Red Planet Run (7 page)

Mother paused. “Only she and one of the children survived the voyage.”

She waited, long enough for us to picture Emaa Katya and her babies in an open boat on the Gulf of Alaska. “On Kodiak Island, Ekaterina took the name of Tlingit, in homage to the tribe of Alaskan Indians who kept massacring any Russian unfortunate enough to attempt to settle southeast Alaska.” There was a ripple of laughter.

Mother raised the storyknife over her head again, displaying it between the tips of her fingers. “This was Ekaterina’s storyknife. Her uncle carved it for her out of a walrus tusk when she was a child, so that she could tell stories in mud and snow to amuse her younger brothers and sisters and cousins. There is evidence that the storyknife was at one time a tool, a snow knife, used to cut blocks of ice to build temporary shelters called igloos, but by the time the custom passed to Ekaterina’s generation, the snow knife had become a toy for children, more specifically a girl’s toy, a storyknife.”

With a single stroke of the flat edge of the storyknife, Mother swept the sand smooth. She drew the path again, from the top of the tray curving down to the bottom, and next to it, in the center of the frame, another woman symbol.

“This custom of taking a name continued with Ekaterina’s surviving daughter, Elizabeth, my great-great-grandmother. At the age of sixteen she married Demetri Moonin and moved to Ninilchik on the Kenai Peninsula.” The triangular symbol for man appeared on the wet sand, and next to it the symbol for kayak. “Demetri was lost at sea during a sea otter hunt not two years later, and at her naming the following year Elizabeth chose to take the name of Susitna, she who sleeps and dreams of her lover’s return. Elizabeth Susitna inherited the storyknife upon her mother’s death and was the first to use it during her naming.”

Next to the woman symbol, Mother illustrated two child symbols. “Elizabeth Susitna had two children, Axenia and Demetri. Demetri was my great-grandfather.”

“Like his father, Demetri hunted the sea otter”—the symbols for kayak, spear, and
ikamaq
were etched in—“and paid homage to its importance in his life by taking its name, Ikamaq.” She held up the storyknife’s sheath. “He made this sheath for the storyknife from moosehide. He wove the designs on its sides with rye grass picked in the Barren Islands.”

Mother drew the child symbol next to Demetri Ikamaq. “Demetri Ikamaq had one child, a daughter, called Esther. Esther was my grandmother.” The storyknife smoothed the sand; the path was redrawn, another woman figure inscribed. “Esther and her father were very close, and at nineteen Esther took his name to be her own, Ikamaq. She married Derenty Anahonak and moved with him to Seldovia. She brought the storyknife with her, made the candle from seal fat, and began the custom of lighting it during each naming ceremony.”

“Esther had nine children.” We waited as the tip of the storyknife inscribed five male and four female symbols. “One of them was a daughter, Elizabeth.” The sand was swept smooth, and another female figure appeared, this time to one side of the tray. “Elizabeth was an artist and an activist determined to translate the traditions of both her cultures, Russian and Aleut, into her work. At nineteen she took the name Alutiiq, or Aleut, to be her own, as well as a middle name, Ekaterina, to commemorate both lines of her heritage.”

“Elizabeth helped found the Alaska Federation of Natives, to write the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, and to establish the Ikamaq Fjords National Park and Wildlife Refuge. It was Elizabeth who made the base for Esther’s candle from soapstone, carving it in the likeness of the family totem.” In swift succession appeared the figure of
alutiiq,
or people, the roofed symbol for community, the branched symbol for forest, the three wavy lines for water, a hammer and chisel, and the ikamaq.

Mother swept the sand smooth again, and again inscribed the symbol for woman. “I am Natasha, daughter of Elizabeth Ekaterina Alutiiq and Enakenty Quijance. After the war, when the borders were reopened, I took my daughters to the Philippine Islands to meet my father’s family. His father, my grandfather, was Alfredo Quijance.”

She smiled, a gentle, reminiscent smile. “I spent all my time in Baguio sitting at his bedside, listening as he spoke to me of the Quijance family, of the leaders it has given to the cause of a free and independent Philippine nation, of its martyrs as well. He told me of leading the Battle of Pyongyang”—Mother drew the shape of a billowing mushroom cloud—“which action ended the United Eurasian Republic’s eastward expansion and prompted the affiliation of the Philippines, Japan, and United Korea with the American Alliance.”

