Angakkuq

Wally had been hoping to meet with Joseph Nanook, who some people called Nanny, when he’d first read about what was going on. The reports described Nanny as the cookie company’s local liaison, the sherpa, to mix terminologies and inclines, to their parcels in the interior. As far as Wally could tell, Joseph had fashioned himself a medicine man, while the cookie company thought they meant he was a scientist.

He visited the Nanooks, who were a husky and pale family, as if they lived only in the polar winters, and was made up of a matriarch and her husband, two adult children, a cousin who traveled a lot, and Joseph, an adult child in both senses of the word. He only lived with them occasionally, staying somewhere on the other side of town, which was only a stone throw’s away anyway. They didn’t want to talk to Wally. The people in town had the grace never to bring Joseph up to the Nanooks unless they did it themselves first.

Wally promised them he wasn’t with anyone important, and that he was only interested in Joseph’s experiences, as he put it, in the interior, which he was studying, he said, for ecological purposes. The mother stood at the door suspiciously, letting him in only after he promised he wouldn’t share anything with anyone.

What she let did him share was that little Joe was always a troubled boy. He had a fondness for animals. He studied biochemistry but dropped out. He started going out into the interior as a teenager. There was a set of caves he’d lived in over the course of several summers. He’d never stayed this late in the season. Wally could tell they were worried, though they never said it. He had found the caves when he was a kid and claimed that they were tunnels. Wally had to convince the Nanooks to let him share that information. He explained his own work in Canada, the part about the on cryptids and tunnels. The Nanooks were impressed that Wally hadn’t simply decided to ignore their wishes and told who he wanted.

On Elsmere Island Wally had been convinced the Adlets had dug a system of underground tunnels, and that was how they’d been able to expand their territory so quickly. The team had flown some drones with X-ray capabilities to try to map the underground but evidence of tunnels was inconclusive. Wally also thought this was how the Amarok had gotten to the interior in Elsmere Island. More and more, Wally was convinced there was a whole cryptid war happening under the ground in Elsmere Island.

Joseph had shown his brother and sister the tunnels before but they weren’t there. It was char season and the brother was out in the bay fishing. The sister was at the museum. The mother suggested Wally wait. They had just started preparing lunch. Wally was too excited about the tunnels. He wanted to get back to the hotel, where Dedrik had let him set up his 3-D printer in the back. It would have been done with the snowmobile by now.

Joseph’s sister showed up at the hotel after her mother told her about Wally’s visit. He had set up the printer in a closet off to the side in the lobby.

-Are you going into the interior to look for the caves? she asked him as she stood in the doorway.

-What’s that, eh? Yeah, I am, Wally said, looking at her quizzically. I’m Wally Woodbine, I’m sorry I’m out of cookies.

-Yeah, she said, mom told me about you. You should have stayed for lunch. She thought it was something she had said. The food here’s not so good anyway, she added, looking around the lobby of the hotel.

-I had a chance at breakfast this morning, it was good.

-Your mother didn’t tell me your name.

-Vaan. Vaan Nanook. So she says you’re trying to go see the tunnels?

-What’s that, eh? I never told her that, but yeah, I am.

-So it was something she said, Vaan laughed.

-Only because I’m excited to see them, he said as he started to pull the snowmobile out of the closet. He had measured the closet and this was the biggest snowmobile he could print and get through the door.

-On that? Vaan asked, pointing at the 3-D printed snowmobile.

-It’s a lot faster than it looks. A lot.

-Well, Vaan said. These people, she thought, who always think they can replace what they ought to know with what they have. There seemed to be more of them coming all the time.

-I don’t know quite how to get there, Wally admitted.

-Mom told you to wait. Joseph took Malik and me plenty of times.

-Do you ever go to visit Joseph?

-Not since he started cooking his own medicine.

-Does that he do that out there?, Wally asked, nodding his head in the direction of the windows facing the interior.

-It’s a lot safer, for him and for everyone else.

-There can’t be 500 people in this town, Wally began with astonishment.

-There’s almost 800, Vaan snapped back. Your kind.

-Is that who buys it?, Wally asked, choosing to ignore the comment.

-No, Vaan said. He doesn’t cook it to---, she began before stopping herself. Who do you work for anyway?

-Like I told your mother, I’m a, uh, scientist with the Canadian government. We’re interested in what the cookie company did here, and its impact on the environment.

-Right, well, Joseph doesn’t cook it to sell. Do you know how fast the drug guys would come down on him? It’s medicine.

-What is it for?

-You’ll have to ask him yourself.

-Will you take me to him?

-I don’t think I can fit on that thing, she said, kicking the snowmobile again, Wally having dragged it out through the lobby to the entrance by this time.

They did fit on the thing, which was faster than it looked, like Wally had said. The town had its own 3D printer, but it only printed pre-set configurations, none of which included any kind of snow vehicle. There wasn’t much interest in going into the interior except from the newcomers and the thrill seekers.

On their way in, Wally thought he could’ve found Joseph on his own, or at least the way Leffer must have went. Each of the faded trails they took at a fork seemed like the easiest one. Wally asked Vaan if they were going also in the direction Leffer was found. She told him they were.

Wally could see the caves in the distance, four holes into the ground, that looked like a giant had slid his fingers on an incline into the ground and then pulled it up. Vaan pointed at one of the caves, where Joseph would be. They found only traces of him there. Evidence of a campfire. Markings on the wall. An empty storage box. And in the back, a precipitous drop.

-That’s the tunnel isn’t it?

Vaan nodded.

-Did you or any of your siblings ever go down there?

-Joseph might have. With the wolves.

-The wolves?

-Who live there.

Wally stared at her. He explained about his theory of underground tunnels on Elsmere Island.

-It’s dogs there.

-The ground is getting softer as the seasons get warmer.

-The wolves didn’t dig these, the American government did. Long ago.

They moved through the caves. The next one was empty, but in the third they found what Wally had read about in the reports attributed to Laffer back in Qaanaaq, a body split in half. It had been wrapped with a body remover, the top half still containing the latches.

In the fourth one they found a wolf. Vaan shot at it from her hip and he went running into the tunnel.

-I didn’t know you were armed.

They returned to the cave where the two pieces of a body laid. They attached the top to the snowmobile, and tried to find a way to bring the other half with them too. They tried to connect the latch from the top half of the body remover surrounding the body to the bottom half but it wouldn’t hold.

-There’s no rush, Vaan finally said. We can return tomorrow.

-I have to get to the space base. I was hoping to take advantage of their open-door policy but it’s getting a bit urgent, eh?

-I can return on my own for the other half, Vaan offered. We have a snowmobile.

-Where do you think Joseph is?

-In another cluster of caves I guess. Joseph found a lot of them.

They returned to town in silence, the half-body dragging behind them, and brought it to the hospital.

It had been one of the cookie company men. The doctors also told Wally the dogs had died. They had started puking and wouldn’t stop. The results from Ilulissat came back inconclusive, and the bodies were brought back on the same helicopter that brought the results.