Ice: The Climate Fiction Saga

by Wendeberg, A.

  ‘It was a rhetorical question.’ I’m moving the image with my index and middle finger and zoom into the observatory to find a trace of Runner. Any trace.

  ‘Interesting behaviour,’ Erik says and sits down, his hip perched on the desk, his head tilted. He’s playing curious. ‘You do know that he’s dying should he still be there? Or already dead, for that matter.’

  ‘I do and I won’t forget who is responsible.’

  ‘Romantic feelings, daughter?’

  ‘For you? No.’

  He snorts and moves a little closer. ‘Your man is dead. Spend your time with something more useful than looking for a stinking carcass.’

  I push my chair back and look up at him. ‘Does your room need cleaning?’

  A flicker wipes past his eyes. Anyone with a healthy survival instinct would now be very quiet. Thing is, I don’t have anything worth living for.

  We stare at each other for a long moment. Then he says, ‘Tell me what you learned last night.’

  I inhale and pause the satellite live stream. ‘Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.’ I spit the words at him.

  Erik nods. ‘Genesis 3:16. I wonder why you’ve chosen this particular quote. Do you understand it?’

  ‘Women are worth shit. I’m just trying to wrap my head around it.’

  He barks a laugh. ‘You didn’t understand half of it.’

  I shrug and stare at the blank screen. No need to tell him that I completely understand why he soaks his men in religious bullshit. It gives his soldiers a meaning to their shitty little lives. They can put their own misery behind them, take up arms, kill everyone who has demeaned them — including the women who’ve rejected their advances. Then he gives them obedient wives they can treat any way they want. Clean my room! Clean my clothes! Spread your legs! Open your mouth! It’s a straightforward way to brainwash. God said so, don’t think about it. Then, a few years into servitude, God will be gradually replaced by Commander. Because the Commander acts in the name of God. Dost thou dare doubt Him? Thou shalt burn in hell!

  ‘I am still not entirely sure if I over or underestimate you. But I guess I’ll have to win your trust to find out.’ He extracts a key from his pocket and unlocks the shackles. ‘You are quite adept at picking them.’

  I manage to muffle my gasp with a cough. He doesn’t buy it, of course.

  ‘I wonder how the hell you plan to buy my trust.’

  ‘Trust cannot be bought.’ He narrows his eyes. ‘You are now free to go wherever you wish as long as you stay inside the Vault. You go outside, you die. But you know that. I’ll give you full access to my library. And you will complete all tasks to my full satisfaction. Your first mission is to plan an attack on a Sequencer base north of Berlin.’

  He brings up a map. ‘They chose a dormant nuclear power plant. The snow revealed them.’ His calloused fingers point to broad, muddy tracks trailing through the white. There’s a lake, a forest, and two grey cooling towers. I nod and try to focus on what he says as my stomach turns.

  ———

  I saw Runner today. Two months! He’s stayed alive for two whole months and no one’s evacuated him from this radioactive shit-hole. I’m surprised all the trees are still green and he finds enough food.

  I can barely control myself. My whole body trembles and Erik will guess something’s up with me and then he’ll interrogate me and I can’t have that right now.

  I have to plan how to stick the photographic emulsion into his jacket, how to shield it from light but not from radiation.

  Shit.

  Runner.

  I miss him so much, it hurts.

  I shut my eyes and think of our last day in Taiwan, the stream, the rock I sat on and his hand in mine.

  I grew up in the desert. I love it; it’s such a beautiful place. I love the sand…’ he traces my freckles with his fingers, ‘…the wild landscape scarred by countless battles…’ a zzzing shoots from this scar all across my body, ‘…the sunsets.’ He runs his hand through my orange hair. ‘I’m looking at you, Micka. What scares you so?’

  ‘Everything,’ I whisper.

  His eyes darken, a frown hardens his features. I owe him an explanation, but I don’t quite know the answer, either.

  ‘For a long time,’ I stammer, ‘I was no one. But I chose it; it’s okay.’

