Katvar’s lips compress. He produces a stiff nod, and his Adam’s apple bobs.
‘Do you not…want it?’
He grabs my hand and presses a kiss to my palm. Without taking his eyes off me, he lowers his head so I can tie the exabyte drive around his neck.
Six
Softly rolling hills stretch from horizon to horizon. Upon the scorched earth lie scorched bodies. Here and there, a hand scratches at the grey sky — a final attempt to claw itself out of hell. Smoke curls up from ribcages, gaping jaws, and empty eye sockets. The air is thick with the stink of burnt meat.
‘Micka!’
My name crackles across my eardrums, rough as weathered asphalt, spreading flavours of pear and ash across my tongue. Gradually I grow aware of my body, as though only moments earlier I’d been a mere idea. I gaze down at myself. In my right hand, I find a torch.
I scream.
A hand in my hair.
A soft caress.
As the dream fades, I reach out and pull Katvar closer, press myself against his warmth. His scents of sweat, pine needles, dog fur, and dry bracken steady me. My mouth finds his, and he yields to me, to my tongue, my hands, my desperation.
The gastrointestinal tract of a human is six to seven meters long. I actually looked that up, just in case my twine isn’t long enough. It’s not. But six or seven meters won’t help much anyway. And then there’d be the mess…
But let’s not dwell on it.
My twine collection is nearly fifty meters long. Three hundred would be better, but it seems like the Bear Island shopping mall just ran out of twine. When I was Erik’s prisoner, I once read about shopping malls in one of his books. Couldn’t wrap my head around the concept, and still can’t: aisles upon aisles of food; whole buildings ten times bigger than any council house I’ve ever seen, stuffed to the roof with food. Is that why they believed starving was sexy, because they had no idea what starvation meant? Were people back then happier than people today?
I think of the Nenets who laughed so much, their faces crinkled like old leather all around the eyes. They did have a lot of food, though.
I would definitely be much much happier if Katvar and I had enough food.
My stomach yowls. I drop the axe and look back at the three narrow paths I’ve managed to chop into the jumbled ice, back along the twine I tighten between the nose wheel and one of the passenger seats I dragged out to mark the direction I need to go. There’s a second, shorter length of twine with three pieces of cloth tied to it to mark the distance between the three wheels of the aircraft. The disheartening part is that I’ve only managed to get about fifty meters through the jumbled ice so far. Two hundred and fifty meters left to go. I’m too slow, despite me kicking my own ass all the time, and I’ve only been taking out the biggest chunks of ice.
I guess I should eat a bite before I get back to work.
Katvar sits in bed, frowning. His whole body frowns as his hand furiously scribbles at the notepad. He doesn’t look up when I enter the snow hut, just flicks through the SatPad and gets back to writing. I set up the burner and make food, take off my furs and rub my face with snow. I leave his portion in the pot as I silently eat mine. And then I leave.
Three hours later, and I’m halfway through the jumbled ice. They look like shit, these gouges I’ve made.
Back in the hut, I grab the pot — which is now empty and washed — and fill it with snow. Parched, I begin to make tea, when Katvar drops his pen and notepad, and stares up at the ceiling.
I want to say a lot of things to him, but don’t: How’s your head? Food runs out tomorrow. Have you found a way to make the aircraft lighter?
The water in the pot begins to simmer, so I switch off the burner, and add a few crumbs of lichens. ‘Talk to me, Katvar.’
‘I don’t trust this. I don’t trust myself. I was already wrong about the takeoff distance. So how can I know if this is correct?’
I pour tea into our bowls, and hand him his. ‘Walk me through.’
He explains the difference between ground roll and takeoff distance, the weight of the bohemian villages at full capacity versus the weight they have now. He explains how much weight we have to lose to get the machine above the clouds, which might or might not be at two thousand five hundred meters altitude.
