Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 11 - The Singing Of The Dead
Page 36
out three pure, clear notes on a descending scale.
The woman raises her face into the last rays of the setting sun, and she
smiles.
284
285 Keep reading for an excerpt from Dana Stabenow's next mystery
featuring Kate Shugak
A FINE AND BITTER SNOW
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Some journals established unwritten rules against submissions on chaos;
other journals came forth to handle chaos exclusively.
The chaoticists or chaologists (such coinages could be heard) turned up
with disproportionate frequency on the yearly lists of important
fellowships and prizes.
By the middle of the eighties a process of academic diffusion had
brought chaos specialists into influential positions within university
bureaucracies.
Centers and institutes were founded to specialize in "non-linear
dynamics" and "complex systems."
This page has been designed for the exclusive use of St. Martin's Press.
Some, particularly traditional fluid dynamicists, actively resented it.
At first, the claims failed. Then a process of academic diffusion had
brought chaos specialists into influential. This page has been designed
for the exclusive use of Press Some, particularly traditional fluid
dynamicists, actively resented it. At first, the claims failed his page
has been designed for the exclusive use of St. Martin's Press Some,
particularly traditional fluid dynamicists, actively resented it. At
first, the claims made on behalf of chaos sounded wild and unscientific.
And chaos relied on mathematics that seemed unconventional and
difficult. As the chaos specialists spread, some departments frowned on
these somewhat deviant scholars; others advertised for more. This page
has been designed for the exclusive use of St. Martin's Press Some,
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Interior in Washington, D.C. You should see some of the E-mails I've
been getting. Like to melt down the computer." He ran a hand through a
thick thatch of stiff red hair that was beginning to recede at his
temples, then rubbed both hands over a square face with open blue eyes
and a lot of freckles that refused to fade. "I've never wanted to be
anything but what I am, a park ranger in Alaska. But hell, I don't know.
The secretary won't even listen to her own employees. They want to
drill. And they're looking at Iqaluk, too."
"I beg your pardon?" Her voice had gone soft, marred only by the
growling sound caused by the scar on her throat. Mutt stopped chewing
and pricked up her very tall gray ears and fixed Kate with wide yellow eyes.
He flapped a hand. "Nothing to get worried about, at least not yet."
"I'm always worried about Iqaluk," Kate said.
"I know."
"So you've been fired?"
He made a wry mouth. "Not exactly. Invited to take early retirement, is
more like it." He sighed, and said again, "I don't know, Kate. At least
Clinton and Gore had a clue about the environment, or pretended they
did. This guy, Jesus." He thrust his chair back, stood up, and wandered
over to the window to stare at the snow piled up to the top of the
frame. "I don't know," he said, turning back. "Maybe it's time. I don't
know that I can work with these people for four years, and maybe eight.
I've got twenty-three years in. And hell, maybe they're right. Maybe
it's time for a change of management. Not to mention point of view,
because I sure as shit am out of fashion this year. Maybe I do need to
move on, buy myself a little cabin on a couple acres, find me one of
your cousins, settle in, settle down."
"Yeah, and maybe I need to shoot myself in the head," Kate said, "but it
might kill me, so I guess I won't."
He grinned, although it seemed perfunctory.
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"Whom did you talk to? Who asked you to quit?"
"Dean Wellington. The head guy in Anchorage. I'm not the only one.
They're making a clean sweep, Kate, right through the ranks."
"Whom are they going to replace you with? 'Pro- development' and 'park
ranger' don't exactly go together in the same sentence."
He shrugged. "If it was me, I'd replace me with a kid fresh out of
college, inexperienced, malleable, easy to lead."
"Someone who will do what they're told without asking any of those
annoying little questions like 'What are the adverse affects of a
massive oil spill on a biome?' Without doing things like counting the
bear population to see if there should or shouldn't be a hunt that fall?"
The grin had faded, and Dan looked tired and, for the first time since
she'd known him, every one of his forty- nine years. "When's the last
time you had a vacation?" she asked.
He rubbed his face again. "I was Outside in October." He dropped his
hands and looked at her. "Family reunion."