Mother drew the Alliance flag, and paused. “Even as he spoke to me, he was dying of wounds suffered in that great and terrible battle, the last battle of World War Three, perhaps the last great Terran battle ever. We can only hope so. Decorated many times and by many nations, Alfredo Quijance was a general who grieved over the loss of each and every soldier under his command in that war. I think sometimes he was dying of the grief their deaths caused him, as much as he was of his actual wounds.” Her eyes rested on me for a moment, before lowering again to the tray. The tip of the storyknife drew a field of crosses, row on row. “That the Philippines is a free state of the American Alliance today is due much to him. That the Alliance exists at all is, again, due much to him.”

Mother’s voice was very soft. “I remember his great pride in his family most of all, his pride in me. I chose my name late in life, but eventually I, too, followed the custom of my family, and chose to be known as Natasha Quijance, for my grandfather, so that I would always remember what I owed him, as his granddaughter, and as the citizen of a free and independent nation, on a planet made safer from war.”

Mother sat with her eyes downcast. There was a brief silence.

Charlie stepped forward to squat beside Mother, taking the storyknife from her hand. Sitting next to each other, they looked more like sisters than mother and daughter, both tiny, with smooth brown skin, almond-shaped brown eyes, and thick, shining, absolutely straight and absolutely black hair. The only difference was that Mother’s hair was cut above her earlobes, and Charlie’s reached down past her waist.

My sister raised the storyknife and scrabbled in the sand as if she were writing out a prescription; her symbols were almost illiterate. “I am Carlotta Quijance, daughter of Natasha Quijance. On my nineteenth birthday I chose the name Quijance so that I would always remember my uncle Benigno.

“Uncle Benigno cooked.” Something marginally resembling a stove appeared in the sand. “That’s sort of like saying the Pope practices Catholicism or Shanghai Wang plays jazz. Uncle Benigno had a two-story house on the Seldovia Slough; for anybody else in town the bottom floor would have been a warehouse for fishing gear. Not for Uncle. He turned the whole thing into a kitchen, with industrial-size freezers and refrigerators, three separate ovens, and an eight-burner stove. He taught me to cook bagoong and adobo and lumpia for Aquino Day, and to make kulich and pashka for Russian Orthodox Easter, and turkey and dressing for Thanksgiving, and corned beef and cabbage and soda bread for Saint Patrick’s Day.” Crabbed symbols for food, a candle, a Russian Orthodox cross, a turkey, and a harp appeared in quick succession, only to be wiped clean with a single stroke of the storyknife. “Uncle Benigno could do more with a clove of garlic than any ten Cordon Bleu chefs could do with the spice cupboard of the entire Waldorf Hotel chain at their disposal. And his rice. Steamed, fried, in sushi.” Charlie closed her eyes in momentary ecstasy. “He catered parties as far away as San Francisco, but what he liked best was cooking at home, for the family, for weddings and graduations and christenings, or for no reason at all—just to assemble a group of his nearest and dearest around a table and stuff them full.”

Charlie shook her head, a slight smile on her face. On the sand, a small woman symbol was drawn next to a larger, man symbol. “I grew up in his kitchen, at his elbow. He had no children of his own, and once he decided I could be trusted with a rice paddle, he taught me everything he knew.” She laughed a little. “He never wrote down a recipe in his life, and he was furious with me when I taught someone outside the family how to make sweet-and-sour spareribs. He was even angrier when I chose to become a physician rather than a chef. But he forgave me in time, and cooked banquets for all my graduations.” Her smile faded, her face half tender, half sad. “Uncle Benigno always smelled of fresh ginger. I loved him very much.”

There was a brief pause. Mother looked at me, and I rose and moved to kneel next to her. Charlie passed over the storyknife. It was warm from Charlie’s hand, from Mother’s hand. The carved figures on the haft pressed into my palm as I smoothed over Charlie’s hen scratches.

“I am Esther, daughter of Natasha Quijance, sister of Carlotta Quijance. My father’s name was Sven Ericson.” I drew the man symbol and looked up at Leif. “Sven Ericson was tall and broad-shouldered, blond and blue-eyed, fair of skin. He looked like a Viking. He looked like you.”

“And like you,” Leif said gravely.

I inclined my head. “Yes. And like me. And like so many Alaskans, like so many of our ancestors, Sven was an emigrant, this time from Norway. He came to Alaska and signed on a fishing boat in Seward and went around the Kenai Peninsula, picking salmon and pulling crab pots. Eventually the boat came to Seldovia. Your grandmother was on the dock. He married her the next day.” I looked at Mother, and she grinned a very un-Motherlike grin. It never pained Mother to talk of Dad. Not for the first time I wished I was more like her.

