White Heat

by Melanie McGrath

  In the world of his fantasy he had so often imagined this frantic exodus to new pastures, the mass tramplings, drownings, tumblings from cliffs and rocks, the frenzy of predators, that he felt he'd somehow brought the moment into being. He thought of himself as the brave and selfless reporter sending dispatches from the middle of the war zone, because, make no mistake, the lemming swarm was war, a Darwinian struggle for survival played out on a breathtaking scale.

  More than at any other time in his life, Derek was conscious that he could not afford distractions. He would have to focus his every waking moment on the meticulous, systematic gathering of the evidence so that when he finally presented his findings - to Nature, perhaps, or to Scientific American - the whole package would be watertight. The thought that he alone might predict a lemming swarm when scientists with PhDs and grand reputations were saying the population wouldn't peak for another year was thrilling. He'd waited too long in the wings for this not to be the moment that changed everything.

  Even though there had been no formal investigations, the dismal events of the spring had tied up a great deal of detachment time. In a normal year, he and Stevie would start out on their spring patrol at the end of April. This was their chance to survey the land, check on caches, conduct a few low-level experiments, complete their wildlife assessments for the year ahead and make a courtesy call on one or other of the more remote weather stations.

  Now the snow had mostly cleared from the low-lying tundra, and though it lingered in drifts and in the lee of cliffs and eskers, it was too late to travel any distance on the land. On the other hand, the sea ice was still solid and it was light all the time now, so there was nothing to stop them travelling twelve, fifteen hours a day. More importantly, Derek would be able to gather more evidence of the impending lemming swarm and be ready to report on it on his return.

  They would sleep 'upside down', travelling during the cooler hours after 10p.m. In good conditions they would average two hundred kilometres a day, though there were places where travel would be tougher, such as at the narrow strait where the Colin Archer Peninsula of northwest Devon Island reached up to the southwestern tip of Ellesmere. The strait was part-blocked by North Kent Island, which functioned like a cork in a bottle. Here the sea was open all year and huge ice boulders raced through violent and unpredictable currents. Derek reckoned on taking a couple of days to get around it.

  He'd also factored in three research stops on the way. The first would be his own pet project, a count of lemmings on the Simmons Peninsula; the second was a Wildlife Service survey of wolves up on Bjorne Island. This was a trickier proposition altogether, because it was so hard to get anywhere near a Bjorne wolf. Then from Bjorne they'd head across Baumann Fiord into Eureka Sound and drop into the weather station there for the third and final stop, though most of the research up at Eureka would be of the strictly social kind.

  They set off in light drizzle and, after a few hours of uneventful travel across the pack, made camp on the green beach at the tip of the Lindstrom Peninsula and clambered up onto the plateau. Thaw slumps had appeared since the last spring patrol. Stevie took pictures, making a note of the shrunken ice wedges in amongst the rocks and of the relative profusion of mountain sorrel caused by the retreating spillway. When that was done, they checked on the police cache they'd planted there a couple of years previously, in case they ever got into trouble.

  The two men made such good time that they took the afternoon off to rest and fish at the ice edge beside Hell Gate and that evening feasted on char and bannock bread before starting their second night ride. It had stopped drizzling now and the air had taken on the electric smell of the dry west country.

  They started out again around 10 p.m. and hadn't gone far when Derek remembered that neither of them had yet checked in with the detachment, which was being manned in their absence by Pol. One of the joys of the patrol was how quickly you lost all sense of clock time, particularly, as now, when it was light twenty-four hours a day. Now wasn't such a good time to stop. The tough conditions around North Kent Island lay ahead and Derek needed the petty distractions of small town life like a hole in the head. In any case, he figured, nothing significant ever happened in Kuujuaq while they were away. Getting in contact was a formality as much as anything, a way of registering that he and Stevie were doing OK. He made a note to himself to do it next time they made camp.

