Rising from the side of the couch where he lay entombed beneath several thick blankets, she turned and called out.
"Father, he's awake!” Clad in jeans and hoodie, the stocky sixteen-year-old turned back to Morgan. “Excuse me. I've got to finish charging the batteries."
He looked on as father and daughter, going in opposite directions, passed wordlessly in a doorway. Batteries, he found himself thinking as he fought to restrain himself, to sip and not chug the mug's overpoweringly delicious, steaming contents. Electric heat. That explained the almost oppressive warmth of the room in which he found himself.
But not the pillar of green fire he had seen. Or thought he had seen. Nothing explained that, except perhaps delirium.
His own mug firmly in hand, Tungarook settled himself down in a nearby overstuffed chair like a squat bear backing into its lair. The heavy wooden furniture looked as old as it did comfortable. “Good. You're alive. Now you will have a fine story to tell when you get home. Better even than pretty pictures. And when Casey and I go back to Barrow I can tell my wife about the dumb white guy who let himself get caught out alone on the tundra."
A sudden, unpleasant thought caused Morgan to swallow and look down at himself. “Frostbite?"
The hunter pursed his lips. “I don't think so. I checked you pretty thorough while we were getting you out of your clothes and under the blankets. There's a little blackening on the ends of a couple of toes, but not enough to where I think you'll lose them.” He smiled. “Of course, if you went ahead and had the tips amputated, that would give you proof for your story."
The worried photographer nodded slowly. “I think I'd rather keep my toes and invite disbelief.” He eyed his surroundings. “Where are we?"
"In my living room."
For the first time since he had set out from Barrow on the ill-starred trip, Morgan found himself grinning. “You know what I mean."
Tungarook gestured with his free hand. “We're about halfway between Barrow and Atqasuk, but way north of the snow machine track that links them."
Morgan nodded slowly, sipping. “When I lost control I broke my bike, my phone, everything. I was trying to hike back."
His host's smile vanished like the steam from his mug. “You never would have made it. Where I found you was way northwest of the regular route. Of course, when you eventually hit the ocean you could have followed it back to town. If you had better clothes and enough food and hot drink to sustain you for a week's walk or so. If you didn't go in the wrong direction and head out on the ice toward Siberia."
The walls of the tightly sealed little house, Morgan noted, were decorated with framed pictures and other inexpensive bric-a-brac. No animal heads or skins. North Shore people hunted for subsistence, not for sport. “I thought the wolf had me."
"Almost did,” Tungarook opined cheerfully. “You're just lucky a white bear didn't come across you.” He nodded to his right. “They're probably all in Barrow anyway, rummaging the dumpsters behind Pepe's or Arctic Pizza."
For a while it was quiet in the room. Wordlessly, Morgan held out his empty mug. Rising from his padded cave of a chair, Tungarook refilled it from the big white pitcher that sat on a coffee table hand-hewn from a single piece of massively gnarled driftwood that had been hauled out of the nearby river. As the hunter resumed his seat, Morgan happened to glance out the window. A faint but unmistakable greenish glow stained the thin layer of snow outside.
Eyes widening, he nearly shot off the couch. The sudden exertion left him dizzy, but still standing. He staggered to the window. There was no mistaking it: a flickering green light was turning the frozen crystals the color of lime sorbet.
Arriving at his side, Tungarook tried to ease his guest back onto the couch.
"Not so fast, man. You're still pretty weak. You'll hurt yourself."
The photographer succeeded in raising an arm to gesture outside. “Don't you see that?"
The hunter glanced out the window. “See what?"
Morgan looked down at his host, his expression serious. “I'm not delirious. Not now. Something's throwing a green glow on the snow.” Turning and tilting his head back, he studied the low ceiling. “I saw something like it but much stronger when we were coming in. Stronger than a searchlight, it was. A bright, bright green, almost like the aurora."
Tungarook peered hard at his guest. Then the burly hunter let out a heavy sigh and stepped back, forcing Morgan to stand on his own. His fortitude strengthened by curiosity and chocolate, the photographer managed to remain upright.
