'Do they have certain of these floating islands? And we have others?'
'Not really, not officially. But it works out that way. Or did.' And now he came to the critical reasons the Americans had decided to reactivate a research station on an ice island: 'Russia is way, way ahead of us in its ability to use the arctic.
They've had men on ice islands continuously. We had one spurt, then quit. Fact is, we've pretty well surrendered the arctic to them.'
'And the three men who flew in here?' At Desolation Point, even children knew if an important letter arrived. 'They're going to start up again?'
'Yes. And they want Vladimir to supervise the day-to-day operations.'
'And he wants you to help?'
'He does.'
'And you've accepted?'
'I have.'
Desperately she wanted to cry 'What about us?' but she intuitively knew that the sure way to lose a strong man like Rick Venn was to lasso him with tears or pin him down with a sense of obligation; he would fight against that and fly off. She also suspected that he was still unprepared to make a lifetime commitment, so she approached her problem obliquely and in a most beguiling way: 'What are you going to do about the dogs?'
'I was hoping you'd look after them, and find someone who'll care for them.'
'You mean sell them?'
'If you can. If not, give them away. But only to someone who'll run them.' He looked at the dogs who had served him so well. 'They're champions. They deserve to compete.
It's in their blood.'
These words had a special meaning for Kendra; she saw Rick as a champion, destined to compete, and the ice island was an appropriate challenge, but this acknowledgment still left her isolated, and she felt like all women who have let one good man go to try for a better, only to lose both in her gamble.
'So I'm supposed to linger here, year after year, looking after your dogs.' It wasn't going the way she had intended, but it was to his eyes, not hers, that tears came:
'Kiddo! I've found me a real woman! I'll be back.'
'And you're sure I'll wait two years, or whatever. You're sure that Jeb won't come knocking and I'll say "Oh, what the hell?" and marry him?'
'I'm sure,' he said simply, and with repeated promises that he would be back to marry her, he closed the shack where they had been so happy, turned over his dogs, and flew with Afanasi to Barrow and then four hundred miles north over the open Arctic Ocean to where a floating ice island, eleven miles long and three wide, awaited their tardy experimentation.
THERE WERE EXPERTS OTHER THAN THE UNITED STATES Commission on the Arctic who were interested in the complexities of the North Pacific, and two of the best-informed lived in small Asian villages where they spent their days and many of their nights immersed in studies which would have impact upon Alaska, either immediately or at some time in the distant future, for these two men, better than any Americans, appreciated the fact that Alaska's position, as the keystone of the great arch that encloses the North Pacific, gave her world importance.
The two men, one Japanese, one Russian, did not know each other, nor did they even realize that the other existed, but each kept on the wall of his study a large map showing all the nations bordering the Pacific, from Chile at the southeastern tip through Mexico and the United States on the east, across to Siberia and Japan on the west, and down the southwest to Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand. It was a glorious stretch of terrain made more so by the proliferation of red and black dots which peppered the circumference of this vast ocean: indeed, the map looked as if a hundred bees had stung places like Colombia, Kamchatka and the Philippines, raising ugly red welts. These were the clusters of volcanoes, dead and active, that gripped the Pacific in a rim of fire. These were the soaring, explosive mountains, with lyrical names like El Misto, Cotopaxi, Popocatepetl, Mount Shasta, Fujiyama, Krakatoa, Vulcan and Ruapehu, that bespoke the violent character of these areas.
The black dots, far more numerous, indicated where in historic times huge earthquakes had shaken the land, with heavy black crosses indicating the quakes that had leveled parts of Mexico City in 1985, San Francisco in 1906, Anchorage in 1964, Tokyo in 1923, New Zealand in 1931. The most casual glance at these maps revealed the constant attack of lava and trembling earth along the edges of the Pacific, a record of the tremendous relentless forces of the wandering plates.
