Polar Shift

23

From the top of the knoll she had climbed, Karla could see that Ivory Island was not the arctic desert she had first assumed it to be. The tundra was treeless, but it was thick with low-lying, dwarf shrubs, grasses, mosses and sedges that formed a muted carpet. Dandelions, buttercups and fireweed created vibrant splashes of color. The morning sunlight glittered on distant lakes and rivers. Noisy seabirds wheeled overhead.

In her mind's eye, she pictured the rugged landscape as verdant grassland, the steppes teeming with vast herds of woolly mammoth. There would have been bison and woolly rhinos, giant ground sloths, all stalked by predators like the scimitar or saber-toothed cats. She could almost smell the musky animal odor and feel the ground shake from the passage of thousands of huge animals.

Somehow, as if an evil sorcerer had waved a magic wand, the mammoths and the other creatures had became extinct. The question of extinction had intrigued her as far back as she could remember. Like many children, she had been fascinated by dinosaurs and the great mammals that succeeded them as the earth's masters.

Her grandfather was the only scientist she knew, so of course she went to him and asked what had caused these magnificent creatures to die. She had listened wide-eyed as he explained how the world had shifted, and asked him if it could happen again. He had said yes, and she had been unable to sleep. Seeing her fear, a few nights later he had taught her a nursery rhyme that would make the topsy-turvy world right again. She was trying to dig the rhyme from her memory when she heard someone shout.

"Karla!"

Maria Arbatov was waving her arms at Karla. The expedition was ready to get moving again. Karla started walking back to rejoin the others. It was time to return to the task at hand. She knew it would not be easy. The discovery of the baby mammoth carcass had been an astounding stroke of luck. But Ivory Island was a rich trove of the ancient past. If she couldn't find what she wanted here, she should forsake field trips forever and stick to cataloging museum specimens.

Fortified by a hearty breakfast, the expedition got off to an early start that morning. Ito and Sato were ready before anyone else. They were dressed identically in warm-weather clothes, from their boots to their hats. Sergei was grumpier than usual, and even Maria's lovely smile couldn't dispel his sour mood, so she just ignored him.

They had shouldered their packs and headed into the interior of the island, using the river as a guide. They made good time across the flat tundra. By midmorning, when they had taken their first break, near Karla's knoll, they had trudged several miles.

As she hoisted her pack to resume the trek, Karla said: "I've been wondering. How did you transport the specimen all the way back to the camp? It must weigh hundreds of pounds."

Ito smiled and pointed to the packs he and Sato were carrying. "Inflatable rafts. We got the specimen to the river and floated all the way back to camp."

Ito smiled and bowed politely when Karla congratulated them on their ingenuity.

Sergei took up the lead, followed by the two women with the Japanese men taking up the rear. They struck off inland, away from the river. The topography changed from flat tundra to rolling hills and valleys, and eventually they were on the edge of the rolling foothills that ringed the base of the volcano. As they drew closer to it, the black, truncated mountain that they had seen in the distance began to loom above their head like an altar to Vulcan, the lord of the underworld.

They hiked along the shores of several small lakes and made their way around tussocks of cotton grass that marked boggy areas teeming with migrating birds. The temperature rose to around thirty degrees, but a breeze coming off the Arctic Ocean created a windchill factor that halved that, and Karla was glad that she was wearing her down parka.

The cold wind was no longer a problem, once they had descended into a ravine about thirty feet wide. Twenty-foot banks hemmed them in on both sides. A narrow stream a couple of feet deep ran down the middle, with plenty of room for walking on either side. They traveled along the winding gorge for two hours, and the composition of the banks began to change. Soon it became apparent that the ravine was an ancient mortuary. The river that had created the ravine had cut through layers of time to reveal scores of bones that protruded from the sand under their feet.

Karla stopped and picked up a bison leg bone that fitted perfectly into the socket of another bone she found a few feet away. The other scientists were not impressed. They barely gave the find a second look, and she had to drop the bones and hurry to catch up.

She was annoyed and frustrated at their indifference, but the reason for their casual attitude soon became apparent. As they rounded a bend, she saw that the low cliffs were composed almost entirely of bones of every size and species cemented together by the permafrost. She quickly identified pygmy horse and ancient reindeer fossils, ribs and femurs, along with massive mammoth bones and tusks. The graveyard went on for at least two hundred yards.