"Not ‘almost.'” His host murmured the correction with obvious reluctance.
Woozy but determined to hold his ground mentally as well as physically, Morgan blinked at the stocky Inupiaq. “I don't follow you."
"Then follow me,” Tungarook directed him. “Nobody will believe you anyway.” Turning, he headed for a closed door. “Casey is charging the batteries."
"I know.” Morgan tottered after his host. “She said that's what she was going to do. What has that got to do with...?"
As soon as the door was opened and he was able to follow the shorter man through the intervening boot room, he saw. And understood.
The surge of frigid air hit Morgan the instant they stepped out of the changing area. He was tempted to retreat to the warm living room. Brain and body screamed at him to scurry back to the inner sanctum of snug blankets and cozy couch and hot drink. What he saw, however, held him transfixed despite the cold. Transfixed and disbelieving. Transfixed and disbelieving with his hair standing on end. And not in the metaphorical sense, either. Though the longest strands remaining on his pate were little more than an inch in length, each was now standing straight up or out from the sides and top of his head. Beside him, Albert Tungarook's much longer black hair was also standing stiffly at attention, making him look like a human porcupine.
Two sleek but well-used snow machines dominated the tiny, constricted garage. Like an army of pawns surrounding their king and queen, everything from shovels to neatly racked snowshoes lined or lay against the insulated metal walls. Armories of tools hung from the interior siding, coils of shiny cable and black hose were clipped to the walls like hibernating snakes, drums of gasoline huddled against the far wall like so many caucusing wombats, and in one corner, splayed and cured pelts stood stacked waist-high like oversized shoe leather. A rack of steel shelves welded to the rear wall held wired-together ranks of deep-cycle marine batteries. One tangle of cables ran rightward to disappear into a hole in the inner wall of the house. A second serpentine confusion emerged from a nearby floor-mounted transformer. A retractable skylight dimpled the roof overhead. At present it was open to the cold and the stars.
Her right arm upraised, fingers extended, Casey Tungarook stood directly beneath the opening. Seemingly unsupported, her long black hair was standing straight up, as if being tugged by the vacuum of space. Dropping straight down from the heavens, a tongue of cold green blaze entered the garage via the wide-open skylight. It coursed down her upthrust arm, through her body, out her outstretched left arm, and into the transformer on which her open palm rested. The expression on her face was perfectly neutral. She was neither smiling nor frowning. Certainly she did not appear to be in pain. If anything, an awed Morgan decided as he stared openmouthed, she looked bored.
Seeing him gaping at her, she turned in his direction and smiled reassuringly, her brown skin flushed celadon. “It doesn't hurt,” she called to him above the soft hiss of the streaming electric waterfall that poured into the garage. “Though it does kind of tickle."
Morgan did not respond. He had no idea how to respond. What he was witnessing was so implausible, so physically farfetched, that he was sure anything he might say would leave him sounding like a complete fool. In the absence of a response, the girl shifted her stance slightly. The slender downpouring of jade fire promptly moved with her, shimmying like a drapery woven of translucent green satin caught in a sudden gust of wind.
Behind their resp
ective glass indicator windows on the heavy-duty storage batteries, a multitude of individual red needles were steadily advancing from left to right.
Morgan did not realize how long he had been standing in stupefied silence until the chill that invaded his open mouth began to sting his teeth. He felt Tungarook's hand on his arm.
"Let's go back inside,” his host suggested gently. “It's cold in the garage when Casey is working. She'll be finished soon."
"Yes,” Morgan heard a voice murmur. His own. “Back inside."
His hands had not trembled when they had taken the mug of hot chocolate from the girl's fingers, but they did now. He did not even try to pick up the cup as he stared across the room at Tungarook.
"Either I just saw something utterly impossible,” he declared shakily, “or else you've got a hidden film crew here making a movie and I just found myself in the middle of a special effect."
His host chuckled. “Yeah, that's what everybody thinks when they see Casey doing her thing."
