The Courage Consort (25 page)

Hastily, Marko'cain and Tainto'lilith reined the dogs in. If the seashore was the place where the universe intended to give them its verdict, they would have to travel the rest of the way there on foot.

With the sleds at a standstill, quiet descended—or what would have been quiet a few miles back: instead, the air was abuzz with the sound of waves. This was an awesome novelty for the Fahrenheit twins; not the vastness of the ocean, because they had grown up with vastness, but the sound of it. All their lives, circumambient silence had suggested to them that their little family and its machines must be the only animated things in the world: everything else just lay there, still. Even the occasional storm seemed nothing more than a stirring of white dust, a redistribution of lifeless snow by the careless opening of some big door in the universe. As soon as that open door was noticed by whoever was responsible for these things, it would be shut, and silence and inertia would be restored. Here by the sea, however, the illusion was shattered. The great waters were in constant motion, bawling and hissing to each other. Their hubbub was fearsome and relentless, and next to it the voices of the Fahrenheit twins were feeble, barely audible, swallowed up by a larger life.

All this the twins observed and understood in a moment, but even in their newfound humility they found reason to hope. Perhaps the grand restlessness of the sea, its deafening roar of collective purpose, only served to prove how much power it had to help them.

Tainto'lilith and Marko'cain had stopped thirty yards or so from the shore. Dismounting from their buggy, they stumbled around, stiff-limbed, calming the huskies. The ground beneath their feet crackled and sighed. Here and there, sparse vegetation poked through the thin snow, like limp green beans emerging from an inedible expanse of mother's powdered potato. In the near distance, tortured rock formations—volcanic froth frozen in time—fringed a stony shore. Startled by the arrival of the Fahrenheit twins' little cortège, a colony of white birds billowed into the air, a swirling cloud of wings.

'This is the place,' affirmed Tainto'lilith.

The dogs were very hungry by now, and so the Fahrenheit twins fetched out the tins of food from either side of their mother's body.

'There is a tin opener, I hope?' said Marko'cain, holding one of the tins aloft from the slavering jaws of Snuffel Junior.

'Of course there is,' Tainto'lilith reassured him, bringing the glittering tool to light. 'Father has thought of everything.'

Disappointingly, however, the contents of the unlabelled cans, when the lids were cut off, did not appear to be dog food—at least no dog food the twins had encountered before.

'What is this stuff?' frowned Tainto'lilith, peering into the tomato-red goo.

'I'm not sure,' admitted her brother. 'Let's see what the dogs think.'

They tipped two canfuls of the substance onto the ground, where it spread into a globulous pool of gore, enriched with pale seeds. The huskies approached eagerly, sniffed, then looked up at the twins in honest puzzlement.

'This is bad news for us,' said Marko'cain.

'Worse news for the dogs,' said his sister. '
We
have food, at least.'

'Yes, but we need the dogs to get home. They are hungry and cold. Soon they will get weak and bad-tempered.'

'Let's make a fire, then, and cheer them up.'

Tainto'lilith and Marko'cain walked to the shore, feeling the strange new pressure of stones against the soles of their boots. Accompanied by the cloud of cooing birds, the twins searched the rocky strand for something to burn. There was nothing. However, they did find a big bowl-like metal object, ochre with rust—a fragment of a ship, perhaps. They carried it back to where the sleds and huskies were, with the idea of filling it up with fuel like one of those flaming braziers in
Hansi and the Treasure of the Mongols.

'Remember to stand well back,' counselled Marko'cain as Tainto'lilith prepared to drop a lighted match into the oily pool.

The match fell into the liquid and was instantly extinguished. A second match did likewise. One after another, the little sticks of flaming wood were sacrificed to the same greasy fate. Eventually a faint aroma of singed fried food, familiar to the twins from their mother's meals, began to venture through the air.

'This is cooking oil,' said Tainto'lilith.

A finger-dip's taste confirmed she was right.

'We should have packed our own supplies,' said Marko'-cain, putting his glove back on. 'Father was not thinking very clearly.'

'He certainly was in a state.'

