Kolymsky Heights Read Free

in her eighteenth year when she fell into the crevasse and broke her neck. She had eaten a recent meal of fish, and had more with her in a large deerhide bag. The bag had been on a sled, which she was drawing, and the tusk (one quarter of a tusk, the terminal curved portion) was attached to the sled as one of its runners; its twin had evidently broken off and fallen farther into the crevasse on impact. The force of the impact had dislodged the load on the sled and distributed it around and above her upper body, giving the impression of bulk and length we had noticed.
    She had fallen on her left side, with the left arm (she was a left-hander) outstretched, perhaps in an attempt to protect her unborn child. This child, responsible for the pronounced ‘bulge’, would have given her a difficult delivery in any case for its head was very large: its father plainly of Neanderthaloid stock (not the specialised Neanderthal of Europe but the earlier more generalised form with higher vaulting to the skull – its European successor being in this respect a throwback; evolution does not proceed along straight lines).
    Apart from the broken arm and neck she was otherwise uninjured. She had frozen rapidly, brain damage being minimal. And she was perfect. And also perfectly whole: lips, tongue, flesh, organs (her digestive ones indeed arrested while at work on the fish) all healthily fresh: quick frozen. There was even saliva in her mouth. Apart from her height she seemed in all respects of absolutely modern type. And yet, in all respects, she was not. Of which, more later.
    Now two things must be said. Of all inhabited lands on earth this region, of prehistoric ice, is the only one where such a find could be made. Next, it was made at precisely the moment when use could be made of it – although ouroperations have been very careful and she is barely blemished. I cannot bring myself to disfigure her.
    I look at her often. She is still in my tunnel, serene and detached in time, for ever in her eighteenth year. You will see her. So, the end of one long chain of chance and the beginning of another – this most momentous other, the reason you are here.
    I do not doubt, in connection with this, that you will have many things to tell me. Well, I await them.
    And now to begin.

1
    At ten to nine on a June morning, a shining and brilliant morning that promised a day of great heat, a lady of sixty-three cycled through the streets of Oxford.
    She cycled slowly, corpulent and majestic as some former Queen of the Netherlands, sun hat bobbing, flowered dress billowing. Up and around churned the floral thighs until, turning into the High, they were arrested by a slowly changing traffic light. She swooped at once off her saddle and applied the brake – applied it a moment too late so that her broad-sandalled feet went pit-a-pat in small skittering hops as she wrestled with the machine.
    Bad co-ordination. Oh, schrecklich, schrecklich. Everything today was frightful, not least her head. She took the opportunity to remove her hat and fan the head, also to pull at a clinging portion of skirt and shake that about too.
    Her sister had advised her to stay in bed today. Out of the question. With retirement age three dangerous years behind her, she could not allow a cold in the head to keep her in bed. Her employer would not be staying in bed. And other people were after her job. Miss Sonntag’s colds did not, like other people’s, come in winter; hers came in summer, during heatwaves, with stupefying intensity. When the whole world was full of flowers and delight, she turned into an imbecile. She felt hot and cold by turn now, dazed, unnatural, a lump.
    The lights changed and she ascended once more and pedalled regally on. In the city of bicycles there were not today many bicycles. The university was in its long vacation, but her professor was not yet on vacation. Until he went – whichwould not be before the River Spey showed more salmon – there would