“Our culture is their best caretaker. Your island ancestors were the predators.”
“We don’t use whale meat as dog food here.”
“Well, too bad for the horses,” he said, peevishly.
I had seen this argument burst into horrible conflagrations often enough. I think we all felt the Northern Indian preoccupation with sea mammals was something of a cultural affectation, but knew better than to mention it. We also knew that Snorri’s people thought our people were a bunch of yahoos, and we didn’t want to hear about it.
“How do you know the whales won’t just lead you on; or really, why would what they have to say make any sense to you at all?”
Snorri wrapped a strand of eyebrow around his little finger. “That is an excellent question. As my fellow beargrooms used to say, just because a bear swears they are tasty, does not mean you should eat bees.
“Maybe it would be better to say that the Whale Council’s approach is to simply listen for a while—to see what the whales have to say for themselves. But they have to find them first, and that is why they need you, Orange.”
“It is still hard to imagine members of the Finlindian parliament talking about myths and whales, let alone talking about Orange,” said Angie.
“The Whale Council has no official role in the governments. They are an autarky within a representational democracy. That is how they have persisted over the years and are able to further the goals set by their ancestors and conceive of new plans to prepare our culture for the next leg of its migration.”
“What leg?” asked Mini.
“The return.” “Where?”
“Here. The Arctic. We will head into the western lands when the islands return to the Arctic.”
Once again I was trying to fish information about my immediate future from Snorri and he was going on about deep time. It made me surly. So did the beer and the late afternoon.
“Well, what the fuck did you go to Europe for?” I asked.
“We didn’t emigrate, we migrated. Migrations continue in cycles. By the time North America is ready to be serious about civilization, we will be here to help and guide. This is one of the chief purposes of the Whale Council—to preserve our culture and to push it forward. They are progressive.”
“And almost entirely made up of human beings, you said.”
“Correct.”
He was imperturbable on the subject. I tried to circle back to my chief interest: myself. “So, I’m a shaman.”
“Correct, almost entirely a human being,” he said, smiling.
“And your Council has deduced this because of the ghost smirch on my phone? They think this is proof I can talk to a whale? That I have psychic powers?”
“It is not just about you. It is somehow a correspondence between you, the whale, and the telephone itself. A quantum embranglement. A trinity. I do not know how to describe the technology within the WhaleNet phones I gave you all, but they have plenty of autonomy and potential for self-development. It may actually be that your phone, Orange, has initiated all of this on its own. Maybe the phone feels you should be in contact with the whale and it interceded by connecting the two of you.”
“Maybe it knew it was for the whale, and not me before you even gave it to me.”
“No I doubt that very much. That phone was made with your self, your personality, in mind. The Council did not know you then, but Mineola and I helped them develop it based on our knowledge of you.”
I took a moment to congratulate myself on getting rid of that phone so quickly. But then I realized I hadn’t. It had found me again almost the moment I got another phone. Also, if it were a trinity and the whale was the ghost and the phone got sacrificed like the son, that made me God. Unless being a shaman precluded that. I hadn’t expected so much theology this afternoon.
Snorri interrupted my ascension to godhead by asking Mini to see her phone.
“Not a chance!” she said.
“I will be respectful and gentle,” he said, making their exchange sound a smidge lurid.
“Use your own.”
“I cannot, it has too many whales on it.”
Mini slapped the tops of her knees to show she did not really want to get up, but would. “OK, fine, I’ll get it.”
After Mini left the room, Snorri said to Angie, “She doesn’t even keep it in her pocket.”
Angie bounced her empty beer bottle on the coffee table like a gavel. “We’re going to have to leave pretty soon.”
