"Perhaps," I said.
"Who knows what life is all about?" asked Imnak.
"I do not know," I said. "Perhaps it is not about anything."
"That is interesting," said Imnak. "But then the world would be lonely."
"Perhaps the world is lonely," I said.
"No," said Imnak.
"You do not think so?" I asked.
"No," said Imnak, drawing his kayak up on the shore, "the world cannot be lonely where there are two people who are friends."
I looked up at the stars. "You are right, Imnak," I said. "Where there is beauty and friendship what more could one ask of a world. How grand and significant is such a place. What more justification could it require?"
"Help me pull the meat up on shore," said Imnak.
I helped him. Others came down to the shore and helped, too.
I did not know what, sort of place the world was, but sometimes it seemed to me to be very wonderful.
23
One Comes To The Feasting House
"Night has fallen," I said to Imnak. "I do not think Karjuk is coming."
"Perhaps not," said Imnak.
Snow had fallen several times, though lightly. Temperatures had dropped considerably.
Some three weeks ago, more than twenty sleeps past, Imnak and I had taken three sleen in kayak fishing. But then kayak fishing had been over for the year. The very night of our catch the sea had begun to freeze. It had first taken on a slick greasy appearance. In time tiny columns of crystals had formed within it, and then tiny pieces of ice. Then the water, in a few hours, had become slushy and heavy, and had contained, here and there, larger chunks of ice. Then, a few hours later, these reaches of ice, forming and extending themselves, had touched, and struck one another, and ground against one another, and slid some upon the others, forming irregular plates and surfaces, and then the sea, still and frozen, was locked in white, bleak serenity.
"There are other villages," I said. "Let us travel to them, to see if Karjuk has been there."
"There are many villages," said Imnak. 'The farthest is many sleeps away."
"I wish to visit them all," I said. 'Then, if we cannot find news of Karjuk, I must go out on the ice in search of him."
"You might as well look for one sleen in all the sea," said Imnak. "It is hopeless."
"I have waited long enough," I said. "I must try."
"I will put ice on the runners," said Imnak. "Akko has a snow sleen, Naartok another."
"Good," I said. A running snow sleen can draw a sled far faster than a human being. They are very dangerous but useful animals.
"Listen," said Imnak.
I was quiet and listened. Far off, in the clear, cold air I heard the squeal of a sleen.
"Perhaps Karjuk is coming!" I cried.
"No, it is not Karjuk," said Imnak. "It is coming from the south."
"Imnak! Imnak!" called Poalu, from outside, running up to the door of the hut. "Someone is coming!" She had been dressing skins, with the other girls, and other women, in the feasting house.
"Who is it?" he asked.
"I do not know," she said.
"Well, climb up on the meat rack and look, lazy girl," he said.
"Yes, Imnak," she cried.
Imnak and I drew on our mittens and parkas and emerged from the lamp-warmed, half-underground hut. It was clear and still outside, and sounds, even slight ones, were very obvious. The snow was loud beneath our boots, crackling. Moonlight bathed the village and the snow on the tundra, and the ice on the sea. I could hear other villagers, quite clearly, as they conversed with one another. Everyone in the village seemed now to be outside of their dwellings. Several were on the meat racks, in the moonlight, trying to see out across the snow. It was not cold for the arctic night, though this sort of thing is relative. It was very calm. I suspect the temperature would have been objectively something like forty below zero. One was not really aware of the cold until one's face became numb. There was no wind.
"What do you see?" asked Imnak.
"It is one sled and one man!" called down Poalu.
We heard the sleen again in the distance. The sound, of course, in the clear, cold air, carried extremely well. The. sleen may have been ten pasangs away or more. Sometimes one can hear them from as far away as fifteen pasangs.
"Light lamps, boil meat!" called Kadluk, who was the chief man in the village. "We must make a feast to welcome our visitor!"
Women scurried about, to obey. I saw Arlene, and Barbara and Audrey, slaves, glance at one another. If the visitor fancied white-skinned females, they knew the village, in its riches, had such delicacies, themselves, for his sexual taste. Then, under Poalu's sharp tongue, she perched still on the meat rack, they fled to heat water for the boiling of meat.
"It is one sled and one man!" called down Poalu.
"Let us go out to meet him," said Kadluk.
"Who from the south would come in the winter?" I asked Imnak.
"It must be a trader," said Imnak. "But that is strange, for they do not come in the winter."
"I know who it must be!" I said. "He may have news! Let us hurry to meet him!"
"Yes," said Imnak. "Of course!"
"Let us hurry to meet our visitor," called out Kadluk cheerily.
The men hurried to their huts to gather weapons. There are upon occasion wild snow sleen in the tundra, half starved and maddened by hunger. They constitute one of the dangers of traveling in the winter. Such sleen, together with the cold and the darkness, tend to close the arctic in the winter. No simple trader ventures north in that time.
Kadluk in the lead, Imnak and I following, with Akko and Naartok, and the others, too, behind him, harpoons and lances in our hands, tramped out of the village, heading toward the sound of the sleen.
A pasang outside of the village, Kadluk lifted his hand for silence.
We were suddenly quiet.
"Away!" we heard. "Away!" The sound. far off, drifted toward us.
"Hurry!" cried Kadluk.
We ran up, over a small hillock, the snow about our ankles.
A pasang or so away, in the sloping plain between low hillocks, under the moonlight, small, we saw the long sled, with its hitched sleen. Too, we saw two figures in the vicinity of the sled. One was that of a man.
"An ice beast!" cried Akko.
The other figure was that, clearly, shambling, long-armed. of a white-pelted Kur.
The man was trying to thrust it away with a lance. The animal was aggressive.
It drew back, wounded, I believe, but not grievously. It crouched down, watching the man, sucking at its arm. Then it stood on its short hind legs and lifted its two long arms into the air, lifting them and screaming with rage. It then crouched down, fangs bared, to again attack.
I was running down the hillock, slipping and sliding in the snow, my lance in my hand.
The other men, behind me, lifting their weapons and shouting, hurried after me.
The beast turned to look at us, hurrying toward him, shouting, weapons brandished.
I had the feeling, and it startled me, as I ran towards it, that it was considering our distance from it, and the time it would take us to traverse that distance.
I sensed then it was not a simple beast, the degenerate and irrational descendant of survivors of a Kurii ship perhaps crashed generations ago, descendants to whom the discipline and loyalty of the ship codes were meaningless, descendants who had for most practical purposes, save their cunning, reverted to a simplistic animal savagery. The Kur who is only a beast is less dangerous in most situations than the Kur who is more than a beast The first is only terribly dangerous; the second is an incomparable foe.
In the moment that the Kur had turned to regard us the man had hastened to unhitch the snow sleen at the sled. When the Kur turned back suddenly to regard him the snow sleen was free and leaping for its throat.