The Arctic Code (18 page)

As they walked, her mother talked. “Some time ago, I detected an energy signature under the ice. It was relatively weak, nothing that I thought would be of any interest to Sohn International. But it was unlike anything I'd ever encountered, so out of curiosity I kept an eye on it.”

They passed a dozen or so of the mammoth-bone houses before they reached the edge of the village, and then kept going. The ground turned a bit soggy and mossy, dotted by the occasional white microblossom. This was like the tundra that covered Missouri and Kansas.

“A little over a year ago,” her mother said, “the signature changed. It grew stronger, more intense.”

“That was when she finally got in touch with me
about it,” Dr. Powers said, “since we both worked for Sohn. And together, we figured out what it was.”

“Telluric energy?” Finn asked.

“Why, yes.” Dr. Powers cocked his head at his son, seeming surprised. “How did—?”

“We figured out what Skinner was searching for,” Finn said.

As they walked across the tundra, up and down with the rising ground and past the granite boulders, the humming sensation Eleanor had felt earlier grew louder in her mind. It filled the cavern. But no one else seemed aware of it, and she remembered the looks Julian and Finn had given her.
Freak.
She said nothing.

“Skinner.” Eleanor's mother said the name with a hatred Eleanor had never heard in her before. “I went to the G.E.T. for help. But Skinner used his resources and power to take over our whole operation.”

“Right before he arrived, we discovered this place.” Dr. Powers looked around at the cavern as they started up a small hill.

“How?” Julian asked.

“We followed Amarok,” her mother said. “We'd been hearing about sightings of a sled team on the ice. They were nothing but rumors, really, because how could anything survive out there? But one night, we were up on the surface studying the energy anomaly,
and Amarok just appeared from nowhere, as if he rose from the ground. That led us to the fissure in the ice, which we followed down here.”

“And that's how we found
this
,” Dr. Powers said.

They crested the hill. Below them, at the center of a wide crater, a black structure rose from the tundra. It was the size of Luke's plane, standing upright, a dark and twisted, metallic-looking tree that seemed to shift and slide, like a shadow within a shadow. Branches of varying lengths and thicknesses bent at odd angles around a central trunk, forming a brambled maze that defied Eleanor's attempts to make sense of it. At the sight of it, the humming in her head became almost deafening.

“What
is
that?” Julian asked.

“This is the Concentrator,” Eleanor's mother said.

That didn't exactly answer Julian's question. But then, Eleanor couldn't have come up with a single word to describe the thing below her. She could barely settle on a definite shape. Its angles weren't square, or round, or sharp, or smooth. Its black surface seemed to shift and deflect her sight, denying its own existence.

“Why is it . . . ?” Finn started. “Why is it hard to see?”

Dr. Powers cleared his throat. “It seems to have physical and spatial properties we don't have the
anatomical or cognitive ability to perceive.”

“What?” Julian asked.

But Eleanor thought she knew what he meant. “It's like infrared light, right?” she said. “Our eyes can't see heat without special goggles, even though it's there.”

“Exactly,” Dr. Powers said. “Our naked eyes don't have infrared vision because we haven't needed it to survive. We didn't evolve that way.”

Eleanor's mother grinned at her. “Devilishly clever.”

“So it just grew here?” Julian asked.

“It doesn't seem to be a naturally occurring object,” Dr. Powers said.

“Wait,” Finn said. “You mean someone built it?”

“That's right,” Dr. Powers said.

Finn continued, “And whoever made it had . . . different eyes?”

Eleanor's mother and Dr. Powers looked at each other. Then Dr. Powers said, “Different technology, at the very least.”

Different eyes, different minds. Eleanor shuddered when she thought about what would make seeing that thing necessary to survive.

