The Arctic Code

by Matthew J. Kirby

  “Can I help you?”

  Eleanor whipped around.

  A young guy stood there, a coil of hose over his shoulder that almost reached the ground. Eleanor thought about running again, but this guy didn’t seem like he was after her, or cared who she was.

  “I’m, uh, looking for hangar eighteen,” she said.

  “Two more down.” He pointed. “That way.”

  “Thank you.” She nodded and walked on, forcing herself to move slowly and openly.

  Security on this side of the airfield seemed a lot looser than it was in the passenger airport. No alarms here. Maybe that was all part of the deal. Maybe all the illegal runs made by these supply planes were . . . overlooked.

  The young guy’s directions brought Eleanor to the back of the hangar. She skirted around the building and found the main doors wide open. A large plane took up most of the space inside, its wings almost reaching wall to wall. It was definitely an older model, one that ran on gasoline, not one of the newer electric ones. The plane was thick and round, painted in not-quite-matching shades of white, with a wide belly. Eleanor assumed from its girth it was a cargo plane, and it looked like it had been beaten up and not quite given the chance to heal before it got into another fight. A couple of mechanics currently worked on its nose.

  A man stood nearby, watching them, one arm across his chest, the other elbow propped on it, hand under his chin. He wore a plaid shirt under a heavy canvas jacket and had long brown hair that almost reached his collar, a mustache, and thick stubble over the rest of his face and neck.

  Eleanor approached him. “Are you Luke?”

  He glanced at her, then turned his attention back to the plane. “What do you want?”

  “I hear you sometimes fly to the Arctic.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Just some guys who’re jealous of your fat contracts.”

  “That so? Well, pilots always talk big on the ground, but I don’t seem to have a lot of competition these days.”

  “Are you going up there soon? To the Arctic?”

  He scowled. “If these clowns know what they’re doing.”

  “Well, I was wondering if—”

  “Ed!” Luke stepped toward the plane. “What are you doing? Radar’s working fine—leave it alone!”

  Eleanor waited while Ed defended himself and Luke got even angrier. After he’d corrected the mechanic again, he glanced back at Eleanor.

  “You’re still here.”

  “I am,” she said.

  “You must want something.”

  “I . . .” Eleanor didn’t know if she should just come out and say what she wanted. But she didn’t know what she would say instead, or how to ask. “I’m—I’m trying to get to the Arctic.”

  “Uh-huh.” He didn’t seem at all surprised, and she couldn’t tell if that was because nothing surprised him, or because he simply didn’t believe her. “And?”

  “And I want to pay you to take me.”

  “No way.”

  She scowled. “Why not?”

  “Why not?” He turned to fully face her for the first time since she’d walked into the hangar. “Because you’re a kid, and I’m not gonna get myself sued over you. And really, if you’re running away from home, why the Arctic?”

  Eleanor bristled, for several reasons. “Why does everyone assume I’m running away? I’m not.”

  “No? Then what are you doing here?”

  “That’s none of your business!” It didn’t feel right telling Luke anything about her mom. “Your business is getting me to the Arctic.”

  He shook his head. “Girl, you don’t know a thing about my business.”

  True, but she was pretty sure he liked to get paid, no matter what his business was. “I have money,” she said.

  “Not gonna happen.”

  “I’ll pay you five hundred dollars.”

  “No way.”

  “A thousand.”

  “Nope.”

  “Fifteen hundred.” She couldn’t offer much more than that. She only had two thousand.

  “You can make that number as high as you want,” Luke said. “Won’t change a thing.”

  “You have to take me.”

  “I don’t have to do anything except get this plane fixed and make my delivery on time.”

  Eleanor wasn’t giving up. “Where are you going?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Fairbanks.”

  “I need to get to Barrow.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yes. Do you ever fly to Barrow?”

  “Not that this’ll do you a lick of good, but I’m heading to Barrow after my stop in Fairbanks.”

  “That’s perfect.”

