Ice: The Climate Fiction Saga

by Wendeberg, A.

  ‘And you will destroy the satellites.’

  I nod. ‘Yes.’

  He gives me a sharp glance and flicks his hands and fingers.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  He writes it in the snow: ‘You shaved your head. Stupid. Too cold.’

  ‘I had lice.’

  ‘Use petroleum next time.’ He stands and brushes the snow off his pants. ‘We’ll talk tonight.’ And then he whistles at the dogs and they jump up and greet him with wagging tails and excited yips.

  I gaze at the small fire, drink the last sip from my mug, and fill our canteens with warm water from the pot. Then I pack our stuff, sit down on my sled, and cover my legs with furs. I’m not standing on the skids like Katvar, because I’m still not back to normal. The ankle needs another week or so of little strain, and I’m still bleeding. Barktak warned me that my abdominal muscles will never fuse back together if I don’t listen to her and take it easy. So now I’m a bit torn between not giving a fuck because I don’t plan to return from my Svalbard adventure anyway, and giving just enough fucks so I can at least get there in one piece.

  Katvar stands on his sled and taps the lead dog with his long whip. A mighty jerk forward and both sleds are flying through the snow. I’m impressed at how much weight these dogs can pull. Do they notice that with every stop and every meal, each sled gets a little lighter?

  When we reach a clearing that stretches almost as far as the horizon, we know we’ve found the river. We’ve crossed four small rivers already, but this one might be dangerous. It’s much broader and the ice might not be stable.

  Katvar brings his dogs to a halt, turns around and signs. Shit, I hate it when I don’t get what he says. He points up at the clear sky and signs again, slower this time, ‘Can we leave the woods?’

  ‘Let me check.’ I extract my cold limbs from the sled, grab my rifle and walk up to him. Leaning against a tree, I scan the landscape that spreads flat and white before us. ‘I can see the river, it’s two and a half kilometres from here. No bridge anywhere near, but there seems to be ice on the river. Wait! What’s that?’

  I hear him step up to me, hear his breath behind my back. I bristle at the closeness, but what’s in my finder needs analysing and I can’t move away from him without taking my eyes off…a field of approximately two by two kilometres, needled with hundreds of antennae. The wind bends them gently at their tips. There’s no building anywhere near, but I suppose the large crater — now a gently sloping, deep dip in the snowy landscape at the edge of the antennae field — must once have been the control centre of whatever espionage unit had its base here. They look ancient, the countless antennae. As if the people who built them hadn’t dared to dream of satellites.

  A hand taps my shoulder.

  ‘It’s just some old stuff. Want to see?’ I step aside, still supporting the rifle against the tree trunk. Katvar places his hand where I slip off mine and gazes through the scope. He stares at the antennae field, scans the river for long moments, then nods at me and hands me my weapon.

  ‘Wait until nightfall,’ he signs.

  ‘Yes, that’s what I thought, too. We’ll dig a snow cave and try to cross at midnight. If it’s impassable, we’ll return to our snow cave, sleep, and tomorrow morning we’ll follow the river upstream and stay in the forest until we find a bridge.’

  One sharp nod and he gets to work: feeding the dogs, digging a hole in the snow. I chop wood and fix our beds. I don’t like sleeping next to him in this constricted space, almost touching. He knows it.

  When the stew is ready, I call for him, but he doesn’t come. I find him sitting among his dogs, staring up at the moon. I join him and offer him a bowl of food. He takes it and places it on his lap.

  ‘What precisely is the plan?’ he signs.

  ‘We get to Svalbard. As I said.’

  He narrows his eyes at me.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘What precisely will you do in Svalbard?’

  I clamp my teeth down on a piece of meat that proves too large and tough to be chewed to pieces. I push it halfway out of my mouth and use my knife to cut off a bit. Slowly, I chew and take my time to think. Katvar is not a warrior, he knows little about war and the BSA. So what information can I share?

  ‘Erik gained control over the global satellite network. He’s using it to spy on people and to control the war. So…satellites make him more effective; he will bring war to everyone’s home and he can do that any time he chooses.’

  Katvar nods and signs, ‘I know enough people who believe the BSA is doing good work. But I don’t understand.’