  As it turned out, the ice foot was pretty smooth and still plenty wide enough to accommodate the snowbies riding side by side. By the end of the third night's travel they had already passed North Kent and were on the pack in Norwegian Bay.

  Around 6a.m. they scouted the far corner of a beach gouged by ice blocks, which gave a view out to the low coast of Graham Island. They'd camped here at least once a year for as long as Derek could recall. Just to the west of the beach there was a tidewater glacier surrounded by steep moraines from where it was always possible to chip out sweet water. In the winter, there was good ice fishing to be had here and in the summer, murres, kittiwakes and dovekies nested along the low, blunt cliffs, eiders bred among the finger willows and caribou came down to drink at the spillways.

  It was the start of bear country. They were often to be found way out on the pan, hunting seals, though in recent years, the melting pan had forced them inland earlier, but the air was most often clear and the country was low with wide vistas so man and bear weren't likely to run into one another by accident. That said, you couldn't be too careful. A decade or so ago, he'd seen them regularly playing with the dog teams on the ice outside Kuujuaq but these days the bears were more likely to view the dogs as an easy meal. It was a hard time to be a bear.

  When they'd finished erecting the tent, Stevie set up the primus and the two men mugged up and put on some bannock to heat. Neither was a big talker and while they waited for the bread to cook, they mostly sat in silence, speaking only when some question came to mind they couldn't answer for themselves.

  'You read that piece in the Circular?' Stevie said. 'Hermaphrodite bears.'

  'Uh huh.' A long pause. 'Actually, no. What the hell is a hermaphrodite bear?'

  'One that's both male and female. That's what the Circular said.'

  Another long pause, while both men chewed this proposition over, then Stevie said: 'Now, wouldn't that save a heck of a lot of trouble.'

  Later, Derek lit a cigarette while Stevie cranked up the sat phone and made a brief call to his wife, who was just getting the kids off to school. Stevie signed off: 'I guess we should check on the detachment.'

  Derek replied reluctantly: 'I guess so.'

  Out on patrol was the one time Derek had the luxury of forgetting about the place.

  A while later, Stevie came loping across the shale towards his boss.

  'We got a problem.'

  Derek said: 'Like what?'

  'Like that hunter woman over in Autisaq, Edie Kiglatuk.'

  She'd been on the radio three times, Pol said, always at strange times, saying she needed to talk to Sergeant Palliser urgently. 'Wouldn't tell Pol what it was all about, kept saying she'd only speak to you.'

  What could Edie possibly need to talk to him about that was so urgent? If he was to get ahead of the game, Derek would need to submit an article to the Circular before the swarm actually began. His scientific paper could wait a little longer, but not too long. He didn't want a bunch of zoologists and environmental researchers pitching up in the High Arctic before he'd laid claim to the territory. But he needed some stats from the survey he was planning to carry out on Simmons. He imagined Misha reading about him or even - he hardly dared hope it - switching on the TV news.

  Working through several options in his head, he decided that none of them involved going back to Kuujuaq to sort out Edie Kiglatuk. Any case, they'd be up at Eureka a week or so from now. Nothing was so urgent it couldn't wait a week.

  He said: 'I'll call her from Eureka.'

  Over the next few days he had no reason to regret his decision. The wol
f survey was a bit of a fiasco but the lemmings were spectacular. All the way up the southeast coast he scoured the tundra for lemming trails and burrows. As each day passed, his notebooks and sample bags filled with the evidence that was going to change his life.

  A week later, as the two police snowmobiles drew up to the main complex building at the Eureka High Arctic weather and research station, Derek Palliser was in state of some excitement. He parked his snowbie and dismounted. It had been a long ride up and his back was jarred from the hours spent in the saddle but all he could think about right now was getting warm enough to be able to tell the station chief, Howie O'Hara, an old ally, about his lemming findings. He didn't even wait for Stevie, just went right to the front entrance of the main building, reached for the door handle and pulled.

  Derek found himself in a heavy-curtained snow porch, the sound of Hawaiian music throbbing through the walls. The door to the outside opened and Stevie appeared. Derek looked at his watch. He realized he'd lost all sense of time. It was 1a.m.