“My first memory is of sitting on his lap at the wheel of his crabber, the
Kaia.
It was late at night and late in the year, with a clear sky and a calm sea, and we were right out in the middle of the Gulf of Alaska, right in the lap of the Mother of Storms herself.” I drew the kayak symbol and the sea symbol beneath it, and closed my eyes, the better to remember.

“You couldn’t see anything but stars everywhere you turned. It was during the Geminid meteor shower, a meteor a minute. I didn’t know what it was at first—I thought the sky was falling. Dad told me that our Earth was only one shore of a universal sea, and not to be afraid to catch the spray on my face.”

I opened my eyes and looked at my daughter. “You come by your interest in astronomy honestly, Paddy. Your grandfather knew each and every star by name, their constellations, the Greek legends behind most of them. He taught them to me.” I drew the Big Dipper and Polaris. “He taught me how to fish for salmon and for king crab in the Gulf. He taught me seamanship, from bowknots to red right returning. I know it was in his mind that I would step into his shoes when he was ready to retire, but he wasn’t angry when I went into construction instead. He just kept on fishing. It was what he did. He was high boat in the Gulf for the last five years of his life.

“Then, in 1996, the
Kaia
went down off Dutch Harbor in an October storm. He went down with her.” I reversed the kayak and water symbols so that the kayak symbol was beneath the three wavy lines.

I paused again. “I remember his laughter best of all, a deep, roaring belly laugh that seemed to shake the
Kaia
right down to her trim line. I still miss hearing it. I still miss him. At my naming I chose the name Svensdotter, so that I would be known as Sven’s daughter, in his honor, and to keep the memory of him alive for as long as I live.”

I swept the sand smooth and lay the storyknife on the tray, the hilt facing Leif. Mother said, “You have chosen today as your naming day, Leif. Have you chosen your name as well?”

“I have, Emaa,” he said, very young, very dignified. He extended his hands, palms up, and into them Mother placed the storyknife. I saw his surprise at its smooth texture, his appreciation of its rich weight. He grasped the handle and began to draw, awkwardly at first. I was watching the tip of the knife score the sand when his first words registered. My head shot up and I stared at him with my mouth open.

“My mother’s name is Esther Svensdotter, but she hates the name Esther the same way Auntie Charlie hates Carlotta, so everybody calls her Star. ‘Star’ is what Esther means, and it’s sort of where she lives”—he stole a glance at my face—“and she’s sort of the color of a red dwarf right now”—there was a burst of laughter, quickly smothered— “so I guess it fits.”

My eyes dropped to the tray and the knife and my son’s hands, and fixed there. The shaky but recognizable symbol for star filled the top of the tray of sand. Around it Leif drew the house symbol.

“I’m a Petri kid. You all know the song, ‘born in a Petri dish, behind a Bunsen burner, in the lab on a Sunday afternoon.’ Emaa fixed things so that Star would leave an egg on Terra when she took over at Terranova, and then Emaa finagled a donor for the sperm”—Leif skated smoothly over his father’s identity—“and then she mixed them both together in a Petri dish, and here I am.”

The smile in his voice encouraged us to join in his amusement. “Emaa raised me on Terra, and Star didn’t know anything about me until we came out to the Belt. So I didn’t meet my mother until I was ten.” I could feel him looking at me. “I’d heard about her, though. Everybody had.”

“Star Svensdotter built the track for the SuperShot from Anchorage to Nome, to connect up with what would have been the Siberian Express across the Bering Strait. She brought on line the first offshore oil field in the Navarin Basin. She oversaw the construction of Copernicus Base on Luna, and the Helios Early Warning System of solar satellites. She built Terranova, the space habitat in Terran orbit at Lagrange Point Five, practically with her bare hands. She led the One-Day Revolution to victory, and she held our first E.T. dialogue with the Librarians. In her spare time she skated in the Anchorage Olympics”—something resembling a duck on an ironing board appeared—“married Caleb Mbele O’Hara, and mothered three children, two of which she actually knew about.” There was more laughter as Leif drew three child symbols, two male and one female. “Star Svensdotter has packed more living into fifty-nine years than most of us could into five hundred. It probably makes me more tired to talk about it than it did her to live it.”