  ‘I don’t really understand these people, either,’ I say. ‘From what I learned about human history — and I can only talk about what Erik made accessible to me, which is most likely biased and very limited — what did I want to say?’ I scratch my forehead.

  A smile flickers past Katvar’s lips.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘You look like a warrior,’ he signs.

  ‘I am a warrior.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Where was I? Oh, yes. The ancient question: Us or them? Them being the ones who think, look, speak, or behave differently. Them or The Others. Does that sound familiar?’ I throw him a sharp glance and his expression darkens. ‘Yeah, it does. Of course, it’s always us who deserve to survive, us who are better, and us who have the shiny future. Never them. The BSA is cultivating this in a way that is not new. Men are the us, women are the them. A man has ten times the worth of a woman, a man can have many wives, women have to obey, submit, serve or they’ll be punished. A man can take a woman whenever he wants or rather, whenever he feels the need. Women are filthy. Without women, men would be clean. Women can be punished, raped, killed. Because women stand so low, men can stand above them; they have something to look down upon. Because we are so filthy, they are clean and good. Because we are unworthy, they are worthy. That’s why so many young men join the BSA — because they feel they deserve more than a hard life with hard work shared equally among family members. They want to feel entitled. Few women join the BSA by choice, and I can only guess what their true motives are. One of the women in the camp told me she wanted to give birth to the next martyr, the greatest honour for a mother. I almost puked in her face.’

  Katvar sits frozen, eyes dark. There’s repulsion shining in them.

  ‘Erik has control over weaponised satellites.’ My voice is low and hoarse. This is too close to home. ‘If he sees us, he can kill us with the push of a button. He can pick a city and burn it off the face of Earth. When he decides his war is to enter its final stage, he can kill tens of thousands of people without risking his own life. I don’t know why he hasn’t done this already; it’s as if he’s waiting for something, maybe his final showdown. I’ll prevent that. I’ll burn the BSA headquarters to the ground before they can do this to us.’

  Slowly, he nods. Then he signs, ‘How many children are in that camp?’

  I laugh at him. A bitter, cold noise. ‘Fuck, Katvar! You don’t know shit about war!’ I compress snow in my hands and throw it against a tree. Thwack! it says as it bursts into pieces.

  ‘How many children?’

  I growl in frustration. ‘Between twenty and twenty-five.’

  He narrows his eyes. ‘So you push a button and kill twenty-five children just like that?’ He snaps his finger and I’m ready to kick his balls.

  ‘Yes.’

  He nods. ‘You will not.’ With that, he rises to his feet and begins to play with his dogs. They are made of simpler material. No politics. One leader, the others follow.

  I’m angry, boiling inside. I walk up to him and hiss, ‘You do not understand anything! You haven’t seen them strap explosives to children and send them into battle as living bombs. You haven’t seen them gang-raping nine year-olds, you haven’t seen them beating a young, beautiful, gentle woman to pulp, dismembering her and burning her alive because they believe that a woman loving a woman is against the law of th
eir god and needs to be punished by a lynch mob. You haven’t… You haven’t…’ I gulp, kick at the snow, and turn away, images of sweet Rajah flooding my mind, my eyes, my heart. I want to puke out all the pain, the smell of her blood, the stench of her burning flesh.

  My hands on my knees, my stomach convulsing, saliva dripping into the snow, I stand half upright, half felled.

  A hand settles softly on my back. I whirl around and punch him in his face. ‘Touch me one more time and I’ll break your arm.’

  He takes a step back and licks a trickle of blood off his lips. There’s no fear in his eyes. ‘You forgot to pull your gun,’ he signs, slow and deliberate. It feels like capital letters to me.

  Air leaves my lungs and I turn away from him, crawl into our snow cave and roll up in my furs.

  Fuck this.

  Fuck him.

  ‘Can’t see any dark patches,’ I say and lower my rifle. ‘Is it possible to get ammunition in Minsk? I’ve less than twenty rounds left and I need target practice before we reach Svalbard.’

  He nods but doesn’t elaborate.

  ‘Okay.’ I’m tense. Frozen rivers are treacherous. This one is mighty, more than a hundred metres wide. I would have expected a churning mass of ice and black water in its centre. But there’s nothing but peaceful white. I don’t trust it.

