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‘So.’ She stared at the smoke curling up from her cigarette. ‘That’s very strange.’ And then, before I had time to explain, her eyes suddenly looked at me with disconcerting directness and she said, ‘And you are quite certain that it is Lake of the Lion that my father transmitted from?’

‘Yes.’ And I gave her the details of the message, though I was perfectly well aware that she already knew them. ‘What I can’t understand,’ I added, ‘is why your fiance didn’t admit that it was Lake of the Lion in the first place.’

‘Perhaps he is not sure.’ Her eyes were suddenly clouded and on the defensive.

‘He seems to have accepted the fact now.’

‘I can understand,’ she said. And then she stubbed out her cigarette with quick jabs and got to her feet. ‘I am going to rest now. I think you should get some sleep, too.’ I started to follow her, but Darcy stopped me. ‘Sit down a minute.’ He was watching her as she crossed the big room, a small, lonely figure threading her way between the crowded tables. ‘Don’t ask her that question again,’ he said.

‘What question? About Laroche not admitting it was Lake of the Lion?’ He nodded. ‘But why ever not?’

‘Just don’t ask her, that’s all,’ he said gruffly. And then he, too, got to his feet and I went with him. Outside we found Lands and Laroche standing by a jeep. ‘Well, I managed to fix it,’ Lands was saying to him. ‘They didn’t like it, but they’ll let you have it for the afternoon. It’ll be here in half an hour.’ He looked up at the sky. A ridge of cloud lay motionless to the west, its darkness emphasized by the fitful gleam of sunlight that flitted across the camp. ‘More snow by the look of it.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, it’s your only hope of an easy passage, so you’d better make the best of it,’ he said to Laroche. ‘Take him with you.’ He jerked his hand in my direction. ‘Give him some idea what the country’s like.’

‘What about Paule?’ Laroche said.

‘I’ll tell her women aren’t allowed in the helicopter. It’ll make her mad and she’ll chew my head off, but I’m not having her risk her neck in that thing.’

‘It’s safe enough,’ Laroche said.

‘Maybe. Well, good luck, Bert. I hope you find the place.’ And he got into the jeep and drove off up the camp road.

We went down to the grade then and waited for the helicopter. It came from the north with an ugly buzz-saw of sound, looking like some huge gad-fly, silver against the dark cloud. All along the grade heads lifted and turned to watch it, fascinated; it had an eerie quality about it, like a visitant from another planet, but I suppose the men saw in it tangible evidence that other parts of this wilderness were occupied. It plumped down on a flat section of the grade not far from us and the rotors slowed and stopped.

It was my first flight in a helicopter, and as I climbed in, I thought it was an odd place to make it. It was a small machine, so finely balanced that the pilot had to transfer the battery aft to its fuselage seating in order to compensate for my additional weight. It had one of those Perspex curved fronts so that there was nothing to obstruct the view. I was squeezed in between Laroche and the door, and as we rose vertically into the air, it was like being borne aloft in an armchair. The pilot shifted his grip on the juddering control column and we slid off sideways along the grade, gaining height all the time until even the big yellow tumble-bugs looked like toys and the grade, running away to the north, was just a slender, broken ribbon of yellow, a frail line scored by ants across the fir-black face of Labrador.

We followed the grade almost as far as the trestle, and then we turned east and went riding high over country that was nothing but jackpine and lake. The sun had gone and the land was a black plateau shot with lakes, dozens of little lakes that all ran northwest south-east, the way the glaciers had scoured the rock base, and the water was steel-grey.

Laroche had the map Mackenzie had drawn for Paule open on his knee and after about ten minutes he signalled the pilot down. The noise of the rotors made it quite impossible to talk. We hovered at almost tree-top height, and after peering closely at a lake a little ahead of us, Laroche nodded his head and we went on.

Just beyond the lake was a clearing. The pilot shouted something and then the machine was hovering over it and we began to descend. We touched down light as a feather amongst the jackpine and the pilot got out, ducking beneath the gently turning rotor blades, ‘What have we stopped for?’ I asked.

Laroche smiled at me. ‘I think Len has been drinking some beer,’ he said, and the smile smoothed the lines out of his face so that he looked almost boyish.

It was the first time it ever occurred to me that you could put a plane down in the middle of nowhere just to relieve yourself. It was so sublimely ridiculous that I found myself laughing. Laroche was laughing, too, and in the moment of sharing the joke, the tension between us was temporarily eased.

After that we stayed close above the trees, for the map showed a trail running north and south. It was an old trail and difficult to distinguish. But Laroche seemed to have an instinct for the country, so that I began to think that perhaps we would find the lake that afternoon. He sat hunched forward, his eyes peering down at the ground, and every now and then he’d signal with his hand and the stunted tops of the trees would slide away beneath us.

We reached the end of the trail and there was the next lake marked on the map, a long, narrow sheet of water trailing away to muskeg at the farther end. Laroche pointed to the map and nodded, and he shouted something in the pilot’s ear and made a quick urgent movement of his hand. I had a feeling then that he was in a hurry, as though he wanted to get it over. The map showed only three more lakes, but no distance was given. ‘How much farther?’ I shouted to him.

He shrugged his shoulders and I sat back, staring at the bleak loneliness of the strip of water that was coming towards us, praying to God that we’d find Lake of the Lion and not have to do all this again on foot. All the brightness seemed to have gone out of the sky and the land had a stark look, as though suddenly deadened by the fear of winter. The joke shared in the clearing seemed a long way back, and as we skimmed the surface of the lake, little cat’s-paws of wind ran away from us on either side.

Laroche turned his head, craning his neck to peer up at the sky behind us. The pilot glanced back, too, and when I looked back out of my side-window, the lake behind me had almost disappeared and the country beyond was blurred and indistinct, the sky above it frozen to a grey darkness. And then the storm caught up with us and everything was blotted out by driving sleet that rattled on the Perspex with a hissing sound that could be heard even above the noise of the engine. All we could see was the ground immediately below us, the trees whipped by the wind and slowly greying as the sleet turned to snow and coated them.

I glanced at the pilot. His lips were tight-pressed under the beaky nose, and his hands gripped the control column so tight that the knuckles showed white. He didn’t say anything, and nor did Laroche. They were both leaning slightly forward, their eyes straining to pierce the murk, and their tenseness was instantly communicated to me.

I had seen it snow the night before, but not like this, not with this cold, malignant fury. And though I had been alone then, I had still been close to the grade so that I had felt no sense of danger. But now it was different. The grade was miles behind and we were being tossed about in a land devoid of humans. This, I knew, was the real Labrador and, shivering, I thought of that lonely voice calling to my father out of the ether.

The trees vanished and there was another stretch of water below us. Little white caps danced on the ridged surface. And then it was gone. And after that there were more lakes, small grey patches of water that came up one after another and vanished abruptly, and then a big sheet of water and a pebble bank — the third lake marked on the map. The helicopter dropped like a stone, plummeting down on to the grey back of the pebble island, and as the skids touched, the pilot and Laroche jumped out, holding the fuselage down until the rotor stopped and then piling stones on to the skids.