Lloyd sighed. “You really know how to take the romance out of life.”
“No,” said Glinn, standing up. “I only take out the uncertainty.” He nodded out the windows. “If you want romance, come take a look out there.”
They stepped forward. McFarlane could see a small island, just coming into view, even darker than the black water around it.
“That, gentlemen, is Isla Desolación.”
McFarlane looked at it, mingled curiosity and trepidation quickening within him. A single shaft of light moved across the brutal rocks, vanishing and reappearing at the caprice of the enshrouding fogs. Immense seas tore at its rocky shore. At its northern end, he made out a cloven volcanic plug: a double spire of rock. Snaking through the central valley was a deep snowfield, its icy center exposed and polished by the wind: a turquoise jewel in the monochromatic seascape.
After a moment, Lloyd spoke: “By God, there it is,” he said. “Our island, Eli, at the edge of the world. Our island. And my meteorite.”
There was a strange, low giggle behind them. McFarlane turned to see Puppup, who had remained silent throughout the entire conversation, covering his mouth with narrow fingers.
“What is it?” Lloyd asked sharply.
But Puppup did not answer, and continued to giggle as he backed and bowed and scraped his way out of the office, unwavering black eyes fixed on Lloyd.
Isla Desolación,
12:45 P.M.
WITHIN AN hour, the tanker had eased its bulk into Franklin Channel, which was less a channel than an irregular bay, circled by the craggy peaks of the Cape Horn islands. Now, McFarlane sat in the center of the open launch, his hands gripping the gunwales, aware of the awkward bulk of the life preserver strapped over his heavy jacket and slicker. The seas that caused the Rolvaag to roll uncomfortably were now tossing the launch around like a child’s paper boat. The chief mate, Victor Howell, stood at the helm, his face furrowed with concentration as he fought to keep his heading. John Puppup had scrambled into the bow and was flopped down like an excited boy, each hand gripping a cleat. Over the last hour, he had acted as an impromptu harbor pilot for the Rolvaag, and his infrequent murmured words had turned what would have been a harrowing approach into one that was merely nail-biting. Now his face was turned to the island, light snow settling on his narrow shoulders.
The launch bucked and twisted, and McFarlane clung tighter.
The chop eased as the launch approached the lee of Isla Desolación. The island reared up before them, true to its name: black rocks poking up like broken knuckles through windblown patches of snow. A cove came into sight, dark under the shadow of a ledge. Following Puppup’s signal, Howell turned the launch toward it. At ten yards out he cut the engine, raising the propeller shaft simultaneously. The boat glided in, crunching lightly onto the shingle beach. Puppup sprang out like a monkey, and McFarlane followed. He turned to offer Lloyd a hand.
“I’m not that old, for chrissakes,” Lloyd said as he grabbed a pack and hopped out.
Howell backed the boat off with a roar. “I’ll be back at three o’clock,” he called.
McFarlane watched the boat slap its way from shore. Beyond, he could make out a zinc-colored wall of bad weather coming toward them. McFarlane hugged himself against the cold. Although he knew the Rolvaag was less than a mile away, he nevertheless wished it was within eyesight. Nestor was right, he thought. This is the very edge of the world.
“Well, Sam, we’ve got two hours,” Lloyd said with a broad grin. “Let’s make the best of it.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a small camera. “Let’s get Puppup to take a picture of our first landfall.” He glanced around. “Now where did he get to?”
McFarlane looked around the small beach. Puppup was nowhere to be seen.
“Puppup!” Lloyd cried.
“Up here, guv!” came a faint cry from above. Looking up, McFarlane made out his silhouette at the top of the ledge, framed by the darkening sky. One skinny arm was waving, the other pointing at a nearby ravine that bisected the cliff face.
“How’d he get up there so fast?” McFarlane asked.
“He’s a queer little fellow, isn’t he?” Lloyd shook his head. “I hope to hell he remembers the way.”
They walked up the shingles to the base of the ledge. Chunks of ice, washed ashore by storms, littered the strand. The air smelled sharply of moss and salt. McFarlane squinted at the black basalt cliff. He took a deep breath, then started up the narrow crevasse. It was a tougher climb than it looked: the ravine was slick with packed snow, and the last fifteen feet was a treacherous scramble over icy boulders. Beneath him, he could hear Lloyd puffing as he followed. But he kept a good pace, fit for a man of sixty, and they soon found themselves clambering onto the top of the cliff.
