Some Men ran away into the Bolizzardds and Died.
Some Men stayed and were Shot.
Sme M Froze to Deth.
Sm Men Ate theother mn and Died Anwwyay.
Mr. Hickey and Mr. Masnsonn sit up There in Ther Boat in the Wind. I thinge, but donnot Know, that Mrr. Mansin is No Lngr Livvng.
OI killed him.
I kelled the Men I lff behing at Rescue Camp.
I am so Sorry.
I am so Sorry.
All my lfe, my Brother knows I wish my brther werehere now, Thmoshe knws, al my lifI hve lved Plato and the Dialogues of Sokrates.
Like the grete Sokates, but not rf not grete I, the Poisoin, mcuh Deservd, movs up throu my Torso and Deadeens my Limbs and Turns my Fingrs — Surgeons fingers — to Unfeellling Sticks and
So glad
Wrote the note nw pined to my Cheset befre this
TheMen at Re cm
Thomnas, if they Find this Upon my and Ret
I am So Sorry.
I did My Best But never is en
Mr.Msnsns Wonds I AM NOT S
Gd wac ov Th MEn
59
HICKEY
Sometime in the last few days or weeks, Cornelius Hickey realized, he had ceased being a king.
He was now a god.
In fact — he suspected, was not yet certain, but suspected strongly and was close to certain — Cornelius Hickey had become God.
Others died around him yet he lived. He no longer felt the cold. He no longer felt hunger or thirst, much less the need to slake those former appetites. He could see in the encroaching dark as the nights lengthened toward the absolute, nor did the blowing snow and howling wind hinder his senses.
The mere mortal men had required a rigging of a tarp from the boat and sledge when their tents ripped and blew away and they huddled there like sheep with their woolen asses turned to the wind until they died, but Hickey was comfortable high on his throne in the stern of the pinnace.
When, after more than three weeks of being unable to move because of the blizzards, winds, and plummeting temperatures, his dray beasts had whined and begged for food, Hickey had descended among them like a god and provided them with their loaves and fishes.
He had shot Strickland to feed Seeley.
He had shot Dunn to feed Brown.
He had shot Gibson to feed Jerry.
He had shot Best to feed Smith.
He had shot Morfin to feed Orren… or perhaps it was all the other way around. Hickey’s memory could no longer be bothered with trivial matters.
But now those he’d so generously fed were dead, frozen hard into their blanket sleeping bags or contorted into the terrible claw shapes of their final throes. Perhaps he had become bored with them and shot them as well. He did vaguely remember carving up the choice parts of more men than he had shot to feed the others in the past week or two, back when he still needed to eat. Or perhaps it had just been on a whim. He could not recall the details. It was not important.
When the storms ended — and Hickey now knew that He could command them to cease at any time if it pleased Him to do so — he would probably bring several of the men back from the dead so that they could finish hauling Magnus and Him to Terror Camp.
The damned surgeon was dead — poisoned and frozen in his own little tarp tent some yards from the pinnace and the common graveyard tarp — but Hickey chose to ignore that unpleasant development — it was but a mild irritation. Even gods have phobias, and Cornelius Hickey had always held a deep fear of poison or contamination. After one glance — and after firing a single bullet into the corpse from the entrance to the tarp tent to make sure the damned surgeon was not feigning death — the new god Hickey had backed away and left the poisoned thing and its contaminated shroud-tarp alone.
Magnus had been mewling and complaining for weeks from his favored place in the bow but had been strangely quiet the last day or two. His last movement, during a lull in the blizzards when a dull winter light had illuminated the pinnace and the snowburied tarp next to it and the low hill they were on and the frozen beach to the west and endless ice fields beyond, had been to open his mouth as if to make a request of his lover and God.
But instead of words issuing forth, or even another complaint, hot blood had first filled and then geysered from Magnus’s open mouth, flowed down his bearded chin, and covered the big man’s belly and gently folded hands, ending in a pool on the bottom of the boat near his boots. The blood was still there, but frozen now into waves and ripples, looking like nothing so much as some Biblical Prophet’s flowing (but ice-covered) brown beard. Magnus had not spoken again since.
His partner’s brief Death Nap did not disturb Hickey — he knew that He could bring Magnus back whenever He chose to — but the open eyes endlessly staring over that gaping mouth and frozen icefall of blood began to get on the god’s nerves after a day or two. It was especially hard to wake up to. Especially after the eyes frosted over and became two white, icy, never-blinking orbs.
Hickey had stirred from his throne in the stern then, crawling forward past the propped shotgun and bag of powder-shot cartridges, over the centre thwarts past the heaps of wrapped chocolate (which He might deign to eat if hunger ever returned) and past the saws and nails and rolls of sheet lead, stepping over the towels and silk handkerchiefs stacked so neatly near Magnus’s bloodied feet, finally kicking aside some of the Bibles that his friend had pulled close to him in the last days, stacking them like a little wall between Hickey and himself.
But Magnus’s mouth would not shut — Hickey could not even snap off or chip away the thick river of frozen blood — nor would the white eyes close.
“I’m sorry, love,” he whispered. “But you know how I hate being stared at.”
He had used his ship’s knife to pry out the frozen eyeballs and throw them far out into the howling darkness. He would fix that later when He brought Magnus back.
Finally, upon His command, the storm lessened and then died away. The howling ceased. The snow was piled five feet high on the westward, windward side of the pinnace high atop its sledge and had filled in much of the space under the death tarp on the leeward side.
It was very cold and Hickey’s preternatural vision could see more dark clouds moving in from the north, but for this evening, the world was calm. He saw the sun set in the south and knew that it would be sixteen or eighteen hours until it rose again, also in the south, and that soon it would not rise at all. It would then be the Age of Darkness — ten thousand years of darkness — but that suited Cornelius Hickey’s purposes well.
But this night was cold and gentle. The stars were bright — Hickey had been taught the names of some of the winter constellations now rising, but this night he had trouble even finding the Plow — and He was content to sit in the stern of his boat, his peacoat and watch cap keeping him perfectly warm, his gloved hands on the gunwales, his gaze locked forward in the direction of Terror Camp and even the distant ship He would reach when He chose to bring his dray beasts and consort back to life. He was thinking about months and years past and marveling at the inevitable miracle of his own transcendence.