My first instinct is to push him and watch him fall to his death. Except I’m almost sure it’s a felony. Plus, Ian is considerably stronger than me, which means it might not be feasible. Abort mission, I tell myself. Just squeeze by. Ignore him. Not worth your time.
The problems start when he looks up and notices me. He stops exactly two steps below, which should put him at a disadvantage but, depressingly, unfairly, tragically, doesn’t. We are at eye level when his eyes widen and his lips curve in a pleased smile. He says, “Hannah,” a touch of something in his voice that I recognize but instantly reject, and I have no choice but to acknowledge him.
The staircase is deserted, and sound carries far. His “I came looking for you” is deep and low and vibrates right through me. “Last week. Some guy in your office said you don’t work there much, but—”
“Fuck off.”
The words crash out of me. My temper has always been reckless, one hundred miles per hour, and . . . well. Still is, I guess.
Ian’s reaction is too baffled to be confused. He stares at me like he’s not sure what he just heard, and it’s the perfect chance for me to walk away before I say something I regret. But seeing his face makes me remember Merel’s words, and that . . . that is really not good.
He didn’t believe you capable of doing the work.
The worst part, the one that actually hurts, is how thoroughly I misjudged Ian. I actually thought he was a good guy. I liked him a lot, when I never let myself like anyone, and . . . how dare he? How dare he stab me in the back and then address me as though he’s my friend?
“What exactly is it that you have a problem with, Ian?” I square my shoulders to make myself bigger. I want him to look at me and think of a cruiser tank. I want him to be scared I’m going to pillage him. “Is it that you hate good science? Or is it purely personal?”
He frowns. He has the audacity to frown. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You can cut it. I know about the proposal.”
For a second he is absolutely still. Then his gaze hardens, and he asks, “Who told you?”
At least he’s not pretending not to know what I’m referring to. “Really?” I snort. “Who told me? That’s what seems relevant?”
His expression is stony. “Proceedings regarding the disbursement of internal funding are not public. An anonymous internal peer review is necessary to guarantee—”
“—to guarantee your ability to allocate funding to your close collaborators and fuck up the careers of the ones you have no use for. Right?” He jerks back. Not the reaction I expected, but it fills me with joy nonetheless. “Unless the reason was personal. And you vetoed my proposal because I didn’t sleep with you, what, five years ago.”
He doesn’t deny it, doesn’t defend himself, doesn’t scream that I’m insane. His eyes narrow to blue slits and he asks, “It was Merel, wasn’t it?”
“Why do you care? You did veto my project, so—”
“Did he also tell you why I vetoed it?”
“I never said that it was Merel who—”
“Because he was there when I explained my objections, at length and in detail. Did he omit that?” I press my lips together. Which he seems to interpret as an opening. “Hannah.” He leans closer. We’re nose to nose, I smell his skin and his aftershave, and I hate every second of this. “Your project is too dangerous. It specifically asks that you travel to a remote location to drop off equipment at a time of the year in which the weather is volatile and often totally unpredictable. I’ve been in Longyearbyen in February, and avalanches develop out of the blue. It’s only gotten worse in the last few—”
“How many times?”
He blinks at me. “What?”
“How many times have you been to Longyearbyen?”
“I’ve been on two expeditions—”
“Then you’ll understand why I take the opinion of someone who has been on a dozen missions over yours. Plus, we both know what the real reason of the veto was.”
Ian opens, then closes his mouth. His jaw hardens, and I’m finally sure of it: he’s mad. Pissed. I see it in the way he clenches his fist. The flare of his nostrils. His big body is just inches from mine, glowing with anger. “Hannah, Merel is not always trustworthy. There have been incidents under his watch that—”
“What incidents?”
A pause. “It’s not my information to disclose. But you shouldn’t trust him with your—”
“Right.” I scoff. “Of course I should take the word of the guy who went behind my back over the word of the guy who went to bat for me and made sure my project was funded anyway. Very hard choice to make.”
His hand lifts to close around my upper arm, at once gentle and urgent. I refuse to care enough to pull away from his touch. “What did you just say?”
I roll my eyes. “I said a bunch of things, Ian, but the gist of it was fuck off. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
“What do you mean, Merel made sure that your project was funded anyway?” His grip tightens.
“I mean exactly what I said.” I lean in, eyes locked with his, and for a split second the familiar feeling of being close, here, near him crashes over me like a wave. But it washes away just as quickly, and all that is left is an odd combination of vengeful sadness. I have my project, which means that I won. But I also . . . Yeah. I did like him. And while he was always just in the periphery of my life, I think maybe I’d hoped . . .
Well. No matter now. “He found an alternative, Ian,” I tell him. “Me and my inability to carry out the project are going to Norway, and there is nothing you can do about it.”
He closes his eyes. Then he opens them and mutters something under his breath that sounds a lot like fuck, followed by my name and other hurried explanations that I don’t care to listen to. I free my arm from his fingers, meet his eyes one last time, and walk away swearing to myself that this is it.
I will never think of Ian Floyd again.
Seven
Svalbard Islands, Norway
Present
He’s not wearing NASA gear.
By now it’s nearly dark, the snow falls steadily, and whenever I look up to the edge of the crevasse, huge snowflakes hurl straight into my eyes. But even then, I can tell: Ian is not wearing the gear NASA usually issues to AMASE scientists.
His hat and coat are the North Face, a dull black dusted with white, interrupted only by the red of his goggles and ski mask. His phone, when he takes it out to communicate with me from the edge of the crevasse, is not the standard-issue Iridium one, but a model I don’t recognize. He stares down for a long moment, as if assessing the shitfuck of a situation I managed to put myself in. Flurries circle around him, but never quite touch. His shoulders rise and fall. One, two, several times. Then, finally, he lifts his goggles and brings the phone to his mouth.
“I’ll send down the rope,” he says, in lieu of a greeting.
To say that I’m in a bit of a predicament at the moment, or that I have a few problems on my hands, would be a vast understatement. And yet, staring up from the place where I was positive I’d bite it until about five minutes ago, all I can think about is that the last time I talked with this man, I . . .