  He laughed, a hollow sound, even though he seemed genuinely amused. “It’s far from perfect,” he said. “Barrow is no place for a kid. Last place on earth you want to be, and that’s saying something.”

  “How much do you want?” Eleanor asked.

  “It’s not the money, kid. I’m doing you a favor.”

  “Please.” Eleanor hated that she couldn’t keep the begging sound out of her voice. “If you don’t help me, I’m going to be in big trouble.”

  “Oh, I think you already are.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Airport security was here just before you were. They’re looking for a girl with a big Arctic pack on her back.” He made a show of looking around the hangar. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that’s you?”

  This unsteadied Eleanor’s resolve with a moment of panic. She swallowed. “Maybe.”

  Luke spread his hands. “Look, I’m not going to turn you in. Truth is, I don’t care what kind of fight you’re in with your parents, or what kind of teenage drama you got yourself into, but—”

  “You don’t know a thing about me.” Her voice actually sounded slightly menacing, which she hadn’t intended. But Luke was making light of a dangerous and desperate situation, without knowing it.

  He glanced at her askance. “Fact is, I take you on my plane, your problems become my problems. Someone could even say I kidnapped you. No thanks.”

  “Please, I—”

  “Sorry, kid.” He swept his greasy hair back. “Now, every moment I waste talking to you is a moment I’m not watching these idiots with Consuelo—”

  “Who’s Consuelo?”

  His scowl said he thought she was an idiot for asking. “My plane. So if you’ll excuse me.” He turned away from her.

  Eleanor seethed. “I’m not just some runaway, you know! You don’t understand the situation! This is—”

  “Kid, you find someone on this snowball of a planet who doesn’t have a sob story, and they’re either a lunatic or a liar. Now get lost before I change my mind and call security.”

  Eleanor accepted then that she wouldn’t be able to convince him, so she slowly turned toward the hangar exit and walked away.

  But that didn’t mean she was giving up. That beat-up plane was going to Barrow. When it—or she, apparently— took off, Eleanor planned to be on her.

  Eleanor found a couple of giant wooden spools stacked outside the hangar, which she hid behind, stealing occasional glances at Luke’s plane through a nearby window. Consuelo’s back end lay open, and Eleanor decided that her best chance to stow away would be to get inside her cargo hold. But how? She pushed on the window to test whether it was unlocked.

  It was.

  She left it open a crack to hear what was going on inside, then waited for an opportunity when no one was around.

  She checked her Sync to see what time it was. At least the day had started to warm up a bit. Her teeth weren’t chattering, and her body didn’t shiver as badly. On the other side of the giant spools, the road had grown busier, with more trucks and people moving between the hangars. An hour went by. Then another.

  At last the mechanics seemed to be clearing from Consuelo, rolling away their tool chests and unplugging their mobile computer terminals.

&n
bsp; Now was Eleanor’s chance. She slid the window open the rest of the way and readied herself.

  “Thanks, Ed!” she heard Luke call from somewhere near the plane’s nose.

  The mechanics and ground crew had all backed away, but they were still in the hangar. There was a chance one of them might spot Eleanor, but she didn’t think she could wait to see if they would leave before the plane took off.

  When no one seemed to be looking, she lifted her pack through the window and dropped it on the ground. Then she quickly heaved herself over the sill and landed next to her pack.

  A stair truck pulled slowly up to the plane. Luke trotted up it and then ducked through the aircraft’s open door. As the stair truck backed away, and Luke closed the door, Eleanor realized he was leaving. She had to move, and she had to move fast.

  She grabbed her pack and skulked along the back wall of the hangar, putting the plane between her and most of the crew, readying herself to run toward the open cargo hold. But just then she heard the whine of hydraulics engaging, and the ramp to the cargo hold lifted off the ground. The plane was closing.

  Eleanor couldn’t wait until the hangar emptied. She broke cover and sprinted toward the ramp, watching it rise, knee-level, then waist-level, then approaching shoulder-height.

