ANAWAK WAS DREAMING. He was in a plane, circling Vancouver, waiting for permission to land, but the control tower wouldn't let them. The pilot turned to him.
'They're not going to let us land. Vancouver and Tofino are out of the question.'
'Why?' yelped Anawak.
'We've made our enquiries. You don't live anywhere near here. We've got no record of a Leon Anawak. Ground Control says I have to take you home. Where do you want me to go?'
'I don't know.'
'You must know where your home is.'
'Down there.'
'Fine.'
The plane dipped, then banked around again. The city lights came into view, but only a scattering, too few for Vancouver. This wasn't Vancouver. There were ice floes drifting on dark water, and a marble mountain range beyond the town.
They were landing in Cape Dorset.
Suddenly he was in his childhood home, and there was a celebration – his birthday. Some of the local kids had been invited, and his father suggested a race in the snow. He gave Anawak an enormous package tied clumsily together. It was his only present, and it was precious, he said. 'You'll find everything in there that you'll need in life,' he explained. 'But you must carry it with you while we're running.'
Anawak tried to balance the enormous parcel on his head, steadying it with both hands. They went outside, and as the white snow glistened in the darkness, a voice whispered to him that he had to win the race or the others would kill him. At night they were wolves and would rip him to pieces. He had to reach the water first, had to run before they caught him.
Anawak began to weep. He cursed his birthday, because he knew that soon he would grow up, and he didn't want to grow up and be torn to pieces. Digging his fingers into the parcel, he started to run. The snow was deep and he sank into it. It reached his hips, scarcely allowing him to move. He glanced back but no one was running with him. He was on his own. Only his parents' house was visible behind him, with the door closed and the lights out. A cold moon shone down from above, and suddenly it was deathly still.
Anawak wondered whether he should return to the house, but everyone seemed to have left. It looked eerie and forbidding-. There was no one to be seen in the frozen moonlit night, and not a sound. He remembered the wolves, waiting to eat him alive. Were they in the house? Had the party ended in a bloodbath? It didn't seem possible. In a mysterious way Cape Dorset and the house seemed to defy the laws of nature. This was where they had gathered for his birthday; but now it was a distant future or an even more distant past. Or maybe time had stood still and he was looking at a frozen universe hostile to life.
Fear won out. He turned away from the house and trudged towards the water. The wharf belonging to the real Cape Dorset had vanished, and the ice led directly to the sea. His parcel was getting smaller all the time, so small that he could carry it in one hand, and in a few steps he was at the edge.
Rays of moonlight shimmered on the dark waves and the drifting slabs of ice. The sky was studded with stars. Someone was calling his name. The faint voice was coming from a snowdrift, and Anawak moved forward until he was close enough to see. Two bodies, dusted with snow, lay side by side. His parents. They were staring at the sky with empty eyes.
I'm a grown-up now, he thought. It's time to open the parcel.
He examined it on the palm of his hand.
It was tiny. He began to unwrap it, but there was nothing inside, only paper. He tore away the crinkled sheets, discarding layer after layer, until the parcel was gone and so were the fallen bodies of his parents, leaving him alone on the edge of the ice, with the dark waves beyond.
A mighty hump parted the water and sank down.
Anawak turned his head slowly. He saw a small, shabby house, a shack made of corrugated iron. The door was open.
His home.
No, he thought. No! Tears came to his eyes. This wasn't right. This couldn't be his life. It wasn't where he belonged. It couldn't end like this.
He crouched in the snow and stared at the hut, weeping uncontrollably, in the grip of a nameless misery. His sobs almost burst his chest, echoing in the sky, filling the world with lamentation, a world in which no one existed but him.
No. No!
Then the light.
ANAWAK SAT UPRIGHT IN BED. The display on his alarm clock read 2:30 a.m. His tongue was sticking to his palate so he got up and went to the mini-bar. He reached for a Coke, opened it and drank. Then, clutching the can, he went to the window, opened the curtains and looked out.
