By early autumn,
their progress was blocked by thickening layers of ice. Each
day was a coal-black night in which they hovered in a wooden
hull creaking as if its nails were being painfully pried out.
This unworldly Cagean chorus could make one worship indigenous
gods!
When summer
finally arrived, and the ice still refused to crack, unwilling
to face
another winter, the crew disembarked and trudged south,
pulling like dray horses boats packed with the tons of material
civilized
people need to value
themselves, over hundreds of miles
of high pressure
|
There are
nights when I can't sleep for the gut-wrenching fear that the
door is being forced open by expanding fingers of ice.
ridges, wearing worn-out
boots and ragged clothes. When their food gave out, not knowing
how to hunt, they killed, hacked, and ate their own. Those
who survived longer usually froze and died; but sometimes a
few made it through.
|
Recurved bows invented
in Asia were packed across the Bering Strait, an advanced
technology used to conquer the strong and swift-footed Tuniit,
who "were
capable of hunting caribou by running them down. To accomplish
this feat, they slept with their feet in the air. This drained
the blood from the feet, making them lighter and therefore
capable of faster movement.”
On tundra already littered
with the rusting machinery from previous wars, now
their arrows stand in watertight silos,
theoretically capable intercepting missiles from demonized
peoples with the syncopated insertion and twist of a few
cold keys.
|