  As she reached it, she launched her pack inside ahead of her, heard it slide down the ramp into the plane. Then she jumped, high enough to get her shoulders and elbows over the edge of the ramp, and felt it lift her feet off the ground. If she didn’t get inside, she’d either have to let go or let the door close on her.

  She pushed and strained upward, managed to kick her left leg over the edge, and from there was able to roll over the lip into the plane. The steep angle of the ramp sent her tumbling downward, and she landed hard at the bottom. The ramp closed with a loud and final clang behind her, sounding like one of those prison doors in the movies.

  She was in.

  The cargo hold was dark, except for two small windows and a few dim yellow lights in wire cages along the walls. It smelled of old machine oil and gasoline. Within a couple of moments, her eyes adjusted to the low light, and shapes emerged from the darkness. Stacks of crates and containers surrounded by thick nylon webbing filled the space. Eleanor bumped her way deeper into the hold until she found a small space where she could nestle down and hide for the long flight, which usually took her mom seven or eight hours.

  The plane’s combustion engines woke up, much louder back here than Eleanor had expected. She covered her ears while the aircraft eased forward, and as the plane left the hangar, the light coming in through the two windows brightened.

  Eleanor could now see her surroundings better, the crates and boxes and other containers on all sides. They each bore the same stamp.

  PROPERTY OF

  G.E.T.

  Her eyes widened. Luke’s cargo belonged to the G.E.T.? That was his big fat contract? That was probably why he was heading to Barrow. A slow dread overcame her as she realized she might have just walked her Sync right into the hands of the people she had tried to keep from taking it. This stowaway plan had just become a lot more complicated.

  As they rumbled along the tarmac, Eleanor gripped the webbing for support. It was actually fairly cold in the cargo bay, and it occurred to her that the plane might not be heated back here. It might not even be pressurized back here, now that she really considered it. As that realization unfolded, Eleanor’s dread multiplied into fear.

  She could freeze or suffocate long before they even reached Barrow.

  CHAPTER

  7

  AFTER TAXIING FOR A SHORT DISTANCE, THE PLANE CAME to a halt. Eleanor wondered why they weren’t taking off, and she worried that it might even have something to do with her. Had security stopped the plane? Then the hydraulics engaged with the same whine as before, and a frame of light appeared around the ramp as it descended. Luke was opening the hold.

  Eleanor scrambled deeper into the stacks of G.E.T. cargo, but there wasn’t enough space for her to completely hide herself. She looked up, made a lightning decision, and climbed up the webbing as if it were a ladder, which wasn’t easy. The straps moved and gave under her feet like the rope ladders on her old elementary school playground. But she managed to reach the top and dive over and inside the webbing, onto the stack of cargo. There she nestled down, now safely out of sight.

  Just then, voices entered the cargo hold, followed by the sound of heavy boots on the metal ramp. Eleanor held as still as she could, listening.

  “I was just about to take off,” Luke said. “This delay is—”

  “Pardon my intrusion.” That sounded like an old man, with a voice that creaked like leather. “But the nature of this shipment is such that I had to make certain. When did you take delivery?”

  “Late last night. Loaded it myself.”

  “It is all accounted for?” the old man asked.

  “I told you, it’s all in order.” Luke sounded even more irritated with this guy than he had with Eleanor.

  “This hold is pressurized? Temperature controlled?”

  “Of course.”

  Well, at least Eleanor wouldn’t have to worry about suffocation or freezing to death.

  “And now that you’ve seen it,” Luke said, “I’ll be on my way. There’ll be a major polar storm moving in over Barrow in the next twenty-four hours. I need to be unloaded and gone before it hits.”

  “When do you expect to land?” the old voice asked.

  “Depending on how long my stop in Fairbanks takes—”

  “Does your business in Fairbanks involve humanitarian aid?”

  “What? No.”

  “Then by order of article six of the International Conservation of Energy Treaty, I authorize you to proceed directly to Barrow.”

