Page 22 of Under Story

Below that, in the same scrawl, the person had written: John Gerard, Generall Historie of Plantes, 1597—do you know it?

Gloria emerged from the kitchen with a plate of almonds and Brie. In the hearth, a fire smacked and sizzled busily.

“Who wrote this?” asked Laurel, holding the frame.

“A lover,” Gloria said. “Paul.” To Laurel’s raised eyebrow, she added, “I’m not a nun, you know.”

“I know you aren’t,” said Laurel, though she had no knowledge of Gloria’s romantic life. She set the frame back down and took her usual seat. “Doesn’t sound like a fellow mycophile.”

“It was the language Paul loved. ‘Strange and new fangled meates’! He was a physicist, but an omnivorous reader.”

“When was this?”

“I was fifty when we met. And sixty-two in ’98, when we separated.”

Laurel tried not to convey her surprise. She had pictured Gloria near her own age, twenty-four. “What was he like?”

“Pensive. Intensely curious. He was the first person I dated who took my ideas seriously,” Gloria said.

Laurel cringed internally, that this would take until Gloria’s fifties. Then again, her own luck hadn’t been much better. Laurel’s longest relationship had been with a mycologist named Christopher. Though he was only five years older than she—a postdoc—Christopher liked to think of himself as her mentor. He touted her promise and solicited her involvement on a paper, guaranteeing that she would be featured as a coauthor. As they worked, Christopher became domineering, then distant. He broke up with her in the middle of a frozen lake. She walked back to shore alone and didn’t hear from him again. The final paper did not mention Laurel, though it featured her contributions.

Gloria’s cat, Cygnus, rubbed against Laurel’s pant leg.

“So you dated in—the early nineties?” she asked, petting him. “Isn’t that when the Rhizotron was built?”

Gloria nodded. “For a long time, I had dreamed about building a lab underground. I knew that it would be expensive, and that I would have to advocate for it at the highest levels of the university. Paul’s faith gave me confidence when I needed it most.”

“But you didn’t…stay together?” asked Laurel, delicately.

“No. Paul wanted to get married. He also wanted to retire and move closer to his grandkids. I would have married him, but I didn’t want to retire. The Rhizotron was finally up and running. I felt like I was just getting started.”

Gloria wore a private expression. Laurel wondered, but could not ask, whether some part of her regretted it.

“Have you ever tried to find out what happened to him?”

“Oh, no. I think it’s probably better I didn’t.” Gloria smiled instinctually, too quickly. Then she gestured to Laurel’s messenger bag. “Shall we look at your data?”

Laurel took out her laptop. Over the course of the year, she had refined her experiment and processed the results. She pulled up her Excel plot and handed the computer to Gloria, who scanned it intently.

“This is excellent, Laurel,” she murmured. “Have you considered a conference submission?”

Gloria had one in mind: a gathering, that fall, on the theme of Other Worlds. The call invited academics from a range of disciplines; Laurel could propose a dispatch from the world belowground. The conference would take place in San Francisco, where Gloria grew up.

“An old friend—Seymour—is an organizer,” Gloria said. “I lived with him and his partner, Julian, when I was young.”

The idea made Laurel giddy: if she was accepted, it would be her first major conference presentation. She could feel Gloria’s excitement, too. It flowed between them—a selflessness on Gloria’s part, this enthusiasm for the younger academics whose careers were all ahead. She was proud of her ducklings, as she called them, and though it was true that she benefitted from their successes, which reflected well upon her, she seemed to feel no competition.

They stayed together, chatting, until the last log turned to embers. When Laurel left, it had just begun to snow.

In the second week of February, red construction paper hearts appear in the dorms at McMurdo. Jules puts fake roses in the dining hall, and Diego makes cookies with pink and white icing. Laurel spends Valentine’s Day in her room, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The next morning, she finds a notice in her mailbox: every woman who plans to winter over is required to test for pregnancy.

“I have an IUD,” she splutters.

“And I have a girlfriend,” says Nita. “It doesn’t matter.”

The station is unable to provide prenatal care, let alone abortions or deliveries. Plane travel is too dangerous in winter. After March, there will be no arrivals—and no way out—for six months.

“You’d think they’d take our word for it,” says Laurel.