Lord of All Things

by Andreas Eschbach

  “Morley’s right,” Adrian said. “Where a plane can sink, a person can.”

  Charlotte shook her head reluctantly. “That was almost half a century ago.”

  “True,” said Adrian, shouldering his backpack. “But the glaciers were in a lot better shape back then than they are now.”

  They compromised by tying the life jackets onto their backpacks when they finally set off. They would only put them on once they reached the plateau.

  The first part of the expedition was a trek on foot along a chain of hills around the southern tip of the island, then east toward the glacier. Their path took them between jagged, snow-covered cliffs up a steep track in the ice that looked as though it had been built for a bobsleigh run. Barely ten minutes in, Charlotte was soaked through with sweat. They had to keep their concentration sharp every second; one false step would send them slipping all the way back down the slope they had just so laboriously climbed up. Charlotte preferred not to think about the injuries someone could get from such a fall. Soon there was nothing in her world but the rasping of her own breath and the creaking of crampons digging into the white, cold mass. Up above them silent plumes of snow puffed out from the tall cliffs that fringed the sky, then pattered down onto them as glittering dust. Sometimes the ice squeaked underfoot as though they were walking over gemstones.

  They passed bottomless chasms in the glacier that shimmered blue in the depths. On either side of the path were formations that looked like avalanches frozen in place. Snow, rain, ice, and wind had created bizarre sculptures that sparkled like diamonds in the sunlight. It was as though they were climbing upward into a strange world where humans were never meant to tread. Halfway up they took their first rest break.

  “This is the easiest ascent we could find,” Adrian explained, panting.

  Morley, who had been part of that first scouting survey, couldn’t even talk; green-faced and gasping, he sat on the ground gulping for air like a stranded fish. The only one who wasn’t short of breath was Leon van Hoorn. He had been constantly hurrying ahead to take pictures of them from up above, then dropping back to frame them against the sky as they climbed, then catching up again, with no visible effort, to snap them in profile or in closeup as they hauled themselves onward, panting.

  “Wonderful,” he never tired of saying. “You’re doing brilliantly.”

  “Hey,” Charlotte gasped after a couple of minutes catching her breath. “Does someone like you just get to travel wherever you like? I mean, without even thinking how you’ll photograph what you see or who you can sell the picture to?”

  “No,” Leon answered curtly, lifting his camera again to take a shot of Charlotte as she spoke. “That’s the price you pay for this kind of life. Accept it or stay home—that’s what my teacher told me.”

  “Oh great,” Charlotte said and found herself thinking of Hiroshi and what he had told her about earning a living—that most jobs twisted people’s lives out of shape; that this was why he wanted to free people of the necessity of work. For the first time she began to understand him a little. But she didn’t want to think of Hiroshi just then. Not here, not now. At that moment there was only the ice and the cold wind that robbed her face of all feeling, the sun above the horizon, her muscles aching, and her lungs burning, and the next step to be taken. “Come on,” she urged. “Let’s get going.”

  Not all was still and frozen. Before they reached the plateau, they passed trickles of meltwater, thin streams gurgling down off the face of the glacier that disappeared into the cracks and crevices in the ice.

  “Oh yeah,” Morley gasped. “Something’s happening there. Not good. Not good at all.”

  And then at last they were up above, standing at the edge of an immense, unreal white plain of frozen silence. The only sign of a human presence were the remains of the wind-speed tower, rearing up from the highest peak of the mountain chain to their left, a nearly unrecognizable tangle of steel girders, smothered in snow, that had once housed the Soviet meteorological gear that measured the Arctic storms. They revived themselves with long swigs of hot tea, enjoying how the icy pain let go of their lungs, and tried to ignore Leon, who was prowling all around them with his camera to his face.

  “Okay,” Morley said eventually, taking the GPS reader from his windbreaker, where it hung on a cord around his neck. He had already entered the coordinates they were aiming for. They would simply hike on until they zeroed in on target. “The rest is just a walk in the park.”

