“Simon,” screamed Colin.
But Kate was there. She had caught up Colin’s roughly improvised weapon of bullets by its length of wood, and touched the inch of fuse to the fire. It blazed into life. She ran forward, holding the piece of plank at full arm’s length in front of her until it wedged into the whale’s throat. Just as she did so, the first round exploded, and the recoil nearly tore her hand off. The whale jerked back and went rigid. Kate carried on running. Behind her, the makeshift weapon tore itself apart as the rest of the magnum shells detonated, blasting through the whale, ripping away the whole top of its head. With the last of the rope still caught up in what was left of its jaws, the whale sank silently through the hole, leaving only a long streak of rust behind it on the ice.
Kate fell on her knees beside Colin and looked out with him over the quiet sea at Job kneeling on his little raft of ice.
At least the other two killers had gone for the time being.
“There’s nothing we can do,” she said.
He swung round to face her. His eyes were dark, his face thin, desperate, his lips chapped, there was a cold-sore she hadn’t noticed at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t you see . . .” he cried. There were tears in his eyes. His hand moved to dash them away before they froze on his cheeks. “He is my friend.”
She repeated, gently, as if to a backward child, “There is nothing you can do.”
“There must be something . . .”
“Ross.” Simon. “He’s waving.”
Ross slewed round, still on his knees. Kate moved closer to him. Job was a black silhouette against the sea.
“What’ve we got?” asked Colin.
“Nothing.”
“Dynamite . . .”
“It’s gone,” she whispered.
Colin sat back on his heels. There was nothing they could do. A little wind blew in his eyes. He brushed away the tears again. Then, over the sea, came a faint sound. Job was waving his arms.
“C-o-l-i-n!” shouted Job. He waved his arms slowly, carefully, the ice rocking beneath his knees at even this slight movement, the icy water slopping against his sealskin boots and trousers. Distantly, Colin raised his hand. Job continued to wave both hands, the dynamite forgotten in his left mittened fist. He had nothing to say except Colin’s name, no idea except to show that he was as yet all right; and so he waved, and so the ice-raft rocked.
Ripples spread in circles, blue-grey and black. Job’s eyes followed them thoughtfully as they moved towards him, until they became two solid black shapes, graceful as arrow-heads, sharp as knives. Spray roared into the air. The whales began to circle.
Job began to pray. To what gods?
The fins disappeared.
Job cheered and waved his arms. Ross waved back, waved and waved. Job raised his arms, paused: something . . .
A gentle wind was pushing him in the back. The raft began to move towards the floe. Little waves washed over the blunt ice and lapped at his knees. It was moving! With infinite care, he climbed to his feet. Upright he would make a better sail, if only the wind would keep blowing. The figures on the floe became clearer, began to assume depth, colour . . .
Job’s heart beat at the back of his throat. He stood unsteadily, legs spread, arms spread, riding the wind.
A minute passed. Another. Drawing themselves out to terrible length.
“NOT FAR,” Colin called.
“NOT FAR,” answered Job.
The wind faltered. Job looked up. The clouds were thinning. A change in the weather. Perhaps it will get warmer, he thought, shivering in his wet clothes.
“It’s going to break,” he called, for want of anything better to say.
“What?”
“The weather, it’s going to . . .”
The ocean leapt behind him, drew itself up, bucketed aside. The killer rose, foot after foot, to the height of a second-storey window, blocking out nearly half of the sky. Yard after yard of it: scarred face, black liquid eyes, white cliff of belly, up and up until the flippers reached over the far edges of the tiny raft, reached, hooked, held. Job staggered back until his shoulders were against the snow-white belly, and the whale held him erect. He found he was screaming a name. “AIPALOOKVIK!” Great God of Innuit The People: the Spirit under the Iceberg, Teeth of the North Wind, He who Bites and Destroys.
The killer Aipalookvik cradled the Eskimo against its chest almost protectively, moving its great tail to hold the tiny raft steady, to prevent it sinking under its great weight. Job waited dumbly for the end: against a god what else is there to do?
As he waited, the killer Aipalookvik, Biter and Destroyer, gave a strange low loving call.
The water parted scant yards from Job. The black point of the mate’s fin, the black sail, the black shoulder, came . . . and her face, out of the water, mouth agape, hurling the ocean aside. Job’s mind raced into prayer. “O Lord, out of the depths.” His lips screamed wordlessly and she was upon him, flipped half on her side, her jaws closing round his legs.
Oh Lord, out of the depths . . . Job felt her teeth grate on his bones. She backed away. His trousers flapped in rags against the bloody ruin below his waist. He did not look down. Oh Lord, out of the depths . . . said his mind; “COLIN!” he screamed.
Colin, seeing him like that, saw Jeremiah five years earlier, asking to be left to die. He assumed that Job was demanding the same thing – to die well.
Perhaps he was.
“THE DYNAMITE,” screamed Colin. “JOB, THE DYNAMITE.”
Job held the stick, fused and ready to light, in his left hand. He fumbled for a match. His eyes went up, he could see Colin’s face looking as though it were carved of bone. He turned his face away, lit the match, sheltered from the wind by the bulk of the whale. The fuse hissed into life, spitting fire . . .
And the mate came at Job again, her mouth opening like a mantrap at his knees. He saw the teeth, the water flowing past them in little red eddies, pink waterfalls; he saw the great pink-white blade of her tongue working, the crimson shadows of her throat. He fell forward, thrusting out his arm, and she took it, hand with its spitting bundle, shoulder, deep into her mouth.
The flame of the fuse seared her: she jerked back, snapping shut her teeth. They almost met across his upper arm, and as she slid back whimpering, left the flesh stripped away from shoulder to elbow. The muscled walls of the arteries spasmed shut, the length of the bone shone yellow-white.
Job tore himself back from the terrible sight, and the joint of his elbow, still between her teeth, severed with the strain. The white stick of his humerus stood out from the ruin of his shoulder as he staggered back, on his knees now. His shoulder slammed into the rigid flipper of Aipalookvik for the last time, and toppled forward drunkenly towards the waiting mouth of the killer’s mate.
“Oh Lord,” he said. “Out of the Depths I cry to Thee . . .”
And the dynamite exploded.
On the floe they froze; Kate, her arm round Colin’s shoulders, Simon, his legs wide, his mouth open, the piece of rope caught up as Job began to come back on the wind still in his hands. The red mushroom of mist fell back into the sea, and there was nothing there.
“By God he did it,” said Simon.
“What did he say?” asked Colin. “What did he say?”
Kate had only half heard herself, but she told Colin. “The debt. He said you were free.”
TWELVE
i
The killer whale in which Job had seen the great God Aipalookvik heaved his forty-foot length through the dull water, back breaking the surface so that he could gasp air into his blast-damaged lungs. A beard of blood clung to his chin and upper chest where his delicate skin had been ruptured by hundreds of shards of bone sent howling like shrapnel on the first wind of the blast, from his consort’s massive skull and Job’s upper torso. He was lucky that his wounds did not extend any further up his white cheeks, for had they done so, his eyes would have been destroyed.