Free Dark Matter by Michelle Paver Page B

by whistling, and for once I didn’t mind. Soon afterwards, he went inside.
    The two of us stayed, watching the sky.
    Gus said quietly, ‘Hard not to be moved, isn’t it?’
    I grunted.
    With his heel, he hacked at the snow. ‘I read somewhere that the Eskimos believe they’re the torches of the dead, lighting the way for the living.’ He hesitated. ‘They say that if you whistle, the souls of the dead will draw nearer.’
    I threw him a sharp glance, but he was staring at his boots.
    ‘D’you believe in any of that, Jack?’ His face was grave. In the lamplight, frost glinted in his beard.
    ‘Believe in what?’ I said guardedly. ‘Spirits brandishing torches?’
    ‘No, no of course not. I mean . . . unseen forces. That sort of thing.’ Embarrassed, he hacked again at the snow.
    I guessed what he meant by ‘that sort of thing’, but I didn’t want to talk about it, not in the dark, so I pretended I didn’t understand. ‘I believe in the wind,’ I said. ‘That’s an unseen force. And radio waves.’
    For a moment he was silent. Then he snorted a laugh. ‘Very well, then. Be the literal-minded scientist.’
    ‘I’m not,’ I replied. To prove it, I told him what I’d been reading in the professor’s periodicals.
    I must have waxed enthusiastic, because his lip curled. ‘And you envy them, don’t you, Jack?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Those physicists in their laboratories. You want to be the one thinking up the crazy theories about the universe.’
    It was my turn to be embarrassed. And flattered, that he should know me so well. Because he’s right, I am jealous. That
should
be me, dreaming up mad ideas in a physics lab.
    And maybe I could do it, after all. Maybe when we get back to England, I can find some way of going in for a further degree. Gus thinks I can. That’s got to count for something.
    So now as I sit here writing, I keep breaking off to fantasise about the insights I’ll gain at Gruhuken, and how I’ll astonish the world on my return.
    How things change! When we first got here, my nerves were on edge. All that brooding about ‘the great stillness’, and getting spooked by some sealer in a sheepskin coat. But now that Gruhuken is really ours, I’m not on edge any more.

1st October
     
    I can’t stand it, he’s insufferable. I know the dogs need fresh meat, and I know that means shooting a few seals. But Jesus Christ.
    Yesterday I went with him in the canoe, and I got lucky and shot a seal. We rowed like hell and gaffed it before it sank, then dragged it back to shore. The dogs were going frantic at their stakes. Gus ran down to help cut up the carcass.
    Algie was chief butcher, because of course he’s the expert after six weeks in Greenland. So there he is, skinning it – or should I say ‘flensing’ it – with hisnasty great ‘flensing knife’ (why can’t he just call it a knife?). But as he’s slitting the belly, the creature shudders. Its guts are spilling out, its blood soaking the snow, that hot-copper smell catching at my throat, but its eyes are big and soft as plums –
alive.
    ‘Christ, it’s not dead!’ I croak as I scrabble for a rock to finish it off. Gus has gone white and he’s fumbling for his knife. Algie calmly goes on skinning. It’s only when he reaches the bit over the heart that he sticks in his knife and ends it.
    Why? To show us how tough he is? Or is it because he hates this place, and he’s getting his own back?
    I told him he made me sick. He said if I felt like that I should’ve done something, not just watched. We would have come to blows if Gus hadn’t hauled me away, leaving Algie fuming.
    ‘I know he’s been your friend for ever,’ I told Gus when I’d got myself under control, ‘although why that should be I cannot begin to fathom. But you saw what he did. Tell me you’re not going to make excuses for him.’
    Gus flushed. ‘No excuses. Not this time.’
    I was fiercely glad about that.
    You’d think skinning a seal alive would