The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 143

right. That is a certainty to embrace relentlessly, a vigilant philosophy. In this case, though, it would seem that what men have done—wrong or right—they in their overweening pride presume they can do again, wrong or right. Who are these Reunionists? Their philosophy, expanding from the scraps fed me by Diomedes, seems as smug and superficial as that of the New Benthamites. They seem opportunists more than revisionists. Grim Fiddle smells the stink of sanctimoniousness.

I exhaust myself. It feels fine, though, to sweat out my bile. And my fear. I have found the wherewithal for this outburst. Perhaps I have resources I have long underestimated. This does not mean that I do not trust my own measure. I have made a profound decision. Its finality gives me calm for now, though I know it will not last. I have paused to explain my contempt for the Reunionists, and their hollow campaign to resurrect Grim Fiddle, because I spy them clearly from the vantage of a set course. Such disgusts me, yet less so than the thought of being plucked from my grave to be carried on the shoulders of opportunism as a hero. I hate the lie as I love the truth. It is my torment that I am confronted now by two lies, neither more terrible than the other. I have chosen.

I shall take my own life. I cannot say when. Before, that is enough. Gardiner has not returned since Christmas morning. I do not expect him until the reading of my sentence after the new year. Then there is the onus of the next supply ship, which might, no, certainly will, bring another letter from Diomedes about the Reunionists. This gives me at least a fortnight to press my flesh smooth, to make peace in my mind, to get my heart’s prison all in order. I shall make more specific arrangements then, how to do it, at what moment—sunrise and sunset being impossible in the land of the midnight sun. I am sure now of this one thing: I will not let them have me. I have nothing left but this, my life. I want to keep it. I do not want to die. Yet I shall not bargain with fate. It is my life my way or not whatsoever. I shall not surrender myself to my deathless enemy, the lies of tyrants, the politics of falsehood. It is a lie to take one’s own life, I know, and suicide will undoubtedly prejudice my final judgment. That is understatement. I shall risk this prejudice rather than give comfort to my enemies. This smacks of self-sacrifice. That might be part of it. I am primarily thinking of myself. Either I take me, or they will.

I am in panic, I can feel that. I can also see that I might have transformed Diomedes’s letter into a phantasm of persecution. Yet I have no time for patient reconsideration. I must anticipate. Diomedes has been gone four years. There is no knowing how long he delayed writing me about the Reunionists, or how long the Reunionists have been conspiring against me. It is good tactic in conflict to presume the very worst. Therefore, though I have just learned of my peril, I presume the Reunionists are poised as I write. There must be no delay. I learned long ago to trust my luck. As Peregrine said, without misfortune there is no fortune at all. I trust now that my twenty-nine years here in solitude and reflection have been good luck. I trust now that my luck will go bad unless I act decisively.

It does not interest me to defend my decision further. There is a maddening sidebar. I cannot and should not now expect that anyone will ever read this manuscript. I must prepare myself to destroy it before I destroy myself, for fear the Reunionists, deprived of a false scapegoat by me, can take my confession and twist it to hold up their pious robes. What bitterness, and yet perhaps such a comedy as this deserves the jest of remaining untold.

I can do what I will, then, a freed prisoner. I could choose fear and self-pity and sleep. I shall not. I shall rush to complete my story as well as I can. I shall write pell-mell. I have the time to Diomedes’s next letter.

C

HAPTER

THE

L

AST

THE PEOPLE’S

REPUBLIC OF

ANTARCTICA

My Crimes

I RULED Anvers Island absolutely for six years. The length of my reign over what I call the Kingdom of Ice is more in question. In my construction as self-elected regent, the Kingdom of Ice was seeded by the exodus of several hundred thousand wretches into the Antarctic over the decade of epic ruin that closed the twentieth century; was given life by me and my company one black winter of corruption and murder on Anvers Island; was given shape and strength over five years of piracy, murder-raiding, and all-out war against the Ice Cross; was elevated to youthful grandeur over another black, hallucinatory winter marked by madness in the camps, colossal eruptions through the South Shetlands chain, and the collapse and capitulation of the Ice Cross; and was finally cut down and dismembered at the close of its sixth year, early summer, not by a blade wielded by its enemies but by the tongues of its counselors, and particularly its queen.

I should give voice to my defamers, who were finally the tribunal that condemned me. Some said that the idea of my Kingdom of Ice, and the kingdom itself, was a ruse, said that I was never a king, as my archipelago state was never sovereign. Instead, I was said to be a warlord, a guerrilla chieftain who gathered to himself the title of king in order to aggrandize his outlaw horde and to chain to his throne the people of the ice camps. I was said to be a sham king who deliberately promoted himself as regent over a geography that was