White Heat

    As
she set a chip of iceberg on the stove for tea, Edie Kiglatuk mulled over why
it was that the hunting expedition she was leading had been so spectacularly
unsuccessful. For one thing, the two men she was guiding were lousy shots. For
another, Felix Wagner and his sidekick Andy Taylor hadn't seemed to care if
they made a kill nor not. Over the past couple of days they'd spent half their
time gazing at maps and writing in notebooks. Maybe it was just the romance of
the High Arctic they were after, the promise of living authentically in the
wild with the Eskimo, like the expedition brochure promised. Still, she
thought, they wouldn't be living long if they couldn't bring down something to
eat.

    She
poured the boiling berg water into a thermos containing
qungik,
which
white people called Labrador tea, and set aside the rest for herself. You had
to travel more than three thousand kilometres south from
Umingmak Nuna,
Ellesmere
Island, where they were now, to find
qungik
growing on the tundra, but
for some reason southerners thought Labrador tea was more authentic, so it was
what she always served to her hunting clients. For herself, she preferred Soma
brand English Breakfast, brewed with iceberg water, sweetened with plenty of
sugar and enriched with a knob of seal blubber. A client once told her that in
the south, the water had been through the bowels of dinosaurs before it reached
the faucet, whereas berg water had lain frozen and untouched by animal or human
being pretty much since time began. Just one of the reasons, Edie guessed, that
southerners were prepared to pay tens of thousands of dollars to come up this
far north. In the case of Wagner and Taylor, it certainly wasn't for the
hunting.

    Sometime
soon these two were about to get a deal more High Arctic authenticity than
they'd bargained for. Not that they knew it yet. While Edie had been fixing
tea, the wind had changed; squally easterlies were now sweeping in from the
Greenlandic ice cap, suggesting a blizzard was on its way. Not imminently, but
soon. There was still plenty time enough to fill the flasks with tea and get
back to the gravel beach where Edie had left the two men sorting out their
camp.

    She
threw another chip of berg into the can and while the water was heating she
reached into her pack for her wedge of
igunaq
and cut off a few slices
of the fermented walrus gut. The chewing of
igunaq
took some time, which
was part of the point, and as Edie worked the stuff between her teeth she
allowed her thoughts to return to the subject of money and from there to her
stepson, Joe Inukpuk, who was the chief reason she was out here in the company
of two men who couldn't shoot. Guiding paid better than the teaching that took
up the remainder of her time, and Joe needed money if he was to get his nurse's
qualification. He couldn't expect to get any help from Sammy, his father and
Edie's ex, or from his mother Minnie. Edie didn't spook easily - it took a lot
to frighten an ex-polar bear hunter - but it scared her just how badly she
wanted Joe to be able to go ahead with his nursing training. The Arctic was
full of
qalunaat
professionals, white doctors, white nurses, lawyers and
engineers, and there was nothing wrong with most of them, but it was time Inuit
produced their own professional class. Joe was certainly smart enough and he seemed
committed. If she was thrifty and lucky with clients, Edie thought she could
probably save enough this coming summer to put him through the first year of
school. Guiding hunting expeditions was no big deal, like going out on the land
with a couple of toddlers in tow. She knew every last glacier, fiord or esker
for five hundred miles around. And no one knew better than Edie how to hunt.

    The
chip of berg had melted and she was unscrewing the top of the first thermos
when a sharp, whipping crack cut through the gloom and so startled her that she
dropped the flask. The hot liquid instantly vaporized into a plume of ice
crystals, which trembled ever so slightly in the disrupted air. The hunter in
her knew that sound, the precise, particular pop of 7mm ammunition fired from a
hunting rifle, something not unlike the Remington 700s her clients were
carrying.

