“So if I see Angelina Jolie in the woods,” Kozak said, “and she is calling to me, ‘Vassily! Vassily! I must have you!’ I should not go to her.”
“You might at least want to think it over,” Nika said with a smile.
Kozak shrugged. “Still, I would go.”
Slater leaned back against a crate and surveyed his team like a proud father observing his brood. In only a matter of hours on the island, they had begun to come together nicely as a team. Professor Kozak was an industrious bear, quickly unpacking his ground-penetrating radar equipment and itching to get started the next day. Dr. Lantos had checked all the crates of lab equipment and supplies, and advised Slater on where they should set up the autopsy tent. Sergeant Groves was off on rounds right now, securing the premises (from force of habit, since the island held no hostiles) and getting to know the Coast Guardsmen who had been left to complete the construction of the prefabs, lighting poles, and ramps the next day.
If the weather allowed, that was. A storm was heading their way, and already its winds were scouring the colony like a steel brush. Slater prayed they wouldn’t get a heavy snowfall, which would mean just that much more digging to get to the graves.
And then there was Nika, whose presence here he had so opposed at first, and who was rather like a spirit herself — a friendly, woodland sprite, filled with native tales and history and lore. Slater found himself immersed not only in her words, but in the light that seemed to be captured in her jet-black hair and eyes. Her tawny skin had taken on a positively golden cast in the glow of the lamps, and he noticed that she frequently touched a little ivory figurine, no bigger than a jump drive, hanging outside her blue-and-gold Berkeley sweatshirt. He was grateful when the professor, perhaps noting it too, asked, “Is that a figure of a little kushtaka around your neck?”
“No,” Nika said, holding it out on its thin chain so that they all could see it better. “That would be bad luck. This is a good-luck charm. We call them bilikins.”
Slater leaned closer, his coffee mug still in his hand. Now he could see that it was an owl, expertly carved with its wings furled and its eyes wide open.
“The owl represents the perfect guide because he can see even in the dark of night. The leader of the hunt traditionally wore it.”
“Walrus tusk?” Kozak said, turning it over in his stubby fingers.
“Maybe,” Nika said. “But my grandmother gave it to me, and her grandmother gave it to her, and if the story is true, it’s made from the tusk of a woolly mammoth. They’re frozen in the soil all around here, and every once in a while one turns up.”
What else, Slater couldn’t help but think, was he going to find in the frozen soil of St. Peter’s Island? A perfectly preserved specimen, its viral load stored within the flesh like a ticking bomb, or a decaying corpse, whose deadly contaminant had been leeched away by decades of slow exposure and erosion?
“Yes,” Kozak said, “the topography and geology of Alaska is like Siberia, and is well suited to this sort of preservation.” Now that he knew its provenance, he looked even more impressed by the humble bilikin.
An especially strong gust of wind battered the tent, and the lights flickered again. Slater reached into his shirt pocket and removed several plastic packets, each one containing a dozen blue capsules and a dozen white.
“I think brandy is more usual after dinner, yes?” Kozak said, examining his packet.
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t mix well with these,” Slater said.
Dr. Lantos had opened her packet, and said, “Prophylactic measures?”
“Yes. The blue one’s a standard anti-influenza drug; you’ll need to take it every day for the next six days, whether we’re still working here or not. The white one is a neuraminidase inhibitor that’s shown both preventative and therapeutic results in trials done at the AFIP.”
“I never heard of these trials,” Lantos said, examining the white capsule skeptically.
“The results haven’t been made public yet. And tomorrow,” he said, with a grin, “may be the best field test we’ve ever run.”
“So we are the guinea pigs?” Kozak said.
Slater nodded and washed one of each of the pills down with the last of his coffee. Kozak and Lantos did the same, but Nika sat silently, waiting.
“Where’s mine?”
Swallowing, Slater said, “You won’t need them.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not coming into contact with any of the bodies.”
“Who said so?”
“The exhumations are a very dangerous and very grim spectacle. There’s no need to subject yourself to any of that.”
But Nika dug in her heels. “Do we really need to go through this again? As the tribal rep, and a trained anthropologist, I insist on being there.” She held out her palm, flat.
Slater glanced at Lantos and the professor, and they both looked at him as if to say, “Not my call.”
Slater dug into his shirt pocket, removed the packet he was planning to give Groves when he got back from his rounds, and plopped it in Nika’s hand, instead; he’d make up another one later for the sergeant. She smiled in victory and held the little plastic baggie up like a trophy, and the others laughed. Slater had to smile, too; no wonder she’d become mayor.
“Now they might make you drowsy,” he advised, “so take them just before you go to bed.”
“And where would that be?” Dr. Lantos said, glancing around the mess tent, one of the few structures erected that day.
“I’m afraid this will have to double as the barracks for tonight.”
“Then I’ve got dibs on this juicy spot under the table,” she said, tapping her foot on the insulated rubber flooring.
“And I will put my sleeping bag on top of that fat pile of cushions,” Kozak said, gesturing at the stack of mats that would be laid down to make a path to the graveyard the next day.
“Nika,” Slater said, “I was thinking that you could—”
“I already know where I’m sleeping tonight,” she said.
“You do?”
“I do.”
As they trudged across the colony grounds, covered with crates and bundles of supplies unloaded from the Sikorskys, Slater continued to argue with her, but Nika would have none of it. She felt it was her duty to make this gesture of atonement to the spirits who had once inhabited this place. There was no explaining such a “metaphysical” view, however, to a man as empirically oriented as Frank Slater. She recognized that it was his job as an epidemiologist to look at things as squarely and objectively as possible, and to keep all other considerations out of the equation.
It was her job, as she saw it, to remain open and attuned to it all — the seen and the unseen, the facts and the faith. She had grown up among the legends and the folklore of her people. Her first memories were of fantastic natural phenomena — the swirling lights of the aurora borealis, the barking of a chorus of seals draped like mermaids on the ice floes, the sun that set for months at a time. You could not grow up on the coast of Alaska, one shallow breath below the Arctic Circle, and not feel both your remoteness from the rest of the world and your oneness with the vast and timeless elements — the impenetrable mountain ranges, the impassable seas — that surrounded you. Instilled within her was a sense of wonder — wonder at humanity’s place in the great scheme of things — and an innate respect for any people’s attempt to create a belief system able to encompass it all.
When they arrived at the church steps, she expected Slater to stop, like a boy dropping off his date at her home, but he started up the stairs instead.