Part 35 (1/2)

”Shannenhouse,” he said He had gone barreling down the steps without giving the pilot any warning and, as it turned out, had caught hi one of his rare periods of sleep ”Wake up, it's dayti! Colistened eerily in its tight glossy sheath of seal hides ”The sun?” he said ”Are you sure?”

”You just missed it, but it will be back in twenty hours”

A softness appeared in Shannenhouse's eyes that Joe recognized froo ”The sun,” he said Then, ”What do you want?”

”I want to go kill Jerry”

Shannenhouse pursed his lips His beard was a foot long now, his sht,” he said

”Can that plane fly or not?”

Joe started around the tail, over to the starboard side of the plane, where he noticed that the hides covering the front part of the fuselage were of a hter color and a different texture than those on the port side

Stacked in a neat pyra to be loaded on board, sat the skulls of seventeen dogs

4

Wahoo Fleer, their dead CO, had been at Little Aain in '40 When they went through his files, they found detailed plans and orders for transhts In 1940 Captain Fleer himself had flown over part of the territory they would be crossing to kill the Geologist, over the Rockefeller Mountains, over the Edsel Fords, toward the shattered nificent vacancy of Queen Maud Land He had ht to carry with him

1 ice-chisel 1 pair of snow-shoes 1 roll toilet paper 2 handkerchiefs The great anxiety of such a flight was the possibility of a forced landing If they crashed, they would be alone and without hope of rescue at the ht their way back to Kelvinator Station on foot, or press on ahead to Jotunheiear they would need in such an instance: tents, Pries that they would have to drag theht it would add to the payload

Engine s 18 lbs Flare gun and eight cartridges 5 lbs

The precision and order of Captain Fleer's instructions had a settling effect on theirone of the enemy They resuar, and Joeabout their descent over the past three ether they ransacked Wahoo Fleer's desk They found a decoded tidbit fro an unconfirht not be a German installation on the Ice, code-named Jotunheim They found a copy of the Book of Mormon, and a letter marked ”In the Event of My Death,” which they felt entitled, but could not bring themselves, to open

Shannenhouse took a shower This necessitated the runting and cursing in three languages, cut and shoveled, one by one, into the melter on the Mess Hall's roof, whose zinc ra ”Nearer My God to Thee” They spoke little, but their exchanges were amiable, and over the course of a week they resumed the air of co the otten that flying unsupported and alone across one thousand lacier to shoot a lonely German scientist had been their own idea

”Hoould you feel about a nice ten- or twelve-hour stretch of, oh, say shoveling snow?” shoveling snow?” they would call to each other fro, after they had spent the previous five days doing only that, as if so superior had put them on shovel duty and they were just the unlucky stiffs who had to obey the order to dig out the Hangar and the tractor garage In the evening, when they caers seared with cold, back into the tunnels, they filled the Mess Hall with cries of ”Whiskey rations!” and ”Steaks for the men!” they would call to each other fro, after they had spent the previous five days doing only that, as if so superior had put them on shovel duty and they were just the unlucky stiffs who had to obey the order to dig out the Hangar and the tractor garage In the evening, when they caers seared with cold, back into the tunnels, they filled the Mess Hall with cries of ”Whiskey rations!” and ”Steaks for theout, it required a full day of tinkering and heating various parts of its balky Raiser engine to get it running again They lost an entire day driving it thirty yards across level snow froar They lost another day when the winch on the tractor failed, and the Condor, which they had ed to tow halfway up the snow ra back down into the Hangar, shearing off the tip of its left loing This required another three days of repair, and then Shannenhouse came into the Mess Hall, where Joe had a Royal Canadian Mounted Police manual for 1912 open to the chapter entitled ”So to es were properly lashed es properly lashed was itees did not suffice for his cursing needs

”I'rafted on the Condor's wing needed to be covered and doped to the rest of the sheathing, otherwise the plane would not take off

Joe looked at hi It was the twelfth of Septeh thesoldiers and planes would be returning to Jotunheiet aloft by then, their ht have to be called off That was part of Shannenhouse's

”You can't use thethat,” Shannenhouse said ”Though I would be lying, Dopey, if I said the thought hadn't occurred toat Joe; he still hadn't shaved his bearish red beard His eyes rolled toward Joe's bunk, where Oyster lay sleeping

