Colony

by Benjamin Cross

  He turned off his headlamp and prayed that the Dolgan was okay. There had been no screams and he had fired a shot off, so why wouldn’t he be? They knew their business, these Dolgans. Cannibals or not. No doubt he had killed the bear, felled him with a single bullet, and any second now he would return to the cave ready to carry on as if nothing had happened.

  Semyonov waited for him. By now the pounding of his heart drowned out the drip-dripping of moisture from above, and it was suddenly accompanied by twinges of discomfort: not quite pain, but almost.

  He reached a hand towards his top pocket, his eyes remaining glued to the cave entrance. As he fingered the zip, he felt his own defencelessness more and more keenly. As well as the rifle, the Dolgan had been carrying everything else of any use in that rucksack: the bear spray, the flares, even the damn survival tin.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden rustling and then movement at the cave entrance. Semyonov’s skin was clammy despite the chill. Discomfort churned in his chest. He held his breath. Please be the Dolgan, please be the Dolgan, please be the Dolgan…

  It was not the Dolgan.

  5

  Callum watched as Lungkaju craned over the mummy’s legs. How would he react? He was proud of his Nganasan heritage and as faithful to his traditional customs as Fenris was to him. But he also piloted a helicopter for a gas company. He had a smartphone and, so he assured Callum, Facebook and Twitter accounts. Would he be upset to see one of his ancestors like this? Or was he more likely to want a selfie with the archaeological find of a lifetime so that he could post it online?

  “I know this man.”

  Callum stared at Lungkaju. His face was barely illuminated in the torchlight. “He’s carrying a prehistoric flint blade,” he said. “If you know him, then you must be a hell of a lot older than fifty.”

  Without taking his eyes off the mummy, Lungkaju pushed his hood back and reached inside the neck of his parka. He withdrew a stone pendant with the image of a man carved into the front. “It is him,” he said in a low voice. “It is Ngana’bta.”

  “Ngana’bta?”

  “It is a sad name. It means to be forgotten because he was an orphan. But thousands of years ago he was a great Nganasan hunter.”

  Callum had a vague memory of being told the story by one of the host families that he and his team had stayed with in the summer chum settlement in Taymyr. But by now it was a distant, vodka-infused memory. “But Ngana’bta is only a myth.”

  For the first time that Callum could remember, Lungkaju frowned. “The only difference between myth and history, Doctor Ross, is that we choose to believe history. My grandfather taught me this and he was a very wise man.”

  He was right, of course. The fact that a culture’s history was spoken rather than written didn’t make it any less valid. “I’m sorry,” Callum said. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “It is funny,” Lungkaju said. “Ngana’bta also did not believe in myth. Would you like to hear?”

  “I’d love to.”

  Lungkaju settled back onto his haunches and drew a deep breath. “He was an orphan. He was taken in by the people of the Taymyr Lake, my ancestors, and brought up as one of them. He was taller than most of the other boys in the village and he was also very smart. He would sit and learn from the shamans whenever he had no chores. He was an expert skier and hunter, and he could shoot his bow and throw his spears while moving at great speed. He could do this even as a child.”

  As he spoke, Lungkaju kept his body perfectly still and his eyes closed. But the remainder of his face became oddly animated. His eyebrows bobbed up and down, his forehead crumpled as he strained for the right words and his voice turned increasingly sonorous.

  “Ngana’bta was given the job of protecting the clan’s reindeer from wolves. He did this with great courage by charging the wolves on his skis and killing the slow ones with his spear. His work made him fearless, and he led many hunting parties into the far, far north where most Nganasan were afraid to go. Then, in his twentieth year, the sun disappeared from the sky.”

  “An eclipse?”

  “Yes, but to my ancestors this was a very bad sign, Doctor Ross. The leaders of the Twelve Clans that hunted along the northern sea coast called a council. The earth told them that she was angry and that the greatest hunter-warrior in the land would have to perform for her a sacrifice.”

