Angie does that, I thought. She calls to say she’s on her way.
“Carrier pigeon whales?” asked Mineola.
“Ha! The minkes are a bit pigeonish, but no, they were probably more like city buses. The migration routes and territorial patrols of some special whales were known to the people. It could well be that particular whales were fitted with boxes or slots in their blubber. Over the years this would heal over and not trouble the whale at all. Harpoon tips and all sorts of hardware have been found in whales many times; we still find centuries-old matériel in the big bulls and cows. Conceivably, a whale could even hold a bank of boxes, individual boxes for particular tribes. When the whale came to call, people would check their box or post something in another’s box.
“By our standards, this would be slow, but for the ancients, this would be miraculous. No other culture on the planet would have possessed such advanced telecommunication skills.”
“Were this all true,” said Mini.
“It is speculative, I’ll grant you, but it’s supported by increasingly rich likelihood.”
“A floating post office, like the islands in Kashmir,” I said. Snorri appraised me. “Worldly.”
“I read it in a poem.”
“A bookmobile,” said Mini.
“Imagine an ark, a cultural repository,” said Snorri, “a kit for starting a culture. If your tribe knew it was headed for danger or facing cultural stagnation, a Harbinger Whale could be loaded up like an arc and sent off into the future for further generations to find.”
“Like the millennium vault on Svalbard,” I said. “But you’ll never find a whale with an ancient trove—they outlive us but not by millennia.”
“No, you are right,” said Snorri, “we met their descendant last summer. But discovering their lineage—or rather its discovery of us—is akin to finding the foundations of the Alexandrian Library. Even if a scroll were never found, just knowing the library was not a mere legend changes our civilization. Likewise for the Harbinger Whale. The Whale Council’s archives are ancient beyond writing even. Just knowing the Harbingers existed allows for new interpretations of artifacts and relics. Maybe there were no pre-literate times for my people. It’s quite possible they have had symbolic writing systems for eons. The ancient ivory platters, so ill-suited to any practical use, may not be covered with wear marks. This may be representational language. A disc of bone slotted into a whale may well be a schedule: This whale will be at such and such a place when the sun and the stars are at such and such a place. Each whale would carry a map of its route.”
City buses were not native to Bismuth, but I knew what they looked like. I imagined people lined up on the beach, waiting for the whale, complaining about how late it always was.
Mini was more critical. “Why would a whale have anything to do with people? Especially your ancestors, Snorri. They’d all know you as killers, I’m sure.”
“Whaleherding is not modern, Dear. We are thought of as old-fashioned even by our own people. A good whaleherd has a great deal of empathy for his subjects. What I learned as beargroom, some of it I could use with whales. Whales, obviously, are much less personable and charismatic, harder to develop feelings for, but whaleherds are a guild that have been part of our culture—not so much Estonindian anymore, but Finlindian, certainly—since forever.
“What a whaleherd must do is take care of and watch over his whales. Protect them from predators, help them find grazing waters, groom them. Grooming is especially important. And it’s not just aesthetic, though a handsome whale is a happy one. Whales get terrible parasites. Wars are fought on their backs between rival city-states of lice. The hagfish, the lamprey, the doctor and nurse fish, the crabs—you know we have to wind worms out of them? We lure them from their tunnels in the blubber with morsels and then twist them around a rod like a windlass ever-so-slowly to pull them out without breaking them and causing a terrible infection. It is crowded on a whale, even their reefs of barnacles have parasites of their own. So what is a poor whale to do? It has to scrape itself on shoals or slap itself silly by belly- and back-flopping just to scratch an itch. When I was a whalehand at the fjord, I spent hours every day scrubbing the little beasties off the minkes. They loved it! They titter when you tickle their bellies! They love their kribble too, but they just adore being plucked and preened. Sometimes just a quick wipe of tissue to clear the snot from its blowhole, other times it is more like surgery—sawing off corns from their flukes and chiseling away concretions of crustaceans.
