Identity Matrix (1982) (3 page)

Since Mom died I'd gone away for the whole summer, conscious of the fact that neither of my parents had lived to a very old age and that I could go any time. If I couldn't participate, at least I could visit.

My first year I'd gone on the Grand Tour in Europe. I'd been there before, of course, but this time I poked into everything and anything. I spoke passable German and my French was very good indeed and it helped a lot.

And this time I'd decided on Alaska and the Yukon, mostly because it was already dramatically changed from when I was a boy and I had this strong feeling that, if I didn't see it soon, I'd come back to find it domed over and paved, a chilly California. I'd salmon-fished at Katmai, took a trip into Gates of the Arctic National Park, walked the garbage-strewn streets of Barrow, taken a boat down the Yukon, and now, after a flight from Fairbanks, it had been more than worth it—the place, spoiled or not, still was absolutely the most scenic area in the whole world.

And huge, and wide, and lonely.

I loved the place, but knew that July was not January, and I wasn't so sure I'd like it in the opposite season.

From Whitehorse I intended to take the once-a-day tourist train of the White Pass and Yukon Railway to the trail head at Yukon National Park on the Canadian side, then make my way down the Chillicoot Pass, a reverse Trail of '

98, way down to Sitka at the bottom, where I could catch the ferry south. The trail was excellent, thanks to the National Park Service, and while I couldn't have hiked a hundred feet up it the way the pioneers did in the gold strike days, I was wonderful at walking
down
trails. It was a natural capstone to my Alaskan Grand Tour, as it were, and one that I'd have hated myself for passing up. I looked forward to the walk, but not to its ending, for that boat would take me to Seattle and a plane home. I didn't want to go home, really. That bar had brought it all back to me, and, in a sense, represented what home and "real life" was.

I didn't really want real life any more, not that kind, and lying in bed, in the stillness of the early morning, I wondered if I really wanted life at all.

The White Pass and Yukon Railroad owes its exis-tence and continued huge fortune to the gold rush. One look at the Chillicoot Pass showed that only the hardiest could climb it under the best of conditions—yet tens of thousands did, carrying all that
they
owned on their backs. The lucky ones made it to the top without collapsing or being robbed by Soapy Smith and other pro-fessional crooks, but, as with all gold rushes, even the lucky ones who made it to the headwaters of the Yukon River and the boats that men like Jack London piloted downriver to Dawson and the gold fields, rarely struck it rich. Those who did, though, were faced with prob-lems as well, for never had gold been so remotely lo-cated and so hard to get not merely out of the ground but out of the area once you did. As the boomtowns grew, their new, swelling populations also needed almost all manufactured goods—and it was due to this that enterprising business pioneers, in a stunning feat of engineering, built the narrow gage railroad all the way from the port at Skagway up, over the mountains, to Whitehorse and the river and road connections. Although the gold fever was now long gone the railroad pros-pered, supplying growing population of the Yukon and dealing now in new, less glamorous but no less needed resources of the burgeoning north country. So big was the business that they'd been trying for years to get rid of the one tourist train a day, as there was still only a single track and it was needed for more profitable goods, but, while service was not really what it once was, that train still ran.

At the beautiful headwaters of the Yukon River, in a bed of glistening lakes at the river's source, the train stopped at the old station where once the gold-seekers had transferred to glittering stern-wheelers, only now it was to feed the captive tourists a captive lunch and allow northbound freights to pass. It was here, though, that I got off with a pack and little else, since, just around the lake over there, was the top of the Chillicoot. It was a warm day, around 60 degrees, which meant almost hot down in Skagway, only a few miles for the eagle to fly but a long, long way down. The air was crisp and cleaner than most people have ever known, and, near the trail head, you could look down through scat-tered clouds and see the Pacific far beyond gleaming in the sun.

Although it was a long walk, with all its switchbacks, it was an easy day trip from this direction—three or four for the one in great condition coming up the way the pioneers did—but I had been trapped by the tourist train's schedule and it was past midday. My ferry wasn't due in down there until after 7 P.M. the next day, so I was in no hurry and planned to stop at one of the convenient Park Service campgrounds about halfway and say goodbye to the wilderness experience in some grand style.

