White Heat (26 page)

    She
said: 'They behave themselves?'

    Sammy
made a waving motion with his hand. 'A coupla pups. They just wanted to see
Uimmatisatsaq.'

    And
go eider hunting, right?'

    'That's
what they said, but when we got to Craig, they didn't seem too interested. They
were, like, digging about in the shale, in the rocks. Rockhounds, I guess.'
Sammy helped himself to another drink. 'Whatever.' He patted the sofa next to
him. 'They paid and they're gone.' He grabbed Edie's waist and pulled her
towards him. The smell of his breath was as good as love. 'Come on, woman,' he
said, 'let's celebrate.'

    It
wasn't till a long while later, when they were in bed, that Edie became aware
of the smell of burning food. She stumbled to the kitchen and took the pan off
the heat. Sammy was up and in his thermals; he grabbed her from behind and gave
her a good squeeze.

    'I
worked up an appetite in there,' he said. 'What you got?'

    They
sat on the sofa, ate leftovers, and played around some more. When they were
finally exhausted from their efforts, Edie made a brew, stuck
The Gold Rush
on the DVD and they huddled together beneath a caribou blanket on the sofa in
silence, watching Big Jim McKay and Black Larsen fight it out for Jim's gold
strike, then Larsen tumble to his death leaving Big Jim, his memory lost in the
fight, to stumble about the Frozen North trying to remember where he'd left his
gold.

    'I
guess that's what they call a cautionary tale,' Edie said.

    She
looked over but Sammy was already fast asleep. Reaching across him, she shook
the rye bottle, out of habit only, since there was nothing left inside it.

    As
she went to put it back on the table, she disturbed something under a pile of
papers, and a white plastic ballpoint pen fell out. Recognizing it as the one
she'd taken from Wagner's pocket a couple of months before, she picked it up
and as she did so, she noticed the word 'Zemmer' written along its side in
tasteful dark green lettering.

    Her
mind turned a somersault. The so-called pizza takeout place. Suddenly, she felt
frighteningly sober. Whatever Zemmer really represented, it had to be the link
between the two dead
qalunaat.

    She
shook Sammy awake.

    'You
need to leave.'

    He
caught her expression and didn't protest. At the entrance to the snow porch,
she went back inside, picked up his bottle of Canadian Mist and asked him to
take it.

    She
watched him trudge down the pathway and felt a twinge of sadness but also,
somehow, better.

    The
sky was hedged with high cloud and the sun came and went through the gaps. She
bundled on her kamiks, dogskin hat and outdoor parka and went to feed the dogs.
On her way back into the house it struck her that whatever Sir James Fairfax
had traded with Welatok in exchange for a penknife it couldn't have been dogs
because Sir James, like most
qalunaat
explorers of the day, refused to
use them.

    Retrieving
the pages, she grabbed her telescopic lens and went out into the deserted
street. This time she found what she thought she was looking for at the very
end of the second page, the lettering bunched up where Fairfax had been trying
to conserve paper. There, phonetically written but correctly this time, was the
word '
uyaraut
': a precious stone, and in the same sentence - she could
hardly believe she hadn't seen it before - the word 'Craig'.

    Just
at that moment, she felt the sharp prick of an ice crystal on her face, then
the welcome watery coolness. Another arrived, then another. One had landed in
the middle of the top page and melted slightly, washing the smear around the V
in the word
'Vililuq'
and clarifying what had before been an unreadable
smudge. The word was fainter than before but there was no mistaking it.
Wilituq.
She sat back. Was it too far-fetched to suppose that Wilituq was Fairfax's
version of Welatok?

    Sir
James Fairfax had traded a penknife with Welatok for what the Inuk described as
a precious stone. All at once she thought back to her encounter with Saomik
Koperkuj on Craig and to the jewellery he had claimed to have taken from a
wolf: a gold chain on which had been suspended a strangely heavy stone.

    The
following evening, after school, she bought a half- sack of beer in the
Northern Store, then packed a bag and took off along the ice foot east on her
snowmobile. At the little cove where dovekies sometimes gathered, she left her
snowbie and scrambled up the cliffs and along the short path across the plateau
to Saomik Koperkuj's cabin.

    She
opened the door and peered in. No one at home. Advancing into the cabin, she
spotted a hunting knife on the table and picked it up. Making her way to the
curtain at the back where Koperkuj slept, she tweaked it open and peeped
inside. Suddenly there was a creak from behind. She drew back, startled. The
old man was standing inside the door with Andy Taylor's Remington in his hand.

    He
said: 'Get lost.'

    For a
moment, he didn't seem to know who she was, then recognizing her at last, he
lowered the rifle. The expression on his face remained the same.

    'Not
in the mood for visitors, Saomik Koperkuj?' Edie dropped the hunting knife in
her bag, reached in and pulled out the beer. She was relieved to see the
necklace was still hanging around his neck. 'Maybe this'll help.'

    The
old man's face softened for an instant, then resumed its brittle expression.

    'What
are you after?'

    She
flipped the ring pull and handed him the can.

    'I'm
taking some
qalunaat
hare-hunting later in the summer,' she lied. He
stared at her, his eyes narrowed. 'I thought you might be able to give me some
tips.'

    He
nodded, seeming content with her explanation, and took a long drink. She pushed
the remaining cans nearer.