The hotel was on a hill overlooking Kinngait and parts of the neighbouring hamlets. It was a clear and cloudless night and a nocturnal half-light steeped the houses, tundra, snowfields and sea in an improbable shade of reddish-gold. It was never truly dark at this time of year: the contours just softened and the colours mellowed.
All of a sudden he saw its beauty. He looked in wonder at the sky, then let his eyes roam over the mountains and the bay. The frozen seascape of Tellik Inlet shimmered like molten silver, while Mallikjuaq Island rose up from the water like a slumbering whale.
What now?
He remembered how he had felt at the Station with Shoemaker and Delaware, his sense of alienation, from Davie's, Tofino, and everything around him. How he had seemed to be missing some inner space to protect him from the world. Something decisive had been on the horizon, of that he had been certain. He had waited, elated and fearful, as though an extraordinary change would sweep over him.
Instead his father had died.
Was that it, then? The event that would change everything? His return to the Arctic to bury his father?
He had far greater challenges to deal with. Right now he was facing one of the greatest that mankind had ever seen. Just him and a few other people. Yet it had nothing to do with his life. His life had a different framework, in which tsunamis, climate disasters and plagues had no place. His father's death had pushed his own life into the foreground and now Anawak felt, in Nunavut, a chance to reclaim it.
After a while he got dressed, pulled a fur-lined hat down over his ears and walked into the moonlit night. He had the streets to himself He roamed the town until a wave of tiredness engulfed him, then returned to the warmth of the hotel room, and was asleep before his head had hit the pillow.
THE NEXT MORNING he called Akesuk. 'How about breakfast?' he asked.
His uncle seemed surprised. 'We've just sat down here. I thought you'd be busy.'
'OK. No problem.'
'Hold on – we've only just started. Why don't you come over? There's scrambled eggs and bacon.'
'Great.'
The plateful with which Mary-Ann presented him was so large that Anawak felt full before he started, but he still dug in. A smile spread across her face, and he wondered what Akesuk had told her. He must have found a good reason for Anawak to have turned down their offer of supper last night. She didn't seem in the least offended.
It felt odd to grasp the hand that Akesuk and his wife had extended to him. It pulled him back into the family. Anawak wondered whether it was a good thing. The magic of the moonlit night had vanished now and he was far from making peace with Nunavut.
After breakfast Mary-Ann cleared the table and went shopping. Akesuk twiddled with the dials on his transistor radio, listened for a while and said, 'IBC is forecasting mild weather for the next few days. You can't rely on it entirely, of course, but even if it's only half true, it'll be good enough for us to go out on the land.'
'You've got a trip planned?'
'We're leaving tomorrow. The two of us could do something today, though, if you like. Are you sticking to your plans – or were you thinking of flying back early?'
The old fox had guessed.
Anawak stirred his coffee. 'Last night I was on the point of leaving.'
'I guessed as much,' Akesuk said drily. 'And now?'
'I don't know. I thought maybe I'd take a trip to Mallikjuaq or Inuksuk Point – I don't feel comfortable in Cape Dorset. I don't mean
to offend you, Iji, but good memories are hard to come by with a… well, with a …'
'With a father like yours,' his uncle said. He stroked his moustache. 'What astonishes me is that you're here at all. It's been nineteen years since any of us heard from you and now I'm the only one left. I got in touch with you because I thought you ought to know, but I never believed we'd see you here again. Why did you come?'
'Who knows? It wasn't as though anything was drawing me back. Maybe Vancouver wanted to get rid of me for a while.'
'Nonsense.'
'Well, it had nothing to do with my father, if that's what you're thinking. I'm not going to shed any tears over him.' He knew it sounded harsh, but it was too bad. 'I can't do that, Iji.'
'You're too hard on him.'
'He led a bad life.'
Akesuk gave him a long look. 'Yes, he did, but there weren't many options back then.' He drained the dregs of his coffee. Then he was smiling. 'Here's a suggestion. We'll start our trip today. Mary-Ann and I were planning to go somewhere different for a change – north-west to Pond Inlet. You could come too.'
Anawak stared at him. 'It's out of the question,' he said. 'You'll be out there for weeks. I can't possibly be away for that long – even if I wanted to.'