I met a few people as I descended, mostly young couples or two or three young men, but it was not a busy day for the trail. More would start two days hence, when the ferry came in and disgorged its load, but, for the most part, I had the trail, the views, the clean air and whistling, soft wind to myself the way I wanted it. Finally, leisurely, I reached the camp I'd selected before starting out and was delighted to find no one else using it. It was one of the best according to the parks guide, with a stunning view of Skagway, tiny and glistening below, its harbor, and out past the last point of land, past Haines Junction, to the Pacific and the Inside Passage.

I'd packed light; all cold stuff, prepacks, the sort of thing; for minimum gear and minimum weight, with a small, light folding pup tent I'd already used often on this trip. Still, I had a tiny little gas jet and pot for boiling water, since I couldn't conceive of a day without coffee to get me going, and it not only worked nicely but also provided the added joy of being able to make a cup of bullion.

I sat there for a long time in the late-evening daylight enjoying the view, the solitude, watching a couple of brown eagles circling lazily in the sky, and I thought of what a contrast it was between here and that bar back in Whitehorse.

Here, perhaps only here, I was at least partly human, as close to nature and the world as I could get. Here there were no pressures, no social rules, no sign of beautiful people and the kind of normalcy I had never known.

I did very little thinking, really. I just lay there, at peace for the first time in a long, long time, looking out and around and becoming one with nature, riding with the whispering winds, soaring like those eagles, at rest, and free.

I didn't want to go back. I knew that for a certainty.

This sort of peace and freedom was beyond me in any crowded, social setting. Soon it would be back to the cities and the bustling humanity and a world that was very much like that bar, a world in which I was not equipped to live and join and mingle, but only to sit silently at endless dark tables sipping, sipping my drink that might bring forgetfulness while observing the rest of the world in a manner oh, so very clincal and so damnably detached from myself.

I thought again about women, oddly. I'd more than once taken a woman to dinner and had pleasant conver-sation, or to a show, but after they'd eaten and watched, they'd walk off with somebody they met in the waiting room or at intermission. Oddly, I had no trouble going places with women—they considered me safe, nonthreat-ening, nonsexist and nonsexual, which, in a way, I was. I didn't even want to go to bed with those women particularly, but it hurt me terribly to watch them going to bed with everybody else in the world except me. More than one grad assistant had put the bite on me for a loan, or propped up my ego so I'd buy them dinner, only to use the money to treat somebody else to a date. I was a soft touch and often used, and I knew I was a sucker, but, damn it, if all hope vanishes what's left?

But I realized, late that night, in the deepening gloom over the mountains above Skagway, that
I had
lost hope. My scars were too deep, too painful, and would never heal, and they had me in agony. I was a human being! Why, then, did everyone around me insist on being treated as a human being but never even think to treat me like one? Hurry! Hurry! See the robotic man! He walks! He talks! He thinks! But he never feels…

But I felt, all right. Every single time was another scar on my soul—no, not a scar, a festering, rotting, infected wound that would never heal, never subside, could only be compounded more and more until the pain grew unbearable. I could feel them now, those wounds, growing worse and worse as I approached a return to civilization and society, already near the threshold of pain. Weeping slightly in my lonely tent, uncaring as to what would happen, I finally, mercifully drifted into sleep.

The sound of horses woke me, and I groaned, turned over, grabbed for my glasses, and glanced at my watch. A bit after seven in the morning, I noted, and rolled over, squinting to see what the noises might be. It was unusual to find horses on a trail like this—it'd take an expert to navigate them on the winding, rough terrain and I didn't even realize that the Park Service allowed them. Still, there they were, coming slowly down, two men and a child, it looked like, on three brownish-red horses breathing hard in the morning chill, nostrils flaring.

I crawled out of the tent and went over to my small pack, where I'd left a pot of water the night before fetched from a small waterfall nearby. I lit the little gas jet, then went over and scooped up some icy cold water from a rivulet on the rocks and splashed my face, trying to wake up and look at least moderately presentable. Only then did I turn to the approaching trio and give them a good looking-at.