  Callum had heard of the twelve clans. They were roughly equivalent to the modern Finno-Ugric peoples of northern Scandinavia and north-western Russia, and the northern Samoyedic peoples living between the Urals and the River Yenisey in north-eastern Russia. He waited as Lungkaju took a swig from his flask.

  “To find the champion, each clan called for their best hunter-warriors to take part in a sacred contest. Lots of men, young and old, went along. Those that were chosen faced many very difficult tasks to test their strength and their speed and their skills with weapons. In the end, the last five men were given a final task. They had to hunt and kill three animals: a wolf, an ice tiger and a white bear. The hunters were allowed no help, not from men or dogs. It was very hard. Soon three of them were dead and another was not able to finish the task and went back to his village in shame.

  “Now only Ngana’bta was left. He laughed and boasted, ‘Not only will I hunt these creatures, but I will hunt and kill them all in one day!’ The elders shook their heads and the shamans cursed him. Even the Nganasan, who knew of his skills, still doubted him as he vanished into the snow.

  “He had only his skis and his ski-pole spears, but he had spent his life on the trail of wolves and he quickly found this first animal. He chased it from the rest of the pack on his skis and then killed it with his spear. Then he skinned it and went to the land of the ice tiger.

  “He knew that ice tigers were smart and that they were afraid of men. He knew that they would never show themselves while they could see him and smell him. So he took off his skis. He threw the wolf skin over him and howled like a lost wolf. He knew that the wolf and the ice tiger were enemies because they both hunted the reindeer. And soon a very big tiger followed his howls. As the tiger pounced, Ngana’bta threw off the wolf skin and speared the tiger through the heart. Then he skinned him and went north towards the ocean and the great white bear.

  “The bear was the hardest animal to hunt of all. He was twice the size of Ngana’bta, with sharp teeth and sharp claws and a very thick skin. The bear and the tiger were enemies, just like the tiger and the wolf, so he put the tiger skin around him and roared like a lost tiger until a very big white bear followed the roars. It had big claws and even bigger teeth, and when it saw the tiger, it roared also and then attacked. But Ngana’bta was on the ice and he had dug a hole in front of him. He had hidden this hole with snow, so when the bear was very close it fell down through the hole into the water.

  “When he came up for air, Ngana’bta took off his tiger skin and stabbed his spear into the bear’s chest again and again until he was dead. Then he took out his knife and cut off the bear’s head. He went to the council, dragging the wolf skin and the tiger skin and the bear’s head with him. The elders did not think that he would live, so they were sitting in a circle drinking and laughing together when he returned, and he threw the bear’s head into the middle of their circle.

  “Those that did not know him were now very scared. They knew now that there was a young Nganasan hunter of great bravery and skill. They were scared because the clans were not always at peace and Ngana’bta would be a very great enemy in war. They honoured him as the youngest-ever champion of the Twelve Clans, and after much talking they decided that he must go north. He must go further north than any man before. He must go to the Land of White Death. There he must hunt the monster called Tansu Taibaa. To please the earth, he must kill the creature and bring back one of its teeth.

  “Ngana’bta laughed and said, ‘I do not believe in Tansu Taibaa. He is a
myth. A simple myth for simple men. But I will go to the Land of White Death, and if I am wrong and he lives, then I will cut out his skull and swap it for my sleigh and ride it back to you!’

  “The very best carpenters made him a strong wooden sleigh. The Twelve Clans gave him their strongest sleigh dogs. The very best craftsmen made him a pair of whalebone skis and they made him two ski-pole spears from the tusks of a double-tusk narwhal. The shamans made him a very powerful talisman with a carved tooth from the wolf and the ice tiger and the white bear that he had killed and hung it around his neck. Then he said goodbye to his family and to his friends and left for the Land of White Death.”

  Lungkaju reopened his eyes, reached into his pocket and withdrew his flask once more. He unscrewed the cap and took another draught.

  “So what happened to him?” Callum asked.

