Ice Brothers

by Sloan Wilson

  “Is that really true?”

  “They date some of the old Norse expeditions here by the style of the European clothes on the bodies in graves hundreds of years old.”

  Paul wondered what future archeologists would make of Sparks’s and Blake’s bullet-ridden bodies in their Coast Guard uniforms. It was curious to think that those two men might be the final witnesses of their age.

  “You want to come to my boat for coffee?” Brit asked.

  “I’m so tired I can barely stand and there are a million things I have to do.”

  “If you could only trust me, I might be able to help with some of it. I know this country and these people.”

  They paused in the lee of a sod hut to escape the wind. Brit’s face was so lost in the fur hood of her parka and his own eyes were stinging so in the cold that he could hardly see her expression, but her voice was soft and sad.

  “Is Peomeenie a good man?” he asked suddenly.

  “The best. He’s a pilot and a lead hunter. That’s aristocracy here.”

  “Can I trust him?”

  “To do what?”

  “I’m not sure yet. He captured the German lieutenant, didn’t he?”

  “To Peo that was a rescue more than a capture. He would rescue anyone. I’m honestly not sure whether he would fight for you if that’s what you want to know.”

  “Do the Eskimos have contact with the Germans?”

  “Not ours. Ours have never gone near Supportup-Kangerdula. There are some rumors that others farther up the coast have been trading with the Germans. I don’t know if they’re true.”

  Paul was tempted to ask her whether Peomeenie would be a good man to send as a scout to map the German base, but he knew there was no way he could be completely sure she would not relay anything he said to the enemy.

  “Thanks,” he said brusquely. “I have to get back to my ship.”

  “I’m living in my boat now. Come if you want me.”

  He did not reply. He was so tired that he suddenly was not sure he could make it through the deep snow to his ship. Perhaps sensing his weakness, dogs came toward him from all directions. Brit shouted and led them away.

  When he returned to the warmth of his cabin Paul allowed himself to get two more hours of sleep. When the quartermaster called him, he said, “Is Mr. Green aboard?”

  “He’s with the wounded, sir.”

  “How about Mr. Williams?”

  “He’s with the prisoners, but Mr. Farmer just came aboard.”

  “I thought he was sick.”

  “He looks fine, sir. Do you want to see him? He’s in the wardroom.”

  “I’ll go see him.”

  Seth was sitting at the table in the wardroom writing letters, a habitual posture.

  “God, I’m glad to see you,” Paul said. “I was worried.”

  “My ticker just kicked up a little. They say I need rest, but I can’t stand it up there in that sickroom. Just getting back to the ship makes me better.”

  “Don’t do any work. Just take it easy.”

  “I can stand my watch, skipper. Don’t take that away from me.”

  “It’s up to you. Is Boats still with the prisoners?”

  “He’s sacked out up forward. Can I do anything for you?”

  “Where’s Flags?”

  “In the forecastle, I think. Can I get him for you?”

  “Ring him on the telephone. Tell him I want to see him in my cabin.”

  Somehow Paul’s brief sleep had left him more exhausted than before. His muscles ached as he walked to his cabin and he felt dizzy. It’s just delayed shock, he thought. God, what will happen if I’m really coming down with something? He barely had the strength to get into his bunk.

  “You wanted me, sir?” Flags asked.

  “Go to the village and find an Eskie named Peomeenie. Ask him real politely to come here to see me. He’s the guy who brought in the Kraut lieutenant.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Show him here and wake me. Thanks, Flags. I’m just too bushed to go myself.”

  “Get some sleep, sir. I’ll get him as soon as I can.”

