Ices end, p.35
Ice's End, page 35
McCormick shook his head. “The Admiralty still considers them safe. Lady Jane Franklin has organized a private search. She insisted Ross lead it.”
“I thought Ross had retired from polar voyages.”
“That’s what he said. Somehow, Lady Franklin changed his mind. Maybe rumors of his recklessness on the Erebus that first summer had reached her in Van Dieman’s Land, and she used them against him.”
“How?”
“Guilt,” McCormick answered without hesitation. “The nuns at my school always pressed us further by reminding us of the atonement we owed the Lord.”
Yule fell silent, thinking back to the young woman who had taken on her husband’s work with such ease in Van Dieman’s Land. Questions swirled in his head.
What “guilt” was McCormick referring to? Was it simply Ross’s near-suicidal pursuit of the South Magnetic Pole, or was there more? Had Lady Jane learned of the insurance policy filed against Ross with Aspley? Did she suspect his men hated him? Had she somehow learned what Ross had done to Hooker? Should Yule tell the surgeon now?
First, he decided to test what McCormick already knew.
“What do you think of that choice?”
“As insufferable as Ross is, he knows polar seas better than any man alive,” McCormick said. “And I will admit, he seemed more cautious after the trouble we had near the Great Barrier our first summer. As much as it pains me to admit it, he may be the best hope those men have.” He smiled briefly. “After all, Ross never ate his boots.”
Yule said nothing further.
Epilogue
Southern Ocean
Antarctica
July 2123
Roscoe lingered on the platform behind the Lautaro’s conning tower, savoring the peach sky after months of blackness.
“Mind if I join you?”
Roscoe turned to see Chip leaning on the railing beside him. It was July 31—the date the blast had been scheduled. But the submarine’s sonar showed no patrol subs or no-sail zones. The Southern Ocean lay calm, calm enough for the Lautaro’s crew to go topside.
The sun wouldn’t rise over the Ross Sea for a few more weeks, but the Lautaro had voyaged far enough north to catch the first twilight Roscoe had seen in months. Most of the crew had retreated indoors after a few minutes in the cold, but Roscoe stayed behind, his suit’s hood loosely draped over his head.
“Makes a hell of a difference, doesn’t it?” Chip asked, nodding toward the horizon. “Full-spectrum lamps just don’t cut it.” He pulled up a message on his wristband. “Says here the nuclear test’s been called off,” he said, using air quotes. “Determination that the requested warhead is not suitable for undersea detonation.”
“They’re still buying WECs from StarCross, though?”
Chip nodded. “No govellers will give up their water supply over one video. But it gave them pause before they traded nukes for water.”
“You think these microbes will give people an alternative to Spigot?” Roscoe asked.
Chip smiled. “Too early to tell. It’s going to take way more research to find out what these things are and what makes them tick. So far, they’ve stumped the guy who’s bred bacteria that can eat metal and algae that glow in fresh water.” He cracked his knuckles through his gloves.
“Any idea how long that research will take?”
“Nope,” Chip said. “We’ve just built an incubator that mimics the pressure and chemistry down there. Based on the salinity readings, they seem pretty happy so far, but figuring out what they are and scaling up production? I wouldn’t hold your breath. And even if they’re scalable, Griqua Tierra will decide whether to share.” He shifted, pushing another floating wristband message in front of Roscoe. “StarCross is definitely spooked, though. Check out this out—Tololo forwarded it to the crew.”
Roscoe scanned the text:
Dear Spigot family,
We would like to bid a bittersweet farewell to our friend and CEO, Grei Jahnford. After ten years of visionary leadership, Mr. Jahnford has decided to step down to spend more time with his family and church.
In a statement, StarCross President and Chairman—
Roscoe swiped the screen closed. “Guess Jahnford’s prayers weren’t answered.”
Chip raised an eyebrow. “Prayers?”
“Remember what you told me? You thought Jahnford was praying that the freshwater plume wouldn’t get discovered on his watch. He knew it’d look bad if people realized he was selling water while a free source was next door. Guess he was right.”
“Yep,” Chip said, grinning. “Guess whatever God there is isn’t on his side.” He reached into his coat and pulled out a flask. “Dry ship or not, if Petí gets communion wine, I should get one flask of McMurdo vodka.”
He raised it toward the horizon that now separated them from Spigot and a CEO who was packing his bags. “To Jahnford’s end.” Before taking a swig, Chip added, “And to Hamza.”
