That one surprised me. I said, “You knew we were going to Lichholm?”
He nodded. “It seemed a safe assumption. I screened this boat hoping to get her to come there and pick me up, and found out that she’d been chartered.” He waited, and when I didn’t say anything he added, “Her destination was confidential. What wasn’t confidential was the name of the person who had chartered her.”
“Your wife.”
“Yes, Adah. It wasn’t hard to guess her destination, or that she had competent friends who were handling things for her.”
Audrey said, “We’re reclones, Ern and I. I feel sure you know.”
He shrugged. “Of course, but there was no reason to bring it up.”
“Your wife checked Ern out of the library and enlisted his help, and he talked her into checking me out too.”
Dr. Fevre smiled. “You’re in his debt.”
“Yes, but in hers as well.…” Audrey let it trail off. “She’s my patron. May I ask why you don’t live with her?”
I tried to change the subject, but Dr. Fevre waved it away. “I’ll explain.”
He turned to Chandra. “I meant to get you alone and tell you about this, honey; but I might as well do it now. Not many people ask, but I tell anybody who does.”
Chandra nodded, looking so uncomfortable I expected her to run off.
“Your mother has an emotional disorder. It causes her to alternate, without warning or pause, from wild elation to severe depression. I know you can’t know a great deal about psychology. Nor do I, for that matter.”
He turned to Audrey and me. “Do either of you?”
I shook my head.
Audrey said, “No. Nothing, really.”
“I have consulted psychologists, experienced people who have dealt with many cases of this type. It is, as I told you, an emotional disorder.” He took a deep breath. “That means it’s not a mental disorder. Neither psychologists nor psychiatrists are permitted to treat sane individuals who do not desire treatment. I’ve tried repeatedly to persuade Adah to get treatment. She insists there is nothing wrong with her.”
Audrey looked at me before she spoke. “Ern and I are checked out of the Polly’s Cove Public Library, both of us. Chandra came for us, but officially it was your wife who checked us out; that means she’s our patron.”
“Which is why you two are on this boat. I understand.”
Audrey wasn’t finished. “As library resources, we’re obligated to inform our patron. We don’t have to mop floors or load dirty dishes into the sterilizer; but when our patron travels, she’s entirely within her rights to require us to accompany her.”
Dr. Fevre smiled. “And you do your duty, just as I strive to do mine.”
“I said we weren’t required to load dishes. We aren’t, but we generally try to be helpful within reason. For one thing, it looks good for us if we’re checked out a lot. It doesn’t have to be different patrons. If one patron checks us out four times in a year, our record shines. Do you know what I mean?”
Dr. Fevre said, “Certainly.”
I stuck my oar in. “There’s a lady who checks me out once a year, every year.”
Audrey said, “That alone makes Ern pretty solid. It’s when a year goes by and nobody checks a certain resource out that she looks bad.”
I said, “Now you know where we stand. You’ve been to Lichholm. Several times, I believe. We haven’t, and I don’t think your wife knows anything about it.”
Chandra put in, “I don’t either.”
Audrey said, “You’re going there on your sabbatical, and I’m reasonably sure you’ve been there before. Since Ern and I know nothing about the place, how about filling us in?”
“Gladly.” Dr. Fevre smiled. “Lichholm is a small island off the northernmost coast, not far from the Arctic Circle. I don’t know the population but it cannot be much more than a thousand, and may be less. Some of the world’s richest fishing grounds lie to the southeast, and nearly all of the men fish.”
For a moment he fell silent.
“Their island came to my attention originally because of its ice caves.”
I suppose my eyes opened wider or I sat up straighter or something. Whatever it was, it made Dr. Fevre chuckle. “That’s right, caverns of ice. Caverns in a glacier. Very extensive and very beautiful caves of crystal-clear ice, although to see them you have to bring a flashlight or a lantern. Their existence is almost unknown to the rest of the world, but I have explored them. I’ll be delighted to show them to you when we get to Lichholm—assuming that you’d like to see them.”
Very truthfully I said I certainly would.
Audrey nodded, and Chandra exclaimed, “Me too!”
“In that case I must warn you”—Dr. Fevre was still smiling gently—“that those ice caverns contain thousands of corpses.”
Audrey gasped loudly enough for me to hear her.
“For generations, the inhabitants of the island have interred their dead in the ice caves, where the intense cold preserves them perfectly.”
Audrey said, “Now I understand the name of the island. I’ve been wondering about that.”
Dr. Fevre nodded. “It makes perfect sense, when one thinks about it. If a young woman wishes to see what her great-grandmother looked like, she can be taken there and shown. Or suppose a man is away from the island when his wife dies of a fever. When he returns, he can be shown his wife’s body. He knows then that she is in sober fact dead, and that she did not die by violence.”
I said, “What about the treasure? Why not tell us about that?”
Dr. Fevre started to speak, but closed his mouth firmly before the first word came out. Audrey stared at me.
“I saw a map of that island once,” I said. “There was a star on it in a little rectangle. It seemed pretty clear that whatever the rectangle represented was the reason the map had been made. When I saw it, I had no idea who had drawn it, but I believe I could offer a really good guess now.”
Audrey and I waited for Dr. Fevre to speak; when he said nothing Audrey turned to me. “We’ve stopped pitching. Have you noticed, Ern? Almost stopped, anyhow.”
There was a lot more talk, but I have given all the most interesting stuff. When Dr. Fevre’s clothes were dry, he and Chandra went off to visit Adah, and Audrey went out on deck again. I knew she expected me to join her, but I went up onto the bridge for a few minutes first.
When I came down again and found Audrey on the main deck, she asked, “Are you taking questions?”
I shrugged. “Depends on what they are. I don’t know everything anyway.”
“What do you know about the star on that map you saw? Does it mean treasure?”
I shook my head. “I’ve no idea what it means. Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Then how about this one?” She lowered her voice. “What do you think of Dr. Barry Fevre?”
I shrugged again. “He’s handsome, brave, smooth, and plausible. Maybe slick, too. I haven’t quite made up my mind about slick.”
“Was he telling the truth? About those ice caves, I mean.”
“Probably. I don’t know.”