“W
E CALL IT THE
C
ONCENTRATOR BECAUSE WE
think
it's concentrating telluric current,” her mother said. “This is the source of the signature we detected from the surface. Its energy is the reason Skinner took over our research, but from the beginning, Simon and I believed it would be very dangerous to harness the power here until we understood it. Which government put it here? Why? Skinner wouldn't listen, and he was about to fire us and force us from the station. So Simon and I took all our research and went out onto the ice. I sent my files to you, including the coordinates, and then I erased everything from my Sync. I
didn't know what else to do to keep it from falling into Skinner's hands.”

Her mother had pulled out an instrument, a kind of gun. It had a bundle of barrels above a grip, with a small computer screen and control panel at the back end.

“What's that?” Eleanor asked.

“A telluric scanner.” Her mom switched the device on. “Without the calculations on my Sync, I haven't been able to calibrate it. We haven't had the ability to really study the Concentrator at all. I can't tell you how frustrating it has been. But now that you brought me this”—she held up Eleanor's Sync—“I can get back to work.”

She manipulated the controls of the scanner, the computer screen wavering with oscillating curves. They descended toward the Concentrator, and Eleanor's mother paced around it, watching the readout, but as she did so, Eleanor felt a subtle shift in the humming around her, a change in tone.

“Simon, this is incredible,” her mother said. “We were right. The concentration of telluric current here is . . .”

Dr. Powers stepped toward her. “Vectors?”

The humming smothered her mother's reply as she and Dr. Powers huddled together over the scanner.
Eleanor blinked and shook her head, averting her eyes from the Concentrator. The humming seemed to emanate from it, and it was getting worse. Something was happening, and it had begun when Eleanor's mother turned on the scanner.

“Look for subcurrents,” Dr. Powers said.

“Right,” her mother said. “Let me dial up the gain.”

The humming swelled to a pounding rush, building, building, as if to something explosive. Eleanor wanted to cover her ears.

“Sweetie?” Her mother was looking at her. “Are you okay? You look flushed.”

“I'm, uh . . .” The Concentrator seemed to be reaching out toward her, clawing at her mind. The humming felt so deafening she couldn't concentrate. “Could we—” Eleanor rubbed her temples. “Can we get away from here? Back to the village?”

“Of course, sweetie.” Eleanor's mother turned to Dr. Powers. “Do you want to continue without me?”

“No, you need to be here for this.” Dr. Powers looked at Eleanor, seeming worried. “Let's all head back. We shouldn't push them after their ordeal. It's probably exhaustion or dehydration.”

Her mom switched off the scanner, and the humming immediately diminished. Eleanor sighed.

“Come, sweetie.” Her mom put her arm around
Eleanor and shepherded her away from the black device. With each step they took out of the crater and across the tundra, the humming grew quieter still, and before long Eleanor felt herself returning to normal.

They had almost reached the edge of the village when something lumbered out ahead of them from behind one of the boulders. Something massive, and hairy, with long, curved tusks.

Julian yelped. “What the—!”

“Holy crap,” Finn whispered. “That's . . . that's a woolly mammoth!”

The creature emitted a low, rumbling sound as it walked toward them. Its head and shoulders towered at least ten feet high, and the sharp smell of its hair and musk reached them well ahead of the animal, rousing Eleanor from the last aftereffects of the humming.

“She's tame,” her mother said, pulling Eleanor close. “Just be still and watch.”

She?

The mammoth's advance was quick and almost stumbling, the long cords of her brown coat swinging. When she reached Eleanor and the others, she stopped, huffing, the tips of her tusks but a couple of feet away, her eyes taking them in.

“Amarok's people have a name for her,” her mother said. “Kixi.”

“Odd,” Dr. Powers said. “She seems a little agitated by something.”

Eleanor did not like the idea of an agitated mammoth and wondered if Kixi could perhaps feel the humming, too. Weren't animals supposed to have the ability to sense earthquakes or something? Maybe it was like that. The mammoth lifted her trunk and extended it toward them, sniffing. Eleanor flinched a little as it drew near to her.

“Hold still,” her mother whispered.

