Crusaders in Hell

BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA Michael Armstrong

Nuliajuk, the seal woman, came to Qawik in his vision. He was swimming deep below me pack ice, down where the tungai- animal spirits-lived, paying his respects to the souls of the sea animals. Qawik was swimming with a seal, diving and turning, and when he looked at her face she smiled at him-woman's face, seal's body.

"Nuliajuk," he said.

Nuliajuk smiled. "It is time for you to go to the surface. You must push the water aside and rejoin your people."

"I am dead," Qawik said. He tugged at the woman's knife, the ulu, stuck point first in his skull. The knife would not come out. "I cannot rejoin my people. I am dead."

"You must go to the surface," she said. "Now. Push the water aside. Go. Go." Qawik shook his head. Nuliajuk stared at him, and then he yielded.

"Go."

He rose. He kicked, fought, swam through the cold water, up and up. The darkness gave way to light. The ice thickened, became a great mat of dark dirt, roots shooting down, timbers and old houses in the permafrost. He pushed. The dirt cracked and groaned and split apart. He floated on his back.

He looked at his hands: flesh reformed on the bones of his fingers. There was a squirming around him, a twitching. His legs flew back to his body. He watched as a wolf spat out his liver, saw the liver fly back into his groin.

The muscles spun and wove around the skeleton, the skeleton grew back into his body, his body became whole.

His parka came back out of the dirt. The spots of the reindeer hide grew together. His sealskin mukluks wrapped his feet. His cheeks grew back around the quarter-sized labret in his left cheek, the dime-sized labret in his right cheek. His scalp itched as his hair grew back. He licked his ops and tasted cold dirt. Qawik spat, kicked, and rose out of the ground.

Above him was a great whale's jaw. As he watched, the arches of the mandibles leaned into each other and collapsed, settled into the mire, and sank. He blinked his eyes, squinted; the world was a blast of bright. He breathed, one deep lungful, another, the air filling his whole body.

Qawik coughed. The air smelled like rotten -eggs, humid and thick, the smoke from a dying blubber lamp. He spat, breathed again, coughed.

Nuliajuk flopped around in the swamp, mud dripping from her flippers, mud on her face. She shook her head and drops of bloody mud flew out of her long black hair. She sat up on her hind flippers, smiled, and with one flipper waved her arm at the great swamp.

"Welcome," Nuliajuk said. "Welcome, Qawik, to Hell."

"Hell," Qawik asked Nuliajuk. "What is this Hell?"

"The world below," she said. "The place where the tungai live. The land of the devils."

"Ah," said Qawik, smiling. "That Hell. The missionaries spoke of it often. Is this where Satan lives?"

"Satan does not live," Nuliajuk said. She turned from him, drew her seal body behind her over the mud.

"Satan exists. It is not life so much as... so much as something else. We do not live here. We ... well, you will see soon enough."

"Why am I here?" he asked.

She shook her head, scratched at her neck with a flipper. "Always with the why, eh? You humans: why, why, why?"

"Why am I here?" he asked.

"You are here, Qawik, because you are a heathen and a sinner. Didn't the missionaries explain that to you. Qawik followed her across the mud. "I was baptized," he said. "I received the good news of the Lord. I accepted his spirit into my body." He stopped. "That was shortly before I became an angatkok."

"An angatkok!" Nuliajuk stopped, sat, furrowed her brow. "Ah: a shaman." She crawled on through the mud. "You were baptized. You must answer to God." She turned, looked at him with intense green eyes. "That is why you are in Hell."

She swatted at the back of her seal body. "Oh, Heaven. I am sick of this body and this goddamn swamp. Take my hand."

"Hand?"

"My fucking paw. Take my paw." Qawik reached down and grabbed her paw. "Close your eyes, babe. We're going to New Hell."

She twined and oozed and the swamp went white, then gray, then became a whitewashed room that smelled of disinfectant. The walls and floor were bare, except for a metal chair bolted to the wooden floor, and an alcove along one wall that held a great granite throne. Two lanterns hung from hooks on either side of the throne; the wicks hadn't been trimmed in some time, and the chimneys of the lanterns were black with soot Nuliajuk squeezed his hand. Her paw felt warm, soft; as he watched, the flipper wiggled into a hand. He looked up at her: same face, but no more seal body. She was a little shorter than him, but fleshy, big, the way a bearded seal looked. She wore a sealskin parka, sealskin boots and breeches; the black and white spots matched her old seal body. She had braided her hair into a complicated coiffure, two plaits from above her ears that Joined below her chin into a long red braid that came to her waist.

