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

2

Certain types of sleep are worse than no sleep at all. After the last two hours I wake up more tense, more physically depleted than if I had kept myself awake. It's dark outside.

I make a list in my mind. I ask myself who I could recruit to my side. It's not an expression of hope. It's just that the mind won't quit. As long as you're alive, it will never stop looking for ways to survive. As if there were someone else inside you, someone more naive but also more tenacious.

I give up on the list. The crew of the Kronos can be divided into those who are already against me and those who will be, when it comes, right down to it. I don't include the mechanic. I'm trying not to think about him at all.

When they bring my breakfast I'm lying on the table. Someone fumbles for the light switch, and I ask him not to turn on the light. He puts the tray inside the door and leaves. It was Maurice. He couldn't have seen the broken cupboard door in the dark.

I force myself to eat something. Someone is sitting outside the room. Now and then I can hear a chair scraping against the door. At some point the auxiliary engine and the big generators start up. Ten minutes later they start unloading from the quarterdeck. I can't see what it is. The infirmary windows face aft.

The day is starting. The dawn doesn't seem to bring light with it; it's more like a physical substance itself, like wisps of smoke drifting past the windows.

The island isn't visible from this angle. But I can feel the ice. The Kronos is tied up astern. The edge of the ice is about seventy-five yards away. I can see one of the ropes passing through an anchor of packed ice, attached to a beacon of churned-up, solid ice floes.

The motorboat goes ashore and is emptied. There's not enough light to identify the people or determine their baggage. Later it looks as if the boat has been abandoned, tied up at the edge of the ice.

I feel as if I've gone as far as I can. You can't demand that anyone" go any farther than that.

Jakkelsen's key is lying inside the cushion that I'm using as a pillow. There is also a blue plastic container. And a cloth wrapped around a piece of metal. I expected the mechanic to discover that they were missing right away, but he hasn't come back.

It's a revolver. Ballester Molina Inunangitsoq. Manufactured in Nuuk under an Argentine license. There's a disparity between its purpose and its design. Surprising that evil can assume so simple a form.

Rifles can be excused by the fact that they're used for hunting. In certain types of snow a long-barreled, large caliber revolver may be necessary for self-defense. Because both musk oxen and polar bears can slip around the hunter and attack from behind. So swiftly that there's no time to swing a rifle around.

But there's no excuse for this snub-nosed weapon. The bullets have a flat-tipped jacket of lead. The box is full. I load the cylinder. It holds six. I snap the cylinder into place.

I stick a finger down my throat, producing a rattling cough. I kick at the remaining shards of glass in the cupboard door. They fall to the floor with a crash. The door swings open and Maurice comes in. I lean against the table, holding the revolver with both hands.

"Get down on your knees," I say.

He starts toward me. I aim the barrel downward at his legs and press the trigger. Nothing happens. I've forgotten to take off the safety catch. He makes a forward, upward jab with his good left arm. The blow catches me in the chest and throws me up against the cupboard. Pieces of glass from the broken window dig into my back with that typically cold pain of extremely sharp edges. I drop to my knees. He kicks me in the face. His foot breaks my nose and momentarily robs me of consciousness. When I come to, one of his feet is next to my head; he must be standing right over me. I take the scalpels wrapped in Band-Aids out of the tool pouch in my work pants. I move forward a little and cut him across his ankle. There's a tiny snap as his Achilles' tendon is severed. When I take the knife away there's a yellowish glimpse of bone at the bottom of the incision. I roll away from him. He tries to come after me, but he falls on his face. It's not until I stand up that I realize I'm still holding the revolver. He's down on one knee. Without haste he reaches inside his windbreaker. I step over to him and hit him in the mouth with the barrel of the gun. He falls backward against the cupboard. I don't dare approach him again. I go out the door. His key is still sitting in the lock. I lock the door behind me.

The corridor is empty. But there's movement behind the door to the mess. I open it a crack. Urs is setting the table. I slip inside the door. He puts down a basket of bread. He doesn't notice me at first; then he does.

I unscrew the top of a thermos. Pour myself a cup, put in some sugar, stir it, and take a sip. The coffee is almost scalding, the burned taste of the beans is nauseating combined with the sugar.

"How long are we going to be here, Urs?"

He's staring at my face. I can't feel my nose, can only sense a diffuse heat.