“A whale simply cannot turn its head and nibble at a flea like Rover can. Some of them genuinely appreciate the grooming. Who’s to say it is not their idea? We humans are the ones bred for nit-picking and tick extraction. Maybe they are taking advantage of an instinctual compulsion of ours. There are fish grooming stations in the lagoons of archipelagoes across the oceans, everything from walruses to basking sharks get the treatment. On land, anything that stands still long enough will get its lice plucked by birds if they know where to go. This is a service we could have exchanged with whales for their messaging. This, the Whale Council and I believe may be the fundamental mystery of Hyperborea.”
“They were whale scrubbers,” I said, sensing an oncoming conscription into another foul job.
“Even for you,” said Mineola, “this is odd.”
“My bearbride would not have thought so, nor do the Whale Council. Interspecies grooming and cooperative hunting are not at all uncommon.
“If whales knew there were a protected place, a safe harbor, where for generations they could go to rid themselves of pests, they would exploit it, cooperate, even. The Council does not see these conjectural Hyperboreans as poolside attendants. Caring for the whales was crucial, of course, just as a postal worker lovingly cares for his vehicle.”
“What?” said Mini.
“Oh, you know, the old postal pride—prompt, accurate delivery on gleaming steeds.”
Mini and I looked at each other. The mail must be different in Finlindia. “We don’t have a mail man.” I told Snorri, “We go pick it up ourselves at the PO.”
“This whole continent has such pretensions to the first-world economy,” he said. “I forget sometimes that North America is still a developing country. No national education, no health care, a rudimentary rural postal service, no bandwidth to speak of outside of the cities. Everyone in debt to your own multinational versions of company stores.”
“The whole continent is not like that,” said Mini.
“Bismuth is,” I said.
“My point is,” said Snorri, “Hyperboreans took care of their whales. They were respectful, yes. However, these were work animals.”
“Not servants?” said Mini, wearying of Snorri’s pedantry and maybe a little defensive of the national economy that had served her so well.
“They were working men and working animals. They had a shared umwelt of purpose, a mutually advantageous symbiosis. They had reached an agreement, a compact. The Hyperboreans maintain their grooming station in perpetuity, and this attracts reliable whales; the whales, in turn, act as couriers for the Hyperboreans. Thus, a cultural empire that straddles the Northern Hemisphere.”
“The working men of Hyperborea are the emperors of the North Pole?” Mini was mocking Snorri.
“No, though they might have thought so at some point in history. And ‘empire’ is the wrong word I think. The Hyperboreans may have allowed a culture to stay vital as it migrated for thousands of miles and thousands of years. They could have made long distance, high-speed communication possible. News and small objects could travel distances in weeks that would otherwise take years or be simply impossible. To put it in the terms of your people, it could be how we knew there was a there there, and we could get there from here.” Snorri had tried a little Down East accent with his attempt at regional humor. I could imagine him practicing it, listening to Bert and I records.
Snorri seemed to feel as if he’d made an important point and settled ba
ck into his chair for a slow pull off his flask of old milk. I was still asea but tried to summarize what he’d been telling us, hoping to hasten this tale that began in deep history and supposedly promised money for me in its conclusion. “There’s a bus station/post office/whale spa at the North Pole.”
Snorri capped his leathern flask. “Say instead that it is the hub of the world. . . of ancient Northern civilization, at any rate.”
Mini said, “I kind of like ‘whale spa.’”
Snorri chuckled insincerely to humor her. He probably did not see any humor in whale scrubbing. He’d probably scrubbed too many himself. I don’t know how I’d feel if he were talking about an ancient guild of dishwashers.
