Smilla's Sense of Snow aka Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow

Part Two
The Sea
1

"I'm thinking about the little captain on the bridge up there," says Lukas. "He no longer sails a ship. He no longer exercises any authority. He's just a link in the coupling that transmits impulses to a complex mechanism."

Lukas is leaning against the railing of the bridge wing. In front of the bow of the Kronos a skyscraper of red polyenamel grows out of the sea. It looms over the foredeck and well beyond the tops of the masts. If you tip your head way back you can see that somewhere high in the gray sky even this phenomenon comes to an end. It's not a building; it's the stern of a supertanker.

When I was a child in Qaanaaq in the late fifties and early sixties, even the European clock moved relatively slowly. Changes occurred at a rate that allowed people time to register a protest against them. This rebellion first took form in the concept of the "good old days."

Nostalgia for the past was then a completely new feeling in Thule. Sentimentality will always be man's first revolt against development.

The times have made this reaction obsolete. Now a different kind of protest is needed than the lachrymose mourning for native soil. Things are happening so rapidly now that at any moment the present we're living in will be the "good old days."

"For these ships," says Lukas, "the rest of the world doesn't exist anymore. If you meet them on the open sea and try to raise them on the VHF to exchange weather reports and positions, or to ask about the ice conditions, they won't answer. They don't even have their radio on. When you displace 340,000 cubic yards of water and produce horsepower like a nuclear reactor and have a computer as big as an old-fashioned ship's chest to calculate your course and speed and maintain them or diverge from them slightly if necessary, then your surroundings cease to interest you. The only thing left in the world is your departure point and your destination and who's paying you when you reach it."

Lukas has lost weight. He has started smoking.

He might be right. One of the syndromes of development in Greenland is that everything seems to have happened recently. The Danish Navy's new heavily armed, high-speed inspection ships were recently introduced. The vote to join the Common Market and the narrow majority to withdraw as of January 1, 1985. Not long ago the Defense Ministry restricted entry permits to Qaanaaq for military reasons. And at the spot where we're now standing, everything has been newly built. The large floating oil platform, the Greenland Star, outside of Nuuk, consists of 25,000 linked metal pontoons anchored to the sea floor 2,500 feet below us. A quarter of a mile of desolate, windblown, green-painted metal, ugly as sin, twenty sea miles from the coast. "Dynamic" is the word the politicians use.

It has all been created with the goal of coercion in mind.

Not the coercion of Greenlanders. The presence of the army and the direct violence of civilization are almost at an end in the Arctic. It's no longer necessary for development. The liberal appeal to greed in all its aspects is sufficient today.

Technological culture has not destroyed the peoples of the Arctic Ocean. Believing that would be to think too highly of culture. It has simply acted as a catalyst, a cosmic model for the potential-which lies in every culture and every human being-to center life around that particularly Western mixture of greed and naivete.

What they want to coerce is the Other, the vastness, that which surrounds human beings. The sea, the earth, the ice. The complex stretched out in front of us is an attempt to do that.

Lukas's face is haggard with distaste.

"Previously, up until 1992, there was only Polar Oil at Exringehavn. A little place. A communications station and a fish cannery on one side of the fjord. The plant on the other. Managed by the Greenland Trading Company. We could dock stern-fast, up to 50,000 tons. When we got the floating hoses out we would go ashore. There was only one building for living quarters, a galley, and a pumphouse. It smelled of diesel. Five men ran the whole place. We always had a gin-and-tonic with the manager in the galley."

This sentimental side of Lukas is new to me.

"That must have been nice," I say. "Did they have clogging and concertinas, too?"

His eyes grow narrow.

"You're wrong," he says. "I'm talking about power. And about freedom. In those days the captain was the highest authority. We went ashore, and we took the crew along with us, except for the anchor watch. There was nothing at Fxringehavn. It was just a desolate, godforsaken place between Godthåb and Frederikshab. But in the midst of that nothingness, you could take a walk if you wanted to."

He gestures toward the complex of pontoons in front of us, and toward the distant aluminum barracks. "Here they have three tax-free shops and regular helicopter service to the mainland. There's a hotel and a diving station. A post office. Administrative offices for Chevron, Gulf, Shell, and Exxon. In two hours they can put together a landing strip that can handle a small jet. The gross tonnage of that ship in front of us is 125,000 tons. There is development and progress here. But no one is allowed ashore, Jaspersen. They come on board if you want anything. They check off your requests on a list, and they bring a portable chute and load your order on. board. If the captain insists on going ashore, a couple of security officers show up with a landing bridge and hold his hand until he's back on board. They say it's because of the danger of fire. Because of the risk of sabotage. They say that when the piers are full, there are 250 million gallons of oil here."

