White Heat

by Melanie McGrath

  The only chance she saw now was to draw him in, to make him imagine she was sympathetic to his cause. She waited a while until she felt his body relax and the stink of his adrenaline softened, then she pitched in.

  'I know places where there might be other stones,' she said. 'Meteorites.'

  DeSouza didn't reply. She tried again.

  'If I knew what you were looking for, exactly, maybe I could help you? I know the land.'

  A snort. 'How could you possibly know what I might be looking for?' He moved around so she could see his face. 'How could you even begin to understand?'

  She nodded, submissive. 'I know I'm stupid.' He looked at her. 'I have my uses, though. If we run out of food, I can bring down a caribou at a kilometre.'

  DeSouza laughed. 'We're not going to run out of food,' he said, then, flipping at her pigtails with his rifle: 'What are your other uses?'

  Edie closed her eyes and swallowed. 'You're right. I'm useless, what's worse, a female. But I'm wondering, given I'm no use to anyone, can I put my arms down now?'

  DeSouza let out an impatient little sigh, but he did not protest. He looked drained, she thought, almost spent.

  'The scientists here,' he said, gesturing northeast, beyond the cliffs, towards the science station campus, 'they do good work, you know, mechanical stuff, mostly, developing vehicles and sample collectors.' He wasn't really talking to her but, rather, she realized, to himself, to the other, saner part of himself.

  He fell silent. She understood then. He was fatally lonely. All her life, she'd watched the Arctic destroy men like DeSouza. They came up north with their fantasies of self-reliance and rugged individualism only to discover they weren't so rugged after all. Soon enough, most of them found that they needed people. And those who didn't lost their minds. Right now, DeSouza was at a crossroads, she thought. He could go either way.

  He stared at the sky for some while, then he turned his head to look at her. After a long time he said:

  'You know what makes meteorites special? Apart from the gas?' He tried to muster some righteous anger but what came out sounded weary.

  Edie felt a deep, warm relief. He wanted to connect.

  'I suppose you'd say meteors came from the spirit world, some baloney like that.'

  Edie grimaced. 'No,' she said. 'Spirits come from the spirit world. Meteors come from outer space.'

  'ALH 84001, you know about that?' he said. She had proved herself sufficiently that he wanted to pull rank on her. This was good.

  She shook her head.

  'No, of course you don't,' he said, pleased.

  'You could tell me,' she said. 'Just to pass the time. Or, if you don't feel like it, I've got some stories.'

  'Christ, no,' he said. 'Goose-men, walrus spirits, I've had a bellyful of that shit. Smile, interact with the natives, kiss my ass.'

  'Then educate me,' she said.

  He looked at her quizzically. She answered him with a weak smile. She'd offered him an outlet for his loneliness and he'd taken it.

  'ALH 84001 is the fancy name for a meteorite found in Antarctica. Ten years ago, a guy called David McKay, working at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, claimed it contained fossilized life.'

  A thin, cold snow was beginning to fall. DeSouza got up. They were obviously waiting for someone, or something.

  'Ah shit,' he said.

  Edie craned her neck in the direction of the tent. 'It's warm in there.'

  He motioned her to go ahead. At the entrance to the tent he told her to stop and lift the flap far enough back so he could see in. He went in backwards, took out Derek Palliser's rifle, cracked it open and threw it into the snow. While he was occupied, Edie peered into the gloaming, trying to think of some way she might trick DeSouza out of his weapon. Her eye fell on the footprints he had made in the new snow. The pattern was familiar, the same zig-zag with the brand stamp and the ice-bear logo she'd seen up on the bluff just after Felix Wagner was shot.

  The professor emerged from the tent carrying a reel of fishing twine. Pushing Edie inside with his rifle butt, he motioned her to sit then bound her ankles and wrists. Then he sat back and lit one of Derek's Lucky Strikes. Silence fell, interrupted only by the sound of the policeman's light snores. It seemed as though DeSouza had decided not to say any more. She'd have to tread carefully. She knew for sure now that he was a killer. He had shot Felix Wagner. She wanted him to know that she knew, that someone else was keeping his secret. Waiting until he'd nearly finished his smoke, she ventured:

  'Is that how you and Felix Wagner met? You both worked at the Space Center?'