"You're under arrest, Fraulein Smilla."

"I have permission to stroll around."

He doesn't believe me. He's hoping that I'll leave. Nobody likes a guaranteed loser.

"Drei Tage. Three days. Tomorrow the provisions will be taken ashore. Then we'll all work im Schnee, in the snow."

They're going to help pull the stone down the chute made from railroad ties. That means that it must be very close to the coast.

"Who has gone ashore?"

"Tørk, Verlaine, der neue Passagier. With bottles." At first I don't understand him. He sketches them with his hands in the air: oxygen tanks.

I'm on my way out the door when he comes after me. The situation is a repeat; we've stood this way before. "Fraulein Smilla…"

Urs, the man who has never dared come too close, takes hold of my arm, insistent.

"You must sleep. You need medical treatment," he says.

I pull my arm away. I haven't succeeded in frightening him. Instead, I've appealed to his sense of sympathy.

At sea, as a matter of principle, you lock a door only upon exiting a room, to make the work easier during a rescue operation if there's a fire. Lukas sleeps with his door unlocked. He's sound asleep. I close the door behind me and sit down at the foot of his bunk. He opens his eyes. At first they're dull with sleep, then glassy with shock.

"I've temporarily discharged myself."

He tries to grab me. He's quicker than you might expect, considering that he's lying on his back and has just been sound asleep. I show him the revolver. He keeps coming. I bring the barrel up to his face and snap off the safety.

"I've got nothing to lose," I say.

He relaxes. "Go back. Being under arrest is your security."

"Oh, sure," I say, "having Maurice outside is so comforting. Put on your coat. We're going out on deck." He hesitates. Then he reaches for his outdoor clothes. "Tørk is right. You're sick."

Maybe he's right. In any case, a layer of numbness has come between me and the rest of the world. A crust in which the nerves are dead. I rinse off my nose at the sink. It's awkward because I have to hold the gun in my other hand and keep an eye on Lukas at the same time. There's not as much blood as I thought. Facial wounds always feel worse than they are.

He goes first. As we pass the stairs to the upper decks, Sonne comes down. I step close to Lukas. Sonne stops. Lukas waves him on. He hesitates; then his training, years in the navy, and all his inner discipline take over. He steps aside. We continue on across the deck. Over to the railing. I stand a few yards away. This means we have to speak loudly to hear each other. But it makes it more difficult for him to grab me.

I have spent so many days on the open sea that the island seems to me to have a dark, painful beauty about it.

It's so narrow and high that it looms up from the frozen sea like a tower. The rock is visible only in a few places; by and large it's covered with ice. Like a cold Arctic cornucopia, the ice spills over the edge of the bowlshaped top and down the steep sides. A spit is protruding through the sea toward the Kronos: the Barren Glacier. If we could see the other sides, we'd see sheer rock faces, ravaged by crevasses and avalanches.

The wind is blowing off the island, a north wind, avangnaq. This crystallizes into another word, and at first there is only the internal sound, as if it were spoken by someone else, someone inside me. Pirhirhuq, snowstorm weather. I shake my head. We're not in Thule; the weather is different here. My exhausted system is creating phantoms.

"Where will you go afterward?" He gestures around the deck and at the open water. At the motorboat over at the edge of the ice.

"Be my guest, Miss Smilla."

Now that he drops all pretense of courtesy, I realize that it has never really been part of him. It belongs to Tork. Along with the justice on board. Lukas has never been anything but a tool.

He starts walking away from me. He, too, is a loser. He has nothing more to lose, either. I let the heavy metal slip down into my pocket. Before, in the infirmary, I could have shot Maurice. Maybe. Or maybe I consciously didn't take off the safety.

"Jakkelsen," I say as Lukas is leaving. "Verlaine killed Jakkelsen, and Tørk sent the telegram."

He comes back. He stands next to me, staring out across the island. He stays there, his expression never changing, as I talk. At one point the outlines of several large birds tear away from high up on the slopes of ice: migratory albatrosses. Lukas doesn't notice them. I tell him everything, from the beginning. I don't know how long it takes. When I'm done, the wind has died down. The light also seems to have shifted, although I couldn't say exactly how. Now and then I glance over at the door. No one appears.

Lukas has lit one cigarette after another. As if lighting up, inhaling, and then exhaling the smoke must be done with great meticulousness each time.

