On the Rocks

The great vault door swung smoothly shut, its seal took a long inhuman breath. The outside world was excluded once again. Phil reached out, took his thick parka from its peg and slid his arms into the cool silky sleeves. His routine had been set over two decades; for all that the Arctic Ocean was no more than one hundred miles away, he had never needed the coat outside.
Working habits so thoroughly established can hardly be abandoned just because time is running out. The thing was that if impending redundancy made a mockery of today, the last day, then it made a mockery of every day that had gone before it. Twenty years completely wasted. Phil knew that it was true. There was no point in checking the freezer temperatures; there was no point booting up the computers. He knew it, but he could not accept it, could not act on it. The show must go on, or accept the fact that all along it had been no more than a show.
Harsh white lights hummed and row upon row of green indicators on broad silver doors reported that all was well. Does a heart not beat until the very moment when it stops beating? Very poor grasp of the future those indicators. Phil broke his habit of counting the aisles and the shelves; for a change he estimated flexi-time and how many hours he had lost to the month-end calculations; all for the sake of this place, this doomed place.
The pointless computers came to life. Phil's coffee steamed and he checked for messages. Of course there weren't many memos or e-mails either. This place was one of the institutional living dead; hardly worth communicating with once funeral arrangements had been made.
He tapped out three curt replies: 'No we can't help you','Unfortunately we cannot fulfill your request', and 'That programme has been suspended.' He wanted to add 'I wish someone had told me that before I devoted half my life to this industrial ice tray.' Duty retained the power to stay his hand.
The telephone rang. Phil watched it. Who could possibly need to speak to him? 'Hello, broom cupboard' he wanted to say. No really he didn't even want to pick up the receiver. This time duty moved his hand.
'Hello, Ice Repository.'
'Blake, have you finished that paper I asked you for last week?' It was May. What a charmless parasite. There were all kinds of ways Phil would really have loved to answer the over-promoted bean counter. Instead, as he had done with a succession of line managers down the years, he swallowed hard on his rage and frustration.
'It will be on your desk by the end of the day Mr May.' His spirit screamed to add 'along with my resignation' but, unbidden, the terms of capitulation came again: 'I just have one or two details to finish.'
'Good. Well, we'll have you out of there after today. You'll have something useful to do won't you?'
'Yes Mr May.'
'I'm sure we'll make some room for you up here where the real work gets done. Anyway, I need to see that paper by the end of the day. Good, Right. Later.'
That idiot, Phil reflected, he wants to turn me into one of his little minions. Everything that I know and everything that I have done, wasted.
He sat and looked down at the telephone for a long time after that. His mind went blank. There was only the ugly cream telephone, an ancient piece of junk.
Finally he pushed his chair back and stood up. The last few research enquiries were still waiting. He could attend to these and ignore, if only for a little while, the bloody bureaucracy. In fact as he turned away from the telephone at last he stuck out an arm and swept the paper May had demanded off the desk and into the gaping waste basket below. He wondered how long he could force himself to leave it there; he dreamed for a moment of being someone who would never pull it out and re-tidy it for presentation.
He managed to work then as if nothing had changed and as if nothing would ever change. This library of ice was his domain; he guarded the ice of six continents and the records of research undertaken over many decades. He could open doors and produce ice cores from Greenland, from Antarctica, from K2 or from Everest and from many other places besides. He had a world of ice.
Every cabinet and every shelf reminded him of the scientists who had come and of the work this place had helped. This repository had collected numerous academic acknowledgments since he had been here; in fact he could go into any good reference library and find a journal containing the paper 'Climate Change in Holocene Africa' and there would be his name gratefully recorded. The only place May's name was acknowledged was on the door of the third cubicle of the gents' on the second floor: "wanker".
It was nice to pretend, but every time he had to remind a correspondent that the repository was closing he was brought back to harsh reality. It had all been for nothing. Despite himself, he gradually began to let more of his anger seep into his e-mails: 'misplaced funding cuts' he fumed; 'short-sighted economies' he hammered; 'just the kind of people who got us into this mess and now they're destroying the evidence.' Send? Yes! 'No doubt the wanton destruction of this repository will improve the Government's energy efficiency figures; a closure rich in irony as the ice melts.'
He didn't leave the ice cores for his lunch break. He didn't have the heart to go with time so short. Just before two the intercom at the main door buzzed. Phil found himself standing halfway along an aisle of cabinets resting his head on a metal door. The hood of his parka was up and he made no move.
The intercom buzzed again. Phil banged his head on the door. Thirty seconds passed and then the intercom started to buzz and did not stop. One last bang of the head and 'Oh alright, alright. I'm coming.'
'Yes' he barked into the little box on the wall.
'Phil? It's me Hilary. Let me in.'
'What do you want Hilary? I'm pretty busy in here. It's a big day you know?' Six weeks earlier Phil would have been ecstatic if Hilary had come down here to visit him; today he was unmoved; his work was on death row.
