“I guess gassing people and starting their house on fire doesn’t count as hurting people these days,” said Emily.
Rice shifted in his chair. “As I said, things got out of hand.”
“It was supposed to be a kinder, gentler kidnapping then, was it?” Emily’s eyes glistened with loathing. She stuffed a wad of french fries into her mouth.
The smile on Rice’s face teetered and collapsed. “The President of the United States has suffered a psychotic break and run away, young lady, threatening our national security. Your father has chosen to help her. Their crimes endanger this entire planet. They must be stopped. If bringing you here can put an end to this, then I’m not about to apologize for my actions.”
“You really are a fuckhead,” said Emily.
Iain reached out and put a hand on Emily’s forearm to quiet her. He gave her a quick smile and turned to Rice. “So do you know where our father is now?” he asked.
Over near the door a radio crackled and Rice turned to see one of the soldiers take a call. He sighed and turned back to the kids. “He and the President are in Canada right now,” he said, wondering why he was explaining anything at all to these fucking larvae. It was a waste of his time and talents. “We’re negotiating with Canadian officials for their surrender.” A ping sounded in his new implant and he smiled with relief. About fucking time.
In through the double doors came Bob and Alice. They spotted Rice immediately. Bob strode over and stood next to the table, Alice shadowing her closely. Ignoring the kids, Bob spoke to Rice. “Good news, Grand Poobah. Spud and the gang have cleared the field.”
“Really?” said Rice. “Guess I got their attention. Ma Kettle still in the igloo?”
Bob shook her head. “She’s on the move, boss. A fucking dogsled, no less.”
Rice gave a hearty laugh. “Goddamn motherfucking son-of-a-bitch!” he said with glee. “I love it when the dice roll my way!” He stood, tossing his napkin on his plate and reaching out to drain the rest of his Coke. He looked at Bob. “You got loverboy safely behind bars, right?”
Bob nodded. “We were there waiting for him when he fell,” she said, glancing briefly at Emily and Iain before turning back to Rice. “He’s ours. And get this: we found his ex in a soul bank. The Life had her on ice!”
Rice nodded and pulled on his jacket. “Sweet. We’ve got a Specter in place and the good Lady Stardust doesn’t have her pills, the poor dear.” He motioned toward the door with a nod of his head. “You up for a bit of midnight hunting, Bob?” he asked.
“Thought you’d never ask, Theo,” she said with a smile. “Glad to have you back.”
“Any word on the body the Prez said she saw on the highway?” asked Rice, straightening his tie.
“Nothing yet, boss,” said Bob.
“Guess I can’t have everything.”
Without so much as a fleeting look at the kids, Rice walked toward the door, stopping long enough to give the soldiers his instructions. Then he was gone. Emily and Iain could hear him whistling down the hallway.
Bob turned to Alice. “You coming?”
“Soon,” answered Alice in a whispery voice.
Bob reached out and put a hand on Alice’s shoulder, nodded her acceptance, then followed Rice.
Alice took a seat across from the two kids, pulling the chair far enough from the table that she could sit cross-legged. Emily and Iain stared. She was beautiful, but in such a strange, exotic way that they felt simultaneously fascinated and repelled, as if Alice were a snake drawing close enough to strike. She was so tiny, like a three-year-old, but with large, very dark, almost black eyes as old as the bedrock that surrounded them all, and just as captivating. Her hands, mostly hidden in the sleeves of her tiny red sweater, were like the hands they’d seen on little monkeys at the zoo.
“You are human children,” said Alice.
Iain nodded. “Who—?” he managed to sputter.
Alice nodded slowly. “I am Alice,” she said, her voice quiet and stiff, the whisper of a fawn. “I remember human children from my socialization, but that was some time ago. I had forgotten.”
“I’m Emily,” said Emily. She pointed at her brother. “This is Iain. They kidnapped us.”
Alice frowned slightly, as though her face were a rigid, plastered mask. “You are the children of the man Rice killed?” she asked.