  DeSouza shrugged. 'The guy was a jerk. A zero.' His face contorted into a snarl. They'd met as freshmen at the University of Washington's Arctic Club, he explained. Later, after Wagner had made a lot of money in real estate, he used his connection to DeSouza to join the Arctic Hunters' Club.

  'Felix was a hustler, not a real hunter. Once he was in the club, he cultivated Fairfax for his contacts and Belovsky for his money. You should have seen him, oiling up to those guys. Bear hunting in the Caucasus, shooting pheasants in some English castle. It was grotesque.'

  'That was when he found out about the stone and the diary, right?' Edie watched DeSouza's face for signs of irritation but saw none. He seemed to have forgotten that she was his captive.

  'I guess that selling the same information to Zemmer and to Belovsky and thinking neither of them would find out wasn't exactly a smart move,' she said.

  DeSouza looked at her with an expression of grudging admiration. He was back in the game.

  'Not so stupid as you say, eh?' he said, with some regret. 'Better for you if you had been.'

  'Wagner was stupid and look what happened to him,' she said. 'Andy Taylor too.'

  DeSouza's snarl returned. 'Wagner always had these hangers-on and they were always bozos.' He took a breath to calm himself. 'I didn't have anything to do with the Taylor business. Didn't have to. The Russians got there first.' DeSouza laughed.

  Edie took her cue and went in closer. 'Tell me about ALH 84001.'

  He looked at her, weighing up whether or not she was worth the effort of engagement, then softened. The loneliness again.

  'Last year,' he said, 'McKay went back to the stone and analysed it using . . .'He hesitated, shot Edie a wary look and drew back. 'Never mind.'

  Edie brought to mind the report Mike Nungaq had given her, and scanned through all the technical terms she could remember.

  'Electron microscopy?'

  DeSouza cracked a tiny smile. Her reward was for him to continue. Right now, what he needed, even more than he thought he needed the stone, was someone who understood his obsessions.

  'All the work so far has been focused on magnetite. All the official work, that is.'

  'Official work, walrus ass,' she said, dismissively.

  'I'm getting to like your style,' he replied, more relaxed now

  'It's just a lack of brains,' she said. He was so easy.

  'You know what nanobes are?'

  She shook her head. This time she really didn't.

  'Tiny, fossilized extraterrestrial forms, a billionth of a metre in diameter. They've been found in magnetite and halite here on earth and in ALH 84001. Some say they're a form of life but it's never been proved.'

  She could feel the energy coming from him again.

  'I think I can prove that they are life and what's more, that they lived on Mars.'

  She held her breath. There was a plane coming. She could feel the rumble before the noise became audible. DeSouza hadn't detected it yet.

  'Do you know what that means? Men win Nobels for less.'

  So that was it. The realization was all the more terrible for its mundanity. Like so many brilliant men and women driven solely by their ambition, DeSouza had traded in his humanity somewhere along the way

  'But to do that you need the stone,' she said, a little too loud, eager to distract him while she tried to determine the direction of the engine sound.


  He tipped his head slightly to the side. 'And research time.'

  'Which costs money,' she said.

  The engine was audible now. DeSouza had heard it. He motioned Edie to stand up then, taking out his hunting knife and cutting the fishing line around her ankles, he said:

  'Come meet an old friend.'

  It was snowing and a low cloud had fallen across the sea. The sound of the plane grew louder. As they stood on the shale listening to the swell of the engine, the air began to vibrate. Instinctively, Edie checked the direction and strength of the wind. Tarramiliivuq; it was turning to the north. A terrible dawning began to edge its way across her mind.

  Johannes Moller. That fat old walrus fart was in this deeper than she'd realized.

  A spot appeared among the clouds, blooming then resolving into the familiar shape of a Twin Otter. But the plane coming towards them wasn't Moller's.

  It was Auntie Martie's.

  A surge of hope shot into Edie's throat. She wanted to whoop. Martie had seen them.

  'She's your aunt, isn't she?' DeSouza shook his head. 'And you people always say family comes first.'