  'Ten days to get here and they start the party before us?'

  Fat hope of collaring Howie at this hour, he thought.

  'Uh, maybe it's not our party, D.'

  'You don't say?'

  They pulled off their outer parkas, hats, gloves and boots, pushed open the door and took in the scene. Inside the mess hall, a couple of dozen men and women dressed in plastic grass skirts and leis were doing the conga. Beside them, on a long table, in what looked like specimen jars, sat a line of the biggest mai tais Derek had ever seen.

  The two police continued to stand in the doorway. Stevie threw Derek a glance.

  'Good luck, bud. It was nice knowing ya.'

  Just then a flash of colour whizzed past Derek and he felt a plastic lei lasso his neck. Next thing he knew, an oversized cocktail was being pressed into his right hand and someone in a plastic grass skirt was loading his cheek with wet kisses. Before he had time to gather himself, he was sucked into the conga from which there was now no escape.

  'What's the celebration?'

  The woman who'd dragged him into the dance line pointed to two men and a woman sitting at a table, a two- litre bottle of vodka in front of them.

  'Our Russian friends.' The woman had to shout above the sound of the music, slurring her words. 'Back off to Vladivostok or wherever the hell they're from.'

  She began jigging up and down out of time with the music. Palliser took a good look at her and realized he was eyeing a woman so caned it was a miracle she was still upright.

  Later on, the Cossack dancing started up and Palliser found himself sitting at the table with one of the Russian men and the now-empty bottle of Stolichnaya.

  'Back home tomorrow?'

  The Russian smiled and shrugged.

  'Only two week.' He held up three fingers. 'Scientist exchange.'

  'I'm a scientist,' Derek said. He heard himself saying it and cringed, but he'd started now, so there was no choice but to go on.

  The Russian laughed. 'You're policeman,' he said.

  Derek was wagging his finger about in random fashion.

  'Same thing,' he said. He tapped the finger to his nose. 'Investigation.'

  The Russian man leaned in, still laughing.

  'What you investigate, science police?'

  Derek looked at the man. He was huge and red-faced.

  Somehow it didn't seem the right time to tell him about lemmings.

  'Crimes,' he said. 'Suspicious deaths.'

  The Russian didn't believe him.

  'Oh yeah? What death you investigate, science police?'

  'Right now?' Everything in Derek's head seemed very fuzzy. He held up two fingers. At least he wasn't too drunk to count. 'Two deaths,' he said. 'Craig Island.'

  'That so?' the Russian said.

  Derek drew back and tapped his sergeant's stripes. The dancing Russian was calling his friend onto the floor. Derek tapped his nose again.

  'Can't discuss it,' he said.

  The Russian swayed a little. His eyes narrowed.

  'But you can be sure of one thing,' Derek said. He knew he was ridiculous, but he couldn't stop himself. 'We'll leave no stone unturned.'

  He lurched for his glass but when he turned around the Russian was gone.

  When Derek woke up his head clanged, his back ached and his tongue had sunk like some dead and rotting seal into the foul maw that was his mouth. There was also a strange woman lying next to him.

  'Hi there,' the woman said, slipping her hand under the covers and stroking the thin sprinkle of hair on his chest. Her eyes shifted about his face, looking for reassurance. She was qalunaat, brown-haired, around thirty-five. Other than that, he had no idea.

  'You have a good time?'

  'Super.'

  For all he knew, it was true. He had almost no memory of the night before at all, let alone how he'd ended up in bed with this woman. He didn't even know her name.

  He thought: How am I going to get out of this? Then Edie Kiglatuk sprung to mind.

  'Aw shoot, I have to, uh, radio back home.'

  'Now?' The woman sounded pissed off.

  Derek shrugged and did his best to look mysterious. 'Urgent police work.' What can I say?