“Good!” cried Puppup, bowing and applauding. “Very good!”
McFarlane bent forward, resting his palms on his knees. The cold air seared his lungs, while the rest of him sweated beneath the parka. Beside him, he could hear Lloyd catching his breath. Nothing more was said about the camera.
Straightening up, McFarlane saw they were standing on a rock-strewn plain. A quarter mile beyond lay the long snowfield that stretched back into the center of the island. Clouds now covered the sky, and the falling snow grew heavier.
Without a word, Puppup turned and set off at a brisk pace. Lloyd and McFarlane scrambled to keep up as they climbed the steady rise. With remarkable speed, the snow developed into a flurry, shutting their world down into a circle of white. Puppup was barely visible twenty feet ahead, a bobbing specter. As they gained altitude the wind picked up, driving the snow horizontally across McFarlane’s field of vision. Now he was glad that Glinn had insisted on the subzero boots and Arctic parkas.
They crested the rise. The snow flurries swept aside, giving McFarlane a glimpse into the valley beyond. They were on the edge of a saddle overlooking the snowfield. It looked much larger from up here: a great blue-white mass, almost glacial in its irresistibility. It ran down the center of the valley, surrounded by low hills. Beyond, the twin volcanic peaks thrust up like fangs. McFarlane could see another snowsquall boiling up toward them from the valley: an unrelieved wall of white that swallowed the landscape as it approached.
“Grand view up here, eh?” said Puppup.
Lloyd nodded. The fringe of his parka was dusted with snow, and his goatee was flecked with ice. “I’ve been wondering about that large central snowfield. Does it have a name?”
“Oh, yes,” said Puppup, bobbing his head several times, his wispy mustache swaying in time. “They call it the Vomit of Hanuxa.”
“How picturesque. And those two peaks?”
“The Jaws of Hanuxa.”
“Makes sense,” said Lloyd. “Who is Hanuxa?”
“A Yaghan Indian legend,” Puppup replied. He did not offer more.
McFarlane looked sharply at Puppup. He remembered the mention of the Yaghan legends in Masangkay’s journal. He wondered if this was the legend that had led Masangkay down there.
“I’m always interested in old legends,” he said casually. “Will you tell us about it?”
Puppup shrugged, nodding his head again cheerfully. “I don’t believe any of those old superstitions,” he said. “I’m a Christian.”
Once again, he turned suddenly and began walking, setting a rapid pace down the hillside toward the snowfield. McFarlane almost had to jog to keep up. He could hear Lloyd laboring behind him.
The snowfield lay in a deep fold of the land, mounds of broken boulders and debris lining its edges. As they came up to it, the fresh squall fell about them. McFarlane bowed under the wind.
“Come on, you lot!” cried Puppup out of the storm.
They walked parallel to the snowfield, which rose steeply above them like the flank of a huge beast. Now and then, Puppup stopped to examine it more closely. “Here,” he said at last, kicking at the vertical wall to make a toehold, pulling himself up, and kicking again. Cautiously, McFarlane
crawled up behind him, using Puppup’s toeholds, keeping his face turned away from the wind.
The steep sides of the snowfield gradually leveled out, but the wind swirled around them ever more violently. “Tell Puppup to slow down!” Lloyd shouted from behind. But if anything, Puppup walked faster.
“Hanuxa,” he suddenly began in his strange, singsong accent, “was the son of Yekaijiz, god of the night sky. Yekaijiz had two children: Hanuxa and his twin brother, Haraxa. Haraxa was always the favorite of the father. The apple of his eye, like. As time went on, Hanuxa grew more and more jealous of his brother. And he wanted his brother’s power for himself.”
“Aha, the old story of Cain and Abel,” Lloyd said.
The snow in the center of the field had been scoured away, leaving blue ice. It seemed impossibly strange somehow, McFarlane thought, to be trudging through the center of this nothingness, this child’s snow globe of white, toward a huge mysterious rock and the grave of his former partner—while listening to this old man relate the legend of Isla Desolación.
