by David Klass
We seem to have picked up speed even though the Eskimos have stopped paddling to eat. Whatever spell Kidah is using, our driftwood boat is racing through the choppy sea. In the far distance, I see a thin black streak and resist the temptation to yell “Land ho!” Instead, I finish my salmon and walk forward to join the discussion.
“Looks like you enjoyed lunch,” Kidah says.
I wipe a piece of salmon off my chin. “Time travel gives me an appetite.”
My dad doesn’t look pleased. I sense that he’s trying to restrain himself, but then he says, “Jack, you’re a Prince of Dann. How can you eat your fellow creatures?”
I shrug. “I dunno, Dad. I guess that was how I was brought up. If you were there, maybe you would have raised me another way. But you were busy at the time.”
Kidah raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t intercede.
“Where did you get the Eskimos?” I ask the wizard.
“They’re Inuit,” he corrects me. “One of the very last groups that remember the old customs. They shop in a grocery and they have aluminum boats, but they still hunt and fish in traditional ways. And they remember how to build an umiak.”
“That would be this funky boat?”
“Yes. The kayak was the ‘man’s boat,’ and the much larger umiak was the ‘female boat,’ used to transport many people over the water to new hunting grounds. Which is exactly what we’re going to use it for.”
“We’re going hunting?” I ask.
He nods. “As soon as we drop off our friends. They’ve been most hospitable, and since we don’t need them for the hunt it wouldn’t be fair to risk their lives. Especially since the odds of our surviving are not particularly good, and I speak as a well-known optimist.”
I don’t see what possible good a dog could do hunting from a boat, Gisco pipes up telepathically. Much as I would love to accompany you on this vital and heroic mission, I would hate to get in the way. Perhaps you should drop me off at the nearest Inuit village.
Kidah gives him a smile. “If I didn’t know you better, stout friend, I would think that you were serious. But your fearlessness is well documented.”
Gisco looks back at him and nods a bit ruefully. Yes, it’s true. I fear nothing. I laugh in the face of death. But just for the record, exactly how low did you say the odds of us surviving are?
“Unfortunately, quite low,” the wizard responds and shades his eyes. “There’s the village. We’ll make straight for land, drop them off, and then we can begin the hunt!”
As if hearing his words, the umiak darts across the water toward the distant spit of land.
47
The polar bear doesn’t wait for us to find a place to dock. When we get close to land he stands, gives my father a last comradely growl, and then jumps off the umiak and swims to shore. He clambers up on some rocks and trots inland, and the Inuit seem happy to see him go.
We sail around the spit of land into a spectacular fjord, and I soon spot the Inuit village on a mountainside. I was expecting igloos and kayaks, but I see several dozen wooden houses and aluminum boats tied to a wooden pier.
Our umiak runs aground on a gravel beach, and the Inuit say goodbye to Kidah and then hop off and wade ashore. I notice they take almost everything useful with them—food, rifles, and even the fishing net. Kidah waves goodbye to them and the same mysterious current that beached us yanks us back out.
I stand with Kidah, my father, and Gisco and watch the village recede as we slowly glide out of the fjord, back around the point, and head for open water.
It’s a sunny day, and the sky and the water both look pristine. I savor the fresh taste of the breeze, but something keeps bothering me. Finally I admit it: this beautiful world doesn’t feel like home to me anymore.
Not that I miss glagour or giant scorpions. But something deep inside of me connected to the far future earth, damaged though it was. Ever since I came back through time, I’ve had the strange feeling of being a visitor—an interloper in the world I grew up in.
A breeze blows at our backs and the current pulling us out to sea grows stronger. I’m sure we could go even faster, not to mention more safely, with a modern boat and an engine.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to hunt if we borrowed an aluminum boat?” I ask the wizard.
“No,” he tells me, “I had them build this umiak especially for us. It was blessed by their angakok . . .”
“Their what?”
“Their shaman,” he tells me. “He said some old spells over it, and I added a few of my own. There’s not much you can do to tinker with an aluminum boat, but this umiak will do just what we need it to.”