“What?” said Iain, rising out of his chair. “Rice just said…”
Alice cut him off with a wave of her tiny hand. “He was working against the Plan,” she said evenly. “He had to be stopped. I helped put him into the Confusion.”
Tears spilled down Emily’s face, the outpouring of grief and fear and anger that had been building up since the attack on her grandfather’s house. She pushed back from the table and leaned forward, huddling into herself as though she’d taken a blow to the gut.
Alice turned to watch her. “Do they hurt?” she asked, pointing at Emily’s tears.
Emily looked up, frowned, wiped at her face.
“They killed him?” asked Iain quietly.
“He was working against the Plan,” repeated Alice. She slid off her chair and stepped toward Emily, reaching up to let a tear roll onto her finger. She brought the tiny drop close to her face to examine it more closely. After a long moment she looked at Emily. “Why do you make these?”
“Because they killed my Dad!” she said harshly, hoping that anger would soothe her fear. “Because I love him!”
Alice looked again at the tear, watching it crawl like a spider along her finger. Her porcelain brow crinkled almost imperceptibly. For the briefest of moments her eyes lost their focus, as if in the space of a single heartbeat she had traveled to the ends of the Universe and back again in search of understanding. She looked from Iain to Emily, her eyes flaring. “I do not think they know of this,” she said, a slight tremble in her voice, as though the realization had stirred her heart. Without another glance or word, she walked away, slipping through the double doors so deftly that they did not even seem to open.
Emily and Iain stared, unable to speak, unsure of what had just happened.
15.2
The ride was far smoother and quieter than Linda would have expected. The sled slid across the packed snow like a skater on a rink, the composite runners shushing like librarians. The dogs, a team of six harnessed in tandem, pounded the trail on soft pads, an engine of breath, bone, and muscle speeding them to the Inuit camp. It was as if the dogs knew the import of their task, and were willing to spend themselves in service. Another debt of gratitude Linda intended to one-day repay.
The night was cold and clear, the only wind that of their own passing. The heavens overhead were painted with northern light. The stars had to compete for their share of glory, peering through a gauzy, auroral curtain of cobalt, emerald and violet. Linda scanned the sky, searching for the telltale winking out of stars, searching for discs and diamonds, searching for those whom Obie called ‘all of the above.’ She saw no sign of them. Payok was right. They’d gone.
“Are you warm enough?” asked the man behind her. He stood on the sled’s runners, the musher, he’d said, and when he leaned low it felt like he was speaking right into her ear. Linda looked around to see him. His wide grin shone out from between his fur hood and goggles, teeth sparkling in the midnight light. Linda guessed that he was in his forties, though she had to admit that it was difficult to tell.
“I’m fine,” called Linda. She was. The fur parka they’d given her kept her as toasty as she could wish. And the facemask worked far better than she’d anticipated, even if it made her look like a Ninja. The only things that felt a bit cold were her toes, but they always felt cold. “What’s your name again?”
“I’m called Aamai,” the man said. “It means ‘I don’t know!’” A slowing of the sled caused him to raise his head. “On by!” he called and the dogs picked it back up.
“That’s an interesting name,” said Linda.
“It reminds me th
at I am not in control of everything,” answered Aamai. “My other name is Bill. I grew up in Winnipeg. Worked as an electrician most of my life. But Sinaaq asks us all to adopt Inuktitut words as new names, as a way of shedding the sins of the past and stepping into our true selves, and our work here on Earth.”
An interesting idea, thought Linda. Given all that she’d been through, and what she could foresee ahead of her, she wondered what her new name might be. What name would you give someone who has come, as Obie said, to help guide humans through the collapse of civilization? And what name would history give her? Would she be regarded as a great leader or a monster? Or both? Linda sighed. Such questions would be answered by generations hence. If there were any generations hence. For now, she had to concentrate on the matter at hand.
