Katvar bandages my ankle, pulls on my sock, puts my boot back on and laces it. He lies down next to me and entwines his fingers with mine. Together, we watch the clouds until he points up and says hoarsely, ‘Dinosaur.’
‘Looks like a boar to me.’
‘Too long neck.’
‘It’s the common northern long-necked boar. It was a delicacy until the entire species was fried and eaten. If I remember correctly, it happened in 1974.’
He snorts and turns on his side. His brow is in deep creases as he touches his fingers to my cheek. ‘I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you.’
‘What they did to me was not your fault. It was their’s.’
‘Wouldn’t you feel the same if it had been me in that cell?’
I smile. ‘Yes. And wouldn’t you be trying your best to convince me that I’m not responsible for any of it?’
When he smiles back at me, it’s as if a second sun rises.
‘I completely forgot about Kioshi!’ I burst out. ‘Where is he? And why the hell was he at the base? Oh, and the dogs? Did you find them?’
‘I picked them up when I got our stuff from Bear Island. Left them with the Sami here for the time being. And Kioshi… He was the only one I could think of to help us. He’s my best friend and understands my language. Olav — the Pilot who gave me flying lessons — and I searched several of the Lume’s summer camps until we found him. Kioshi, I mean.’
Katvar lifts his face to the sun. ‘Kioshi must be with the Sami now. He and most of the others were flown in last night. I promised him we’d meet them when we get back, and then talk to the elders.’ His gaze slides to the hangar. He swallows. ‘Micka, there’s a…thing I need to do. Will you stay here and wait for me?’
‘What thing?’ Something’s off, I can feel it.
‘The deal I made…’ He sits up and rubs his palms over his thighs, and tells me about several favours he asked of Alta, offering them only one thing in return: an electronic library of two million books, half of them in advance, the other half if the mission was successful. He could have demanded the whole city for this treasure but asked only for help to find and retrieve me, to be allowed to keep our solar plane and be taught how to fly it, and to be given enough provisions for a week when we leave.
‘But where’s the problem?’ I ask.
‘I’m going over to let them make a copy of the other half now, and then…then there’s another small favour, the last one I’m going to call in. But I’m not sure you still want it.’
I roll onto my side and sit up. ‘Want what? What favour?’
He curls his hands to fists. A tremor runs through his frame as he exhales, and signs, ‘To get screened for genetic defects.’
I puff out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. ‘Why wouldn’t I want that?’
I’ve been trying to talk him into that for months. He’s always wanted to be a dad, but never dared dream of it because he was too afraid of the mark his father left on his genome.
He drops his gaze to his lap. ‘Because I didn’t protect you.’
That’s when I remember the desperate words he spoke last night: If I can’t protect you, how will I ever be able to protect our family? It hadn’t registered then, but now… ‘You want babies?’
Half a nod from him is all it takes for me to lunge and wrestle him to the ground. I stare down into his warm, brown eyes. An ear-to-ear smile has me looking pretty stupid right now. ‘You want my babies.’
‘Badly,’ he rasps.
Hand in hand, we walk to Alta’s hospital to meet the physician who drilled a hole in Katvar’s skull. Her name is Bente, she tells me, as she runs a thin metal spatula across the inside of Katvar’s cheek, and then holds out a fresh spatula to me.
Puzzled, I draw back.
‘Last time I checked, two people are needed to procreate. Open up!’ She swabs me and tells us to come back in two hours.
‘Uh, I thought it took twelve hours or so to sequence a human genome with an MIT FireScope,’ I mutter.
She shrugs. ‘There’s no need to sequence and analyse the whole genome. Screening for known genetic defects is enough. Takes the machine one and a half hours, and me another ten or twenty minutes to look through the results and make sure they’re correct.’
‘You’re doing a lot of this?’
‘Since we got this machine, yes. We can diagnose infections and check for antibiotic resistance, we can screen for inherited disorders. It’s extremely useful. Now stop bothering me.’ She grins and walks away.
‘Is she always like that?’ I ask Katvar.
‘I think she calls it “humour”.’
He leads the way out of the hospital and through the streets of Alta. It looks friendlier now than it did when I last saw it and winter still had a tight grip on the land. The windows are covered with gauze, not reindeer skin. Kids are playing soccer in the streets. A couple of adults argue over who’s responsible for fixing a particular stretch of pavement.
Odd. I haven’t seen signs of peace for months — years, if I don’t count the short time at the Lume’s winter quarters — and I learned not to expect it.
All I ever expect is violence and war.
‘So the BSA didn’t attack Alta after all?’ I ask Katvar.
‘They disappeared after they lost Tromsø.’
‘They’ll probably be back.’
‘Probably.’ He stops walking. ‘What about Ice Face? Will you tell them what we know?’ He jerks his chin in the direction we’re heading.
‘No, I… I don’t trust these guys. And they don’t trust me. I killed four of their men.’
He scans my face. ‘You are planning something.’
I open my mouth. Breath dies in my throat. ‘I’m going to start a war.’
His eyes darken. ‘Micka, no!’ he croaks.
Katvar is a pacifist at heart. If he could, he would bring peace to everyone, even to the BSA.
I take a step closer to him and whisper. ‘You will like this one, I promise.’