She snorted. "That's not a vacation; that's indentured service. I mean a
real vacation, white sand, blue sea, drinks with little paper umbrellas
in them, served by somebody in a sarong."
"Gee, I don't know, that'd be about the same time you were there."
"I don't vacation," Kate said, "I hibernate. When?" He didn't answer.
"Do me a favor, Dan. Don't say yes or no to your boss. Take some time
off, and let me work an angle or two."
"Why?"
"Oh, for Crissake." Kate stood up. Mutt gulped the last of her jerky and
bounced to her feet, tail waving slightly. "I'm not going to sit around
here and pander to your ego. Get out of town."
A genuine smile broke out this time. "That's good, since
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pandering to my ego isn't your best thing. I'm not going to get out of
town, though, even though I am now officially terrified to say so."
"And why not?"
"I've got a girl."
"So what else is new?"
"No, Kate, I mean really. I've got a girl."
She estimated the wattage of the glow on his face. "Why, Daniel Patrick
O'Brian, as I live and breathe. Are you, by any chance, in love?"
He laughed. He might even have blushed. "Argghh, the / word-don't scare
me like that."
"Are you?"
"I don't know. I don't want to leave her, though."
"Who is she?"
"She's waiting tables at the Roadhouse. She's great, Kate. I've never
met anyone like her. She loves the outdoors, she loves the wildlife, she
hikes and mountain-bikes, and she's a good cross-country skier. She
wants to learn how to climb and maybe take on Big Bump with me next
summer. She's gorgeous, too." He paused. "I've got at least twenty years
on her. I've been afraid to ask her how old she is. I don't know what
she sees in me."
"Yeah," Kate said. "Don't worry. I do."
He grinned, a little sheepish. "I'm heading out to the Roadhouse this
afternoon. I'll introduce you. And buy you a drink?"
"Sold. See you there." She stopped to survey him from the door.
Reassured by the sparkle in his eyes and the reappearance of the dimples
in his cheeks, she turned and left, Mutt at her heels, flourishing her
graceful plume of a tail like a pennant of friendship.
His smile lingered
after they were gone. He had been feeling besieged,
and if he was not mistaken, he had just received a delegation from the
relieving force.
Well. If his friends-it appeared he did have some after
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all-were going to fight for him, he could do no less.
His smile widened. And he knew just who to recruit for the front lines.
He stood up and reached for his parka.
On the way back down the mountain, Kate thought of all the things she
could have said in answer to Dan's question. That he'd been the chief
ranger for the Park for eighteen years, after working his way up the
Park Service's food chain fighting alligators in Florida and volcanoes
in Hawaii. That Park rats knew him and trusted him as no Alaskan trusted
a federal park ranger anywhere else in the state. That moose and bears
both brown and black wandered regularly through her yard, and that a
herd of caribou migrated regularly over the plateau, and that no one in
the Park who knew how to shoot or any of their families and friends had
ever gone hungry on Dan O'Brian's watch.
That Dan O'Brian had managed, sometimes single-handedly, to maintain
healthy populations of every species of wildlife from the parka squirrel
below ground to the bald eagle above, and had managed to do it while
maintaining the good opinion of park rats, Native and nonnative,
sourdough and cheechako, subsistence hunter and big-game hunter,
subsistence fisher and sportsfisher and commercial fisher alike, and
that he had managed to do it without being shot, or hardly ever shot at,
was a remarkable achievement. If some wet-behind-the-ears,
fresh-out-of-college kid wired through his belly button to the current
administration took over, the Park would begin to deteriorate, and the
population of the wildlife would only be the beginning. Mac Devlin would
roll out his D-9 and start flattening mountains and damming rivers with
the debris in his search for new veins of gold. Dick Nickel would start
chartering sports fishers by the 737 into the village airstrip. John
Letourneau would start bringing in European big-game hunters by the 747,
if he hadn't already. Dan O'Brian was just a finger in the dike, but he
had it stuck in a pretty vital hole.
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Besides, if he left, she'd miss him.
She stopped in Niniltna to talk to Auntie Vi, who listened in
bright-eyed silence, her head cocked to one side like a bird's. "I'll
start calling," she said, and displayed a cell phone with pride. It was
lime green and transparent.