He straightens up and gives me a smile.

"They should have listened to me," he says. "I suggested that they give you an injection. Fifteen milligrams of a strong tranquillizer. I told them you would escape. Tørk was against the idea."

He smiles again. This time there is madness in his smile. "It's almost as if he wanted you to come. He left the rubber raft behind. Maybe he wants you to go ashore."

He waves at me and says, "Duty calls," as he walks off. I lean on the railing. Tørk is somewhere in the low fog banks where the ice floats out to sea.

Far below there is a white wreath. Lukas's cigarette butts. They're not bobbing up and down; they're lying perfectly still. The water they're floating in is still black. But it's no longer shiny. It's covered with a dull membrane. The sea around the Kronos is about to freeze over. The clouds overhead are being sucked up into the heavens. The air is completely still. The temperature has dropped at least fifteen degrees in the last half hour.

Nothing seems to have been touched in my cabin. I get out a pair of short rubber boots and put my kamiks in a plastic bag.

The mirror reveals that my nose isn't particularly swollen. But it's sitting crooked, pressed too far to one side. In a moment he's going to start diving. I remember the steam in the photo. The water is probably 50° or 55°F. He's only human. It's not much. I know that from my own experience. Yet you always try to keep yourself alive. I put on my thermal pants, two thin wool sweaters, and my down jacket. From my box I take out a wrist compass and a flat canteen. And a woolen blanket. Sometime long ago I must have been preparing for just this moment.

All three of them are sitting down; that's why I don't spot them until I'm actually up on deck. The air has been let out of the rubber raft; it's a gray blanket of rubber with yellow markings, lying flat against the aft superstructure.

The woman is squatting down. She shows me her knife.

"I let the air out with this," she says.

She hands it back to Hansen, who's leaning against the davits.

She stands up and comes toward me. I have my back to the ladder. Seidenfaden follows her hesitantly.

"Katja," he says.

None of them is wearing outdoor clothes. "He wanted you to go ashore," she says.

Seidenfaden puts his hand on her shoulder. She turns around and slaps him. One corner of his mouth splits open. His face looks like a mask.

"I love him," she says.

Her remark isn't directed at anyone in particular. She comes closer.

"Hansen found Maurice," she says, as if in explanation. And then without transition she adds, "Do you want him?"

I've seen it before, the domain where jealousy and insanity run together, erasing reality.

"No," I say.

I move backward and bump into something that won't budge. Urs is standing behind me. He still has his apron on. Over it he's wearing a fur coat. In his hand is a loaf of bread. It must have just come out of the oven; in the cold it's surrounded by a halo of dense steam. The woman ignores him. When she reaches for me, Urs places the bread against her throat. She falls onto the rubber raft and stays there. The burn appears on her throat like film being developed, with marks from the ridges on the bread.

"What should I do?" Urs asks me. I hand him the mechanic's revolver. "Can you buy me some time?" I ask. He looks thoughtfully at Hansen. "Leicht," he says, "no problem."

The pontoon bridge is still out. As soon as I see the ice, I realize that I've come too early. It's still too transparent to bear my weight. I sit down on a chair to wait. I prop my feet up on the cable box. This is where Jakkelsen once sat. And Hansen. On a ship you're continually crossing your own tracks. Just as you do in life.

It's snowing. Big flakes, qanik, like the snow on Isaiah's grave. The ice is still so warm that the flakes melt on it. If I stare at the snow long enough, the flakes don't seem to be falling but rather growing up from the sea, rising to the sky to settle on the top of the rock tower above me. At first the snow is six-sided, newly formed flakes. After forty-eight hours the flakes break down, their outlines blur. By the tenth day, the snow is a grainy crystal that becomes compacted after two months. After two years it enters the transitional stage between snow and firn. After three years it becomes neve. After four years, it's transformed into a large, blocky glacial crystal.

It wouldn't survive more than three years here on Gela Alta. By that time the glacier would push it out to sea. There it would break up and float outward to melt, disperse, and be absorbed by the sea. And then someday it would rise up as newly formed snow.

The ice is grayish now. I step down onto it. It's not good. Nothing is much good anymore.

I stay in the shelter of the ship for as long as possible. At one point the ice is so thin that I have to make a detour. They probably wouldn't see me, anyway. It.has started to grow dark. The light is drifting away; it was never very bright in the first place. I have to crawl the last ten yards on my stomach. I put the blanket on the ice and squirm my way forward.