We are now speeding out into open ocean. Gisco watches us pull away from land with a wistful look, as if he doubts he’ll ever get a hot meal on terra firma again.
I share his doubts. We’re in a handcrafted wooden boat, heading out into open sea to do battle with God only knows what dangers.
“What are we going to hunt with?” I ask Kidah. “They took all the guns and nets.”
He passes me a paddle, and hands one to my father. They look handmade, with long handles and narrow blades.
“I don’t think we need to paddle,” I tell him. “This current is pulling us out pretty fast now.”
“It’s not for paddling. This is what you’re going to hunt with,” Kidah tells me.
I look at him in disbelief. “Should I use it to try to bash the Dark Lord over the head?”
“That’s not a bad idea,” the wizard answers with a grim smile.
“If and when we find him, I’ll take care of him,” my father promises in a low voice. I see fury in his eyes, and recall that my dad was tortured for years at the Dark Lord’s command. In addition to all our greater goals, my father’s clearly out for personal revenge, and from the look on his face he means business.
“So we’re hunting for the Dark Lord?” I ask. “He’s out there somewhere on a boat?”
Kidah is silent for a minute. The current is speeding us along at such a pace now that we’re already out of sight of land. “No, Jack,” he answers. “He’s not on a boat.”
“Then where is he?”
The wizard looks out at the glittering water as if he’s pondering my question and somehow giving me an answer. “Destroying this world,” he whispers. “And our world a thousand years from now. Heartbreaking, isn’t it?”
My dad is also staring out at the blue ocean. “Yes,” he says. “I can feel it. Truly terrible.”
“What’s terrible?” I ask. “What’s he doing? And where the heck is he if he isn’t out here on the ocean?”
Gisco finally helps me out. The point is, old fellow, we shouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing right now. That’s the key.
“The key to what?” I ask. “Don’t talk in riddles. What shouldn’t we be able to do? We’re just sailing across a polar sea on an umiak. I thought that’s what they were made for. What’s the big deal?”
The big deal is that this is the Arctic Ocean, Gisco informs me. If I’m not mistaken, we’re heading straight for the North Pole.
Yes, Kidah agrees. We’re about three hundred miles from the pole. It’s time to go down.
“Down where?” I ask.
But Kidah doesn’t appear to hear me. The old wizard has closed his eyes and begun whispering. And the strange thing is that someone or something is answering him.
48
Ihear faint chanting. At first all I can make out are muffled voices rising and falling in a beautiful but spooky chorus, like waves crashing into a distant shore. The wizard smiles and makes a circular motion with his hand, as if summoning the spirits to come closer. The chanting gets louder, till I can tell that it’s the same singsong language I heard when Kidah talked to the Inuit.
Gisco, do you hear that singing? I ask.
I wouldn’t exactly call it singing, my four-legged traveling companion responds uneasily.
What would you call it?
The hound’s sensitive
ears twitch. A powerful angakok calling upon his tribe from a deep trance.
A shaman? I ask. What’s he saying?
Who knows? It’s an old tongue. The dog listens to the chanting for a few seconds, and his expressive eyes grow sad. The Inuit shamans believe in an underlying animating force called Sila that unites man and nature, and brings life or death, the learned hound informs me. It controls the weather and the waves, and is the spiritual breath of this harsh but beautiful environment. The shaman can intercede with it for mankind’s benefit . . .
I can’t understand a word of the rising and falling chant, but as I listen to Gisco’s explanation I get a picture in my mind of several dozen Inuit standing around a fire on a frozen coastline as snow falls. An old man, toothless and wind-scoured, stands in the center of the circle, backlit by the flames.
I see that he is standing near what looks like the carcass of a beached whale. The old shaman’s face is painted, and he’s wearing a feather headdress. He raises his arm and shakes a rattle, and begins chanting faster and faster, caught up in a wild ecstasy.