He searches for a new cigarette, but the pack is empty. "That's the nature of centralization. Under these conditions the shipmasters have virtually disappeared. Seamen don't exist at all."

I'm waiting. He wants something from me. "Were you hoping to go ashore?" he asks. I shake my head.

"Even if this was your only chance? If this was the end of the line? If we only had the return trip left?"

He wants to find out how much I know.

"We're not taking on any cargo," I say. "We're not unloading anything. This is nothing but a rest stop. We're waiting for something or other."

"You're guessing."

"No," I say, "I know where we're going."

His body is still relaxed. But now he's on guard. "Tell me."

"If I do, you have to tell me why we're docked here." His complexion doesn't look robust. It's quite pale and chapped in the relatively dry air. He licks his lips. He's been counting on me as a form of insurance. Now he's confronted with a new, risky contract. It demands a trust in me that he doesn't feel.

Without a word he walks past me. I follow him inside the bridge. I shut the door behind us. He goes over to the slightly raised navigational table.

"Show me," he says.

It's a map of Davis Strait on a scale of 1:1,000,000. Toward the west it shows the outermost point of Cumberland Peninsula. To the northwest it includes the coast along Great Halibut Banks.

On the table, next to the sea chart, is the Ice Center's map of ice formations.

"Since November the field ice has stretched 100 sea miles out and no farther north than Nuuk," I say. "The ice forced farther north by the West Greenland current has moved out to sea and melted because Davis Strait has had three mild winters and is relatively warmer than normal. The current, now free of ice, continues up along the coast. Disko Bay has the world's highest concentration of icebergs. During the last two winters the glacier at Jakobshavn has moved 130 feet a day. That produces the largest icebergs outside of Antarctica."

I point to the map of ice formations.

"This winter the icebergs were forced out of the bay as carly as October and directed out along the coast with a ridge of turbulence between the West Greenland current and the Baffin current. Even in sheltered water there are icebergs. When we leave here, Tørk will set a northwesterly course until we're free of this belt."

His face is expressionless. But there is the same air of concentration about him that I saw at the roulette table. "Since December the Baffin current has carried western ice down to the 67th parallel. It has frozen together with the new ice somewhere between 200 and 400 sea miles out in Davis Strait. Tork wants us somewhere in the vicinity of that edge. From there we'll be given a course due north."

"You've sailed here before, Jaspersen?"

"I have hydrophobia. But I know something about ice."

He bends over the map. "No one has ever sailed farther north than Holsteinsborg this time of year. Not even in sheltered waters. The current packs field ice and western ice into a floor of cement. We might be able to sail north for two days. What does he want us to do at the edge of the ice?"

I straighten up. "You can't play without chips, Captain."

For a moment I think that I've lost him. Then he nods. "It's like you said," he replies slowly. "We're waiting here. That's what they've told me. We're waiting for a fourth passenger."

Five hours earlier the Kronos shifted course. Outside the mess a dull sun hung low in the sky; by its position I could tell we had changed course, but I had already noticed.

In the dining hall of the boarding schools, students seemed to take root in their chairs. In any unstable situation, the few fixed points take on special meaning. In the mess of the Kronos, we sit glued to our chairs. At the other table Jakkelsen is eating, introspective and wan, his head bowed over his plate. Fernanda and Maria try to avoid looking at me.

Maurice is eating with his back to me. He's only using his right hand. His left hand is in a sling around his neck that partially covers a thick bandage on his shoulder. He's wearing a work shirt with one sleeve cut off to make room for the bandage.

My mouth is dry with a fear that won't let up as long as I'm on board this ship.

On my way out the door, Jakkelsen comes up behind me. "We've changed course! We're on our way to Godthåb."

I decide to clean the officers' mess. If Verlaine follows me, he'll have to pass the bridge. If we're on our way to Nuuk, he'll have to come. They can't permit me to go ashore in a large port.

I stay in the mess for four hours. I clean the windows and polish the brass trim and finally rub the wooden paneling with teak oil.

At one point Kützow comes by. When he sees me, he hurries off.