Thus, when the Nazca Plate subducted under the continental plate, the edges shattered and parts of Mexico City collapsed in ruins. When the Pacific Plate ground along the North American Plate, San Francisco caught fire, and when the opposite side of the Pacific Plate subducted under the Asian Plate, Tokyo's buildings fell apart.
And when, in its northern reaches, the Pacific Plate hammered its way down under the shallow continental Bering Sea, the world's most concentrated chain of volcanoes rose gloriously in the sky, while the earth's most incessant family of earthquakes shook the land and, if they were submarine, sent great tsunamis radiating through the Pacific.
Alaska, occupying the crown of this fiery rim, had a position not only of geographical dominance as the link between Asia and North America, but also of potential economic and military importance, and in these closing years of the century the Japanese expert was concerned primarily with the economic, the Russian with the military.
In a beautiful mountain village some twenty miles west of Tokyo on the minor Tama River, Kenji Oda, the able mountaineer who had rescued Kimiko Takabuki from her fall in the crevasse, pursued his studies. Tamagata, a village of graceful wood and stone houses in the traditional Japanese style, had been chosen by the powerful Oda family as the site of their research operations.
The family had many commercial interests, but son Kenji, oldest and ablest of the third generation, had concentrated on the family's wood-pulp holdings, and to perfect himself in this international specialty, he had made himself familiar with the pulp forests of Norway, Finland and Washington State in the United States. While working with paper interests in Washington he had climbed Mount Rainier in the dead of winter with a team of American fanatics.
At thirty-nine he enjoyed his seclusion at Tamagata because it provided a serene environment in which to reflect at a distance on the balancing of these world markets, and also, easy access to the international flights that left Tokyo almost hourly for all parts of the Oda empire: the factories in Sao Paulo, the newly acquired hotels in Amsterdam and the forest leases in Norway and Finland. But the more he studied the world paper problems and Japan's diminishing access to major forests, the more clearly he saw that the almost endless forests of Alaska had to become a prime target for anyone interested in the making and distribution of paper.
'In many practical ways,' he told his study group, 'the forests of Alaska are closer to Japan than they are to the major centers in the United States. A manufacturer in the eastern United States can get his wood pulp more easily from the Carolinas, Canada or Finland than from Alaska. Our big Japanese ships can put in to Alaskan ports, load with pulp, and come back across the North Pacific to our paper and rayon plants here in Japan a lot cheaper than the Americans can handle the same wood pulp by truck or train.'
A representative of the Oda shipping lines freight only pointed out that the maritime distance from Japan to Sitka was rather longer than Kenji had indicated, whereupon the latter chuckled: 'You have good eyes. But if we go ahead with this, we're not going to Sitka. I have my eye on a rather substantial island just north of Kodiak, on this side of the bay,' and he indicated a densely forested island which could supply the Oda Paper Works for the next fifty years.
'On our mountain-climbing trips to Denali,' he explained to the men, 'our plane broke out of the clouds right about here, and below I saw this undeveloped island. Since we'd started our descent into Anchorage, we were low enough for me to see that this was prime forest, probably spruce, easy to log, easy to reduce to pulp, easy to ship back to our plants in liquid form.'
'Any chance that we can get long-term contro
l? I don't mean outright ownership.'
Before replying to this critical question, Oda became reflective, and looking at the big map dominating the wall facing the men, he pointed to Alaska: 'Strategically speaking, this area is more a part of Japan than it is of the United States. Every natural resource Alaska has is more valuable to us than it is to America. The oil at Prudhoe Bay ought to be coming straight across the Pacific to us. The lead, the coal and certainly the wood pulp. The Koreans aren't stupid. They're moving in everywhere.
China is going to show enormous interest in Alaska; Singapore and Formosa could use Alaska's resources to tremendous benefit.'
