it’s the Ice Wall ringing the disk, although they have yet to see any UN troops. What will they find?
SARGE stood on the Resolute’s bridge, looking out at the wall of ice looming ahead of the vessel. He would have been on the bow, but it was way too cold out there, even in his polar suit. Crossing the Drake Passage, the rails and rigging of the icebreaker had been coated in thick rime ice from the waves of freezing sea water crashing over the bow and sides. The crew had cleared that off now that they were in calmer waters, but it was still just too damned cold. Even indoors, he was freezing all the time, despite wearing two sweaters and never changing out of his long johns.
He scanned the top of the Ice Wall, which rose some two hundred feet above the water. The soldiers had to be here somewhere, or else how could they enforce the restrictions of the Antarctic Treaty?
“Which country controls this section of the Ice Wall?” he asked no one in particular on the bridge.
“Ice shelf, Sarge,” said Liz, sitting on the other side of their captain, Jose Luis Sosa of Ushuaia, to whom she now turned. “Que — como se dice ice shelf?” Her Spanish was terrible, but Sarge didn’t know the language at all.
“Este es un tempano, no es un plataforma del hielo.”
“Did you hear that, Sarge? That may not even be the Ronne Ice Shelf, just a large iceberg.”
She went back to admiring the icy seascape, occasionally pointing out a beautifully sculpted iceberg and snapping a picture with her Nikon. Sure, it was scenic, but how could she pay attention to that when they might be attacked at any moment? She’d change her tune when they started taking incoming fire.
After their big argument about Kepler, they’d mostly kept apart, but now that they were nearing the wall, they couldn’t help seeing each other. Still she wouldn’t let up. Just that morning — whatever morning meant down here with the sun constantly above the horizon — she’d brought up the idea of a backup plan. She’d wanted to show him the website of a company she’d talked about before, Amazing Antarctic Adventures. She seemed to spend a lot of time surfing their site.
“We’re going to find the Ice Wall, Liz, I’m sure of it,” he’d told her.
“Yeah, keep hoping, but if that doesn’t turn out, we could get on one of these flights to Union Glacier or the South Pole. You could just look out the window, watch for your Ice Wall and the soldiers guarding it. You’d be able to see what’s really down there.”
“Why would I trust them?”
“These people are used to traveling in the Antarctic. And Dawa knows some of them, because they also lead trips in Nepal.”
Dawa. Liz had been spending quite a bit of time with the monk. He’d even seen them out on the lido deck, back on the Fool’s Gold, meditating together. That rankled. Liz could put up with Tenzing’s mysticism, but she couldn’t hear a word about the Flat Earth without challenging it? Typical liberal female — white men were always wrong, but foreigners’ faults should always be overlooked in the name of diversity and inclusion. He was no racist, but that kind of forced multiculturalism always bothered him.
As for Tenzing, Sarge had never been able to figure out how the monk had heard about their plan. The fellow claimed it was just coincidence, being in the right place at the right time, but Sarge wasn’t falling for that. Nothing was ever a coincidence. Only sheeple believed that.
At least the monk didn’t believe in little green men from space. He’d gotten that much out of him during their first interview after arriving on Rock’s yacht. He’d claimed he hardly knew Sophie Stardust, and thought the Aetherius Society, while harmless, had mangled Buddhist thinking by importing it into their own religion via Theosophy. As for what he actually believed, and why he wanted to go to the Antarctic, he only made vague statements about a reality beyond the visible one — more mystical bullshit. But he did have good stories about guiding rich Americans up Mt. Everest. Until he got to the part about having some sort of vision at 27,000 feet. More mystical BS, probably brought on by hypoxia.
Between avoiding the constant arguments with Liz, and Dawa keeping mainly to himself, it had been a lonely transit south. Mike and his guys mostly stuck together. The crew on the Fool’s Gold had been accommodating, but once they’d transferred to the Resolute in Ushuaia, even those small interactions were missing. The ship’s captain was monolingual and the most common phrase he used in Sarge’s presence was pinche pendejo Yanqui. Even with no Spanish, Sarge got the gist.