Morgan blinked in surprise. “I'm not the first?"
Tungarook shook his head. “Well, you're the first non-Inupiaq. My relatives and friends, they know about it and accept it. Living together here for ten thousand years or so, people come around to accepting all kinds of things folks from down south would call impossible. We have stories and legends for happenings that have never even occurred to you."
"So it's—magic?” Outside, the green glow had vanished, but Casey did not reappear. Checking her wiring, perhaps. In every sense of the term?
"What, are you calling me a superstitious savage?” At the stricken look that appeared on Morgan's face, Tungarook laughed out loud. “Nothing magical about it,” he replied, finally taking pity on his guest. “It's simple physics. Well,” he corrected himself, “maybe not so simple. But physics. I've discussed the basis with some of the scientists at the Arctic Research Center outside of town. Without mentioning its relation to my daughter's singular aptitude, of course. But we talked process and effect. To put it succinctly, Casey can channel the aurora."
Morgan found himself longing for something stronger to drink than hot chocolate. “Still sounds like magic to me.” He found his gaze being drawn to the door that led toward the garage. “Looked like magic, too."
Tungarook set his mug aside. “What do you know about the Aurora borealis?"
"It's pretty.” Morgan added apologetically, “Physics isn't something I know a lot about. I'm just a photographer, most of the time."
"And I'm just a hunter, some of the time,” his host replied. “But I have a special daughter, and I have a responsibility to know all that I can about her.” He leaned toward his guest. “How did you think way out here that we kept the batteries charged enough to supply all this light and heat?"
"I didn't think about it. You'll recall,” Morgan added wryly, “that when I got here I was nearly frozen to death."
"Oh yeah, so you were. Well, the scientists tell me you get an auroral display when charged particles in the Earth's magnetosphere collide with and excite atoms in the upper atmosphere. These atoms get rid of their gained energy in the form of light. Because most of the emissions come from something called atomic oxygen, most auroras have a green or red glow. Nitrogen gives blue and purple. I'm told there's also infrared, ultraviolet, and x-rays, but we don't see those down here. We're just human.” He poured himself a fresh mug of steam and chocolate.
"Casey may be the first person, at least in our time, who can channel the aurora, but she's not the first example of it happening. Back in 1859 a monster storm on the sun produced maybe the strongest aurora in your time and mine. Most of the telegraph lines around the world went crazy, jumping in and out of service, because of the strength of the auroral discharge. But it turned out that some of the lines were just the right length and orientation to let a—it's called a geomagnetically induced current—flow through them, and allow those particular lines to be used for normal communication."
Morgan made a face. “Oh, come on now. Not really."
Tungarook nodded. “A couple of operators communicating between Boston and Portland, Maine, switched off their station power and transmitted back and forth for two hours using nothing but auroral current. Said the line worked better on auroral power than it did with the juice from their storage batteries.” He waved his hand. “When she holds her arms and body just so, Casey can align herself the same way. Maybe her mother took too many iron supplements when she was pregnant. Maybe there was some kind of unique impurity in them. I don't know."
Morgan turned contemplative. “Every month you see stories about people conducting lightning through their bodies and into the ground or into other objects and still surviving. Then there are the tricks people play with Tesla coils. But I've never heard of anyone channeling the aurora itself."
Lifting his mug to his lips, Tungarook replied absolutely deadpan. “You should get out more. I could rent you a snow machine."
"Actually, right now, I'm thinking more of the bed in my hotel room back in Barrow. That, and a steak."
"Can't do steak, but have you ever had uhnahvik?" Morgan shook his head no. “I'll get some out of the cold box. Bowhead whale blubber with the skin still on. Boil it ‘til it's soft enough to chew, put on lots of salt. You'll like it. It'll remind you of calamari. Eat first, then sleep. I'll wake you before sun up."
Morgan had to smile again. “I'm exhausted, but even so I don't think I'll sleep ‘til February.” More somberly he added, “What makes you think I won't talk about your daughter to others and show up back here someday with a news crew?"