  “Wait a minute. Ask Cookie to fix the best spread he can for him. Tell him this guy can really help us.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Peomeenie soon arrived. He was wearing a gray sealskin parka and britches made of polar bear skin with a big dark patch of something like mink sewn into the crotch. It made him look oddly naked in his bulky clothes. His boots were of soft white leather with geometric designs around the tops in red, black and blue. His clothes were spotlessly clean, even though he exuded the pungent odor Paul had noticed in the church. Despite his gray-streaked long hair, his round copper-colored face looked young until he opened his mouth, revealing the brown stumps of bad teeth. Completely unconscious of them, he smiled and laughed almost continuously. Paul judged that he was just under five feet tall, but he was a compact giant, not a midget. He looked as though he could punch his way through a stone wall.

  “It’s good to see you,” Paul said, taking his tiny, iron hand. “I haven’t had a chance really to thank you for bringing in the German lieutenant.”

  “Very nice,” Peomeenie said. “Thank you, captain. Very nice. This is very fine ship.”

  Paul had the impression that the man had understood little and that he was repeating memorized phrases almost parrotlike. The powerful little hunter never stopped beaming. His main effort seemed to be to please.

  “Let’s go down and get something to eat,” Paul said and led the way to the galley.

  Cookie had prepared steak with mushroom sauce, a variety of canned vegetables, strawberry ice cream from the destroyer and a big chocolate cake. Peomeenie ate ravenously, but handled his knife and fork with skill. It was difficult for him to chew much, both because of his teeth and because he apparently couldn’t stop smiling. He gulped his food in great chunks. When coffee was served he put five teaspoonfuls of sugar into his cup.

  “Would you like a bag of sugar to take with you?” Paul asked.

  Peomeenie’s smile almost split his face.

  “Fix up a ten-pound bag for him, Cookie,” Paul said.

  Back in his cabin, Paul decided not to offer Peomeenie a drink. Apparently alcohol was as bad for the Eskimos as for Indians and old ice pilots. He sat on the edge of his bunk and gave Peomeenie the stool by the chart table.

  “How would you like to do a job for us?” he began. “A really important job?”

  Peomeenie beamed the whole time Paul described the reconnaissance of the German base and kept nodding his head, but Paul suspected that he understood very little if anything. Obviously an interpreter was needed. He thought of getting Swanson, but guessed the old man would hate the idea of involving an Eskimo in the war, even if he were basically on the side of the Americans when he got his fear of the Germans under control. The only other interpreter he could think of was Brit. He still wasn’t sure that he could completely trust her, but there might be even more danger in refusing to trust anyone.

  “You know Brit, don’t you? Let’s go see her. She can help us talk.”

  “Brit, yes!” Peomeenie said and led the way to the ketch on the ways.

  Paul had barely enough strength to climb the ladder to the deck of the little yacht. At the sound of their footsteps, Brit slid open the hatch.

  “So you and Peo got together,” she said. “Come below.”

  Brit offered Peomeenie hot chocolate, not Aquavit, Paul noticed, and while she prepared it, she stood over the stove and said, “Have you decided to trust me?”

  “I don’t think I have much choice. Look, I’m sorry. I need an interpreter.”

  Peomeenie smiled and nodded.

  “I want him to be a scout for us. I want him to tell me what the Germans have got at Supportup. Do you think he could get in there and out without getting caught?”

  “I’ll let him answer that,” she said and spoke rapidly to the Eskimo in his language. When Peo
meenie replied he got up from the bunk where he had been sitting and stood to his full childlike height. His dark eyes flashed and he gesticulated with his small iron hands.

  “Peomeenie says that he is almost as good a hunter as the old people, his ancestors, and they could move like ghosts through packs of wolves, never mind camps of men, without ever being noticed. He wants to know why you want to find out about the Germans. He says they are bothering no one at Supportup, which is inhabited only by demons anyhow.”

  “Ask him if he is afraid of the demons.”

  After a brief exchange during which the Eskimo gesticulated with even more animation, Brit said, “He says that the old people were afraid of nothing. They killed polar bears single-handedly with a bone knife. He is not as good as they, but their blood runs in his veins.” Brit paused. “Fear is not Peo’s big problem,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “He wants to know if you intend to kill the Germans.”

  “Tell him yes. Tell him they killed two of my men and the entire crew of a ship just like the Arluk.”