  She looked at him, anxious now and unsure of his meaning.

  The plane was descending rapidly and heading directly for the shoreline. Edie waited for Martie to swoop up and bank around in preparation for a landing on the water parallel to the shore, but the Otter advanced towards the land, dropping until it seemed as though it was skimming the waves. DeSouza began to look alarmed.

  'What the fuck?'

  The Otter kept on coming. It was no more than a hundred metres from them now, flying so low they could feel the air around them being sucked towards the wings, so close that Edie could almost see the expression on her aunt's face. As it grew nearer, DeSouza cracked. She heard him cry then make a sudden dive for the shale, covering his head with his hands, his rifle lying unprotected beside him. The plane roared overhead then swooped upwards. In an instant Edie was making a beeline for the rifle, struggling against the ties on her wrists. The plane rose and banked.

  Before she could reach it, DeSouza jumped up and grabbed the weapon, swinging it wildly. Before he could gather himself, the plane had turned and was coming in for another pass.

  Edie watched it approach. As the Otter swung in low once more she stumbled backwards, making for the tent. Momentarily distracted by the sound of her feet on the shale, DeSouza lurched about and raised his rifle. The bullet passed her with a whistle and ricocheted off the rock behind. The plane was nearly on DeSouza now. She saw him drop and again cover his head with his arms. Racing for the tent, she scoped about for Derek's rifle, thinking she might just have time to grab it, dive into the tent, cut the fishing line around her wrists and reload before DeSouza got to her. By now the plane had completed its swoop. She could hear the engine screeching into an ascent. Behind her, DeSouza would be lifting himself off the ground. Her head was fizzing and she felt every muscle stiffen. Glancing back, she saw him raise his rifle and instinctively hit the shale.

  The plane was banking over the sea ice, preparing for another pass. DeSouza was heading her way now, shouting and screaming obscenities, his rifle pointed at her head. She felt her breath catch in her throat. Suddenly, DeSouza stopped, settled the rifle into his shoulder and leaned into the sight. There was a loud crack and for an instant everything seemed to stop. She felt a spray of blood across her face and she froze, uncomprehending. DeSouza fell forward.

  He was kneeling in the shale, his face buried in it as though he had been caught drinking at a stream. An unearthly gurgling sound was coming from his chest. A pool of blood began to spread out from his mouth. Edie stood up and turned to see Derek Palliser, lowering his rifle and cracking a smile.

  'Square knots.' Derek limped towards her. 'Edie, you think of everything.'

  As the plane moved out into the open water and was coming round for a landing she told Derek what had happened, filling in the details as they went to fetch Saomik Koperkuj, carrying him back to the beach in a tarp. He was so light, so frail, it was a wonder he was still alive, but he was. Sick, with a shallow, racing pulse, but alive.

  Martie was waiting for them. There was no time then for explanations. They loaded the old man onto Edie's snowmobile trailer and from there onto the seaplane.

  By the time they went back for DeSouza he was already dead.

  'You go with the old man,' Derek said. 'I'll call the science station, get someone to come pick up the director.'

  She and Derek looked at each other. Something passed between them.

  A short while into the flight, Koperkuj seemed to regain consciousness and began to groan. Edie reached for the first-aid kit tied to the back of the bulkhead and pulled it down. The plane gave a little lurch over a cloud and dislodged a box packaged in shrink wrap lying behind it. Pushing it to one side, Edie took out a foil of Vicodin tabs from the first-aid kit, crushed a couple up, pulled aside the old man's trousers and, donning a pair of vinyl gloves, inserted the powder into the old man's rectum. Pretty soon, the groaning stopped.

  She pulled off the gloves and threw them aside, picked up the box and noticed the distinct vinegary, vegetable smell, the same smell she'd noticed in Martie's cabin. Her aunt was preoccupied with something on the instrument panel. Drawing out her knife, Edie made a small cut in the shrink wrap around the box then through the card, opened it up and inserted her thumb and finger. A white powder clung to her thumb. She raised it to her mouth and took a little on her tongue. The bitterness made her shiver.

