MAX was tired and cranky. Normally he wouldn’t have been. Tierra del Fuego had crisp, cold, blue skies; dark snowy mountains; a harbor that opened to an unending sea; and a restaurant with amazing steaks. Hugo, the guide Brandon hired, was friendly and very excited to talk about the battle between Chile and Argentina for the control of the islands at the tip of South America.
But Max didn’t care about any of that.
He was a fact guy. The balloon landing had not been smooth. They’d nearly flown into the flight path of a small Cessna. Brandon had had to make excuses to the airport people, and when they finally took off, he announced the flight time would be fifteen hours.
Fifteen.
Max hadn’t prepared for that, and Max didn’t like not being prepared. In his mind the flight from Mexico to South America would be like Ohio to Florida. But Tierra del Fuego was literally half a world away, at the southern tip of the continent.
At least the flight from Tierra del Fuego to Antarctica would be short. If they could get one. Which they apparently couldn’t.
And that was the other thing making Max cranky.
“When you say ‘no flights to Antarctica,’ do you mean, like, ever?” Alex said.
“September is late winter in Antarctica, and flights are limited,” Hugo said. His office had a plateglass window overlooking the frigid bay, but Max was sweating as if it were a steam bath. “You can’t just call the airport and tell them you’re on your way. Military transports get quick clearance, but commercial and personal flights? It’s a strict process. You must apply and wait your turn.”
“Cat pee!” Max screamed.
“Pardon?” Hugo said.
“He’s angry,” Bitsy explained.
“Ah, I understand,” Hugo said. “Tierra del Fuego is lovely, and ordinarily I would invite you to stay awhile. But if you are truly in a rush, I suppose I can contact my friend, Captain Oswaldo Perez, who is leaving tomorrow on a cutter to bring medical supplies.”
Max sat forward, hopeful. “How long will that take?”
“Two days,” Hugo said.
“Two days is good,” Max said. “We can do that.”
“Thank you!” Alex blurted.
Hugo raised his eyebrows. “Save the thanks until after the trip. To get from Tierra del Fuego to Antarctica, one must cross the Drake Passage. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Max said. “The only part of the ocean that circles the entire world uninterrupted by land.”
“Smart boy,” Hugo said. “Six hundred times the water flow of the Amazon River. With no constraints to the water’s movement, everything is bigger—waves, wind, rain. In good weather, it’s the ‘Drake Lake.’ But in bad . . . well, it is not for the fainthearted. Waves can be as high as forty feet.” He laughed. “Then we call it the Drake Shake.”
“Lovely . . .” Nigel drawled.
“So,” Hugo said, “I strongly suggest you wait for a plane.”
Before Max could answer, he felt a buzzing in his pocket and looked at his screen. A call from his dad, not a text. Nigel and Bitsy were arguing with Alex, who was looking at Max for support. But he ducked out of the office and into a waiting room. “Hello?”
“Max? It’s Dad!”
He loved hearing his dad’s voice. It had been so long. Every incident, every weird moment of his adventure bubbled up inside his brain and crowded just inside his mouth. Before he could think of what to say, it all began spilling out at once: “We’re fine. We found four of the ingredients. One of them was a hippo bone! We were in Greece, where I rode a motorbike, and then we took a trip on the Trans-Siberian—”
“Max, I can’t wait to hear more,” his dad interrupted. “But I’m afraid I have some news. Nothing to panic about right now. But your mom . . .”
His voice trailed off. That was not good. That didn’t sound like a nothing-to-panic-about thing.
Max sat down. “My mom what?”
“Her cancer has returned, Max. Apparently the treatments didn’t quite knock it out.”
“But that can’t be true,” Max said. “We got the best doctors in the world.”
“Absolutely. We did. But . . . the human body is unpredictable, Max. Even with the best care—”
“Is she going to die?”
“We’re taking her for more examinations. There’s a good chance we may have to return to the Mayo Clinic. The doctors don’t know much yet—just that it’s back. But she’s a fighter, Max. You know that.”
“Yes, she is,” Max said, because it was a fact.
“Sorry to call with bad news, but I’ll work out your return with her and the pilot. Mom will love to see you.”
“Yes.”
“In the meantime, stay safe. Listen to what Alex tells you, OK?”
Max didn’t know where to begin with that one. So he just said, “Yes,” and hung up the phone.
He sat. He looked out the window to the sea. The silence was growing around him now. It was so loud he had to put his hands to his ears and scream.
“Max!” Alex barged into the waiting room, but Max ran out the door. “Max, where are you going? It’s freezing!”
He wasn’t feeling the temperature. Or the snow that was just beginning to fall. He wasn’t seeing the sea lions on the shore reacting to his screams, slinking into the ocean. He wasn’t looking at the patch of ice he stepped on as he ran toward the shore.
But he felt the sharp pain up his spine as he fell. And the warmth of a thick parka Alex was wrapping around him as he sat on the ground. “What happened?” she said.
Max tried to swat away the skunk smell. It was suffocating him.
“Did something happen to your dad?”
“No no no no no no no no no no.”
“Your mom? Is that it, Max?”
Max was rocking now. “It didn’t matter. The submarine. The money. Everything we did. It didn’t work. She’s sick. She’s sick again.”
“Oh no . . . no . . . I’m so sorry.” Alex wrapped her arms around Max, and he didn’t fight it. Bitsy, Nigel, and Hugo were by his side now. Alex must have mouthed something to them, because they were all saying how sorry they felt.
“Do you want to go home?” Alex said.
Max looked out to sea. Five brownish-gray whiskered seal faces stared at him, bobbing on the water. It looked like they were waiting for his answer. He wanted to tell them it was none of their business. But he knew Alex would take it the wrong way. So he took a deep breath and answered her question with the only facts he knew. “I wouldn’t be going home,” he said. “Dad’s probably taking her back to Minneapolis.”
“I meant, to be with your mom wherever she is.”
“That’s what he said,” Max replied. “He wants me to come back.”
Alex turned him around and forced him to look into her face. Max hated looking into people’s eyes. It creeped him out. When he was a kid, he thought other people’s eyes were like the black holes in outer space that could suck you in. But he didn’t feel that now. In Alex’s eyes he saw two little mirrors, two images of himself staring back. He wondered if that meant a part of him was actually living inside her. And vice versa. He had never thought of that before.
Max shook his head. “We need one more ingredient. One more and we have the cure that saved Jules Verne. We have been doing this for Evelyn. That’s enough reason to keep going. But now Mom’s sick again. We can’t go back, Alex. What if we can save Mom too? We’re so close . . .”
“Why? Because it might not work,” Alex said. “We have to face the fact that this mission could be hopeless and crazy.”
“Maybe,” Max said with a deep sigh, “but stopping it would be crazier.”