Perplexed, the twins perched themselves on the edge of their mother's sled and considered their lot. The huskies whined and snuffled nearby, investigating every clump of vegetation and bird dropping in case it was edible. They were well behaved so far, but it wouldn't last. Soon they would realise that the twins, and the body of Una Fahrenheit, were the only meat for miles around.

In the skies above, contradictory messages were being sent. A subtle orange glow on the horizon promised the dawn, at long last, of the Arctic summer. Then again, there were massive clouds in the sky and the occasional flicker of light, threatening a thunderstorm.

'We are going to need some shelter,' predicted Marko'cain.

'If we get too comfortable, the universe may think we don't need any help.'

'I'm sure we will not be able to get too comfortable.'

They harnessed the dogs again, then travelled along the shoreline at a funereal pace. The heavens were crackling with electricity, which made the animals uneasy and distractible, tugging against the reins. The waves crashed louder and louder, sending spray so far inland that it spattered the cheeks of the Fahrenheit twins.

After another mile or so, something extraordinary could be seen, sprouting up from a hillock.

'Is it a tree?' wondered Tainto'lilith, urging the huskies on. But it wasn't a tree. It was the giant blades of a helicopter, all on their own without a vehicle to be attached to. Someone had carried the great metal cross here, buried one of the blades deep in the ground, and thus created a monumental steel crucifix.

'We should be careful,' said Tainto'lilith. 'If lightning comes, it will probably strike that cross.'

Marko'cain nodded, deep in thought.

'Perhaps this is the message from the universe,' he said, as they drew nearer.

'About mother?'

'Yes. Perhaps we should stand her up against that cross, and invite the lightning to strike her.'

As if in support of this idea, a bright tendril of electricity whipped across the sky, lighting up everything for a moment with tungsten clarity.

'Do you really think so?' said Tainto'lilith dubiously. 'Don't you think it might … it might make her … come back to life?'

'Back to life?' breathed Marko'cain. 'No! Do you think so?'

'I can imagine it happening.'

Marko'cain stared at the cross, then into his embroidered lap, imagining it for himself.

'That frightens me,' he admitted at last.

'Me too,' said Tainto'lilith.

'Let's wait for a different message.'

A few hundred yards farther on, they found the helicopter from which the blades had come. It was bigger than Boris and Una Fahrenheit's machine and in better decorative order, except, of course, for the missing blades and (on closer examination) its belly, which was all crumpled and ruined. Plainly, it had crashed, and failed to get up again.

The Fahrenheit twins went to investigate the wreck. They peered through the Perspex windows, then flipped open one of the doors. There were seats for six passengers, but no one inside, despite complex skeins of blood patterning the upholstery. No doubt at least one of the people who had lost that blood was buried beneath the great metal crucifix nearby. Those who had done the burying had moved on, seeing no point in staying with the husk of their flying machine. Tainto'lilith and Marko'cain would have done the same. After all (as they quickly ascertained), there was no food in the helicopter anymore, and all the flammable stuff had been taken out of it. The twins walked back towards the growling dogs, empty-handed.

'We could sleep inside it, maybe,' said Marko'cain, looking back.

But next instant, a flash of lightning struck the steely hull, exploding the windows like the skin of a giant balloon, branding a helicopter skeleton shape on the twins' retinas. In terror they covered their eyes, but the flare of luminescence faded almost immediately, leaving only a blueish flicker fidgeting over the blasted paintwork.

They hurried back to their sleds, where the dogs were barking and howling frantically.

'Be calm! Don't fear!' they counselled the animals, too fearful themselves to extend their hands. Even Snuffel Junior looked as though he might bite instead of submitting to a placatory stroke.

'Good dogs!' cried the twins without conviction, taking a step towards the phalanx of snapping canine teeth and saliva, then taking a step backwards.

However, just as the children were on the brink of conceding they'd lost control, the tension was resolved from an unexpected quarter. One of the dogs, a little removed from the others, detected a hint of movement where no movement had been, and, with a yelp of glee, bounded away to investigate. All the other dogs stopped their barking and turned their heads, nostrils agape.

