Ritual Chill

by James Axler

  Come to that, Ryan was feeling a similar expectancy, although his was tinged with apprehension.

  The hunting party took them into the forested areas on the uplands. If they had been returning from an expedition, then it had been empty-handed. If they had been setting forth, then they’d considered the intrusion of the companions enough of a reason to turn back without accomplishing their mission. Either way, it was another little thing that made all the companions—with the notable exception of Doc—feel uneasy.

  They took the trail for the first quarter mile, then veered off into the scrub. There appeared to be nothing in front of them but foliage, thick and impossible to pass, but this was illusory. The growth of bushes and small trees shadowed by the larger trunks had been carefully arranged to disguise another trail, this one more narrow, less well-trodden than the one they had left. It snaked away at an angle and took them deep into the forest.

  Perhaps these Inuit just liked to keep to themselves—they certainly didn’t seem to be overly sociable types—but maybe there was another reason they hid themselves off the trail taken by those trading between the scattered settlements.

  They walked for just over half an hour at a steady but not taxing pace. Suddenly, turning a corner, they reached the Inuit ville. It was silent and disguised, and the first view was shocking to the companions. Shocking because it seemed to appear from nowhere, with no clue, and shocking because of its composition.

  Wood-and-log huts, sheet-metal-covered constructions and cinder-block huts—much like the ville they had stumbled across down on the plain—were arranged around a central point, a piece of round, open space that was scuffed and churned as though in constant use. The dwellings all faced the center, and were populated by men and women who barely looked up from their everyday tasks as the hunting party entered. The stoops of the huts saw people wash clothes, sew, butcher meat for salting and storage, and clean blasters—all without paying heed to the strangers in their midst.

  Except for one man, who detached himself from a group of others who were rendering the remains of what could once have been a deer for fat and bone, and walked across with a peculiar shuffle to where the hunting party was now standing.

  “Strange quarry,” he said elliptically to the hunt leader, ignoring the companions.

  “Found ’em wandering about, lost. Seem friendly enough—not so stupe as to try to draw on us, anyway. Came from up there,” he added, gesturing toward the distant volcano, away up the slopes.

  The Inuit chief—for surely he had to be, such was the quiet authority he seemed to have over the others—sniffed back a string of mucus that started to drip from his nose and gave the companions a long perusal. He was the same height as the others, perhaps a little rounder and certainly older. The lines around his eyes seemed to form caverns around the dark orbs that called attention to the depths. The rest of his skin was like leather, toughened by the elements and tanned by the harsh suns of too many summers that were cold yet bright. He held up a hand in greeting. When he spoke, he shared the same rich burr as the hunt leader. It was an accent the likes of which they hadn’t heard before and, as with the huntsman, it took no little concentration to understand what he said.

  “I don’t know how long you’ve been out here, or what you’ve been doing, but you don’t look as though you could do it for much longer.”

  As a greeting, it was hardly fulsome. It was, however, an accurate summation of how the companions both looked and felt.

  “We’ve been traveling a long time, and we got ourselves a little lost. Found a ruined ville back along the way, and were heading for somewhere a little more hospitable,” Ryan told him, choosing his words carefully.

  The Inuit chief looked at the hunt leader. There seemed to be an unspoken question that passed between them, at which the hunt leader shrugged.

  The chief fixed Ryan with a glare. His eyes narrowed. “You’re on foot? Where d’you come from that you got this far on foot?”

  Krysty broke in before Ryan had a chance to answer. “We had a wag at one time, but the axle got broken on some ice. We had to leave it, but thought we were nearer Ank Ridge than we were.”

  “Looks like you people are just real shit at directions. Lack of sense in that direction ain’t going to get you nothing but chilled around here. Maybe you struck lucky running into my people.”

  “I hope so,” Ryan said pointedly.

  The Inuit chief stayed silent, his eyes locked with Ryan’s singular orb. Both men were trying to see into the other, to judge what they really meant by their statements. Finally the Inuit spoke.