He lifts an eyebrow.
‘What if the Sequencers and the BSA were so extremely busy with one another that they had no time to bother anyone else? Doesn’t that qualify as peace?’
A frown carves his brow as his gaze begins to drift in thought. He snaps his eyes back at me and signs, ‘You’ll use Alta’s strategy to burn out the BSA and the Sequencers?’
Grinning, I softly bump my fist against his belly. ‘I love how your brain works.’
‘It’s bold, this strategy.’
‘You think it will work?’
‘If you’d asked me before I saw Alta march into that Sequencer base and come back out victorious, I’d say, no. But now…I think it might work.’
‘You with me in this?’
He hesitates, then gives me a semi-nod.
I nod. ‘You’re sceptical.’
He shifts his gaze over my shoulder, toward the city centre. Somewhere there is the council house and a handful of Alta’s civil defence waiting for us to show up and hand over the other half of our electronic library.
‘Who will you ask for help?’ he signs.
‘People we trust. No more than a dozen. And I’m going to train them.’
He’s dead serious when he asks, ‘You plan to win a war with a handful of warriors?’
Silently, we hold each other’s gaze. There’s no need to discuss the extremely high risk of failure for such undertaking. But if we win, the reward will be immense. Neither of us can remember the time before the BSA declared war on the world. This war is older than the remaining 2986th part of ten billion humans. Katvar and I weren’t even born then, and neither were our parents or grandparents.
I take his hand in mine and brush my thumb over his knuckles. ‘It’s time we ended this. I don’t want to be another mother who loses her children in a battle some old megalomaniac fart starts.’
He lifts our entwined hands and presses a kiss on my wrist.
‘Together,’ he whispers
across my skin.
The Baltic Sea is a deep blue blanket spreading out far below us. I tell myself that if we crash, we can swim. It’s bullshit but it’s the only thought that keeps my panic at bay. Fear stirrs just under my skin, making my heart jump and my breath come in short bursts.
Katvar is cradling my hand in his lap as he pilots our solar plane. It’s his third solo flight, he tells me. I’m not sure if that’s supposed to make me feel better.
I scan his beautiful profile and can’t believe the devastating news Bente gave him. Katvar carries a gene defect that can cause Roberts Syndrome — one of the rarest of all genetic disorders, according to her. She also told us that we can have as many kids as we want, because Roberts syndrome only manifests if both parents are carriers of this mutation, and I am not. The defect is so extremely rare, it occurs in only one of four billion people. He must be the only Roberts Syndrome carrier on this planet.
He was shocked by the news. Partly because he’s been right all along: His genetic makeup is marred by inbreeding. And partly because I’ve been right, too: He’s healthy, and his kids and grandkids will be just as healthy as other children.
That he now has proof for both rattles him deeply. He can have perfect kids of his own, while not being perfect himself. Maybe it feels to him a bit like his father’s wrongdoings are redeemed.
We’ll both need time to come to grips with this. With the sudden fortune bestowed on us after all the suffering.
And we’ve been lucky to leave Alta unharmed. The Sami informed us that Alta’s civil defence had planned to keep us for ransom and auction us off to whoever offered the highest bid, the Sequencers or the BSA.
Again it was Runner’s tale that saved our lives: The Sami believe Katvar and I have been sent by the Bringer of Good Tidings. They watched the sky burn. Kioshi told them that we did this, that we destroyed the BSA’s most important means of reconnaissance and communication.
A simple warning by the Sami — that if we were not allowed to leave untouched, they would never again supply Alta with reindeer meat and furs — was enough to make Alta step back.
The legend is spreading among the hunter tribes of the North, growing stronger with each passing season. Was that what Runner wanted?
Our three dogs are leashed to a passenger seat in the back. My rifle is strapped to my ruck on the floor behind me. An unknown future awaits.
END
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Acknowledgments
This book wouldn’t have happened without a bunch of great and lovely people.
I’m indebted to:
Sebastian Roberts for the most enjoyable discussions on how to best take over the world.
Magnus for loving Micka, and being the first to read everything I write.
Ralf Kleemann, Float Pilot from the Alaska Bush Pilot Forum, and Antares from KBoards for helping me gut Micka’s solar plane to get it off the ground.
My faithful readers and friends at silent-witnesses.com for for supporting this project and our small owl rehab: Victoria Dillman, Philip Heather, Gloria Gorton-Young, Therese Webster, Caroline Wolfram, Michael Morrison, Kim Wright, Louis Valentine, Terry Kearns, Debby Avery, Walki Tinkanesh, Steve Howard, Linda Koch, Tom Welch, Gudrun Theater, Carry Pandya, Linda Stepp, and Nancy McDonald.
Tom Welch for being my friend, even though he has to proofread all my crap, and then proofread it again because I keep tinkering with it.
You, dear reader, for coming back to Micka and Katvar (I didn’t kill him! Yay, me!)
And Peppa, the best-ever rescue barn owl in the world, for all the affection she so generously bestowed on us, and every minute she spent in our company. We treasure every memory of you, little owl. I hope you find the fattest mice and the loveliest owl partner, and live a long and happy owl life.
Click here to read Peppa’s story.
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