Siberia (11 page)

Sultan was beside himself, yelping and dancing around this strange object. He tried to bite it and leapt backward, pawing at his mouth. I tugged the bolt, and shoved the door. It came open, I dropped and ran for it.

I had to hope that Nosey could look out for herself.

It was morning now, a raw, gray, grizzly dawn, the kind of before-winter weather I hated. The snow was turning into slush. There were no fur-coated guards in sight. The dogs in the pen yelled and barked at me, but they’d been making a racket anyway: nobody came running. Mr. Ismail’s office door was open. The room was empty, my knapsack and my coat were gone.

Between the dog pen and the sheds where Mr. Ismail’s office stood, a narrow alley led to another yard. I guessed that must be the way to the fur farm itself. He thinks they’re fur-bearers, I thought: he’ll have taken them to the fur farm.

The other yard was bigger, surrounded by gray, blank buildings with rows of small windows high up. The foul smell was even stronger. I saw a pair of fur-coated guards with rifles on their backs walking briskly out from between two buildings, heads down, scanning the concrete in front of them. I dodged inside a pair of tall double doors that were standing ajar, found another door unlocked inside the lobby, and I was inside the fur-processing factory. There were some people in dark, close overalls with grubby white caps, tending the machines. But they were at the other end of the huge space: they didn’t notice me.

The windows were too high to give much light. White tubes on the walls gave out a faint heat. The pens, or cages, were in three rows, with aisles between them, and moving trays under them, that carried the slurry away. In the first row the pens were like tanks. Tiny things squirmed, over the white tubes along the insides. I had never seen live factory animals before, and I saw why Mr. Ismail had thought I was carrying fur-bearers. The tiny things were covered in thick, black fur. I stared at them, and had strange thoughts about my mama’s magic. But these kits had no heads or feet that I could see, and barely any bellies. They weren’t animals. They were sheets of moving, fur-covered skin: clothes, growing, with no purpose or feelings of their own. Oh, if my kits had been put in one of these tanks! If they had already been somehow changed into things like this! I looked in all the tanks, sick with dread, and saw no
bright brown.
Only black, and white; rust-red and blue-gray.

In the other two rows the fur-bearers started getting bigger. Still no sign of my Lindquists. I hurried on through. In a second huge room the air was icy cold, and here some of the furs were huge: almost ready to be killed. You could see how awful it would be, if one of these creatures were to breed, somehow, with a wild animal like my Nivvy. Think of a sheet of mobile fur, big as a bedspread, armed with fierce teeth, brave and cunning and always hungry. Imagine an army of them, roaming the wilderness.

Beyond the cold room I was in the processing sector. Here there were long sinks, where it seemed as if the furs were scraped and washed in different treatments. But the machines were silent, and there were no workers about. Everything was cold, and dirty. Maybe the farm would have been stinking whatever anyone did, but nobody was even trying to keep things clean. Stacks of raw furs festered, waiting to be treated. Piles of stinking waste had just been shoved into the corners.

I didn’t see Mr. Ismail anywhere, but in a room labeled
Specialist Hand Washing,
on a shelf under a sink, as if they’d been hurriedly hidden, I found my knapsack, and Storm’s jacket. The knapsack was fastened up. The nutshell was inside, and so was the nail box, with the lab case. I’d hidden the map and the compass in the lining of Storm’s jacket before I jumped on the train: they were still there too. Finally I opened the nutshell, and my kits were there, scared but alive.

I felt like crying, I felt like praying. I’d hardly set out on the journey and already I’d broken nearly all Mama’s rules. But the magic had saved me.

Then I heard voices. There were people coming down the corridor.

I backed into the shadows, and hid myself as best I could, ducking down behind a stack of unwashed furs. They smelled worse than anything. The door opened and I saw the silhouette of two figures, looking in.

I heard Mr. Ismail’s voice. “Nothing to look at in there,’” he said. “See? Just a disused washing room.”

The other man—it must be the visitor who had called Mr. Ismail away when he was dealing with me—muttered a question. Mr. Ismail muttered back. I wondered if he was trying to explain why his workers and guards were all running around searching the factory floors, as if they’d lost something small and mobile.

