Chapter 64
It was the end of Febre, the second month of 941 AM.
The Sunray, restored with great care, stood parked next to a larger carrier jet in the cover of a jutting cliff.
An endless, flat, white desert of ice and snow surrounded the ships. The wind blew biting cold. At least, Darc thought, there were no human remains sticking up from the ice, as in his dream. The real land, hundreds of meters below the sea of ice, was virtually impossible to reach.
He had recently encountered a local group of natives - the tribes who called themselves Inuit, living just like their ancestors in these barren wastes. This land now belonged to them. The Inuit called it "Jukei", a name carried down from the last remaining people who perished in it.
Jukei... U.K. ... United Kingdom... England... Britain... Albion. Many names for one land. Heavily dressed in fur coats and thick boots, Darc shuddered and chattered his teeth; the chill came from within. How many previous times had the ice claimed his homeland? How many times had its name changed?
One day, he thought, England shall be green again - but not in my lifetime.
A metallic voice interrupted his thoughts: "Where do you want me to put this, Sir Darc?"
Lachtfot came marching up from the Sunray, dragging a loaded sled. The robot wore snowshoes on its heavy feet, just like Darc did; and after Lachtfot trudged Shara, mouth steaming, her fur-clad arms folded together.
"Just put the stone down, here." Darc pointed at a spot of naked rock.
They were walking on the peak of the Pennine Chain, the only part of the British Isles not completely covered by ice. The robot pushed the thick stone slab off the sled, overturned it, and rested it upright on the spot. It had been cut out of the nearby rock the very same day.
On the slab, two meters tall, Darc had inscribed with a laser-knife:
______________
A.R.Yngve
DARC AGES
Book Three
______________
Arctic grave
(1993 - ? )
POWERS ARCHIBALD
(1991 - ? )
KEPT IN LOVING MEMORY BY THEIR FATHER, DAVID ARCHIBALD
(1963 - )
The slab was thicker at the base; it might stand upright for centuries, until it too became covered by ice. Darc walked over to the slab, pulled away his fur hood and let his thick head of white hair flutter in his face.
He looked down at the dark rock below the slab and tried to picture his children's faces, the few years of their lives he had seen.
But he could barely remember what they had looked like.
Silent, unmoving, he started to weep. He did not feel the wind, the tears that nearly froze on his cheeks, or Shara embracing his waist. After a time, he sensed her presence.
"I can't forget them, Shara," he said. "It's as if they went away just last year. But I keep forgetting all the important things about them, detail after detail... and worst of all..."
Shara held on tighter to him, stroking his face with one glove, until he could finish: "I cannot stop hoping for the impossible. I lived; perhaps they also did. Maybe, somewhere in the world, there are other frozen people waiting to be found..."
He turned to face her up close. She was weeping too, but there was mostly anger in those black, deep eyes of hers.
"Why can't you stop torturing yourself?" she said. "The past is gone and buried! Even if you found them one day, and brought them back to life, they would have aged... you have changed... you would be strangers to each other. You should think of us, you and me, and Eye-Leg, and Dohan, and Meijji, and Claw, and the Lepers - the people here, now! We all need you! I need you!"
"I need you," he replied.
They stood there for a while, slowly rekindling the fire between them, letting the world run its course. Mourning, after all, could only last so long, only claim so much attention.
And so they walked back toward the waiting ships, and the world. Darc was already dreaming of their destination, Amreca, and his plan to form a union of city-states there. That would be the best way to ensure stability, during the long process of curing all Lepers and making them fullworthy citizens.
An Amrecan federation of city-states, with a constitution, a flag... and an anthem. Darc had all the time in the world to pick a suitable piece of music, but he had narrowed it down to a few choices.
The King would always be the King, but in his youth Darc had slightly preferred the bombast of the singer Meat Loaf; he could still remember almost every word of his best songs.
What would it be - "Bat Out Of Hell", "Dead Ringer For Love", or why not "Modern Girl"?
This time, Darc told himself, this time we are going to do it right.
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