The Flavors of Other Worlds Read online

  Cedan and Kedef did not hesitate. Taking deep breaths in case something hellborn should come after them, they swam rapidly upward, grabbed hold of the motionless hunter, and dragged him down into deeper, safer water.

  “Menno!” Cedan was tugging and flailing at the tuzaca shell. When it would not come loose, he pulled his knife from his waistwrap and used it to cut through the spongy, solidified chisith. With Kedef pulling, they soon had the shell off. Still Menno did not respond.

  When he saw why, Cedan whirled and lost the undigested remnants of his morning meal.

  Even the venerable Kedef was forced to momentarily turn away. Only when both had managed to overcome the initial shock were they able to turn back to Cedan’s friend.

  Menno was dead. That was immediately apparent. It was the particularly Hellish means of his passing that had so shocked them. The driven explorer’s entire upper body was burned dark, as if it had been shoved into one of the underwater volcanic vents that dotted the far boundaries of the community’s territory. His eyes had been boiled away. Cedan tried to imagine his friend under that kind of assault, reeling from the unexpected fiery pain as he struggled to make his way back into the water. With his eyes gone he had probably lost his way, and had only stumbled back into the real world when it was too late. Stumbled, or fallen and slid downslope.

  But the tuzaca shell, full of cooling, soothing atmosphere, had survived intact and was still sealed in place. What had gone wrong?

  “I cannot imagine,” Kedef murmured in response to Cedan’s query. “I have not the kind of specialized knowledge necessary to posit an answer to that question.” Drifting in the water, the somber elder considered the dead, burned body. “Yet his lower body, beneath the shell, shows signs of only slight wrinkling. It is almost as if in some way the tuzaca shell that was necessary to sustain life somehow contributed to his destruction. If this attempt is to be repeated, the matter will require considerable further study.”

  “Further …?” Cedan gaped at the elder. “You don’t mean that you’re going to suggest that another Tyry try this?”

  Kedef responded with a gesture that was difficult to interpret. “You are yet young, Cedan. A thing once tried is destined to be tried again. Wiser Tyry than you or I will discuss what has happened here today and seek ways of overcoming it. There will always be those who feel they have no choice but to push at the limits of the possible. There will always be those who from an early age will be urged to go to Hell, to the point where they come to regard it as their destiny.”

  Cedan was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, it was with renewed admiration for his deceased companion. “Well, all is not lost today. In his passing Menno has provided me with the opportunity to fulfill a long-held desire of my own. To eat a close friend.”

  Kedef gestured understandingly. “A laudable, if not especially revolutionary aspiration. I will assist with the hauling.”

  Together they towed the body of the dead explorer back to the community. The story of his valiant effort, temporary success, and subsequent demise was the occasion of much discussion and debate. In the end, the effort was accounted a modest success. After all, there were leftovers.…

  6

  Cold Fire

  As a tiny part of its education program, The National Science Foundation has a policy of sending one speaker a year up to Barrow (now Utqiagvik) Alaska to give talks to the students at the local schools. Being the northernmost community on the North American continent, Barrow (have some sympathy for my spellchecker—I’m going to continue to say Barrow) doesn’t receive a lot of casual travelers. For the speaker in 2006 it was decided to invite a science-fiction writer instead of yet another scientist. I was asked if I would be interested. As a lover of far-away places, I accepted immediately, with one proviso: I wanted to go in the dead of winter, to experience the conditions.

  So it was that in mid-December of that year I found myself winging from Fairbanks to Barrow, in pitch darkness. I was in seat 1A, which I thought from the numeration would put me in first class. What I learned upon boarding was that seat 1A was in the first row of coach halfway back in the plane, the front half of that particular Boeing 737 configuration being given over entirely to cargo (Alaska Airlines was the only US airline to fly this unique combi: they have since been retired in favor of separate aircraft for cargo and passengers). This was important because there are no roads to Barrow, only twenty-six miles of town road, all of which dead-end in the tundra. So a lot of cargo arrives via air. I also learned that the temperature is higher inside the food freezers of the local markets than it is outside the local markets. And much, much more.