Rosco accepted the flask. The vodka burned as it went down. One mouthful of the potent brew had him looking at the submarine’s wake, wondering about the ripple effects of their mission.
The mere chance that these microbes could produce fresh water, upsetting StarCross’s precious Goldilocks production rate, had convinced StarCross to fire an executive and cost it some of humanity’s most powerful weapons. What other problems might it cause for their stranglehold on water, and how far would they go to suppress it?
And what about that scrap of paper in the pail? Could it somehow upset the Revelators, those fanatics who revered people like Ross?
Chip interrupted Roscoe’s thoughts with more good news.
“There’s a new job waiting for you in Griqua Tierra.”
Roscoe turned, intrigued. “What kind of job?”
“Councilor-on-Call says it’s top priority. When we get up there, their Civil Service’s Library Division wants you to help decipher what that paper inside the pail says.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Roscoe said, taking another swig. Then a thought struck him. “So, I’ll be doing the same job as in Spigot.”
Chip shook his head. “Not even close. Griqua Tierra’s library isn’t a dead-end job like in Spigot. When a co-op or the Governing Council needs some thorny problem solved, they go to the Library. A lot of Tololo’s intel ends up there. And they waived the probationary period for you. They want you, man.”
Roscoe’s gratitude felt real now—but he decided to push his luck anyway. “Do you think Griqua Tierra will have room for Hamza’s parents? They were hoping Hamza would get them out of their Naurutown. This place sure sounds like an improvement.”
The scientist gazed into the waves, tilting his head back-and-forth in his familiar “I’m thinking” motion. “It can’t hurt to ask.” After a pause, he gave Roscoe an odd look. “What about your parents? Were they counting on you too?”
“Oh yeah, they were.” Both his post-hearing anger at his parents and his older dreams of getting them off-world seemed to lie back in Spigot’s Archives, relics of bygone days. All the space they’d taken up in his mind had gone empty, leaving him numb. “Dunno if I’d want to bring them down, though.” When Chip made the same nasty-sip face Evangelina had during their meeting, Roscoe decided to steer the conversation elsewhere. “Why did the library people say they wanted me?”
“Apparently Tololo said you’d be perfect for the job.”
“Tololo?” Roscoe asked, startled. “How does he know me? Do you know who he is?”
Chip shook his head. “Ricardo won’t tell me. Just said Tololo’s been transmitting old archives. Evangelina thinks it might help her research. She mentioned some botanist named Hooker.” Chip snorted.
Roscoe chuckled too—but not at Hooker’s name. “I think Tololo’s a ‘she,’ Chip.”
The hatch creaked open before he could explain.
“Shit!” Chip hissed, snatching the flask from Roscoe and tucking it in his pocket.
Ricardo appeared, holding his phone. “Message for you, Roscoe,” he said.
“A message?” Roscoe repeated.
“Surprised us too,” Ricardo said. “It came through a pirate satellite. We had to send it up to the Library in Griqua Tierra for decryption.” He held out his phone. “You recognize the sender?”
Roscoe took the phone and shared the screen with Chip:
Roscoe—
Nice work. Greenland’s helping me out with some stuff—it’d be great to have you on board too. Can’t share more until we meet in person. If you ever want to meet up, go to Shiduri’s. Order a Blood Falls Red Ale and an Elephant Island IPA. Tell her you’re meeting with someone about researching Kropotkin’s theories on the subglacial lakes. She’ll take care of the rest.
In solidarity,
Finn Smalls
Roscoe and Chip looked at each other, then southward, toward the horizon, the thawing continent beyond, and whatever waited for them back there.
Author’s Note
From 1839 to 1843, the H.M.S. Erebus and Terror charted the Antarctic coast and the Southern Ocean under the command of Captain James Clark Ross. The expedition failed to achieve its principal objective—planting the British flag on the South Magnetic Pole—but the Ross Expedition, along with the concurrent U.S. Exploring Expedition commanded by Charles Wilkes and a French expedition led by Jules Dumont d’Urville, helped fill in the blank spaces at the bottom of humanity’s maps.
These voyages remain most closely associated with the men who led them. But their true contributions took the form of data collection and survey work by the likes of Henry Braddick Yule and Charles Tucker, and the specimens and observations gathered by Joseph Dalton Hooker, Robert McCormick, and their counterparts on other ships. The Antarctic came into focus for the first time thanks to this patient, methodical, and often unglamorous work—work that continues today, as Antarctica remains the only continent reserved for science.
