White Heat (51 page)

    For a
while she listened to his breathing, allowing herself to be reassured by its
soft regularity, then she went out and took a short stroll along the shingle.
The twilight had long since passed, and the sky had deepened to a fierce,
uncompromising black. Though the mist had cleared somewhat, the remnants of
frost smoke still hung in the air. She would let Derek sleep a bit longer. A
few hours wouldn't make a difference one way or the other. It was the middle of
the night. So long as he didn't get wind of their arrival, DeSouza wouldn't be
going anywhere.

    She
let herself back into the tent. Derek slept on. The wind crept up and began
whooping along the cliff overhead before tumbling onto the shingle. Then there
was another sound on shingle, something heavier and rhythmic and not propelled
by the wind. It came again, the same, unmistakeable rattle of something living
moving, a fox perhaps. On second thoughts, the footfall was too heavy for fox,
too heavy even for wolf or caribou. Instinctively, she tensed, her breath held
fast in her throat, listening for animal sounds while the crackling of the
shale came closer, then slowly began to retreat towards the cliffs.

    Most
likely it was musk ox or bear but, remembering the missing Koperkuj, Edie
decided to investigate. Reaching for her hare-fur mufflers, she tied them
around her kamiks then, grabbing her rifle and ammo belt, screwed on the night
sight, brushed aside the canvas, zipped up the tent flap behind her and set off
alone.

    The rifles's
night sight illuminated the deep, dead dark of the shingle and picked up some
indentations in the shale mass, leading off up towards the slopes at the west.
It wasn't as easy to see as Edie had anticipated. Everything around seemed in
motion. The footprints were diffuse and the wind was already blowing them away,
but they looked as though they'd come from two legs, not four.

    They'd
not told anyone except Stevie where they were going, so whoever was out there,
it couldn't be DeSouza. Stevie wouldn't have told a soul. A hunter most like,
perhaps even Koperkuj himself, though it seemed unlikely.

    She
took a breath, put all thoughts and words out of her mind. From now on, she
would rely only on the evidence of her senses: the sound of the wind, the
indentations in the shale and the bitter tang of crushed caribou moss as she
trod through the light snow. Moving softly, almost soundlessly, psyching
herself for an encounter, she followed the line of footprints as they stretched
into the darkness. She made her way across the beach, alert, her heart
pounding, until she reached the slickrock below the cliffs. There she stopped,
crouching low, waiting. More cautious now she was sure the source of the prints
was human. Pretty soon she heard a low groan and moved forward, silently, with
her knees bent, using the night sight to see her way through, her trigger
finger at the ready.

    At
a
stepped ledge where the rock fell away, she lowered herself so that she was
sitting with her feet dangling onto the surface below. Tapping with her toes,
feeling for a step, she eased herself onto the rock. The groaning grew louder.
Unmistakeably human, it seemed to be coming from around the side of a large
boulder. Staying low, she called out, but got no response. The wind brought a
scent to her nostrils, a smell so familiar it felt like a friend. Blood.

    Moving
forward, slowly, leading with her rifle, she called,
'Kinauvit?'
Who are
you? Nothing. At the boulder she rested for a moment, picked up a stone, threw
it to attract fire then, when there was no response, mustered her courage,
raised her rifle, readied the sights and leapt round the rock.

    Through
the night sight she could see a bundle lying at an odd angle: a human being,
either dead or unconscious. She reached out and pushed the barrel of her
Remington against the body. Nothing. Flipping on her headlamp she saw what she
immediately thought was the victim of a bear attack. Though the body seemed
untouched, the face was mashed, a dense slub of flayed skin and clotted blood,
the features all but erased. Slinging her rifle around her shoulder, she
reached down and placed two fingers on the carotid. There was a pulse. As she
removed her hand, her fingers made contact with metal. A familiar gold chain
glinted in her headlamp. It was Old Man Koperkuj and he was still alive. Just.

    She
took his shoulders and turned him over then took off her fur hat and laid it
under his head. As she did so, his arms flopped across his body and she saw
that he had been tortured: his hands were meat stumps from which the
fingernails had been ripped out.

    He
lay completely still now, the bloody hocks of hands bunched against his face.
Everything in her Inuk soul went out to him. To violate an elder this way was
as obscene as violating a child.

    She
stroked his head. 'It's OK.'

    Koperkuj
was in no state to move. It couldn't have been his footfall she'd heard in the
shale. Immediately, she clicked her headlamp off and was reaching for her rifle
when the dazzle of a powerful lamp blinded her. It took a moment for the red
sparks behind her eyelids to clear, but when they did she could see standing
before her the craggy outline and aquiline nose of the man in Qila's photo.
Professor Jim DeSouza. He was pointing a rifle directly at her.

    Her
instincts told her she was dealing with someone very sick. 'This man is an
elder,' she said.

    'That's
not my fault.' DeSouza moved closer, kicked her rifle away and picked it up.
His voice grew quiet and conspiratorial.

    'You
know what I want, if you hadn't taken it from him, this wouldn't have
happened.' He must have sensed her revulsion because he drew back a little. 'He
was more protective of you than I'd imagined he would be. It took a lot for me
to get it out of him.' He nudged at the old man's hands with his boot.

    'He
doesn't like
qalunaat,'
Edie said.

    'I
don't blame him.' DeSouza's face was as contorted and brittle as the branches
of an ancient, wind-whipped willow. 'People should stick with their own kind.
We'd all be much happier that way.'