With great fanfare, Sergei announced that they had reached their destination. He dropped his rucksack on the ground next to the blackened ashes of a fire. "This is our base camp," he said.

The others left their bags as well, and continued along the ravine carrying only camera equipment and a few hand tools. As they trekked along, Karla thought about the baby mammoth back at the base camp. She was dying to test it. From its tissue and cartilage, they could perform radiocarbon tests to determine when it lived and died. The tusks would provide growth lines, like those in a tree, that would reveal seasonal differences and metabolic rate and migratory patterns. Seeds and pollen in the stomach contents would tell much about the biological world that existed thousands of years ago.

After hiking along the ravine for another ten minutes, they came to a section where there was a shallow cave in the wall of the gorge.

"This is where we found our little baby," Sergei said.

The ragged cavity was several feet across and about a yard deep.

"How did you get it out of the permafrost?" Karla said.

"Unfortunately, we had no water hose to melt the permafrost," Maria said. "We relied on hammer and chisel to extract the specimen."

"Then it was partly exposed?"

"Yes," Maria said. "We had to chop a little around the edge of the carcass before we could pry it out." She explained that they had rigged up a crude travois from mammoth tusks and dragged the frozen specimen to the river. It was floated back to the base camp and moved into the shed, where the temperature was below freezing even in the daytime.

Karla examined the hole. "There's something strange here," she said.

The other scientists clustered around her.

"I don't see anything," Sergei said.

"Look. There are other bones much deeper in the permafrost. They are evidently thousands of years old." She reached into the hole and scraped out some decayed vegetation and showed it to her colleagues. "This stuff is not very old. Your little elephant came into the hole more recently."

"Perhaps it is my poor English, but I'm not sure if I understand what you're saying," Sato said politely.

"Yes, what are you saying?" Sergei said with no attempt to hide his impatience. "That the mammoth is not part of its surroundings?"

"I don't know what I'm saying. Only that it is odd that the flesh is not rotting."

Sergei crossed his arms and looked around at the others with a triumphant grin on his face.

"I understand," Maria said. "I'm surprised we didn't see it before. This ravine still floods from time to time. It's possible that a flash flood washed the specimen away from a wall farther along and that the baby floated here, where it lodged in the hole and froze again."

Sergei saw that he was losing his conversational edge. "We're not here to look at holes," he said brusquely. He led the way about a hundred feet from the discovery site to where the ravine branched off.

"You go with Maria down there," he said, pointing to the left-hand branch. "We'll examine the other ravine."

"We've already been down this one," Maria protested.

"Look again. Maybe you'll find some more of your floating mammoths."

Maria's eyes flashed. Sato saw that a salvo was coming and intervened. "We had better make sure our hand radios are tuned to the same channel," he said.

With a verbal brawl averted, they all checked their walkie-talkies; and made sure the batteries were good. Then they split up into two groups, with the three men going one way and the women the other.

"What's wrong with Sergei today?" Karla asked.

"We got into an argument over your theory last night. He said it was all wrong. I said he wasn't giving you credit because you were a woman. He's such a male chauvinist, my husband."

"Maybe he just needs a little time to cool off."

"The old goat will be sleeping with an iceberg tonight. Maybe that will cool him off."

They both burst into laughter that echoed off the walls of the ravine. After walking several minutes, Karla saw why Maria had been so angry about being ordered to the left-hand branch. There were few bones to be found. Maria confirmed that the expedition had partially explored the other gorge and found it far richer in bones than the one they were in.

As they scanned the walls of the gorge, Maria's hand radio crackled. Ito's voice came on.

"Maria and Karla. Please return immediately to the point where the party split up."

Minutes later, they were back at the place the ravine forked. Ito was waiting for them. He said he had something to show them, and led the way along the tributary to where the other two men were waiting in front of a section of banking that looked as if it had been blasted open with dynamite.

"Somebody has been digging here," Sergei said, stating the obvious.

"Who could have done such a thing?" Sato said.

"Is there anyone else on the island?" Karla asked.

"We didn't think so," Ito said. "I thought I saw a light a few nights ago, but I couldn't be sure."