“Well,” he said, “the grooming was probably not the most important element of what may have happened in Hyperborea. It is probably most significant for its likely geography. Obviously, whales are sea mammals and need to breathe air. Although the Arctic is principally a sea, in places the ice on top of it is higher than the water below is deep. Sea mammals simply cannot travel the distance from open water to the presumable location of Hyperborea without surfacing to breathe. If there were an isolated, protected patch of open water—an oasis—it would be an ideal wintering harbor for some whales, as long as they didn’t spread the word too far and crowd themselves out of it. This harbor could have been bored through the ice by a meteor. It could be a volcanic or thermal vent from an undersea fissure. Most likely, though, is that it was a product of glacial melting, and it has been maintained by human hands—the Hyperboreans.”
Mini asked whether she had already asked if the Hyperboreans were Northern Indians and what they had to do with the Inuit.
“That is an important question,” said Snorri. “And we are not certain of the answer. There have been several waves of human immigration to the Arctic. The Northern Indians had more of a migration. The race was native to the Arctic for several generations, but is now concentrated in coastal Northern Europe. The Whale Council and other anthropologists do not think we were the only aboriginals in the region at the time. The most likely answer is that, as the Northern Indians passed through the Arctic territories on the Northeast Passage, we bestowed aspects of civilization to the local cultures. They came to admire and emulate us, and even though their histories have forsaken us, their cultural progenitors, we live on in their mythologies as ancient gods and heroes. So perhaps the Inuit were living in the Arctic as my people passed through. There may not be record of contact, but echoes and shadows of our passage linger in their culture.”
“Oh, that’s right,” said Mineola sarcastically, “I’d forgotten it was your ancestors that had also built the pyramids and zig-gurats. And taught farming to the Mesopotamians.”
“I’m surprised you don’t think my ancestors were influential,” said Snorri, with mock offense.
“Whatever they were, it wasn’t modest,” she said.
“I bet they could explain the hell out of just about anything,” I said.
“You are forgetting that you are directly involved, young man,” said Snorri.
“You’re right!” I said. “I’ve been sneaking up to Hyperborea every summer since college. Don’t tell Angie, but I have a girlfriend up there.”
“Angie’s not your girlfriend,” said Snorri.
“How would you know?”
“Mini.”
She nodded.
“Well, anyway, about two hundred hours ago you started telling me a fish story about the top of the world and got me to keep listening by promising me some money. That was when I became involved. Not in prehistory. And I am never going to give a whale a bath.”
“You said you wanted him over,” Mineola told Snorri, “to prepare him, to set this in context. And you have, but we’re not even into the Bronze Age yet. Tell him what the Whale Council told you.”
“Orange,” said the whaleherder, “would you explain ‘off the hook’ and ‘on the hook’ to me? I know they are both North Americanisms about busyness and fishing, but the nuances escape me.”
“‘Off the hook’ is when a phone receiver is knocked off its cradle and nobody can call you because of the busy signal. But it doesn’t really mean you are occupied; mostly it means you are having such a wild party that you can’t hear the busy signal. I bet the kids who say it don’t even have land lines or busy signals.”
“It has nothing to do with fish?”
“No, that’s just ‘on the hook.’ Which is also not really about fishing. It’s like when someone believes a whopper and they swallow it ‘hook, line, and sinker.’ If you’re on the hook, someone is reeling you in.”
“And it is metaphorical.”
“Ayup. Or I suppose. I don’t do that kind of fishing. We use nets and dredges.”
“And lastly, Captain Hook?”
“A legendary old island whaler with a boathook for a hand and a grudge against the fish that ate it. Nobody really knows how he got in Peter Pan.”
“Snorri, you’re drifting,” said Mineola.
“I am just looking for the right phrasing, the right hook, to tell Orange the Whale Council wants him to follow the Harbinger Whale to the Arctic and find Hyperborea. They will fund the expedition. We will take Honeypaws and a few other vessels.”
“That’s off the hook!” I said.
“The Whale Council are not having a wild house party. Though they do have a trunk line grafted directly from the Transatlantic Cable.”