The motorboat is tied up at the edge of the ice. It's empty. The shore is still three hundred yards away. A kind of stairway has formed here where the submerged part of the glacier has thawed several times and then frozen up again.

What's overpowering me at the moment is the smell of earth. After so long at sea, the island smells like a garden. I scrape away the layer of snow that's about fifteen inches thick. Underneath are remnants of moss and withered Arctic willow.

There was a thin layer of snow when they arrived; their footprints are quite clear. They have two sleds with them. The mechanic is pulling one of them, Tørk and Verlaine the other.

They've headed up the slope to avoid the steep portals where the ice runs out to sea. The loose snow is a foot and a half deep. They've been taking turns stamping down a trail.

I put on my kamiks. I keep my eyes on the snow and simply concentrate on walking. I feel like a child again. We're going somewhere, I don't remember where, it's been a long journey, maybe many sinik; I start to stumble, I'm no longer one with my feet, they're walking by themselves, plodding, as if each step were a task to complete. Somewhere inside me I feel an urge to give up, to sit down and sleep.

Then my mother is behind me. She knows what's happening, she has known it for some time. She talks to me, she who is usually so taciturn. She gives me a box on the ear, part violence, part caress.

"What kind of wind is it, Smilla?"

"It's kanangnaq."

"That's wrong, Smilla, you're asleep."

"No, I'm not. The wind is faint and damp, the ice must have just started breaking up."

"Speak politely to your mother, Smilla. You've learned rudeness from qallunaaq."

We keep on going this way, and I wake up again. I know that we have to get there; long ago I grew too heavy for her to carry me.

I'm thirty-seven years old. Fifty years ago, that, was a full lifetime in Thule. But I've never grown up. I've never gotten used to walking alone. Somewhere deep inside I'm still hoping that someone will come up behind me and box my ear. My mother. Moritz. Some outside force.

I'm starting to stumble. I'm standing near the glacier. They paused here. They put crampons on their boots. Close up, I understand how the glacier got its name.

The wind has worn down its surface to a compact, slippery covering with no irregularities, like a white, fired ceramic glaze. Right in front of me it slides over a drop of about 160 feet. Here the surface of the ice is broken up into an ice fall. A network of gray, white, and grayish-blue steps. From a distance they seem quite regular; on closer inspection they form a labyrinth.

I can't tell which way they've headed. I can't see them, either. So I start walking. Their tracks are harder-to follow. But not impossible. The snow has settled on the horizontal steps; there they've left their mark. At one point, when I lose my bearings and begin searching in semicircles, I spot a yellow trace of urine from far away.

I start hallucinating and fragments of conversations come back to me. I say something to Isaiah. He answers. The mechanic is there, too.

"Smilla."

I walked three feet past him without seeing him. It's Tørk. He has been waiting for me. He has spoken my name so gently. Like the time he called me up, on the last night in my apartment.

He's alone. He has no sled and no baggage. Sitting there, he looks so colorful. Yellow boots. His red jacket casting a rosy glow across the snow around him. The turquoise band against his pale hair.

"I knew you would come. But I didn't know how. I saw you walking across the water."

As if we've been friends all along but had to hide it from the rest of the world.

"There was a layer of ice."

"Before that you walked through locked doors."

"I had a key."

He shakes his head. "For people with resources, the right events happen. They may look like coincidences, but they arise out of necessity. Katja and Ralf wanted to put the brakes on you in Copenhagen. But I saw possibilities. You would point out things that we'd overlooked.

That Ving and Loyen had overlooked. That people always overlook."

He hands me a climbing harness. I step into it and fasten it in front.

"But what about the Northern Light?" I ask. "And the fire?"

"Licht called Katja when he got the cassette. He tried to blackmail her. We had to do something. It was my fault that you got involved in that. I turned things over to Maurice and Verlaine. Verlaine has this primitive hatred of women."

He gives me the end of the rope. I make a figure-eight hitch. He hands me a short ice ax.

He goes first. He has a long, thin stick. He uses it to test the ground for crevasses. When he's fifty feet away, he speaks. The shiny walls around us create acoustics like those in a bathroom. Harsh and yet intimate, as if we were sitting in the bathtub together.

"Of Course, I've read the things you've written. Your passion for ice is certainly thought provoking."