'I'm not suggesting you stay the whole time. We'll all set out together, and after a few days you can fly back on your own. You're a grown man – you don't need me to hold your hand. You can get on a plane by yourself, can't you?'
'But that'll be far too much trouble, Iji, I-'
'I'm fed up of hearing about trouble. Why should it be any trouble for you to come too? There's a group of us meeting in Pond Inlet. All the arrangements have been made, and I'm sure we'll find room for your civilised behind.' He winked at him. 'But don't go thinking it'll be an easy ride. You'll be given your share of bear duty like the rest of us.'
Anawak pondered his uncle's invitation. It had caught him off-guard. He'd prepared himself for one more day, not three or four.
But Li had made clear that he should stay for as long as he needed to.
Pond Inlet. Three more days.
'Why are you so keen for me to come?' he asked.
Akesuk laughed.
'Why do you think?' he said. 'I'm going to take you home.'
ON THE LAND. Those three words encapsulated the Inuit philosophy of life. Going out on the land meant escaping from the settlements and spending the summer camped in tents on the beaches or on the floe-edge, fishing, and hunting walrus, seal or narwhal, which the Inuit were permitted to kill for their own consumption. They would take everything they needed for life beyond the reaches of civilisation, loading clothes, equipment and hunting tools on to ATVs, sledges or boats. The territory they were venturing into was untamed: a vast expanse of land that people had roamed for thousands of years.
Time was of no importance on the land, where the routines and patterns of cities and settlements ceased to exist. Distances weren't measured in kilometres or miles but in days. Two days to this place, and half a day to that. It was no help to know that it was fifty kilometres to your destination, if the route was filled with obstacles like pack ice or crevasses. Nature had no respect for human plans. The next second could be fraught with imponderables, so people lived for the present. The land followed its own rhythm, and the Inuit submitted to it. Thousands of years as nomads had taught them that that was the way to gain mastery. Through the first half of the twentieth century they had continued to roam the land freely, and decades later the nomadic lifestyle still suited them better than being confined to one place by a house.
Some things had changed though, as Anawak was increasingly aware. They seemed to have accepted that the world expected them to take regular jobs and become part of industrial society, and in return they'd been granted the acceptance denied to them when Anawak was a child. The world was returning part of what it had taken, and giving them a new outlook, in which ancient traditions took their place alongside a western lifestyle.
The place Anawak had left behind had been a geographical region devoid of identity or self-worth, its people robbed of their energies and respected by no one. Only his father could have redrawn that picture for him, but he was the one who'd done most to inspire it. The man buried in Cape Dorset had become symbolic of the wider resignation: a worn-out alcoholic prone to self-pity and temper, who'd failed to stand up for his family. That day, as Cape Dorset had disappeared from his view, Anawak had stood on deck and shouted into the fog: 'Go ahead, kill yourselves! Then you won't be such an embarrassment.' For a second he'd toyed with the idea of leading by example and jumping overboard.
Instead he'd become a west-coast Canadian. His adoptive parents had settled in Vancouver, good people who did everything they could to support him in his schooling. They'd never grown accustomed to each other, though: a family united purely by circumstance. When Leon was twenty-four, they'd moved to Anchorage in Alaska. Once a year they sent him a greetings card, and he'd reply with a few friendly lines. He never visited, and they didn't seem to expect it – the idea would probably have surprised them.
Akesuk's talk of an expedition on the land had prompted a new wave of memories – long evenings round the fire, while people told stories and the whole world seemed alive. When he was little, he'd taken for granted that the Snow Queen and the Bear God were real. He'd listened to the tales of men and women who'd been born in igloos, and imagined how one day he'd journey over the ice, hunting and living in harmony with himself and the Arctic myth – sleeping when he was tired, working and hunting when the weather was right, eating when he was hungry. On the land they would sometimes leave the tent for a breath of fresh air and end up hunting for a day and a night. On other occasions they'd be ready to go, and the hunt never took place. The apparent lack of organisation had always seemed suspect to the qallunaat: how could anyone live without timetables and quotas? The qallunaat constructed new worlds in place of the existing one: Nature's ways were sidelined, and if things didn't fit with their notions, they ignored or destroyed them.
