CONRAD'S QUEST FOR RUBBER

Chapter Seventeen

From the Diary of Josip Sobieski

WRITTEN FEBRUARY 4, 1249, CONCERNING JUNE 12, 1248

A FEW days later, while we were sitting around a fire, Taurus said, 'I've been thinking about those deer people, and you know, I don't think that they were herding the deer after all.'

'So?' Sir Odon said. 'Just what do you think they were doing?'

'I think that they were following the deer. I mean, think about it. They weren't ahead of the animals, they were behind them at all times. When the animals moved, they moved, and they didn't dare stop, for fear of being left behind. When the deer stopped for a while, they could stop, too, and try to talk to us. You could see that they were curious about us, and they were friendly enough. But when the deer started to move again, they packed up everything in a hurry and left. I think they did that because they had to do that. They eat the deer, they wear the deer, and they ride behind the deer. I'd be willing to bet that they protect the deer as well. Without the deer, they would be absolutely nothing! So they must follow them wherever they go.'

Sir Odon thought awhile and said, 'You know, that's almost crazy enough to be the truth! To think that a whole tribe of people are in effect enslaved to a herd of deer! Amazing!'

'But are the people really the slaves?' Father John said. 'It is the deer that are slaughtered and eaten. It is the deer that pull the sleighs. And I'll tell you, I examined some of those sleigh draft animals, and they were castrated males. Do masters permit their slaves to castrate them?'

'But it is the deer who decide where both the herd and the tribe are going,' Sir Odon said.

Zbigniew said, 'Maybe the people don't care where they're going, as long as the deer are there. Perhaps the deer know best where the better grazing is to be found. I mean, who would know better than a deer where the best food for a deer is?'

'I suppose so,' Sir Odon said. 'But it is still one of the strangest relationships that I have ever witnessed.'

'I can tell you have never met Komander Sliwa,' Lezek said. 'He has six wives and everybody in the family is happy. Now, there is a strange relationship!'

A few days later we found the iron deposit. At first all we saw were several small mines that must have been used sporadically by native blacksmiths. They were little more than holes in the ground, actually, and scattered over several square miles.

But then, when Father John noticed that the ore from all of the mines was identical, he suggested that the whole area must have a huge seam of iron ore under it. We dug a half-dozen small pits, and found iron in every one of them!

We spent a further three weeks at the site, digging dozens of holes to define just how big the thing was, and digging a deep hole in the center of it, like a well, to find out how thick the ore seam was. Any way we figured it, there was more iron available than the army could use in three hundred years!

We surveyed the area, and sketched in some grandiose plans for equipment to mine and clean the ore, and then started to work our way back, making preliminary drawings for a series of canals and locks to get the ore down the river to the Baltic.

We were all vastly excited about the possibilities ahead of us, because according to the army policy statement concerning explorers, we would all be getting a percentage of the profits of the mine. Not a huge percentage, but as Kiejstut put it, 'A small part of infinity is still very large!'

Our plans called for specially built steamships, designed to hold bulk cargoes of coke or iron ore, to run between the Vistula and the Torne, with steel-making plants at the mouths of both rivers. Coke from Poland would be shipped to the plant on the Torne, and then the ships would be filled with iron ore to be shipped back to Poland. It would be a most efficient operation!

We then discovered there were four seasons up there in the north. They were June, July, August, and winter.

By the time we made it back to our base camp, three months had gone by. The short northern summer was over, and the rivers were all frozen over. We suddenly realized that our carefully drawn plans for two gross miles of canals and locks were all a waste of time! If they were built, they would be useless for most of the year.

So we started all over, and this time we designed a railroad. Fortunately, we could use the same surveys, and do the design work at our base camp, which was wonderful, since we again had some variety in our meals. For the last six weeks, while on the trail, we had been eating nothing but fresh venison, and even that delight became very tiresome after a while.

Our radio messages concerning our find were well-received on the ship, and as they were getting back to Poland every month, we heard that Lord Conrad was pleased with us. It seems that the seam of magnetite at Three Walls was almost depleted, and another source of high-grade iron ore was urgently needed. We were now certain that our discovery would not be ignored.

On less important topics, our garden had been surprisingly productive, considering that it had only about five weeks of growing season. When we got back, we found a half acre of plants that had matured, but were mostly frost-killed and rotted. The potatoes, beets, and other root crops could be salvaged, but little else was saved.

Nonetheless, the long days of sunlight did allow for a decent enough harvest, except for the fact that a farmer would have to do all of his work, from plowing to harvest, in only five weeks, and it didn't seem likely that a man could make a living that way. Maybe gardening would be a hobby for some of the workers at the steel plant we would build here.

We made a few quick excursions back up the river, to check on a few alternate railroad routes and to bring back more samples of the ore for the metallurgists, but for the most part, the balance of our year on the Torne was spent at our base camp.

Once, coming back from the ore site, we crossed the tracks of the deer people, but we didn't meet any of them. We found out later, over the radio, that they had been contacted by two of the other explorer lances, southwest of there, toward Sweden. Hopefully, the others would learn more about those strange people than we had.

Before the Baltic froze over, a few people from the ship dropped by, to pick up our ore samples, along with our maps and drawings, and drop off some fresh fruits and vegetables, but army policy was that an explorer lance should spend at least a year at a site, so we did.

Once it became really cold, having the cave was a godsend. It was pleasantly warm in there compared to what it was outside.

A cave stays the same temperature all year around. This temperature is the average of all the outside temperatures in the area over the past several years. At least, that's what our data showed once we'd collected it over a year.

In fact, recording the temperature, along with the weather and the time the sun rose and set, was about all we did for the last six months in camp. Cooking, eating, and sleeping were the only other things we had to do besides writing up what had happened the summer before.

I expanded my notes to cover my entire life up to then. That is to say, this is when I wrote most of the journal you now hold, although now that I've gotten this far, I think I might continue with it.

At the Winter Solstice, the opposite of the Midnight Sun happened. One day the sun never does come up. But you cannot celebrate something that doesn't happen, so we didn't.

We tried trapping fur-bearing animals, using traps we made according to one of the manuals we had with us. Either there weren't any animals to be trapped or we didn't know what we were doing, or both, but the project was not successful.

We did find a large bear, or rather, he found us. Apparently, the cave had been his winter home, and he vigorously objected to our possession of it. This was only fair, since we objected to his repossession of the premises with even greater vigor. The bear made it all the way through the doorway before dying with over a dozen bullets in him. Bear meat was a refreshing change from venison, and we made his pelt into a rug.