The track vehicle was warm enough to be comfortable, and Trevor could just see through the frosted window if he scraped it often enough. Sokolov opened the thermos that he had packed before they left and poured two cups without asking, knowing that everyone wants a hot drink when it was that cold. They were roughly two miles to windward of Vostok Station, Sokolov and Trevor in one vehicle, two other Russians in another. It wasn’t really far enough to be certain that the snow was uncontaminated by pollutants given off by the station, but it was as far as Trevor could get the Russians to go. It was probably fine, since the wind direction was almost one hundred percent reliable. And almost was almost good enough, but not quite. It would, however, just have to do.
Sokolov wasn’t really involved in this project, but he had been doing his own research on site for over a year and had it pretty well down. It was good to have something different to do. Trevor was watching the workers unloading the equipment from the other vehicle. This wasn’t actually the project that he was sent there to do, either. There had been many ice cores drilled at Vostok and the French team that was there during the summer was very good, thanks to the Swiss engineer who was running the operation. The equipment was slated to drill three separate cores. Trevor’s was last. Therefore, he had time on his hands to try something that he had thought about, but not mentioned to anyone else, other than Sokolov, yet. When he was a full professor, he hoped to get a grant to come back on a project of his own. Now, he could conduct his experiment on the side and possibly have a theme for his doctoral dissertation.
“How did you keep this a secret from our atmospheric scientist?” Sokolov asked him. “This would be just the type of research he would like to steal and claim as his own.”
“I told him that I was going to walk from site to site collecting samples and carry them with me for several miles.”
“Ah.” Sokolov thought for a moment. “We are not going to do that, are we?”
“No. We’ll dig a pit right over there. As you know, of course, the annual snowfall here is consistent to the point of being almost unnatural. It has long been understood that chemicals get trapped in the gasses that form the bubbles in the ice.”
“Absolutely. That is why the cores are mined.”
“Correct. What I am looking at is a recent record, maybe fifty or sixty years. The cores map certain climate changes from distant history. Since we are in a current period of rapid warming, I am going to take a year by year, much more detailed record of the most recent past. By doing a chemical analysis of each year individually, maybe even seasonally, I can reconstruct a nearly perfect model of what chemical changes occur along with climate change. By finding a pattern, I am thinking that I may be able to correlate them with the triggers that bring on climate change, making long-term climate prediction a possibility.”
“Not a bad hypothesis for a grad student.”
“Thanks, though I’m not technically a grad student. More of a research assistant while I work on my Ph.D.”
Trevor looked over his material list, sipping the hot tea. Sokolov didn’t do anything.
“Where did you learn English so well?” Trevor asked him.
“University.”
“Interesting. I don’t know anyone who speaks Russian.”
“That is because your imperial masters do not want your awareness of what is taking place in the larger world. The enlightened Soviet leadership, on the other hand, understands that when the working classes of your society rise up, they will require our assistance and we want to be prepared to communicate with them.”
Trevor smiled. At first he was alarmed when Sokolov would go off like that, but over the last few days he recognized that the Russian was just venting. He needed someone to talk to, and he was discrete in his indiscretion. He only did it when it was safe.
“Forgive me if I don’t start learning Russian.”
“I cannot do that. Most of the world’s great literature is in Russian and you will remain ignorant until you can read it in the original.” About this, Sokolov was serious.
“Then you will have to teach me,” Trevor said.
“Our political leader will find this an excellent use of our spare time.”
“Well, there isn’t going to be much more of that now.”