He jabs his ice ax into the snow, wraps the rope around it, and carefully pulls in the rope as I follow him. When I reach him, he speaks again.

"What would your experts say about this glacier?" We gaze around us in the growing darkness. The question is difficult to answer.

"I don't know what to say. If it were ten times bigger, they might classify it as a very small ice calotte. If it were lower they would say it was a botu glacier. If the current and wind conditions had been slightly different, the drifting and deflation would have reduced it so severely within a month that they would say there wasn't any glacier here at all, just an island with a little snow on it. It's impossible to classify it."

I come up to him again, and he hands me the rope. I choose a belay stance, and he continues on. His natural movements are agile and methodical, but the ice makes them slightly fumbling, too, as with all Europeans. He resembles a blind man, practiced in his blindness, perfectly adapted to his stick, but still blind.

"The limited ability of science to explain things has:always interested me. My own field of biology is based on zoological and botanical systems of classification that have all collapsed. As a science; biology no longer has any foundation. What do you think about change?"

His question comes as a non sequitur. I follow him, and he winds up the woven double rope. We're connected by an umbilical cord, like mother and child.

"It's supposed to be the spice of life," I say.

He hands me his thermos. I take a sip. Hot tea with lemon. He bends down. On the snow there are some dark grains, crushed stone.

"Four and a half times ten to the ninth; 4.6 billion years. That's when the solar system began to assume its present form. The difficulty with the earth's geological history is that it can't be studied. There are no traces. Because since that time, since the time of Creation, rocks like these have gone through a countless number of metamorphoses. The same is true of the ice around us, the air, and the water. Their origins can no longer be traced. There are no substances on the earth that have preserved their original form. That's why meteorites are so interesting. They come from outside, they've escaped the transformation processes that Lovelock described in his theory about Gala. Their form goes back to the origin of the solar system. As a rule they consist of the first metals in the universe-iron and nickel-and silicates. Do you read fiction?"

I shake my head.

"That's too bad. The writers see where we're headed before the scientists do. What we discover in nature is not really a matter of what exists; what we find is determined by our ability to understand. Like Jules Verne's book The Hunt for a Meteor, about a meteorite that turns out to be the most valuable thing on earth. Or Wells's visions of other life forms. Or Piper's Uller Uprising, in which a special form of life is described. Bodies formed on the basis of inorganic substances, from silicates."

We've reached a flat, windswept plateau. A series of regular crevasses opens before us. We must have reached the ablation zone, that spot where the glacier's lower layers move up toward the surface. There's a knob of rock that has parted the flow of ice. I didn't notice it from below because it's some type of white stone. Now it gleams in the fading light.

The snow has been stamped down where the base of the rock slopes toward a crevasse. They've stopped here for a while. This is where Tørk turned around to come and get me. I ask myself why he thought I would come. We sit down. The ice forms a big bowl-shaped hollow, like an open clamshell. He unscrews the lid of his thermos. He continues to talk as if the conversation hadn't been interrupted, and maybe it hasn't either, maybe it has continued on inside him, maybe it never stops in there.

"It's a beautiful theory, the theory about Gaia. It's important for theories to be beautiful. But it's wrong, of course. Lovelock shows that the globe and its ecosystem are a complex machinery. But he doesn't prove that it's more than a machine. Gala is not fundamentally any different from a robot. Lovelock shares a flaw with other biologists. He fails to explain the beginning. The first forms of life, what came before cyanobacteria. Life based on inorganic matter would be a first step."

I move cautiously, to keep warm and to test his attentiveness.

"Loyen came here in the thirties. With a German expedition. They were going to do preliminary construction for an airport on a narrow strip of flat coastland on the north side. They brought Thule Inuits with them. They couldn't get any West Greenlanders to come along because of the island's bad reputation. Loyen began his search the same way Knud Rasmussen did when he discovered his meteorites. By taking the Inuit stories seriously. And he found the meteorite. In '66 he came back. He and Ving and Andreas Fine Licht. But they didn't know enough to solve the technical problems. They constructed a permanent passageway to the stone. Then the expedition was cut short. In 1991 they came back. That's when we came along, too. But we were forced to return home."

His face is almost invisible in the dark; the only solid thing is his voice. I'm trying to figure out why he's telling me all this. Why he's still lying, even under these circumstances, when he's totally in control.