Sonne appears. He stands there for a while, rocking hack and forth on the balls of his feet. I'm wearing a short blue dress. Maybe he takes that as an invitation to stay. I Ie has misread me. I've put on the dress so I'll be able to rtin as fast as possible. When he gets no encouragement, he leaves. He's too young to make a move, and not old enough to be pushy.

At four o'clock we drop anchor behind the red wall. I lalf an hour later I'm called to the bridge.

"At this time of year," says Lukas, "there's only one way ra get farther north. Unless you have an icebreaker along. And even then it might not be possible. What you have to do is go farther out to sea. Otherwise you'll get caught in a bay, and suddenly the ice will close around you, and there you'll sit."

I could lie to him. But he's just about the only straw I have left to cling to. He's a man on his way down. Maybe sometime in the near future, he'll end up down there where our paths could cross.

"At 54 degrees west longitude," I say, "the ocean floor drops off. That's where a branch of the western current turns away from the coast. There it meets the relatively colder northern current. West of the great fishing banks there is an area of unstable weather."

" `The Sea of Fog.' Never been there."

"A place where the largest chunks of ice from the east coast are carried and can't escape. Similar to the Iceberg Cemetery north of Upernavik."

With the corner of the ruler I find a dark area on the ice map. "Too small to be clearly marked. It often takes the form of a long bay, like a fjord in the pack ice-maybe it looks like that now. Risky but navigable. If the journey is important enough. Even the small Danish inspection cutters occasionally went in there, chasing British or Icelandic trawlers."

"Why sail a 4,000-ton coaster with a couple of dozen men up toward Baffin Bay to enter a dangerous opening in the pack ice?"

I close my eyes and call up an image of a magnified plant embryo, a little shape curved around its own center. The same images that were superimposed on the sea chart on the boat deck.

"Because there's an island. The only island that far from the coast before you reach Ellesmere Island." Under my ruler it's a dot so small that it's almost invisible.

"Isla Gela Alta. Discovered by Portuguese whalers during the last century."

"I've heard of it," he says thoughtfully. "A bird refuge. The weather is too bad even for the birds. It's forbidden to go ashore. Impossible to drop anchor. No reason in the world to go there."

"I'll still bet that's where we're headed."

"I'm not sure that you're in a position to make any bets," he says.

While I'm still on my way down from the bridge I think that the world may have lost a nice person in Sigmund Lukas. It's a phenomenon that I've often observed without understanding it. Inside someone another person can exist, a fully formed, generous, and trustworthy individual who never comes to light except in glimpses, because he is surrounded by a corrupt, dyed-in-the-wool, repeat offender.

Out on deck, dusk has fallen. A cigarette is glowing in the dark.

Jakkelsen is leaning against the railing. "This is incredible, fucking incredible!"

The complex below us is lit up by lights on poles lining both sides of the piers. Even now, bathed in this yellow light, painted grass green, with lights on in the distant buildings, and little electric cars and white traffic markings, the Greenland Star looks like nothing more than several thousand square meters of steel plunked down in the Atlantic Ocean.

To me it seems so obviously a mistake. To Jakkelsen it's a magnificent union of high technology and the sea. "Yes," I say, "and the best part about it is that the whole thing can be taken apart and packed up in twelve hours."

"With this place they've won out over the sea, man. Now it doesn't matter how far it is to the bottom or what the weather's like. They can put down a harbor anywhere. In the middle of the ocean."

I'm no teacher or Boy Scout leader. I'm not interested in setting him straight.

"Why do they need to be able to take it apart, Smilla?"