Both men looked like hell and neither looked like they should be on a trail in the Alaska panhandle. Both wore suits, although the clothes looked like they'd been slept in for days, and both looked dead tired and somewhat harried. The child, I saw, was an Indian girl, perhaps twelve or thirteen, with long, black hair almost to her waist, but still pre-pubescent, although she was cer-tainly on the verge of turning into a woman. She looked a bit more normal, in a ski jacket, T-shirt and faded, well-worn jeans, with extremely worn cowboy boots that might have been tan at some point in their past.

The lead man had only now spied me, looking some-what wary and suspiciously in my direction, eyes dart-ing to and fro as if he expected others about. Both men looked to be in their forties, with graying hair and lined faces; the kind of men you'd expect to see in business offices in Juneau or Anchorage but not out here and not looking like that.

"Good morning!" I called out in my friendliest tone. "You look a little tired."

The lead man nodded glumly and stopped near me. The other seemed mostly interested in surveying the terrain not only around the camp but also back along the trail. For a fleeting moment I thought they might be escaping bank robbers with their hostage, and their manner did nothing to reassure me. The Indian girl looked impassive, as if either resigned to her fate or uncaring of it.

"Mornin'," the lead man responded to me. "Yeah, you're right about being tired, I'll tell you."

"Want some coffee?" I offered, trying to stay as friendly as I could. No matter who these people were my best chance was to keep innocently on their good side and let them go.

"Coffee…" the lead man repeated, almost dreamily. "God! Could I use some coffee…"

"You sure you wan'ta stop, Dan?" the other man put in, speaking for the first time. "I mean, we don't know…"

The man called Dan sighed wearily. "Charlie, after you been here a while you'

ll see things differently. I'm so damned tired and sore that if I don't get something in me I'm going to fall down to Skagway."

The other shrugged. "O.K. Suit yourself." He sounded nervous and not at all convinced. Both men got off their horses, though, and stretched. I couldn't help but notice as Dan, the nearest to me, got down there was more than a hint of a shoulder holster. I think he realized what I'd seen as well, and I could see him weighing in his mind what to say to me.

"Don't be alarmed," he aid at last. "We're not crimi-nals. Not really, anyway.

The truth is, we're federal officers."

That stopped me. "Huh?"

He nodded. "What you see here is the culmination of a lot of skullduggery in what might be the most minor diplomatic incident in recent memory." He looked over at the boiling pot. "Coffee ready?"

I nodded idly and went over to the pot. I had only two telescoping plastic cups, so I fixed two cups of instant and decided I'd wait until they were through before having my own. I felt bad about the Indian girl, though, still sitting there atop her horse.

Dan went over to her, sipping hot coffee with a look of extreme ecstasy on his face. She looked down at him quizzically and asked, well, something like, "
U

chua krm sbi
?" It was a guttural language pronounced in a manner that would give me a sore throat. In fact, Dan's response would, I'm sure, be beyond me.

"Gblt zflctri gaggrb,"
it sounded like. "
Srble."

Whatever it was, she nodded and dismounted, ap-proaching the pot. Using a little ingenuity, I'd managed to refill it about halfway from the rivulet in which I'd washed my face.

"You know about the Tlingit Indians?" Dan began at last.

I nodded. "A little. The local tribe, I think, along the panhandle."

"That's putting it mildly," he responded. "Fact is, they aren't like any Indians you ever heard about in your history books. They're nuts. More like the Mafia than the Sioux. In the early days they sold protection to the Hudson's Bay Company. The Company'd pay 'em or their trappers just would go into the wild and never come out. Then the Russians moved in, and they de-cided the Russians were competition for the protection racket, so they went to war and massacred 'em—the Indians massacring the Russians, that is. Real sneaky, real clever. Used the money to buy all sorts of manufac-tured goods and to throw huge parties. They even started the gold strikes up here just to bring in people so they could extort more money."