Drowned Worlds

by Jonathan Strahan

  Shortly after dawn, Prince Ugalik roused us. For breakfast the Pikatti cooks had prepared a locavore chowder that they served from a cauldron in which pollock eyes and capelin fins bobbed about like croutons. As the morning progressed, we learned that Chief Yakone was requiring a majority of the tribe’s adults to join him in refloating the state canoe. The work team would depart at noon. Ugalik would serve as captain of the Nuliajuk.

  “Tell me about the weapon,” I asked the prince.

  “Our legends speak of a mystic narwhal, Atuqtuaq, large as an iceberg, golden as the sun.”

  “I was afraid it would be something like that,” I said.

  “Golden?” said Golly.

  “Some sort of benign bacterium,” said Ugalik.

  “The tusk of Atuqtuaq is longer than seven harpoons,” added Tikasuk. “According to the legend, Sivuugun and Luava will summon the narwhal from the depths of the vast sea that white men call Baffin Bay. They will command him to pierce the heart of Qaumaniq.”

  “As you might imagine, Simon and I know nothing about summoning narwhals,” said Lucretia.

  “Once the Nuliajuk is underway, I shall teach you the chant,” said Tikasuk.

  Three hours later, my wife, Golly, and I joined a party comprising the chief, the prince, the shaman, and forty other Inuit, the lot of us tromping eastward across the pack. The strongest men hauled sledges loaded with provisions, including blankets, oil lanterns, victuals, and kegs of peat lager. To my eye our procession suggested some epic athletic competition whose devotees were always trying, without success, to have their venerable sport recognized by the International Winter Olympics Committee.

  At last the Nuliajuk rose before us. With its stately mainmast bisecting the horizon and its palisades of upright oars, the vessel more closely resembled a Viking longship than a canoe. After much heaving and hoeing, grunting and groaning, straining and—yes—sweating, we succeeded in pushing the Nuliajuk to the edge of an emergent lead. No further effort was required, for the canoe proceeded to launch itself, the keel incising the ice so deeply that a segment of the shelf snapped off and the hull entered the channel with a resounding swoosh.

  Ugalik now selected his company, eighteen burly men capable of, in the prince’s words, “rowing a two-ton longship through ice-choked waters for hours at a time on minimal rations.” With resolute faces and swaggering gaits, the crew of the Nuliajuk followed Ugalik and Tikasuk up the gangway, and then came (with fearful faces and diffident gaits) Lucretia, Golly, and I. On the prince’s orders, four men unfurled the sail, a patchwork of scraped animal hides. The crazy quilt caught the breeze, flapping like a battle flag—for was this not the banner beneath which Sivuugun and Luava would defeat Qaumaniq and its children? The rowers found their benches, unshipped their oars, and began to pull. The Nuliajuk glided forward, and we were off on the ultimate extreme excursion. Come to the top of the world and test your mettle against a demon. Journey to the Arctic and toss quoits of ice onto a narwhal’s tusk.

  FOR FIVE DAYS and five nights we coursed down the liquid groove, the wind keening all around us. As if seeking to heal the lacerated pack, the banks of the channel continually lurched toward each other, fusing in our wake and threatening to crush our stern, “for such is the way of leads,” Ugalik informed us. Aboard the Nuliajuk anxiety reigned. We were not a happy ship.

  Transcending our fear, ignoring the -40˚ centigrade winds, Lucretia, Tikasuk, and I managed to convene an anthropological seminar in the prow. Repeatedly the shaman sang the chant by which Atuqtuaq might be summoned, while his dullard American students struggled to learn it by heart. The syllables left a strange and pungent taste in my mouth, as if I’d eaten ambrosia and washed it down with peat lager. Lucretia reported a similar sensation. Travel to the North Pole and imbibe the sap of the mythic world-tree. Dare to visit 90˚N and drink of Yggdrasill, whose limbs reach far into the heavens.

  On the morning of the sixth day, owing to a felicitous conjunction of wind and muscle and luck, the Nuliajuk sailed into the Kane Basin, watery portal to Baffin Bay. The surrounding sea was a treacherous gazpacho clotted with bergs, clogged with floes, and veiled in fog, but at least we were free of the pack. By late afternoon we had pulled within sight of the torn and bleached shores of Greenland, borne by currents that, the shaman informed us, the golden narwhal was known to ply.