"Nuliajuk?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No, not the seal woman. I am the Welcome Woman. This is my real body," she ran her hands over the parka, "though I do like this coat."

The Welcome Woman pointed at the metal chair. "Sit," she said. "The Lord Satan will pronounce your sentence."

"Satan?"

"Sit," she said.

He sat, and when he turned to her again, she was gone.

"Qawik." a voice said from the throne. "Qawik?"

Qawik looked up. A man sat in the throne - not a man, an inua - a naked man with the head of a bear; an immense cock dangled from his crotch almost to the floor. A tungai, some spirit, sat on the man's broad shoulders; the tungai had the head of a bat and the body of something that looked like an ermine, with a long tail and small hands. The granite throne glowed dull red, and the inua's skin sizzled like caribou steaks frying in fat.

"Satan?" As the words came out, the chair shocked him, and Qawik winced.

"Lord Satan," the inua said. Satan's teeth clicked as he spoke. "Christ, how I hate these primitive religions. Yes, I am Satan, Prince of Darkness, Lucifer, all that crap. You call yourself Qawik. But I see here," he waved his hand and a long yellow parchment unrolled from his fingers, "that you have other names, too."

"I am also called-"

"Don't say it," Satan said. "It's probably one of those godawful names that only He can pronounce. Qawik. You will go by Qawik here. If means ... Oh, blast, it's here somewhere."

"Wolverine, Lord Satan," Qawik said. "Wolverine."

"Ah, yes," he said. "The Arctic hyena. Eats dead dungs. Well, your name may be appropriate, little wolverine. Tell me, what are your sins?"

Qawik smiled. "I have no sins." The chair crackled with light. Pain shot up his spine and his back went straight. "Lord Satan," he added through clenched teeth.

"You have the sin of pride," Satan said. "You damned heathen, you are sinned for that"

"I am not a heathen," Qawik said. "I was baptized-"

"-baptized by Presbyterian missionaries on April 13, 1861," Satan said. "Had you never been baptized you might not have come here-might not have sinned under less rigorous rules. But you were baptized, Qawik, and so you are mine."

"What are my sins. Lord Satan?"

"Ah," said Satan. His thin lips spread back, showing the long yellow teeth.

"Ah, now we are getting somewhere. Your sins? Your sins are many.

"You are a murderer. You killed twenty-five men, two women, and one child in your life. You took four wives - I see the last one left her mark-" Satan pointed at the ulu stuck in Qawik's head

"--and had many other women. You stole. You took the Lord's name in vain. You honored other gods before Him. You lied. Shall I go on?"

"No," said Qawik. "I have sinned, I suppose. He smiled. "I killed twenty-six men."

"Twenty-six, twenty-seven, what the Hell difference does it make? Pride! That is your greatest sin. Pride." Satan reached up, petted the tungai on his shoulder; the familiar nuzzled against the thick far of the bear's head.

"Okay, I'm supposed to read you this passage down here at the bottom. It's from the Big Guy upstairs - God, Lord of the Universe. God says, 'For these sins, you-' and he has your real name here, but fuck if I'm going to say it,' - also known as Qawik, are forever damned to Hell.' There you go, buddy: that's your sentence. You're in."

"Welcome to Hell. Enjoy your stay."

And Satan vanished in a cloud of yellow smoke.

"It's not so bad."

Qawik got up-out of the chair, stood, and turned. The Welcome Woman was standing by a door that had not been there before. She had taken the parka off and was wearing a brightly colored dress that hung loosely around her porcine body. Images of some strange buildings were printed on the dress. Her hair was cut shorter and arranged in a style dot looked like ft loon's nest. She had purple eye shadow dot clashed with her green eyes.

"Don't let Lucifer scare you," she said. "Hell's a swell place." She held out a band. "You want the tour?"

"What the Hell," Qawik said. He took her hand and walked with her into the dark.

The door from the sentencing room led into a long hallway; the walls of the hall were whitewashed stucco. Screams and moans and sounds of general torment came from behind the walls. Once, a door materialized out of the hallway, and a tall blond man in black leather stepped out. He slapped the Welcome Woman on the ass with his swagger stick. Jumped as she swung a fist at him, then turned, whistling, down the hallway.

"Goddamn Goering," the Welcome Woman muttered.

"Who?" Qawik asked.

"After your time," she said. "You died in, urn, 1889? Goering was Just a pup then. You'll meet him soon enough. He's running the Fallen Angels while Hadrian is on sabbatical."

"Hadrian?"

"I guess you're weak on Roman history, huh? Hadrian built this wall in Britain about 125 A. D."