  Then, the truth forms and words tumble out of my mouth. ‘I chose to be invisible instead of being unwanted. And now, it’s hard to be seen, to be listened to. It makes me vulnerable. The hurt will come back. That’s what scares me.’

  He nods; his gaze rests on my face and there’s a deep sadness that makes me want to reach out and touch him. But he’s faster. His fingertips brush my cheek. ‘Don’t disappear, Micka,’ he says softly.

  Abruptly, I stand, walk to the nearest wall and bash my head against it. There. Pain. One more time and I’ll be better. Can’t have this fucking sentimentality now.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Erik asks when he enters the control room.

  ‘Moral dilemma,’ I snarl at him. ‘You’re asking me to kill my own people.’

  ‘They are not your people anymore. Now, show me your plans.’

  I take a deep breath and open the file I prepared last night.

  ———

  I stare down at four white rectangles. I’d slipped them one by one into a small slit in Erik’s jacket on four consecutive days. I know he goes outside at night when he believes I’m sleeping. My test is working, because in my other hand I hold four black rectangles. All eight test strips are small sheets of glass I found in one of the storage rooms in a box labelled “microscope slides.” I didn’t see any microscope, though. Not that it matters. I coated all the slides with a mixture of agarose, aqueous dichromate solution, silver dichromate perchloric acid, and acetic acid. It sounds simple, but it isn’t. The solution is highly sensitive to light, so I had to mix the ingredients in a pitch dark room (aka, my cell), dip the slides into it, and air dry and store them so that they wouldn’t get exposed to any kind of radiation before I needed them.

  It took me the better part of a month to figure out how to ascertain that my home-brewed test strips were working. And then it took me another five days to muster the courage and enter the section that contains the micro reactor. No clue why Erik dares to get close to this thing without ever checking if it’s safe. There isn’t even a Geiger counter at the door to the reactor room. I wonder if someone’s stolen it or if Erik’s removed it so I can’t measure the outside radiation. Probably the latter.

  So here I am — four black test strips tell me the reactor room isn’t safe (as the big yellow and black sign clearly states), the other four — very white ones — tell me the outside is not contaminated at all.

  Erik, you arse.

  Time to find out where I am.

  ———

  Third day locked up in my cell. Still no food. Water is rationed to one cup a day. Erik’s shut off the heating system. It’s below freezing in here and I’m sure my breath is clouding. I can’t see it, though. Lights are off, too.

  He is punishing me because I figured it out.

  I figured it out before he could stop me.

  I’m inside the Svalbard Seed Vault. Spitsbergen. No radioactive contamination. No United States of America.

  I win.

  He doesn’t.

  Love will find its way through all languages on its own.

  Jalal ad-Din Mohammad Rumi

  All warfare is based on deception.

  The Art of War, Sun Tzu

  I bite down hard on my cheeks as I type the password into the interface and press enter.

  The control unit swallows my letters without a twitch. The monitors come to life. A surge of relief brings me close to collapse; I press my forehead to the desk and breathe Jeremiah’s name.

  First rule in warfare: Know
where your enemy is.

  I click on the world map and locate Svalbard.

  While running through the snow, I’d seen no indications of the presence of the BSA on the island. But I can’t believe that. I click “home.” The shortwave infrared satellite imagery flickers to Longyearbyen and the many antennas dotting the snowy hill.

  A movement catches my eye — an oversized mosquito, black and light green on white. The aircraft skids to a halt on the small Longyearbyen airstrip.

  It shouldn’t surprise me they’ve come so fast. And yet it does. I want to scream, and, all of a sudden, I miss Katvar and wish I’d said farewell.

  I zoom out to find our snow cave, but I don’t get far. There he is already, on my sled approaching the Vault from the west, while a team of five men — two with what seem to be sniper rifles, and three with submachine guns — hop out of the aircraft and move towards the Vault from the north.

  I wipe my mind clean of fear. We were both dead the moment we stepped onto the ice of the Barents Sea.

  I squint and crank up the sharpening filter. The northern lights flicker through the feed and blur the images.

