The cab shook violently once, then twice-the terrain was growing uneven. Marshall cut his speed. The GPS showed the lake directly ahead now: a vast wall of blue that took up the entirety of the tiny screen. And then there it was, beyond the windows: a dim line in the howling murk, covered with drifting snow, recognizable as a body of water only by its uninterrupted and featureless horizontal line.

Marshall slowed the Cat. Turning the wheel, he began to cruise along the edge of the lake, scanning carefully for any sign of habitation. He’d used ten gallons of gas already; that meant he could spare only two or three more in his search. The frozen ground sloped down steeply toward the lakeshore, and he had to keep a tight hand on the wheel and a steady pressure on the foot throttle to maintain forward traction.

Suddenly the Cat sheered violently to one side. Realizing a crevasse yawned ahead, Marshall turned the wheel sharply in the opposite direction and stepped on the gas. The cab shook as the metal tracks crabbed along the slick ice sheet. Marshall feathered the engine, trying to find the balance between traction and forward motion, struggling to keep the tracks from slipping sideways into the widening crevasse. The big vehicle whipsawed back and forth, at last struggling over the lip of the ice sheet and falling heavily forward onto level ground once again.

Marshall let the Sno-Cat roll to a stop. He sat there, idling, as his heart gradually slowed. Then, applying pressure to the throttle again, he eased forward, moving gently away from the steep shoreline.

Then, through the swirling snows, he saw something-or thought he saw something: gray shapes in the strange late-summer twilight. He stopped the Cat, staring hard through the glass. It was off to the side, away from the lake. Twisting the wheel, he inched the Cat forward. As he approached, the dim shapes resolved themselves into rudely built igloos: two of them, snow-scoured and pathetically small, surrounded by vortexes of swirling ice.

Marshall stopped the vehicle, killed the engine, zipped his parka tight. Then he exited the cab and clambered down the trapezoidal tread. Turning his head away from the teeth of the wind, he approached the first igloo. It was dark and cold, its entrance tube a black void. He staggered over to the second igloo, knelt before its doorway. It, too, was tenantless, the fur blankets and skins within cold and stiff.

Beyond, Marshall could now make out three additional igloos and a larger snowhouse. There were no other structures around, and he realized with surprise just how small the last Tunit community really was.

These three igloos were just as deserted as the first two had been. The ice walls of the snowhouse, however, danced with a faint, flickering orange glow. A fire was burning inside.

For a moment, the winds slackened, as if to rest from all their blowing. As the clouds of snow subsided, Marshall could once again make out the strange, blood-red northern lights lowering in the sky. They cast an eerie crimson glow over the tiny village of ice.

Taking a deep breath, he made his way to the snowhouse, drew back the caribou skin that served as a door flap, and stepped cautiously inside. The interior was dark, low-ceilinged, and full of smoke. A profusion of skins and blankets covered the floor. Marshall brushed the ice and snow out of his face and looked around. As his eyes adjusted, he realized there was only one occupant: a figure in a heavy caribou-skin parka, kneeling before a small fire.

Marshall took another deep breath. Then he cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said.

For a long moment, the figure remained motionless. Then, slowly, it turned toward him. The face was a dark hollow within the fur-lined hood. The figure raised a hand to the hood, pulled it back with an unhurried, deliberate motion. A wizened face marked with intricate tattoos stared up at Marshall. It was the old shaman who had come to the base, warned the scientists to leave. He held a reindeer antler in one hand, decorated with fantastical lines and curlicues, and an intricately carved bone in the other. There were several small items scattered across the reindeer skin before him: polished stones, tiny fur fetishes, animal teeth.

“Usuguk,” Marshall said.

The man gave a faint nod of his head. He didn’t seem surprised to see him.

“Where are the others?”

“Gone,” the man replied. Now Marshall remembered the voice: quiet, uninflected.

“Gone?” he repeated.

“Fled.”

“Why?”

“Because of you. And what you have awakened.”

“What have we awakened?” Marshall asked.

“I have spoken to you of it already. Akayarga okdaniyartok. The anger of the ancient ones. And kurrshuq.”

There was a pause in which the two men regarded each other in the flickering light of the fire. The last time they met, the old man had seemed anxious, frightened. Now he looked merely resigned.

“Why did you remain?” Marshall asked at last.

The shaman continued to look at him, his black eyes shining in the reflected firelight. “Because I knew you would come.”

35

The weeping wasn’t particularly loud, but it refused to abate: a continuous drone of background noise, mingling with the tap of the heating pipes and the distant hum of generators. When Wolff closed the door of the officers’ mess, it faded from audibility. Yet it remained a presence in Kari Ekberg’s mind; a presence as real as the fear that gnawed and refused to go away.

She glanced around at the people in the mess: Wolff; Gonzalez and the corporal named Marcelin; Conti; the academician, Logan; Sully, the climatologist; a handful of film crew. On the surface, everyone seemed calm. And yet there was something-in the furtive expressions, in the way people started at unexpected sounds-that spoke of controlled panic.

Gonzalez glanced at Wolff. “You’ve got them all locked down?”

Wolff nodded. “Everyone’s in their bunks, ordered to remain there until we tell them otherwise. Your private, Phillips, is standing guard.”

Ekberg found her voice. “You’re sure they’re dead?” she asked. “Both dead?”

Gonzalez turned toward her. “Ms. Ekberg, bodies just don’t get any deader than those two.”

She shuddered.

“Did you get a look at it?” Conti asked, his voice a low monotone.

“I only heard Ms. Davis’s screams,” Gonzalez replied. “But Marcelin did.”

Wordlessly, everyone turned toward the corporal, who was sitting alone at a table, an M16 slung over one shoulder, aimlessly stirring a cup of coffee he’d forgotten was there.

“Well?” Conti urged.

Marcelin’s youthful face looked pink and shocked, as if someone had just ripped the guts from his belly. He opened his mouth but no sound came.

“Go on, son,” Gonzalez said.

“I didn’t see much,” the corporal said. “It was rounding the corridor when I-”

He stopped dead again. The room was silent, waiting.

“It was big,” Marcelin began again. “And it had a head with…”

“Go on,” Wolff urged.

“It had a head with…with…don’t make me say it!” Abruptly the pitch of his voice spiked wildly.

“Steady there, Corporal,” Gonzalez said gruffly.

Marcelin gasped for breath, the hand that held the plastic stirrer stiffening. After a minute he mastered himself. But he shook his head, refusing to say more.

For a long moment, the room remained silent. Then Wolff spoke up. “So what do we do now?”

Gonzalez frowned. “I don’t see that we have a lot of choices. Wait for the weather to clear. Until then, we can’t evacuate-and we can’t get reinforcements.”

“You’re suggesting we wait around to get picked off, one by one?” said Hulce, one of the film techs.

“Nobody’s going to get picked off,” snapped Wolff. He turned to Gonzalez. “What’s the weapons status?”