She slowed, leaned close to Qawik, and whispered into his ear. "Rumor has it that Hadrian has been captured by this gang of crazies, the Dissidents. The Dissidents say they grind Hadrian up into hamburger and cast his body to the end of Hell if Satan doesn't meet their demands."

"Can they do that?" Qawik asked.

The Welcome Woman nodded. "Hell, you can't kill anyone down here, but you can make it hard to put them back together again."

They turned a comer in the hallway, came to an alcove. In the middle of the alcove was a small kettle on a block of red marble. Steam rose from the kettle - steam that smelled like boiling shit Beyond the kettle was a door with two buttons beside it Loud banging came from the other side of ft.

"Help!" someone yelled from the other sole of the door. "We're shield Let us out!"

"Shit," said the Welcome Woman. "Elevator's broken."

"Elevator?" asked Qawik.

"Oh, yeah," she said. "This room you go inside and it gets lowered down and when you come out you're in a different place."

"Like a dancehouse?"

She laughed, sort of a snort. "No, no. We're in a building and there are lots of floors to it. We take the elevator to get to other floors."

"And the elevator is stuck?"

"Yeah. The guy who builds things around here - Mr. Hughes, you wouldn't know him - has a real hard time getting good help."

Qawik pointed at the kettle. "What's that?"

The Welcome Woman snapped her fingers. "Damn! I almost forgot Thanks for reminding me.

That's your torment You haven't received your torment." She waved down the hall. "The Hall of Torment. This is where you are assigned your punishment"

Qawik looked around the comer, beard more screams of anguish. A small bead of sweat was forming on his nose.

"Torment?"

She smiled. "It shouldn't be too bad. And you can always appeal. Stick your hand in the kettle."

"In the kettle?"

"The pain won't last long. Stick it in there. It's God's Grace, A part of God has consented to honor us with His Presence. Stick your hand in there."

"It smells like anak," he said.

"Shit? You've denied God. You think He's going to smell like roses? Stick your hand in there."

Qawik shuffled to the kettle, closed his eyes, and thrust his right hand into the burning Grace. A terrifying cold gripped his hand, froze it in His embrace.

Pain, pain like: blood that was molten metal, flowed up his arm, into his heart, through his body, through his brain, through his soul. He opened his eyes and saw a wisp of a demon, a white angel, a great inua floating before him, blue eyes blazing. The Grace hovered over the kettle, flowed in and out of it, a face that was neither man nor woman, human nor beast. The face bared its teeth, and spoke.

"Qawik, you are damned," the Grace said, "and this is your torment" The Grace waved an arm, and a whaling harpoon, a bomb gun, and a cloth bag appeared in the air. "You are to hunt whales in the Sea of Purgatory." Grace smiled. "And you will never catch one."

The wisp fell back into the kettle, and the harpoon, bag, and gun clattered to the floor. Qawik's hand began to bum. He pulled it from the kettle, shook it, watched drops of steam fall to the ground and bum their way through the floor.

He rubbed his hand. It was raw, red, but whole.

Behind the elevator doors there was a snap, and a great rushing sound as something fell past the doors. There was a long scream that went on for half a minute, dwindling until it became a low moan. The doors slid open, revealing an open shaft, and a frayed cable slapping against the side of the shaft.

Brilliant sunlight streamed down from above, and icy fog fell down the shaft.

"Ah," said the Welcome Women, "the elevator seems to be working now." She walked over to the open door, poked her head through the doors, ducked back quickly. Her red hair was rimmed with hoar frost, and little icicles hung from her drippy nose. "I think we're in the inner latitudes."

"The inner latitudes?"

" 'North,' you would call it. Hell's Arctic. It's like this big pit, only it's flat ... well, it's hard to explain. Anyway, there are cold places in Hell and this is one of them. You've arrived, pal. This is tt. Your new home for the next couple of eternities."

"But this room that goes up?"

"Oh, that. It, uh, seems to have descended a little fester than it should. A new system Mr. Hughes is trying out. 'Express Service', he calls it. Anyway, you climb." She picked up the harpoon, the bomb gun, the cloth bag. "You'll need these." She handed him the weapons.

"Climb?" he asked.

"It's not too far," she said. "Probably a thousand vertical feet."

Qawik stuck his head through the door, saw a rusty ladder to the right, felt the cold air fall down on him. "But what do I do when I get to the top?"

"Like the Grace said; hunt whales."

He swung his leg around, put a foot on a rung, tested it. The rung bent, rust flaked away, but it held. He put another foot on the rung, grasped a rung above. The Welcome Woman poked her head through the door.