Mini came back with her WhaleNet phone and gave it to Snorri. It looked like the rest of the adult phones—Moira’s was the only one that was bendy. Where mine had the sigil of the mer-deer, Mineola’s was decorated with an inlaid design of a heart with a garland around it. Snorri stroked it with his finger, telling us that it was heritage whaletooth with a mammoth tusk inlay. Snorri drew his finger along the heart’s border and the phone responded by glowing softly from within. We all smiled. It was romantic. He opened her phone like a reliquary, drew a heart on the touchscreen and showed it to us. This was Mini’s personal display, he told us. There we all were, the members of the WhaleNet, rendered in scrimshaw-style illustrations, just like on the phone the whale ate. “Now look at Orange’s,” he said.
My phone looked like it might still work, despite being in pieces. We looked at the display on mine. What was immediately apparent was that Mini’s phone was a beautiful artifact and mine looked like it deserved its fate. My phone’s screen looked to be lit with an insectile flashlight, hers made our icons look like they hung on a gallery wall. Yet the icons on mine seemed to have much more dimensionality, more personality. On mine, Angie and Mini and Snorri were all just outlines, since they were in the room with me. “Look at Moira!” said Angie. Moira’s icon’s eyes were crossed and it was sticking out its tongue.
“She does that when you look at her too long,” I told Angie.
“Not on mine,” she said.
“Your icons,” said Snorri, “are lively and subtly expressive.” “Moira’s subtle?” said Angie.
“The icon is astonishingly good at representing her feelings about being observed by adults; that is actually quite subtle.”
Angie made the same expression as her daughter. “Subtle,” she said and left for the bathroom.
“The point I am trying to make is that Orange’s phone is not capable of this, yet here it is. This is the disposable ball point pen of mobile phones. Never mind its utter lack of aesthetics, it does not have the memory, the processing power, or even the resolution to show images like this. Where’s the charger?”
“I lost it. I thought it had self-winding mode, anyway, like the Batphone you gave me.”
“You know it was a whale phone. And obviously you don’t know that this phone can’t ‘wind itself.’ But it does?”
“Ayup. I’ve never plugged anything into it.”
“How did you import the icons of the WhaleNet? Did you sync with Angie?
I didn’t want to say, here in front of her and her sister.
“He means the telephones,” said Mini.
“Oh, no, I don’t think so. When I first got it, I didn’t know anyone’s number, so I just called a few places in town like the store and the Topsoil. This used to be Moira’s, right?” Angie, who had re-joined us in the living room, nodded. “You guys must have deleted everything on it. I tried entering some things but gave up. The next time I picked it up, there you all were waving back to me on the WhaleNet icons.”
“Those are several more things this phone is incapable of. What you are describing is an emulation and an improvement upon something we all thought was induplicable. Are there any other surprises?”
“The ringtones change a lot, so do the vibrations.”
“And I suppose you have never downloaded a ringtone?” said Snorri.
“Moira was gonna show me how, but we never did,” I said.
“What about the phone you lost?”
“Phones. I had two before this one, not
counting yours.”
“They were on the WhaleNet too?”
“Yup. I thought they were roaming and found it themselves.”
Snorri shook his head. “You cannot wander into the WhaleNet; you must be invited.”
Mini asked if I’d communed with the whale on the other phones and I told her I hadn’t owned them long enough to try. I couldn’t remember if the ghost icon had been on those phones.
Snorri said to Mini, “I am so pleased you cherish your WhaleNet phone, but I am concerned it is languishing. These telephones were made to thrive on attention, and I worry that yours will be slower than its peers. This could be why the WhaleNet is so persistent in finding you, Orange. It is a scant but legitimate possibility that it felt lost and lonely in the whale’s gut and it sought out you, the only person it ever knew.”
“I didn’t abandon it at the convent doorstep. I don’t think I even had it for more than a few hours. I never even knew its number.”
“It was made for you. It expected to be held in your hands, to learn by hearing your speech patterns.” “The poor thing,” said Angie.