"What about the pieces that were cut off?"

His hesitation explains everything, and it's a relief to figure out what he's up to. He still isn't sure how much I know or whether I'm alone. Whether someone might be waiting for him-on the island, at sea, or when he gets back home. For a short time, until I have talked, he still has some use for me.

At the same time, another more important realization comes to me. The fact that he's waiting, that he has to wait, means that the mechanic hasn't told him everything; he hasn't told him that I'm alone.

"We examined the pieces. We didn't find anything unusual. They consisted of a mixture of iron, nickel, peridotite, magnesium, and silicates."

I'm sure that he's telling the truth. "So it's not alive?"

In the darkness I sense his smile.

"There's heat. It's definitely producing heat. Otherwise it would have been carried out along with the ice. It melts the walls surrounding it at a rate comparable to the movement of the glacier."

"Radioactivity?"

"We tested for it, but didn't find any."

"And the dead men?" I ask. "What about the X-rays? The light-colored stripes inside their internal organs?" He pauses for a moment.

"You wouldn't want to tell me how you know about that, would you?" he asks.

I don't answer.

"I knew it," he says. "You and I, we could have made a good team. When I called you that night, it was on an impulse; I trust my intuition. I knew you would pick up the phone. I had you all figured out. I could have said, `Come over to our side.' Would you have come?"

"No."

The tunnel starts at the foot of the rock. It's a simple design. They dynamited their way down where the ice had a natural tendency to let go of the rock, and then they cemented large concrete sewer pipes to the wall of the tunnel. The pipes slant down at a steep angle; the steps inside are made of wood. This surprises me at first, until I remember how difficult it can be to pour cement on a permafrost foundation.

Thirty feet down there's a fire.

The smoke is coming from a room adjacent to the stairs, a cement shell reinforced with beams. Several sacks are spread on the floor. On top of the sacks there's an oil barrel filled with burning, chopped-up wooden crates.

Against the opposite wail, instruments and equipment are piled on a wide table. Chromatographs, microscopes, large crystallization jars, an incubator, and an apparatus I've never seen before, built like a big plastic box with glass on the front. Underneath the table there's a generator and more wooden crates like the ones burning in the barrel. Nowadays everything goes in and out of style, even laboratory equipment, and these instruments remind me of the seventies. Everything is covered with a layer of gray ice. They must have been left behind in '66 or '91.

Tørk places his hand on the plastic box. "Electrophoresis. To separate and analyze proteins. Loyen brought it along in '66. When they still thought they were dealing with some form of organic life."

He gives a small nod. Everything he does is pervaded with the knowledge that these small signs and gestures are enough to make the rest of the world fall into place. Verlaine is standing at a tall worktable with a dissecting microscope. He adjusts it for me, the ocular on 10 and the objective on 20. He moves a gas lamp closer.

"We're in the process of thawing out the generator." At first I don't see a thing. Then I adjust the focus and see a coconut. "Cyclops marinus," says Tørk. "Water flea. It or its relatives are found everywhere, in all the oceans of the globe. The threads are organs of equilibrium. We've given it a little hydrochloric acid; that's why it's so still. Try looking at the back of the body. What do you see?"

I don't see anything. He takes over the microscope, moving the petri dish under it and adjusting the focus again.

"The digestive system," I say. "The intestines."

"Those aren't intestines. That's a worm."

Now I see it. The intestines and stomach form a dark field along the underside of the animal. The long bright channel goes up along its back.

"The primary group is Phylum nematoda, roundworm, and it belongs to the subclass Dracunculoidea. Its name is Dracunculus borealis, the Arctic worm. Known and described since at least the Middle Ages. A large parasite. Found in whales, seals, and dolphins; it penetrates the musculature from the intestines. The males and females mate, the male dies, and the female wanders to the subcutis, where it forms a nodule as big as a child's fist. When the mature worm senses that there are Cyclops in the surrounding water, it perforates the skin and releases millions of small living larvae into the sea, where they're eaten by the water fleas, forming what is called a host, a place where the worms can go through a process of development lasting several weeks. When the flea, via seawater, gets into the mouth cavity or intestines of a larger mammal, it disintegrates and the larva gets out and bores into this new and larger host. There it matures, mates, makes it way to the subcutis, and completes the cycle. Apparently neither the water flea nor the mammal suffers any harm from it. One of the world's most well adapted parasites. Have you ever wondered what prevents parasites from spreading?"

