A stream cut down from the hills backing the creek. He’d seen it on the chart and now he could see its banks. He climbed up into the cab again, made the stream and drove up it. The track soon lost itself, twisting and turning in the tangle of hills. He drove for twenty minutes without finding anywhere to ditch the plough; no cave, no gorge. It began snowing again while he peered. He decided to leave it anyway. No one would find it here before next summer. And time was going fast.
He switched off, climbed out, attached the backpack and skis and was down again quicker than he’d gone up.
His face was crusted with snow, his gloved hands numb as he came out on to the creek. He poled himself across the ice to the mouth. The little broad skis made hard work of langlauf striding, but they were better than nothing. He stopped to beat the feeling into his hands before taking his position.
No shelving beach here. Just the creek running out flat with the strait. The great void stretched before him. The Russian island came first, three times the size of the American and masking it completely. He had to hit the larger one and work round it before taking a position for the other. From now on, it would be dead reckoning, his bearing checked every few minutes, for in the ocean of darkness he would be totally blind. He unhitched the backpack and dug out the torch and compass.
He could scarcely feel the little compass. He took his gloves off and breathed on his hands and shone the torch down on it. He couldn’t steady it with one hand, so he gripped the light under his chin and got both hands to it. Even so the needle was hard to steady. He found after some moments that it wouldn’t steady. It fluttered and swung, and fluttered and swung, ten degrees, and twenty, and thirty. It swung round the dial. He saw it wasn’t merely swinging, but pulsing. Radar pulses, some bloody pulses, from somewhere.
He watched it a full three minutes to see if there was a pattern. The pattern was a continuous pattern: the needle, in fluttering jumps, going round the dial, round and round.
This was the position at four o’clock, when he realised he had no compass and no vehicle, and nowhere to go if he had one.
The nearest shelter before he froze was the village of Veyemik, and as he trudged there he racked his tired brain.
The first house was also the largest house. He hammered on the door, and continued hammering till he heard babies crying and shouted oaths, and presently an Eskimo stood before him in a suit of long Johns.
‘I stole nothing!’ Porter told this Eskimo.
‘What?’
‘I swear to God! They’re chasing me. They’ve chased me all the way!’
‘Who’s chasing you?’ said the Eskimo. ‘From where?’
58
From Tchersky, the general was again on the phone to the airbase. It was 2 a.m.
‘What the hell are you saying?’ he said.
‘He isn’t there. They’ve searched the camp block, they’ve searched the whole site. He’s nowhere on it.’
‘But he’s got to be there. What else is there there?’
‘Mine workings, a kilometre away. He didn’t go there — at least not with a crew. They send them out in snow tanks, it’s snowing like hell. Do you want the mine workings searched?’
‘Of course search them. He could be hiding there. We know he’s there somewhere. He flew out there.’
But this was by no means so certain. The camp said it had no record of him. He had slept in no bunk, eaten no meal, had been allotted no tags and had deposited no papers. There were also no skis or luggage for him.
‘But he was on that plane,’ the general said. ‘He stole a ticket to get on it.’
Again this was not certain. Another worker might have stolen the ticket and papers — unintentionally, in the course of a random robbery. But the thief would have had his own ticket. He didn’t need this ticket. And he certainly wouldn’t have handed in the papers. Which would account for them not being there.
The general thought.
‘The flight crew that’s staying there — don’t they know if the ticket was used?’
Again — no. It had been a madhouse on the plane. And no tickets had been handed in on it. They had been handed in at Baranikha. Should they check with Baranikha?
‘I’ll check with Baranikha. You check the mine workings.’
The general checked with Baranikha and he found that the ticket had been handed in and the man had got on the plane. He had got on it but he had not apparently got off it; not, anyway, at two intermediate stops, for they had checked and no natives had disembarked. The man had certainly proceeded to Mitlakino but what happened to him there they didn’t know.
‘They chased me with a snow tank! They chased me from Mitlakino. Ask them in Tunytlino — a tank roaring after me in the middle of the night!’
‘From Mitlakino you skied — from the mining camp?’
‘What could I do? They’d have killed me. I’ve skied all night, I’m exhausted. They hate Evenks — and the Inuit too.’ He was speaking Inuit with the Eskimos. ‘The Chukchees don’t trust us. In Chukotka it’s only them — no jobs for Evenks.’
‘Well, I don’t know.’ The Eskimo was a plump individual with a mild manner, and his house was large because he was the headman. He stroked his round face and looked with bewilderment from the hysterical Evenk to the other members of the household. Eleven of them gazed back with similar bewilderment.
‘You’d better sleep now. You can sleep by the stove. In the morning we’ll work it out.’
‘But you’ll speak for me? You won’t let them take me?’
‘I’ll speak for you. I don’t understand it yet. Where do you get the tongue?’
‘Up north. I worked some seasons … But you won’t give me up? They know I’m here. They chased me all the way to Leymin. They couldn’t get past it, not on that track in the snow. But I got past it. You’ll speak for me in the morning?’
‘In the morning we’ll see. It’s still snowing. It shouldn’t be snowing now. In the morning there could be fog. For now, everybody sleep — it’s gone four!’
It was gone four, and at six everybody got up again, and there was fog.
And the Evenk, after his sleep, was altogether calmer. He was apologetic about his hysteria of the night. Maybe they wouldn’t have killed him, but they would have beaten him badly. A man had lost money in the mine and immediately they had accused him — the only Evenk. He could prove he had stolen nothing. He had nothing. When they came looking for him today –
‘Look,’ the headman told him, ‘nobody will come looking for you today. They can’t. It’s a fog. And if they should, the women will hide you.’
At this the Evenk showed alarm again. Why women? Why would women have to hide him?
Because the men would be away, working.
Where away? How far away?
On the ice. The sea.
Sealing by the shore? No farther than that?
The Eskimos smiled. Not sealing. Not at this season. Fishing. At their fishing station. Out in the strait. They would be out all day.
At this he showed even greater alarm. He wasn’t staying all day with women. He would ski on down the coast, then. Unless the men would take him with. Would they take him with?
If he wished, but there was no danger. Nobody could get here in the fog. Still, if he was nervous …