The door closed and the footsteps retreated. I stayed where I was, crouched in the stinking gloom, hugging my treasure. I must be going crazy with fear, because I thought I had recognized that second voice! But it couldn’t be. It
couldn’t
be.

I waited to see if anything else would happen. But nothing did. Finally I put on Storm’s coat, shrugged the knapsack onto my shoulders, and started trying to find my way out. Farther into the neglected back rooms of the fur farm, I spotted a broken window, mended badly with cardboard and tape. I ripped out the cardboard, put Storm’s jacket over the shards of glass, and climbed out, onto open ground. There was a double fence not far away, both sides capped in rolls of barbed wire. But it looked as neglected as the rest of this place, and there weren’t any guards in sight. I crossed a bare field of slush, found a place where the base of the inner fence had come loose, and wriggled under it. The outer fence was more solid. I headed left, away from the railway line, down the corridor between two walls of wire. I set off at an awkward jog trot, my best pace: looking for a spot where I could climb. But the guard dogs were out, loose between the two fences: and something told me, even when I saw them in the distance, that I wasn’t going to deal with them the way Nosey and I had dealt with Sultan. These dogs were different, silent and efficient. I could see ahead of me a fence post that had come away, leaning at a crazy angle. I remembered when I had been able to run like the wind.
. . .

I reached it. I fell against it with a vicious stitch in my side. The biggest of the dogs had caught up. It didn’t even growl. It lowered its massive head. I saw the saliva dripping from its jaws, as it gathered itself to spring—

—and something came barreling along, between the dogs’ feet. A creature stranger than any factory animal, a scurrying ball of barbs. Nosey had found me. The pack jumped and yelped. The lead dog forgot me, for a crucial half minute, as this extraordinary thing popped up in front of him. Maybe he’d been trained to feed on human flesh, but he still backed off, bewildered, from the sting of Nosey’s spines. I scrambled up the fence post. My Lindquist uncurled herself, and trotted cheerfully after me. I fell down in the slush on the other side, and lay there, trembling.

An hour or so later I had found a place to hide. It was an old packing case, hidden in a stand of bare willows, on the waste ground at the end of the railway platform: where heaps of fur farm junk, cardboard, torn skins, and other rubbish trailed off into the empty plain. I dragged some filthy sacking inside, and some rotten furs. I knew I couldn’t go any farther. I was dead tired, and my weak knee had suffered badly, in all the running and climbing. It wouldn’t carry me any farther. At least Nosey and I would be warm while we waited for the dogs to sniff us out.

But I couldn’t rest, not yet. At dusk I left my precious knapsack in the packing case with Nosey, slipped down to the railway spur, dropped onto the ballast, and crept along beside the track, back to the platform yard. There was something I had to know. When I’d been hiding in the hand-washing room, I had heard a voice and seen a silhouette I thought I’d recognized. It was crazy, but I had to make sure I was wrong.

A half-solid sleet was streaming down from the leaden sky. The dogs in the pen were quiet. Two armed guards in the dog-fur coats lurked in a shed doorway: I saw the tiny burning coals of smoking cigarettes in their cupped hands. There was no one else about. I crept into the narrow alley behind Mr. Ismail’s office. Light fell, dirty and yellow, from the window. I could just manage to see inside.

Mr. Ismail was sitting at the littered desk. He wasn’t alone, he was talking to someone. They had a bottle between them, and shot glasses. The farm manager’s words ran into each other. He was feeling sorry for himself, and probably he was drunk. But I was interested in the other man.

“I saw them with my own eyes,
bright browns.
You don’t know the fur business, or you’d know, that’s worth
. . .
And this girl in strange uniform. What’s it mean, eh? Where was she taking them? An’ what was that other thing?”

The other man filled Mr. Ismail’s glass again, and murmured.

“You’re right,” agreed Mr. Ismail, dolefully. “If I make a report of strange going son, it all comes back on me. I’m to blame. Muties, they’ll say. No, no, I’m keeping quiet, much obliged to you for your advice.”

The second man raised his glass, and tipped back his round, bristle-cut gray head. I saw his face. The groove between his eyes, the arched brows, that long nose, the expression of his mouth. I could not be mistaken.