'Let me in Phil. Please.'
Hilary came through the door, her face was a picture of concern. She was wearing a long raincoat that immediately took Phil's mind off the ice cores.
'I was worried about you Phil.'
Phil basked in Hilary's warm smile. 'Oh, I'm not doing too badly Hilary' he lied and knew immediately that she knew that he was lying.
'Are you really busy?'
'No. I'm waiting for two o'clock. I suppose I should put the plastic trays into position under the cabinets.'
'I've taken the afternoon off.'
'Oh that's nice' Phil answered dully as he kicked white trays under the nearest freezer units. 'What are you going to do?'
'Phil! I came here to be with you, you arse!'
Phil stopped what he was doing and looked at Hilary. He was embarrassed. She was sitting there at his desk and still wearing that long rain coat.
'Is it raining outside?' he asked feebly.
'No' Hilary said and Phil's heart jumped into his mouth.
'Nearly two' he muttered.
'I'm sorry Phil. This is shit for you.'
An ancient Roy Harper lyric running through his mind, Phil made his way over to the desk. He reached past Hilary to the top drawer, pulled out the only piece of paper in there and handed it to her. She started to read.
'No mention of the funding crisis then? Or of the cutbacks?'
'I don't think they can admit how bad it is even to themselves. Apparently it's all about "new priorities".' Phil snorted a half laugh.
'But you've told me often enough that some of the samples you have here are unique. It's incredible isn't it?'
Phil just looked at Hilary. She handed him back the letter, 'Thanks for coming' he said. He suddenly realised just how much this visit meant to him. 'I guess most of the world thinks it's too late to be worried about ice cores. Soon there won't be any ice left at all out there, so why worry about a little bit of old stuff in here?'
Hilary reached out a hand and touched Phil on his face. 'I'm really sorry' was all she said. He was lost in the touch of her fingers.
'You have no need to be sorry' he managed as her hand fell away. 'I suppose I shouldn't worry. This place hardly matters anymore.' He glanced up at the clock on the wall, white and as ugly as the telephone. 'It's two' he said, 'excuse me a minute.'
Phil made his way on unsteady legs towards the bank of switches at the back of the repository. He opened a box to reveal the master switch and stood transfixed. Twice in twenty years, very briefly, the power down here had been cut. Now it was going off for good. He reached out and flicked it off; it was easier than he thought it would be. There was no fight left in the place.
On his way back he checked all of the drains at the end of the rows. Soon the water would begin to flow. Even as he reached Hilary he thought he heard the first stray drip fall into one of the plastic trays. 'Done' he said, 'it's off.'
'You once told me that you had some ice from Africa here Phil.'
'I didn't think that you were very interested in ice.' Phil had had many years in which to become cripplingly self-conscious of the risk of being an ice-bore. 'I've got ice here from places where there has been no ice for decades; I've got ice here from the Shining Mountain. It doesn't shine any more.'
'Where's that?' Hilary asked. She really did seem interested.
'Kilimanjaro. Ice free since 2025 and there's a core here from sixty years before that, before the top even started to melt. It tells the story of the African climate for centuries.'
'Wow' Hilary said. It was an odd exclamation. Phil discovered that he liked to hear Hilary say "wow", but there was something oddly detached in her voice nonetheless. 'Can I see it?'
'I don't see why not. It'll be gone soon anyway. Wait here.' Phil could definitely hear dripping and when he looked and saw no green indicator lights he did a violent double take that nearly cricked his neck. He could still hardly believe that it was all melting. He opened the cabinet with reverence as if he was about to inspect the relics of saints rather than a rapidly defrosting ice-box. He pulled on the gloves that always lived in his parka pocket and withdrew a metal cylinder from the middle shelf. The dated, plastic-wrapped label read "Kilimanjaro", African ice.
He carried the sample carefully to the desk saying 'Here it is.' He was about to explain that normally he wouldn't put an ice core out here but the words stuck in his throat. Hilary was undoing the belt of her raincoat. Phil shyly glanced again to see if there was any sign of any other piece of clothing showing from underneath. Hilary smiled at him.
The belt came free from the buckle, but Hilary held the coat closed. 'Can I see the ice?' she asked. Phil hoped that it hadn't just melted in his hands.
He opened the metal case and slid out the long cylinder of African ice. His heart was pounding. He turned his head towards Hilary intending to say something crass like 'Well, what do you think?'
Hilary reached inside her coat and pulled out a hammer. She was wearing a little suit, dark blue, smart and sexy, but hardly what Phil had allowed himself to imagine. He was confused. Hilary smiled again, for all the world as if she had indeed opened her coat to reveal nothing underneath but flesh. She reached into her coat again, deep into an inside pocket. With a clink out came two short glasses. She raised her eyes suggestively and delved again, this time into a poacher's pocket at the hem. Finally out came a bottle of bourbon. She placed it determinedly on the desk between them.
'I hope you like ice' she said and passed Phil the hammer.