CHAPTER 11

Latitude 70° 49’ 23” N

Longitude 152° 29’ 25” W

Altitude 10 ft.

Cassie threw herself into data processing. For five days, she transferred several thousand latitude and longitude measurements into minuscule triangles on a topographical map, one triangle per den. She finished late on day five, and then stepped back to survey her work. She wrinkled her nose. Anyone could have done this—a kid, a monkey, Jeremy.

“Good,” Dad said behind her. “How many do we have?”

Cassie counted. “Forty-one on eastern Ellesmere, maximum distance twelve and a half miles from shore, twenty-eight within five miles.” Bear could be there now, distributing souls. “Baffin Island, twenty-three near Cape Adair.”

Her father took notes. “Foxe Basin?”

“Bear must have visited a number of these by now,” she said. It was the height of birth season. Had any of the cubs been stillborn? Some must have been. If he were in Karaskoye More and he felt a call in the Chukchi Sea, he might not make it even at superspeeds. She thought of Bear alone in his castle, mourning the cubs he’d failed to save.

Dad’s pencil paused. “Cassie, you don’t need to think about him anymore. You’re safe here.”

Not again. She forced herself to smile and say in an even voice, “He’s not dangerous. He’s sweet.” And fun and funny.

“It’s a common psychological reaction for people to identify with their kidnappers,” he said. “But you’re home now. We won’t let him take you again.”

Dad was so stubborn. “You know what Bear did one time? I woke up with a sore throat, and he brought me breakfast in bed.” More like a feast, really. Pancakes, waffles, cereals. She’d never had anyone bring her breakfast in bed. “And then the rest of the morning, he told me stories so I wouldn’t have to talk and I wouldn’t be bored.” He’d even acted some of them out. Even with her sore throat, she had laughed a lot. “Does that sound so terrible?” She hadn’t laughed like that since she’d returned to the station.

“You don’t need to tell me,” he said. “Whatever happened, you’re safe now. You’re with people who love you.”

Bear loves me, she thought. “He’s not a monster,” she said.

Gail poked her face into the room. “It’s after midnight. Would you two workaholics come to bed?” She smiled with all her teeth.

“Do you want to call it a night?” Dad asked kindly, as if talking to a child.

Cassie sighed. One more argument wasn’t going to convince him. “All right.” She deposited her papers onto her desk, and she trotted after Dad and Gail.

At the door to her bedroom, Dad paused. “Good work today, Cassie.”

She wasn’t sure of that. Bear did more to help the polar bears in one jaunt across the ice than she could do in one year of drawing triangles on maps.

“Night,” Gail said. She didn’t try to hug or kiss Cassie. After the first few awkward nights, they had let that drop in a tacit acknowledgment of the gulf between them.

Managing a halfhearted wave, Cassie backed into her bedroom and closed the door behind her. She heard her parents’ voices receding, and then their door shut too.

Cassie flopped down onto the bed. Yellow fluorescent light reflected on the photographs that her younger self had taped to the cement walls. She rolled onto her stomach to look at the shrunken images of snowdrifts and mountaintops. She leaned over and smoothed the crumpled corner of one photograph. She had scrawled: “Lomonosov Ridge 89° N.” She remembered it: the fierce jumble of ice blocks, the expanse of sky, the burning cold. “Oh, Bear, what are you doing now?”

She threw a rolled sock at the light switch, and it bounced off. Third sock, she got it. In the darkness, she missed Bear more. She knew she shouldn’t. She was home now. She had her life back, plus her mother. So why wasn’t she happy?

Tossing beneath her comforter, Cassie thought about her life in the castle, how she’d never gotten tired of the afternoons they’d spent in the garden, of the evenings they’d spent playing chess (even when he’d won three out of four games because she’d never had a backup plan), or of the late nights when they’d drunk hot chocolate in the dark and he’d made up stories just for her. She remembered how he had laughed the first time she’d slid down the banister, and how he had cried when that first cub had been stillborn. How many more stillborns had he had to face alone? If only she could find a way to be with him and help the polar bears.

Cassie sat up in bed—she was on the verge of an idea. She could feel it. Bear missed births because he did not know where and when they would be. But she had access to the precise denning dates for hundreds of expectant bears.

Cassie threw off her comforter and hurried to Owen’s workroom. She clambered over boxes and engine bits to the new computer. After yanking the protective cover off, she hit the power button. She paced as it booted. Births were not random. She could predict them—or at least their likelihood. Cassie perched on the desk chair and clicked to the denning file.

“Let me do that,” a voice said.

Cassie jumped. Owen was two feet from her elbow. How on earth had he heard her from back in the sleeping quarters? “Do you have a baby monitor on this thing?”

“You’re not exactly light-footed.”

She relinquished the desk chair. “Be my guest.” He sat, and she leaned over his shoulder. “I want an extra column on the denning sites spreadsheet.” He inserted the column. “Mmm. Okay. Now put in a formula to add two months to each of the denning times to account for the final stage of the gestation period.” He did. “Can you print a page?” she asked.

“It’s going.”

The printer whirred, and Cassie hovered over it. “Slow.”

“Ink-jet. Leave it be.”

“You think I’m going to break every piece of equipment, don’t you?”

Owen shrugged.

“I am not a klutz,” she said.

“Excitable,” he said.

She yanked the page out before it finished, blurring the ink. Pacing, she scanned it. “Label that column ‘Predicted Birth’ and sort the data by date and location. Date first. Please.”

He made the adjustments and printed. After grabbing the pages, Cassie perched on a stool. She chewed on her lower lip as she read. Could this work?

Owen cleared his throat. “The grant said nothing about predicting births,” he said. “Up to your father, but I doubt we can change the basic premise now.”

“Uh-huh.” She barely heard him. Dates overlapped for disparate locations, but it was not impossible. If he had a route that took him from Hudson Bay… It would be a challenging project to determine the route and to update it, adjusting probabilities, on the fly. It would need someone with training and skills…

Owen waited for a response. Cassie smiled at him. “Can you print a few more files for me?”

Cassie rolled her sleeping bag and stormproof bivy sack into the bottom compartment of her backpack. She was packing full expedition gear this time, in preparation for trips out on the ice. She added freeze-dried food packets, oatmeal flakes, nuts, dried fruit. If her plan worked, she’d be out on the pack ice every day—just like she’d always wanted.

As she packed, Dad hovered beside her. Flushed, his face looked like angry lava. He leveled a finger at her. “You’re not going. And that’s final.”

Cassie examined her MSR stove and tested the fuel pump. She wasn’t going to fight with him.

“I won’t let you ruin your life.”

“It’s my choice to make.” She kept her voice calm. She didn’t know when she’d see Dad again. She didn’t want to leave angry.

He gripped her arm. “Cassie, I only want what’s best for you.”

Cassie yanked out of his grip. Turning her back on him, she packed quickly with practiced skill—heavy items braced by clothing. “I know I’m not making the choices you would, but—”