"Have fan," she said. "Look me up When you're in New Hell." She added, "When you file your appeal. See you." She ducked back into the hallway, and the door shut behind her.

Qawik climbed, one hand up, a foot, grasp a rung, again. He climbed. And climbed...

He came up into the cold.

Icy snow, snow that was the color snow looked when blood dripped into it, swirled around the surface of the shaft. Qawik grabbed the last rung, pulled himself up, crawled onto the surface.

He crawled away from the open shaft and lay in the snow, his legs like shigs, muscles like rotted sinew. The ruddy snow blew into his face, down his neck, over his body; he was embraced by cold.

The ground groaned behind him, Qawik turned his head, watched as the open shaft moaned shut. One foot was dangling over the edge. He lifted it, and the hole closed shut like a deep sphincter, until the dirt was healed.

The wind stopped.

Clouds near the southern horizon glowed pale gray, but the rest of the sky was deep ebony-no stars, no moon, only low clouds. The south grew brighter, and the dark shroud over the sky fell back into the dawn. A great red globe rose over the horizon, a light-giving globe. Warmth washed over Qayvik's face. The globe rose higher, and the warmth turned to cold, to agony, to pain-the same feeling he felt when his hand was in the kettle of Grace.

"Paradise," a voice said.

Qawik looked to his right. Fur-dad feet stood next to him. He looked up: feet, polar bearskin breeches, a reindeer parka, a head, a body ... a person. He squinted, stared at the face. The face had a labret-a face plug-under the lip: a black labret. with a red bead, a blue bead, stuck in the plug, "Ukalliq?" Qawik asked. "Little rabbit?"

The man smiled, held out a hand. "Qawik."

Qawik grasped Ukalliq's hand, let him pull him up.

He stood, stared at Ukalliq, hugged him. "Ukalliq. Little Rabbit."

"Do not stare at Paradise," Ukalhq said. "Her Light is too painful for the damned, though Her Heat is merciful."

"It is a short-lived mercy," a man said. Qawik turned.

He was six feet tall or more, dressed in a parka and breeches like Ukalliq's, but his face had a savage countenance, due, perhaps, to the quilt of purple squares tattooed across his cheeks. He had no hat, no hair, except a little top-knot at his crown.

"I am Queequeg," he said, "late of the Pequod. I am your harpoonist." He held out his hand, and Qawik reached behind his back, unstrapped the darting harpoon, and handed it to the giant.

Queequeg hefted it, tested its weight, and smiled. "Is good," he said.

"We heard you were coming, Ukalliq said. "The Fallen Angels swept through several sleeps ago and told us a great whaler would come."

"But where are the whales?" Qawik asked.

"Out there." Ukalliq turned, and Qawik followed his gaze. "The Sea of Purgatory."

The Sea of Purgatory was one great flat plain of pink ice. Great ridges thrust up against the land, mountains of ice pushed against the coast, peaks along the horizon. The air flickered beyond the ridge; as Paradise rose, water and whitecaps could be seen glinting on the horizon.

"The leads are opening," Qawik said.

"Ai, the channels will be filled with whales soon enough," Ukalliq said.

"Arviq?" Qawik asked. "The whale?"

"No," Ukauiq said, "not Arviq. Arviqluaq. The gray whale, the whale that fights back."

"Az-zah," said Qawik.

"Leviathan," Queequeg said. "The Great Whale."

The whalers took Qawik to their village, a small mound at the end of a spit that thrust out into the Sea of Purgatory. They called the village Qitiqliq, which meant "middle finger." They were building sod houses for the days when

Paradise would not shine, but the huts were incomplete, only depressions in the ground. For the moment, they lived in old canvas tents and warmed themselves by small blubber fires.

There were ten whalers-men, women-all tied to the sea in some way. They sat around a small fire, working on their whaling tools, trading tales. Pat, a small woman with short-cropped hair, dressed in a bright orange parka, asked

Qawik why he was in Hell.

"Pride," he said.

"Qawik was a great man in our village," Ukalliq said. "He was a great shaman, a good hunter. He killed ... how many whales?"

"Twelve," he said.

"You killed twelve whales?" Pat asked. "I do not understand you. The whale is a noble animal, with a language, intelligence. How could you km a whale?"

"I was hungry," Qawik said. "Who are you to judge?"

"I worked for Friends of the Whales," Pat said. "After your time. Our organization fought to keep the whalers from decimating the great herds."

"Pat's a suicide," Ukalliq said. "She boarded a Soviet whaling ship and jumped in front of a harpoon gun."

He shrugged. "Ask her to show you her scar sometime." He smiled at her.

