The Ice Limit

'Smallpox?'

Puppup shook his head. 'Measles.'

'Ah,' Glinn said. 'My grandfather died of measles, also.' This was, in fact, true.

Puppup nodded.

'We have something else in common,' said Glinn.

Puppup looked at him sideways.

'My great-great-great-grandfather was Captain Fitzroy.' Glinn spoke the lie very carefully, keeping his eyes unmoving.

Puppup's own eyes slid back out to sea, but Glinn could see the uncertainty in them. The eyes betrayed, every time. Unless, of course, you trained them.

'Strange how history repeats itself,' he went on. 'I have an engraving of your great-great-great- grandmother, when she was a little girl, meeting the queen. It hangs in my parlor.' For the Yaghan, establishing the family connection was everything, if Glinn's reading of the ethnographic literature was correct.

As he listened, Puppup grew tense.

'John, may I see the ring again?'

Without looking at him, Puppup raised his brown hand Glinn took it gently in his own, applying a warm pressure to the palm. He had noticed the ring the first time he had seen him, drunk in the snug in Puerto Williams. It had taken his people back in New York a few days to determine what it was, and where it had come from.

'Fate is a strange thing, John. My great-great-greatgrandfather, Captain Fitzroy, of the HMS Beagle, kidnapped your great-great-great-grandmother, Fuegia Basket, and took her to England to meet the queen. And now I have kidnapped you,' he added with a smile. 'Ironic, isn't it? Except that I won't be taking you to England. Soon, you'll be home again.' It was popular in those days to bring 'primitives' back from the farthest reaches of the earth to display at court. Fuegia Basket had gone back to Tierra del Fuego on the Beagle several years later, with the bonnet and ring given her by the queen. Another passenger on that voyage had been Mr. Charles Darwin.

Although Puppup did not look at him, the opacity seemed to be fading from his eyes.

'What will happen to the ring?' Glinn asked.

'It'll stay with me into the grave.'

'No children?' Glinn already knew that Puppup was the last of the Yaghan, but he wanted to gauge the answer.

Puppup shook his head.

Glinn nodded, still holding the hand. 'Are there no others left at all?'

'A few mestizos, but I'm the last one to speak the lingo.'

'That must make you sad.'

'There's an ancient Yaghan legend, and the older I get the more I think it was meant for me.'

'What is that?'

'When the time comes for the last Yaghan to die, Hanuxa himself will draw him down into the earth. From his bones, a new race will grow.'

Glinn let go of Puppup's hand. 'And how would Hanuxa take the last Yaghan?'

Puppup shook his head. 'It's a bloody superstition, isn't it then? I don't remember the details.'

Glinn didn't push. This was the old Puppup talking again. He realized there was no way to know if he had been successful in reaching him. 'John, I need your help with Comandante Emiliano Vallenar. His presence here is a threat to our mission. What can you tell me about him?'

Puppup shook another cigarette out of the pack. 'Comandante Emiliano came down here twenty-five years ago. After the Pinochet coup.'

'Why?'

'His father fell out of a helicopter while being questioned. An Allende man. So was the son. He was posted down here to keep him at arm's length, like.'

Glinn nodded. That explained a great deal. Not only his disgrace in the Chilean navy, but his hatred of the Americans, possibly even his self-loathing as a Chilean. 'Why is he still commanding a destroyer?'

'He knows certain things about certain people, don't he? He's a good officer. And Comandante Emiliano is very stubborn. And very careful.'

'I see,' said Glinn, noting the shrewdness of Puppup's insights. 'Is there anything else about him that I should know? Is he married?'

Puppup licked the end of a new cigarette and placed it between his lips. 'The comandante is a double murderer.'

Glinn stifled his surprise by lighting the cigarette.

'He brought his wife to Puerto Williams. It's a bad place for a woman. There's nothing to do, no dances, no fiestas. During the Falklands War, the comandante was put on a long tour of duty in the Estrecho de Magallanes, keeping the Argentinian fleet pinned down for the British. When he came back, he discovered his wife had taken a lover.' Puppup took a deep drag. 'The comandante was clever. He waited until he could walk in on them, doing it, like. He cut her throat. As I heard it, he did something even worse to the man. He bled to death on the way to the hospital in Punta Arenas.'

'Why wasn't he put in prison?'

'Down here, you don't just tell your rival to sod off. Chileans have old notions of honor, don't they?' Puppup spoke very clearly, very matter-of-factly. 'If he had killed them outside the bedroom, it would have been different. But...' He shrugged. 'Everyone understood why a man who saw his wife like that would do what he did. And that's another reason why the comandante kept his command so long.'

'Why is that?'

'He's a man who might do anything.'

Glinn paused a moment, looking out across the channel at the destroyer. It hung there, motionless, dark. 'There's something else I must ask you,' he said, his eyes still on the warship. 'That merchant in Punta Arenas, the one you sold the prospector's equipment to. Would he remember you? Would he be able to identify you, if asked?'

Puppup seemed to think for a minute. 'Can't say,' he answered at last. 'It was a big shop. Then again, there aren't many Yaghan Indians in Punta Arenas. And we had quite a bargaining session.'

'I see,' said Glinn. 'Thank you, John. You've been very helpful.'

'Speak nothing of it, guv'nor,' said Puppup. He looked sidelong at Glinn, eyes sparkling with shrewdness and amusement.

Glinn thought quickly. Sometimes it was best to confess a lie immediately. If done properly, it could breed a perverse kind of trust.

'I'm afraid I haven't been entirely honest with you,' he said. 'I know a lot about Captain Fitzroy. But he isn't actually my ancestor.'

Puppup cackled unpleasantly. 'Of course not. No more than Fuegia Basket was mine.'

A gust of bitter Wind tore at Glinn's collar. He glanced over at Puppup. 'How did you get the ring then?'

'With us Yaghans, so many died that the last one left inherited the lot. That's how I got the bonnet and the ring, and just about everything else.' Puppup continued gazing at Glinn in a bemused way.

'What happened to it all?'

'Sold most of it. Drank the proceeds.'

Glinn, startled again at the directness of the response, realized he hadn't even begun to understand the Yaghan. 'When this is over,' the old man added, 'you'll have to take me with you, wherever you're going. I can't go back home again.'

'Why not?' But even as he asked the question, Glinn realized he already knew the answer.

Rolvaag,

11:20 P.M.

MCFARLANE WALKED down the blue-carpeted corridor of the lower bridge deck. He was bone tired, yet he