Killer

Ross stirred; and woke. “I smell coffee.”

“Just going to get some,” said Job. “You’d better hurry, or it’ll be cold.”

“Just coming.”

Ross rolled over and pulled his shirt towards him. His left arm was wrapped in it. Job bent down to crawl through the wind-proof flap. Ross began to position his arm with dexterous ease. He was humming a tune.

Outside it was still bright, although the sun was low. The four of them were grouped round the fire tray, seated on the crates, sipping steaming coffee. On the pale flames sat a huge pan filled with a mess of ham and reconstituted eggs.

“I know,” said Kate as Job eyed it, “it looks terrible, but it’ll taste OK, I promise.”

“It looks great,” said Quick gallantly.

“After more than twenty-four hours without solid food, even my cooking would look good,” said Warren. “Coffee?”

Job picked up a cup from the pile of utensils on the lid of one of the food crates. Preston poured. Job drank it. It was hot, and black, and perfect.

“Is Mr. Ross all right?” asked Preston, his face concerned. “After last night . . .”

“He’s fine. Just coming.” Job stretched, his whole body stiff with bruises from the crushing grip of the polar bear. “If you have any sympathy to spare, save it for me.”

“I knew a lady once, who hugged like that,” said Warren, relishing the memory. “Ran a house of ill repute in Skagway . . .” Then he remembered he was sitting next to his daughter, and blushed.

Ross came out of the tent.

Kate, her face still warmed by a smile at her father’s embarrassment, felt her eyes drawn to the tattered sleeve, the buckled plastic and scarred metal of his arm. The black glove was gone now, and the plastic hand blackened by fire instead. All the unkind thoughts she had felt about Job carrying Ross’s bags, helping him with his coat like a servant, came back to mock her. Her eyes went up to his face, and he was smiling at her. She realised she was still smiling about her father: Ross thought she was smiling at him. She felt almost embarrassed and widened her smile a little.

“Coffee?” asked Preston.

“Please.”

His eyes left Kate, who smiled for a moment or two more. Ross pulled up a crate and sat on it carefully.

“That smells good,” he said, gesturing to the pan.

“All right,” said Kate, “you don’t have to tell me what it looks like. I know.”

“I wasn’t going to. I’ve never seen anything that looks like that.”

“I have,” said Warren, “but only under a microscope.”

“Much more of this,” said Kate, “and you’ll need a microscope to find your share.”

“Just like her mother: can’t take a joke.”

“But I’m sure,” said Kate, her voice like honey, “that the ladies of Skagway laugh ever so much.”

They all got plates from beside the cups, and ate with spoons. Kate was right: it tasted OK.

They ate in high spirits, as though merely out for a picnic. The evening was clear, deceptively sunny. The heavy clothing kept them warm enough. The sea lapped quietly, distantly. The wind was gentle, playful. The floe was really huge, and the ice lovely. The tall hills towered reliably close at hand, the tongue of ice reached out and out, away from them, substantial, solid, shining, nearly twenty acres of it. The surface of the ocean was dotted with other small floes, all of which were empty and still. In the far distance the pack shone brightly and insubstantially, like the smoke from a green flare. In the high bright sky, a plane passed, a tiny flash of intense light and a comet-tail of cloud; the echoes in the silence giving a whisper of its power.

“Tell us about your arm, Colin,” said Kate.

Ross, about to drink, looked at her speculatively over the rim of his cup. The old familiar wrench in his belly died almost immediately; the sudden tension around the fire did not emanate from him.

He swallowed. “No,” he said.

“No. Of course he won’t,” said Quick, bitterly, but without hysteria. “He doesn’t want you to stop smiling at him.”

“Simon!” shouted Warren. “How dare you . . .”

“Then,” said Kate, loudly, keeping fast hold on the conversation, “perhaps Job will tell us precisely what he meant last night by his reference to Sedna’s Knucklebones.”

Job shrugged. “It is only a legend of Innuit.”

“A legend! Just right! We’ve nothing to do but unpack things, eat, sleep and get on each other’s nerves. A legend would help pass the time.”

Job looked around, nervously. “I don’t . . .”

“Oh come on, Job,” said Warren; “you tell a mean story, you know you do.”

Job shrugged again.

“First tell us what Innuit is,” said Kate.

“Innuit means ‘The People’. It is what we Eskimos call our­selves.”

“And the story of Sedna is one of your legends?”

“That is correct. It is the story of how the things in the sea came to be there. Not plants or fish, but creatures, animals.”

“Oh, please, tell us,” begged Kate, filled with the excitement she had felt when she first saw the pack.

Job looked at Ross, who shrugged his lopsided shrug, and nodded.