China Mountain Zhang

"Zhang?"

Maggie is standing on the tower, lit from underneath by the light. She is faceless behind her face mask, hidden in her ARC, but I know her size and shape, her voice. It infuriates me to see another faceless person in an ARC suit. The Arctic makes people things. I do not answer her, but make abrupt, choppy cuts in the ice.

"What are you doing?"

I think the wind and the stressed ice sounds are answer enough. Then I think, damn it, I want to be in the wind. So putting down the cutter I take off my mask, pull back my hood. The wind is so cold it makes my eyes tear, the air is so cold it hurts to breath, much colder even than going into the water. I open the seals, pull the top off. I don't care if I'm cold. The pain of the cold seems like the right feeling, seems real. I pick up the cutter and make a cut.

Part of me ca

I am talking to the ice, and I am saying over and over, "I have lost my frigging mind, do you understand? I have lost my frigging mind. I have lost my frigging mind."

Maggie comes over and takes my arm and says, "Come inside. Come inside."

At first I think, no. But then I realize I am cold, and that I really want to, so I let her pick up my pull-over and the cutter and we go inside. Now she talks and I am quiet. "It's nothing," she says, "it happens in the winter. Come inside, have something hot, have some tea. The Eskimo call it perlerorneq, winter depression, it happens when it gets dark and you're unhappy, but now it's over, you're okay, you'll be okay. I'll make you a cup of tea, very sweet, here put this back on and get warm." To Jim and Ja

Words wash over me, I don't care. I don't care, except I am so tired that I could weep. I wonder if I am going crazy, but I think that if I am, at least I will go home.

Maggie takes me back, and takes me to my room. She sits with me on my bed and tells me, "Right now, you are just sick of life, perlerorneq, but you'll feel better."

"I'm sorry," I mumble. But I have a feeling now, not anger. Underneath my tiredness I feel grateful. "Thank you," I say.

"Go to sleep," she says.

I sleep for sixteen hours, through the day and the next night. And when I meet everyone the next morning for breakfast, I am embarrassed, and they are all kind. I ca

Ja

"I don't know what happened to me," I say, penitent and confused. I go to work, and they keep me working on the third level, close to them, and they talk to me often.

Maggie talks to me, matter-of-fact. "When they had trouble with depression in space, they asked the Inuit Eskimo and the Greenland Eskimo about perlerorneq. It's like a circuit breaker. Now the Eskimo train research crews in space ways to deal with it. I learned about it in school, in my Native Studies course."

My unhappiness is still there, but it is gray, not black. I go back to the full spectrum lights, I study a little. Ja

So December passes. Christmas, a package from Peter, sweaters in the most outrageous styles, with little capes; all the rage, he writes. I give one to Karin. We exchange gifts, sing songs. It's not so bad.

We are expecting sunrise at 12:14 p.m. on February 2. In January I study and wait through the days. I have the feeling that I have felt the worst and now it will be all right. I decide to renew my contract.

"Don't worry," Ja

On January 29 we are studying in the late morning. Eric is ru

Ja

And then, four days early, I see the edge of the sun, blinding, above the horizon. "Ja

She looks up and her eyes widen and then crinkle with delight. "Oh, Zhang, wonderful."

It's morning. I smile and smile.

"It's not a real sunrise," Ja

We sit in silence and watch the sun rise and then dip. In minutes it is over.

I expect to feel the weight of the night again, but no, the sunrise is enough. I can wait. I can study, I can pass the exam. And the second night is not so bad, never as bad as the first.

I have survived. And I think, finally, I am adapting.

JERUSALEM RIDGE (Martine)

The little girl looks at me and asks, "What's that?"

"What?" I ask. The myth that all middle-aged women like children is just that, a myth.

"That," she points.

"It's a candle," the man working on the skid says. "Come over here Theresa, I need you to hold something for me, okay?"

Clearly her father. They both have the same pale, washed out look, like faded cotton. Newcomers. Maybe whatever life they'd been living before they got here washed them out that way. The little girl looks up at me, not sure what to make of me, then obeys.

I'm walking the perimeter, checking for an air leak. I know it's here, I just don't know where it is. We use a very old fashioned way to locate leaks, whenever we get a flag that the air mixture is off somewhere in Jerusalem Ridge, I come out here and prowl around with a candle, using the flicker of the flame to find the leak.

Don't go looking for Jerusalem Ridge on your map, it's called New Changsha, or Sector 56/C-JRU, depending on whether your map is dated during or after the Cleansing Winds Campaign. It's on the northern edge of the Argyre Basin in the southern hemisphere. JRU is actually the initials of the surveyor. Aron Fahey says the name comes from the initials, but I really couldn't say. Most of the people who were here thirty years ago and would remember have been relocated. Aron would have been nine then so I'm not sure he really knows. I came when they reopened the sector seven years ago and walked into a viper's nest of back-stabbing and leftover animosities. Even now the Commune tends to break into two parts, the old people left who remember everything anybody ever did to anyone else during the Campaign, and the new ones who left our mistakes on Earth. The people who were kids during the Campaign tend to stick with the new people.