  She thought about her aunt's incessant scratching and the burn marks on the spoon in her cabin. She remembered now, too, how delicately her house had been searched, with a knowledge of the places she might put things, care taken to put every object back in its exact place. So that's who DeSouza had meant by an 'old friend', when he had ironized about Inuit putting family first. It was Martie he'd been waiting for, Martie who had warned DeSouza they were on their way.

  The realization hit Edie like a rogue wave, turning her mind in so many directions she had to take hold of her breathing to collect herself. Then, when she was calm, she very quietly reached for her weapon. She approached the cockpit. Martie felt the gun barrel against the back of her neck and let out the screech of a cub abandoned by its mother.

  'Edie, no.'

  At the cry, Edie pressed the barrel in harder. Her skin prickled with adrenaline.

  'The only reason I'm not killing you right now is that someone has to fly. But you pull any tricks, and I mean any tricks, I'll send us all down.'

  She took a moment or two, gazing out of the window down to the grey, hypnotic water of Jones Sound. When she felt calm once more, she said, 'How long till we land?'

  'Twenty minutes.' Martie's voice sounded as though it had jammed inside her head.

  'Then that's how long you've got to explain yourself.'

  It had started out as some extra cash on the side. The dope - methamphetamine - came up on the Arctic Patrol ship labelled 'scientific instruments' and was collected by DeSouza personally. The ship's captain, Jonson, was in on it.

  Martie was the bag woman. Every so often she would land at the science station strip, pick up a box and drop it in Iqaluit.

  Martie paused in her explanation.

  'DeSouza told me the dope-running was funding important research.'

  'You know he shot Felix Wagner, right?'

  Martie nodded reluctantly.

  She'd found out long after the event. DeSouza had followed the hunting party, waiting for the moment Wagner was alone and he could disable him and take the stone. He fired off the shot, but then Andy Taylor appeared. DeSouza hadn't meant to kill Wagner, but he wasn't too sorry that he had. He claimed Wagner knew how much he needed that stone, he owed him. But instead Wagner had sold out.

  'Shit, Edie, he said what he was doing would change the world. When everything got used up here, he said, people would go and live up in the stars with the spirits. I don't know zip about science. I
know about flying planes. So I thought, what harm can this do? It wasn't like the dope was coming into Autisaq.'

  'But then you started using.'

  'I don't know how it happened.' Another agonized bark. 'I guess I just started tooting every now and then to keep up my concentration, you know, for the flying. Then the old man found me at it, so he joined in. No one even noticed the consignments were short. But DeSouza came by the cabin one day when me and Koperkuj were sampling the wares. That's when I realized he was using too.'

  'And that's when he found out about the stone.'

  'Uh huh.'

  'Koperkuj wouldn't give it to him?'

  'You know how the old man was . . .' She hesitated. '. . . is. He wouldn't sell his own turd to a qalunaat. Next time DeSouza came round, he told him he'd lost it. DeSouza didn't believe him, but the old man wouldn't budge. That was why he let you have it, so that DeSouza wouldn't steal it;

  She glanced back at the old man.

  'He gonna be OK?'

  Edie shrugged.

  'You gotta understand, Edie, in the early days, DeSouza was all right. Things changed once he'd got sight of that stone. And then the meth. I dunno, he just went dark.'

  'A dark spirit.'

  Martie nodded.

  'And then Koperkuj went missing . . .' Edie continued.

  'All honesty? I didn't know what had happened. Far as I knew, DeSouza believed the old man had lost the stone. Neither Koperkuj nor DeSouza realized I knew you had it, so I figured I was safe. But then DeSouza let slip he'd seen the old man just before he disappeared so I figured what he was up to with him. The stuff I told you about Koperkuj dealing weed? I knew you'd tell Palliser and I assumed he'd make the connection with the space station and go check out DeSouza.'

  'And you thought you'd take the stone from my house and give it to him, he'd release Koperkuj and everything would be just fine.'

  'Something like that. Shit, it sounds crazy, Little Bear, but everything got so fucked up. When I couldn't find the stone and I saw the photo on your couch I was worried and then later when I came round and you'd gone, I panicked. I figured you'd worked it out.'