  “Okay, here’s the deal. You can stay here and rest up before heading to Ank Ridge. We’ll put you in the right direction. But you earn your keep while you’re here. You hunt with us, work with us. You don’t stay long, and you don’t make trouble. Then everything’s good.”

  “You want our weapons?” Ryan asked. Then, when the Inuit shook his head shortly, asked, “Why not?”

  “We’re quicker, tougher than you.”

  “How do you know that?” Ryan tried to keep his voice neutral, to not make it sound like a challenge.

  The Inuit shrugged. “You’re tired. And I know how good my people are.”

  AT THE DIRECTION of the Inuit chief, the hunt leader and one of the women—who were almost indistinguishable from the men in build and dress—took the companions to one of the huts.

  “If you want to eat, meal is at sundown. We eat together here. Need to chop wood and clean livestock before then. Maybe you start earning by helping then,” the leader said brusquely. His tone left no doubt that this wasn’t a request.

  As the door closed on the companions, they found themselves alone in a log hut that had mattresses on the floor and blankets piled in one corner. The blankets and mattresses were clean, and the floor had been swept. A wood-burning stove, run from logs and tallow to fire it, was in one corner. There was nothing else. One window, to the left of the door, supplied the only light and the only way of observing what was going on outside. J.B. walked over to the window and watched the Inuit go about their everyday tasks.

  “Dark night, these people have been on their own too long,” he muttered. It was an observation prompted by the sight of the dwellers. Some were like the hunt party, but others had more severe mutations. There were those who had no arms, just vestigial flippers; others had more severe facial distortions, with flaps of skin where nose or mouth should be. Others were without legs, propelling themselves on sleds or carts with wheels attached. But despite this, they all seemed to be strong, and all were working. It was clear that this was a society where only the strong and adaptable survived, and all were geared toward working for a common cause, making them strong as a group as well as individuals.

  And yet the taciturn nature seemed to spread throughout that group, as they went about their tasks without much need or, indeed, desire for conversation.

  “These people put the fear in me,” J.B. said simply. “I don’t trust them.”

  “You and me both,” Ryan agreed, joining the Armorer at the window.

  “Then why are we here?”

  “You tell me what option we had?” Ryan countered. “They had the drop on us, and they offered us shelter when we’re in unknown territory and in need of rest.”

  Mildred, like the others, had been listening, and took it upon herself to speak. “There are a few other things that are bugging me about these people—like how come they’re all so in-bred when there are other communities around? They must have come across them in the course of hunting and trading, so why haven’t they mixed it up a little to stop all those mutations? And how come they’ve hidden themselves away here, with no way of seeing where they are from the main trail?”

  “Could be that they want to keep to themselves because that’s what they believe,” Krysty pondered. “You know, like some communities believe that in trying to keep their people free of outside taint? Not necessarily right, but it might explain it.”
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  “Not why hide,” Jak countered. “Only hide trail when don’t want be found.”

  “Exactly,” Mildred affirmed. “They’ve covered their tracks for a reason, and I’ve got an idea why that might be.”

  “Which is?” Ryan asked.

  “Come on, Ryan, are you telling me you didn’t notice it, too? The homesteads in this ville, look at the way they’re constructed.”

  “Like the ville we left behind.” J.B. frowned. “But that’s the way they all are around here, right?”

  “Mebbe, but where we stayed last night hadn’t just been smashed. There were some parts that had been taken. Mebbe as replacements for what these people needed on their own buildings.”

  “Come on, you’ve no grounds for saying that other than paranoia,” Krysty reasoned.

  “No? Mebbe paranoia’s not such a bad thing. That ville was ripped to shreds, and this one’s untouched—”

  “But it was out in the open, and this one is hidden,” Krysty interjected.