The tip of the trunk, which almost resembled a lip, touched Eleanor's forehead, gently, like the brush of a velvet curtain warmed by the sun coming in. Eleanor smiled as Kixi then blew a puff of air in her face, tossing her hair, before moving on with her heavy gait.

“She's heading out to graze,” Dr. Powers said. “Magnificent creature.”

In the mammoth's wake, Eleanor stood immobilized. So did Finn and Julian.

Dr. Powers chuckled at them. “All right, back to the hut. It's time to put all the pieces together.”

E
leanor sat on the floor in the building made of mammoth bones, touching her forehead where Kixi had brushed it. She'd thought these bones were prehistoric, but now . . .

“Is it some kind of clone?” Finn asked.

“No,” Eleanor's mother said.

“But . . .” Eleanor's mouth hung open. “How?”

“Exactly,” Dr. Powers said. “That is exactly how we felt when we first saw this place. I'm not sure we've figured it all out yet, but I think we're close.”

“As near as we can tell,” her mother said, “Amarok and his people are from the late Pleistocene, in geological terms, or the Upper Paleolithic, in archaeological terms. From a period known as the Younger Dryas.”

“The Stone Age?” Finn asked.

“Exactly,” Eleanor's mother said. “Roughly twelve thousand years ago.”

If Eleanor hadn't just been nuzzled by a woolly mammoth, she might have taken what her mother was saying as a sign of mental illness. But now she just sat and listened.

“The Younger Dryas was a period of rapid cooling,” Dr. Powers said. “An ice age. Geologists still don't really know what caused it, because the Milankovitch cycles wouldn't have predicted it.”

Eleanor noticed that he left the name
Skinner
off the cycles.

“It seems,” Dr. Powers went on, “that Amarok and his people died in a catastrophe of some kind. A flood. A storm. We don't know, but something wiped them
out with one shot, along with Kixi. Their whole village got buried in the permafrost, along with the Concentrator.”

An unexpected, unpredictable ice age had destroyed Amarok's village and his people. Much the way another unexpected, unpredictable ice age was currently destroying Eleanor's.

“That is how it stayed for thousands of years,” her mother said. “Until a few years ago, when the Concentrator began emitting energy. We believe the energy carved out this cave and somehow revived Amarok and his people. It's telluric. It's the earth's own life force. Believe me, as a rational empiricist, I know how incredible this sounds, and I have wrestled with these conclusions in spite of the evidence before my own eyes.”

“Within the last year,” Dr. Powers said, “its output has increased to the strength of a nuclear power plant, and it shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, it continues to increase.”

“But who put it there?” Julian asked. “Where is the energy going?”

Dr. Powers turned to his son. “We don't know yet. But now that we have the Sync, we'll hopefully be able to answer those questions.”

“But if the earth is losing energy from it,” Finn
said, “is that thing causing the Freeze?”

Dr. Powers slowly rubbed his hands together. “We don't know, son. We simply don't know. But for now, I think you all need some more rest.”

T
hey spent the rest of that day avoiding any talk of the Concentrator, or even the woolly mammoth walking around. Finn and Julian went off with their dad, while Eleanor and her mom walked around the village, reunited against impossible odds.

“I missed you,” her mother said. “After Simon and I came down here, I wondered if I'd ever see you again.”

“When they told me you were lost,” Eleanor said, “I wondered the same thing.”

“I hate to ask this, but does Uncle Jack know where you are?”

“Not really.” Eleanor worried about what Skinner might have told him after she ran away with Julian and Finn. “He knows I made it to the station, at least.”

Her mom winced. “Poor Jack.”

“In my defense, he had to expect this from me.”

Her mom nodded. “You two seem to have an understanding of each other.”

“Yeah.”

“There are times I envy that.”

“Mom . . . ,” Eleanor said, but didn't know what to
follow it up with, because her mom had touched on something true. There were times Eleanor wished she had that kind of understanding with her mom, too.

“It's okay, sweetie,” her mom said. “I get to love that you constantly surprise me. Like how you found your way here.”