Maybe it's nervousness that makes me answer him, after all. "They built it when they started bringing oil up from the sea floor off North Greenland. It took ten years from the time they discovered oil until they could extract it. Their problem was the ice. First they built a prototype of what was supposed to be the world's largest and most solid drilling platform, the Joint Venture Warrior, a prodiirt of glasnost and Home Rule, a cooperative venture between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Denmark's largest shipping company A. P. Moller. You've sailed past drilling platforms. You know how big they are. You can see them fifty sea miles away, and they get bigger and bigger, like an entire universe floating on!xosts. They've got bars and restaurants and offices and workshops and movie theaters and fire stations, the whole thing mounted forty feet above the surface of the ocean so even the worst storm waves will pass underneath it. Just think about the way they look. The Joint Venture Warrior was supposed to be four times as big. The prototype was sixty feet above the water surface. It was supposed to provide jobs for 1,400 people. They constructed the prototype in Baffin Bay. After it was erected, an iceberg came along. They had expected that. But this iceberg was a little bigger than usual. It was calved somewhere on the edge of the Arctic Ocean. It was 325 feet tall and flat on top, the way icebergs are when they're that high. It had 1,300 feet of ice below the surface, and it weighed about 20 million tons. When they saw it coming, they did get a little nervous. But they had two big icebreakers on hand. They fastened them to the iceberg to pull it onto a different course. There was hardly any current and no wind. Still, nothing happened when they started up the engines. Except that the iceberg continued straight ahead, as if it didn't notice anything was tugging at it. And the iceberg rolled right over the prototype; there were no traces of the proud model for the Joint Venture Warrior left behind in the water except for some patches of oil and pieces of debris. Since then, they've made all Arctic Ocean equipment so that it can be dismantled in twelve hours. That's how much warning the Ice Center can give them. They drill from floating platforms that can be cut loose. This magnificent harbor is nothing more than a tin tray. When the ice came by, it would carry the platform off as though it had never been here. They only put it up during mild winters when the field ice doesn't reach this far north or the pack ice this far south. They haven't conquered the ice, Jakkelsen. The battle hasn't even begun yet."

He puts out his cigarette. He has his back to me. I can't tell whether he's disappointed or indifferent.

"How do you know all this, Smilla?"

When they were still deliberating whether to put the Joint Venture Warrior on the ice, I was working a sixmonth stint at the American cold-water laboratory on Pylot Island, conducting experiments to measure the elasticity of sea ice. I was part of an enthusiastic team of five. We knew each other from the first two ICC conferences. When we had parties and got drunk, we would give speeches about the fact that this was the first time five glaciologists of Inuit origin were gathered. We told each other that we represented the highest concentration of expertise anywhere in the world. We gleaned our most important data from plastic washbasins. We would pour salt water into the basins, put them in a laboratory freezer, and freeze the water to ice of a standard thickness. Then we took these sheets outdoors, placed them between two tabletops, loaded them down with weights, and measured how much they sagged before they broke. We made little electric motors vibrate the weights and proved that the vibrations from the drills wouldn't affect the structure or elasticity of the ice. We were full of the pride and enthusiasm of scientific pioneers. It wasn't until we were writing the final report, in which we recommended that A. P. Moller, Shell, and Gospetrol begin exploiting the Greenland oil reserves from platforms built on the ice, that we realized what we were doing. By then it was too late. A Soviet company had designed the Joint Venture Warrior and won the contract. All five of us were fired. Five months later the prototype was pulverized. Since then they haven't tried anything more permanent than floating platforms.

I could tell Jakkelsen all this, but I don't.

"Tonight I'm going to fix everything for us," he says.

"That will be wonderful."

"You don't believe me, man, but just wait and see. The whole thing is crystal-clear to me. They've never been able to fool me. I know this ship. I've got it all worked out."

When he steps into the light from the bridge, I see that he's not wearing any outdoor clothes. He's been standing here in 14°F weather, conversing with me as if we were indoors.

"Get your beauty sleep tonight, Smilla, and tomorrow everything will be different."

"The prison kitchen provided einzigartige opportunities for baking sourdough."

Urs is leaning over a rectangular shape wrapped in a white dish towel.

"Die vielen Faktoren, the many factors. The sour-dough starter, the yeast, and finally the bread dough. How long should it rise, and at what temperature? What types of flour? How hot an oven?"

He unwraps the bread. It has a dark brown, shiny, glazed crust broken in places by whole grains of wheat. An overwhelming aroma of grain, flour, and pungent freshness. Under different circumstances it might have made me happy. But something else interests me. A time factor. Every event on a ship has its first portent in the galley.

"Why are you baking now, Urs? It's ungewohnlich, unusual."

"The problem is the balance between the Säuerlichkeit and the rising power."

Ever since he discovered me in the dumbwaiter and we stopped talking to each other, I've thought there was something rather doughlike about him. Something elastic, unspoiled, simple, and yet sophisticated. And at the same time, much too soft.

"Are you serving an extra meal?" He tries to ignore me.

"You'll end up in the slammer," I say. "Right back in jail. Here in Greenland. And there won't be any kitchen work. No time off for good behavior. They don't make much of a fuss about meals here. When we meet up again, in three or four years, we'll see whether you've retained your good humor. Even if you've lost sixty-five pounds."