Verlaine puts on more wood and pulls the generator over to the fire. The radiant heat burns one side of my body; the other is cold. There's no proper ventilation. The smoke is suffocating. They must be in a hurry.

"Some kind of obstruction is what always stops the parasites. Take, for instance, the Guinea worm, which is the closest relative of the Arctic worm. It's dependent on heat and stagnant water. It's found wherever people are dependent on surface water."

"Such as on the border between Burma, Laos, and Cambodia," I say. "For instance, in Chiang Rai."

They both freeze. In Tørk it's a barely visible pause. "Yes," he says, "in Chiang Rai, for example, during the relatively rare periods of drought. As soon as it rains and the water begins to flow, as soon as it cools off, the conditions become more difficult for the worm. That's the way things have to be. Parasites have developed along with their hosts. The Guinea worm has developed along with human beings, perhaps over the past million years. They are mutually compatible. Every year 140 million people are exposed to the risk of being infected with the Guinea worm. There are 10 million cases annually. Most of those who are infected endure a painful period of several months, but then the worm is expelled. Even in Chiang Rai only half a percent of the adult population, at the most, suffer any permanent damage. This is one of the primary rules of nature's delicate balance: A good parasite does not kill its host."

He moves slightly, and I involuntarily step back. He looks in the microscope.

"Imagine their situation in '66-Loyen, Ving, and Licht. Everything has been planned. There are problems, of course, but they're mere technicalities and solvable. They've pinpointed the stone, constructed the entryway and these rooms; the weather is good, and they have plenty of time, relatively speaking. They realize that they can't bring the whole stone back, but they know they can take home a piece of it. There are photographs of their saws, a brilliant invention, a hardened steel band that ran across rollers. Loyen was opposed to cutting the stone with blowtorches. Then just as the Inuits are putting the saw in position, they die. Forty-eight hours after their first dive. They die almost simultaneously, within an hour of each other. Everything changes. The project has failed and time is running out. They have to improvise an accident. Loyen is the one who does it, of course. He has enough presence of mind not to destroy the bodies. At that point he already has a feeling that something is wrong. As soon as they reach Nuuk he does an autopsy. And what does he find?"

"Look at the time," says Verlaine.

Tørk ignores him. "He finds the Arctic worm. A widespread parasite. Big, twelve to sixteen inches long, but quite ordinary. A roundworm whose cycle is known and understood. There's only one thing wrong: it's not found in human beings. In whales, in seals, and dolphins, and occasionally in walruses. But not in human beings. Nearly every day infected meat is eaten, especially by Inuits. But the moment the larva enters the human body, it's recognized by our immune system as a foreign object and is devoured by lymphocytes. It has never adapted to our immune system. It has always been limited to certain large sea mammals with which it must have developed simultaneously. It's part of the balance of nature. Imagine Loyen's astonishment when he finds it in the corpses. And quite by accident, too. Because at the last minute he was forced to take X-rays to identify the bodies."

I don't want to listen to him or talk to him, but I can't help it. And besides, it stretches out the time.

"Why did it happen?"

"That's the question Loyen couldn't answer. So he concentrated on a different question: How did it happen? He had brought samples home from the water around the stone. Aside from the meltwater, the lake is fed by another lake higher up, on the surface. There's some bird life up there. And quite a lot of trout. And several kinds of fleas. The water around the stone is full of them. All of the samples Loyen brought home were infected. So he decided to graft the larva onto living human tissue."

"That sounds lovely," I say. "How did he manage to do that?"

As I ask the question, the answer comes to me. He did it in Greenland. In Denmark the chance of being discovered would be too great.

Tørk sees that I realize how it was done.

"It took him twenty-five years. But he found out that the larva had adapted to the human immune system. As soon as it's in the mouth it penetrates the open mucous membranes and forms a kind of skin, created from the person's own proteins. In this camouflage the parasite is mistaken for the human body itself and the defense system leaves it in peace. Then it starts to grow. Not slowly, over a period of months, the way it does in seals and whales, but rapidly, hour by hour and minute by minute. Even the mating and wandering through the body, which can take up to six months in a sea mammal, now take only a few days. But that's not the decisive factor."

