‘That’s why everyone hates each other nowadays,’ he reckoned. ‘Because they are overloaded with non-friend friends. Ever heard about Dunbar’s number?’
And then he had told her about a man called Roger Dunbar at Oxford University, who had discovered that human beings were wired to know only a hundred and fifty people, as that was the average size of hunter-gatherer communities.
‘And the Domesday Book,’ Ash had told her, under the stark lighting of the hospital canteen, ‘if you look at the Domesday Book, the average size of an English community at that time was a hundred and fifty people. Except in Kent. Where it was a hundred people. I’m from Kent. We have anti-social DNA.’
‘I’ve been to Kent,’ Nora had countered. ‘I noticed that. But I like that theory. I can meet that many people on Instagram in an hour.’
‘Exactly. Not healthy! Our brains can’t handle it. Which is why we crave face-to-face communication more than ever. And ... which is why I would never buy my Simon & Garfunkel guitar chord songbooks online!’
She smiled at the memory, then was brought back to the reality of the Arctic landscape by the sound of a loud splash.
A few metres away from her, between the rocky skerry she was standing on and Bear Island, there was another little rock, or collection of rocks, sticking out of the water. Something was emerging from the sea froth. Something heavy, slapping against the stone with a great wet weight. Her whole body shaking, she got ready to fire the flare, but it wasn’t a polar bear. It was a walrus. The fat, brown wrinkled beast shuffled over the ice, then stopped to stare at her. She (or he) looked old, even for a walrus. The walrus knew no shame, and could hold a stare for an indefinite amount of time. Nora felt scared. She only knew two things about walruses: that they could be vicious, and that they were never alone for very long.
There were probably other walruses about to haul out of the water.
She wondered if she should fire the flare.
The walrus stayed where it was, like a ghost of itself in the grainy light, but slowly disappeared behind a veil of fog. Minutes went by. Nora had seven layers of clothing on, but her eyelids felt like they were stiffening and could freeze shut if she closed them for too long. She heard the voices of the others occasionally drift over to her and, for a while, her colleagues returned close enough for her to see some of them. Silhouettes in the fog, hunched over the ground, reading ice samples with equipment she wouldn’t have understood. But then they disappeared again. She ate one of the protein bars in her rucksack. It was cold and hard as toffee. She checked her phone but there was no signal.
It was very quiet.
The quiet made her realise how much noise there was elsewhere in the world. Here, noise had meaning. You heard something and you had to pay attention.
As she was chewing there came another splashing sound, but this time from a different direction. The combination of fog and weak light made it hard to see. But it wasn’t a walrus. That became clear when she realised the silhouette moving towards her was big. Bigger than a walrus, and much bigger than any human.
A Moment of Extreme Crisis in the Middle of Nowhere
‘Ohfuck,’ whispered Nora, into the cold.
The Frustration of Not Finding a Library When You Really Need One
The fog cleared to reveal a huge white bear, standing upright. It dropped down to all fours and continued moving toward her with surprising velocity and a heavy and terrifying grace. Nora did nothing. Her mind was jammed with panic. She was as still as the permafrost she stood on.
Fuck.
Fuck fuck.
Fuck fuck fucking fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
Eventually a survival impulse kicked in and Nora raised the signal pistol and fired it, and the flare shot out like a tiny comet and disappeared into the water, the glow fading along with her hope. The creature was still coming towards her. She fell to her knees and started clanging the ladle against the saucepan and shouted at the top of her lungs.
‘BEAR! BEAR! BEAR!’
The bear stopped, momentarily.
‘BEAR! BEAR! BEAR!’
It was now walking forward again.
The banging wasn’t working. The bear was close. She wondered if she could reach the rifle, lying on the ice, just slightly too far away. She could see the bear’s vast pawed feet, armed with claws, pressing into the snow-dusted rock. Its head was low and its black eyes were looking directly at her.
‘LIBRARY!’ Nora screamed. ‘MRS ELM! PLEASE SEND ME BACK! THIS IS THE WRONG LIFE! IT IS REALLY, REALLY,REALLYWRONG! TAKE ME BACK! I DON’T WANT ADVENTURE! WHERE’S THE LIBRARY?! I WANT THE LIBRARY!’
There was no hatred in the polar bear’s stare. Nora was just food. Meat. And that was a humbling kind of terror. Her heart pounded like a drummer reaching the crescendo. The end of the song. And it became astoundingly clear to her, finally, in that moment:
She didn’t want to die.