  He staggered from the bed out into the corridor and made his way to the comms room, helping himself to some coffee from a thermos in the kitchenette just inside the door and sloshing it around his mouth to get rid of the rank taste of old cheap cocktails. The place was deserted. He realized that he felt rather sick, was probably still drunk. Last night remained a blank.

  It occurred to him then that it would be good to let Howie or someone else on the permanent staff know he was intending to use the radio. Inside the overheated atmosphere of the station complex, people tended to be territorial about the smallest things. The place was a natural breeding ground for petty resentments. It wasn't as though there was anywhere you could go to cool off. Freeze, sure, but cool off, not so much.

  He stepped outside, scanning the site for someone to ask, but the station seemed deserted. He checked his watch. It was 5.32a.m. and Derek Palliser felt like shit.

  What to do? He could hardly go back to the complete stranger he'd woken up beside and ask if she would mind him sleeping off his hangover in her bed. Even if he could remember her name or how to get back to her room. Plus she'd looked rather expectant and he realized he'd been kind of rude and rejecting. Who in hell makes urgent radio calls at 5.30 a.m. after a night on the tiles? It would be bad enough having to face her over the lunch table; he certainly couldn't go back there now.

  He decided to find a chair to settle into in the comms building, catch up on some sleep there, and was making his way back when he heard a pattering of paws and, turning, saw Piecrust come trotting after him. There was another thing he'd forgotten, the damned dog. In the kitchenette he came across a tin of baked cookies and slung a handful on the floor for Piecrust's breakfast.

  Some hours later, he was woken with a shake. He opened his eyes. He was slumped in a chair by the radio with the dog draped over him, still fast asleep, its nose jammed in his ear. He lifted a hand to his cheek and scraped at the crust of dried dog drool.

  'We mustn't keep meeting like this,' a voice said. It was the woman he had or hadn't slept with.

  He smiled thinly, fishing around desperately for a name. Oh Jeez, now he remembered. In Hawaiian, she was Palakakika and he was Jamek, or something like it.

  'The radio is password protected,' Palakakika said.

  'Yeah,' he lied. 'So I discovered.'

  'Which means you have to get the password from the chief comms officer.'

  'Who is . . .?'

  The woman stuck out a hand. 'Agent Palakakika.' She shot Derek a conspiratorial look. Shit, what sad little game had they been playing together? 'That gets out, I'll obviously have to have you killed,' she added.

  'Agent Palakakika.' Derek felt suddenly very sick. 'Could I make a radio call?'

  Night shift at Autisaq answer
ed and was immediately interrupted, as so often at these latitudes, by a snatch of some other transmission, the guitar solo from Pink Floyd's 'Time', Derek thought.

  The interruption gave him an instant to think. What was he doing? He couldn't just radio in and ask to speak to Edie, not without everyone in Autisaq getting to hear about it. She wasn't the most popular person in the settlement right now. Being radioed by the police in the early hours wasn't likely to make her any more so. Besides, hadn't she said she wanted to talk to him privately? When the comms operator in Autisaq came back on he told him not to worry, it just a routine call and that he'd be back at his desk in Kuujuaq tomorrow. The voice copied the message and called off. Derek pushed back his chair and handed the headphones to Agent Palakakika, who noted the time and made an entry in a navy blue log book by the side of the radio.

  'Funny how the word urgent means different things to different people,' she said, throwing him a hungry look. She reached into the zipper of his pants. 'You've shown me what you mean. How's about I show you what I mean?'

  Nah, Derek thought. Approximately two-tenths of a millisecond later, he had a change of heart. He smiled at Agent Palakakika.

  'The name's Bond,' he said. 'Jamek Bond.'

  The following afternoon Pol showed up in the Twin Otter, as arranged. The trip back to Kuujuaq was short and alleviated, for Derek, by the dazing swill of sex hormones coursing around his body. From the airstrip, he went directly to the detachment building, threw up, then called Mike Nungaq's number in Autisaq. The shopkeeper greeted him with his usual cheer.

  'Package coming in?'