  Some of which found its way into the following story, which I wrote after returning home.…

  * * *

  By four pm the arctic sky was filled with a haunting wispy green that twisted and writhed in front of the stars like the fluttering wing feathers of a frightened tropical songbird, and Morgan knew he was freezing to death.

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, he was sure the wolf was laughing at him.

  It stood above him, silhouetted by starlight on the rim of the depression where he had sought shelter and found only death. Little puffs of laughter emerged from the lips of the formidable gray eminence, crystalizing in the air before the wind carried them off to the north. They were only congregations of breath; soft, anxious, canid exhalations. But in the haze and daze that was progressively smothering his thoughts, Morgan was sure it was laughter. When the powerful predator was through chuckling at his predicament, it would begin to eat him. Gazing up from where the heavy steel leg trap pinned him to the bottom of what he had hoped would be a sheltering hollow in the tundra, he imagined that the eyes of the wolf were like emeralds lit from within.

  Might as well be eaten, he thought resignedly, by something beautiful.

  It was not supposed to be this way. He had set off from Barrow with his cameras and a big thermos of hot coffee and another of rich chicken soup in hopes of capturing some panoramic scenes of the deep arctic winter. It was mid-December on the North Slope, a time when only the most fitful illumination between ten in the morning and two in the afternoon glazed the landscape like glistening honey. Before and thereafter, the sky was as black as the oil that gushed out of the ground at Prudhoe Bay, far to the east. When some of the staff at the hotel in Barrow had expressed reservations about him traveling alone out into the shadowy tundra, he had smiled cheerfully and assured them he had plenty of fuel to make it to the little village of Atqasuk, only sixty miles distant. His all-weather GPS would keep him from getting lost, and he had plenty of experience on snowmobiles (or snow machines, as they called them up here) back in Wisconsin.

  Except … this wasn’t Wisconsin, the satchel holding his GPS unit and cell phone had been crushed when he had dumped and damaged the snow machine halfway between Barrow and Atqasuk, and both the coffee and chicken soup had long since been consumed and had dissipated their life-sustaining heat throughout his bruised body hours ago. Then the wind had come up. He had sought temporary shelter in the fortuitous depression. Perhaps the wolf had come seeking shelter there as well, only to find that today the familiar protective hollow was offering board as well as room. A logical place, Morgan had realized too late, for a trapper to set his steel.

  He was out of food, out of drink, out of hope. Very soon now, with the questing, relentless cold beginning to work its way through his multiple layers of clothing, he would be out of time. The irony was that the North Slope was experiencing a heat wave. The temperature when he had left town had been almost five degrees above zero Fahrenheit. He had seen Inupiaq women grocery shopping in socks and flip-flops.

  It didn’t matter. Even without the wind, he would still freeze to death. And it felt much colder now. A dry, still pain had begun to numb his muscles and seep into his bones. Coming in slower, longer heaves, his breath crackled like breakfast cereal.

  Emerald eyes, burning as they came closer. Fixated and hungry. The two-
legged prey in the depression showed no sign of trying to flee. Baring her teeth, the solitary female prepared to pass the word to her pack. Morgan felt himself losing consciousness as a chill, dark blanket began to settle over him.

  Something sharper than a snap of thumb and finger re-ignited his hearing. A wheeze of snow puffed skyward just to the left of the wolf’s front paw. Her head came up, the fire in her eyes flickered, and she turned and bolted. Had she ever been there? Or had he imagined her? As his thoughts spun and mixed with the swirling snow around him, Morgan could not help but lament the passing of what would have been a great picture. If he’d had one of his cameras with him. If he’d had the strength to aim it and take the shot. If he had been able to lift his head. He heard a voice.

  “Damn. Missed her.”

  Thump, shuffle, thump. Retreating to the safety of childhood, Morgan remembered the muffled sound his favorite stuffed dinosaur had made every time he had punched the crap out of it. A terrible pressure left his leg as the jaws of the steel trap parted and his leg was gently but firmly raised and laid aside. Then he was in motion; rising and sitting up, though not of his own accord. Strong arms beneath his own, short and powerful like the concrete pillars that held buildings above the permafrost in Barrow, were lifting him up.