Kate recoiled, as if someone had offered her a diamondback rattlesnake.
"Uh, great, Auntie. I'm going to talk to Billy now. And I might go to
Anchorage."
"You know somebody there?"
"I can get to know them."
Auntie Vi grinned, and the evil in that grin kept Kate warm all the way
to the Niniltna Native Association offices. Billy looked up when she
walked into his office. "Ah, and here I was just inches from a clean
getaway," he said.
Kate was known in the Park and, indeed, across the state of Alaska for
many things. One of them wasn't finesse. "You hear about Dan O'Brian?"
"No."
She told him. As a clincher, she added, "Dan says the feds are
interested in selling exploration leases in Iqaluk, too, Billy. We need
him."
Billy frowned but said nothing.
Kate was incredulous. "Don't tell me you want to let them drill in Iqaluk!"
"It'd mean jobs, Kate."
"None for us! Nobody here knows how to drill for oil!"
"They could be trained. We could get the feds to make it a condition of
the leases."
A hot reply trembled on the tip of her tongue. From somewhere, she found
the strength to repress it. "Then," she said, with tight control, "you'd
better make sure that we've got the ear of the top spokesman for the
feds in this Park."
He frowned. "What do you want me to do?"
"Do you want to have to break in a new ranger? Somebody who's going to
go around burning out squatters, even if they've been squatting for
twenty years? Somebody who
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doesn't know a moose from a caribou and won't look the other way when
somebody shoots one to feed his kids after the season is closed?
Somebody who'll let all the fish go up the river because the lobbyist
for the sports fishers has a bigger bullhorn and a fatter wallet than
the lobbyist for the commercial fisher?" She paused and took a deep
breath. "I'll fight against any kind of development in Iqaluk, Billy,
barring the logging leases we've already signed, but if you decide you
want to go after subsurface mineral development and you get your way,
it's better for all of us to deal with Dan, someone who knows us and
knows our ways, than some yahoo with a diploma so new, the ink isn't dry
on it yet. At least Dan listens to what the elders have to say about the
history of salmon runs. The seals are coming back to the Sound today
because he did." She paused again. "You know you don't want to have to
break in somebody new."
"Well," Billy said, a defensive look on his round moon face. There was
only one right answer, and they both knew what it was. "No."
"All right, then. Call everyone you know in Juneau and then start in on
D.C. NNA's got a lobbyist, doesn't it?"
"Yes."
"Call him and tell him the Niniltna Native Association, the largest
private landowner in the Park, has a good working relationship with the
current chief ranger and how you'd hate to see that change. In fact,
you'd hate it so much that any new ranger appointed in his place would
very likely meet with resentment and possibly even active opposition.
You can't vouch for his or her safety. Mention tar and feathers."
Billy laughed. Kate stared at him. The laughter faded. What Kate Shugak
lacked in finesse, she more than made up for in force of personality.
Besides, Billy was, above all else, a smart politician and he knew what
a poll of Park rats would say about Dan O'Brian leaving office. He
cleared his throat and reached for the phone.
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* * *
Kate made a couple of other stops to talk to village elders, and she was
satisfied with their responses. Screw with one of us, screw with all of
us, and Dan had been a part rat long enough that he was definitely on
the inside looking out. Mutt, riding behind her, nose into the wind,
seemed to sense her feelings and took a swipe at Kate's cheek with her
tongue, nearly dislodging the bright red knit hat crammed down over
Kate's ears.
On the way to the Roadhouse, she had an inspiration, and five miles
short of her goal, she took a turnoff that led down to the river, a mile
from the road at this point. Spruce trees stood tall and thick next to a
narrow track, snow up to the lowest branches, only to fall into deep
declines nearer the trunk. It took some doing not to slide into them,
and after the second near miss, Mutt decided to get off and walk. Kate
slowed the machine to a walk and thought about the man she was going to see.
> John Letourneau lived on the Kanuyaq River, about a mile downstream from
Niniltna. Home was an immense lodge built of peeled spruce logs, with