  “Which brings me back to Jak’s point—why? Why ‘hide’ where you are if you trade with the other villes and are part of the chain between here and Ank Ridge? Why be the only ville that hasn’t been ripped apart?”

  “We don’t know what the other villes on the route are like, Millie,” J.B. pointed out. “And we won’t until we reach them. And mebbe part of the reason for this place being hidden is to avoid being attacked by whatever’s doing it.”

  “Anyway, we don’t even know for sure that this trail is all the way to Ank Ridge, or used for trade,” Krysty added mildly. “There’s a lot of mebbes and ifs in there, Millie.”

  Mildred sighed and rubbed at her face, revealing the extent of her tiredness. “Yeah, you might be right. But it just doesn’t feel right, and I guess I was trying to look for reasons why.”

  “Now that I will agree with you,” Krysty murmured, trying to tease out Titian locks that remained almost painfully tight. “This feels real bad.”

  “Anything we did would be bad at this point,” Ryan said, trying to calm his people. “We’ve just got to try to pick our way through the minefield and hope we don’t blow a leg off. At least we’ve got some shelter, we’ll have food and rest, and we’ll be ready for trouble if it comes. Yeah, at least we’ll know what direction it’s gonna come from.”

  It wasn’t a sentiment with which any of the companions felt reassured, but there was sense to it: better to know your enemy than to be caught from behind.

  There was one other thing, which had occurred to Jak if not to the others, and which he refrained from speaking of until he knew more. Why had the hunt party, which had picked them up, been returning from the plains, when any wildlife they would wish to hunt would be more likely to be in the territory immediately surrounding their settlement?

  OPTING TO GO ALONG with things until they could get a better idea of what was actually happening within the ville, they emerged from their cabin as the light began to fade. There was still enough time for them to join their hosts in feeding the livestock and preparing supplies of firewood for the stoves that heated the buildings. They worked mostly in silence, unwilling to talk too much among themselves, and coming up, once more, against the wall of taciturn silence that they had experienced on first entering the community.

  The work was hard. The Inuit drove at a hard pace and expected the same from their “guests.” Instructions were barked in that same burr that was shared, seemingly, by all the dwellers and made them hard to understand. Nonetheless, the companions were able to fulfill their tasks and join the ville dwellers as they queued to receive their food from the communal kitchen cabin that seemingly serviced the whole community.

  “Why don’t people cook in their own huts? Why do you eat like this?” Ryan asked of the chief. He was only partly interested, figuring that it was also a good way to draw the man into conversation.

  “Food’s sometimes scarce. It helps if we keep it all in one place, cook it all in one place. Means no one hoards, and we all share and share alike. That’s the way it’s always been, and the only way that’s right.”

  As he left the cookhouse, he beckoned to Ryan to follow him to his own cabin. Ryan gave him a questioning glance and the chief then beckoned to the other companions. As they followed, each figured that they were about to learn something of the community. Why else would such a taciturn man want their company?

  When they had settled in his cabin—as sparse as their own, except for a framed print of an old map behind grimy glass that rendered it almost opaque, hanging from one wall, and an iron chest on the far side of the room—they waited for revelation. Except conversation didn’t come easily to these people and it was actually Doc who broke the silence…with a comment that seemed, at first hearing, cryptic.

  “Scots—I do believe I finally have it!” he exclaimed, seemingly out of the blue. “Tell me, dear sir, what is your name? I don’t believe you have graced us with as of yet.”

  The Inuit chief gave Doc a long, hard stare. It was as though he were trying to figure out if Doc was being funny or was just plain crazy. Finally he said, “Thompson. John Thompson.”