Eleanor felt a warmth blossom in her chest that no polar storm could drive out. “That's a nice way to look at it.”

Her mom winked. “Better than blaming the Donor.”

Eleanor laughed, and a few comfortably silent moments later, Amarok approached them. Eleanor sensed the same charge coming off him as the first villager, the one who had told them to wait in the hut. In fact, that force seemed to radiate from all the people in the village.

“You eat with us?” Amarok said.

Eleanor's mother bowed her head. “Yes. Thank you.”

Amarok nodded and walked away. Eleanor watched him go, trying to imagine what it would be like to wake up to a world ten thousand years removed from hers, and couldn't. She wasn't even sure she could wrap her head around that long a time. “What will happen to them?” she asked.

Her mother sighed and shook her head. “I have
no idea. But I pity them. They're an unintentional by-product of something completely beyond their understanding. In a different time, before the Freeze, anthropologists would have wanted to study them.”

“I wish they could hide down here forever.”

“Hiding doesn't seem to be in Amarok's DNA. Simon and I—”

“Simon?”

Her mom blushed a little and looked at her feet. “Dr. Powers and I warned Amarok not to go up on the surface anymore. But he won't listen. He's even been to Barrow with his team of wolves.”

“Really? I bet that freaked him out.”

“Don't be so sure. They are
Homo sapiens
. As human as you and me. And one thing humans are good at is adapting.” She waved Eleanor to her side. “Come on. Let's go eat.”

“What's for dinner?” Eleanor asked.

“Rabbit, probably. The tundra down here is teeming with them.”

They walked back through the village and joined with everyone around the communal fire pit. Finn and Julian were there with their dad, trying to talk to some of Amarok's people. The firelight felt warm against Eleanor's face, and the woodsmoke smelled spicy and deep. She took a seat next to her mother, ate stringy,
charred meat with her fingers, and just watched.

Later, she listened as Amarok spoke to his people in his language. Eleanor recognized the sound of it from her snippets of memory of the previous night. He seemed to be telling a story, and with great flair. He moved around the fire, singing, almost dancing, adopting the postures of animals, conveying exaggerated emotion. His audience laughed, and it felt to Eleanor like any gathering of family and friends.

Her mom was right. They were like her, and she was like them, as much as she felt like anyone. Her awareness of this gave her hope. An ice age had claimed Amarok's people. Yet here they were, living, laughing, telling the stories they'd always told. Perhaps that meant there were things the ice couldn't contain. Perhaps its grip wouldn't last forever. Even in the face of a rogue world, even with the threat of insatiable ice, Amarok had his voice.

He came to sit by Eleanor later that evening. “Food good?”

Eleanor smiled and nodded. “It was very good. Thank you.”

“Welcome,” he said. Then he pointed his chin toward the edge of the village in the direction of the Concentrator. “You see
tawkeeshick
?”

“Yes,” Eleanor said. Then she enunciated each
syllable of the next word. “Con-cen-tra-tor?”

“Yes, Concentrator,” Amarok said. “
Tawkeeshick
.” He said the word with a seeming reverence.

So his people had a word for it—

Wait.

His demeanor when talking about the Concentrator, and the fact that his people had a word for it, caused Eleanor to wonder something else. She considered how to ask her next question. “Amarok, how long has
tawkeeshick
been here?”

Amarok frowned, clearly not understanding. The English he had learned was apparently still very limited.

Eleanor tried to simplify it. “When . . .
tawkee­shick
?”

“When?” Amarok asked. “
Tawkeeshick
?”

Eleanor nodded.

Amarok still frowned, but he looked skyward. “
Tawkeeshick . . .
before.”

“Before? Before what?”

Amarok spread his arms wide. “Before village.”

Did that mean what she thought it meant? “
Tawkeeshick
was here before your village?”

Amarok nodded. “
Tawkeeshick
here before.”

But that would mean the Concentrator had been there for over twelve thousand years. That meant no
modern government or company had put it there. But how was that possible?