  But before Lucretia and I could began the chant, another vessel, much larger than the Nuliajuk, loomed out of the mist, a palatial cabin cruiser with the name Expedience painted on its stern, followed by Virginia Beach. Glistening mounds of ice and snow rose from the multiple decks, giving the cruiser the appearance of a colossal ocean-going layer cake. A distress flag fluttered from the radar antenna. Ugalik dutifully brought the canoe within hailing distance. Leaning over their respective gunwales, Ugalik and his fellow skipper, one Walter Paycock, entered into a loud conversation. The Expedience, it seemed, had run short of beverages. Might the Nuliajuk supply the yacht with bourbon, vodka, sherry, or champagne?

  “We have only peat lager,” said Ugalik. “You know—aputi?”

  “Never heard of it,” said Walter Paycock.

  “It’s pretty awful, but we can spare a keg.”

  “Bring it on board, and we’ll tell you all the latest news from below the Arctic Circle. Just lash your dinghy to our stern. My bosun will drop a transom ladder.”

  And that is how an Inuit prince, an Inuit shaman, and three displaced Americans ended up lounging in a sumptuous, carpeted, steam-heated drawing-room on the salon deck of an opulent yacht. Among the well-shod consumers of our dubious beer were a half-dozen U.S. politicians (four men and two women), three male lobbyists, of which Walter Paycock was one (his speciality being pollution control abatement), and a celebrated D.C. radio talk-show host, Whip Hemsoth, who credited himself with a theological innovation he termed “Christian nihilism.” Although I was happy to share our aputi with the company of the Expedience, the attendant discourse brought me to the brink of despair.

  “We didn’t expect to run into any Eskimos on this trip, but I want you to know I have no problem with you people,” said Senator Bart Grimsby of Colorado, sipping his lager. “I’m not prejudiced.”

  “How fortunate for you,” said Ugalik.

  “What brings you to this neck of the woods?” asked Golly.

  “Well, you might call it a nature cruise, but it’s also a kind of therapy voyage,” replied Alabama Governor Jeremy Brisket.

  “‘Therapy voyage,’ that’s good, Jeremy,” said Walter Paycock.

  “Back in D.C.,” Governor Brisket continued, “we all have to pretend we detest tax increases, regulatory zealots, environmental fanatics, government overreach, creeping socialism, the budget deficit, the fetus deficit, faggots wearing engagement rings, and scientists telling ordinary folks what to do, when in fact we don’t give a flying fuck about any of those things. God, it feels good to leave all those crocodile tears at home. Here we can be ourselves. On Walter’s boat a man can look his buds in the eye, raise a glass of bourbon, and say, ‘Dear friends, we have poleaxed the planet, and that makes our peckers twiddle.’”

  “Not my pecker,” said Carlotta Frostig, the junior senator from West Virginia, and the yacht’s company laughed in unison.

  “You blubber lovers make damn good beer,” said Senator Lawrence Duggery of Kentucky, gulping his aputi.

  “Our poleaxed planet—is that where the nature part of your journey comes in?” asked Lucretia.

  “Yup,” said Leonard Colander, a lobbyist for Exxon. “Earlier this year we navigated the coast of Nigeria. Lagos is now mostly under water. God, that sight gave me a woody.”

  “You’re the last honest man, Lenny,” said Whip Hemsoth.

  “Yes siree, a mighty fine brew,” said Senator Duggery.

  “Then we cruised through the Panama Canal and kept heading west,” Mr. Colander continued. “Most of Australia’s beaches are drowned, did you know that?”

  “Praised be Qauma
niq,” said Lucretia evenly.

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Wish I could go back in time and thank all those dinosaurs who laid down their lives so we could have fossil fuels,” said Senator Frostig.

  “New Guinea is now a swamp,” said Governor Ethan Walloper of Mississippi. “Sumatra is flooded to the gills. Singapore has became ducktopia. Bangkok looks like fucking Venice. If you think we lost any sleep over this, you don’t know how the world works.”

  “I’ve never imagined I knew how the world works,” said Ugalik.

  “What about your witch doctor?” asked Governor Walloper. “Does he know?”

  “I skipped witch doctor school that day,” said Tikasuk.

  “Love Jesus, embrace your inner storm trooper, and leave the planet a more miserable place than you found it—that’s Christian nihilism in a nutshell,” said Whip Hemsoth. “If there’s a better path to fulfilling your purpose and engorging your wedding member, I haven’t found it.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t hold up my end of this particular conversation,” said Ugalik. “It’s time we returned to our canoe.”