"Assholes," she said. Pat got up and walked away.

"Never mind her," Ukalliq said. "Qawik, I want you to know that after you died you Were a hero to our people. In my old age, the children feared and respected you, Qawik."

Qawik looked down. "That is good to hear." He pointed at Ukalliq. "But you?

Why are you here? You never sinned. You were a deacon in the church."

Ukalliq shook his head. "I did not worship God," he said. "All that was a lie.

My whole life, even in the church, I was praying to the whale." He fingered a charm around his neck, an ivory carving of a bowhead whale. "And I was wrong.

My god does not exist. And God does."

"But your sin is less than mine," Qawik said.

"All sins are equal in the eyes of God," Ukalliq said.

Pat came back with a slab of meat, handed it to Qawik. "Eat this," she said.

"What is it?"

"Whale meat, from a stinker. We found Leviathans body washed ashore last fall."

"No," said Ukalliq. "He hasn't eaten."

Pat glared at him. "fiat."

Qawik took the offered meat, held it to his mouth.

"No," said Ukalliq. "You shouldn't eat it."

Qawik smiled. "You should know that it is wrong to refuse food offered by a woman." He bit down on the meat, chewed. "This is good."

"It is done," said Pat. She held her hands to her hips, laughed. "How do you like Hell food, whaler?"

"It is good," said Qawik.

"I'm sorry," Ukalliq said.

"Sorry? Why?"

"Is this your first food?"

"Yes," said Qawik. "It is good."

Ukalliq looked down. "I'm sorry. I tried to warn you."

"Warn me? Why? I was hungry." He turned to Pat. "Thank you."

"Do not thank her," said Ukalliq. "Now that you have eaten, you can never be satisfied."

"I do not understand."

"You must satisfy your hunger, and you will. But the food ... the food will never settle."

"You cannot shit," said Queequeg.

"You will feel like you have to shit, but - you cannot." Ukalliq winced. "Your groin feels like it's on fire. The only time you can shit is if you, well, if you-"

Queequeg held up his left hand; he was missing two fingers. "If you eat human flesh, you can shit.

Little tiny turds, but it's shit. The flesh grows back."

He rubbed tiny nubs growing from the stumps.

Qawik put the meat down, stared at Pat, "I will eat your flesh someday, little bitch."

Paradise rose in a high parabola, each day rising earlier and earlier, until one day Paradise did not set. The whalers could hear the ice creaking and groaning. They had put watchers out, and one day Pat came running into the camp.

"The whale," she said. "A pod of them beyond the ridge."

They had a boat, an old wooden Yankee whaleboat, built by a man named Wade.

Wade had built the boat so he could get to Purgatory. Like Others, he had believed that Purgatory was across the Sea of Purgatory, and that if he rowed long enough he could reach the continent and make his way out of Hell. Soon after he finished his boat, his work had been discovered and the Fallen Angels fell upon him, flaying him alive and casting his flesh to the whalers. The whalers said that they sometimes saw Wade wandering die beach, a man with no skin, searching for his flesh.

Wade's boat leaked, was heavy in the water, but it could crack through ice.

The whalers dragged the boat out onto the ice, over the ridges, to the edge of an open channel of water. And they waited.

Leviathan rose. The great gray whale burst through the tee at the edge of the open channel of water. Ice cracked, heaved, fell in great blocks around the hole. Leviathan supped back down, sank, came up again, hitting the ice again.

He popped out of the open hole, 80 feet of whale, danced on his flukes, and then slammed down onto the ice.

The shuddering ice woke the whalers from their sleep. Qawik got up, slipped on his mukluks, grabbed the bomb gun, and ran for the boat. Queequeg was in the bow, holding the harpoon.

Qawik jumped in, Ukalliq joined them, other whalers came aboard. Pat climbed into the stem.

"No," said Ukalliq.

"I must witness this awful destruction," she said.

"Let her," Qawik yelled from behind. "We do not have time to argue."

Pat climbed in, the whalers grabbed oars, and they shoved the boat over the ice and into the water. Twenty yards ahead Leviathan thrashed in the water, leaping up, slamming down, his belly flops like fifty elephants thrown onto tike sea.

"He teases us," Ukalliq said. "Some say Leviathan is the Devil himself."

"Devil or not, we are going to catch him,' Qawik said. But he remembered the Grace's proclamation: you will hunt whales, but never catch them.

The boat crawled through the cold water, chunks of ice thumping against the sides. Water leaked through the cracks of Wade's crude boat, and Pat was put to bailing. They rowed, awkward strokes, but Leviathan was slow, and they closed the gap.