  He had spoken too soon. The ice shield that covered the whole island sloped slowly upward toward the center, so that they were still always climbing, however slightly, as they hiked. It wore them down.

  Charlotte dropped back until she was walking alongside Angela, who was marching forward with machinelike regularity. “Hey,” she said once she was sure the men were out of earshot. “You and Leon…is that still a thing?”

  “What about me and Leon?”

  “Well, back in Amsterdam you said you liked the look of him,” Charlotte said, gazing at her own breath freezing into a cloud. “And then in Helsinki you said you’d have to take a closer look…”

  Angela laughed. “I’ve finished taking my look. You can have him. I’ve noticed that you want him.”

  It was childish, of course. Girlish dreams. No question. It was wicked even. Yes. But indulging in fantasies of her and Leon made the rest of the trip so much sweeter—irresistibly so.…Now Charlotte smiled when he pointed the camera at her. She flirted with the lens, that dark, gleaming eye. She cast it smoldering glances when he focused in on her. Let him wonder what she meant by that. Quite a lot. Perhaps, she told herself, they might find some pretext for a trip up onto the glacier together. Just Leon and her and a tent. Did these sleeping bags zip together? She knew there were some models designed in such a way that two bags could be joined together to make one big one, though she hadn’t checked to see whether that was true of the ones they had brought. The grandiose scenery! The endless emptiness! This stark, seemingly unchanging landscape, where even time itself seemed frozen into place. It was sublime. Primeval. It had to be an incredible experience to come here with a man, a real man, to be alone here with him. Alone together.

  Charlotte looked at the photographer. How nimble he was. How surefooted as he went for the best angles. How elegantly he wielded the camera. Leon smiled back, seeming to understand her thoughts, to enjoy what was unfolding between them. The pounding of her heart was due to more than just the upward slope of the glacier they were marching across. How strong the sun was up here! It was a good thing she had put on sunblock. And a pity she hadn’t asked Leon to help her apply it. Next time perhaps. It was childish. Girlish dreams. Wicked even. But she enjoyed it.

  Something glittered on the ground ahead, something unusual enough to get her attention. Charlotte stopped where she was and bent down. It wasn’t a smooth bubble of ice, nor a snow sculpture formed by wind and frost; it was something metallic. Something quite ordinary. Some sort of hook, chrome-plated, maybe a door handle or some such thing. She wondered how it had gotten here.

  Maybe it was from the missing jet? She put out her hand and was just about to pick it up when Leon called after her. “Charlotte!”

  She straightened up and saw him waving his arm.

  “Come on! We got it!”

  She had fallen behind. The others were all standing around Morley, who was holding his GPS in his hand and pointing down at the ground. Zeroed in. Obviously, they were there at last.

  “Come on!” Leon called again. “I want everyone in the picture.”

  She hurried, almost ran. By the time she joined the others, she was out of breath and coughing, while they were already striking poses as though they had discovered the North Pole. Charlotte joined them and put her hood back, never mind how cold it was, and shook her hair free because she knew it would look good on camera.

  And she forgot to
mention the metal object she had found.

  “It has to be around about here,” Morley said again, taking one step to the side, the GPS still in his hand. Then one more step. He was trying to pace out an area corresponding to the zeroes on his screen.

  Adrian was already at work organizing the drilling. After they had all taken off their backpacks and put on their life jackets, he collected the pieces of the drill kit and began to assemble it.

  “Excellent,” Leon called out, shooting like crazy. “The researchers at work. Super!” His camera whirred as he took shot after shot.

  The sun was shining, the endless ice gleamed, the sky shone a deep blue.

  “This is pointless,” Charlotte grumbled as she strapped on her jacket. It was uncomfortable and stiff as a board. “The ground’s like concrete here.”

  “But we don’t know what might happen once we start drilling,” Adrian responded.

  “What could happen? Almost fifty years later?”

  “We don’t know,” he insisted.