Anawak thought of the Chateau and the challenges he and the team were facing. He thought of Jack Vanderbilt, clinging to the belief that the events of the past months were down to human planning and activity. Anyone who wanted to understand the way of the Inuit had to let go of the mania for control that characterised the western world.
But at least they were all of the same species. There was nothing familiar about the beings in the sea. Anawak was convinced that Johanson was right. Humanity was on the brink of losing this war – people like Vanderbilt couldn't see any perspective but their own.
Maybe the CIA boss was aware of his failings, but he wasn't about to change.
Anawak suddenly realised that they would never solve the crisis without the right team.
Someone was missing, and he knew who it was.
WHILE AKESUK PREPARED for their departure, Anawak sat in the hotel and tried to place a call to the Chateau. After a few minutes he was redirected to a secure line and diverted several times. Li wasn't in Whistler: she was on board a US warship near Seattle.
A quarter of an hour later, he was connected and made his request for another three or four days' leave. When she agreed, he felt a prick of conscience, but told himself that the fate of the world hardly depended on it. Besides, he would be working: he might be in the Arctic Circle, but his mind would still be busy.
Li mentioned that she'd launched a sonar offensive against the whales. 'I don't expect you to be pleased,' she said.
'Is it working?'
'We're on the point of giving up. It hasn't achieved the desired results. We're having to try everything – at least if we can keep the whales away for a while, we've got more chance of sending down divers or robots.'
'You need to expand the team.'
'Who did you have in mind?'
'Three people.' He took a deep breath. 'I'd like you to recruit them. We need more input in the areas of behavioural and cognitive science. And I need s
omeone to help me. Someone I can trust. I'd like you to get Alicia Delaware on board. She usually spends her summers in Tofino. She's a student – majored in animal intelligence.'
'Fine,' Li said. He hadn't expected her to agree so quickly. 'And the second person?'
'A guy in Ucluelet. If you take a look at the MK files, you'll find him under the name of Jack O'Bannon. He's good at handling marine mammals. He knows a thing or two that might help us.'
'Is he a scientist?'
'No. An ex-dolphin-handler with the US Navy. Marine Mammal Program.'
'I see,' said Li. 'I'll look into it. We've got plenty of our own experts. Why him?'
'That's who I want.'
'And the third person?'
'She's the most important of all. In a sense, we're dealing with aliens, so you'll need someone who devotes their time to thinking about how we could communicate with non-human life-forms. Dr Samantha Crowe is head of SETI in Arecibo.'
Li laughed. 'You're a bright guy, Leon. We'd already decided to recruit someone from SETI. Do you know Dr Crowe?'
'Yes, she's good.'
I'll see what I can do. Make sure you get back here safely.'
INSTEAD OF TAKING a direct route northwards, the Hawker Siddeley turboprop headed east. Akesuk had persuaded the pilot to make a small detour so Anawak could admire the Great Plain of Koukdjuak, a wildlife sanctuary dotted with perfectly round ponds that were home to the world's largest colony of geese. The passengers, from Cape Dorset and Iqaluit, were all en route to Pond Inlet, where the expedition into the wilderness would begin. Most were already familiar with the view, and had dozed off Anawak, however, was entranced.
They followed the line of the coast for a while, crossing into the Arctic Circle. Below them was the lunar landscape of Foxe Basin, its frozen surface fissured with cracks, leads, and pools of water. After a while, land reappeared, mountainous territory with steep drops and sheer palisades of rock. Snow glinted from the bottom of deep, shadowy gorges. Rivulets of meltwater poured into frozen lakes. In the light of the setting sun the scenery looked more majestic than ever. Rugged brown mountains were interspersed with snowy valleys, while jagged ridges reached up into the sky, the rock disguised by snowdrifts. Then, almost seamlessly, the plane passed above a blue-tinted shoreline, and they were staring down at a continuous layer of pack ice, Eclipse Sound.
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