  Katvar and the team of five men are still unaware of each other. But not for much longer.

  It’s the hardest thing I’ve done in my life, but it needs doing: I zoom out to scan the whole of Svalbard for movements. It takes only a few seconds, but they stretch to a painfully long time. There’s no one else. The next task, the only reason we came here, is to install the program and wreak havoc.

  I don’t even…

  Fuck.

  A quick assessment of Katvar’s position and speed, of the men’s approach, and I turn away from the horrible scene, race from the monitor room through the server room, the corridor, the Seed Vault, and the last corridor, all the while my inner eye is showing me how fast Katvar moves, how fast the armed men are, and when they will meet. I know I’ll be too late.

  Heart pounding and fingers tightly wrapped around my rifle, I sprint the last few metres, press against the wall, punch the red PUSH HERE TO OPEN button, and dive outside. I skid over the small platform and land face-first in a pile of snow. Pressing flat against the cold ground, I listen.

  All is quiet. The aurora wipes green and purple across the starry sky. There’s nothing pretty or peaceful in this. To me, northern lights always come with danger.

  Clouds burst from my mouth. Shit, my breathing will give me away. I pull the scarf up over my face, adjust the white fabric concealing my rifle and myself, scan my surroundings with my scope’s night-eye, and then move away from the concrete block, crouching forward, down the slope and gradually pushing into view of the airstrip and the stretch of land between me and the five men.

  Before I can lower my eye to my scope, a sled with a fur-clad man appears from behind a low hill. The four dogs are racing, he’s pushing them to full speed; paws and skids spit snow at the night sky. He’s whistling at his dogs, urging them on, and I have absolutely no clue why Katvar would approach armed men at full speed. With one arm he holds his pathetic, old rifle. His longbow is tied to the sled.

  He offers himself. He is bait.

  I will not scream.

  I tilt my rifle north, taking aim. Before I can move my finger to the trigger, a burst of bullets sprays from one man’s submachine gun, felling one of the four dogs and Katvar.

  I will not scream.

  I bring the reticle to the man’s chest and squeeze the trigger. He falls, and at once, the others dive for cover. Before they all disappear, I slip another round into the chamber, aim, and fire. The target falls. Two men down, three to go.

  I am invisible.

  I am The Fog.

  I move my scope back west. Katvar is lying flat on the ground, the snow sprayed with bright red. The ghostly green northern lights illuminate his torn hood and the large hole showing bloodied fur and hair. Blood leaks down his white face. A clean headshot.

  I will not scream.

  Trying to control the rage, I exhale and regret it only a second later. My cloudy breath gave away my position. A bullet rips a hole into my fur coat, just where the shoulder meets the hood. I notice it from the corner of my vision before I hear the shot. A second later, I’m gone — backed away and changed position, knowing they will have done the same.

  The dogs are yipping nervously. They want to get away or turn around to check on Katvar, trying to pull the sled, but the dead pack member and the tipped sled make their movement almost impossible.

  Slowly, I breathe into my scarf, bring my rifle in position and scan the surroundings.

  A cloud of condensed breath rises from behind a snowdrift roughly three hundred and fifty metres from me. I aim at the snow, a mere forty centimetres below the crest and fire. No scream. Once the echo of my shot dissipates, Svalbard falls silent again.

  No one should be stupid enough to blow his breath straight up in the air.

  I move my rifle to check the sled, but no one’s hiding behind it — the dogs would have told me with sharp barks of alarm. They managed to move closer to Katvar’s body. And then I see it. A faint white wisp of life. He’s breathing!

  I have to be quick now. He’ll be losing blood fast. I scan the low ridges again and can’t spot any sign of the men. Desperate to get to Katvar, I press the rifle to my chest, take the pistol in my left hand, flick off the safety, and stand.

  They don’t stick their heads up, so they can’t see me and I can’t see them, but I know they must be ahead of me, hiding somewhere behind the many snowdrifts. Somewhere within a radius of four hundred metres.