  “Nobody knows this for sure,” Lungkaju replied. “Some say that he let the dogs go and threw away the weapons and went to find his real mother. Others have said that he asked a killer whale to carry him across the sea, but that the whale was jealous of such a great hunter and so he still swims around and around with Ngana’bta on his back, pretending not to know the way. I do not believe this one, Doctor Ross.” He peered into the torchlight. “But my grandfather, he used to tell me that Ngana’bta did reach the Land of White Death, but that Tansu Taibaa caught him there and ate his flesh.” After a few seconds he added, “I believe my grandfather.”

  With the end of the tale, the cave was plunged into silence. Could it be true? Callum had no idea. There was no reason why Lungkaju would make up such a story and there was no reason to distrust him. All he knew was that, if it was true, and if this turned out to be one of those rarest of instances when history, archaeology and legend held hands, then he was staring at one of the most important scientific discoveries of the century.

  “Say I believe the story,” he said. “I still have a couple of questions.”

  Lungkaju met his gaze and waited.

  “What makes you so sure that this is Ngana’bta?”

  Without speaking, Lungkaju leant forward and grasped at the mummy.

  Ordinarily Callum would have had a heart attack at the thought of even touching such a find, let alone manhandling it like this. But, not for the first time that afternoon, his curiosity had the better of him.

  Carefully, sensing his friend’s anxiety, Lungkaju rolled the mummy over onto its back. The face that had been pressed into the stone floor for so many years crept into the torchlight. It bore an expression of pure horror. The skin was pale. The eyes had receded back into the skull, leaving wide-open sockets. The tip of the nose had been creased upwards and to one side, and the lips were bent open in an unnatural grimace, revealing the front teeth.

  Callum had excavated many dead bodies over the years. But this was different. This was death in a very loose sense, and it was a fearsome sight. If Lungkaju was at all moved by the spectacle, then he hid it well. As the face had rolled into the light, Callum had half-expected him to drop the mummy in disgust and flee the tunnel. But instead he had kept calm, his own expression unchanged.

  Callum’s eye was drawn lower, to where the parka fabric appeared to be pierced through. The cavity, slightly smaller than a fist, continued on into the stomach, and around the edges a rust-coloured halo was dyed into the garment.

  “It’s a stab wound,” Callum said. Whoever this was, it looked as if they’d been impaled as well as having their legs hacked off. But what could’ve… His mind moved back to the carved bone object, the possible ski-tip, salvaged from Fenris. The splintered end was similarly discoloured, and the dog must have tugged it free from the mummy’s gut.

  Lungkaju said nothing but began feeling around the top of the mummy’s chest. Callum watched as he undid the drawstrings at the base of the hood, loosened the neckline and reached inside. A second later he withdrew his hand, two strands of a hide thong now trailing from it. Slowly, he unfurled his fingers.

  Callum could hardly believe his eyes. In the centre of Lungkaju’s palm were three strung canine teeth, ascending in size. The teeth were separated by two silver spacers, and a series of symbols was carved around their roots. Surely it could only be the amulet that he had described just moments earlier; the amulet that the shamans of the twelve clans had made for Ngana’bta before sending him to his death. Single teeth from a wolf, a tiger and a polar bear.

  “You had a second question, Doctor Ross?” Lungkaju asked.

  Callum’s gaze remained glued to the amulet, the shock of this latest revelation still reverberating inside his brain. “Tansu Taibaa,” he whispered at last. “What was it?”

  At this, Lungkaju shifted uneasily. “I do not know. I thought that it was not real also.” He draped the amulet across the mummy’s chest. “But I know what it means.”

  Callum looked up.

  “Tansu Taibaa,” Lungkaju continued. “It is strange. A very strange name. It means lizard bird.”

  Chapter 4

  Tusking

  1

  The centre of Callum’s laboratory on board the Albanov was taken up with surfaces and storage units, map tables and field plan digitising palettes. Computer terminals were positioned around the edges. Sinks with attached gas extraction chambers stood at either end and a large, glass-door specimen refrigeration unit hummed away in the far corner.