It was
Yagin.

I dropped to the ground, and crouched there, sleet in my face, hugging my knees, stunned. What could it mean? What was Yagin doing here?

Was he looking for me?

* 7 *

Lagomorpha

I Stayed in my packing case because I had no choice. When I crawled back in there after I’d seen Yagin, soaked and frozen and black with soot from the railway line, I really thought I would be dead before morning. I’d be chewed up by the dogs, the Lindquist kits would be in a tank in the fur-bearers shed, and Nosey might escape but she would be left all alone.
. . .
But nothing happened.

After two days, I had to believe that Yagin—if I had really seen him, if I hadn’t dreamed the whole thing—must have convinced Mr. Ismail to forget the mystery fur-bearers, and pretend he’d never seen the runaway girl in strange uniform
.
But why would Yagin do that? If he was chasing me, didn’t that mean he wanted to catch me? If he had tracked me down to the fur farm, didn’t that mean he knew about Mama’s treasure, and he wanted to take it from me, the same as the bandits who had burned our hut down? He knew I had the Lindquists, Mr. Ismail had told him. But how much did he know? Did he know more than I did? I lay in my stinking nest, listening for the dogs, putting together what I knew, and trying to make sense of it all.

The way they changed and grew was so strange I had to call it magic. But I thought I understood what the Lindquists
were,
now. I had remembered the names of the orders. I remembered how my mama had told me that Nivvy was a
real
wild animal.
So
. . .
there were no wild animals left (or hardly any), but there were these kits, that could
grow
into wild animals, the way fur-bearer kits grew into huge sheets of fur. But if that was what the Lindquists were, why were they a secret? Why shouldn’t I take them to the Fitness Police—who were supposed to kill muties, but look after the true wild creatures? I could say, You think my mama was a criminal, you think she did something terrible, but she’s
not
. Look! Here’s the marvel that she’s been keeping safely, after she was dumped in the wilderness; all these years.

I thought about it, and I thought about it. But I knew there was something wrong. It couldn’t be that simple. Mama had said, “When you have no one to turn to, look deep into your own heart.” So I looked, and I found that though I longed to trust someone,
I did not trust Yagin.
No matter what he’d done for me I didn’t trust him. I would keep faith with my mama. I would do what she had planned to do. Somehow, all by myself, I would get the kits across the frozen sea, to the city where the sun always shines, and until then I would tell nobody,
nobody.

Nosey foraged for herself; there were plenty of bugs. The kits did not need anything. Luckily it wasn’t very cold, even at night, because I didn’t dare to light a candle. I ate the remains of the food Katerina had given me, and tried to rest. The worst thing was having hardly any water.

On the third day I began to get over my fear and exhaustion.

I used the railway track as a kind of open-air secret passage, to get deep inside the fur farm without meeting any dogs or fences. I found my way into food and housekeeping stores: I found an unlocked shed of winter equipment and stole a small sledge, and a bivvy tent.
. . .
The thieving was in ways harder than at New Dawn, because I wasn’t an insider; but in ways much easier. The fur farm guards and workers were pushovers compared to the New Dawn wardens. They didn’t lock things up, even though there were notices everywhere saying they were supposed to. They didn’t keep records. They didn’t know what they had, so they weren’t going to know the rations I took were missing. The plunder made me miss my school friends, even Rose: and it made me remember how Rain had died, which was miserable. But thinking of what to steal and how to steal it occupied my mind, leaving less room for depressing thoughts.

I felt like Mama in the Settlement: safe in the place of greatest danger.

Like me, Nosey was most active at dusk. When I returned from one of my expeditions she’d come trundling out of the dark, snuffling and grunting, and climb into my lap (I was glad I had my thick uniform skirt, to protect me from the prickles). She’d stand up with her paws on my chest, to give me kisses with her wet berry-nose. She got fat as butter from feasting on roaches
. . .
unfortunately she also picked up a horde of fleas. But I was soon just as verminous, so we matched. I never undressed, of course, and I never washed. I got used to being filthy.