  “Come on, man. Help me. I don’t want to have to drag you all the way.”

  Rejuvenated by the sound of another human, and one exuding soft-voiced confidence as well, Morgan summoned reserves he had long since given up for lost, and in an instant of wonderment found himself again on two feet.

  Half awake, half dead, unsure which way the balance was tilting, he leaned on the shorter man as they stumbled out of the hollow. Instead of a bright red snowsuit like the photographer wore, his unexpected savior was clad in a traditional heavy parka of dark blue. Colorful abstract embroidery decorated the sleeves and hem. The neck ruff was of wolf, perhaps a relative of the female who had been about to make a meal of the visitor from Wisconsin. The bottom hem, wrists, and hood were trimmed with wolverine fur, which strongly resists freezing even when wet. Rendered harmless by needlework, a set of threatening claws hung close to the zipper.

  Ahead of them a shape loomed out of the wind and dark. Another snow machine, lean and mean but equipped with all the necessary gear for checking a winter trapline. At that moment it represented the most exquisite example of modern technology Morgan had ever set eyes upon. In his sudden anxiety to reach it, he stumbled against his rescuer. Neither fell. It was like falling against a soft, two-legged boulder.

  “If you’re going to die,” the man shouted jovially above the wind, “at least wait until we get to the house. If I have to drag you behind the machine, it will make for one ugly corpse.”

  He helped the feeble Morgan onto the back of the vehicle. Even through the all-encompassing numbness that pervaded his body, the photographer could feel that the seat beneath him was uneven. Looking down, he saw that much of the space that was supposed to accommodate his butt was presently occupied by the bodies of several arctic hares and a white fox.

  “Can you hang on?”

  “What?”

  Settling into the driver’s seat, the hunter raised his voice. “Can you hang on? It’s about ten miles to the house.”

  Unable to speak, the exhausted photographer nodded. It was sufficient. Adjusting his snow goggles, his stocky savior positioned himself. To Morgan, the Chicago Philharmonic doing Beethoven never made music as fine as the throaty roar of the snow machine’s engine rumbling to life. A moment later men and machine were accelerating across the murky, ice-bound landscape.

  “I’m Albert Tungarook!” the man yelled back at his passenger. “What happened to you?”

  Gasping weakly, leaning forward, his eyes shut tight against the freezing wind as he pressed his face against the blue parka, Morgan explained. The driver nodded comprehendingly.

  “Lucky for you I come along. From the looks of it, I figure you were about two minutes from becoming a wolfsicle. Sorry I didn’t get her, though.” He nodded at his passenger’s seat. “Try to stay off the fox. It’s frozen and can’t bleed, but you don’t want to ride halfway with a femur up your ass.”

  Ten miles. Ten miles of bumping, jouncing, bone-jarring anguish on the uneven tundra. Tungarook dodged ditches that were like zippers in the earth and sped over frozen ponds as easily as Morgan would have negotiated a sunlit highway back home. How the hunter found his way in the darkness and the flat frozen terrain Morgan did not know. The man never looked once at an instrument of any kind. There was no sun. There were no landmarks. But there were familiar constellations, and ribbons of waving, hypnotic aurora overhead to tie the stars together.

  He was sure he was dead or dreaming, or dreaming of death, when he saw the pillar of green fire.

  Green tinged with red actually. And purple, and a little blue. It plunged out of the black night like the lambent finger of an unseen genie. Hissing softly, it spilled with alacrity upon a small house set beside a frozen stream. Behind a single triple-paned window a more familiar yellow light beckoned, soft and familiar. All that was needed to complete the bucolic impossibility was wood smoke curling aesthetically upward from a brick chimney. But there was no chimney, brick or otherwise, and for hundreds of miles around no wood to fuel it had there been one.

  He passed out against the back of Albert Tungarook, and dreamt of postcard nirvanas.

  The aroma of something wonderful wrapped in steam brought him back to awareness. In a moment he was tasting as well as smelling it. Hot chocolate. It burned his lips. He didn’t care. He would not have traded it for the amphoraed ambrosia of Zeus on Olympus.

