In the hissing blinding whiteness two scientists, a bearded man and a woman with fierce, hungry eyes, struggle up the mountain. They are bound together by a rope tied around their waists and carry bulky packs. They speak in sign language because the blizzard drowns out voices, screams in their ears with an oddly human rage. Occasionally they pass the stiffened bodies of those who came before. Clad in bright puffy jackets and thick boots, they seem too well-prepared, too optimistic, to be so indisputably dead. Rick’s foot skitters over a patch of ice and Marie nearly capsizes into a drift. For God’s sake, she signs, be careful. Sorry, he replies. Two legs punctuate the drift. Anyone we know, Rick signs, and Marie replies, I don’t think so, but she has trouble looking away from the frozen, peaceful face, which seems to conceal some essential secret. She doesn’t mean to but she cries a little for the unknown woman. She regrets it because the tears turn instantly to painful shards of ice that abrade her skin. She gulps from her thermos of tea, burning the roof of her mouth with the boiling liquid. Maybe this is it, she thinks, maybe this is what all the years of struggle and work and sacrifice have added up to, and she should be angry but she’s too bone-tired, sick to death of the slow, endless climb, Rick’s car-salesman smile, the numbness in her toes and the emptiness in her heart. At noon they settle in a secluded hollow and build a fire, which won’t last long but is still a fragile comfort. They unwrap sandwiches and trade, because Rick doesn’t like peanut butter. Marie knows she should keep up her strength so she chews and tries to swallow but her throat has clenched shut with a surprising strength. The task before her is too immense, too threatening, to allow her body to function. I wasn’t given a choice, she tells herself, over and over, as if repeating it will make her believe it. Rick is starving and downs two egg salad sandwiches and wishes he could stop worrying about stupid things like whether crumbs get caught in his beard and rot there. Because how long has it been since he had a hot shower? Days, weeks. Time up here isn’t the same. It telescopes, stretches and thins like taffy, resists divisions and categories. Marie thinks of her childhood, how every night she’d demand her father kill the imaginary monster beneath her bed, even though she knew it wasn’t real. He’d crawl on the floor, growl deep in his throat, and she’d laugh and know she was safe. And now I’m the monster, she thinks, and the thought infects her like a virus. She balls up the sandwich and throws it away and Rick signs, don’t do that, you’ll attract predators, and she signs, I’m sorry, and it isn’t the sandwich she means. I think we’re close, Rick signs, flashing his oily smile. Aren’t you excited? Excited? Sure. Finally we’ll find out the truth. See the thing with our own eyes. It’s like we’re in those old stories about explorers discovering new lands. Maybe they’ll even name it after us. I doubt it. Excited, she thinks. Maybe she once was. When the rumors first started to circulate. A completely new technology. Maybe even miraculous. Certainly something that could change everything. Found by a climber who had the sense to leave it where it was but was stupid enough to babble to a friend, who told someone else, and of course the Supervisor, who had spies everywhere, even outside the Adler Corporation, got wind of the discovery. It was the Supervisor herself who had chosen them for this mission. Decreed the eight months of hard physical and mental training to ensure they’d survive until they completed the objective. Officially of course no one at Adler believes in UFOs. Unofficially the Supervisor had concerns. She felt a responsibility. She felt something so important shouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. That’s the Supervisor for you, Marie thinks now. Always with the best, the most humanitarian, of motives. I don’t think we’ll find anything, she signs. It was probably just a rumor. Let’s think positive, he answers. Flashes his grin. At the Adler Corporation Rick is something of a hot commodity. He’s had affairs, if the rumors can be believed, with several of her colleagues. She can’t see the attraction. There’s something crafty, piggish, about the eyes and she’s always disliked beards because what are they but another deception. Well, Rick signs, let’s get back to it. He gets up and stamps out the fire. Fragile wisps of smoke rise, vanish. Instinctively, he starts to hold out his hand to Marie but thinks better of it. He senses she dislikes him but he can’t figure out why. She’s several rings above him on the corporate ladder and since he’s ambitious he’s always been extra nice and respectful. But she continues to look at him like he’s something stuck to the bottom of her shoe. A cigarette butt, a fast-food wrapper. Maybe she’s just bitter, unhappy, he thinks. Some people are like that. Curdled, like milk, from the inside out. That night they find a shallows depression to sleep in. Marie can’t sleep. She hasn’t slept in days. She stays awake staring at the immense, glittering sky, which is almost beautiful enough to make the long empty nights worth it. The moon, heavy and glistening, dips so close she thinks she can see its topography. Ridges, ravines, vast, echoing canyons. Stars explode across the blackness. She starts to count them but gives up at ninety-seven because how will she ever keep track of them all. Rick falls asleep almost instantly but wanders through a dense, terrifying nightmare where a vast stinking beast stalks him, brings him to ground, nibbles on his toes. He understands that he will be eaten alive but it will take a very long time. Obliteration In tiny scraps of flesh. When he wakes he finds he’s drenched in sweat despite the bitter cold. They don’t keep track of the days anymore so they don’t know exactly when they find it. At first it’s only a blurred gray patch in the driving snow, so close in color to the atmosphere that they think it’s nothing at all. But as they trudge closer it takes shape. It isn’t small but it isn’t large either. A polished silvery disk, thin on one end, half-buried in a snowdrift. Rick gives her a thumb’s-up and kneels beside the object. Don’t touch it, Marie signs, but he isn’t watching her. He’s tracing the edge with a bony finger, his eyes wide with triumph and wonder. Marie grabs his shoulder and shakes. Don’t you remember the instructions, she signs, and he shakes his head and signs, sorry, I got excited. He digs his laptop from his pack, powers it on, starts to type notes. He’s absorbed in his work and Marie thinks she won’t get another moment so perfect. She crouches behind him. His jacket is thick and his red knitted cap is pulled down over his hair so why does she imagine she can see the knobby bones of his spine, the sheen of his brown hair. She digs in her pack and brings out the shiny object which is surely too light for such a deadly purpose. She inches it towards the back of his head and pulls the trigger. Strangely the shot makes no sound or maybe it’s only that the storm obliterates it. But he’s clearly dead. He’s pitched forward into the snow, a red amoeba of blood spreading from his head. Ragged bits of his brain speckle the whiteness. She’s a little ashamed to find the scene aesthetically pleasing. The contrast between scarlet and white. The way his face is so peaceful, emptied of personhood. She’d thought that maybe after she carried out this final order, she’d be a completely different person. But she isn’t. The same hopes, worries, resentments, jostle through her mind, if anything louder, more demanding than before. Her hands, when she strips off her gloves and studies them, look ordinary and familiar. She kneels beside Rick, yanks the laptop from his stiffening fingers. Working quickly, she removes the hard drive and kicks it until it fractures into four jagged pieces. She buries the shards and the gun in the snow, deep enough that it’s likely they’ll never be found. Then she rises, weary enough to sleep for weeks, but she knows she can’t. She has an appointment to keep. She trudges forward, begins the long, slow journey back down the mountain.