The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 126

would seem that he did love Cleopatra, with passionate foolishness, and knew that she did not love him, or would not. Grandfather said he was like Saint Andrew. That was a compliment, and sharp judgment: Andrew, the simplest and most muscular disciple, crucified by the Romans on a cross in the shape of an X, the patron saint of Rusland and Scotland, therefore a Norse saint. Grootgibeon might have been a plain hero, bold, guileless, obedient; or he might have been a clumsy follower, thickheaded, impressionable, spontaneous. He does seem to represent the contradiction of those who aspired to sainthood in the South. There were many like him, quick to fight, slow to think. Lazarus might have described Grootgibeon’s nature best when he said that a good man who determines to fight for dignity and then gets angry will become a moral monster, possessed. And was Grootgibeon limitless? That was determined by his luck.

Grootgibeon was assigned to Ice Cross sea duty, the command of a white cutter. Cleopatra honored her bargain with Grandfather and persuaded Grootgibeon to include Grandfather, Gizur Sail-Maker, Skyeless, and Tall Troll in his crew. This is a clue that Israel’s rashness had tainted Guy, Earle, and Peregrine, along with Thord and Orri. Grootgibeon was assigned a patrol east of the Drake Passage. He ran the Scotia Sea several times that summer, into the fall, once to the Falklands in the aftermath of a battle on Tierra del Fuego. It was then that Grandfather got ashore on Mead’s Kiss to carve his second message. It was all he could do, because of the plague ships.

I have not emphasized the seaport plague to this point, because I never saw it. It did exist. I have heard too many reports from too many different sources, over too long a time, for it to have been a rumor. I do believe that the threat of the plague is what moved so many wretches to dare the Scotia Sea. The plague, more than the volcanoes, would explain the panic on Elephant Island the first summer my family spent there, would explain the growth of the camps throughout the South Shetlands the second summer they spent there, trapped by Israel’s rebellion, separated from Grootgibeon and Grandfather by war. The wretches must have been told, or learned by rumor, that the ice camps were plague-free, that the camps offered health care and food for the broken and malnourished. More, there was the attraction that the ice camps were said to be administered by the Church. Grandfather told one gruesome anecdote about the Church and the plague. He said that he saw that summer a thousand-mile-long coastline under quarantine, and that he also saw several ships commanded by priests like Father Saint Stephen that ran the blockade into the infected areas. They knew there was no return, and yet they had to be shot out of the water.

Grootgibeon was ordered to winter his ship at one of the new camps on King George Island, thus prevented from getting back to help Cleopatra and my family. Grandfather emphasized to me that he convinced Grootgibeon to winter instead on Greenwich Island, cut by the sixtieth meridian, because Grandfather was certain that one day Grim Fiddle would come south on that heading. Grandfather had by then become Grootgibeon’s confessor; he used his familiarity with Cleopatra in order to bend him. Grandfather would not elaborate on his relationship with Grootgibeon; he preferred to speak of their deeds. I speculate that Grandfather gave Grootgibeon the strength of mind he lacked, and that Grootgibeon gave Grandfather the strength of arm he lacked. As Grandfather bartered with Cleopatra, he came to barter with whomever was necessary. I write with pity. Grandfather’s weapons were his will and his magical voice. He was prepared to, and did, forge a pact with violent nature, violent man, deranged politics, anything that would help him achieve his heart’s desire. He said he did not bargain with Satan, however; repeated this to me like a chant. Would he have? He did not.

The Birth of the

Hielistos

The Bransfield Strait was filled with the first of the black-ice islands that winter, because of the volcanoes. The eruptions could kill then, a toxin in the fumes that I would witness much later. This poison augured another kind: Privateers came to the South.

The privateers originated because the republics of the South who had signed the Treaty of Good Hope did not genuinely trust New Benthamite diplomacy but could not hope to match the might of the warships from the North. Therefore they in effect hired the pirates who were already preying upon the fleet of the damned, provided them with sophisticated stores and logistics, and dispatched them across the South Atlantic in order to promote their chauvinist interests. Of course, it was folly for the republics of the South to believe—and perhaps they did not—that pirates would do anything but continue to pillage and murder, even with clandestine support by nation states. In the Antarctic, this soon meant that the privateers turned to attacking the Ice Cross and raiding the ice camps. And why? For food and goods, yes, and also for the serpentine strategy of the republican masters; but there was also treasure. Many wretches did carry gold and gems. I know; I have filled caves with the stuff in my time, as useless to me as it was to those privateers.

The threat of the privateers probably explains why Grootgibeon wintered away from Elephant Island—to defend the perimeter from raiders. It also explains the gradual transformation of the Ice Cross in 1998 and 1999 into a war fleet. The privateers were said to be responsible for the first massacres on the ice. (Grandfather said that Golgotha was built on the ashes of an American Quaker camp.) And significantly, the privateers had many bases across the Southern Ocean, from Bouvet Island to Thule in the South Sandwich group to Cape Adare in the Ross Sea, yet there was one group