  Katvar puts his skis on and gestures for me to do the same. ‘Aren’t we walking along the river to find a bridge or something?’ I ask.

  He shakes his head and signs, ‘No bridge. Steel cable a three-day’s run from here. You can walk on it, cross it, but not the dogs and the sleds.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  He pauses, looks me up and down, and signs, ‘I saw it.’

  ‘How far north have you been?’

  He flicks hands and fingers and I have to ask him to write it down for me. One word: Scandinavia.

  ‘We’ll talk later,’ I say and strap my skis on my feet.

  The sleds are heavy, but the skids are long and distribute the weight evenly. My skis do the same for me. But still, I’m nervous. I broke through a frozen river once and, hell, did the cold hurt. I’m more prone to frostbite now that I’ve already lost two toes to it.

  Katvar ties the end of a rope around his hips and throws me the other end. He treats me like an aggressive or wounded animal, keeping his distance, moving calmly, observing.

  He sets his skis on the ice, signals for the dogs to wait, and begins to move forward. Twenty metres in, close to the middle of the river on the most unpredictable section, he stops and whistles.

  Both teams jump up, eager to race toward him. As they move, he lifts his right arm and holds it, palm down, parallel to the ice. The dogs slow down. He directs them around the rope that binds him to me, lines the two teams up a few steps from one another and stops them when the first team has almost reached him.

  The ice sighs with the weight of the sleds and I can tell that the animals don’t want to be here. The lead dogs are calmer than the others. Gull has her snout in the snow, then up in the air and back in the snow again. She whines and presses her tail to her belly. She doesn’t trust the ice, either.

  Katvar begins to walk again, tugging me along, and scanning the ice for snow that seems darker or lower than the surroundings. Each step produces a creak of compressed snow and sharp, but faint, sighing of the ice.

  As he crosses the middle I exhale a large cloud. A few metres more and he stops, calls the dogs and lets them trot to the far side. Then he signals to me and we both begin to move again, twenty metres from one another. He’s safe now, or close to it. I’m the worm on the fishing line. That reminds me… Maybe we should fish tonight to get a little variety into our stomachs.

  One loud zing! and the next time I look up from my skis to Katvar, he’s gone. The rope around my hips tightens with a snap and jerks me forward. I slither and shout until I finally get to slam the poles into the snow and bring my skis perpendicular to the rope, fighting the urge to run to the dark patch ahead of me. I shout, ‘Stay!’ to the dogs, then tune out their barking.

  Then, all I do is pull and grunt, pull and grunt. Shit, he’s heavy. Rope curls at my feet. I can’t see a trace of him. ‘Katvar!’ I scream, knowing he won’t hear me. His ears are probably full of the roaring of the icy river.

  His head bobs up in the water. Arms flailing, trying to grab the slippery rim of the ice. I move a few steps closer, always keeping tension on the rope, always pulling a bit more and a bit more.

  The rope is wet and freezes to my mittens. ‘Come on! Help me!’ I cry, jam the edges of my skis deeper into the snow and ice, and lean my whole body against the pull of the rope, and scream again for him to fucking fight.

  Suddenly, the rope gives. A dark shape lies on the ice. I move in a semicircle around him toward the far side of the river. Rope tight, eyes on the river and on Katvar. He’s moving and I tell him to stop. Close to the river’s edge, I begin pulling him in. The dogs jump at his still form as soon as we reach solid ground. Or where I believe solid ground must be. Impossible to tell with the snow cover so thick.

  I touch his cold face and he opens his eyes. ‘Let’s get you out of these clothes.’ I throw my mittens aside and tug at his coat, pants, and boots. Small ice crystals are forming on his wet fur collar. He’s deathly white. His lips are blue. But he tries to help with the clothes, his breath ragged, fingertips clumsy.

  I help him sit up. ‘One second, and you’ll be warmer.’ I dash to my sled and spread the furs atop it, help the stark naked man climb in, and cover him with more furs, tuck him in and tie him down with the bag straps. I’m reminded of Runner. It’s a good memory, because he and I survived. Then.