Leviathan swam slowly, his great flukes rising up and down like flapping bellows. They paddled gently, eased up ten yards, then five, then two yards behind the beast. Queequeg flicked the safety off the harpoon, raised the shaft. He took a quick breath, raised his arm, and thrust the harpoon into Leviathan.

Below the head of the harpoon was a small rod. The rod hit the whale and triggered a shotgun shell that drove a barbed bomb into the flesh, a bullet for behemoths. Queequeg counted; one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three. The bomb exploded, and Leviathan rose.

He was a mountain of flesh, a titan of tonnage, eighty feet of power and might and horror.

Leviathan turned, head facing the whalers, and opened his great mouth. Teeth like swords-row upon row of teeth-gaped at them. Dead things oozed from the beast's mouth: demon fish, green slimy things, the battered pieces of the damned.

"Azah," said Qawik, "that is not Arviqluaq. This is a beast I have never seen."

"It is Leviathan," said Pat. "It is the whale of all whales. He has come to get his revenge."

Qawik hefted the bomb gun, a great gun with a barrel an inch-and-a-half wide, a barbed bomb down its barrel. "Perhaps," said Qawik. "We will see what Leviathan can do against this."

Leviathan rolled over, dove, and went down. A line was attached from the harpoon to the boat, and when the whale dove, the line sang from the boat until all five hundred yards were strung out. The line yanked, and then the boat began moving, "A Nantucket sleigh ride!" Queequeg yelled.

Qawik shook his head, looked at Ukalliq. "It is not how we do it. We throw our floats, and let the whale drag the floats, not the boat." He stared at the great open leads. "But there is enough water. Perhaps the whale will not sound under the ice."

Leviathan towed them over small cakes of ice, through the open channel of water. The whale rose twice, lay gasping for breath, then sounded again. The third time the whale rose. Leviathan surfaced in a great red cloud of blood.

He rolled over, began spinning, winding the line around his body.

"He's reeling us in," Ukalliq said.

"No," said Queequeg, "I think not. Qawik, move up to the bow."

Qawik traded places with Queequeg, stood at the bow, bomb gun ready. Leviathan rolled, blood oozing from a great wound in his back. Qawik raised the gun, clicked the safety off, sighted down the barrel.

"Closer, closer," he said. "Okay, okay. Just a second..."

"My Lord," said Ukauiq.

Leviathan turned, great head facing them, and opened his mouth. He rose up on his flukes, and fell back, yanking the boat toward the cavern of his mouth.

"Kill it!" Pat screamed behind him. "Kill the beast!" Qawik squeezed the trigger, fired at twenty feet. The bomb flew towards Leviathan's great eye, hit it, sank deep, and exploded. The whale fell back, pulling the boat toward him.

"Cut the line!" Qawik yelled.

Ukalliq grabbed a hatchet, swung at the line, and cut it. Pat turned at the sound, screamed in horror as the line tightened around her foot and yanked her into the sea.

The boat drifted away. Pat thrashed in the water, was pulled to Leviathan, closer and closer, into the maw of the great beast. The whale opened his jaw, bit into Pat's chest, and speared her with his teeth. He shook her like a rag doll and spat her out. Leviathan rolled, eye streaming blood, kicked his flukes, and dove into the deep blue sea.

"A good hunt!" Qawik yelled. "A good hunt!" He began singing his whale song, a low guttural scream. The whalers rowed over to Pat's body, pulled it into the boat. Queequeg stared at the disappearing cloud of red. "But we did not catch the whale,' he said. Ukalliq smiled. "It does not matter. It was a good hunt.

Next time. Next time we will catch the whale," When they got back to their camp, they found a new darting harpoon, and five hundred yards of new line.

They cut up Pat's body and feasted on her flesh. They hunted Leviathan. Qawik was never sure if it was the same whale or a different whale. The whalers would go out to the leads, set up camp, and always the whale would come. He came to them; they never had to hunt him. He came in an explosion of ice, or they would hear him moaning in the distance, or they would see him thrashing in the middle of the open channels. Whalers would come and go, and they would lose a whaler to Leviathan, and eat it like they ate Pat, but they never caught the whale. They would come close, but they never caught the whale.

Qawik would stare at the open leads, at the vanishing bubbles, at the harpoon sticking from Leviathan's back, at the great wounds the bomb gun made. But he never caught the whale. They hunted well, but never caught the whale.

And he did not mind.

"Doesn't it bother you not to catch the whale?" Queequeg asked him around the campfire.

"Never," Qawik said. "It is the hunt that is good. If the hunt is good, that is what matters.

