Shaman Pass (10 page)

Active sighed, opened his parka, unzipped the fly of his snowmachine suit, and felt inside. Yep, he was wearing a belt. He pulled it out, threaded it through the apex of the tongue, then through the frame of the luggage rack at the back of the Yamaha, and buckled it.

He straightened up and studied it. It didn’t look strong enough. He jerked the sled closer and looped the belt through the tongue and luggage rack again, then nodded in satisfaction. The double thickness of leather might work.

He rebungeed the tarp into place, climbed onto the Yamaha, released the kill switch, said a little please to the Great Perhaps, and hit the starter. The machine caught instantly and sounded right. He gave the throttle a gentle squeeze and moved off across the pan, twisting on the seat to check out his makeshift hitch. The sled was moving with the Yamaha. What more could he ask?

Active babied the rig across two more pressure ridges, then shut it off and coasted to a stop on the snow at a fork in the trail. One fork led straight ahead, over the next white pressure ridge. The other veered left and followed a kind of valley between the ridges. He was considering which way to go when a flicker of yellow-gray fifty yards up the valley caught his eye.

His gut lurched and felt hot and he stood up on the running boards and shrugged the rifle off his back and worked the bolt to put a shell into the firing chamber. He raised the Winchester to his eye, saw nothing, lowered it and flipped the scope covers off, raised it again.

At first he still saw nothing. Then an Inupiat woman stepped into view from behind an ice slab and lowered a sopping polar bear hide through a hole in the ice. A rope was tied to the polar bear’s nose; several feet payed out, then the line went tight, vanishing behind the same ice slab that had concealed the woman. She must have been pulling the hide out of the hole when he had first noticed the flicker, he concluded.

He lowered the rifle and shrugged it onto his back before she could spot him pointing it at her. Evidently she hadn’t heard him come up; perhaps it was because he was downwind of her.

He hit the starter button and let the Yamaha glide forward. She finally heard the engine and looked up, gave a little wave and then watched, hands on her hips, as he drove up and switched off the snowmachine. She was in her midfifties, he guessed, dark silver hair, glasses with round black frames, flowered parka with a big fur ruff, black snowmachine suit, Sorel boots.

They shook hands and introduced themselves. She was Rose Napana. Her husband, Charlie, she reported with some pride, had killed the polar bear two days earlier because it wouldn’t quit hanging around their whaling camp.

The rope, Active now saw, was looped around an ice block a few yards from the hole. An old Polaris snowmachine with a dogsled behind was parked there, too.

Rose saw him eyeing the setup. She kicked the rope, stretched across the snow in front of her. “Them sea lice never finish yet,” she said. “You want some tea?”

“Sea lice?”

Rose frowned and studied him. “You’re that
naluaqmiiyaaq
trooper, ah?”

Active nodded.

“Sea lice are these little bugs, live in the water.” Rose said it patiently and slowly like she was talking to a kindergartner. “They eat the meat and fat off the skin. Nice meal for them and I never have to scrape it. Good deal, ah?” She grinned. “But they’re not done yet. One more day, maybe. Now you want some tea?”

He declined and asked if she knew the way to Whyborn Sivula’s camp.

She lifted her eyebrows. “I’m going that way, you could
malik
on your snowgo.”

He was deciding that “
malik
” must mean “follow” when Rose took a closer look at the Yamaha, then turned an admiring gaze on him. “
Yoi
, so pretty. I always want a purple snowgo myself. And electric start! Too bad you break your windshield.”

From the ice she lifted a slab of snow that appeared to have been cut for the purpose and slid it into place over the polar-bear hole, to prevent blow-in and retard freezing, he supposed. Then she straddled her old Polaris, pulled the starter rope, and headed back up the trail toward the fork.

He steered his Yamaha in a wide, easy half circle to spare the leather hitch and followed her as she worked her way through the pressure ridges and out to the edge of the ice. There she stopped, and made a throat-cutting motion for him to do the same. He did, and flipped up his goggles.

The lead was a half-mile wide, Active estimated, a belt of indigo flecked with small white floes. The west wind was piling up small waves against the edge twenty feet from the front skis of his Yamaha. Wisps of sea smoke hurried across the water toward them.

Across the lead, he could see the ragged front of the pack ice, looking by some trick of perspective like a distant mountain range an ocean away.

“Whyborn is second camp that way,” Rose said, pointing up the lead to the right. “You can’t miss it. See you.”

She pulled her starter rope and headed left down the lead.

Active followed the ice edge for a half-mile, then the trail pulled away from the water and skirted behind a rubble of pressure ridges where the ice edge swelled out to a kind of point. As he passed by, he saw several snowmachines parked behind the ridges, and a foot trail leading toward the water. The first camp, he surmised.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

FOUR-TENTHS OF A MILE farther on, Active found another gaggle of snowmachines behind the white slabs of a pressure ridge, another foot trail leading through the ridges toward the ice edge.

Active parked the Ladies’ Model and debated what to take with him from the sled. Anything left behind might get pilfered, but he couldn’t carry it all. He settled on the rifle, which he left strapped across his back, and the double-trash-bagged handle from Uncle Frosty’s harpoon, which he pulled from under the blue tarp. He took off a mitten, reached into the inside pocket of his parka, and touched the baggie that contained Uncle Frosty’s owl-faced amulet.