  “And then? If one of us falls into ice-cold water, what then? He may not drown, but he’ll freeze for sure.”

  Adrian clearly didn’t want to think too hard about the worst that might happen. “Best to play it safe,” was all he said, and he turned back to the drill.

  Leon prowled around them in ever-greater circles, stalking them like a panther and taking photographs the whole time. A panther in a bright-red anorak. “Ladies!” he called. “Maybe you could…” Then the rest was lost as he lifted the camera to his face once more.

  “What?” Angela hollered back. “Speak up!”

  “Could you do something that looks like you’re working!” Leon waved his arms. “From over here it looks like Adrian is doing everything, and you two are just standing and watching.”

  Charlotte and Angela glanced at each other. The biologist chuckled. “Well, that’s what’s happening, isn’t it?”

  “Hold on a moment. It’ll look better right away,” Adrian called back. He turned to Charlotte. “When Morley and I lift the first ice cores, you can be ready with the samples case.” He looked at Angela. “And you can—hmm, perhaps you can put up one of the marker poles. As though you’re giving us coordinates.” He pointed to a spot about five yards away. “Over there, for instance.”

  Leon stood off to the side, waiting. Even from a distance, they could almost feel his impatience.

  “Couldn’t drilling like this damage the jet?” Charlotte asked. “If it’s really down there.”

  Adrian shook his head. “This is an ice drill. It wouldn’t have a chance against metal.”

  “Folks! The sun will be disappearing behind the clouds any moment now!” Leon called again. “I’m not asking too much here, am I? Just do something. The main thing is that you aren’t just standing around.”

  “Yeah, yeah!” Adrian looked around for Morley, who was still pacing the ice with his GPS. “Morley, how does it look?”

  “I suggest we sink the first drill here”—he coughed and pointed down at his feet—“then in a grid at ten-meter intervals. That should do it.”

  “Okay, take this then.” Adrian passed him the drill bits he hadn’t mounted yet.

  “Hey, look what I found over here!” Leon called out. “What are these things?”

  Charlotte turned her head and saw the photographer bending over, saw him reach out his hand, and she realized he was standing exactly where she had seen that gleam of chrome earlier. At the same time she realized what nonsense it had been to think it might be part of the vanished Tupolev jet: not a scrap from that impact could have lain on the glacier for forty years without being covered over with ice and snow. But before she could say anything, Leon screamed. It was a sound full of surprise and pain.

  Adrian turned around. “Leon?”

  Leon didn’t answer. He was still standing there, stooped over, his hand outstretched, and he wasn’t moving.

  “Leon!”

  For one complacent moment Charlotte was sure Leon was just playing a silly trick. Then Angela broke into a run and the others followed, leaving everything where it was. Leon still wasn’t moving. And the closer they got to him, the more clearly they could see why.

  He had been impaled.

  Angela stopped abruptly and put her hands in front of her mouth. Adrian stopped, too, and gasped, “Jesus Christ!” And Morley stumbled backward as though sandbagged, then turned around and threw up on the virgin white snow.

  Right where Leon’s hand had touched the ground, three gleaming metal spikes reared up from the ice and speared his body like a fork spearing a canapé. One of the spikes had entered his right hand and emerged halfway up his forearm, only to pierce his head below the right eye. Another spike had gone into Leon’s right knee and come out at his lower back. And the last was lodged in his left thigh just below the hip. It was a vision from the worst of nightmares.

  “Oh my God!” Angela exclaimed. “Oh my God oh my God oh my God!”

  Perhaps the worst thing was Leon was still alive. He wasn’t even bleeding. There was not a drop of red on the snow around him.

  Charlotte approached him. She did not know what she was doing or why; that moment she knew nothing at all. Her mind was completely blank, as empty as the icy wasteland. Her heart was beating so slowly that it seemed an iron weight lay upon it. Leon looked straight at her.

  “This hurts so mu…” she heard him whisper, almost below hearing.