  Having mooched around it as part of the initial tour and returned only once in the fortnight since, this was only the third evening that he had been there. Until yesterday, there had been no reason for him to be there. His field survey had identified precisely nothing of archaeological interest. Not so much as a flint flake. His only regular task had been to keep his field diary updated, which he had done on his laptop from the comfort of his own cabin.

  The discovery of the ice mummy had changed everything.

  Callum pulled on a pair of latex gloves, took the bone object and placed it on one of the work surfaces. The more he’d looked at it that day, the more confident he’d felt in his original assessment. It was the end of a highly ornate, ancient bone ski and it was the most probable cause of the mummy’s stomach wound.

  He reached up, grasped the head of an anglepoise and brought it into position above the artefact. After a great deal of trial and error earlier that day, he’d managed to affix the digital camera to a robotic arm extending from a unit above the workstation. He now returned to the computer, where the shutter image was relaying in real time. Grinning like a child with a new toy, he remotely manoeuvred the arm until the camera was in the perfect position. He then took a number of shots at different resolutions and from different angles; the photographs were automatically uploaded and saved to the computer’s hard drive ready to be emailed back to the department.

  He’d attempted to contact both Clive and Jonas as soon as he and Lungkaju had returned to the Albanov. But Volkov hadn’t been kidding about the predicted solar flare activity. It had been playing havoc with the ship’s transmitter and all external communications were down. This was disappointing, but no great disaster. Lungkaju had agreed not to mention the find to anyone until official arrangements could be put in place to deal with the logistical, financial and publicity fall-out, and Callum had no problem taking him at his word. In truth he was more concerned about missing his video call with Jamie; the intermittent and minimal disruption Volkov had talked about had actually been regular and prolonged, at least over the last couple of days.

  As he went to rearrange the ski-tip, there was a sudden crashing noise and the sound of raised voices from Ava Lee’s laboratory next door. Callum rushed out into the corridor and knocked on the door. “Ava? Are you okay in there?”

  There was no response, so he tried the handle. The door was unlocked, and he went ahead and cracked it open.

  Ava was on her knees collecting up a scatter of beige-coloured stones from the floor. A tray teetered back agai
nst the side of a storage unit and Dan Peterson was bent over a stool, his face contorted, clutching at his lower back.

  Ava looked up suddenly. She blushed. “Doctor Ross.”

  “I heard shouting,” Callum said. “There was no answer when I knocked…”

  “Oh, it’s all been a bit Chaplin meets the Marx Brothers,” she said, fishing the last of the stones out from underneath a cabinet. “I was showing these to Dan when I went and dropped the tray. When I tried to pick them up I knocked into him and he hit his back against the desk there.” She attempted a laugh.

  “Are you okay, Dan?” Callum asked.

  “I’m just fine, thank you,” Peterson replied, unable to conceal a wince. “It’s like Ava says. It’s my own damn fault for being such a doofus.”

  “You should go to the infirmary and get it checked.”

  “Oh, hell no, it’s just a little knock to the pelvis, that’s all. I’m gonna go lie down a while and it’ll be fine.” Still clutching at his spine he stood up, wished them both a good evening and made his way out.

  Callum walked over to Ava and took the tray. “Here, let me help you.” He went to place it back down on the nearest counter-top only to find that it was already strewn with books and stacks of papers. He scanned around. The whole place was in a state, clutter spread across every surface.

  He placed the tray down on top of an open textbook. “Busy evening?”

  “Oh, this is nothing,” she replied, the redness retreating from her cheeks. “You should see my office back home. I put half a bacon sub down in there once and it was a full week before I found it again.”

  Callum studied the beige stones scattered across the surface of the tray. They were shark fin-shaped with serrated edges.

  “They’re teeth,” Ava said.

  “Dino teeth?”