Then he picked his way through the pressure ridges to Whyborn Sivula’s whaling camp.

A white wall tent like a tiny cabin squatted ten yards from the water, canvas rattling in the wind. A stovepipe poked out the top, sending up a thin tendril of gray smoke that left a sweet, oily smell in the air as it streaked away to the east. Slabs of white
muktuk
were stacked beside the tent. Active knew whalers hunted the little white beluga whales that often preceded the prized bowheads up the leads in the spring. The meat was good to eat, supposedly, and the
muktuk
made good fuel for the camp stove.

An
umiaq
, also white, crouched on snow blocks at the water line, a steel-barbed harpoon and a whaling gun like a giant’s rifle pointing seaward from the bow. Inside were coils of rope and a huge white float.

The whalers had raised a windbreak of ice slabs near the
umiaq
. A half-dozen men lazed in the shadows behind it, drinking coffee, chatting idly, two of them playing cribbage with a pegboard made from a walrus tusk. Their card table was a blue-and-white plastic Igloo cooler.

Another man, with binoculars hanging from his neck, stood on the crest of the nearest big pressure ridge, looking out across the lead. Here it was choked with floes and slush, no longer the open expanse of indigo Active had seen when he and Rose first found the water. Perhaps as a result, the west wind, though still rising, created no waves here.

The lookout spotted Active and called out something in Inupiaq. Active thought he caught the word
naluaqmiiyaaq
.

In a moment, an Inupiaq in navy blue snowmachine pants and a brown down vest, but no parka or gloves, emerged from the tent and walked forward as Active covered the last few yards to the camp. The man blinked for a moment in the white light, then pulled mirror glasses from the vest and put them on.

Whyborn Sivula was slight and looked to be in his early sixties, his face a dark, polished brown with strong Mongol lines. He still had all his teeth, as far as Active could see, and the gray hair still had a little black in it.

But it was hard to be sure. He walked easily, like a man still with good knees and hips. So he could be in his early fifties.

Still, Inupiat men who spent much time out in the country weathered early to that deep and relatively wrinkle-free mahogany, Active had learned, and then seemed to stop aging for a while. So Whyborn Sivula could be in his early seventies.

Active pulled off his right mitten and put out his hand. “Mr. Sivula? I’m Nathan Active with the Alaska State Troopers.”

Sivula shook hands, his eyes on the trash-bag-wrapped object at Active’s side. “Everybody know who you are.”

Active held up the harpoon. “Do you know why I’m here?”

Sivula said nothing.

“I talked to Calvin Maiyumerak.”

Still nothing from the old whaler.

“Can I show you this?” Active raised the harpoon again.

“We could go inside, I guess.”

Sivula led Active into the tent. Inside were two flat cargo sleds, covered now with caribou hides and sleeping bags to serve as benches and beds. Opposite the doorway, at the end of the alley between the cargo sleds, a homemade barrel stove muttered to itself. The sweet, greasy stench of burning
muktuk
was very strong. Something was bubbling in a pot on top of the stove. It smelled like beef stew. Or fish soup. Or both.

Sivula sat on one of the sleds and motioned for Active to use the other, and offered beluga stew from the stove. Active downed a bowlful, partly because it was local protocol, and partly because he was hungry and cold from the ride up the coast.

Then he turned his back to Sivula and laid the harpoon shaft, still wrapped in its trash bags, on the bright green sleeping bag that covered the other sled. Then he pulled the baggie from inside his parka and laid it beside the harpoon. He put the owl’s face down, then slid out of the way and faced Sivula, whose eyes were riveted to the objects on the sleeping bag.

“Did you hear that Victor Solomon was killed?”

Sivula said nothing, eyes still on the green sleeping bag.

“He was killed with this harpoon.” Active pointed at the exhibits on the sleeping bag. “And the killer left this amulet on the body.”

Sivula still didn’t speak, though Active thought he flinched slightly.

Active knew he was pushing it. Older Eskimos considered questions rude, particularly from a stranger. But today, there wasn’t time for the proper formalities, and Sivula seemed hypnotized by the amulet and the shaft.

“These things were taken when Uncle Frosty was stolen from the museum,” Active said.

Sivula definitely flinched now. “I don’t know about that,” he said.

Now Active was silent, holding eye contact until Sivula broke it. Active cleared his throat, looked at his feet. Still nothing. “I heard you went to Calvin Maiyumerak’s house and asked him about the burglary.” He looked not at Sivula, but forty-five degrees right of the mahogany face, at a rear corner of the tent.

Finally Sivula spoke. “He never tell me anything. Say he don’t know anything about the burglary.”

“Why did you want to know about the burglary?”

“I don’t know.” Active saw the mask sliding over Sivula’s face, the one that meant a white person, or perhaps any authority figure, was asking too many questions.

“What do you know about the burglary?”

Sivula squinted and said nothing.

Active unwrapped the harpoon shaft, being careful not to touch it except on the ends, and also careful to expose the owl-face property mark for only a fraction of a second. Then he rolled the mark out of sight and looked at Sivula.