‘Okay, so you are saying the ground roll is much shorter than the takeoff distance. But that doesn’t matter to us. We have to get the machine out of the jumbled ice first, and beyond that are a couple of hundred kilometres of smooth sea ice. About the weight, though…’
‘Yeah,’ he rasps.
We need to lose two hundred kilograms to get to an altitude of two thousand five hundred meters with the few dregs of fuel we have left. ‘Okay,’ I say, and put my furs back on. I’ll chop the shit out of the jumbled ice, gut that stupid aircraft and get us out of here.
‘Micka,’ Katvar croaks before I can leave.
‘I’ve found something.’ His hands are trembling as he signs.
More bad news. I lock my knees so they don’t buckle.
‘I was searching for more information on the SatPad, and I found a submenu, and then another one, a hidden one. And there was…was…’ He lowers his head, swift fingers flying over the SatPad’s screen. He holds it out to me, eyes black as tar.
I sit down and stare. ‘W…what? Two million… Two million books?’
Katvar nods.
‘Why would Erik leave this behind? Are you sure they are books?’
‘I opened forty or fifty at random.’
‘All about religion and warfare?’
‘No, they are…stories. Crime stories. Love stories. Handbooks on how to build things, make things. Medical books. It’s…a miracle.’
‘Two million books?’
He nods again.
‘Fuck me in suspenders! But why?’
‘A backup, maybe?’
I lean back and nearly fall over. ‘Maybe. I have to think about this.’
‘We can make copies and distribute them everywhere. People need this.’ He taps his knuckles against the SatPad, his breath ragged.
‘It’s most likely a trap. Erik doesn’t leave things like this laying around. Impossible. It’s… Could it be rigged?’ I snatch the SatPad, and scoot close to the exit. Scan the seals and tiny screws. Lots of scratches there.
‘If it hasn’t blown us up yet, it’s not going to blow us up now. Or tomorrow.’
‘I don’t trust this.’
He puts a hand on my knee. ‘I don’t either. But it’s an asset. He hid it in the Vault. It wasn’t just laying around. It was hidden, Micka.’
‘But he knew I was coming.’
‘Yes, and he had you rigged. He tried to blow you up. He didn’t want to blow up his library.’
‘What…did you…’ My mind begins to race. When Katvar lifts his hands to speak, I grab his wrist and shake my head. I need a minute. ‘Erik said something when he gave me this thing. Ugh, I’m so stupid! He wanted me to figure it out! He said, “I’m giving you access to part of my library.” This is his library and he gave it to me. He gave me access to part of it, and even said it. But I never expected the SatPad to contain all his books.’
I release Katvar’s hand and shake my head. ‘Erik kept harping on about “knowledge is power.” He gave me two million books, knowing I could read whatever I wanted. Learn whatever I wanted. But only if I was smart enough to find them. And I never was.’
Groaning, I rub my tired eyes. The Great Pandemics and the World Wars have left humanity bereft of written knowledge. Burning books, blowing up servers, murdering doctors, scientists, political leaders was all part of eradicating cultures and expertise. Part of weakening your enemy. But what I am holding in my hand now is…unfathomable. It’s the most valuable thing we have in our possession. More valuable than a hundred solar planes. ‘What do we do with it?’ I whisper.
‘We can change everything. We can change the world.’
The wind has picked u
p again. It’s an angry storm of shards. Instead of chopping away at the ice, I work in the aircraft, a list from Katvar flattened out on the cockpit controls. I cross off the four passenger seats, six kilos each. We’re down by twenty-four kilos. One hundred seventy-six to go. The floor mats and interior panels weigh approximately four kilograms together and I’ve tossed them out already, so I cross those off, too. All the access panels in the floor make only about two kilos in total. I leave them in for now.
Below the list of items in the airplane’s interior is our packing list. Axe, saw, bow and arrows, guns and ammo, furs, brush for our bedding, dogs, harnesses and lines, sled, burner, pot, bowls. The armfuls of brush are light, but we’ll leave them behind because they aren’t essential. The sled weighs about fifty kilos. The pot and bowls another two. A no-brainer really. I cross them off the list.