  “Dr. Watkins,” Luke said, “I don’t need your authorization to do anything.”

  “Let me rephrase. I order you to go straight to Barrow.”

  Luke’s voice turned angry. “Excuse me? Yours ain’t the only cargo on this plane. I’ve got buyers lined up for the rest of this stuff! I gotta make a profit—”

  “I have the power, granted by the UN, to override all but humanitarian missions. You run afoul of me, young man, and I’ll make sure this . . . plane is grounded for good. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly,” Luke said, bringing a different kind of ice into the plane.

  “Good. I’ll let our Barrow facility know to expect you.”

  “We done here?” Luke asked.

  “You may depart,” the old voice said.

  The sound of the men’s footsteps left the plane, and a few minutes later, the cargo door lifted and groaned shut. When the engines kicked back up and the plane moved, the tower of cargo beneath Eleanor shifted as if it might collapse. Her hands and feet shot outward instinctively, to steady herself, but the netting kept it all in place.

  The plane taxied for only a short time. Then the engines rose to a wail, and the aircraft lurched forward. Everything around Eleanor rattled so hard, she imagined pieces of the plane shaking off on the runway. The escalating g forces rolled her up against the netting and pressed it into her back as the plane finally heaved itself into the sky. Once the aircraft lost contact with the ground, the rattling ceased and things settled down, as if the plane had let out a sigh. It was still noisy but felt more calm and steady. They were in the air.

  Eleanor had made it. Officially an Arctic stowaway. She imagined the city of Phoenix growing small and distant behind her, with its refugees and Ice Castles and her school and her home and . . .

  She sighed. “Poor Uncle Jack,” she said aloud.

  Once they’d been airborne for a while, Eleanor climbed down and felt comfortable pulling out one of the flashlights from her pack to get a better look at the cargo around her. She wondered what the G.E.T. might be sending to the Arctic and hoped it would give her some clue about what her mother had been working on in Barrow. She cast the flashlight’s narrow spotlig
ht over the crates and containers, the white circle of cold light a moon moving through the hold, landing on uneven surfaces.

  Most of the crates were too heavy or large for her to lift, but she managed to pull down one of the smaller ones, labeled TELLURIC SCANNER. It was made of plastic, with a hinged latch on each side of the lid. She popped them and pulled the lid away.

  Inside, she found an electronic device wedged in cutaway foam. It reminded her of the bar-code scanner guns that grocery store employees carried around on their hips. But this looked a lot more complicated, with a couple of blank LCD screens, dials, and buttons. Eleanor had no idea what it might be used for. Telluric?

  She closed the lid to the case and hoisted it back where it came from. The nearby crates bore labels that made about the same amount of sense to her. There were TELLURIC TRANSISTORS and FIELD PERIMETER RODS and TELLURIC CONDUCTION RODS. She pulled out her Sync, looked up telluric, and found it was just a word for something related to the earth.

  Great. Earth.

  Given that her mom was a geologist, and the G.E.T. drilled for oil, this wasn’t exactly an astounding discovery.

  She sighed and switched off her flashlight to save power. Then she looked around for a comfortable place to sit and couldn’t find one. On top of that, the unremitting engine noise had already started to feel like a pressure on her ears.

  Eight hours.

  This was going to be a long flight.

  After an hour of doing nothing, Eleanor turned her attention back to the crates. She forced herself to look at each one, just in case there was something interesting. That took up another hour or so but didn’t result in anything new or useful.

  She pulled out her Sync, intending to reread her mom’s texts, but decided that perhaps she should conserve the device’s power. She didn’t know when she would next have the opportunity to charge it. But that thought caused a new worry. What if the battery died and she had no way to read the messages? The last message in particular, with the numbers, that code . . . She decided to memorize them, just in case. It didn’t take too long. Just like memorizing a couple of phone numbers. To test herself, she covered up the screen with her hand and recited the series out loud, checking herself along the way. She got them all right.