The whaler’s body was rigid, his hands gripping his knees as if to keep from reaching across and grabbing the harpoon.

“These things here that were taken in the burglary and found on Victor Solomon’s body, they have marks on them,” Active said. He pulled the amulet out of its baggie and placed it on the sleeping bag, the owl’s face still down. “My friend Jim Silver—you know Jim Silver, the
naluaqmiut
police chief?”

Sivula nodded, still rigid, his eyes never leaving the objects on the bed.

“Jim Silver said that, in the early days, the Inupiat put these marks on their equipment in case it got lost,” Active said. “But he didn’t know whose marks were on these things from the museum. Maybe an Inupiaq would know, someone who knows about the early days.”

Sivula’s eyes flicked to Active’s, then back to the sleeping bag.

“Maybe you could help me,” Active said. “Maybe you know the old marks.”

Sivula squinted no again.

“So you can’t help me?”

Another squint from Sivula.

Active sighed, then picked up the amulet, put it back in its baggie, and dropped it into the pocket inside his parka, not looking at Sivula. Then he rolled the harpoon shaft up in its trash bags and refastened the two miniature bungee cords holding the wrappings in place.

“Too bad,” he said, finally looking into Sivula’s face.

They stared at each other that way for a few moments. The tent rattled in the wind and the
muktuk
sputtered in the stove. Finally Sivula lifted his eyebrows. “Maybe I could take a look.”

Active unwrapped the harpoon and amulet. “I’ll show you, but you can’t touch them. We have to send them to the crime lab in Anchorage to be analyzed.” He turned both amulet and shaft so that Sivula saw the owls’ faces simultaneously.

Sivula’s face froze. “Saganiq!” he said. He slumped back onto his sled.

“What?”

“Saganiq. When I’m little kid, there’s always these stories about this old
angatquq
, Saganiq. Very powerful, his
kikituq
spirit is
ukpik
—snowy owl.” Sivula leaned across the alley between the sleds and pointed at the face of the amulet on Active’s knee. “Saganiq is last old-time
angatquq
before Jesus comes to the Inupiat and we give up devil worship. There’s so many stories about him. . . .”

His voice trailed off and he gazed at the amulet. “I’m never sure before Saganiq is real person, but now I guess so. Could I look at his
kikituq
?”

Active held the amulet over Sivula’s knees. The whaler bent close and studied it for perhaps two minutes.

“So Uncle Frosty is Saganiq?” Active asked.

Sivula appeared to be thinking this over when the lookout from the pressure ridge thrust his head into the tent and said something in urgent Inupiaq. Sivula lifted his eyebrows and answered in Inupiaq, then stood and looked at Active. “I have to go outside now and look at ice. My boy, Franklin there, he say the pack ice is moving in on us now, maybe we have to pull our camp out.”

“What does Saganiq have to do with Victor Solomon’s killing?”

Sivula’s face seemed to turn in on itself, looking back into the Inupiat past. “This is Eskimo business from early days ago,
naluaqmiiyaaq
,” he said. “Best you leave it alone.”

“But was Uncle Frosty Saganiq?”

Sivula’s face veiled over in the Eskimo mask again as he pulled on a white parka and white mittens from beside him on the sled. “You should leave it alone,
naluaqmiiyaaq
,” he said again. “All done now anyway.”

He pushed through the tent flap and began speaking Inupiaq with Franklin just outside.

Active rewrapped the shaft and amulet and stepped out into the wind. It was faster now, the tent rattling more than before, the smoke from the
muktuk
smearing out a little flatter as it raced eastward and vanished in the pressure ridges. There was snow, too, just a few flakes whirling in the wind, but the taste of gun metal on Active’s tongue meant more of it coming.

Whyborn and Franklin Sivula were trotting across the ice to the lookout point. Active peered out over the lead but was hard put to see any difference. It had been choked with floes and slush before, and it was now, though perhaps there was more ice and fewer patches of open water.

The real question was whether the pack ice was closing in on the camp. Active couldn’t even guess. The loose ice was so dense, he couldn’t tell where the lead ended and the pack began.

He turned to watch Whyborn and Franklin on the pressure ridge. Whyborn had the binoculars pointed across the lead. He swept them from left to right, then handed them to Franklin and charged down the slope and across the ice, shouting at his crew in a mixture of Inupiaq and English.

“Let’s go, this lead is closing,” Active heard him shout during one of the English passages.

Active watched as the whalers ran to the tent, spread back the door flaps and yanked the two cargo sleds out. One of them poured the water from the beluga stew into the stove to put out the fire, and in less time than he could have imagined, three men were lashing the
umiaq
onto one of the sleds, while three more piled the tent and camping gear onto the other.

Two other men hurried off down the ice trail and returned moments later on snowmachines.

Franklin Sivula stopped his work on the
umiaq
and looked at Active with a grin. “You better get out of here, man, no place for a
naluaqmiiyaaq
.”

Active grinned back, and trotted down the trail through the pressure ridges to his Yamaha, hoping the hitch he had made from his belt would hold at least till he got Silver’s sled back onto solid ground.