Perhaps I am not worthy of Leviathan. Perhaps that is why he does not come to me. Perhaps Leviathan does not wish to yield his body."

"I do not understand this," Queequeg said. "Why should you not be worthy? You are a good hunter. Is that not worth enough?"

"It is not enough to be a good hunter," Ukalliq said.

"We believe that the whale gives up his body-his parka, we call it-only if we are worthy. We must please the whale. If we pleased Leviathan, then we would catch him. Obviously we do not please the whale. But we are in Hell. How can we please anybody?" True," said Queequeg. He smiled, neat white teeth in the patchwork of tattoos. "But we can try, right?" So they tried.

Once they rescued a man from the jaws of the whale. They had harpooned Leviathan and were coming up on him for the kill. Leviathan rolled over, mouth agape, and a man swam out of the maw. They cut the whale loose, rowed over to the man, and pulled him out of the icy water.

He was blue and almost dead, and before his soul and body slipped back to Lord Satan for a new torment, he told them his story.

"I am Jose Marti, Cuban revolutionary," he said. "I was swimming for Purgatory when Leviathan ate me. You must help us. You must kill Leviathan."

"We are trying," said Qawik. "You said 'us.' Who is this 'us?' "

"We are the Revolution," said Marti. "We are led by a great man, Che Guevara.

There is something terribly wrong in Hell. People who should be in Purgatory-or even in Paradise-are damned to torments they do not deserve. We have appealed to Satan, but our appeals fall on deaf ears."

Queequeg smiled. "His ears are not deaf,' he said. "He simply likes to ponder these matters for a great time. You should know that."

"We beseech God, but He does not listen to us. We must get out. Many of us have tried to swim to Purgatory. But Leviathan gets us."

"That is true," said Qawik. "We see many bodies pierced on Leviathan's teeth. And when one of our own falls into the water. Leviathan crushes their body, and sends their soul back to Satan."

Marti sat up in the deck of the boat, clutched Qawik by his parka. "You must kill Leviathan. He cannot live anymore." Jose Marti let go of Qawik, fell to the deck, and his soul went to Satan once more. They lifted his body over the side and dropped it into the water.

Qawik stared at Marti's body as he fell into the depths. And an idea came to him.

"You are mad," Ukalliq said.

"Perhaps," said Qawik. "Still, I see no other way to kill the whale."

Qawik and Ukalliq sat in the unfinished iglus of Qitiqliq. Qawik was greasing the barrel and stock of the bomb gun with fat from the body of a man who had gone back to Satan, one of the corpses that Leviathan had spat back up.

Ukalliq was sewing a watertight bag from the man's skin.

"Do you know what happens to those who go back to Satan?" Ukalliq asked.

Qawik nodded. "I have heard stories."

"Stories! No story can match the reality. Did I tell you of the time when I first came here?"

"You have hinted."

"Ah, let me tell you more than hints. When I first came to Hell I was shamed at my torment. I went out on the ice, took off my parka and my boots, and let the cold take me. Paradise was not out, and I went quickly. I passed away. It was a great peace, a great sleep, but it did not last long.

When I awoke, I was back with Satan. I had returned to New Hell. And there I met the Undertaker."

"The Undertaker? The man who puts bodies back together?"

Ukalliq nodded. "A horrible, disgusting man, with breath worse than shit-breath that smelled like walrus , bile gone rancid for ten winters. When you awake, the Undertaker hovers over you, and tends to your wounds, and makes your body whole. He is very worried about you, and so gets very dose, so the whole time you are smelling this awful, disgusting man. He looks like a great lemming--a lemming shaved bald. It is disgusting. But that is not all,"

"What more can happen?"

"You enter Hell again. You must receive a new torment, and you must listen to the awful whinings of that fat pig, the Welcome Woman. When I met her again she was at the Undertaker's, watching my body become whole. When my penis grew back, she-you do not want to hear what she did."

"It sounds bad, Ukalliq."

"It is bad," Ukalliq said. "Qawik, you are content with hunting the whale. Let us keep hunting."

"It is not enough anymore," Qawik said. "I want to destroy Leviathan."

Ukalliq put the final stitch in the bag. "Done," he said, holding the bag up for Qawik to see. "Do you think your plan will work?"

He smiled. "God's Grace told me that I was to hunt Leviathan, but that I would never catch him.

And so I will not. But God's Grace said nothing about destroying Leviathan. And so I will."

Qawik slipped a bomb into the greased bomb gun, and handed the gun to Ukalliq.