“The Yaghans believe that blood is the source of life and power,” Puppup continued. “So one day, Hanuxa killed his brother. Slit Haraxa’s throat and drank his blood, he did. And his own skin turned the color of blood, and he got the power. But Yekaijiz, the father, found out. He imprisoned Hanuxa inside the island, entombing him below the surface. And sometimes, if people approach too close to the island after dark, on windy nights when the surf is up, they can see flashes of light, and hear howls of rage, when Hanuxa tries to escape.”
“Will he ever escape?” Lloyd asked.
“Dunno, guv. Bad news if he does.”
The snowfield began to slope downward, ending at last in a six-foot cornice. One at a time, they lowered themselves over the edge, sliding down onto harder ground. The wind was gradually abating and the snow falling more softly now, big fat flakes that spun and fluttered to earth like ash. Even so, the wind kept the barren plain scoured almost clean. A few hundred yards ahead, McFarlane could see a large boulder. He watched as Puppup began to jog toward it.
Lloyd strode over, McFarlane following more slowly. A wrinkled piece of hide lay in the lee of the boulder. Nearby was a scattering of animal bones and two skulls, a rotting halter still wrapped around one of them. A frayed halter rope was tied around the boulder. There were some scattered tin cans, a large piece of canvas, a sodden bedroll, and two broken packsaddles. Something was underneath the canvas. McFarlane felt a sudden chill.
“My God,” said Lloyd. “These must be your old partner’s mules. They starved to death right here, tied to this rock.”
He began to reach forward, but McFarlane raised a gloved hand and stayed him. Then, he slowly approached the boulder himself. He leaned over and gently grasped the edge of the frozen piece of canvas. He gave it a shake to clear it of snow, then tossed it aside. But it did not uncover Masangkay’s body, only a welter of decaying belongings. He could see old packs of ramen noodles and tin cans of sardines. The tins had burst, spewing pieces of fish across the frozen surface. Nestor always did favor sardines, he thought with a pang.
Suddenly, an old memory came back. It was five years earlier, and several thousand miles to the north. He and Nestor had been crouched in a deep culvert next to a dirt road, their packs stuffed to bursting with the Atacama tektites. Armored trucks passed by just a few feet away, showering the culvert with pebbles. And yet they were giddy with success, slapping each other and chortling. They were ravenous, but did not dare light a fire for fear of being discovered. Masangkay had reached into his pack and, pulling out a tin of sardines, offered it to McFarlane. “Are you kidding?” McFarlane had whispered. “That stuff tastes even worse than it smells.”
“That’s why I like it,” Masangkay whispered back. “Amoy ek-ek yung kamay mo!”
McFarlane had given him a blank look. But instead of explaining, Masangkay began to laugh: softly at first, and then more and more violently. Somehow, in the supercharged atmosphere of danger and tension, his laughter was irresistibly infectious. And without knowing why, McFarlane, too, dissolved into silent convulsions of laughter, clutching the precious bags, as the very trucks that hunted them crossed and recrossed overhead.
Then McFarlane was back in the present, crouching in the snow, the frozen tins of food and rags of clothing scattered around his feet. A queer sensation had come over him. It seemed like such a pathetic collection of trash. This was a horrible place to die, all alone. He felt a tickling at the corners of his eyes.
“So where’s the meteorite?” he heard Lloyd ask.
“The what?” said Puppup.
“The hole, man, where’s the hole Masangkay dug?”
Puppup pointed vaguely into the swirling snow.
“Damn it, take me there!”
McFarlane looked first toward Lloyd, then at Puppup, who was already trotting ahead. He rose and followed them through the falling snow.
Half a mile, and Puppup stopped, pointing. McFarlane took a few steps forward, staring at the scooped-out depression. Its sides were slumped in, and a drift of snow lay at its bottom. Somehow, he had thought the hole would be bigger. He felt Lloyd grip his arm, squeezing it so tightly it was painful even through the layers of wool and down.
“Think of it, Sam,” Lloyd whispered. “It’s right here. Right beneath our feet.” He tore his eyes away from the hole and looked at McFarlane. “I wish to hell we could see it.”
