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 at attention in watertight silos, theoretically capable intercepting missiles from demonized peoples with the syncopated insertion and twist of a few cold keys.
