“How long has it been now?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Five days. Maybe more.”
“Five days. It feels longer.”
“Maybe.”
She heard the roar of the fire outside and the quiet tones of the conversation between Colin and Simon. It seemed so normal. So matter of fact and natural. They might have been here for ever. They might be here for ever. The prospect, nebulous, improbable, didn’t frighten Kate at all. Strangely, she felt deeply content. It was as though something had promised her that she would come through all right, unscathed.
“Job?”
“Yes?”
“Is that why you stay with him, because he reminds you of this one-armed god?”
Job gave a half-laugh. “Partly. I suppose you could say so.”
“Only partly?” She did not mean to be rude, or to be patronising towards Job’s beliefs, but she wanted to know. She was deeply interested.
“What do you want me to say? It is a childish coincidence that he resembles Torgasoak, true; and yet . . .” He thought for a while, trying to define his almost religious regard for his friend, trying to put it in a way she would understand. “Among Innuit,” he said quietly, dreamily, “there is a belief that a man can only become a shaman, a truly powerful person, a man who can control the Inua and communicate with the gods, in only one way. He must be eaten by the white Bear and survive.”
“And Colin had his arm chewed by the polar bear on the first night . . .”
He laughed. “Yes, there is that, but no, it’s not what I meant. It was what Jeremiah told me of the Antarctic. The storm there, when it came in its final stage came as a white bear. There was no doubt in his mind, you see, and he placed certainty in my mind also.”
“He loved Colin Ross, too.”
“Oh no. Jeremiah hated him during those last few days. I have never seen such hatred in a man.” Job shook his head.
Kate’s head snapped back, her eyes wide, searching Job’s calm face. “He hated him? But why? I mean, Colin saved him . . .”
“Yes. That was it, you see. Jeremiah wanted to die in the cold. You don’t understand . . .” He paused again, thinking carefully. “Jeremiah knew he was dead when he broke his leg. There was no chance of surviving after that. For a while he might live, but he would never walk, he would never know a woman. And he was a proud man, Jeremiah, he would take nothing from anyone. He hated a debt, and he died owing Colin an arm, owing him a life he didn’t even want.”
“But his testimony saved Colin’s reputation.”
“True. He was never a small-minded man, my brother. He would not strike back like that. If he could not do it man to man, he would leave it to spirits more powerful than he.”
“And you? How do you feel about it?”
“There is a death joining us. I will stay with him and help him if he needs helping, until the debt is paid.”
“But you haven’t been near him in five years!”
“We have been close enough.” There was silence. Suddenly Job seemed to her to have become a strangely sinister figure. She remembered the fear his quiet voice had engendered in her on the plane when she had first met him. The basic fundamental pattern of his and Colin’s relationship as she saw it had been upset, and she was by no means certain whose side the debt was on; whether Job felt he owed Colin a life, or whether he expected to take one.
Kate frowned, trying to understand. Anywhere else, with any other people involved, it would be too ridiculous for words; and yet she found she could believe it of the strange, silent Eskimo torn between two fundamentally opposing cultures, full of strange mystical beliefs which seemed to make so much sense up here in this nightmare environment.
“But you think he’s one of these shamans?”
“I don’t know. What I believe is of no importance. Jeremiah believed. I said I would be here at an ending. I swore. I will be here.”
“An ending?” She didn’t really want to know, but she had to ask.
“Yes. I swore. Until an ending: his or mine. It is necessary for Jeremiah.”
“Do you really believe all of this?” Her voice was strident.
“It is of no importance.” His voice was weary. He had fallen into the trap he feared for the others. He had revealed too much of himself to this girl. He could not stay with her any longer, now that she knew so much, for she would try to find out more, and God alone knew where that might lead. He pulled himself to his feet, put on his anorak, overtrousers and boots, and went outside.
For several moments, Kate waited, her mind trying to fathom it, a strange sense of unreality making her doubt everything about her. Then she got up and followed him outside.
Colin and Simon were crouched over the fire tray, and Job was picking up stuff from around the wreck of the storage tent, putting the tins he had collected into the latrine-cum-storage tent.
“More coffee?” asked Colin.
“Long as it’s hot,” she said absently.
For a while they remained as they were, the two men bending assiduously over the fire, the girl reserved, distant, watching the Eskimo with narrowed eyes. Then Colin asked, “What is it, Kate?”
“Umm? Oh. Nothing.” She frowned, angry with herself— no sooner had she decided it would be unwise to dig further into what Job had told her than she was making it quite obvious that there was something wrong. She joined them and, much to his relief, took the pot away from Colin, who went to help Job.
“What’s the matter with Kate?” he asked, quietly, in case his voice carried.
“She asked too many questions.”
“And you answered them?”
“Yes.”
“Was that wise, Job?”
“It was not wise, no.”
They took the last of the tins into the new storage tent with its untidy pile of boxes and its single evil-smelling chemical toilet. There was no more to be said, so they silently cleared the glass and the orange ice off the floe and dumped it all into the quietly slopping hole around which it lay.
“It won’t take much more,” said Ross, looking around at the remains of the floe.
“No,” said Job. “Three days if the weather holds, and if the killers stay away.”
“Will they?”
“Who knows? Perhaps Jeremiah has the ear of Aipalookvik after all.”
Ross gave a half smile. “No. He’ll wait to settle his own debts later. If this is anyone’s work, it’s Hers.” He gestured south over half the world.
“Perhaps.” It was Job’s turn to smile.
It may be that they were both a little mad, talking of dead men and continents as though they had power and could order events. But neither thought himself or the other even slightly insane.
“Come and get it, Job,” yelled Kate.
When Job was finished he wandered off alone again. The rest of them cleared away, washed up and went to bed. By the time Job came back over the restless ice and climbed quietly into the tent, they were all sound asleep. For a while he lay in his sleeping bag, cramped uneasily between Ross and Simon, his eyes still full of the dead grey of sky and sea, the livid blue of the floes; his mind restless with the problems his talk with Kate had thrown up. How much did he owe to the memory of a dead brother, how much to a religion he only half believed? He was still wondering when he too fell asleep.
They all slept peacefully for nearly six hours. Job tossed and turned a little at first, and Kate moaned when she lay on her back; but Simon and Colin slept like the dead, undisturbed by memories or dreams. Far above them the clouds began to thin out, and the day, tending towards evening, silently brightened. The sea remained quiet, disturbed only slightly by a gentle breeze freshening from the east. The floes stirred restlessly, brightening with the sky, champing quietly one against the other. A flock of birds flew high swift towards Alaska, disturbing the air with only one or two cries and a distant humming of wings, and the ocean answered with its own quiet songs – the cries of three hunting whales.
Job never knew precisely why he woke then, but suddenly he found himself sitting up straight, tense with some unremembered fear. He looked around the tent. The rest were quietly asleep. He lay down again, but he could not get his eyes to close. In any case he needed to go to the toilet. He rose silently, went to the tent-flap and let himself out. There was a wind. The sky looked quite promising. He stretched until his bones cracked, and then went over the gently shifting net towards the latrine-tent.