Arctic Rising

by Tobias S. Buckell

  Anika thought about the flash of light that boiled the water back at the mist boats. It wasn’t just navigating—that cloud had destructive power. But she had another pressing concern: “How will we land at the harbor if Thule is being blockaded? Won’t they refuse to let us land?”

  “It’s Thule,” Albus said, sounding puzzled. “Even if you declare war on them, if you pay for the harbor fee and entrance visa, they’ll happily trade with you.”

  * * *

  Someone, somewhere, once realized that the Arctic Circle needed its very own Hong Kong, its very own Singapore. A replication of relatively unfettered laissez-faire mercantilism run amok. A free-trade harbor. Low-tax haven. A place for the edges of Arctic society to experiment and innovate.

  It began with offshore oil ships used for storage, rafted together, serving as the hub for cross-polar oil shipping. Several oil multinationals joined their resources and gave birth to a new entity responsible for maintaining the flotilla and storing the oil. It also buffered them against liability in the event of a spill.

  And then things went their own direction. The flotilla began serving as a free harbor for not only oil, but any shipping. Floating factories were towed into place so that midsized and pico-sized factories could manufacture on the spot the objects that were being shipped, using raw materials shipping in from other directions.

  The flotilla grew. The harbor ossified. Tall buildings grew out of the decks of the ships. Floating derricks the size of skyscrapers were purchased. Anika could see this seed that began Thule as they flew in, a twenty-square-mile area of glittering, floating metal. The harbor side of Thule consisted mainly of barges lashed to other barges to create a miniature Venice at sea here on the edge of the ice. Towering apartment blocks really were encased derricks, their feet stretching out far below to stabilize them.

  Thule Corporation leased space to the various entities that grew into being under its larger umbrella, made few rules, and profited. As the old flotilla harbor grew, its board of directors realized that gaining more usable “land” would allow unprecedented profits.

  So they decided to save the polar ice cap and move aboard.

  Who was going to complain? After all, the rest of the world was resigned to just letting it slowly … melt away.

  That part of Thule stretched out past the industrial metal grime of the harbor and its swinging walkways and long piers. Fresh, pristine ice architecture radiated away from the blotch of the harbor. The size of this salvaged ice-island was famously compared to roughly that of Rhode Island. Underneath the igloos and ice apartments, burrowed in and insulated, Thule’s explosive growth continued on, reaching icy fingers out until it reached the North Pole Arctic Preserve.

  Massive snow machines, just like the ones usually seen at ski resorts but scaled up an extra magnitude, spat snow out from the tops of buildings and artificial hills, constantly laying down inches of new snowpack to compensate for the continuous ablation of warmer water.

  Fields of solar panels glinted in the harsh, cold air. Massive wind turbines poked their superstructures out from between buildings; several even had buildings on their bases. Offshore, away from the ice pack, even larger wind farms floated, tethered in place by anchors, blades spinning slowly and patiently. Oil might have fueled the rush to the North, but Thule’s constituents had a radical commitment to power independence that was visible right from the air.

  They circled the harbor, passing through a hail of small midge-like insects that rattled against the outside of the helicopter. The pilot landed at the margin of the airport on the edge of a disk of asphalt raised over the snowpack.

  Welcome to the tip-top of the world, Anika thought as the blades began slowing, the pitched whine drawing down. It was a relief to get out and stretch after several hours in the bumpy helicopter.

  And then she thought: I’m carrying a pistol in my waistband into an international airport. She leaned over. “Roo, we’re all armed and this is an international airport.”

  “It’s Thule,” Roo said. “The wild, wild North. You have to use it to do something stupid before they jump at you, and it’s just as likely everyone else is armed.”

  A customs official, looking just like any other cold-weather citizen in a heavy parka and hood with faux-fur lining, waited for them outside as the kicked-up snow blew away.