  It was the last thing Leon van Hoorn would ever say. In the next instant he began to shrivel. His eyes lost their focus. His face slackened, and his features fell away. His skin wrinkled as though the bones, muscles, and fat beneath it were melting away. And then they saw that he was indeed melting: within seconds his head was no larger than a dried apple, his mouth was a tiny hole, his eyes had vanished, and the face was unrecognizable. The whole body dwindled away. His legs buckled, and his feet lifted clear of the ice, dangling like husks. Even his clothing was sucked up. The camera. The sunglasses he had been wearing against snow glare. His shoes shrunk down to little black knots, to clots, then vanished entirely. All that was left were three silver spikes, gleaming like swords, as tall as a man and shimmering all over with a rapid scurrying motion, like a nest of vengeful steel ants.

  All of a sudden Charlotte knew that she had seen this motion somewhere before.

  “Get out of here!” she screamed, spinning around. “Run!”

  3

  They only stopped when they thought they were far enough away to be safe. Just as Leon had said, the sun had gone behind the clouds—but not completely: bright rays broke through here and there, one of them falling on the exact spot where Leon had been…absorbed. The spikes seemed to be getting smaller, withdrawing into the ice they had come from.

  “What was that?” Morley gasped, pale as snow himself. “What in God’s name was that?”

  “Nobody will believe us,” Adrian gabbled. “Damn it all. Nobody will believe any of this ever happened.”

  Angela was trembling. Of the four of them, she was suffering most from shock. Her face was wet, and the tears had frozen to ice around the edge of her hood. Charlotte wished that she could cry, too, but she felt frozen inside. She felt nothing. All she could do was think, and all she could think was: Hiroshi. The thought pounded in her head like the pulsing of her blood. All of this has something to do with Hiroshi’s machine! But how could she explain that to the others? None of them knew Hiroshi, and Charlotte didn’t feel up to the task of explaining what she had seen on Paliuk. The feeling that she had lifted the veil of life, that she was connected to the real world, that she was truly alive here—that feeling was gone. This was a nightmare. Who would want to live in a nightmare? The only thing to do with a nightmare was escape it.

  “What a goddamned…” Adrian stopped and then gave an inarticulate howl. “They’ll say we pushed him off a cliff
! I can see us there already, in a Russian jail, accused of murder…”

  “Even the camera’s gone,” Morley said hollowly.

  “Devil’s Island.” Adrian waved his arms. “Saradkov is also known as Devil’s Island. Did you know that?”

  “No.” Morley shook his head, his eyes wide.

  “The copilot told me. He also had some dumb theory about where the name came from…Oh shit! The legends were right!”

  “Devil’s Island,” Morley repeated. “Oh great. So what do we do now?”

  As if in answer to his question, another steel blade shot out of the ice less than twenty yards away. And then another, closer.

  “Run!” Charlotte screamed. What else could they do?

  And so they ran again, ran as fast as they could, back the way they had come, while behind them the blades sprang from the ice like bear traps. But the blades were behind them. It seemed that whatever was after them couldn’t manage to cut them off, or lay a trap, or aim straight for them.

  “We have to split up!” Adrian yelled as they ran. “One of us has to get back to the radio. Call for help.”

  There was no trace now of the silence that had made such an impression on them as they climbed. Instead, their own ragged panting thundered in their ears, seeming to boom back from the distant glacier walls, and they heard the SHIKK! SHIKK! SHIKK! of the blades chasing after them.

  “Call for help?” Charlotte shouted back. “You’re dreaming. By the time they’re here…” She didn’t finish her sentence, couldn’t bring herself to. There was no need to put it into words.

  She looked around. Was she imagining it, or were they putting some distance between themselves and the…thing? The spikes seemed to be falling back, unable to keep pace. And they had changed: they no longer shot barely two yards out of the ice but stretched up higher, three yards, five, ten, then crumpled and fell in a fruitless attempt to snatch their prey.