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Fuzzy Mammal
Aug 15, 2001

Lipstick Apathy
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Fuzzy Mammal
Aug 15, 2001

Lipstick Apathy
An End to Global Warming

“On the bright side, for every acre lost to deforestation, one fifth of an acre of arctic land becomes arable,” Dr Penrose typed. “Permafrost to tundra, and tundra to prairie. Of course this is small comfort for Africa.” She sighed and closed her laptop. Fielding endless pop-sci questions for skeptical journalists was one of the few things more enervating than corralling freshmen. But, beggars can’t be choosers when they’re angling for tenure track. Too distracted to concentrate, she gazed downward out the passenger window at the gently rolling landscape of scrubby trees and house sized, lichen stained boulders. Ditching her class to jump into the field was one thing, but you could never escape all drudgework.

Glaciers regurgitated preserved objects slowly and continuously. Their accelerated retreat had led to a bit of a bonanza in her field over the last few decades. Well preserved corpses of extinct ice age creatures got most of the attention, but no one had ever heard of anything like the report from a gold surveying team exploring near Lombovozh, nestled in the northern Urals. She glanced at her snoring grad student Jerry and tried to get some sleep of her own.

Fourteen hours, a fitful night, a hasty outfitting session, and a butt-numbing snowmobile ride later, they were on site. They advanced down an aquamarine chasm cut lengthwise midway up the glacier. A crevasse that had opened when the lower ice shelf had abruptly shifted, lubricated underneath by gravel and meltwater. Winding past a final bend they saw an entire neanderthal village in cross section, split down the middle as the lower glacier angled away. Jerry began a quick photo survey while Penrose examined the nearest hut.

“It must have been some blizzard,” she mused. Everything external enveloped by snow in a single storm, and everything inside mummified and flash frozen. Her giddiness at being the first team to the find evaporated as she spied the family huddled together in the back corner. She approached slowly, brushing past a string of root vegetables and other forage hanging from the ceiling. Rictus faces stared blankly, and at their feet was something she couldn’t recognize.

“Jerry! Come check this out.”

He ambled towards her, looking over his shoulder.

“I know we don’t technically have an export license, but what do you make of that?”

“You’re the one who said we only had time for an initial survey, Doc. To prove it was even here.”

He glanced back again the way they had come and frowned.

Laying In the center of a complicated snarl of vaguely runic lines was a carved figurine. Rough, mottled chalcedony smoothed in small regions to make clear facial features. A stern male visage emerged from the rough stone surface.

“You’re not thinking of touching it are you?”

“The glacier could resettle and seal this place back up at any time.”

“The find of the century, and you’d risk disturbing it out of precaution?”

The sound of footsteps overtook their budding argument. Jerry turned while Penrose snatched the carving off the floor and stuffed it up the sleeve of her parka.

The men advancing from the opening weren’t local toughs, at least by her estimation. Penrose fancied estimation one of her strong suits. Leaping head first into a kleptocracy. Well, that was just one half of the risk reward ratio, wasn’t it? Estimate the rewards, and it wasn’t really a decision at all was it? She held the face in the crook of her elbow as she eyed them. Definitely professional toughs.

“English, anyone?” she asked tentatively.

“Da. You come with us. Poachers and thieves not welcome in this province.”

She elbowed her student and he handed over the camera. The lead man jerked a handgun back along the path. Glancing sideways into the dimness of the hut she saw a spreading stain of water upwelling from the center of the glyph. Turning away, she began trudging back out the fissure.

###

Eyeing the door to her ‘cell’, the second story office overlooking an grimy warehouse back in Lombovozh, Penrose slipped the figure out of her sleeve. She was thankful whoever had commandeered the place hadn’t bothered with heating. It gave her an excuse to keep her parka on. Keeping an ear out for boots on the galvanized stair she examined it more closely.

Older than fertility iconography by far, she thought. Older than hunting scenes, too. She shivered, and pushed away errant thoughts of ancient microbes. Staring deeply, she noticed how the milky quartz seemed to absorb and reemit light suffusely, rather than reflect it.

Before her gaze could drift any deeper she was jerked to attention by a cold wet splat on her brow. Another quickly followed from a gap in the ceiling.
Wiping her face and shifting to the side she held the face out so that an edge caught the next falling droplet. Crystals of ice rebounded off the surface with a soft puff and her breath caught in her throat. Both in surprise, and in the sudden numbing cold filling the room. With another drop every smooth surface had gained a filigree of frost, and the source of the leak had frozen over too. The carving itself seemed unaffected. The unsmiling face staring outward. Thankful for her parka she slipped the stone into her waistband.

The room had come close to normal by the time Jerry was thrust through the doorway.

“I told them you were in charge,” he said through a split lip. Grimacing, she got up was escorted downstairs.

“Did you Americans think you would not be noticed coming here?” the agent asked.

“For the tenth time, we’re academics not thieves. I’m from the department of anthro-” A sharp backhand brought her up short.

“The Vice Premiere is an academic, too. His instructions on what to do with you to were quite explicit.”

###

Back upstairs with one hand cuffed to Jerry she glanced around the room once again. Spying an old filing cabinet she yanked him over and pulled out the top shelf. The sheet metal housing the shelf was folded back, revealing a sharp punched edge. Before he could protest she grabbed his wrist in hers and drew them both sharply downward and across it.

“Jesus Christ doc!” he shouted.

“That’s not even the worst of it,” she said, pulling out the carving with her other hand.

His eyes opened in shock and opened further as she drew their bloody forearms across the face.

For every square mile buried under the icecaps, a tenth of a mile of desert retreats. Sand to savannah, savannah to farmland. Small comfort for Europe.

Fuzzy Mammal
Aug 15, 2001

Lipstick Apathy
I'll give this another shot

Fuzzy Mammal
Aug 15, 2001

Lipstick Apathy
Spiral
855 words

Fuzzy Mammal
Aug 15, 2001

Lipstick Apathy
It occurs to me this morning that my story is quite a legibility challenge so if you don't have a printer to print it out and spin the page pm me and I'll share the source text.

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