  The snow is soft and creaks quietly as I take one step after the other. I’m an excellent target — upright, close, no cover. Easy, even for a bad shot.

  Ahead of me, nothing moves, nothing breathes. Did they retreat to the aircraft? Is there a pilot waiting or a backup they can call in? I’m so close to the peak of the snowdrift that I can see a pair of feet, fur gators, legs — black against the white snow, the occasional pale green flickering across it. When the chest comes into view, I fire two shots in quick succession. In the corner of my eye, the other man throws up his hands. I have no time for negotiations. I pull the trigger on him twice. My eyes search for the bodies of the other three, making sure they are as still as icicles, then I set my feet in motion. Quick.

  I race towards the sled and the man in the snow.

  ‘Katvar!’ I cry, knowing he won’t answer. He might still be alive, but for how long? I can’t do anything about a damaged brain.

  I would at least hold his hand and kiss him and tell him I love him, because I never told him. There’s so much I want to say.

  I kneel at his side. ‘Katvar?’ My fingers fly over his face, his hood, the gaping bloody hole.

  It’s a mess, I can barely see where the fur ends and his hair begins. Shit there’s so much blood. I roll him onto his back and push the hood aside, plant a layer of snow on his wound to slow the bleeding, then check for more bullet wounds but can’t find any — a small victory.

  I rub my hands clean with snow and gently, ever so gently, pick off clumps of bloodied snow and bits of fur from his wound. He doesn’t respond. His breath is so shallow, I keep checking the pulse in his neck to make sure he’s still alive.

  ‘Katvar, please?’ I cup his cheek. There isn’t even a flutter of eyelids. ‘Don’t go now.’

  I take another handful of fresh snow and hold it against the wound. Slowly, the white turns a bright red. I want to cry, but instead, I keep talking to him, my voice soft, my hands gentle.

  ‘Open your eyes, my love. Don’t you want to see me?’

  I kiss his brow, the bridge of his nose, his lips, while everything inside me screams.

  My chest heaves, tears skid down my face to splash on his. Still, he doesn’t move. The cold wind forms small ice crystals in my lashes.

  I keep cleaning his wound, trying to see the extent of the injury. The longer I work, the more hopeful I am. There doesn’t seem to be any brain tissue in h
is hair, but pieces of skin, a broad wound with nasty, torn edges, and lots of blood.

  I stand and walk up to the dogs, cut the dead one off the line and tip the sled back on its skids. I lead the dogs to Katvar. They are beside themselves and it takes a lot of growling and pushing to calm them down.

  With my arms wrapped around his ribcage, I pull him onto the sled and strap him down. A click of my tongue and we slide uphill towards the Vault.

  The security system scans my retina and the hatch opens with a belch. The dogs hesitate and I have to step off the sled and lead them into the dark corridor. Behind us, the door hisses shut.

  We pass the airlocks and the Seed Vault, the connecting tunnel to the server room, and finally reach the door to the control room. The scraping of the skids on the concrete floor keeps the dogs irritated and jumpy the whole way. When I take off their harnesses, they at once rush to check out Katvar, the room, the technical equipment, and back to Katvar again. There’s a nervous whining coming from the three snouts and I have to agree — I want to cry too.

  I send the dogs out of the control room and pull the sled halfway through its door to block them from coming back in. I can’t have dog noses all over Katvar’s wound when I stitch him up. I unstrap him and pull him off the sled, lay him on the cold stone floor, always careful not to touch his injury. Then I open the sled bags and pull out the bear skin, spread it on the ground and move him over. It’s not easy to hoist a limp man onto a fur blanket without bunching it up into a useless blob.

  I press my fingers to his neck and find a regular pulse, open his coat and take out the water bottle he’s keeping warm there. I take a sip. I’m parched. Should I try to make him drink? Probably not. The water might enter his airway.

  I roll him onto his side and pull his arm out of the coat sleeve, move the hood aside, and check his wound. Congealed blood, liquid blood, bits of skin and hair.