“Well,” said Snorri, “perhaps instead of you, it was fostered by the Harbinger Whale. One possibility is that it received lots of environmental stimulation in the whale and that was enough to quicken its evolution. It is possible the phone does not consider itself to be a telephone any longer. Maybe the phone is sharing its Jonah-like impressions of its world with you; or it could be that the whale is somehow consciously or intuitively using the phone to call you up and you simply do not understand what it is saying.
“Most intriguing to me is the possibility that you, the Harbinger, and the telephone have formed a symbiotic gestalt umwelt, a trimurti combining your sensorium with the phone’s network and the whale’s echolocation.”
Angie started to speak, but her sister gave her a look that said, ‘Let it pass; you’ll get home sooner.’
“There are members of the Whale Council who wonder if there is a quantum connection between Orange, the phone, and the whale. A simultaneity in their communications, no matter the distance. Can you imagine? Instant communication with a vessel that can hear in three dimensions? Think of the navigational applications! I could even see spaceships using this!”
“Orange and his magic phone,” said Angie.
“Wasn’t my idea.”
“Or was it?” asked Snorri. “You quite deliberately prepared and sacrificed that telephone. I know, I know. You did not volunteer for any of this, but you were the one who was chosen.”
“That’s Chosen One, right there; I just talked to him yesterday.” said Angie, tapping the Korean’s icon on my broken phone.
“Duty calls, Orange,” said Snorri.
Booty calls, I thought.
“So, what do you think?” Snorri asked.
Before I could answer, Angie stood up. “We can’t stay any longer—I have to go and pick up Moira; she and her father are going to be at the dock in an hour.”
“Call them and say you may be late,” said Snorri.
“I did call them a few minutes ago—so that I won’t get stuck here, late.”
“We still have a great deal to discuss,” said Snorri. “You might, but I have a great deal of daughter to go get.” “Why don’t you leave Orange here, I can bring him over on Honeypaws tomorrow.”
I bugged my eyes at Angie, pleading silently to be taken home.
“Let him go, you can talk to him tomorrow,” Mini said to Snorri.
“Perhaps we should pause,” he said. “This has been heady, I know. All right, I will call you tomorrow. All set?”
“Ayup.” I pushed the parts of my phone into a pile so I could scoop them into my pocket.
“But there is one more thing,” said Snorri.
“No there’s not,” said Angie.
“Hold on a second,” said Mini.
“Oh, right, I forgot,” said Angie.
“What?” I asked. They were all smiling.
Snorri had a present for me. It was a wooden box shaped like a small coffin. He pretended to find it on the floor and then brought it up as if it were surfacing. He pantomimed it popping out of the water and then floating over to me. “For you! From the depths, back to your pocket.”
I opened the hinged box and inside it was a palm-sized dull metal slab, the color of a porpoise. It had a rough finish and was very heavy for its size. It was a telephone, of course.
“Show him how to use it,” said Mini.
“Just let him a moment,” said Snorri.
It opened like a book, with hinges on the long side. Each side of it had a black screen and there wasn’t a single button or key on the whole thing.
“Stroke an O with your finger on the left screen,” said Snorri.
I did. An ivory O appeared.
“Now blow into the circle.”
This was stupid, but I did it anyway. We appeared—us members of the WhaleNet, rendered much the same way we appeared on Mini’s phone. I didn’t see the ghost icon. The phone was actually quite heavy and came with a lanyard attached to it by a brass clip.
“See, you can put it around your neck so you won’t drop it!”
This was really stupid. I was the last person to have much of an opinion about fashion accessories, but even I knew wearing a phone around your neck was lame. I put it on anyway.
“It’s made from meteoritic steel more than three thousand years old,” said Snorri.
“Is it Damascus steel?” asked Angie, stroking it as it rested flat against my chest.
“The Syrians learned from the Vikings and the Vikings learned it from us. It’s Northern Indian meteor steel from a sacred crater.”
“It’s really heavy,” I said.
“That makes it harder to lose and more durable,” he said. “Famous weapons with long names have been made from this very same steel.”