  He held up a phone and took a picture of each of them as they stepped out of the helicopter. “Welcome to Thule,” he said, shaking Roo’s gloved hand. “The picture is a public-record file of your arrival. The Dutch Navy already paid your entrance fee, so you’re welcome to travel where you wish. The fee paid for two weeks of temporary Thule citizenship. As a citizen of Thule you have the following right:

  “The right to travel anywhere in Thule you wish, or to leave Thule whenever you wish. Hindrance of free movement of any other person is prohibited.

  “All other rights and laws are determined by the demesne you are physically in.” The various entities that made up Thule were called demesnes, each allowed to create its own legal and political system. Last count, Anika recalled there being some forty mini-countries within Thule, each an experiment in whatever its founders considered the most optimal way to thrive. “Violation of any law that doesn’t involve physical bodily harm to the victim results in demesne expulsion. Violating a standing demesne restraining order results in revocation of Thule citizenship and banishment. Do you accept and understand your rights?”

  They all nodded.

  “One last thing,” the customs official said. “All of Thule is in full little brother protocol mode due to the blockade by the G-35 nations. Just so you’re aware.”

  “And what is that?” Vy asked.

  “One hundred percent two-way surveillance,” Roo cut in, smiling. “All public camera feeds and monitoring services are open to the outside world to peruse. All outgoing phone calls, even the meetings by the leaders of the demesnes, are broadcast out. Nothing is secret, anything that happens next will be seen live by the entire world.”

  “Right,” the customs official said. “Radical public transparency, or sousveillance, if you will. All of our drones are broadcasting what they see. We have mites in the air and in the water, and they’re broadcasting the location and shape of whatever they’re sticking to by networking to each other and passing the data back however they can to Thule’s servers. Anything we know about military action around Thule, the world is witness to.”

  Albus Petersen smiled thinly and turned back to scrape one of the midges off the helicopter. He held it up between his fingers, and Anika could see that it glinted where it wasn’t covered in some sort of goo. “Well, you have just made my return trip that much more complicated,” he said, thoughtfully. “These are everywhere?”

  “You will find a declaration and the codes to access what information we’re gathering on our public pages,” the official said.

  Albus sighed. “I have to figure out what they are going to want me to do for the return trip.” He nodded at everyone. “Good luck.”

  He got back in and shut the door and started talking to the pilot. A heated conference between them began on the other side of the window.

  “You’re here to find the missing nuke?” the official asked, almost casually, pointedly ignoring the commotion between Albus and his pilot.

  The engine began to whine behind them. The rotors slowly began to turn.

  Anika turned to stare at him. He smiled back. “Little brother protocol. You came in on a military copter with intelligence agencies covering your entry fee and request to land. And when intelligence officials gave the leaders of our demesnes information, they shared it with everyone. Pytheas’s dictator is waiting to meet you. I guess you’re expected. In other countries they might get annoyed by outsiders coming in to muck around, but we welcome any and all help in resolving this fucking mess. You’ll find we do things a bit differently in Thule.”

  Yeah, thought Anika.

  Very differently.

/>   The words “Pytheas’s dictator” sunk in, but she ignored them as the helicopter’s blades kicked snow and cold air at them in a miniature gale. They hurried away from the landing pad and into the warmth of the Thule airport’s swooping glass and steel embrace.

  32

  A six-foot-tall woman with startling blue eyes and pale hair waited for them inside the warm and bright airport terminal. She wore large, white fox furs and grinned with diamond-crusted teeth—which sort-of ruined her otherworldly, almost elfin look, Anika thought. She had a jet-black cane held in one hand, with what looked like an impossibly large diamond on the top.

  The flow of people moving to leave Thule passed around her: a stream flowing around a white rock. If Thule was as open as the customs agent indicated, and Anika imagined it was, then everyone knew there was trouble, and the packed mob crushing every inch of the airport terminal was part of a rush to get out of here before things got worse—human rats leaping from a sinking ship.

  “Wynter: the dictator of Pytheas,” Roo said to Anika. “And that’s ‘Winter’ spelled with a ‘y.’ I used to know her as Beverly Smithwyck, back when she was a vice president of a mobile factory business. What worries me is … why she’s here personally.”