Payok, Aamai and an old woman whose name Linda could not remember, had burst into the trailer an hour or so after Cole’s body had arrived, sent by Sina to report that the plans had all been moved up. The aliens had departed as soon as Cole had been delivered, withdrawing their protection from the sky above, leaving Cole and Linda exposed. They would all need to head over to Tuyurmiangoyok, the outlying camp that Sina and her followers had established on the eastern coast of Bathurst Island. “Right now,” said Payok firmly.
Obie had sprung into action, coordinating things with the Inuit. They woke the proprietor of one of the local outfitters and acquired another snowmobile and a freight sled, onto which they loaded Cole’s now-clothed body. Payok and Obie then departed as soon as Cole was secured, taking Linda’s love away into the darkness, taking him from her once again. Linda and Aamai helped load an old diesel Mercedes snowcat with supplies, then found three other members of the group who were repairing snowshoes in a house on the other side of the hamlet. Those three left in the snowcat with the old woman. Then Linda and Aamai harnessed his team and followed by sled. The President was the least necessary component of whatever was about to transpire, it seemed, and now all she could do was ride and watch as Aamai drove them to their destination.
But that was bullshit, wasn’t it? She could ask questions. She could seek to understand. She could do that much. Linda turned to Aamai and shouted, then checked her voice. She would not need to yell. “How far are we?” she asked.
“We’re about halfway there,” said Aamai. “Thirty minutes more, maybe.”
Linda smiled. Though he looked as though he’d stepped out of the distant past, Aamai’s manner of speech was mainstream and modern. “And I’ll meet this Sina there?”
“Yes, though she may be fairly distracted with the tasks before her. Don’t be insulted if she has little time for you.”
“I understand. Thanks. So, what are her tasks, exactly? I mean, nobody’s told me what this is about. This ritual thing we’re going to. What’s it for? And why the hurry? All Obie would say is that the aliens have gone and that we need to protect ourselves.”
Aamai mumbled soothingly to his team for a moment before responding. “I think he does not want to get your hopes up,” he finally said.
“My hopes for what?”
“For restoring your friend’s anirniq, Madam President. His soul. The Tuurngait are masters of such work. As is Utterpok. But even they may fail.”
Linda turned back to look out over the dog team and stare at the sky. Jesus! Can they really do that? Obie had said they’d try but her heart had failed to fully embrace the possibility. The thought of Cole standing before her once again, present and vital and whole, looking down into her eyes, reaching out to hold her … that image terrified her to the core, forcing the questions that hid deep inside. Would he still know her? Would he want her? Would he love her? Would she love him? She did not know if love could survive intact through both death and resurrection; especially love as new and fragile as theirs.
Besides, what could love possibly mean when it had been manipulated by the aliens? So much had happened in so little time. One by one the underpinnings of her life had been pulled away, leaving her lost in doubt. Did the love she’d felt for the man who had helped her escape still burn in her heart? Even if it did, could she trust it?
“I think he will be glad to see you,” said Aamai from behind her, as if reading her mind. Linda turned to see his grin. “I think we will succeed.”
Linda raised an eyebrow. “You don’t worry about getting my hopes up, I see,” she said.
“Our angakkuq is very powerful, Madam President. We have honored the taboos and kept our word.” Aamai pointed at the aurora overhead. “If we do not offend the goddess Sila this night, we may prevail.”
There were too many words she did not know to follow the meaning with her mind, but Linda could feel it with her heart. “You don’t sound like an electrician from Winnipeg,” she said.
Aamai bowed stiffly. “Thank you, Madam President.” He called out to his team and the dogs slowed to a stop. Leaping from the sled, he walked forward, kneeling amongst his dogs to speak soft words of encouragement and embrace the lead pair. After a moment he looked up at Linda. “We will rest here for a bit.”
Linda pushed back the tarp and blankets and pulled herself up and out of the sled’s basket, stretching her stiff legs. “Halfway there” was as remote a place as she’d ever seen. Yet this place was full beyond measure. She looked out over the landscape, noting how the sky’s varied hues played across the drifts and ice patches, illuminating the terrain like a black light in a nightclub.
