Project: Ice Worm

The Americans had planned, at the height of the Cold War, to dig 2,500 miles of tunnels underneath Greenland’s interior for the purpose of deploying nuclear missiles. The army engineers got hundreds of miles set up, but after few years the glacier ice started reclaiming the space, a lot faster than the engineers had anticipated. The project was officially disbanded after just five years and three hundred miles, most of it remaining top secret for decades. Ice core samples taken from those tunnel excavations are still used in climate change science today.

A second top secret program under the carnival barker found the Americans trying to reconstruct and expand the tunnels they had laid out more than sixty years earlier. Global warming had just started having a noticeable-at-the-human scale impact on the interior. That project was abandoned too, but the tunnels were stronger.

-Eventually, they were taking over by these giant wolves, the Lieutenant General continued, bringing Wally into a briefing room to show him a map of the tunnels and photos of the wolves. They had left Sid behind with a young NCO he found who was a Mets fan too.

-Yes, I recognize these. The Inuit call it the Amarok.

-No, these are new, Gladstone said. From the nuclear waste. The B-52 crash.

-Yes, Wally said, I guess you were surprised I surmised that, but we’ve found them on Elsmere Island, where they’re displacing the Adlet.

-Adlet?

-Yes, eh? That’s a mythic half-dog, half-man creature from Inuit mythology.

-There were no nuclear tests on Elsmere Island.

-No there weren’t. It’s an ancient creature, which had been limited to a remote area until the thaw started.

-Right, Gladstone said. He was old enough to remember when climate change was a hoax, too. Now it was a primary mission of the space force.

Wally walked over to the map.

-How far have the wolves gotten?

-We’ve got teams down there ascertaining that currently, Gladstone said. There’s some people I’d like you to meet, he added. What did you learn about the cookie company’s meddling when you were in Qaanaaq?

-It sounds like they bungled it top to bottom.

-And the second team?

-Drug addicts, I’ve been told.

-No, not at all, Gladstone said as he walked Wally over to a door at the rear of the briefing room.

-These are the men from the cookie company. There were only two of them. The third, Wally gathered, had been torn in half in the cave.

They had been led there through the tunnels, the Lieutenant General explained, by Joseph Nanook, an agency asset in Greenland before it withdrew when the American government first announced its new inclusion policy for the world’s largest island it had its sight on publicly again.

Gladstone insisted Nanook hadn’t been actively working for them when he was contacted by the cookie company, and didn’t approach them about the work until he showed up at the entrance of a tunnel three miles from the base.

-Is he here? Wally asked hopefully.

-He should b shortly. He’s been in the tunnels with one of the teams. He’s helped us map out a lot of what you’d just seen. We called them back up for your arrival.

-Yes I’d love to talk to him.

Gladstone told the cookie company men to fill Wally in on what the company had been doing. They had bought the parcels at the behest of the Danish government, which had known about the tunnel entrances because of the long-enduring transatlantic alliance. The Danes put pressure on the government in Greenland to offer those particular parcels, in one of the last things they managed to do before the Greenlandic government expelled them and declared their full autonomy.

It had never been about mineral deposits. The cookie company was supposed to map the tunnels ahead of a plan to deploy a small colony of robots and their human handlers underground. The Montroses were to be the first two, but when they disappeared, the second team was sent to begin a thorough mapping immediately. They didn’t like Joseph Nanook, and left him behind on the first run. They were attacked by a mutant wolf and one of them had been ripped in half.

-What a mess, Wally said. Thankfully, he knew the Americans were here to the rescue.

-Do you have any ideas about what to do?

Wally couldn’t believe Lieutenant General Gladstone was asking him that. What did he know? He was just a cryptozoologist. He watched. He had one idea but he’d have to see the mutant wolves up close to know.

Wally’s view toward America was complicated. He grew up when relations between the U.S. and Canada were frosty. Things began to change when he got to Bates. He liked Maine a lot, even though the people always told him it wasn’t what most of America was like. But it was starting to turn into that. At first, it seemed it was the Canadians turning more American, but eventually it was clear it was a bit of both. It had been a hopeful thing. America had unexpectedly taken a lead on responding to global change, once the problem was so far gone it was matter of engineering as much as policy.

Then there was the integration of Mexico, which moved the border further south while pumping billions of dollars into Mexico’s economies to bring their states up to par for accession. The Americans had taken the EU playbook on enlargement and adapted it for the American continent. It’s how Campeche became the 55th state.

Now Wally stood face to face to this American lieutenant general, who had laid out a fairly horrifying story about American ineptitude and mutant wolves and European subterfuge in tunnels underneath the interior, and didn’t seem to know what to do about it.

-I mean, Wally began, no, not really. He paused. Cover the tunnel entrances?

The two cookie company men fidgeted in their seats.

-They suggested the same, Gladstone said. Our engineers have already been working on a way to cover the tunnels.

-What did Joseph Nanook know about the wolves?

-He’s the only one who’s taken down one of the mutant wolves, one of the cookie company men said.

-What a mess, Wally said, repeating himself.

-He’s probably still wearing its skin, the other cookie company man said.

Naturally, just then Nanook walked in, wearing an unmarked space force uniform.

-I don’t like being talked about, he said to the two seated men before greeting Gladstone.

He brought Nanook over to Wally and introduced them.

-When you took down the big wolf, Wally asked, did you find his hair easy to pull out?

-Yes, Joseph said, raising an eyebrow at the question.

-Have you seen them vomit?

-Yes, Joseph said. You know they’re dying.

-From radiation poison, Wally said. Does he?

-I do, Gladstone said.

-Well then, Wally began, you don’t need me to tell you the problem will take care of itself then, eh?

-It’s good to hear, in any case. They’re not going to mutate more, right?

-No, no, that’s comic book logic, Wally laughed. Americans love comic books.

Then Wally remembered the dogs

-The dogs in Qaanaaq. They must’ve found a mutant wolf.

-Dogs wouldn’t go into the interior, Gladstone pointed out.

-Then they’re coming out.

-They can still cause a lot of damage before they die.

The three looked at each other. The two men at the table fidgeted. No one was sure what to say.

-I should go back to Qaanaaq, Joseph said finally. They won’t like having military around.

-We can put a fence up, Gladstone said. Or big wall.

Big walls, Wally thought. Old solutions.