One hundred twenty kilos left to kill.
The dogs weigh about thirty kilos each. Three dogs. I cross them off.
Thirty kilos left.
My rifle weights eleven kilos, the ammo about three. Shit. Shit shit shit!
If I can’t defend ourselves, there’s no point of flying to the mainland.
I sit down in the pilot seat. My hands travel along the armrests. My gaze follows. How heavy are these things? They aren’t on Katvar’s list, but I wager they are about ten kilos each.
It takes a while to cut a slot into each screw of the co-pilot seat, and unscrew it with my knife. The thing feels heavier than the passenger seats, which is good. It lands with a dull whomp in the snow.
Twenty kilos left, and the innards of the aircraft are already naked. There’s not a speck I can toss out. Jamming my hands into my fur sleeves, I scan the interior again.
The radio, maybe? No, it won’t be much heavier than half a kilogram and we’ll need a way to communicate. But if we don’t get off this island, we won’t need to communicate with anyone.
Ever.
If I had a wiring diagram, I could rip out anything that needs satellite connection, but…I don’t.
My gaze falls on the pilot seat. Ten kilograms of luxury butt warmer.
Fuck it.
I drop to my knees, pick up the saw and get to work.
Seven
The storm has calmed to a sluggish breeze, but the sky is still covered in thick clouds that vomit snowflakes the size of quail eggs. I’ve been chopping ice for only a few minutes, but I’m already sweltering in my thick furs. Hoping I haven’t caught a cold, I pull off my anorak and toss it on a large block of ice. My boot hits slush. Baffled, I lift my leg to find a puddle. Staring at the tiny pond at my feet, I touch my forehead. Nope. Definitely no fever.
It must be…spring?
The axe drops from my hands. I race out through the jumbled ice toward the land-fast ice beyond Bear Island. I rip off my snow goggles and pull down my scarf and collar. Between the cold snowflakes kissing my face, the air feels…balmy?
It’s not me feeling off, it’s the weather. I reach the land-fast ice to find a doughy covering of snow. I touch my fingertips to it. The biting cold is gone. The crisp sharpness of the snow has turned sodden. Sticking a handful of it into my parched mouth, I turn back to scan the island. The jumbled ice belting the shoreline is more than a meter and a half thick — or was — when I carved my fishing hole. A few days of warm weather won’t melt the ice cover, but… How much pressure will the melting ice tolerate before tidal forces break it free?
As I wash my face with wet snow, it hits me: If I’m fast enough, the weather might help me move the solar plane. Only three shallow trenches of sixty meters each left to cut. If they fill up with a few centimetres of meltwater, the dropping night temps will freeze the paths smoother. The dogs and I won’t have to work so hard to pull our machine across to the flat land-fast ice. But…shit. The wheels will freeze to the ground.
Okay. One problem at a time.
I walk back, pick up my axe and anorak, and make my way to the hut.
Katvar digs through our SatPad and our aircraft’s manual for information on ground roll under these changing conditions. He comes up empty. On tarmac runways, ice, slush, and water double the ground roll. Maybe even triple it. But a runway that’s made of ice and covered with puddles of meltwater and mushy snow? Total unknown. Our main problem, though, isn’t the increase in ground roll, it’s that we’ll need two or three times more fuel to get the machine off the ground.
Fuel we don’t have.
‘The solution is simple,’ Katvar signs, after a lot of nodding to himself. His right pupil is still larger than the left, and it doesn’t seem to react to light. That worries me. But what worries me more is that he has this glassy stare and stiff set to his jaw that tell me his headache is back.
What he signs next pulls up my hackles: ‘Leave everything behind. Every piece of equipment except your knife, rifle, and ammo. That will make the machine light enough to get above the clouds with the little fuel that’s left. Refuel above the clouds, fly to the mainland, hunt, keep refuelling, and come back to get me. We’ll eat and rest, and then fly back out together.’