  “I knew it!” Doc exclaimed, thumping the table so that their plates rattled. “I knew I’d heard that accent before, and it all started to fall into place…of course, there were stories about remote camps and expeditions where the locals and the pioneers fused in such a way, but with no media to really reinforce…quite impossible to verify. But then again, by the time there were such means, the possibility of such a thing had been decreased by… McLuan, MacLyon, something like that? He was a Marshal, though how a lawman found time to study such a subject in depth did not bode well for the people he was supposed to protect. Anyway, the concept of the Global Village, something that I always thought—”

  “Doc! Shut up,” Ryan yelled, getting to his feet. The old man stopped dead and looked up at the one-eyed man in astonishment. Inside Doc’s head, he was stunned that a figment of his imagination should be able to talk to him in this way. Outside of that head, it appeared as though Ryan were asserting his authority over the group.

  Thompson seemed impassive, but his eyes flickered across the companions. This was an interesting test of group strength and loyalty. Would they stick up for the mad one, assuming he was talking garbage, or would they follow the one-eye?

  “I—I do apologize,” Doc stammered softly. “I do not know what came over me there. I think perhaps excitement that, after recent events, I found it easy to follow a train of thought. I did not mean…”

  “It’s okay, Doc,” Ryan said gently. “You’ve been through a lot of crap, and it’s kinda good to have you back to talking shit like usual. But mebbe this isn’t the time.”

  Mildred had been thinking about what Doc had said, and decided that it may be the right time to reinforce some of the old man’s words—because it would do him good to know he had been doing more than merely ranting and because it may clear up a few things about their hosts.

  “MacLuhan, Doc. Marshall MacLuhan. You remembered it well, but it was his name, not his rank. And he was right. Things were going toward a Global Village before the villagers squabbled and blew it up. Hell of a memory you’ve got rattling around in there,” she added, declining to note that MacLuhan’s theories had come along in the time between Doc being trawled and then ending up at the end of the twentieth century. He had to have had some time to do a lot of reading while he was being used as a lab rat. Leaving that for another time or place, she went back on tack. “And you’re right about the accent, too. I wouldn’t have placed it as well.”

  “Ah, of course, that explains everything,” Doc said. “What a silly mistake to make, a little like Wyatt Earp discovering the secret of quantum mechanics before polishing off the Dalton boys.” He chuckled to himself, not noticing that Thompson was staring up and down the table, his expression no longer inscrutable.

  Instead he was barely suppressing his excitement. Although, given the normal stony-faced exp
ression of his people, this was admittedly barely visible. Only if you subjected him to the close scrutiny that Krysty observed. It made her spine tingle, her hair tighten so that it pulled on her scalp.

  Thompson rose from the table and went over to the framed map.

  “See this? Many years before skydark, men and women come from across the big seas. You’re right—Scotland. A place called Ireland, too. They were escaping lack of jack, lack of food. They found people like me. They found we had the same problem. Out of the pan and into the flame, as they said. But they had the Almighty, and the Almighty would send something.”

  “They brought you religion instead of bread? Very big of them,” Doc muttered.

  Thompson was across the table before anyone had the chance to move. For one so bulky, he moved at an incredible pace. He lunged for Doc before the other companions had a chance to move, and stopped inches short of the old man’s face. Doc could taste his sour breath.

  “No, you old fool, you don’t understand. You say smart things then be so stupid—how does that work, eh? Listen to me. The Almighty had guided them from starving in their lands, brought them safely across the big seas and landed them here. Sure, we all starved together to begin with, but the Almighty works with mystery. That’s what they said. No one understands, but it works. Faith and trust. We had things to teach them, they had things to teach us. Things that made the hunting better, the living better. And they and we became one. That’s why we have their names, their voice. They gave us the Almighty, showed us the way. And through the way, the light and the truth. And now we live better than others out here because we work together, use everything, make it work, have faith.”

  He pulled back and walked over to the map, taking the frame from the wall and placing it in the middle of the table. He seemed oblivious to the stunned silence around him. If he did notice it, he didn’t let it show. Hoicking up, he spit onto the frame and cleaned off some of the dust and dirt from the glass, revealing underneath a map of how the Alaskan regions had once looked. The map was yellowed and stained, even under glass, and bore a date in one corner: 1879.