He slumps like a deflated souffle. He couldn't possibly know that there aren't any prisons in Greenland.

"At eleven o'clock. For one person."

"Urs, what were you sentenced for?" He gives me a stony look.

"It only takes one call. To Interpol." He doesn't reply.

"I called them before we sailed," I tell him. "When I saw the crew list. It was heroin."

Beads of sweat form on the narrow edge between his mustache and his upper lip.

"It wasn't from Morocco. Where was it from?"

"Why are you hounding me?"

"Where was it from?"

"The airport in Geneva. The lake is so close. I was in the military. We unloaded the crates along with the food supplies, via the river."

When he starts to talk, I understand a little about the art of interrogation for the first time in my life. Fear alone isn't what makes him talk. It's just as much a longing for contact, the burden of a guilty conscience, and the loneliness of the sea.

"Crates full of antiques?" He nods. "From the Far East. On the plane from Kyoto."

"Who brought them out? Who was the shipping agent?"

"You must know that."

I don't reply. I know what he's going to say before he says it.

"It was Verlaine, naturlich."

So that's how they've manned the Kronos. With people so compromised that they had no choice. Not until now, after all this time, do I see the ship's mess for what it really is: a microcosm, a manifestation of the network that Tork and Claussen created earlier. Just as Loyen and Ving used the Cryolite Corporation, they have also made use of an organization that already existed. Fernanda and Maria from Thailand. Maurice, Hansen, and Urs from Europe. All part of the same organization.

"Ich hatte keine Wahl. I had no choice. I couldn't pay." His fear no longer seems exaggerated.

I'm on my way out, but he follows me.

"Fraulein Smilla, sometimes I think you're bluffing. That maybe you're not from the police, after all."

Even two feet away, I can feel the heat from the bread. It must have just come out of the oven.

"And if that's the case, there wouldn't be any risk if one day I served you a portion of trifle, shall we say… full of glass shards and bits of barbed wire."

He's holding the bread in his hand. It must be over 400°F. Maybe he's not so soft, after all. If he was exposed to high temperatures, maybe he'd develop a crust as hard as glass.

A breakdown doesn't necessarily have to be a collapse; it can also take the form of a quiet slide into resignation. That's the way it happens to me. On my way out of the galley, I decide to escape from the Kronos.

Back in my cabin I put on underwear made of new wool. Then I put on my blue work clothes, blue rubber boots, blue sweater, and a thin navy-blue down jacket. In the dark it will be almost black, and it's the least obtrusive thing I can find at the moment. I don't pack a suitcase. I roll up my money, toothbrush, an extra pair of panties, and a little bottle of almond oil in a plastic bag. I don't think it would be possible to slip away with anything else.

I tell myself that it's the loneliness that's getting to me. I grew up in a community. If I've desired and sought out brief periods of solitude and introspection, it has always been in order to return to the social group as a stronger person.

But I haven't been able to find that group. I seem to have lost it, sometime during that autumn when Moritz first brought me out of Greenland by plane. I'm still searching; I haven't given up. But I don't seem to be making any progress.

Now life on this ship has turned into a travesty of my existence in the modern world.

I'm no hero. I had affection for a child. I would have put my tenacity at the disposal of anyone who wanted to understand his death. But there wasn't anyone. No one but me.

I go up on deck. At every corner, I expect to meet Verlaine. But I meet no one. The deck seems deserted. I go over to the railing. The Greenland Star looks different than when I stood here several hours ago. Then I was still numb from the preceding days. Now it represents my way out, my escape route.

At least two of the piers are half a mile long. They're strangely motionless in the long swells rolling in from the dark. Up near the buildings I can see small, illuminated electric cars and forklifts.

The gangway of the Kronos is down. Big signs on the dock say: ACCESS TO PIER STRICTLY FORBIDDEN.

At the bottom of the gangway I'll have to walk across six or seven hundred yards of pontoon dock bathed in light. There probably isn't any guard. The lights are out in the control towers, from which they direct the pumping of the oil. But it's likely that they have the area under surveillance and that they'll see me and pick me up.

That's what I'm counting on. They may be obligated to return me to the ship, but first they'll take me somewhere to an officer and a desk and a chair. Then I'll tell them about the Kronos. Nothing bordering on the truth that I know. They wouldn't believe me. But something else. Something about Jakkelsen's drugs, and that I feel threatened by the rest of the crew and want to leave the ship.