  “We’re truly grateful for the lager,” said Senator Grimsby. “How can we repay you?”

  “By getting the hell out of Baffin Bay and never coming back,” said Ugalik.

  MOVING AT A brisk pace, our departure being more of an escape than an exit, we left the salon deck, descended to the main deck, and headed aft. The fog had lifted. The aurora borealis glinted to port like celestial tinsel. Before we could climb down the transom ladder to the moored canoe, the sky above the bay grew suddenly dark. We glanced heavenward. A massive formation of birds glided across the face of the sun, blotting out its radiance and casting an enormous mobile shadow on the sea.

  No, not birds.

  Something else.

  “Tulugaqs!” cried Ugalik. “A thousand tulugaqs!”

  As the sunlight returned, a throng of thirty globules peeled off from the flock and dived toward the Expedience. The alpha tulugaq smashed through a salon deck porthole, creating an aperture through which the entire squadron abruptly disappeared, winged bears on the scent of honey.

  “Now comes the habitation phase,” said Ugalik, and even as he spoke a sensuous commotion filled the air, moans of ecstasy, orgasmic gasps, a capella choruses of erotic satisfaction.

  “Look to starboard!” yelled Tikasuk, pointing. “There! There!”

  A hundred yards beyond the Expedient’s stern, a subaquatic phenomenon carved a great trough in the sea, the implacable event hurtling toward us with mad vehemence, as if Captain Nemo had made it his mission to sink the yacht.

  “It breaches!” cried Ugalik.

  With a volcanic gush of floes, rollers, and spindrift, an unbound Qaumaniq lurched to the surface, sinewaves of seawater cascading down its crimson flanks. In the full majesty of its liberation, the odiferous monster proved as long and cylindrical as a zeppelin. Wriggling frantically to sustain its momentum, shedding shards of frozen slime, Qaumaniq launched globules in all directions. Abruptly the great red amoeba altered course and began circling the Expedient in a gavotte of infinite gratitude. Finally, after centuries of captivity, the demon-god had found a congregation.

  “Ascend!” Ugalik commanded me, clamping a mitten on the sleeve of my parka.

  “Now!” cried Tikasuk. “Climb!”

  I knew immediately what the prince and the shaman meant. The closer to the heavens we positioned ourselves, the farther our invocation would travel.

  Together Lucretia and I mounted the ice-glazed interior stairways, tread by treacherous tread, until we reached the apex of the ship, a flying bridge ornately fretted with snow crystals. We wasted no time. Stretching to full height, we pressed our frigid tonsils toward our sacred obligation.

  “Tukkuyummavuvungga Atuqtuaq itigaituk Qaumaniq!” Lucretia and I trilled in unison. “Uukkarnit piggaluyungmik Qaumaniq umiaktovvik Atuqtuaq!”

  Below, the huge pulsing slug continued its courtship dance, swimming impassioned rings around the Expedient.

  “Tukkuyummavuvungga Atuqtuaq itigaituk Qaumaniq!” chanted Sivuugun and Luava. “Uukkarnit piggaluyungmik Qaumaniq umiaktovvik Atuqtuaq!”

  From the salon deck the clamor of concupiscence continued to rise, but we ignored it and kept on singing.

  “Tukkuyummavuvungga Atuqtuaq itigaituk Qaumaniq! Uukkarnit piggaluyungmik Qaumaniq umiaktovvik Atuqtuaq!”

  Suddenly, off the port bow, Baffin Bay yawned open. The tremendous mouth began to rotate, transmuting into a furious maelstrom that cast forth ragged ice floes, sheet after sheet, like pieces of a gigantic and insoluble jigsaw puzzle.

  Now came the narwhal, lurching upward from the core of the vortex. The beast was indeed golden, or rather a bright copper, as if clothed in chain-mail wrought from new pennies. As thick and long as a cedar of Lebanon, his tusk was truly magnificent, a lance wielded by a cetacean Galahad. Overwhelmed by his magnificence, I nearly swooned. Lucretia grasped the bridge rail. Atuqtuaq was among us, and we had fallen irretrievably in love with him.

  Sensing his prey, the narwhal deployed himself amidships. He waited. Dancing all the while, the amoeba rounded the Expedient’s stern and headed toward the prow. Atuqtuaq struck, running his enameled javelin athwart Qaumaniq. The impaled demon bellowed. The air resounded with exhilaration: Ugalik’s crew cheering, whooping, hurrahing, and clapping. Atuqtuaq withdrew his tusk. From the demon’s wound rushed a sudden pulpy torrent, slicking the sea and turning the waters bright red. Qaumaniq, now a cadaver, remained briefly in view, its humps and knolls riding the rollers, an archipelago of protoplasm, and an instant later the thing was gone, drifting soundlessly toward the bottom of the bay.

