The helicopter touched down in the Tarfala Valley. Bruce and Liselotte piled out and thanked their pilot. They set toward the station's wooden houses, a half-dozen painted in the characteristic red of Nordic cottages and barns.
A woman in a navy boiler suit appeared from one of the houses to greet them. She introduced herself as Annika, the station manager, encouraging them into the main service building for a hot drink.
Annika told them someone fitting Langstrom's description had pilfered food from the galley. The research staff had only seen him from a distance, descending Tarfala, after realizing he'd taken some of the supplies. It was of little value to the research station, so there was little use in pursuing him, absurd as the theft seemed.
Annika advised there was a lake at the foot of Tarfala Valley, 15 kilometers east, guessing he could now be anywhere along its shoreline. There was a village on the western edge, where a road connected along the shoreline to Kiruna, settlements dotted along the way.
Kirk could have gone in the opposite direction to the village in the lower valley floor instead. If so, he could have followed this as far south as Akkajaure lake by now.
Bruce again faced a game of chance to which direction Kirk could be, and a potential opportunity lost if they chose the wrong direction.
Bruce and Liselotte agreed on the option further from civilization. There was no telling if Kirk had a map or knew about the nearby village and roads at the lake's edge, nor whether Kirk wanted to evade settlements and people.
It was only mid-afternoon, and though twilight had begun, they still had a couple of hours before it would be dark. Both Bruce and Liselotte resolved to keep their momentum for the day, not wanting to give in to the shorter periods of daylight. Annika suggested they stay for an early supper at Tarfala. This would free them of the need to carry excess food supplies, nor skimping on the chance to refuel.
They agreed, and though Bruce felt restless, he recognized slowing down now would be of benefit. Up to now, it had made sense why Kirk had made his way to Abisko: for cryopreservation purposes. But Kirk's wanderings in the surrounding wilderness now seemed aimless.
Liselotte and Annika compared their respective work, as both researched glaciology and climatology. Bruce asked whether it was normal for this area to not be snowing now, in mid-November. They explained much of what was now visible as snow fields surrounding them was the compaction of a type of snow which had partly melted. Left over from the past seasons, it recrystallized, and was even denser. This phenomenon occurred at a larger scale with the mass of the adjacent glacier in the Tarfala Valley. The glacial ice went through a similar process of accumulation and ablation, freezing and thawing.
This caught Bruce's attention, suggesting a line of logic which could have been of interest to Kirk. Bruce remembered what Dr. Romanenko had mentioned about this area's similarity to conditions at the Svalbard Seed Vault.
Bruce queried the relationship to the described changes in glacial mass to the phenomena of permafrost. Liselotte explained the ground beneath ice and glaciers didn't meet the definition of permafrost. For this, it required an active layer of soil.
The focus of her research, she said, was upon the frozen peatlands close to Abisko. The value of their study lay in the vast amount of organic matter sequestered in the world's tundra as a carbon sink. Should such permafrost thaw, the released methane of the organic matter would be devastating.
Liselotte's research measured the release of such greenhouse gas from the peatlands near Abisko. Annika affirmed she also analyzed the effects of changes in the permafrost and glacier on the climate in Tarfala.
This lent further credence to the prospect of Kirk's presence relating to the suitability of such a site for a hypothetical frozen zoo. Bruce asked Liselotte about the Abisko research station's effort to foster a miniature frozen zoo for the northern bat.
She described how climatology models pointed toward the species declining in the south. Northern bats were extending northward as temperatures increased. Parasites and pathogens for the species encroached in the southern part of its range because of the warmer climate.
Annika uttered a short sentence in Swedish. Liselotte smiled, before both realized the language barrier with Bruce.
"She said it's the 'call of the north'," explained Liselotte. "It's known by many names across cultures - a hysteria experienced by people indigenous to the Arctic. They enter a trance-like state, and feel compelled to venture toward the pole, guided by the North Star."
"Do you think this could apply to Kirk? A trance has captured him?"
"No. These hysterias are specific to cultures."
Annika chimed in. "Evidence shows bats have some sense of magnetoreception. We know they can echolocate, but bats could also detect the Earth's magnetic field."
"Of what use?" asked Bruce.
"To orient themselves to their home roost. Like the arctic fox. As bats use echolocation to hunt prey, the arctic fox native to this area uses the Earth's magnetic field to hunt theirs. The arctic fox has a ring of shadow in their retinas, which darkens as it makes its way toward the magnetic north."
Liselotte responded, "Bat-eared foxes in the African savanna use their large ears to listen for insects, as a bat would, even those in the ground."
Bruce considered his solitary nature to be more like a fox than a bat. Foxes weren't like their canine relatives, which were pack animals, despite scarcer instances of the lone wolf. Bats were very social creatures, inclusive of the flying fox, the megabat genus known as the fruit bat.
How was Kirk surviving in this freezing landscape between here and Abisko? It was beautiful in its desolation, its calm almost hypnotic. The worst of the katabatic winds throughout dusk had spared them, Bruce was grateful.
Bruce gestured to Liselotte they ought to make a move once more. It was now early evening, and twilight had given way to night. They would set forth south, in the direction of Akkajaure. Both agreed to maintain it as the southernmost demarcation after which they'd concede.