“No I mean they want their hooks in me. That’s off the hook.” Snorri did not look edified. “‘Off the hook’ can mean a wild statement, too. Also, the entire idea is off the hook, in the sense that it’s crazy.”
“Nonetheless,” said Snorri.
I directed my next question to Mini, whom I felt possessed the most rationality of the three of us: “What?” “He’s shit serious,” she said.
“Why?”
“The Council,” said Snorri, “believes you may be a natural-born whale sensitive. They want you to ask the Harbinger Whale for the directions to Hyperborea.”
Up until this very moment, I had suspected Snorri’s tale was going to conclude with some dealmaking for seagum. Me and the Lucy family were among the last of the Island seagummers and we had the Korean connection too. I figured until the Whale Network became profitable or had at least milked all the money it could from the Northern Indian Whale Council, seagum would solve some liquidity issues for them. I had also presumed that Snorri was working his way up to telling me the secret origin of seagum—that it was Harbinger Whale jism or something. I remembered a snide remark Waldena had made about Snorri being a “whale handler,” and I thought I was going to be made to help induce its production. Thus, I was relieved to merely refuse to join Snorri on yet another trip northward.
“No,” I said.
“Hold on, Orange, it gets kind of interesting from here,” said
Mini.
“It does indeed. Now the first whale sensitives known to the Council.…”
I tapped the pocket where I thought my phone might be. Took it out, and showed it to Snorri. “Angie says she needs me in the laundry room.”
“I didn’t hear it ring,” said Snorri.
“It was a hyper audiotext mail. American phones have them.” I bolted to find Angie before her sister and Snorri could reel me back in.
I was making balls from Moira’s pink and purple socks. I was making sure not to mix them up, as instructed. Angie was telling me what a whale sensitive was.
“I have no idea, I’ve never heard of one,” she said. “And don’t drink all my beer.”
I gave her back the bottle and she held it up to look at the tablespoon of backwash I’d left.
“Snorri’s Whale Council says you’re a whale sensitive?”
“The Harbinger Whale is supposed to give me directions.”
“To where?”
“Hyperborea.”
“Where’s that?”
“The North Pole.”
“Pe
ople already know where the North Pole is, Orange.” I must have looked lost.
“Do you want me to talk to them with you?” she asked.
“Yes, please.”
“A sensitive is an empath,” said Snorri, “someone with an enhanced awareness of the umwelt of another. The Council suspects you are a whale sensitive—that you have a natural correspondence with the Harbinger Whale.”
“Harbinger umwelt is sampo, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Ayup,” said Snorri with a credible island accent.
“Orange has a natural sensitivity?” Angie sounded doubtful.
“He’s kind of oversensitive sometimes,” said her sister.
“Tetchy,” agreed Angie.
“A natural-born shirker,” amplified Mini.
“They’re right. The Council has the wrong man,” I said.
“That was my first reaction as well,” said Snorri. “but they wonder if you may have a special propensity for whalishness.”
“Do you feel whalish?” Angie asked me.
I tried to self-assess my whalishness.
“You were eating squid at The Spouter,” she said.
This was true. I had brought myself to eat Chosen’s grilled squid with relaxing sauce. It was the old shoe to the old socks of their kimchi. “Not kribble, though,” I said, remembering the Harbinger was a baleen.
“You don’t feel like eating freeze-dried krill?” said Mini.
I patted my stomach. “Nope, not even a hankering.”
“He doesn’t look any more whalish than last summer,” Mini said to her sister. “Skinnier, if anything.”
Angie asked, “Can you hold your breath any longer? No, you smoke too much. How about swimming? I don’t think I’ve seen you swim yet this year. How about when you go out fishing with the Lucys, can you sense the currents? Can you hear fish swimming from miles away?”
Mini joined in. “Have you developed an aversion to harpoons? Any worries about orcas? Do you want Snorri to yoik for you while he rubs your belly?”
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