    'Look,'
the old man said grudgingly, 'I got nothing against you personally, I just
don't like people.'

    They
sat for a while in silence while Koperkuj made his way steadily through the
can.

    'Maybe
I'll find a wolf and a necklace like yours,' she ventured.

    The
old man plucked the stone round his neck and held it up.

    'This
is a lucky necklace.' He helped himself to another beer, levering off the ring
pull with his walrus snowknife. The booze had loosened the old man's tongue. 'I
didn't actually get it from a wolf.'

    'Oh,
really?' Edie did her best to sound neutral.

    Koperkuj
chuckled. He was enjoying this. 'You think a wolf would really eat a stone?
Women! Uh nuh. I found this at Craig, on the beach there, near Tikiutijawilik.'

    'You
did?'

    'I'm
telling you,' he said. 'Right there on the beach.'

    'Well,
isn't it odd, the things that wash up there,' Edie said. 'I could use some
luck, I should borrow it,' trying to look as though she was having the idea for
the first time.

    Koperkuj
met her gaze.

    She
took out the little sealskin pouch she'd sewn and handed it over to him.

    'I'll
give you this for it.'

    He
looked at her.

    'Open
it.'

    His
old, arthritic fingers fussed around the tie. Finally he peered inside, turning
the pouch upside down so Andy Taylor's diamond earring tumbled out on the palm
of his hand. Edie watched for any sign of recognition, but there was none.

    'What
is it?'

    'What
does it look like?'

    
'Uyaraut,'
he said.

    'More
than
uyaraut,'
she said.'
Qaksungaut,
diamond.'

    The
old man peered at the stone more closely. His eyes blazed.

    'How
do I know it's real?'

    'Go
ask Mike Nungaq.'

    Mike
was the community rockhound. In another world, in another life, he'd have been
a geologist, but there was no call for Inuit geologists in Autisaq. Still,
anyone find anything they thought they might be able to sell, they brought it
to Mike. 'It turns out to be a fake, you can come get me and break my legs.'

    Koperkuj
fingered the stone. He was wavering.

    'You
can keep the gold chain,' she said.

    'What's
so special about this stone that you want it?' The old man was running it up
and down the chain with his hand.

    Edie shrugged.
'Nothing special. Just caught my eye is all. You know women, we always want
something.'

    The
old man nodded at the truth of this. Eventually, he said:

    'OK.
As a favour to you. But I keep the chain and the
qaksungaut.''

    He
pulled the stone from the chain and handed it to her. It was small, no larger
than a fox's heart and more or less the same shape, a liverish colour embedded
with tiny sparkles and unusually heavy. She'd never seen anything like it
before but now that the stone was in her possession she felt both strangely
powerful and a little afraid, as though, after months following old tracks,
she'd finally come across something fresh and new. The object in her hand
seemed less like a stone and more like a key.

    She
found Mike Nungaq bent over the cereals row at the far side of the Northern
Store, pricing up a consignment of cherry Pop-Tarts. He greeted her and asked
how she was, his expression clouding over as he realized she'd come into the
store for more than just groceries.

    'Etok's
up at the airstrip with a cargo of resupply,' Mike said with a sigh. 'In case
you're wondering.'

    She
wrinkled her nose, conscious that she was stretching the limits of their
friendship. 'Can we talk?'

    'I
was hoping you wouldn't ask that,' Mike said. 'Come on then.'

    He
led the way past the stacks of special offers, flipped up the countertop and
ushered Edie into the back. They sat down at a scruffy Formica table.

    'This
about the election posters?' Word got round fast. 'Or about Elijah running
against Simeonie?' Edie blinked.

    Mike's
brother was a notorious deadbeat, as likely a mayoral candidate as Pauloosie
Allakarialak.

    The
storekeeper blushed a little around the ears. 'You want to know, Simeonie
talked him into it.'

    Edie
let out an involuntary snort. 'An unelectable rival. Smart.' She grimaced.
'Sorry.'

    'The
man's my brother.' Mike looked at his shoes and shrugged.

    He
got up and poured some tea from a thermos into two mugs, then spooned six
heaped teaspoons of sugar into one of the mugs and returned to the table with a
fragile smile. Edie sensed she was on probation. The thing with Elijah had
rattled him and she'd been insensitive.

    'I found
a stone,' she said, pulling a package from her pocket. 'I could use your
opinion on it.' She pushed the package across the table. He plucked the stone
from its wrapping, weighed it in his hand and held it close to his face. Edie
saw him register the hole where the gold chain had threaded through it then
bite his lip, as if to hold back the next question.

    'Heavy,'
he said.

    Getting
up, he fiddled about in a chest of drawers at the other side of the room and
came back with a magnifier, then he sat with it clamped in one eye, turning the
stone over and over in the fingers of his right hand while Edie drank her tea
and looked about the room. A bubble of order marked the place where Etok
worked. There was a trestle table and above it a series of shelves, neatly
stacked with box files. On the table itself sat a desktop computer and a filing
stack, each section neatly labelled. Etok had pinned up a poster of a tropical
sunset bearing the inspirational legend: 'For every door that closes, two more
open.' On the far side was a peg on which she had hung a magnificent sealskin
parka, trimmed in fox.