McFarlane realized that he should be feeling something other than a profound sadness and a creeping, eerie silence.
Lloyd slipped off his pack, unfastened the top, and pulled out a thermos and three plastic cups. “Hot chocolate?”
“Sure.”
Lloyd smiled wistfully. “That goddamned Eli. He should have supplied a bottle of cognac. Well, at least it’s hot.” He unscrewed the cap and poured out the steaming cups. Lloyd held his up, and McFarlane and Puppup followed suit.
“Here’s to the Desolation meteorite.” Lloyd’s voice sounded small and muffled in the silent snowfall.
“Masangkay,” McFarlane heard himself say, after a brief silence.
“I’m sorry?”
“The Masangkay meteorite.”
“Sam, that’s not protocol. You always name the meteorite after the place where—”
The empty feeling inside McFarlane vanished. “Screw protocol,” he said, lowering his cup. “He found it, not you. Or me. He died for it.”
Lloyd looked back at him. It’s a little too late now for an attack of ethics, his gaze seemed to say. “We’ll talk about this later,” he said evenly. “Right now, let’s drink to it, whatever the hell its name.”
They tapped their plastic cups and drank the hot chocolate down in a single gulp. A gull passed by unseen, its forlorn cry lost in the snow. McFarlane felt the welcome creep of warmth in his gut, and the sudden anger eased. Already the light was beginning to dim, and the borders of their small world were ringed with a graying whiteness. Lloyd retrieved the cups and placed them and the thermos back in his pack. The moment had a certain awkwardness; perhaps, McFarlane thought, all such self-consciously historic moments did.
And there was another reason for awkwardness. They still hadn’t found the body. McFarlane found himself afraid to lift his eyes from the ground, for fear of making the discovery; afraid to turn to Puppup and ask where it was.
Lloyd took another long look at the hole before his feet, then glanced at his watch. “Let’s get Puppup to take a picture.”
Dutifully, McFarlane stepped up beside Lloyd as the older man passed his camera to Puppup.
As the shutter clicked, Lloyd stiffened, his eyes focusing in the near distance. “Look over there,” he said, pointing over Puppup’s shoulder toward a dun-colored jumble, up a small rise about a hundred yards from the hole.
They approached it. The skeletal remains lay partially covered in snow, the bones shattered, almost unrecognizable save for a grinning, lopsided jaw. Nearby was a shovel blade, its handle missi
ng. One of the feet was still wearing a rotten boot.
“Masangkay,” Lloyd whispered.
Beside him, McFarlane was silent. They had been through so much together. His former friend, former brother-in-law, reduced now to a cold jumble of broken bones at the bottom of the world. How had he died? Exposure? Freak heart attack? Clearly, it hadn’t been starvation: there was plenty of food back at the mules. And what had broken up and scattered the bones? Birds? Animals? The island seemed devoid of life. And Puppup had not even bothered to bury him.
Lloyd swiveled toward Puppup. “Do you have any idea what killed him?”
Puppup simply sniffed.
“Let me guess. Hanuxa.”
“If you believe the legends, guv,” Puppup said. “And as I said, I don’t.”
Lloyd looked hard at Puppup for a moment. Then he sighed, and gave McFarlane’s shoulder a squeeze. “I’m sorry, Sam,” he said. “This must be tough for you.”
They stood in silence a moment longer, huddled over the pathetic remains. Then Lloyd stirred. “Time to get moving,” he said. “Howell said three P.M. and I’d rather not spend the night on this rock.”
“In a moment,” McFarlane said, still staring down. “We need to bury him first.”
Lloyd hesitated. McFarlane steeled himself, waiting for the protest. But the big man nodded. “Of course.”
While Lloyd collected the bone fragments into a small pile, McFarlane hunted up boulders in the deepening snow, prying them loose from the frozen ground with numb fingers. Together, they made a cairn over the remains. Puppup stood back, watching.
“Aren’t you going to help?” Lloyd asked.
“Not me. Like I said, I’m a Christian, I am. It says in the Book, let the dead bury the dead.”
“Weren’t too Christian to empty his pockets, though, were you?” McFarlane said.
Puppup folded his arms, a silly, guilty-looking smile on his face.
The Ice Limit Page 16