I sincerely hope that this remains the case and that a future like the one I’ve written remains fiction.
Each named sailor in the chapters about the Ross Expedition was a real member of that voyage. Their personalities—and those of the other named characters—are largely figments of my imagination. So is Ross’s abuse of Hooker, Yule’s treasure hunt, and his life insurance policy on Ross from a fictitious Lunk Aspley. Hooker did fall overboard during the expedition’s landing on Franklin Island, but the extent of his illness afterward is also fictitious. However, the dates of each port of call are accurate.
Michael Palin’s book Erebus was an invaluable starting point for my research—one I’d recommend to anyone interested in learning more about the remarkable travels of that hardy bomb vessel. We are also fortunate that no StarCross-like entity has come along to lock up the records of that expedition. The memoirs, journals, and records of Ross, McCormick, Hooker, and other expedition members remain freely accessible in various online databases. My verbatim quotations from these texts, and the map Roscoe found in the Archives, are cited below:
Chapter 4
Earl of Minto’s instructions:
Ross, James Clark. A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions, during the Years 1839–43. London: John Murray, 1847, pp. xxii-xxviii.
Chapter 7
Ross Sea map:
Ross, James Clark. A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions, during the Years 1839–43. London: John Murray, 1847.
Chapter 18
“From 19 January … South Magnetic Pole!”
Palin, Michael. Erebus: One Ship, Two Epic Voyages, and the Greatest Naval Mystery of All Time. Vancouver, Canada: Greystone Books, 2018, p. 90.
Chapter 22
“Ah! Old boy, if I put my hand on it, the body must follow.”
Robertson, J. “A Few General Remarks on the Antarctic Continent, Discovered by Captains Ross and Crozier.” The Tasmanian Journal of Natural Science, Agriculture, Statistics, Etc., vol. 2, no. 6, January 1843, pp. 45–61 at 51.
Chapter 26
“Your former letters … scenery delightful.”
Hooker, Joseph Dalton. Received by Lady Maria Hooker, June 6, 1841. Joseph Hooker Collection. https://jdhooker.kew.org/p/jdh/asset/1702.
About the Author
P. Finian Reilly studied history at the University of Chicago, then got a different kind of education by working as a local newspaper reporter in Montana. In that job, he learned how to drive a motorboat alongside a burning lakeshore, interview anti-government militia leaders, and appreciate just how complicated humanity’s relationship with the natural world can be. He earned his J.D. at Georgetown University Law Center, and now works as an environmental attorney in New Jersey. Ice’s End is his first novel.
Acknowledgments
Many people helped bring Ice’s End to publication. First, I have to thank my longtime editor and friend, Gwen Florio. Gwen has taken many chances on me over the years. As editor of the Missoulian, she hired me to cover a chunk of Montana larger than several states and sharpened my writing and reporting skills in countless ways during my two years on that beat. When I asked her—as the only novelist I knew—for fiction-writing advice, her first words were, “Be a lawyer.” She nonetheless read and edited several drafts of this novel and kept me sane through the publication process.
Adrian Horton, another dear friend from my time in Montana, did the same. We worked side by side in our first jobs out of college, covering local news around Glacier National Park for The Daily Inter Lake. Remarkably, that experience didn’t deter Adrian from agreeing to edit the early drafts of Ice’s End, and giving me encouragement that kept me going through months of revisions and rejections.
I’m deeply grateful to everyone else who took the time to read earlier drafts of this novel, and to give feedback and encouragement: Sabrina Lourie, Scott Altman, James Schadt, Deniz Demirci, Elaine Yao, Emily Mahapatra, Valeria Stutz, and, of course, my parents, Michael and Elaine Reilly. Ice’s End is a much better story for all your input.
Special thanks to Mike Lucibella, former editor of The Antarctic Sun, for reading it with an Antarctic eye and ensuring that I got the details of the Ross Sea Coast right. I’m also grateful to Professor Bethan Davies for answering my questions about the area’s glaciers.
Thanks to Steven Long, publisher of 12 Willows Press, for taking a chance on this novel and giving it several rounds of excellent edits, and to the entire 12 Willows team for doing such a great job with its production.
Finally, I have to again thank my parents, Michael and Elaine Reilly—along with my brother Keelin, my sister Melina, and my sister-in-law Emmeline—for all their support and encouragement over the years.
P. Finian Reilly
April 2025
P. Finian Reilly, Ice's End