  This time there was a longer exchange of words incomprehensible to Paul.

  “He wants to know how many Germans there are,” she said finally.

  “About a hundred on the base and maybe twenty more on a ship. I’m not sure exactly. I hope he can make a more reliable count.”

  After Brit had relayed this to the Eskimo, he made a brief reply. Brit smiled.

  “He says he cannot kill so many Germans alone. He wants to know what help he’ll have.”

  “Tell him we’ll do the killing. I just want information, exact location of buildings and the location of big guns. I want him to draw us a map.”

  “He won’t draw you a map, but he’ll remember everything he sees in detail,” she said. “He can point things out on a chart here.”

  “Fine, but I want him to take one of our men with him. Will he do that?”

  “You don’t want to ask him that. None of your men could possibly keep up with Peo, or move like a ghost, as he said. You’ll have to let him do this job his own way.”

  “He’ll go all alone?”

  “He’ll take a woman, a young Eskimo woman who can travel well.”

  “Ask him how much time he will need.”

  “I shouldn’t ask him that. He has too much sense to answer it. The time he needs will depend on snow conditions, the weather, luck and what he finds there. Eskimos don’t set time limits.”

  “How much time do you think he’ll need? Can you make a guess?”

  “At the very least, a week there and a week back—he has to go around the mountains. More probably a month, and possibly two months or even longer. If the weather gets real bad, he’ll just build an igloo and hole up till it clears. Eskimos never hurry.”

  “But I’m no Eskimo! I’m supposed to stop German weather reports. The Germans are using them to bomb cities every day.”

  “I’ll try to explain that to him.”

  This time Brit and Peomeenie had a conversation that lasted several minutes. When it was over, Brit said, “He says he’ll go as fast as he can. He hopes he can be back in two weeks but can’t promise.”

  “Would he be insulted if I offered to pay him, either in money or in food supplies?”

  “No, you can bet he wouldn’t.”

  “How much should I offer?”

  “You’re asking him to risk his life and his woman. How about a year’s supply of canned goods and dry stores?”

  “That’s fine.”

  Peomeenie listened attentively and made a short reply.

  “Good, but he also wants a rifle and five hundred shells.”

  “Tell him I’ll give him five rifles and thousands of shells if he brings me back really detailed information.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. The Eskimos are already exhausting their supply of game.”

  “Hell, tell him I’ll give him anything he wants if he’ll give me detailed information on the number of men, the location of buildings and guns, and the kind of supplies. I want to know all about the topography. I want his advice on how best to attack these people.”

  After another brief interchange, Brit said, “He wants your whaleboat.”

  “I’ll try to get him one like it. If we capture German stores, he and his friends can have those.”

  Peomeenie grinned more broadly than ever as he listened to this.

  “He wants to know when you want him to start.”

  “As soon as possible.”

  This time the interchange was very brief.

  “As soon as the blizzard is over,” she said. “He’s going to go to choose a woman and to see to his gear now.”

  After Peomeenie had shaken hands and had beamingly left, Brit said, “Can I get you some Aquavit?”

  “I’m so tired that it will probably put me right to sleep.”

  “You look exhausted. You must have had a terrible time. Can’t you take at least a day to rest?”

  “Later maybe. I have to move the ship to a safer place. When the weather clears, the Krauts may come after me with their ship or light planes.”

  “This snow isn’t going to stop for a while. Often it goes on for a week or more.”

  “I have to be ready,” Paul said, but he stretched out on a bunk, propping himself on pillows just enough to accept a glass of Aquavit.

  “Skoal!” she said, touching her glass to his.

  “Do you know what that means?”

  “Skull. Let us drink from the skulls of our enemies. That’s what it used to mean. Now it means ‘Cheers.’ Time has wrought quite a change, hasn’t it?”

  “The old meaning is better for these times.”

  “Bring me a German skull and I’ll drink from it. I’d drink German blood from it. They’ve taken everybody and everything I had.”

