“Magda, please help me finish preparing dinner,” Bodecia said.
She frowned and started to protest before remembering he was going to be here from now on. They had time, a lot of time.
“Of course, Mother.”
“Do you have something for me?” Pelagian asked Jerry.
“Yes, sir, I do.” He pulled an envelope out of his jacket and handed it to the large man.
Pelagian ripped it open and eagerly read the message. Both Magda and Bodecia watched him as he walked across the room, opened the firebox on the wood stove and threw in the letter and envelope.
“Well, that was certainly dramatic!” Bodecia said in a tone that demanded enlightenment.
“Well, the main gist of it all is that I am running for First Speaker of the Alaska Republik.”
The way the words rolled off his tongue told Magda that he was taken with the idea.
“We don’t even know if we have a republik yet!” Bodecia snapped.
“Why are you upset?” Pelagian said.
“Because you haven’t talked to me about this at all, and here you are, putting yourself and us in the crosshairs of every mentally deficient, politically frustrated, would-be messiah out there. Did it occur to you that we might want some input into this momentous decision?”
“Bodecia, my love, nobody outside this room knows anything about it. I’ll happily listen to anything you and Magda have to say about it.”
“And then go right ahead and do what you want anyway!”
“Mother, you’re being unfair. Let’s have a meal and a quiet discussion about this crazy idea Father has come up with.”
Bodecia laughed but Pelagian didn’t. Jerry looked uncomfortable. At that point Rudi hurried in and firmly shut the door behind him. His quick smile faded as he looked around at the others.
“Am I too early for meal? Will be happy to return at later time.”
“Dinner is ready, Rudi,” Bodecia said in a listless voice. “We’re all absorbing the idea of Pelagian running for Czar.”
“First Speaker,” Pelagian said in the most neutral tone he could manage. “We call it First Speaker.”
“Is possible to discuss and eat?” Rudi asked.
109
Klahotsa on the Yukon
“You ever see anything like it before?” Trooper Bates asked.
“What? I can’t hear you through your scarf,” Corporal Smythe said in a low voice.
“The lights, ever see anything like them before?” He pointed up to the aurora borealis filling the dark sky with light and dimming the distant stars.
The aurora curtained across the void with sheets of cold flame that seemed to be hundreds of miles wide, knife-blade thin, and stretching upward into outer space. The lights wavered, shifted; the color changed from opalescence to a mild emerald and bent into a scroll.
“You’re supposed to be on perimeter patrol, not watching pretty lights in the sky, you dumb bastard!”
“How can you not watch them, Smythe. Is there no poetry in your soul?”
“It’s Corporal Smythe to you, Trooper Bates, and if you don’t attend to your duty, I’ll put you on company punishment!”
“Yes, Corporal.”
“I wish to hell it would cloud up,” Smythe said. “When it’s clear like this the temperature plummets.”
“What are we doing out here, anyway? Nobody in their right mind would be poking around here in the middle of a night this cold.”
“What Major Riordan wants, Major Riordan gets,” Smythe said. “We get paid to follow orders, not question them.”
“What’s that?”
“I said—”
“No! Over there!” Bates said in a whisper, pointing into the dark forest.
Corporal Smythe stopped and peered into the trees, trying to pierce the heavy darkness. Above them the aurora twisted and writhed, color shifting to a rose blush that reflected off metal for just an instant.
Smythe quickly raised his rifle and fired into the darkness next to where the glint had vanished.
The gunshot shattered the still night and four shots, fired nearly simultaneously, erupted from the trees.
Two rounds hit Bates in the chest, knocking him back against a tree, dead before he hit the ground. Two rounds found Smythe, one grazing his skull and the other shattering his left scapula. He fell unconscious in the snowy forest, his blood melting snow crystals before freezing into a red pool that reflected the dancing aurora borealis.
110
Nowitna, Provisional State of Doyon, Alaska Republik
“That’s the slowest damn retreat I’ve ever made,” Colonel Del Buhrman said, holding the cup of tea in both hands.
“If you break a sweat in weather like that,” Lieutenant Colonel Heinrich Smolst said, “you die.”
“Why?”
“Because you breathe deeper, strain for more air, and the air is cold enough to frost your lungs—and kill you.”
“Extreme place, this Alaska of yours.”
“And full of extreme people,” Smolst said with a nod. “Like you.”
Buhrman grinned and looked up from his cup of tea when Iago Titus came through the cabin door.
“How’s our patient?”
“My auntie has stabilized the wound, but we need to get him over to Tanana as soon as possible. She says his arm needs surgery.”
“Damn, I was afraid of that. I’ll see if I can get a plane in here to pick him up.”
Smolst shook his head. “It’s somewhere between fifty and sixty below out there, Del. The air is too thin for small planes and we can’t get a big one into Nowitna—the strip is too small.”
“What do you mean, ‘the air is too thin’?”
“All of the moisture is frozen out of it and a small plane has trouble getting any lift without a bit of moisture in the air.”
“You’re pulling my leg, right?”
“I had the same response when they told me that one back in Siberia in ’79. So I asked a pilot about it and he verified the story.”
“I’ll be damned. You learn something new every day.”
“If you pay attention,” Smolst said.
“So we can’t get out by air unless it warms up. I sure as hell hope it doesn’t get any colder.”
“Which begs the question, Colonel Buhrman: why are you still here?”
Colonel Buhrman gave him the squint-eyed, half-smile look that told Smolst the man had an ace in the hole. They had played innumerable games of poker to pass the hours waiting for things to happen and Smolst lost a lot before he began recognizing the colonel’s “tells.” This time the ace in the hole wasn’t a card.
Smolst pressed on. “After all, the war with Russia is over. The war with Japan is all but over. And except for a few bands of rogues like Riordan’s, things have gotten pretty quiet. Yet you’re still here and in the field despite the fact that most of your people returned to California.”
Buhrman’s grin grew under the heavy moustache.
“That’s what I like about you, Heinrich, you’re smart.”
The door flew open and a bundled figure hurriedly slammed the door behind him. After he pushed back the parka hood and pulled the scarf from around his face, Buhrman recognized First Sergeant Scally.
“My God, but it’s cold out there! I think my balls have shrunk up to my esophagus.”
“Now there’s an image I really don’t want to dwell on,” Buhrman said. “Do you have anything further to report?”
First Sergeant Scally hung up his parka, turned to the colonel, and saluted.
“Our pickets report nothing other than an incredible display of the northern lights, sir.”