“We have good snowfall this year,” offered Aamai. “The dogs are happy.” He buried his face in the fur of a dog and sang a snatch of song: “I tremble with joy and the stars laugh along.”
Linda ventured away from the sled, walking slowly up the side of the shallow bowl across which they’d been traveling, stretching and twisting and flexing her arms and legs and back as she made her way, feeling her way fully and gratefully into the healing Obie had brought to her. The snow was crunchy and dry underfoot, solid, as if it had melted and settled and re-frozen many times. Reaching the bowl’s edge, Linda turned to scan the dome overhead, the depths of the Cosmos, the realm of great mysteries. Her heart pounded. Was Cole’s spirit really “out there” somewhere, she wondered? How could such things be? The beauty of it all suddenly stuck in her throat: the sky, the stark, multicolored landscape undulating around her. This was the real world. This land, this sky, this universe of stars. This man. And these dogs. This was real. More real than the world from which she’d escaped, the world of policies and plans and backroom deals. Linda sighed, noting the silence that surrounded her. A smile played across her face as she listened. She wondered if this silence might be the voice of God.
Linda turned to Aamai, still crouching near the sled. She headed back to him. “You love these dogs,” she said.
Aamai nodded. “They are my people, Madam President,” he said.
“You can call me Linda.”
The Inuit nodded sharply and turned back to the dogs.
“How long have you owned them?” she asked.
Aamai winced. “The qimmiq and I have been together for three years now, most of us,” he replied. “I am building a traditional qamutik this winter: a sled made from wood and hides and sinew. When it is complete we will feel complete as well.”
Linda stepped closer to the dogs, offering her gloved hand for one of them to sniff. “How do you choose your team?” she asked.
“I do not choose them. We choose each other. Sinaaq says that this must be the way of things now. The way of partnership. The way of co-creation.” He looked pointedly at Linda. “The days of the conquerors are ending. There will be no more exploitation.”
Linda flinched at his words. She was now the leader of those conquerors. And she knew that Aamai was correct. She felt her face blush at the accusation and hoped that he would not see it under the northern light. She gestured back toward the dogs. “They’re beautiful beings,” she said.
Aamai nodded, as if acknowledging the obvious. “All beings are beautiful.”
Li
nda nodded in response. “Of course.”
Aamai sniffed. “And yet your people misbehave like stupid children, destroying such beauty with every step, risking the extinction of all. Your gods have been as soft and lazy as you have been. They’ve taken far too long to punish you.”
Linda sighed and looked down at the ground, unable to defend herself. The world was a mess. But she hadn’t realized how much of a mess until Obie had walked her around that corner. She cringed at the memory of her dream. And standing now in the light of Aamai’s judgment, she could see the full truth of it. The words “I’m sorry” spilled from her lips before she could stop them. She knew such words were far too small.
Aamai bowed. “I will accept that as a first step, Madam President. It was for this reason I was chosen to accompany you on this journey. But I must warn you that it will take every moment of the rest of your days to make those words come true.” He pointed at the sky with a gloved hand. “And Sila will be with you always, to judge your actions. Do you understand?”
“I will before I leave here,” promised Linda.
Aamai smiled. “Then we can proceed.” With that he offered his arm and helped Linda back into the sled. Linda settled into her seat and watched, with newly-opened eyes, as the musher ran to his team and spoke to them with quiet love and respect. “Will you take us the rest of the way?” he asked calmly. The lead dogs howled at the sky in response, as though mindful of the epic poetry that would one day be written in their honor. Linda’s heart hammered at the sound. It took her a moment to realize why: the dogs were calling her to greatness as well.
Aamai took his place at the back of the sled and called out. “Alright, now!” he said, and the team began to move. Lit from above by aqsarniit, the northern lights, they advanced across the snow and ice with sober minds and eager hearts, like youngsters on a vision quest, towards a future Linda could barely begin to discern.
All of the Above Page 36