‘You want to…stay here, so the plane is lighter?’ I have to make sure my ears aren’t playing tricks on me.
One nod.
‘I’m not leaving you behind.’ I so won’t budge on this.
He wraps his fingers around my wrist, and signs with his free hand, ‘Please, love.’
‘Forget it.’
He freezes. Sets his chin. ‘It’s the only solution, and you know it. Micka, please.’
‘You can force me to tie you up and drag you into the solar plane, but you cannot make me discard you like a rabid dog.’ I leave my furs in the hut. There’s ice I need to attack.
Katvar’s eyes shiver beneath his pale lids. I wonder if he’s dreaming of food. I dream of food all the time. And of war. Rape. Burning bodies. Sometimes even when I’m wide awake.
But graver problems demand my attention now. There’s nothing left to eat. We’ve boiled the last bones, sucked out the last shred of marrow, licked the final drops of broth from the bottom of our pot.
We’re out of time.
As I wait for the sunrise and watch Katvar sleep, I let my decision soak into my bones. And strangely, it calms me. There’s no good solution to this mess we’re in, and the few options we have left for saving ourselves are all suicidal. Such as taking off with only a handful of fuel.
When I shut my eyes, I can see us crashing on the ice. A quick death. Better than a slow perishing, withering to a pair of frozen skeletons.
Leaving him here and returning in two days is the lowest-risk option, but only for myself, and only if I don’t break off the nose wheel when I land, or run into problems on the way.
There are no guarantees.
I don’t understand why Katvar thinks so little of himself. As if he’s mere ballast. Does he not know that I am nothing without him? That there’s no reason for me to save myself, if I can’t take him with me?
His heart has not been sullied by the brutalities the BSA dishes out. He is the opposite of Runner who was a sniper and strategist with a healthy kill rate under his belt, a man with a darkness so deep and tightly coiled up inside him that kissing him felt like unleashing a hurricane. Katvar has none of that, and yet much more. He’s my bright light in all this darkness that I am. He is the bearer of my humanity. Without him, I will burn down the world.
In his gentle hands, Katvar cradles my soul.
The anxious whines of our three sled dogs trickle through the thick walls of our snow hut. The quiet hours before sunrise are probably the best time to hunt; the dogs are anxious to leave. Or perhaps they’re just bored of being tethered to a block of ice the whole night. Just a little longer, buddies.
My gaze scans the two piles of items: the things I’ll take with me — Katvar, the furs to wrap him up, my knife and my pistol plus an additional clip, our pot and burner, my skis. And what I’ll leave behind — the ultrasound scanner, MIT Firescope, SatPad, and def
ibrillator we stole from the Vault, my rifle and ammo. All has been wrapped up tightly in reindeer skins. Katvar’s bow and arrows, our oil lamp, three dogs, stay behind as well. And much more. It’s hard to leave my rifle here, but I can defend us with the pistol if it comes to it. I’ll search for elk or reindeer before I land the machine, then strap on my skis and intercept them, kill one or two with my pistol. We’ll eat, rest, and refuel, then fly back to get our stuff and the dogs.
There’s still a little time before sunrise. I should try to catch some sleep, but somehow I’m unable to let my control slip. I check my pile of things again when my eyes fall on one of our packages. Following a whim and with nothing else to do, I untie the twine holding the reindeer skins together, and dig for our SatPad to search for “Bringer of Good Tidings.” The first time I heard this tale, I couldn’t believe my ears.
The Bringer of Good Tidings sent a woman with hair the colour of flames and skin as scarred as a battlefield to free humanity. She is the spark. The people are the force.
Birket, chief of the Lume, told me that tale when he helped me escape an overzealous Sequencer who believed I’d aided the BSA and murdered my own friends. The tale was spread among hunter tribes of Eurasia, even as far up north as the remote Nenets territory. Birket believed it is I who will free humanity. Whatever that means.
I grip the SatPad harder when my search returns a single hit. Ribbons of goosebumps pour down my back.
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