  Cautiously Lucretia and I descended to the main deck and made our way to the stern, where we joined a jubilant Ugalik, a gleeful Tikasuk, and a begrudgingly admiring Golly. The five of us scrambled down the ladder and boarded the canoe. On Ugalik’s orders two sailors untied the mooring lines, and shortly thereafter the oarsmen pulled us free of the Expedient.

  Naturally I assumed that the golden narwhal, his task complete, would return to the swirling funnel whence he came. But Atuqtuaq had a further boon in mind. Fanning the waves with his mighty flukes, the creature swam south, passed the Expedient’s stern, and continued for some thirty meters. Swerving abruptly, Atuqtuaq charged the yacht, ripping the rudder from its hinges. He attacked a second time, diving beneath the keel and turning the twin propellers into ineffectual masses of metal. Now came the third attack, Atuqtuaq impaling the Expedient itself, becoming the cabin cruiser’s replacement rudder, substitute screws, and operative engine. Working his flukes furiously, the narwhal abducted the helpless yacht, pushing it away from the Greenland shore toward the open sea.

  “I wouldn’t want to be on the Expedient right now,” said Golly.

  “I wonder where he’s taking them?” mused Ugalik.

  “I need a tankard of aputi,” I said.

  “So do I,” said Lucretia.

  “Noble Sivuugun, valiant Luava,” said Ugalik, “we shall now turn our state canoe into a mead hall and drink a thousand toasts to you.”

  MY TALE HAS run its course. Little of it is credible, and all of it is true. Times are better now, would you not agree? While far from extinct, cynicism is on the wane. Though still alive and hungry, the cult of expedience is losing ground.

  Ever since the shattered remains of Walter Paycock’s yacht washed up on the beaches of Labrador—and especially since the bodies of its jaded passengers were reportedly seen decorating the tusk of a roving narwhal like chunks of beef on a shish kebab—certain previously intractable politicians and financiers have acquired an uncharacteristic affection for reality. Thanks to the initiatives of these movers and shakers, the gossamer continents of carbon dioxide that enswathe the Earth have been shrinking, slowly but steadily. My wife and I remain guardedly optimistic, a cautious Cunégonde and an equally mistrustful Candide, planting our garden in go
od faith and hoping that the weeds and rodents will take only their fair share.

  Although I never succeeded in making a depressing documentary about endangered species, I recently acquired, on the strength of a speculative screenplay, enough backers to enter the precarious world of indie dramatic filmmaking. My first feature will be called Shadows on the Ice, a biopic about Matthew Henson, the African-American explorer who accompanied Admiral Peary to the Arctic and was in fact the first expedition member to stride across the Pole. As for Lucretia, I am pleased to report that she escaped academe as planned. Last year she published Nirliq and the Frozen Ghosts, a critically acclaimed and marginally successful fantasy novel rooted in Inuit mythology. She has made a good start on the sequel.

  Almost every night, after crawling into bed, my wife and I embrace, make love, and softly serenade each other to sleep. “Tukkuyummavuvungga Atuqtuaq itigaituk Qaumaniq,” sings Lucretia. “Uukkarnit piggaluyungmik Qaumaniq umiaktovvik Atuqtuaq,” I sing back.

  We are duty-bound never to forget those words. Any day now, another ontologically ambiguous and ecologically undesirable amoeba could manifest itself. But Atuqtuaq is out there. The golden narwhal continues to bide his time. He cruises the seven seas—making maelstroms, feasting on cuttlefish, sporting with lesser members of his kind—even as he anticipates the day when noble Sivuugun and valiant Luava will again rouse him from his vortex and, marveling at his beauty, savoring his preternatural presence, send him forth in fealty to the future.

  LAST GODS

  – SAM J. MILLER –

  THE GODS WERE circling when the sun rose, nine long patches of black that did not brighten with the sea as the sky lit up. I watched Them, Their knife-blade fins like polished onyx slicing the surface, formation shifting but the huge old matriarch always at the head. They swam between the sunken buildings, dwarfing the concrete bunkers, sketching intricate patterns that only They—and the Watcher in the tower—and I, slinking away on the ragged hill behind the town—could comprehend.