”There's Mussels,” he said

They shot Oyster Shannenhouse lured the not wholly unsuspecting dog topside with a slab of frozen porterhouse and then put a bullet point-blank between the good eye and the pearl Joe couldn't bear to watch; he lay on his bunk fully dressed, zipped into his parka, and cried All of Shannenhouse's forrief at the sacrifice of the dog, and handled the grisly work of skinning and flensing and tanning hiet about Oyster and to lose hihts and the stupendous tediuainst Captain Fleer's lists He found and reearbox of the tractor's winch He waxed the skis and checked the bindings He dragged the sledges back in froain the Mountie way He cooked steak and eggs for himself and Shannenhouse He plucked the steaks fro lazed the pan hiskey He set the whiskey on fire and then blew the fire out Shannenhouse caratefully froh,” he said

Joe took his plate, sat down at the captain's desk, and, hoping to absorb frohness, typed the following state for Lt John Wesley Shannenhouse (jg) and Radioize for our presence being elsewhere and probably in all truth dead

We have confirmed an establishment of a German military and scientific base located in the Queen Maud Land, also known as Neuschwabenland This base is presently manned by one man only (See, if you please, attached transcripts, intercepted radio transmissions A-RRR, lviii44-2ix44) As there are two of us the situation see for a minute on a piece of steak The situation was far fro to harm either of them He was not a soldier It was unlikely that he had been involved in any but theof the witch's house in Terezin He had had nothing to do with the storm that blew up out of the Azores or the torpedo that had blown a hole in the hull of the Ark of Mirias had, nonetheless, made Joe want to kill sos had, nonetheless, made Joe want to kill someone, and he did not knoho else to kill

To those who quite reasonably inquire as to ourthis ain

”Johnny,” he said ”Why are you doing this?”

Shannenhouse looked up from a nine-month-old copy of All Doll All Doll Cleaned up and bearded, he looked like one of the faces that had lined the ymnasium, the portraits of past headmasters, stern and moral men untroubled by doubt Cleaned up and bearded, he looked like one of the faces that had lined the ymnasium, the portraits of past headmasters, stern and moral men untroubled by doubt

”I came here to fly airplanes,” he said

let it be not doubtful that we thought only to serve our country (adopted in my case)

Please see to the care of the men in quarters who are dead and frozen

Respectfully, Joseph Kavalier, Radioman Second Class

September 12, 1944

He pulled the sheet of paper out of the typewriter, then rolled it in again, and left it like that Shannenhouse came over to read it, nodded once, and then went back out to the Hangar to see to the plane

Joe lay down on his bunk and closed his eyes, but the sense of conclusiveness, of putting his affairs in order, which he had sought in typing up a final statearette and took a deep draft of it, and tried to clear his mind and conscience so that he could face the next day and its duties untroubled by any scruple or distraction When he had finished his smoke, he rolled over and tried to sleep, but theblue eye would not leave his mind He turned, and tossed, and tried to lull hiining that he lay floating on a black raft, on a warht There was nothing inside or outside of hi toward sleep, pouring into it like sand racing toward the neck of an hourglass In this twilit hypnogogic state he began to i, it was as if he were re it-that Oyster had been capable of speech, had possessed a sweet, cal reason and passion and concern, and that he could not now get the dead dog's voice out of his ears We had so ht What a shame that I only realized it now Then in the instant before he went under, a sharp barking sounded in his inner ear and he sat bolt upright, his heart pounding He realized that it was not the betrayed love of Oyster, but of someone far dearer and more lost to hi peace with the possibility of his own death

He crawled down to the foot of the bunk and opened his footlocker, and took out the thick sheaf of letters that he had received from Rosa after his enlistularly but steadily, fro at Newport, Rhode Island, to the navy's polar training station at Thule, Greenland, to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he had spent the fall of 1943 as the Kelvinator mission was assembled After that, as no reply fro, there had been noof a heart into a severed artery, wild and incessant at first, then sloith a kind of muscular reluctance to a stream that became a trickle and finally ceased; the heart had stopped

Now he took out the penknife that had been a gift from Thomas, and that had once saved the life of Salvador Dali, and slit open the first of the letters