  “Why?” Anika asked. But now Wynter was close enough to overhear them, and she got no answer.

  Anika moved to shake the woman’s hand, but Wynter made no such move. “You are all posing a rather annoying dilemma for me,” she said. “Come.”

  Four men in cream suits waited outside by a chrome-accented all-white limousine with triangular snow treads instead of wheels.

  Once everyone climbed in, Wynter tapped the glass partition with her cane, and the limo rattled into motion.

  “My problem is that you’re asking me to give up people who’ve used the submarine docks to enter Thule,” Wynter said, her teeth sparkling in the rope lighting of the limo’s interior. “My people are going to cry bloody murder. The demesne I run has utter privacy as rule of law. Violet, you understand. You’ve used the docks before.”

  “There’s a nuclear bomb somewhere in Thule, doesn’t that trump everything?” Anika interrupted.

  Wynter craned her head to the side and stared at Anika. “Those who give up liberty for security deserve neither,” she said. “What else will the Pytheas demesne hand over in order to find this nuclear device? Shall I have you all search house by house? Will my demesne even exist after this?”

  “It won’t exist if a nuke goes off,” Anika pointed out, amazed.

  Wynter shook her head. “But we cease to exist if we drastically change the nature of what makes us … us. If I do this, the demesne falls apart as I’m accused of turning against the core principles that founded the demesne. My citizenry believes they should not be tracked. Looking at the makeup on your faces; Anika I must ask, surely you understand the inherent value of privacy?”

  “And the bomb?” Vy asked.

  “There’s always some threat that asks us to sacrifice freedoms to combat it. The only truly safe environ is a one-hundred-percent-controlled one. Not a free one.” Wynter leaned back against her seat and sighed. “It is a great, modern dilemma.”

  “I thought you were the dictator of Pytheas, right?” Anika asked. “How are you the dictator if you can’t even do this small thing to help us?”

  “I’m a benevolent dictator,” Wynter smiled. “Anyone can lease land from Thule, and that covers maintenance of the snowpack and some minor infrastructure. Everything else is up to the demesne, and anyone can leave: right of movement is the one thing you sign up for. So if what I offer as dictator of Pytheas pales compared to other demesnes, I can’t compete. The effectiveness of my policies determines my demesne’s viability. And that is why I have a dilemma: people will walk away if I do what you’re asking. A lot of people.”

  They continued on in silence, through a streetscape of wide plowed sidewalks and buildings that sat on pylons. Anika was missing having sunglasses; she could use a heads-up display right about now. They’d be popping up little tags telling her what the street was, what demesne they were in, and help her feel a lot less lost.

  The leather seats crinkled as Roo leaned forward. “Your citizens understand that business and travel are evaporating if this bomb goes off, right?”

  “My subjects voluntarily live under a dictatorship,” Wynter said. “They’ve ceded the worrying about that to me. They don’t like hearing about this. All they want to know is that Wynter’s got it under control.”

  “But you don’t,” said Vy. “No one in the whole Circle’s got this under control.”

  “That’s why it’s a called a dilemma, Violet,” Wynter snapped. “There are people in Pytheas actually begging me to kick down every door I can and backtrack your UNPG man’s movements so we can ask about the bomb, privacy be damned. I also have the responsibility of fifty thousand loyal subjects’ lives, and they absolutely will not understand or appreciate my selling them out, regardless of how much more annoyed they’d be if a bomb actually does go off. I also have to wonder if the bomb threat is real, which is why I’m here to meet your new friend, Roo, before I decide to do anything.”

  Anika stared into the clear blue eyes, and realized that they were artificially colored. She could see faint green rings around the edges. “What do you want from me?”

  Wynter wrapped her hands around the top of her cane. “So far we have a lot of paper trail bullshit. It could be the same intelligence agencies working for the blockade messing with our heads. I don’t want to make a mistake over a ghost, you understand? I want to look right at you and ask: What did you really see, Anika, up there in your little UNPG blimp?”

