The Alex Crow. Andrew Smith
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In the village? Here?”
I nodded.
The soldier shook his head. “There’s nobody left, boy. Just you. You’re a damned lucky clown.”
“Pierrot.”
The man on the right pulled the mask from his face and wiped the back of a shirtsleeve across his eyes. “I suppose if you can breathe, we might take these damn things off now.”
“The kid’s a little canary,” the second soldier said.
“Was there any food inside your refrigerator?”
“No.”
“Are you hungry?”
I tried to read his face, but there was nothing there. Only whiskers and sweat. He looked as though he hadn’t shaved or slept in days. People commonly had that look in those days—in my first life, Max.
“Yes.”
“Maybe you should come with us. There’s nothing left here, anyway. You don’t want to stay here now, clown-boy.”
“My name is Ariel,” I said.
- - -
Jacob and Natalie Burgess—my American parents—drove me and Max—my American brother—all the way from Sunday, West Virginia, just so that I could see New York City.
They did it only two days after I arrived in the United States.
It is hard to explain the strangeness of my experience. In a matter of days, I had been taken from the filthy squalor of a refugee camp, and then escorted to America aboard a military aircraft by a man named Major Knott, to the Burgesses’ home in a sauerkraut-eating and rifle-admiring hamlet in West Virginia. And then I was whisked away in an automobile with a satellite navigation system for an eight-hour ride so I could gawk in awe at the towers to the sky of New York.
Alex, our crow, came, too. He stayed inside a small plastic crate—the kind you’d keep a dog in—stowed in the cargo area of the Volvo. Alex did little more than stare and stare. The first time I saw him, I thought he was a taxidermist’s model.
On occasion, Alex would say awful things.
From his dog crate, he said, “I want to die.”
It was one of the strange side effects of Jake Burgess’s early work with de-extinction and chipping animals: The resurrected species generally was less than enthusiastic about their sequel-return to the here and now, and the chipped animals—animals that were surgically implanted with mechanical surveillance devices—often manifested extreme psychoses. Alex, our crow, did a bit of both.
Alex stayed in the car while we walked toward the river that looked across to the state of New Jersey. Natalie left a plate of spaghetti inside the crate for Alex to eat.
At the water’s edge, Father—his name was Jake Burgess—said, “This is what I wanted you to see, Ariel.”
And Father waved his arm out across the water as though he had created everything before my eyes, to direct my attention to an enormous welcoming mannequin that rose from the sea.
It was a strange thing to look at. Of course I had seen photographs of the thing before, but standing here at the edge of the continent, the thing struck me as being threatening—a type of warning. After all, the giant blue woman had sharp horns growing from her head and was holding a burning stick, the way you would hold fire to frighten ravenous predators away from you in the dark.
If I owned a house and wanted to keep myself safe from robbers, I would have someone who looked exactly like the great welcoming mannequin watching my door.
Max said, “I’m hungry.”
Mother offered, “There’s spaghetti in the car.”
“I don’t like spaghetti,” Max said.
Max was a finicky eater ever since his summer at fat camp.
Father took us to a sandwich place for lunch. Mother’s purse was stolen while we ate.
She said, “Oh dear. Our car keys were in there.”
Father’s car was towed to an impound lot, and we were stranded in New York City for two days.
Thursday, February 12, 1880 — Alex Crow
There is something morbidly fascinating in our predicament, wouldn’t you agree? To imagine the probability of our present situation was impossible. Think about it—we have created our own island, as it were; our own kingdom, phylum, and class of men who hurled themselves arrogantly against the world and became trapped like flies in pine sap. And yet with each short day and interminable night the men put themselves back out onto the ice, never flagging in their effort to control our fate.
Our last contact with humanity came with our stocking of provisions and fuel at St Lawrence Bay on 27 August, 1879. The Alex Crow became trapped in the ice pack only two weeks later. Captain Hansen maintained a strict and disciplined routine, taking constant measurements while the ice continued to drag our ship farther north toward his desired objective, the North Pole. In November, our expedition discovered a true island, which Captain Hansen claimed for the United States and named Alex Crow Island. It was with much bitterness that we watched that piece of land recede away from us and disappear from view as our other, icebound island of Alex Crow pulled us tediously onward.
We forge ahead, if nothing else, simply for the sake of doing.
The condition of Mr Warren’s hand is worsening.
It may be selfish of me (and this is very likely a confession of sorts—for is selfishness not the truest component of survival?), but having a patient to occupy my thoughts during the endless monotony aboard ship proves to be an acceptable diversion, unfortunate as it may be for the newspaperman.
I am afraid that given our circumstances I may soon become overwhelmed by such selfish diversions. Our provisions cannot last. Eventually, we will all succumb to the ice. After the last hunt on the pack ice, the native drivers of the dog teams threatened to abandon us and make an attempt for Saint Michael, their home.
Now Captain Hansen has armed guards watching the native men and their dogs. He has instructed the guards to shoot them if the dog drivers attempt to leave. The situation grows worse with each passing day.
This afternoon, an inspection revealed stresses on two of the hull’s reinforcing beams. Before departing San Francisco, the Alex Crow had been refitted with new boilers and massive crossbeams below decks in order to withstand the tests anticipated on the journey.
Nobody could rightfully foresee our five-month imprisonment.
Today, while I was rewrapping Mr Warren’s crushed hand, Murdoch said to me that he had been his entire life at sea, but had never endured such a predicament as the one we find ourselves in at this moment.
“The ship will be eaten by the sea,” he said. “I know the ship will break apart, and we will all of us be buried in ice.”
Friday, February 13, 1880 — Alex Crow
The hull of the Alex Crow gave in last night.
Murdoch came up from below and woke me by pounding on my cabin’s door.
“Doctor! Doctor!” he cried.
At first I believed there was some kind of medical emergency that required my attention, but the commotion of men as they scrambled to remove whatever could be taken from the Crow and off-loaded onto the ice that trapped us here confirmed my worst fears.
The Alex Crow is sinking.
- - -
It was when he was eighteen—a legal adult in the Land of Nonsense—that Leonard Fountain answered an advertisement to participate in a paid study by a company