15
DESPITE HIS EUROPEAN name, the pilot was a local. Not as old as the fellow in the shop—in fact, I could have believed him to be still a teenager—and quite a bit lighter-skinned, with curly, rather than frizzy, hair and in possession of his front teeth.
He smiled and held his hand out to me. “Henri Dubois. I got your message.”
His Isla was perfect. Canadian, I thought. That surprised me. “I’m Martin Spencer and these are my assistants.” Time to pull out the fake ID. “I’m a geologist for Nations of Earth. We need to go to the Afar Rift Research station. Can you take us there?”
His eyes widened briefly. “The station is dead, mister. Abandoned. No one there. About to go under water.”
“I know. We’ll be making climate measurements.”
“We have only one climate, Mister, and that is f*****g