  “And I keep thinking I’m the only one who understands this war.”

  “Plenty understand it, but you’re lucky to be able to do something about it.”

  There was a moment of silence during which she refilled his glass and her own. He noticed that there was a slight tremor in her fingers again.

  “But you can’t think about the war all the time,” she said. “You can’t fight if you can’t rest.”

  “That sounds reasonable.”

  “You look as though you have good Norse blood.”

  “German blood. I am what I hate, or a recent transmutation of it.”

  “Maybe it takes one to catch one.”

  “I’m not that German. The Germans are me gone mad. Maybe that’s why they scare me so much.”

  “But you don’t look scared. You seem born for your job.”

  “I was born to sail around the world in an old yawl. Before the Krauts clobbered me, I couldn’t think of anything but taking you with me on a voyage to the South Seas.”

  “There isn’t much we could do in the South Seas that we can’t do here, except swimming.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Have you ever had a Swedish massage?”

  “No.”

  “A Danish massage is better. Are you too tired for me to show you?”

  “I was a hundred years old when I came in here. Now I’m about forty. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll be back to twenty-two.”

  “Is that how old you are? I thought you just looked young.”

  “Twenty-three next month.”

  “How did you ever get command of a ship so soon?”

  “I traded the ship’s launch for booze and stole a whaleboat from a big cutter.”

  “Is that the way it works in America?” She smiled a little.

  “That’s the way it worked in Greenland.”

  They were both quiet as she unbuttoned his clothes and stroked his neck, his shoulders and chest. They kissed, and then she began stroking him again.

  “Your body has always trusted me,” she said. “It just took your head a long time to figure me out.”

  “Some pa
rts of my body are very smart.”

  “And strong even when you’re tired. God, it’s great to have a man so young.”

  “I’m not supposed to ask how old you are, am I?”

  “Not old enough to be your mother, but nobody who’s been through what I’ve seen is young.”

  “I’m about twenty years older than I was six months ago.”

  She laughed. “You have much time to make up for.”

  “I’m afraid that lost time is just lost.”

  “We can try like hell, but the way to do that is not to hurry. Hold still!”

  “How come you always make me laugh? Making love was always a terribly serious matter when I was really young.”

  “Laughing together is what the Eskimos call it. Only the sailors call it ping-ping. The Eskimos just laugh together.”

  “Do they do it well?”

  “Are you trying to trap me into confessions?”

  “Just curious.”

  “I’ve never heard them complain about frigid women or impotent men, but then they never complain about anything. That’s not their style.”

  “Show me how to make love like Eskimos.”

  “I’d rather take off our clothes. Just laugh a lot and be kind and don’t complain. Have a good time. Then you’ll know how the Eskimos make love.”

  Paul slept heavily for five hours when the laughing together finally ended. He might have slept another ten, but she awoke him.

  “The snow is letting up,” she said. “Did you say you want to move your ship?”

  “Yes. Thanks for not letting me sleep.”

  “Does this prove I’m on your side?”

  “Beyond doubt.”

  “Will you listen to my ideas about how to attack the Germans?”

  “I’ll listen.”

  “I’ll make a model of the fjord at Supportup-Kangerdula with clay. When Peo comes back, he’ll show you where everything is. We’ll get as many Eskimos to help us as we can. They’ll lug supplies in and some may fight. I’ll go along as an interpreter. What do you think of that?”

  “I’ll think about it—I promise you that. The model of the fjord is a good idea.”

  After a long kiss he hurried back to the ship. It was dark, but in the clearing sky the moon glowed behind a cloud. Nathan had rousted some depth charges from the hold to the well deck and was changing their firing mechanism. On the chart of Angmagssalik Fjord he had marked a shallow bay inside a crescent of rocky islets which he said would be a good place to defend with mines. The whaleboat had already been taken aboard, and except for the men guarding the prisoners and two of the wounded, all hands were present and accounted for. The ship was ready to get under way.