During the day we stayed in the packing case, unless I had to visit my latrine hole. I’d stolen a whetstone: I used it to rub the rust from my sledge’s runners (most of what I’d stolen was in poor condition). I was making myself a hat as well, to replace Storm’s fleecy cap, which I’d left in Mr. Ismail’s office. I had not been able to find needles or thread, so I was trying to stick fur scraps together, skin to skin, with glue. It was a messy business. While I worked, Nosey would snuffle around after snacks: often coming over to touch my hands with her nose and make sure I was still there. The kits played in the nutshell, or sat watching us. I rarely opened the shield, in case there came a moment when I had to grab everything and run. They didn’t seem to mind. They were lively and content, and had almost reached full size.

I told my family we were not wasting time. “We’re waiting for the weather,” I said. “It’s much easier to travel in the ice and snow, and the cold is not an enemy if you’re prepared. Wait and see. You’ll like it when you can ride on the sledge.”

It was as if the years at New Dawn had been a nightmare. I was safe again in Mama’s care, getting ready to follow the route we’d planned long before; snuggled together on winter nights, in our cupboard-bed. The dreams I’d had then had been a lot different from the filthy, smelly reality, and yet I was happy.

I started training Nosey to eat the same food as me, because she wouldn’t be able to find bugs when the ground was frozen. She liked jerky, very much! She didn’t like con cheese, but she’d munch dried tomatoes or bread.

I thought she would be with me for a long time, all the way to the frozen sea and the city; and after that. I thought she would live as long as my Nivvy: but I was wrong. On the fifth day after our adventure with Mr. Ismail she was out of sorts. I thought maybe she’d eaten too much. When I came back from my foraging I found her lying uncurled in our fur-and-sacking nest, shivering. Then I was worried, so I lit a candle for warmth (I tried to make sure no light could escape). I saw she’d grown again, and she was losing her spines, they were changing back into fur. But her whole body was shaking, and she whimpered when I tried to lift her. All I could do was kneel by her, stroking her and talking gently, and feeding her drops of bottled water. As the night passed she changed again, from this large, hairy shape to stranger forms, and then she started getting smaller fast, shuddering in a fever of change.

She knew me, all the way through. She would still touch her nose to my hand, and grip my finger with her claws. By the time she died she was a tiny thing, the same dim-eyed creature I’d met when we were riding on the freight train. I didn’t cry, though it hurt very much to lose her. She had been so brave, and clever, and funny. I held her in my hand, the way I’d held her when she was little. I told the kits she was gone, then I kissed her velvet fur and laid her down. I burrowed into my smelly heap of furs and fell asleep.

When I woke there was a crackling rime of ice over my bedding. Winter is here, I thought. I must leave soon. In Nosey’s part of the nest there was nothing left but a slim, dry, tapered pellet, the length of my fingernail.

“A Lindquist cocoon,” I whispered, remembering my lessons.

I told the kits, and they looked at me solemnly: almost as if they understood. It was so
strange.
An animal that turns into other animals, and then withers into a little roll of powder. What can you call that but magic? I was almost afraid to touch Nosey’s remains, and I wondered if this had happened to Nivvy. I couldn’t remember if Mama had let me see him dead.
. . .
I did what I had to do. I took out the nail box, unfolded the white case, and prepared myself with my gloves, my mask; and a prayer. I collected the cocoon, put it in a fresh tube, and sealed the tube with the color that meant
Insectivora
. I could hear Mama’s voice in my mind, saying,
Be
careful you don’t mix them up at this stage. We can sort it out if
you do, but it’s better if they’re not mixed up.
There were six colors. There should have been eight. . . .

I wondered what had happened to the ones that had been “lost”?

I wondered what it all meant, and I thought of Yagin the guard with longing. Could he answer my questions?
Was
he the person Mama had sent to help me?

All I could do was trust my mama, and guard the treasure with my life.

I spent that day packing, and eating: stoking up the fire inside. I let the kits out for an adventure, as a treat. Once we were crossing the snow it would be far too cold for them to come out of their nest. I didn’t let them off my lap, but they didn’t mind that. They were full-sized now, but still small enough that I was a wide territory. I tried to pick out which was Nivvy, but they all seemed the same: mischievous, inquisitive, affectionate, and bold. At night they got back into the nutshell, and I slept with it hugged in my arms.