When the attractive hostesses interrupted the discussion to bring morning tea and rice cookies, Kenji took advantage of the break to suggest that they move into the garden, where the beauties of the Japanese landscape, so manicured compared to the wildness of Alaska, put the men at ease, and there he said as the meeting resumed:
'You can understand Alaska best if you view it as a Third World country, an underdeveloped nation whose raw materials are to be sold off to the more developed countries. The United States will never utilize Alaska properly, never has, never will. It's too far away, too cold ... America has no concept of what it has, and very little interest in finding out. That leaves the marketplace open to us.'
'What can we do about it?' one of the men asked, and Kenji replied: 'We've already done it. On my last trip back from Denali, I started negotiations to lease that wooded island. Well, not the land, you understand. They'd never allow that. But the right to cut trees, build a chip mill, erect a dock for our ships.'
'Any luck?'
'Yes! I'm delighted to inform you that after several months of the most difficult negotiations ... The Alaskans are far from stupid. I think they see their position just as clearly as we do. They know they're orphans in their own land. They know they have to cooperate with their Asian markets. And they know ... at least the people I negotiated with knew how intimately they were going to be affiliated with both China and Russia. They can't escape it. So I had no trouble in gaining their attention.
I think they'd prefer to trade with Japan, their wood, their oil, their minerals for whatever we can supply in return.'
The group, most of whom had motored up to Tamagata before breakfast, relaxed in the sun, munched sembei and drank tea. One of the men, who taught geography as a parttime consultant to a university, said: 'I don't want to play the big geopolitician, but that map back there . .. Could we take another look at it?' When they were seated as before, he continued: 'We and China enjoy a lucky advantage in our potential dealings with Alaska. But look at how close Alaska is to Soviet Russia! At these two little islands, which don't show on this map, the two superpowers are about a mile and a half apart. If commercial air travel were permitted between the two areas ... up here where the two big peninsulas jut out, maybe sixty miles apart, you could fly it in maybe ten minutes.'
'What's your point?' Oda asked, and the man said: 'I think we can predict that Alaska and the Soviet Union will always be suspicious of each other. No trade, no amity possible. Also, what Alaska has, Siberia also has, so they are not natural trading partners. On the other hand, what Alaska has is what we need, what Formosa and Singapore need, not to mention China.'
'Your conclusion?'
'Build the pulping plant. Send our tankers to ... What's the name of the island?'
'Kagak. Old Aleutian word, I believe, meaning something like rich horizons.'
'Send our tankers to Kagak. But while we're doing so, let's not overlook the copper mines, the oil which in common sense ought to come our way, and anything else that great empty land will be able to provide in the future.'
Now Oda took command: 'For some time it has been clear to me that the role of the Third World nations is to provide the technologically and educationally advanced nations with raw materials at a fair price. Allow countries like Japan and Singapore to apply intelligence and mechanical skill to those materials and pay for them by sending back to the Third World countries our finished products, especially those that they will never have the ability to invent or manufacture for themselves.'
When several young men well informed on international trade protested that such a simplistic exchange might not be indefinitely possible, Oda pointed to the calculator his financial expert had been using: 'Watanabe-san, how many controls on your computer, which as you others can see is about the size of a large playing card?' It took Watanabe more than a minute to summarize the wonderfully intricate capabilities of the thirty-five keys on his hand-held calculator: 'Ten keys for the digits and zero. Twenty-five others for various mathematical functions. But many keys can provide up to three different functions. Grand total: thirty-five obvious keys, plus sixty-three hidden variable functions, for ninety-eight options.'
Oda smiled and said: 'When I bought my progenitor of Watanabe's miracle gadget, it offered me ten numerals and the four arithmetic functions. It was so simple that it could be handled by anyone. But when you add eighty-eight additional function keys, you move it forever beyond the capacity of the untrained, and most Third World citizens will be in that category. They'll have to rely on us to do their thinking, their inventing and their manufacturing.'
'Just a minute,' one of the team protested. 'I visited the University of Alaska at Fairbanks on our last visit. They have scores of students in engineering who can handle bigger computers than Watanabe's.'