  Anika leaned forward. “The scatter camera got a solid hit. Something radioactive was on board Kosatka. Something they worked hard to protect by shooting me down. I wouldn’t be here, on Thule, if I thought it was just some barrels of waste they were dumping.”

  They stared at each other, then Wynter grimaced. “I doubt it’s dumping, either, from what I’m seeing.” She uncovered the tip of her cane, and a small projector buried in the tip lit up the dark mirror that separated them from the driver.

  The picture the cane transmitted was of an older white man with graying hair. He stood near a concrete pier, inside a large ice cavern. The sub harbor, Anika presumed. Somewhere under the ice, under the Pytheas demesne.

  “You have public cameras, after all that about privacy?” Roo smirked.

  “I’m the dictator of this demesne, might I remind you? The rules don’t apply to me, and I like to know who comes and goes in my territory. That information has never been shared, other than my using it to keep things quiet and orderly. But … being a good dictator means knowing when to toss the rules out. I hope. What you have here is one Mr. Peter Braithwaite,” Wynter muttered. “Meeting him is someone I don’t recognize. May I add, if anyone finds out I handed these men over to you, I will take it very, fucking, personally.”

  “Heard.” Roo sucked his teeth. He looked back at the frozen scene projected against the window and tapped one of the figures. “We know who this one is.”

  Wynter raised an eyebrow.

  Anika was staring, because she knew that figure, too: it was Gabriel. He stood just on the edge of the image, reaching out to shake Braithwaite’s hand.

  “This was taken the morning you were shot down,” Wynter said. “Those are the sub docks. A lot of this demesne’s more interesting characters come through there. That’s why I like to keep an eye on it.” Braithwaite’s image faded away. The next frozen image was a closer still of Gabriel.

  Five men surrounded a fifteen-foot-long wooden case, moving it into place aboard the back of a flatbed truck with the help of several small jack stands and ramps. It looked like it was going to stick out of the end a bit, but just barely fit anyway.

  There it was, Anika thought, her mouth drying. That was the thing that had caused all this trouble.

  “His name is Gabriel. Where did he go after
this was taken?” Anika asked. That could lead them to where the bomb was hidden.

  “This is all I can show you.” Wynter tapped the cane, and the image faded away.

  “Damn it,” Anika said. “This almost killed me. It killed my copilot. It’s hurt people I value.”

  “I can’t give it to you because I don’t have it. I have a secret camera on some of the docks. There are some voluntarily public cameras on the edges of Pytheas, looking out at other demesnes, but we’re pretty dark.”

  “So Gabriel’s people could be anywhere in your demesne, or could have left for anywhere in Thule,” Anika said. “The nuclear device could be anywhere.”

  “If they’ve left my demesne, I doubt they can hide for long. There’s an ad hoc group of concerned citizens parsing the few public camera archives looking for the vehicle they used to see if it left Pytheas and where it was going. You can look them up, search for ‘concerned citizens Thule and nuclear’ and they’ll pop up. So far it hasn’t been found. But thirty vehicles large enough to conceal the device were rented and moved in and out of Pytheas during the time frame we’re looking at. I’m reasonably sure they’re not currently in Pytheas, but they used the vehicles to cover their movements.”

  “They knew you were privacy-obsessed; they used that as a cover.” Roo looked out the window. “We’re not even close to Pytheas, Wynter, we’re ten miles the other direction. What are you doing out of your demesne?”

  They’d slowed down and the buildings had petered out. Four large structures dominated the area, though; they looked like giant igloos, but multiplied in size many times so that they would have engulfed an aircraft hanger. A few people walked around them and streamed out onto the road, headed toward a large wrought-iron gate.

  “You’re right. This is the North Polar Conservation Demesne, or the North Pole Arctic Preserve to others. Most of us call it the zoo, or the tourist trap.” Ten-foot-tall ice walls curved off into the distance. Wynter opened a door as they came to a stop with all the other visitors. “I’ve arranged for you to meet a powerful ally here on neutral ground.”