    She
squinted across the sea ice, hoping for a clue as to what had happened, but her
view of the beach was obscured by the iceberg. Up ahead, to the east of the
beach, the tundra stared blankly back, immense and uncompromising. A gust of
wind whipped frost smoke off the icepack. She felt a surge of irritation. What
the hell did the
qalunaat
think they were doing when they were supposed
to be setting up camp? Firing at game? Given their lack of enthusiasm for the
shoot, that seemed unlikely Maybe a bear had come too close and they were
letting off a warning shot, though if that were the case, it was odd that her
bear dog, Bonehead, hadn't picked up the scent and started barking. A dog as
sensitive as Bonehead could scent a bear a couple of kilometres away. There was
nothing for it but to investigate. Until they got back to the settlement at
Autisaq, the men were officially her responsibility and these days Edie
Kiglatuk took her responsibilities seriously.

    She
retrieved the flask, impatient with herself for having dropped it and spilled
the water, then, checking her rifle, began lunging at her usual, steady pace
through deep drift towards the snowmobile. As she approached, Bonehead, who was
tethered to the trailer, lifted his head and flapped his tail; if he'd picked
up so much as a hint of bear, he'd have been going crazy by now. Edie gave the
dog a pat and tied in her cooking equipment. Just as she was packing the flasks
under the tarp, a sharp, breathless cry flew past and echoed out over the sea
ice. Bonehead began to bark. In an instant, Edie felt her neck stiffen and a
thudding started up in her chest. Until that moment, it hadn't occurred to her
that someone might be hurt.

    A
voice began shouting for help. Whichever damned fool it was had already
forgotten the advice she'd given them to stay quiet when they were out on the
land. Up here, shouting could bring down a wall of ice or an avalanche of
powder snow. It could alert a passing bear. She considered calling out to the
idiot to stop him hollering, but she was downwind from the hunters and knew her
voice wouldn't carry.

    Hissing
to Bonehead to shut up, to herself she said:
'Ikuliaq!'
Stay calm!

    One
of the men must have had an accident. It wasn't uncommon. In the twelve years
she'd been guiding southern hunters, Edie had seen more of those than there are
char in a spawn pond: puffed up egos, in the Arctic for the first time, laden
down with self-importance and high-tech kit, thinking it was going to be just
like the duck shoot in Iowa they went on last Thanksgiving or the New Year's
deer cull in Wyoming. Then they got out on the sea ice and things didn't seem
quite so easy. If the bears didn't spook them, then the blistering cold, the
scouring winds, the ferocious sun and the roar of the ice pack usually did the
job. They'd stave off their fear with casual bravado and booze and that was
when the accidents happened.

    She
set the snowbie going and made her way around the iceberg and through a ridge
of
tuniq,
slabby pressure ice. The wind was up now and blowing ice
crystals into the skin around her eyes. When she pulled on her snow goggles,
the crystals migrated to the sensitive skin around her mouth. So long as no one
had been seriously wounded, she told herself, they could all just sit out the
storm and wait for help to arrive once the weather had calmed. She'd put up a
snowhouse to keep them cosy and she had a first-aid kit and enough knowledge to
be able to use it.

    Her
thoughts turned, briefly, to what the elders would make of what was happening.
All but Sammy didn't much approve of a woman guiding men. They were always
looking for an excuse to unseat her. So far, they hadn't been able to come up
with one. They knew that she was the best damned guide in the High Arctic.
She'd never yet lost a client.

    The
snowbie bumped over an area of candle ice and brought her to her senses. Like
Grandfather Eliah used to say: speculation is a white disease. But then, she
was half-white herself, so maybe she couldn't help it. In any case, it wouldn't
do now. The key to getting everyone out of the situation, whatever the
situation turned out to be, was to focus on the present. The High Arctic only ever
made room for now.

    On
the other side of the pressure ridge, a human shape emerged from the gloom, the
skinny guy, Wagner's assistant. Edie struggled momentarily to recall his name.
In her mind he'd become Stan Laurel, without the charm. Andy, that was it, Andy
Taylor. He was waving frantically. As she approached the gravel beach, he ran
back to where the body of his boss lay splayed on his back. Edie brought the
snowbie to a halt on the ice foot and made her way across the snow-covered
shale. Taylor was gesticulating, trying to get her to speed up, the asshole.
She carried on at the same pace. Running equalled sweating equalled
hypothermia.