Verlaine takes him by the arm. Tørk looks at him. Verlaine removes his hand.

"I want to ask her about something," says Tørk. Maybe that's what he believes, but that's not why he's talking. He's talking in order to win attention and recognition. Beneath his self-confidence and apparent objectivity there is a wild pride and triumph at what he has discovered. Both Verlaine and I are sweating and have started to cough. But he is cool and at ease; in the flickering light of the fire his face is utterly calm. Maybe it's because we're standing in the middle of the ice, maybe it's because it's so obvious that we're nearing the end, that he suddenly seems so transparent to me. As always when an adult becomes transparent, the child inside him steps forth. I remember Victor Halkenhvad's letter, and suddenly, irresistibly, the words spew out of my mouth of their own accord.

"Like the bicycle you never had when you were a child."

The remark is so absurd that at first he doesn't understand it. Then the meaning sinks in, and for a moment he staggers as if I'd hit him. He almost loses it, but then he pulls himself together.

"You might think we've discovered a new species. But that's not the case. It's the Arctic worm. But with a vital difference. It has adapted to the human immune system. But without adapting to our equilibrium. The pregnant female does not make its way to the subcutis after mating. It enters the internal organs, the heart and the liver. That's where it releases its larvae. The larvae that have been living inside the mother, that aren't familiar with the human body, that aren't covered with a protein skin. The body reacts to them with infection and inflammation. It goes into shock. There are 10 million larvae in a single release. Inside the vital organs. The person dies on the spot. There's no way to save him. No matter what else has happened to the Arctic worm, it has upset the balance. It has killed its host. It's a poor parasite, in terms of human beings. But an excellent killer."

Verlaine says something in a language that I don't understand. Tørk again ignores him.

"Verlaine grafted the larva onto all the fish we could get hold of: saltwater fish, freshwater fish, big ones and small ones, at varying temperatures. The parasite adapts to every single one. It can live anywhere. Do you know what that means?"

"That it's not fussy?"

"It means that one of the most important factors restricting its dispersal is lacking: the limitation of the hosts that are capable of transmitting it. It can live anywhere."

"Why hasn't it spread all over the world?"

He gathers up several coils of rope, picks up a bag, and dons a miner's lamp. His sense of time has returned. "There are two answers to that question. The first is that its development in sea mammals is slow. Even if the parasite from this lake and from other lakes on this island as well is washed out to sea, it has to sit and wait for some passing seals to carry it farther, if it's still alive when the seals come by. One answer is that there still haven't been enough people here. The development process doesn't pick up speed until there are human beings involved."

He leads the way. I know that I'm supposed to follow him. For a moment I hang back. As he leaves the room, I'm struck with a feeling of powerlessness. Verlaine looks at me.

"When we were working for Khum Na," he says, "twelve police officers arrived. The only one who escaped was a woman. Women are vermin."

"Ravn," I say. "Nathalie Ravn?"

He nods. "She came over as an English nurse. Spoke English and Thai without an accent. At that time we were at war with Laos, Cambodia, and, in the end, Burma too, with support from the U.S. There were many casualties."

He holds the petri dish between his thumb and forefinger and lifts it toward me. My body instinctively tries to shrink away from the worm. It must be sheer stubbornness that keeps me standing there.

"When it penetrates the skin, it pushes its womb out and emits a white fluid full of millions of larvae. I've seen it.

Disgust contorts his face.

"The females are much bigger than the males. They burrow into the flesh. We followed them with ultrasound scanners. Loyen had grafted them onto two Greenlanders who had AIDS. He had them flown to Denmark and admitted to one of the small private hospitals where they don't ask about anything except your account number. We could see everything-how it reached the heart and then emptied itself out. The womb and everything. All females are that way, even humans, especially humans." He carefully puts down the petri dish.

"I can see that you're a fine connoisseur of women, Verlaine. What else were you doing in Chiang Rai?" He's not unaffected by the compliment. That's why he answers the question. "I'm a lab technician. We were making heroin. At the time the woman arrived, they had sent the army after us, from all three countries. So Khum Na went on TV and said, `Last year we put 900 tons on the market, this year we'll ship 1,300, and next year 2,000 tons, unless you call your soldiers home.' The day he made that announcement, the war was over."

I'm on my way out the door when he speaks again. "Human beings ate the parasites. The worm is an instrument of the gods. Like the poppy."