They'll have to listen to me. Technically and legally, desertion no longer exists. A sailor and a cabin stewardess can go ashore anytime they like.

I go down to the second deck. From there the gangway is visible. There's an alcove where it adjoins the deck. That's where Jakkelsen once waited for me.

Now someone else is waiting. Hansen has propped his rubber boots up on the low steel box.

I could reach the end of the gangway before he was even out of his chair. I'd be the certain winner in a 150 yard sprint down the dock. But then I would run out of steam and collapse.

I retreat to the deck to reconsider my options. I've come to the conclusion that there aren't any, when suddenly the lights go out.

I had just closed my eyes, trying to find an answer in the sounds.

The rolling of the waves along the dock, the hollow sound of the water slapping against the fender beams. The gulls screeching in the darkness, the wind howling low against the control towers. The sigh of the links of the pontoons rubbing against each other. A distant, faint hiss from great turbine generators. And more disheartening than all these sounds put together: the feeling that all noise is being sucked out into the emptiness above the vast Atlantic Ocean. That the entire complex, along with the docked ships, is a vulnerable miscalculation that will be swept away at any moment.

These sounds have no advice to give me. In a place like this, the only way to leave a ship is by means of the gangway. I'm a captive on the Kronos.

That's when the lights go out. When I open my eyes, they seem blinded by the darkness at first. Then a series of red lights appear, approximately a hundred yards apart, on the dock. Emergency lights.

The lights have been turned off on the pier where the Kronos is moored and on the ship itself. The night is so dark that even things close at hand seem to vanish. The distant part of the platform looks like a yellowish-white island in the night.

I can see the dock. I can also see a figure down there. Heading away from the Kronos. A mixture of fear and hope and old habit stops me from hitting my head on the mast or a capstan. At the bottom of the stairs I pause for a moment. There's no one around. But even if there was, I wouldn't be able to see him. Then I take off running.

Out of the ship and down the gangway. I don't see anyone, and no one calls after me. I turn and run along the pier. The pontoons seem alive and unsteady beneath my feet. Down here the emergency lights seem painfully bright. I keep to the side away from the lamps and increase my speed every time I approach a patch of light, catching my breath when I'm back in the dark. Only six days have passed since I watched Lander sail off into the fog, on his way back to Skovshoved, and in every sense of the word, I'm still at sea. But I share some of the joy a sailor must feel when he sets foot on land again after a long voyage.

A figure appears in front of me, moving with the faltering, swaying gait of a drunkard.

It has started to rain. The dock is marked off for traffic, like a street, which is lined with the windowless sides of ships, rising up like skyscrapers 150 feet high. In the distance the aluminum of the barracks glistens. Everything vibrates dully from big, invisible engines. The Greenland Star is a deserted town on the edge of the empty heavens.

The only living thing is the wobbly figure in front of me. It's Jakkelsen. The silhouette against the lamp is indisputably Jakkelsen. Far ahead of him there's someone else heading off somewhere. That's why Jakkelsen is wavering. Like me, he's trying to avoid the light. He's trying to make himself invisible to the person he's following.

There doesn't seem to be anyone following me, so I fall back, not wanting to gain on the two in front of me, but still moving forward.

I make a turn at the last tower. Before me lies a vast open area. A square in the middle of the ocean. In the dimness, the only light comes from a single fluorescent lamp way up high.

In the center of the square, inside a series of concentric circles, slouches the outline of a large dead animal. A Sikorsky helicopter with four slightly bowed, drooping blades. Near one of the barracks someone has left a little pump wagon for extinguishing fires and an electric bus. Jakkelsen has vanished. It's the most desolate place I've ever seen.

As a child I sometimes dreamed that everybody was dead and had left me behind with the euphoric freedom of choice in an abandoned adult world. I've always thought of it as a pleasant dream. At this moment, on this square, I realize that it has always been a nightmare.

I walk forward toward the helicopter, and then on past it, into the faint light tinted dark green by the non-skid surface of the pontoons. The whole place is so deserted that I have absolutely no fear of being discovered.

