He had noticed the stream first a few weeks ago, between the cave and Anyuysk. He had looked it up on the wall map in the Despatch depot. There it was shown as unnegotiable for trucks. From what he could see it ran from the north-west, but at some point it changed direction and meandered east. On the map he had traced the meander. It ran miles and miles, through rising ground, through mountains, to a highway. He couldn’t see how it got to the highway. But it was the Bilibino highway; and above the word Bilibino was the sign for an airport, a major one.
He had tucked this away in his mind as a possible, a remote alternative. But now, with what had happened, there was no other. He didn’t even know if there was this.
In the school atlas the long range of peaks showed up in purple, with only a general title: Kolymsky Heights. A tremendous journey. He didn’t know if a bobik could do it. And this was a Mickey Mouse bobik, untried, put together in a cave.
But if it couldn’t?
He let the militia go and started the engine.
Seven
KOLYMSKY HEIGHTS
51
By 10 a.m., with only forty-two kilometres on the clock, he had discovered why the stream was unnegotiable for trucks. No part of it was wider than two metres and it was littered with boulders. The boulders were iced, blanketed in snow and he had slithered over or squeezed past them. But some were not visible, and into these he had thudded as if into a wall. He was still in first gear, peering behind his lights.
He thought he must have gone halfway. On the wall map it hadn’t looked more than eighty kilometres. The powerful heater kept the windows defrosted, but he could see nothing beyond the headlights.
Presently, uncertain even that this was the right stream, he stopped, got out and climbed the shallow bank. In the freezing wind, the shapes of mountains showed, still climbing. They told him nothing, and he got back in and drove on.
A little after 1 p.m. a dark outline loomed ahead, and he put the lights off and got out to inspect it.
A bridge; spanning the stream.
He mounted the bank and found himself on the Bilibino highway.
It couldn’t be anything else: six metres wide, levelled, a made road. The Bilibino highway. But where on it? Left must go to Tchersky, and right to Bilibino, but how far either way? He couldn’t remember the position on the map. During the journey with the convoy he must have passed scores of such bridges.
Nothing was moving on the highway.
He went down again and drove the bobik up. The road ran straight, no flicker of light visible. For the first time he put the car properly through its gears, through second, through third, to top — and for the first time the bobik began to hum. It hummed through seventy kilometres an hour, and eighty, and eighty-five. He watched the needle, and remembered prising the bare frame off the ground, remembered bolting every part of it together. Oh you sweet little bastard, he told the bobik.
The big trucks wouldn’t stop, he knew, just flash their lights. But there would not only be trucks. On the earlier journey, there had been the odd recovery vehicle, occasional supply bobiks. And these he had seen stopped, their drivers chatting. Well, he would have to pull off somewhere if he saw them ahead; or keep going and chance raising suspicion.
Somewhere he would have to rest. There were laybys on the road, but he couldn’t stop there. Other vehicles might also stop. No stopping at the road stations, either. He would have to get off the road. In the mountains there was nowhere to get off it. He would have to rest before the mountains; if he knew where the mountains were; if he could first fix his position.
The next road station might give a clue; but without a map even this was in doubt. The school atlas was useless. For this reserved area it showed no details; just main rivers, towns, the red line of the highway and nothing else.
Presently he saw the lights of a road station far ahead, and he cut his headlights. As he approached it he cut the sidelights too, and coasted slowly in.
A huddle of big trucks, bobiks, a tracked recovery vehicle. All still.
He switched the engine off and opened the window. Faint music came from the log hut. He peered at it. The huts were very similar, all the early ones of wood; only a few, farther along the route, of concrete. This was one of the early ones. It couldn’t be the earliest?
With a sinking feeling, he realised that it could be; that it probably was. He suddenly recalled that it was only after the first road station that the switchback had started. There had been no switchback yet. This was the first road station — 600 kilometres still to go …
He got moving again, and worked this out. The clock showed 180 kilometres — the stream more than double the length he’d thought. A lot of fuel had been used. In rough going; but the big engine was heavy on gas any way. Even at best it gave only seven kilometres a litre — twenty miles a gallon. He wasn’t getting anything like that. He couldn’t make Bilibino on what he had.
The route was beginning to look familiar, and he recalled that this stretch he’d driven himself, had taken the wheel from the first road station. Under Vanya’s tuition he had swung the big rig into line in the convoy. The steep climb into the high passes would start soon, and then the switchback.
And soon the first pass came — the peaks on either side no longer visible in the midwinter dark. Ahead the ice road shone clear for miles, not a thing on it. He came out of the pass on to a straight plateau, stopped the car and got out, with the torch.
A savage wind nearly took his head off. He hunched through it to the edge. Stanchions and solid railings guarded the edge. Only flanks of icy rock gleamed in the torch beam, and below blackness. Here he was over half a mile high, and below was a gorge. The first task.
He went back to the bobik and collected the debris — the engine harness, the block and tackle, the cans and cartons, everything that could lead back to its origin — and in three journeys pitched it over, together with Ponomarenko’s lumber jacket, the mink hat, the balaclava, the stove.
He was very hungry and he ate, and drank coffee from a flask, watching the road both ways, and then started off again.
Next would be the switchback, and somewhere along it Road Station No. 2. Another task there. And beyond the one after it, a place to rest before the mountain labyrinth. More and more the little bobik was taking the route in its stride. The joking in the stream had done it good: the engine note settling, the eager bark yelping when he stepped on the gas. And he was making excellent time — no lumbering convoy, and a clear road.
The switchback came: rise and fall, rise and fall, a ribbon of ice but running dead straight. And presently Road Station No. 2. He doused his lights, approached carefully, and sat and watched it a while.
Lighted windows, music faintly audible, and in the parking area a dark huddle of trucks and bobiks. He coasted slowly in and cut the engine.
From the back he collected two empty jerricans, the plastic tube, and a wrench. The trucks ran on dieseclass="underline" no use. He kept his eye on the hut door and tackled the fuel cap of the first bobik. Iced up. He got the wrench to it, inserted the tube, sucked, got the siphon going and filled the jerricans. It took no time, and he was away.
Two jerricans weren’t going to be enough.
Twenty litres — 120, 140 kilometres. Needed more. What he had in the tank would get him past the next road station and he’d refill from the jerricans when he found a place to rest.
Stars were visible now; the overcast dispersed. Another weather system. He’d gone a fair way. He lit a cigarette to stay awake; and, as he did so, saw a vehicle approaching, far off.