Snodgrass and Other Illusions - By Ian R. MacLeod Page 0,147

and feel a kind of love. She forgives, after all the times that her life has been taken. She turned then, and went back into the water, and dived in a smooth deep ripple.

I thought then I stood alone in the wind, yet when I looked behind me, Tirkiluk was there. A dark figure, standing just as I have stood so many times at the edge of this shore, looking out at the crystal mountains, the glacier, the bay. She let me hold her, and touch the baby again. I knew that we were saying goodbye, although there were no words.

I can hear the seal mewling on the midnight wind. She is out on the shore again. Calling. Waiting. All I must do now is stand, and lift these limbs, and walk down towards the glittering path of water that spreads out across the bay. And the seal will lead me to the place in the ocean where a lantern gleams, dark hair streams, and fingerless hands spread wide in an embrace.

From there, the rest of my journey should be easy.

From the log of John Farragar, Ship’s Captain, Queen of Erin. 12 May 1943.

Sailed 1200 hours Tuiak Bay SSE towards Neimaagen. A fire has destroyed Logos II Weatherbase, and a thorough search has revealed no trace of Science Officer Seymour. Have radioed Metrological Intelligence at Godalming and advised that he should be listed as missing, presumed dead.

Also advised Godalming that an Eskimo woman and infant survived amid the burnt-out wreckage. They are aboard with us now, and I have no reason to doubt that the truth of this sad matter is as the woman has told me:

Seymour befriended her when she was abandoned by her tribe, and the fire was caused by an accident with a lantern at the time broadcasts ceased. He died soon after from injuries caused by his attempts to recover supplies from the burning hut, and the body was subsequently taken by wolves. The later journals I have recovered are undated, and clearly the product of a sadly deranged mind. I would not wish them to reach the hands of his relatives, and I have thus taken the responsibility upon myself to have them destroyed in the ship’s furnace.

Tirkiluk, the Eskimo woman, has asked to be landed at Kecskemet, where the tribe is very different to her own, and the wooded land is somewhat warmer and kinder. As the deviation from our course is small, I have agreed to her request. Her journey aboard the Queen should take little more than two days, but I am sure that by then we shall miss her.

Afterword

I was asked to do a zombie story for an anthology. Typically for me, I missed the deadline, and came up with something that probably wouldn’t have fitted anyway, although it explores my fascination with the boundary between life and death, along with lonely men in lonely places—many of which, outside of my imagination, I’ve never visited. The fact that I am so conscious of this great big world of which I know so little is one of the reasons that, despite supposedly being an SF writer I’ve rarely yet felt the need to go off planet. That, and a sense that good fiction generally makes the most of the familiar, the things already around us, and, perhaps, a failure of conviction on my part that our species will truly ever make it to the stars. So when I do go that way, as with ‘Isabel of the Fall’, the results tend to have a mythic quality.

I love harsh, icy environments, or at least the idea of them, and have read many books about polar exploration—especially the ones about ill-fated missions, such as Scott’s and Franklin’s. Tirkiluk, though, was my first and only Inuit character. The stuff I read about Inuit folklore in attempting to research my idea was refreshingly free of any undead references, which basically allowed me to go where I wanted. The weather wars idea came from a book called Bodyguard of Lies, which was one of the first to get to grips with the true story of British secret intelligence during the war, Enigma and all. Now, the story has been told many times, and it’s easy to forget just how long it was hushed up for, and how little we knew.

Grownups

BOBBY FINALLY GOT AROUND to asking Mum where babies came from on the evening of his seventh birthday. It had been hot all day and the grownups and