'Exactly!' Oda agreed. 'But when they graduate they'll have to find jobs in what they call the Lower Forty-eight. Their absence will leave Alaska a Third World nation, and let's remember that. Courtesy, assistance, modest stance, listen more than talk, and provide at every turn the help Alaska needs. Because our relationship with that great untapped reservoir can be magnificently helpful, to both of us.'
It was on these principles that Kenji Oda and his wife, Kimiko, who knew Alaska from the inside as it were, moved to the island of Kagak north of Kodiak to establish the big United Alaskan Pulp Company. Significant was the fact that the word Japanese appeared nowhere in the title or the printed materials of this firm, nor were Japanese workmen involved in building the large and complicated plant which reduced Kagak spruce trees to a liquid pulp for tankering across the Pacific to Japan. And when the plant was ready for operation, no Japanese crews appeared to slash down the trees, and only three Japanese engineers settled in Kagak to supervise the intricate machinery.
Kenji and Kimiko did take residence in a modest house on Kagak Island, and they did rent a modest office in Kodiak, to which highly skilled technicians from Tokyo flew in from time to time to inspect and supervise procedures. After the first few months, at an enterprise which involved some nineteen million dollars, there were only six Japanese on the scene and at least half the ships that ferried the pulp to Japan operated under some flag other than the Rising Sun, for if the great industrialists of Japan were determined to take over the development and utilization of Alaska's raw materials, they did not want to be flagrant about it or generate local animosities.
In such behavior the Odas were exemplary. Kenji performed no act which drew adverse attention to himself, but many which added to his sober reputation in the Kodiak community. Was a string quartet to be invited in from Seattle? He contributed at a level just below the three leading local citizens. Were local literary lights producing a fine outdoor spectacle about Baranov and the Russian settlement of the Aleutians and Kodiak? As a paper expert he contributed all costs for printing the programs. On two occasions he invited leading Kodiak officials to fly with him and Kimiko for a vacation in their wooded village at Tamagata, and on another occasion he underwrote the expenses of two college professors from the University of Alaska at Anchorage to attend an international conference in Chile on the Pacific Rim. As a result of such contributions, he and Kimiko became known as 'those fine Japanese who have such a creative interest in Kodiak and Alaska,' and someone listening to that assessment would add: 'And they both climbed Denali,
which is more than we can say for any of the Americans hereabouts.' But during his absences from the pulp mill at Kagak, when he was not vacationing at Tamagata or attending conferences in Chile, Oda was quietly probing into the remote areas of Alaska, seeking out sites like Bornite, where copper might be found, or Wainwright, which had rich seams of coal. Once he heard of a distant mountainside in the northwest arctic whose assays looked as if it might contain promising concentrations of zinc, and after shipping to Tokyo samples of ore taken from various spots in the area, he arranged for a ninety-nine-year lease on a vast area. When questioned about this on his next visit to the research headquarters of his family's operations at Tamagata, he said frankly and with as honest an assessment as he could muster: 'Japan does not want to "take over" Alaska, as some critics suggest. All we want is to do with the other raw materials what we're already doing so successfully with wood pulp at Kagak. And let me stress, in case the subject comes up when I'm not available, Alaska profits from our present deal equally with us. It's what you might call the perfect relationship. They sell raw materials they haven't the capital to develop themselves and we get the raw materials which we can process and on which we can earn substantial profits.'
'Can we do the same with Alaskan lead and coal and zinc?'
'Better. Their bulk is smaller, potential profits greater.' The wise men of Japan contemplated this for some minutes, for this was the way in which their island empire no raw materials, excessive manpower, super excessive brainpower functioned, but then one older man, who had experienced the great revulsion the world had expressed toward a similar Japan in the 1930s, asked quietly: 'But why should the United States allow us to operate in this manner?' and Oda gave the only sensible explanation: 'Because they started 11back in 1867 when they bought Alaska with the idea that the area was worthless, and in the first half century of ownership they totally ignored what they had, unable to perceive it as having any real value. Those injurious misconceptions persist.