The men in the circle repeat the song back to him, and the chant accelerates as the winds quicken and the snow falls more heavily. Soon the shaman’s incantation swirls and gusts in tandem with the howling blizzard. I see the old man’s striking, weather-chiseled face twist in a sudden paroxysm of suffering. It looks like he’s plugged into some great spiritual force, but instead of channeling its majesty he’s sharing its desolation.
He raises his left hand and hurls some powder into the fire, and flames rocket skyward. In the explosion of firelight I see that he wasn’t standing over the carcass of a whale, but rather over a long wooden hull. He was blessing an umiak!
I blink and I’m back on the boat with my father, Kidah, and Gisco, but something has changed. Perhaps it was the angakok’s chant, or maybe Kidah’s spells, but the umiak we’re riding in is no longer an open craft, with driftwood and sealskins beneath and sky above. It’s sealing itself up with a thin, glittering membrane that will soon encase us in a football-shaped transparent shell. The yellow dinghy Gisco and I sailed up the Hudson in a year ago did a similar thing, but that craft used futuristic technology to seal and submerge. What I’m seeing now is pure magic.
There’s no computer here, no buttons to push or operating system to manipulate. Our wooden umiak is the most primitive craft imaginable, and the glittering shell that is encircling us looks as thin and fragile as a soap bubble. It quivers as two- and three-foot waves slap against it, and I think to myself that it can’t possibly shield us from water pressure.
Down we go, into the Arctic Ocean. The blue water closes over our heads, and the white-capped waves recede as we drop straight down. Our bubble-topped bathysphere descends silently and at great speed. The sunlight soon dwindles to one last tiny candle flame, and then is completely extinguished as we are immersed in inky blackness.
I try not to think about the tons of freezing water pressing on the frail-looking bubble from all directions. Surely my dad and the greatest wizard of the future wouldn’t have brought us down here if our craft couldn’t handle it. But even as I try to reassure myself, I shiver with cold and fear. We’re sinking endlessly into an icy ocean near the North Pole. It seems impossible that we’ll ever see daylight again.
Hey, Gisco, I reach out telepathically. I’m feeling a little nervous and claustrophobic. Any cheerful words?
I should have stayed with the Inuit, Gisco responds miserably. Caribou steaks. Campfires. I’m not exactly a sled-pulling husky, but it’s a culture that respects dogs.
You’re pretty husky in your own way, I assure him, trying desperately to lighten the mood.
Or I could have stayed with Mudinho in his village. His parents were so happy when I brought him back, they threw a three-day fiesta! Chicken and roast pork, cakes and cookies! They feted me and pampered me. When Kidah’s call to duty came, I should have announced my retirement. I would still be in their rustic little casa, dozing by the fire, instead of sinking into the Makarov Basin like a dying walrus waiting to be flash-frozen or devoured by some bug-eyed bottom-feeding cold-water crustacean!
You’re not exactly raising my spirits, Gisco.
We’re doomed! Doomed, do you hear me? In fact, we may already be dead. This is the darkness of the watery grave that has no bottom and no roof. O Great Dog God, rescue your humble acolyte from everlasting cryonic entombment. Draw me up from these abysmal depths with your glorious paws, and I shall forgo the roast pig and abstain from the fatty goose. Give me one chance. Give me light!
I know just what he means. The blackness is so oppressive and enveloping that I feel dizzy, and sink to my knees. “Give me light,” I shout out desperately.
As if in answer to our pleas, a spark kindles. It’s the Star of Dann, shimmering to life from the chain around my dad’s neck. I see my dad’s concerned, careworn face as he turns to me. “Are you okay, Jack?”
“I’ve been better.”
“Such moments are tests. Have faith.”
“In what?” I ask him.
“Destiny.”
“I’ve never had any faith in destiny,” I respond, struggling to stand up. “Fate seems cruel and fickle. The best people die horrible deaths for no reason. If this boat were to implode, and we were to drown, what would be the point? We wouldn’t have changed anything.”