Ukalliq slipped the gun inside the bag, squeezed as much air out of the bag as he could, and stitched the bag fight. He walked over to a great tub of water, and held the bag and gun under.

No air bubbles escaped, no water got into the bag.

"It will work," Ukalliq said.

Qawik grinned.

Leviathan came to them on the edge of the ice, with a gentle moan that rose into a high squeal.

The whalers jumped into the boat and gave chase. Leviathan swam slowly, let the whalers catch up with him. Queequeg stood in the bow, raised the darting harpoon, and drove the harpoon deep into the beast. The harpoon held, the bomb exploded, and Leviathan sank into a red sea.

He rose from the deep. The line flew out of the boat, whipped the boat around as it came to the end, and Leviathan towed the boat through the open channels, through the lead in the ice. Cakes of ice slammed against the side of the leaky boat, water sprayed over the bow, mist whipped through their parkas.

Leviathan surfaced once, twice, three times, and then floated calmly on the surface, flukes flapping feebly.

"He tires again," said Queequeg. "Ah, his old trick."

The whale began rolling, wrapping the line around his great body, reeling the boat toward him.

Queequeg and Qawik changed places ,in the bow. Qawik took out the bomb gun, still in its waterproof skin bag. He felt through the folds for the safety, switched it off, slipped a finger around the trigger.

"When we're within ten yards, cut the boat loose," he said.

"Aye," said Queequeg.

"You do not need to do this," Ukalliq said. "You can back out."

Qawik shook his head. "I want to do this, Ukalliq."

"Satan may not send you back here."

"I will return," he said. "This is my home." Qawik turned to Ukalliq, smiled.

He reached up, tugged on the ulu in his head., The woman's knife came free.

Qawik smiled, handed the ulu to Ukalliq. "See, Little Babbit? The blade comes free. It is a good sign. I will please Leviathan."

"Fifteen yards," Queequeg said.

"Goodbye," said Qawik.

"Goodbye, Wolverine," said Ukalliq.

"Ten yards," Queequeg said. He cut the line.

Qawik dove into the water, bomb gun held tight in his arms. He kicked toward Leviathan, swam toward the mouth. Leviathan opened his great jaws, and the water sank down his throat, a whirlpool sucking Qawik into the maw, Qawik held his head high, took deep breaths, and ducked as he was swept over and under the knifelike teeth. He sank down into the throat of the whale, into darkness.

He swallowed one last gasp of fetid, sulfarous air, puffed out his cheeks, kept his lips sealed. The whirlpool drew him down, down over the tongue of the monster, down toward the gullet.

As he swept down the whale's throat, under the brain, below me skull, Qawik raised the bomb gun. He jammed it up into the soft skin at the base of the whale's skull and pulled the trigger.

The gun kicked him back against the side of the gullet. Qawik grabbed, hung onto a flap of flesh on the inside of the throat. He looked up, saw a great explosion above him, saw blood stream out from a hole two yards wide at the bottom of the whale's skull. Torrents of blood, torrents of gray slimy brains washed over Qawik. He licked at the blood, let it wash down his throat, as the blood washed Qawik down Leviathan's throat. Qawik fell into the stomach of the whale, into darkness, into the deep blue sea.

The body of Leviathan, the parka of the great whale, sank to the bottom, Qawik in its stomach.

Qawik felt the breath go out of him, felt the cold wash over him, felt his body crushed by the deep. He went down and down and down, and sank into Hell. Darkness fell over him, and his soul passed on.

The horrible stench of the Undertaker's breath wafted over him, a fart from the ass of a corpse.

Qawik woke up, looked down at his body, looked up at-the rat eyes of Satan's mortician. The Undertaker smiled.

"Ah, you are back," he said.

Qawik looked down at his body. He was all cord and sinew, muscles and bones and blood vessels. He held a red-raw hand up, clenched and unclenched his fingers, winced as the muscles rubbed against each other.

"No need to do that," the Undertaker said. "We have a new skin for you - a new 'parka', as you might say. Would you like to try it on?" He waved to a large slab, thirty yards long - a slab upon which there was laid out a great black bag. Qawik felt his legs walk over to the skin, felt his body wriggle into the huge bag of flesh. He felt his muscles and bones and body grow and expand, fill up the skin, grow into the flesh. His body wriggled and oozed. When the skin was tight, he wiggled his arms, kicked his legs, felt the fins slap against his side, and felt the flukes slap the ground.

"Ah, a perfect fit," said the Undertaker. "I think you shall like your new body, little Wolverine."

And he smiled, that awful smile of rotting teeth.

"Or," the Undertaker said, "should I say 'Leviathan'?"