"Two things,” his host told him with assurance. “First, because you couldn't get a news crew or even another photographer out to this place in winter without everybody in Barrow knowing about it first and letting me know in advance. It's too far from Prudhoe or Fairbanks for a helicopter pilot to risk his machine in the dark and the cold and the wind to find one little house on the tundra.” For the first time since Morgan had made the hunter's acquaintance, the man's gaze hardened.
"Second, I just saved your life. You owe me big time. So I ask you to keep quiet about this thing and leave my daughter be. Sure she's got a strange ability, but outside of that she's a normal, regular teen. If word of what she can do gets out, the scientists will be all over her like mosquitoes on a caribou herd in July. She won't have a life worth anything. If you had a daughter, would you want her likeness and life plastered all over the media, every week, every month, until the day she died?"
"I'm not married,” Morgan replied. Remembering the hungry eyes of the wolf, he substituted for them the hungry attention of the media and knew he could not choose which was the more ravenous. “It hurts to say yes, but—I've photographed other people and kept the photographs private. I guess I can do the same with your daughter. And you're right—I do owe you."
"Good man.” Turning, Tungarook raised his voice. “Hey, Casey! The white guy says he'll keep his mouth shut!"
The girl reappeared a moment later. In spite of himself, Morgan could not keep from staring. She looked untouched by her effort, unaffected by the extraordinary exertion. Utterly ordinary. Had long dead ancestors who had also possessed her ability once been burned as witches? He could not recall reading anything about the Inupiaq ever engaging in human sacrifice. It was not part of their culture. It made sense. A life in the frozen north was too valuable to throw away on such nonsense. Not when the one you spared might be the one standing by to save your life.
As Albert Tungarook had saved his.
She came toward him, the look on her face a mix of youthful shyness and special knowledge. “Thanks, mister. I really don't want to be in the papers. I just want to graduate, get my degree, and have a family. You can't do that if people are always studying you like you're a bug under glass."
He had a sudden, unsettling image of a baby in a cradle teething quietly on green lightning. “I understand.” He eyed her up and down. “It—really doesn't hurt?"
> She laughed. “Like I said, it just kind of tickles.” Her eyes flashed mischievously. “Would you like to see what else I can do?"
Morgan looked uncertain. “Power up a snow machine?"
"Better than that. Let me put on my parka. You come outside."
Outside? He hesitated. By the skin of his toes he had just barely survived an extended period of time in that most unfriendly Outside. A glance through the window indicated that the wind had, at least momentarily, died. And he, after all, had not. He looked questioningly at his host.
"Go on,” Tungarook urged him, a twinkle in his eye. “I'll come, too, so you won't get lost."
Jibe or joke, it was enough to motivate Morgan. He drew himself up. “Where are my clothes?"
The hunter turned and pointed in the direction of the little kitchen. “On a grill over the stove. Should be nice and warm by now. I'll get them for you."
The chill outside bit instantly and hard. Morgan had to fight down the urge to rush back into the inviting warmth of the house. The thin layer of ice and snow crunched like packing foam beneath his boots as he followed Tungarook out through the boot room and then the side door of the garage. That was how you entered and exited the house. In the absence of neighbors a typical front door would have been superfluous and leaked heat.
In all directions there was nothing to be seen but flat, only occasionally bumpy ground. Not a tree, not a bush, not a sprig of grass. The latter would only return in concert with the Sun and the spring, both still months away from making a reappearance. For now and for weeks on end there would be nothing but ice, snow, killing wind, the occasional mournful cry of a wolf, and more stars than could be imagined even in Wisconsin. That, and the astonishing light storm that pranced and strutted across the sky in rolling, mesmerizing waves of incandescent green and red.
Having donned her parka and boots, Casey joined them. While her father and their guest halted not far from the house, she kept walking until she was a good thirty yards or so away. For what little good it did, Morgan had his arms folded across his chest. He managed to forbear from slapping his ribs and jumping up and down. Very soon he was not moving at all, and hardly daring to breathe.
Analog SFF, November 2008 Page 15