  Opening his eyes, he saw a round brown face gazing concernedly down at his own. When he met her gaze, the girl smiled. Where the eyes of the wolf had burned, hers sparkled. She inclined the blue rim of the heavy ceramic mug to his lips again, carefully. Reaching up, he took it from her and smiled back. To his surprise, his hands did not tremble.

  Rising from the side of the couch where he lay entombed beneath several thick wool blankets, she turned and called out.

  “Father, he’s awake!” Clad in jeans and hoodie, the stocky sixteen-year old looked back down at him. “Excuse me. I’ve got to finish charging the batteries.”

  Father and daughter passed wordlessly in a doorway. Batteries, Morgan found himself thinking as he fought to sip and not chug the mug’s delicious, steaming contents. Electric heat. That explained the almost oppressive warmth of the room in which he found himself.

  But not the pillar of green fire. Nothing explained that, except perhaps delirium.

  His own mug in hand, Tungarook settled himself down in a nearby overstuffed chair. It looked as old as it did comfortable. “Good. You’re alive. Now you have a fine story to tell when you get home. Better even than pretty pictures. And I can tell my wife about the dumb white guy who let himself get caught out on the tundra when Casey and I go back to Barrow.”

  A sudden, unpleasant thought caused Morgan to swallow. “Frostbite?”

  The hunter pursed his lips. “I don’t think so. I checked you pretty close when we got you out of your clothes and under the blankets. There’s a little blackening on a couple of toes, but I don’t think you’ll lose them.” He smiled. “Of course, if you did have them amputated, that would give you proof for your story.”

  The photographer nodded and sat up. “I think I’d rather keep my toes and invite disbelief. Where are we?”

  “In my living room.”

  For the first time since he had set out from Barrow on the ill-starred trip, Morgan found himself grinning. His mouth hurt. “You know what I mean.”

  “We’re about halfway between Barrow and Atqasuk, but way north of the snow machine track everybody uses.”

  Morgan nodded slowly, sipping. “I broke my bike, my phone, everything. I was trying to hike back.”

  His host dropped his smile. “You never would have made it. Where I found you was way northwest of the track. O
f course, when you hit the ocean you could have followed it to town. If you had better clothes and enough food and hot drink to keep you for a week or so. If you hadn’t started out onto the ice. If.”

  The walls of the tightly sealed little house, Morgan noted, were decorated with framed pictures and other bric-a-brac. No animal heads or skins. Locals hunted for subsistence, not for sport. “I thought the wolf had me.”

  “Almost,” Tungarook offered cheerfully. “You’re just lucky a white bear didn’t come across you.” He nodded to his right. “They’re probably all in Barrow, rummaging the dumpsters behind Pepe’s or Arctic Pizza.”

  It was quiet in the room for a while. Wordlessly, Morgan held out his empty mug. Tungarook refilled it from the big white pitcher that sat on a coffee-table hand-made from a single piece of gnarled driftwood hauled from the nearby river. As the hunter sat back down, Morgan happened to glance out the window. A faint but distinct greenish glow stained the thin layer of snow outside. Eyes widening, he nearly shot off the couch. The sudden effort left him dizzy, but standing. He staggered to the window. There was no mistaking it: a flickering green light was turning the frozen crystals the color of lime sorbet.

  Quickly at his side, Tungarook tried to ease his guest back onto the couch.

  “Not so fast, man. You’re still pretty weak. You’ll hurt yourself.”

  The photographer succeeded in raising an arm to gesture outside. “Don’t you see that?”

  The hunter glanced out the window. “See what?”

  Morgan looked down at his host. “I’m not delirious. Not now. Something’s casting a green glow on the snow.” Turning and tilting his head back, he eyed at the low ceiling. “I saw something like it but much stronger when we were coming in. Stronger than a searchlight, it was. A bright, bright green, almost like the aurora.”

  Tungarook stared hard at his guest. Then the hunter exhaled a heavy sigh and stepped back, forcing Morgan to stand by himself. His fortitude strengthened by curiosity and chocolate, the photographer managed to remain upright.