    'I
can tell you where the stone is,' she said.

    'Yes,'
he said. 'I know.'

    'Please,'
she said. 'We have to get the old man some help.' The word 'please' sounded odd
coming from her mouth. It was not an Inuit word. But then the professor was not
Inuk.

    DeSouza
clicked his tongue against his teeth.

    'Forget
him, he's gone.' He had lost weight since the photo was taken, and his face
looked drawn. 'For a moment there I thought you might be interesting,
intelligent even, but now I see you're just as dumb as all the others.'

    'The
others?'

    'Natives,'
he said. She felt the contempt leaking from him.

    The
moment to reach him was lost.

    He
picked up her rifle and with one hand cracked it open and took out the clip.
Then he flipped his chin, indicating the space behind her. As she turned he
pushed the barrel of the rifle into her left hair braid and raised it. The
gesture was intimate, violating, as he had intended it to be. 'You go first.'

    They
scrambled down onto the beach. The first intimations of nautical dawn, a
browning of the night around the southern horizon, had picked out the contours
of the tent. There was no light on inside and none came on when they approached.
Derek Palliser was still asleep.

    Edie
felt DeSouza's rifle nudge her pigtail.

    'Wake
Palliser.'

    She
called but there was no answer.

    'He's
hurt. He took a Xanax, some painkillers.'

    DeSouza's
face clouded over. He nudged Edie in the back with his rifle then passed over
some rope.

    'Tie
him up and do it properly. You try to get away, I'll do to him what I did to
the old man. Then I'll come for you. Open the tent flaps so I can see you.'

    'We're
further ahead than you think,' she said, binding Derek's wrists. 'We know
exactly where the stone was found. We can take you to the source.'

    Behind
her, Edie could feel DeSouza's body tense.

    'We're
all the same to you, aren't we?' he said.
'Qalunaat. '
He coughed up the
word as though it was some kind of infection. 'Just after the money. That was
Wagner, Fairfax too. Small men with petty dreams. I couldn't be less interested
in that.'

    For
a
moment Derek seemed to rouse himself, then he fell back into a stupor.
Edie shut up and kept tying her square knot.

    'You
think I've taken leave of my senses, don't you?' he said. He began to inspect
her rope work, pulling on the knots a couple of times. 'Maybe I have.'

    They
moved back onto the beach, leaving Derek trussed up in the tent. DeSouza made
Edie kneel on the shale and had her put her hands on her head, execution style,
while he stood close by, rifle in hand, scanning the sky. The stones bit into
her knees. She considered the possibility of flinging a handful of them in his
face, but she sensed that by the time her hands even reached the stones, he'd
have killed her. They waited.

    So
long as she hadn't yet given DeSouza the stone, he would keep her safe. After
that, he'd take her out onto the tundra somewhere and get rid of her. Apart
from Derek, who would go out of their way to discover what had happened to her?
Mike? Stevie? Martie? Neither Mike nor Stevie would stand up to Simeonie. As
for her aunt, she didn't know any longer.

    The
thin cuticle of the sun had circled a few degrees further round the horizon,
too weak to haul itself into the sky. A terrible bleakness came over her. She
struggled against it, but it was like the great dark period, omniscient,
ineluctable. This won't do at all, she said to herself. Edie might be feeble,
but Kigga doesn't give in. She looked to the horizon once more. The sun was
rusting, falling away into the darkness, but not quite gone yet.

    Not
quite gone.

    The
only chance she saw now was to draw him in, to make him imagine she was
sympathetic to his cause. She waited a while until she felt his body relax and
the stink of his adrenaline softened, then she pitched in.

    'I
know places where there might be other stones,' she said. 'Meteorites.'

    DeSouza
didn't reply. She tried again.

    'If I
knew what you were looking for, exactly, maybe I could help you? I know the
land.'

    A
snort. 'How could you possibly know what I might be looking for?' He moved
around so she could see his face. 'How could you even begin to understand?'

    She
nodded, submissive. 'I know I'm stupid.' He looked at her. 'I have my uses,
though. If we run out of food, I can bring down a caribou at a kilometre.'

    DeSouza
laughed. 'We're not going to run out of food,' he said, then, flipping at her
pigtails with his rifle: 'What are your other uses?'

    Edie
closed her eyes and swallowed. 'You're right. I'm useless, what's worse, a
female. But I'm wondering, given I'm no use to anyone, can I put my arms down
now?'

    DeSouza
let out an impatient little sigh, but he did not protest. He looked drained,
she thought, almost spent.

    'The
scientists here,' he said, gesturing northeast, beyond the cliffs, towards the
science station campus, 'they do good work, you know, mechanical stuff, mostly,
developing vehicles and sample collectors.' He wasn't really talking to her
but, rather, she realized, to himself, to the other, saner part of himself.

    He
fell silent. She understood then. He was fatally lonely. All her life, she'd
watched the Arctic destroy men like DeSouza. They came up north with their
fantasies of self-reliance and rugged individualism only to discover they
weren't so rugged after all. Soon enough, most of them found that they needed
people. And those who didn't lost their minds. Right now, DeSouza was at a
crossroads, she thought. He could go either way.

    He
stared at the sky for some while, then he turned his head to look at her. After
a long time he said:

    'You
know what makes meteorites special? Apart from the gas?' He tried to muster
some righteous anger but what came out sounded weary.

    Edie
felt a deep, warm relief. He wanted to connect.

    'I
suppose you'd say meteors came from the spirit world, some baloney like that.'