"It appears that your eyesight was working very well," Sato said. "We are not alone on the island."

"Ivory hunters," Sergei pronounced. He picked up a splint of bone from the hundreds of broken pieces that littered the ground. "I had no idea they had found this place. It's a sin. There's no science here. It looks as if someone has taken a hammer and chisel to it."

"Actually, we use a portable jackhammer."

The words came from thickset man who stood looking down on them from the top of the bluff. His broad face, his narrow, hooded eyes and high cheekbones advertised his Mongol ancestry. A thin mustache drooped down on either side of his mouth, which was wide in a thin-lipped grin. Karla had studied Russian while she was in Fairbanks and got the gist of what he was saying. The assault rifle cradled in his arms spoke louder than any words.

He whistled and a second later four more men appeared in the gorge, two from each side, all armed with similar weapons. They had tough-looking, unshaven faces, with sneering mouths and hard eyes.

Sergei may have been vain and disagreeable, but he displayed an unexpected courage born of scientific anger. He pointed to the broken bones. "You did this?"

The man shrugged.

"Who are you?" Sergei said.

The Mongol ignored the question and looked past Sergei.

"We are looking for the woman named Karla Janos."

The man was staring at Karla, but she was startled to hear her name from the stranger's lips. Sergei glanced at her in reflex, then thought better of it.

"There is no one here by that name."

The Mongol issued a curt order, and the man nearest to Karla grabbed her roughly by the arm with his dirt-encrusted fingers and pulled her away from the others.

She resisted. He squeezed her arm so hard it bruised. He smiled when she grimaced in pain, and he put his face close to hers. She almost gagged on the odor of his unwashed body and his foul breath.

She glanced over her shoulder. The other scientists were being herded along another ravine. The man at the top of the banking had disappeared. As she was hustled out of sight, she heard Maria scream, then male voices shouting.

Shots rang out, the noise echoing off the walls of the gully. She tried to run back to her colleagues, but the man grabbed her by the hair and jerked her back. First came excruciating pain, then anger. She whirled around and tried to claw his eyes out. He pulled his head back, and her fingernails scraped harmlessly against the stubble of his scruffy beard.

He lashed out with the back of his hand. Karla was stunned by the blow, and offered little resistance when he put his foot behind her legs and pushed her down. The back of her head hit the ground and galaxies whirled before her eyes. Her vision cleared, and she saw the man staring down at her with amusement, then lust, in his piglike eyes.

He had decided to have some fun with his lovely captive. He put his gun safely out of reach and began to unbutton his fly. Karla tried to crawl out of his way. He laughed, and put his boot on her neck. She pounded at his ankle and struggled to escape. She could barely breathe.

The man coughed suddenly, and the grin on his face changed into a mask of shock. A trickle of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth. He pivoted in slow motion, his boot slipped off Karla's neck and she saw the hilt of a hunting knife protruding from between his shoulder blades. Then his legs turned to rubber and he collapsed.

Karla rolled over to keep from being crushed by the falling body. Her elation was cut short. Another man was coming toward her.

He was tall, and limped when he walked. The sun slanting into the ravine was behind him and his face was obscured in shadow. She wanted to get up, but she was still dizzy and disoriented from hitting the ground.

The man called her by her first name. It was a voice she hadn't heard in many years.

Then she fainted.

When she came to, the man was bending over her, holding her head in his hands, soothing her bruised lips with water from a canteen. She recognized the long jaw and the pale blue eyes that were filled with concern. She smiled even though it hurt her cracked lips.

"Uncle Karl?" she asked as if in a dream.

Schroeder placed his fox-fur hat under her head as a pillow, then went over to retrieve his knife, wiping the blade on the man's coat. He picked up the dead man's assault rifle and slung it over his shoulder. Then he took his hat back, placed his arms under her body and lifted her like a fireman carrying a smoke-inhalation victim.

Voices were coming along the ravine.

Pain shot up his leg from his ankle, but Schroeder ignored it. Stepping smartly, he carried Karla in the opposite direction, vanishing around a bend only seconds before the Mongol man and the rest of his gang found their companion. It took them only a second to see that he was dead. Crouching low, they advanced along the wall of the ravine with their weapons cocked.

Schroeder ran for his life. And for Karla's.