At the point where the platform seems to meet the water there are three barracks and an open shed. Jakkelsen is sitting in the shadow, just outside the light. For a moment I feel uneasy. Just minutes ago he was moving as quick as a rabbit; now he's all hunched up. But when I put my hand on his forehead, I feel the heat and sweat from his run. When I try to shake some life into him, there's the clink of metal. I fish around in his breast pocket and pull out his syringe. I remember the expression on his face when he assured me that he could take care of himself. I try to pull him to his feet, but he's too limp. What he needs is two strong orderlies and a hospital gurney. I take off my jacket and put it over him, pulling it up over his forehead so that it won't rain on his face. I slip the syringe back in his pocket. You have to be younger or at least more idealistic than I am to try to fix people who are determined to kill themselves.

As I straighten up, a shadow glides away from the open shed and takes on a life of its own. It's not heading toward me; it's on its way across the square.

It's a person carrying a small suitcase and wearing a flapping overcoat. But the suitcase isn't really small. The person is big. From this distance I can't see very well, but I don't need to, either. It doesn't take much for me to recognize him. It's the mechanic.

Maybe I knew it all along. Knew that he was the fourth passenger.

When I recognize him, I realize that I'll have to return to the Kronos.

Not because it suddenly doesn't matter whether I live or die, but because the problem has been taken out of my hands. It no longer has to do with Isaiah alone. Or with me. Or with the mechanic. Or even with what there is between us. It's something much bigger. Maybe it's love.

When I walk back along the dock, the lights have come on again. There's no use trying to hide.

The tower in front of the Kronos is manned. The figure behind the glass looks like an insect. Close up you realize this is because of his hard hat with two short antennas attached.

Two hoses have been connected up. The Kronos is taking on fuel.

Hansen is sitting at the top of the gangway. He freezes when he sees me. He had been sitting there because of me. But he was expecting me to come from the other direction. He's not prepared for this situation. He slowly shifts gears; he's no good at improvising. He starts to block my way, trying to evaluate the risk of attempting something aggressive. I fumble for the screwdriver and put my hand into my plastic bag. On the stairway behind him Lukas comes into view. I stretch out my clenched fist toward Hansen.

"From Verlaine," I say.

His hand closes around what I give him. With the automatic obedience prompted by the bosun's name. Then Lukas is standing right behind him. He surveys the situation with a single glance. His eyes narrow.

"You're wet, Jaspersen."

He blocks my way up the stairs.

"I had to run an errand. For Hansen."

Hansen tries to find words to protest. He opens his hand, looking for a possible answer there. On his broad palm there's a crumpled ball. It unfolds as we watch. It's a pair of panties-tiny, pure white, with lace.

"They didn't have a bigger size," I say. "But I'm sure you can get them on, Hansen. They'll probably stretch." I walk past Lukas. He doesn't try to stop me. All of his attention is directed at Hansen. His face is full of amazement. Lukas is having a hard time. Nothing but unanswered questions all around him.

As I head up the stairs I hear him give up on this puzzle, too.

"First the baggage," he says. "Then the sternmost capstan. We sail in fifteen minutes."

His voice sounds hoarse, astonished, annoyed, and harried.

I take off my wet work clothes and sit down on my bunk. I think about Jakkelsen.

Through the hull I can tell that the oil pumps have stopped. The hoses have been removed, the hawsers taken in. The deck is being made ready for sailing.

Jakkelsen is sitting somewhere outside in the dark, about half a mile from here. I'm the only one who knows that he's left the ship. The question is whether I should report his absence.

The gangway is lifted. On the deck the posts at the mooring lines are manned.

I stay on my bunk. Because maybe Jakkelsen was on to something. I keep going back to something about his voice on the deck, something about his self-confidence and conviction. If it's true that he's discovered something, there must be a reason why he wanted to go ashore. He must have thought that whatever had to be done had to be done from there. Maybe he can still help me. Even though I have no idea how or why. Or by what means.

There is no blast of the horn. The Kronos leaves the Greenland Star as anonymously as it arrived. I didn't even notice the engine revving up. It's a change in the movements of the hull that tells me we are sailing.

Our cruising speed is 18 knots. Between 400 and 450 sea miles every twenty-four hours. This means that it will take about twelve hours for us to reach our destination. If I'm right. If we're on our way to the Barren Glacier on Gela Alta.

Something heavy is being dragged down the corridor. When the door to the quarterdeck closes, I go out in the hallway. Through the window in the door I can see Verlaine and Hansen moving the mechanic's baggage aft. Black cases, the kind that musicians keep their instruments in, placed on dollies. He must have had excess baggage on the flight over. It must have been expensive. I wonder who paid for it.