It was so heavy, it felt like it would pull my pants down if I put it in my pocket. It was a brand-new albatross, an anchor dense with cultural lumber and demands from the future. I had to thank him for it. I weighed it in my hand. “It looks like it’ll stop a bullet.”
“Ha!” said Snorri, “Like a sheriff’s badge. Here.…” Snorri took the phone, still leashed around my neck and pulled me forward with it. He opened the phone and tapped something inside. Then he held it up as if he were looking in a shaving mirror and growled. It strobed. “Did it come out?” he asked, blinking, holding it in my face. “I cannot see.”
Snorri’s had photographed himself; his image was overlit and his eyes were half shut. His teeth were bared in what looked like a grimace.
“It looks great,” I said.
“That was my bullet-catching face,” he said, pleased. “I will bite it out of the air.” He closed the phone tenderly like a locket and let it drop against my chest.
Mini mimicked a lanyard around her neck, “It looks like you have credentials now. A suit and a haircut and they’ll start letting you into buildings.”
“What’s its name?” I asked Snorri. “All the phones have names, right?”
Snorri glanced at Angie and Mini. He leaned in and whispered in my ear, “Odin’s Bodkin.” To all of us, he said, “There is much to tell you about this device,” he said, poking it.
One thing I already hated about the phone was that it allowed people too many opportunities to poke me in the chest.
“Do I have a new phone number?” I asked.
Angie grabbed it next and pulled gently. “We have to go right now.”
Snorri stood and hugged me hard enough for me to feel the phone pressed between our chests. “I will call you tomorrow!” he said.
“I know.” I said.
We made short goodbyes, and I made promises. I would decide later if they were sincere. Down at the docks, Eero, one of Mini’s Varangian guards, blocked my path. Angie didn’t seem to notice and started to ready her boat to cast off. I had done so well, keeping out of the ocean. I just knew he was going to toss me
in. I thought about whirling Odin’s Bodkin on its tether over my head like a bull-roarer and whacking him in the skull. I tried to deke around him, but he put his big hand on my shoulder and said my name quietly and urgently.
“Do you have any cigarettes?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“I’ll pay.”
I really didn’t. In fact, he gave me an intense desire to smoke one. I would have loved to stand on Angie Baby’s prow, as she broke the waves and I smoked and thought shamanic thoughts.
He looked back at Mini’s house, “She confiscates them.” He wasn’t ready to let me pass and seemed genuinely disappointed. I must have been his last hope for tobacco.
I grubbed around in my pockets until I found the foil-wrapped Chiclet-sized pieces of seagum I had and gave him one. “It’s seagum,” I told him, hoping I wouldn’t have to explain it.
He watched me unwrap and chew my piece and then did the same. “This tastes awful!” he said.
“Yeah, but we don’t have any cigarettes.”
We had hours to go until sunset, but afternoon was functionally over. Angie and I were in the wheelhouse of her Baby, on our way back to Bismuth. She took the phone and lifted the lanyard from my neck, asking me if she could after she’d done it. We both laughed at Snorri’s photo. I told her I didn’t know how to forward it to her, and she said that was good. Angie asked if I didn’t mind taking us the rest of the way in while she went belowdecks and washed up.
My head was so painfully stuffed with Snorri’s stories and schemes I imagined it coldly burning with St. Elmo’s fire. Gaiety was behind us, Bismuth was ahead, glowing pink in a sideways sun. Certainty was an unusual feeling for me, so I recognized it right away. I hadn’t expected to know my own mind so quickly. Maybe it was the seagum I was still chewing. I spit it overboard. It did taste awful, but I’d known that since childhood. What I had realized was I didn’t need to go with Snorri.
This was a familiar thought, of course. This time, however, my home island’s rosy hue seemed righteously unironic. I did not need to accompany Snorri to find the Harbinger Whale. I knew I did not need to because I was certain as an ancient Hyperborean that the whale would come to me, and there was nothing I could do to elude it.
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