“Sometimes fate is unfair,” Dad admits. “All we can do is the very best we can, and then maybe a tiny bit more. But you’re wrong to say that those who die trying to accomplish their dreams have failed. Always remember this—the measure of a man is not the extent of his success but the quality of his struggle.”
I am tempted to dismiss his words as mere platitudes. But I recall his bravery when we first found him awaiting his own execution in the fortress’s dark tower. If he’s right, and the measure of a man is the quality of his struggle, then several men I’ve encountered during my adventures who met terrible fates were heroes rather than failures.
I recall the governor general of the Amazon being machine-gunned to death near the falls. He never accomplished his dream, but he battled with everything he had. And the man who raised me in Hadley-by-Hudson also measured up well. When his moment came, he blew off his own foot to force me to leave, and then turned to make his last stand alone against the Dark Army assassins.
My father shifts his attention to Gisco. The Star of Dann has grown brighter, and the dog’s terrified features are clearly visible. “And how are you, stout four-legged warrior? A little religion is not a bad thing in times of peril.”
Gisco looks back at the King, and appears embarrassed. It’s clear that my dad heard his frightened appeals to the Great Dog God. Now, Gisco draws himself up to his full height and responds, As Your Highness well knows, the measure of a dog is not in his bark but in the strength of his bite.
“Quite so,” my father agrees. “And you have never failed us when the time comes to act.” Dad looks past him, to the front of the boat. The old wizard stands vigilantly at the helm, as if somehow probing the black waters all around us. “Kidah?”
The time-traveling seer half turns. “We are deep enough, Simeon. It’s time to go hunting.”
My father nods and takes off the chain with the locket. He wordlessly passes it to Kidah, who hangs the Star of Dann from a notch on the driftwood prow. Its radiance warms the inside of the boat, while its sapphire light flashes in front of us and pierces the inky depths. We stop descending, and our umiak with its bubble top begins to move forward.
49
Our umiak speeds silently through the depths, and we gather at the front. When you’re beneath the Arctic Ocean hunting an archfiend, it’s comforting to stand near a wizard. The Star of Dann illuminates our path, but nothing is visible in the cone of blue light except endless water and an occasional floating crustacean.
“We’re nearing the polar ice cap,” Kidah tells my father. Then he corrects himself, “Or maybe I should say the polar ice cube.”
My dad nods sadly. “So it’s irreversible?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Kidah responds. “We’re at the edge of the edge. The last tick of the Turning Point.”
“What’s almost irreversible?” I ask. “What’s happening to the Arctic ice cap?”
It’s disappearing, Gisco informs me. And the Greenland Ice Sheet along with it. They’ve been melting at an accelerating rate for the past few decades. The Arctic is the most sensitive of earth’s biomes to global warming—it heats up twice as fast as the rest of the planet. Even if the Dark Lord hadn’t decided to lend a hand, the Arctic Ocean would have been completely free of ice in a few decades.
I picture a globe in my mind, with a white cap sitting on top of it. I imagine that white cap getting smaller and smaller till it totally disappears, and the top of the globe gleams bright blue. “And why would that be so bad?” I ask. “I know polar bears hunt from the sea ice, and I’m sure it wouldn’t be much fun for the seals, either. But people I know don’t use Arctic ice. How would it hurt New Yorkers or Parisians or Tokyo-ites, now or in the future?”
“You’re right about the polar bears,” my father says, and I can tell he’s thinking about the enormous beast he befriended on the floe. “They’ll be the first to go. And mother seals won’t be able to climb up onto the ice and will have to give birth at sea, where their babies will immediately drown. But the rest of us will follow soon enough. We’re all on the same earth, Jack.”
Arctic ice is the earth’s air conditioner, Gisco tells me. It reflects the sun’s rays. When it’s gone, the land and sea will absorb much more light and heat. Global warming will speed up and the ice sheet will melt. As the seas rise, coastlines will be swallowed up, and wars will break out over food and water. The ocean currents will shift, creating extreme weather conditions . . . The dog stops and shrugs. Basically, if you want to screw up the planet, melt all the polar ice and just stand back and wait.