He’d retreated into online society, posting a few videos about the trip. But even within the FE community, he was getting pushback. First, from the dozens of his subscribers who’d attended the Conspira-C Cruise expressly to meet him in person, hear his scheduled talk, and participate in his workshop — “Discovering the Flat Earth: A Collaborative Exploration” — and now demanded their money back. But also, a surprising number of his followers thought it was a mistake to even try to prove the existence of the Ice Wall, and were criticizing the fundraiser he’d started (Rock’s money was limitless, but it hardly seemed fair not to raise some cash of his own). “They’re conning you, Sarge.” “Every ship’s captain and pilot down there is in on the cover-up. They’ll never let you anywhere near the wall.” And worst, this harangue:
“This is a terrible idea! Even if you raise a million dollars, it will prove nothing! The establishment will never accept any new evidence, just as they reject the evidence already provided, since it destroys their false authority. People go over Antarctica every day on their chaperoned tours. You’ll get no further past the international military restrictions than anyone else is allowed to go. People who go down there without permission get chased, fined, and sometimes end up missing mysteriously. Surprise. NASA and the freemasons haven’t faked all this shit for 70 years to just let you travel past their limits.”
The screed continued in this paranoid style, linking the Antarctic Treaty to freemasons, Disney, Von Braun, and pedophile cults. He should have been well used to that by now, having produced several similar screeds himself, but never had he been at the receiving end of one of them. He was shaking by the time he finished it.
After that, he’d stopped posting. Feeling attacked and isolated from all sides, his mood had only darkened as they’d moved south, the temperatures dropping and his nausea increasing with the rougher seas.
The Ice Wall now loomed above the Resolute. Sarge couldn’t tell how far it extended, what with smaller bergs and general haze limiting the view. He should have been excited but all he felt was fear — fear of attack and fear that maybe Liz was right, maybe this wasn’t the Wall itself. And it didn’t seem to curve inward to east and west — not that he had any sense of direction down here, the ship’s compass having gone wonky so close to the southern magnetic pole, or so the captain claimed. Or maybe it was just another trick to keep him disoriented. The captain said he was navigating south by GPS, but Sarge wasn’t falling for that. Maybe his followers were right, and he was being conned.
He pulled out his smartphone, trying to shake off the doubts. If that was the Ice Wall, he had to capture it live for his followers. He moved to the forward window, holding the phone up and checking the exposure.
“Going live again, Sarge?” Liz asked. “And how are you able to do that, I wonder?” She blinked at him, all innocence.
“Satellite internet, of course.” They’d been over this.
“And what’s keeping those satellites up there?”
“I told you, buoyancy and density.”
“Oh, right, your substitute for gravity, I forgot. But they have to keep going around in circles or they’d hit your dome, right? How do they do that?”
“Thrusters, I don’t know.”
“Constantly correcting their course for years on end — sounds like a lot of fuel. And how do they get all that fuel up there?”
“This isn’t the time for an argument. Can I have some quiet so I can do my stream?”
“Pinche pendejo,” the captain grumbled, only half under his breath.
But Liz nodded, and he hit the “Go Live” button. “Hello, Flat Out Truth followers, this is Sarge, and I’m streaming live from the Ice Wall! Would you look at that! At least we think that’s the Ice Wall, it sure looks the same as it does in all those pictures. We haven’t quite confirmed it yet, but I wanted you to be the first to see it. No sign of any UN troops yet, but we’re on the lookout.”
A movement on the foredeck caught his eye and he panned down to catch it with the phone. Mike and a couple of his guys were carrying long, hard-sided cases out to the deck. They opened one to reveal a tube-shaped device and another containing what looked like a missile. That was a surprise, but he kept his composure for his audience.
“And right on cue, our security guys are preparing for all eventualities.”
The captain had a different reaction. “Chingada hijos de putas!” he screamed and left the wheel to his first mate, opened the starboard hatch with a bang, and dashed down the stairs. A moment later he appeared on the deck below, gesticulating at Mike and his team in a silent pantomime of fury. The argument went on for a moment, Mike gesturing toward the wall of ice, and then the captain drew a pistol.
“Looks like we have a situation,” Sarge said into his phone. “I’ve gotta go. See you on the flip side.” He cut the feed and grabbed his parka. “Come on Liz, we need you to translate.” He headed for the door.
“Great,” she said, but followed him out the hatch and down the stairs.
On the deck, the situation seemed calmer than he’d expected. The captain still had the gun pointed at Mike, but all the security guys had their hands in the air.
“Ms. Dare,” said Mike, “please tell the captain we’ll put the rocket launcher away.” Liz translated and the captain seemed to relax, waving the gun at the cases. While the other guards turned to pack the weapons away, Mike continued, “And please apologize for me. I should have checked it out with him first.”
But there was no time for Liz to translate, as the captain turned on Sarge, his pistol waving wildly in the air. Sarge couldn’t help taking a step backward. “Te lo dije, no hay soldados, no hay armada, no hay guardias fronterizas, no hay las Naciones Unidas. No hay nada, ningun, nil! Nada pero hielo y nieve y malditos pingüinos!”
“Capitán, la pistola, por favor,” Liz said, patting the air with her mittened hands.