When I woke there’d been a real, heavy fall of snow. It had drifted into the packing case, covering me: my furs were frozen stiff and caked white. I lay there, breathing air purified by the cold, and feeling a great change. No more half measures: this was winter.

The fur farm was no place for me anymore. No matter how careless the guards were they’d surely see my tracks in the snow, and the workers would be more careful about locking doors. I crawled out of my smelly nest, ate some jerky, and drank some tepid water. I kept a water bottle inside my clothes at night, so it didn’t freeze. I tucked the nutshell into my (stolen) overshirt, and fastened a belt around my waist. I put on Storm’s jacket, my homemade hat, and some stolen gloves (that were too big). The sledge was already loaded: it was time to go.

I was pulling uphill at first, over rough ground, trying to keep to cover and convinced that someone back at the farm would spot me and let the dogs out. But when I stopped and looked back the farm was already out of sight. So was the railway track. I was alone in the white emptiness, the way I had always longed to be.

The plain opened, and I found my rhythm.

I wasn’t cold. I’d stolen good clothes, including some waterproof overall trousers which I wore over my school drawers and under my dress. Actually, when I was sledge-pulling I was always far too warm, and had to wear my coat flapping open. I kept going for a
long
time, that first day. The snow was fresh and smooth but already frozen hard, and good to walk on. I’d use the compass to pick out something north of me, a boulder or a stand of reeds, and make for it. When I reached my mark I’d stop and pick out another. Soon I realized I could line up two marks with the compass, and then I could keep going for longer without having to check my course.

I didn’t think about the hundreds of miles. I just marched, on and on under a clear sky, hypnotized by the emptiness: until the ache in my shoulders vanished, and my legs seemed to swing, unevenly but strongly, of their own accord. Every so often I’d stop, sit on the sledge, and eat something, and then I’d open the nutshell to reassure the kits. They pushed at the shield with their little paws and noses: they knew there was something exciting going on. But I didn’t let them out. It was far too cold.

Once a flight of small birds crossed overhead: I saw no other sign of life. I watched the sun’s steady fall on my left-hand side, and kept the dark line of the forest ahead. How far away it was, farther than I had ever dreamed. How long would it take me to reach that friendly darkness? Weeks? The sky changed color, from blue to turquoise, the sun went down in red-gold clouds: a silver moon rose, nearly full, almost as bright as daylight on the snow, and I kept going.

But I walked more and more slowly. Finally I shrugged off the sled harness. The sky was like an enormous bell, deepest blue overhead, shading through green to lilac above the horizon. The moon made violet shadows in the whiteness. I walked away from the sled with my head tipped back, counting the pinpricks of stars, and as I watched a veil of shimmering silver was shaken down over the blue. Curtains of light, first pink, then green and gold, swept across the sky and then drew back, to show a huge ring of bright golden light. It was the aurora borealis.

Mama had said that long ago, you could only see the mystic lights if you were so far north the sun never rose in winter. She said our world had changed in other ways besides the coldness. The envelope of particles out in space that made this beautiful show reached down farther from the poles, in our time. But I had lived under a cloud of smog every winter. I’d never seen this before. I had never seen anything so beautiful, or so immense. I stood there, alone with majesty, and forgot about everything. I forgot the cold, my chafed shoulders; forgot my trek, forgot the Lindquists, even forgot my mama.

When the aurora faded at last, I saw something whiter than the snow, sitting on a rock a little distance away; like a fallen star. I went over there, my boots going crunch, squeak in the utter silence. It was an animal. He waited, and let me come up to him, fearless as a Lindquist. His fur was white, his face was long but not pointed, and he had a gentle expression. He had his long ears laid back, but when I was close he raised them, so they stood tall above his head. He sat up on his big back legs, his front paws placed neatly together, and watched me with quiet dark eyes.

“Are you a
mutie
?” I said. But I was sure he couldn’t be.

His ears turned, swiveling toward the sound of my voice.

“Are you a real wild animal?”

The white fur shaded to blue-gray on his flanks. His amazing ears—they seemed half the length of his body—were pure white, tipped with sable. In the beauty of the moonlight, I thought he looked like a prince of peace.