thirteen
As they are heated, most molecules become less dense and expand so that the solid that barely fills half a cup will, as it melts to form a liquid, overflow that cup. If heated enough to vaporize, the gas will take up half a room. Water is different. For one thing—unlike, say, nitrogen—it has different names for all its states: water when liquid; steam when a vapour; ice when solid. And when water freezes, it doesn’t contract but expands. Against all reason, ice will float upon water. Ice has always fascinated us.
Climbers, when asked why they want to climb, say, Everest, reply: Because it’s there. A more true answer might be: Because it’s got ice on it. Ice is alluring, mysterious, alien. In the Western world, ice and science are regarded in the same light: cold and clear, ordered and deeply rational, apparently plain yet ultimately unknowable. I doubt that it’s a coincidence that the very first science fiction novel, Frankenstein, mixes both: the monster is brought forth in cosmic fire and marooned on ice. Ice cannot bring forth life but, used properly, it can preserve it. Think of all the food in our freezers. Think of all those kidneys and livers and hearts thrown in coolers and helicoptered out to save the lives of transplant patients. Anyone knows that if you happen to cut your finger off when peeling potatoes, you should keep the finger cool—but not frozen, because then water molecules inside the cells of skin and connective tissue and blood will begin to form tiny ice crystals that will expand and expand and eventually rupture the cell membrane, spilling protoplasm to the wind, destroying it. Those who believe in cryogenics are dreaming. They have seen too many rump steaks come out of the freezer as solid as hoary planks and yet two hours later sit luscious and red and mouthwatering on the countertop; but when something living is frozen, it dies. Only those organisms frozen before they are fully formed—gametes and embryos—can be brought back to life by thawing.
Ice is dangerous, but people keep climbing those mountains and walking the glaciers because, beyond all else, it is beautiful.
The sprekk lay open at my feet, exposing jewels unseen for thousands of years. I put my sweater back on, went down on my stomach, and squirmed to the edge. The Grand Canyon carved from ice. Inches from my nose, the top layer, sooty with hydrocarbons, gave way to one of dirty yellow, then one of heavy cream. These layers glistened, slick and icy, melted and refrozen several times by the spring sun. Below that, beyond the reach of both my arms and direct sunlight, the true colours began. The crevasse was over fifteen meters deep, and further down the light was milky and subtle, shaded and heightened in strange places by irregular outcroppings from the ice walls. Here, a bulge glittered blinding white, while the edge of the shadow it cast shimmered pale mauve, and the deeper shadow dusky indigo. Down, and down, and now the colours lost all hint of the organic and the crevasse became stern and ordered, a cathedral of ice. Striations of amethyst and aquamarine, deep, deep strata of pale emerald. My body heat and the slanting afternoon sun ricocheting down warmed the ice and lifted the biting, mineral scent of water that had fallen as snow eighteen thousand years ago, when mammoths still walked and breathed and scooped aside drifts with their tusks, millennia before human beings even set foot upon the land that would be Norway. That water would not be good to drink. Every year, there was always some stupid tourist who decided to drink from the lake or dip themself a handful of meltwater and came down with violent diarrhea, and mouth sores that lasted for ten days. But there was nothing wrong with smelling it, and for a while I lay lost in the scents and interplay of light and colour.
I had to get up when my thighs got so cold I could no longer feel them. Too long, I’d been lying down too long. Careless. My pants and sweater were damp, but they were made of wool and beneath that I wore silk, which, unlike cotton, dries fast and still traps heat while wet. Where the snow was level, I did some katas, slowly at first, then faster, and faster still, until the movements were mere lightning sketches of killing blows and someone watching from a distance would have thought there was a whirling dervish on the ice. When I stopped, I was warm, but I sat on my pack and poured myself a cup of hot, sweet coffee and ate some cheese and nuts. Staying safe was a matter of prevention.
I munched peacefully. The sun warmed my back and the sweater began to steam. It was about three o’clock. Julia would be in Oslo now, being very American with poor Edvard Borlaug. I got out my map. It was not a good idea to stay on the ice once the sun was slanting enough to send strange shadows stretching out from even small hillocks of snow. There was no longer time for the ice cave, but if I planned a careful route I could still spend a few minutes by the lake.
It was a fair hike north to the lake, but it was along the edge of the glacier, where in some places the moraine was almost nonexistent or so old that it had long since been invaded by moss and lichens, then grasses and the nodding heads of the rare pale Pasquale flower and the delicate cinnamon rose, by birch and aspen and pine and all that flew and hopped and crawled in and on them. The transition from white to full colour would have been impossibly abrupt but for the silvery trunks of birch and carpets of white-petalled mountain avons.
The lake, its surface brilliant with long, late afternoon sunshine, lay in a vast basin carved by the glacier ten thousand years ago. Nigardsbreen now lay at a tangent to the irregular circle of tarn, and its moraine formed the pebble and rock shore on which I stood. On the other side lay sedge and moss freckled with purple saxifrage and, behind that, woodland. Birds sang, an endless weave of bright trill and warble.
The lake itself was glacier melt, barely above freezing, and it was so still it seemed to be holding its breath, thick and green and mineral. I touched the surface with a fingertip, very gently, and the water dimpled but didn’t break, only heaved slightly, turning parts of the surface gold in the sun, part almost black in shadow. Grendel might have lived somewhere like this, deep and gelid and secret.
I sat on a rock and shut my eyes.
There is nothing like the smell of glacier and fjell in April and May, the fecund earth, rich and dark after a long winter, the warming, papery birch bark, and leaves unfurling new and tender in the depths of the wood. I lost myself, utterly relaxed, until the light began to fade and birdsong changed to evensong.
The birds stopped singing.
I opened my eyes and listened harder. Footsteps, crunching up along the glacier behind me and to my left, between me and the setting sun. I turned, preparing to give him or her my I’m just leaving smile, but there was no one there. My breath came fast. No rock, no trees I could use as cover. The footsteps stopped. My heart changed up a gear. He or she had to be on the glacier, but I couldn’t see anything.
I stood up and waved. “Hei!” Gave a big grin. Stood on tiptoes to stretch my muscles, flexed my hands, turned my face slightly so the fattening, setting sun didn’t blind me. In the heartbeat of silence took two steps toward the glacier—cut his line of sight.
A slide and scuffle of snow overhead.
“Hi there!” American voice, male. He came to the edge of the glacier and waved. Medium height, snow on his chest, gloved right hand, bare left. “Wait there, I’m coming down.” He stooped for something but I was already turning, already running the three steps to the lake, when I felt a punch on my back. I heard the phud of a suppressed rifle at the same instant I leapt out along the sunpath on the lake, and the water closed over my head. Blind, I stroked deep.