  ‘Okay, my friend. Hold on for a little while. We need to reach this line of trees, there’s plenty of firewood and cover. I’ll dig us a nice, toasty snow cave and cook you a stew that resurrects the dead. Okay?’

  ‘Hrm,’ he grunts. His lips are pulled tight over his teeth, his eyes are large and pale.

  I pick up the whip and tap Balto between his shoulder blades. Off we trot, the other dog team following with Katvar’s sled.

  ‘It’s not far,’ I tell him. ‘Just a kilometre. Wiggle your toes and fingers, get the blood pumping. Don’t sleep now.’

  Within minutes, we reach the forest. I jump off the sled, grab a shovel and dig as fast as I can. Once the snow cave is finished, I chuck armfuls of brush inside, spread it out and hurry back to Katvar.

  I shrug off my coat for him. ‘Here, put this on. Katvar?’

  I tap his cheek. Eyelids flutter. I tap him harder and he looks at me. ‘I need your help. Sit up, put my coat on, walk with me to the cave.’

  His eyes begin to drift, but he sits up as best as his trembling allows. The furs slide off his chest and shoulders and that’s the first time I notice there’s something black, something that doesn’t belong. Quickly, I cover him with my coat and we walk the few steps through the snow. I help him onto the bed and fetch the furs he’s been lying on, then cover him with those.

  Okay, what next? The dogs ate only three hours ago, so they are fine. I should make a fire and cook something for Katvar, but then it might be too soon for something hot. He needs to warm up slowly.

  I nod to myself, light the oil lamp and prepare my bed next to his. He watches me strip to my underwear. ‘I’ll warm you, then I’ll make food,’ I say, slip under his furs, pull my own furs over both of us, pressing close to him. ‘Holy shit. You need to hurry up getting better. I don’t like sleeping with icicles.’

  Something harsh rolls up his throat. Maybe a chuckle. I can’t tell. We shiver together and I wonder if one is supposed to rub someone with hypothermia until he’s warmer, or rather not. I decide on a tight hug and wishing I were an oven.

  He rolls onto his side, sticks his feet between my shins, and grabs my hand to press it to his icy stomach. He’s trembling hard and I can hear the clatter of his teeth. ‘Just a little bit longer, Katvar. I’ll make you hot food soon. But better ta
ke it slow. Okay?’

  He moves my hand to his chest. The skin there is smooth, muscular, and cold like stone. There’s something, a faint pattern of scars, maybe. ‘What’s on your chest?’ I whisper.

  He doesn’t answer.

  ‘We’ll talk later,’ I say, more to assure him that he’ll be alive and well in the morning than to make him talk about stuff he might not want to share.

  The air in our cave grows warmer. I’m almost too warm now. Katvar’s breathing is shallow, but regular. He must be sleeping. I let him rest, slip out from under the covers and get dressed. Before I open the cave, I make sure he’s warmly tucked in.

  The dogs are nervous. They know something is wrong with their chief. I rub their sides and talk to them, cut up meat and feed them. I chop an armful of wood and start a fire, place the pot over it and melt snow. Which gives me an idea. All I need is a bit more wood. When everything is prepared, I duck back into the snow cave.

  ‘Katvar, wake up.’

  He groans and cracks an eye open.

  ‘You want a warm bath, right?’

  He blinks.

  ‘Remember the pots we brought along to barter trade? Look, I’ve got you the biggest one. It’s filled to the brim with nice warm water. Your feet will fit in. But you have to hurry, it’s getting cold.’

  He pushes himself up and, if possible, grows even paler. I help him sit, pull the furs up over his back and shoulder, and move the pot so that he can stick his feet in.

  ‘Good?’

  He nods and lays his head on his knees.

  ‘Okay. Stew coming in a bit.’

  When I return with the food, he’s back in the bed and the water in the pot is cold. He’s also awake and looks better.

  ‘How are your feet?’

  A small nod.

  ‘Good,’ I say and place the pot on a flat piece of wood, ladle the stew into a bowl and hand it to him. He sits up, all without help, and slowly eats the first spoonful. His eyes close, the corners of his mouth tug into a smile. He places his fingertips to his lips, then moves his hand in my direction. ‘Thank you,’ is what it means.