The captain looked at the gun in his hand and let out a sigh, shaking his head as if to clear it. He replaced the gun in its shoulder holster, then stalked off toward the bridge. “Pinche Yanquis,” he said as he went.
Sarge exhaled in relief, gratitude for Liz’s intervention warring with his usual distrust. “Thanks,” he said, “you saved my ass.”
“Yeah, thanks, ma’am,” said Mike.
“You really thought there were going to be UN troops down here? And they’d just fire on us at first sight?”
“There still might be,” Sarge protested.
“I’m not talking to you,” she said. Now he noticed she was looking at Mike, not at him.
“Rock told us to be ready for anything, so we are,” Mike said, hunching his shoulders, palms up.
“Good thing no one got killed.” She shivered in her unzipped parka. “It’s too cold out here.” She turned back to the bridge.
“Chief, is there really an Ice Wall down here?” Mike asked. “UN troops?”
Sarge tried to put a brave face on it, not to betray any doubts in front of the men temporarily working for him. “Sure, somewhere,” he said, not quite managing the gusto the situation required. “We just have to find it.”
“So what now, boss?”
“I guess we take the chopper up and see what’s on top of the wall.”
Mike looked doubtfully up at the cloud cover, but in an hour it had lifted and Jerry the pilot declared the visibility and weather forecast suitable for a short flight.
Sarge sat in front, a pair of binos slung around his neck, while Liz, Tenzing, Mike, and Captain Sosa sat in the passenger seats.
As the chopper rose above the ship, the first view over the top of the wall was not encouraging. There was no edge, no “other side,” save for more ice and glaciers, with mountains in the distance. And certainly no dome resting atop the wall, though that had already been evident from below. And no people, either, hostile or otherwise. Now that they were above it, it became obvious that what had looked like a wall from below was just one side of a massive iceberg. In five minutes of flying, they came to the other side of it, revealing it to be a perfectly flat berg the size of a small city. Sarge remained silent, feeling the goal of the expedition slipping away from him. Weeks on boats with people he didn’t much like, and for what?
“It must have calved off the Ronne Ice Shelf just this spring,” Liz said. “That’s why it has those sheer sides you thought were a wall. As it gets older, wave action will carve grottoes in its sides and eventually break it into smaller bergs.”
“Well aren’t you the second coming of Ms. Frizzle?”
Beyond the iceberg, the sea ice grew denser until it was a solid pack. Far in the distance was another wall of ice, much taller.
“Este es la Plataforma de Hielo Ronne,” said the ship’s captain.
“How far do you think that is, Jerry?” Liz asked.
“Fifty miles, maybe? Farther than I’d like to go without coordination and a flight plan.”
“Capitan, cuán lejos puede ir el barco en este hielo?”
There was a pause as the captain looked down at the sea ice, judging. “Posiblemente a mitad, pero es difícil a conocer.”
Beyond the shelf, glaciers rose up to towering mountains lost in cloud. Sarge couldn’t see a wall anywhere. “Do you think we passed it somehow?”
“Come on Sarge, now you’re moving the goal posts,” Liz said.
“No, some flat-earthers believe there’s more land beyond the wall. That’s why the world governments don’t want the people to know about it, and they’re willing to murder anyone who gets too close.”
“Then why did they let us through — or over — or whatever you think happened?”
“I don’t know, let’s just go back and see if we missed anything.”
Jerry took them along the edge of the iceberg until they’d returned to the ship, then continued farther along the wall until everyone could see they were flying in a rough square. West of the berg was open water all the way to the Antarctic Peninsula, visible as a chain of mountains in the distance, and eastward the sea stretched to the horizon. No wall, and no UN troops.
“We’d better head back,” Jerry said. Sarge just bit his lip.
Back on deck, a cold wind was rising, making him shiver after the heated cockpit.
“So what now?” Tenzing asked. His constant good cheer had grown nauseating. “We find another way south, yes?”
Liz couldn’t help piling on. “Sarge, Amazing Antarctic Adventures has a penguin camp on the sea ice farther along the face of the Ronne Ice Shelf. They have another base up on Union Glacier. If anyone can get us farther south so we can see what’s here, it’s them. Let me radio them and see what we can work out.”
He looked up at the wall of ice, then back at the faces awaiting his answer.
“Fine. Do what you want. I’m going to bed.”
***End of Part II***
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.
How do you think Sarge handled his disappointment? Can he still hope to find the Ice Wall and the edge of the Earth?
Next up: Another Flat-Earth Interlude, in which Sam and Geraint approach the North Pole and the mysterious place of power Geraint hopes to find.