Over at the helicopter hulk, whose metal skin was still hazy with smoke, a small hole in the torn fuselage was apparently giving birth to a flurry of animal life: a family of voles, shrieking in distress. No sooner had the first one found its feet on the snow than it was snaffled up in the husky's jaws. An instant later, all the other dogs had pounced in unison, and the twins' view of the squirming litter of disoriented rodents was blotted out by a scrum of haunches and wagging tails. Furious growling quickly subsided when it became clear that there was enough for all.

'We are lucky,' said Marko'cain as the dogs gnawed at their miraculous feast. 'Such things can't happen very often.'

'We should eat something ourselves,' sighed Tainto'lilith, weak and shivery now that the crisis was past.

Marko'cain walked over to the sled and fetched the big bag of provisions out of it. He unbuckled it and peered inside.

'Ho! This is a puzzle,' he exclaimed. 'The hamper our father packed for us is empty.'

'Empty!' cried his sister. 'But it was full when we set off! Did the dogs eat it when we weren't looking? Did it fall out, maybe, as we were moving along?'

'No…' Marco'cain was pensive, grappling with ambiguities. 'I shouldn't have said it was empty. It has some…'—he rummaged—'some big crumpled-up papers in it, and a heavy book called …
Principia Anthropologica.
'

The Fahrenheit twins stood for a while with the hamper at their feet, warming their hands inside their armpits, listening to the waves on one side of them and the crunch of bone against gnashing teeth on the other.

'Do you think perhaps our father is trying to kill us?' said Tainto'lilith.

'Why would he wish to kill us?' said Marko'cain.

Both of them did their best to imagine, willing themselves to transcend the limitations of childish thought.

'He might think we are trouble to look after, now that mother can't do it anymore,' suggested Tainto'lilith.

'But we've been looking after ourselves, haven't we?' protested Marko'cain. 'He doesn't often notice we are there.'

'Maybe that's the problem!' declared Tainto'lilith. 'He doesn't notice us very often, so perhaps in his mind we are still babies, needing milk and love.'

'Well…' frowned Marko'cain. 'We will need
something
to eat soon, or we will die.'

Warily, the Fahrenheit twins sampled the tomato-red gloop in the tins. It was, rather unsurprisingly, tomato. They spooned it into their mouths, glob after glob, crimson juice running down their chins.

'This will keep us going,' said Tainto'lilith as cheerfully as she could.

'We need a message from the universe,' retorted Marko'-cain. 'And we need it quick.'

When they had eaten as much of the chilly, snot-textured fruit as they could stand, they sat at the edge of their mother's sledge again, facing the sea. A pearly glow was growing on the horizon. Summer was about to come up.

In normal circumstances, this would have been a cause for ecstatic celebration, but just now the Fahrenheit twins had other things to think about. With great earnestness, striving not to be distracted by their sleepy heads, sick stomachs, and the uneasy sense of their unfinished mission, Tainto'lilith and Marko'cain discussed their chances of survival—not just in the short term, but in the event that they were no longer welcome at home.

The discussion began well enough, with an accurate inventory of their meagre supplies and a headcount of the dogs, but when they moved on to speculate about more slippery intangibles—like their father's true desires or the reliability of supernatural aid—their tempers began to fray. Over and over, they were forced back to the same conclusion: that they had no one to rely upon but each other.

'We must each consider our strengths and weakneths,' said Marko'cain.

'But we are both the same!'

'Not inside our underpants.'

Tainto'lilith sighed in exasperation. Testaments and peeholes were equally useless in the face of an unfriendly universe, as far as she was concerned.

'We are the same,' she said, digging the heels of her boots through the crust of snow, gouging into the hard dark earth. 'Same, same, same.'

Unnerved by the intensity of his sister's conviction, Marko'cain swallowed hard, trying to keep his disagreement to himself. He gazed out across the swirling surf, as if soliciting the sea's ideas, but really he was comforting himself, sending confidential reassurances to his slighted genitals. Tainto'lilith smelled his estrangement instantly, of course.

'Why
shouldn't
we be the same, anyway?' she demanded.

Marko'cain kept his eyes on the sea, dignified in his appreciation of the wider picture.

'If there really is no difference between us, it would mean that neither of us can know anything that the other doesn't,' he pointed out.