Alaska by James A. Michener
'I'm speaking of submarine warfare only, as it relates to major shipping lanes. Think of the haven the Arctic Ocean will be if submarines can lurk here, dart out into the Atlantic, and control traffic between North America and Europe!'
This comparison of the two oceans led Kendra to ask: 'Why is it that the Pacific is rimmed by active volcanoes and the Atlantic not?' and this led to the suggestion that they invite Giovanni Spada, the volcanologist from Palmer, to fly north to conduct a seminar for them on recent developments in his field.
In these years T-7, in its ordained peregrinations, lay closer to Barrow than to any other American-Canadian point with a usable airfield, so it was a relatively simple matter for an air force plane to ferry Spada and his charts to Barrow and thence to the ice island, where he was greeted warmly by men who had worked with him in the past. His visit was surprisingly rewarding because he had the latest details of the earthquake which had produced the destruction in Mexico City and educated guesses as to when Mount St. Helens might let loose again.
But now discussion focused on copies of the map he had distributed, showing the disposition of volcanoes clustering about the rim of the Pacific, and he warned: 'If I'd had space to show each of the volcanoes along our Aleutian arc, there'd be sixty, and more than forty of them have been active since 1760. This chain of fire, guarding the approaches to the Arctic Ocean, is incomparably the most active in the world insofar as island building, submarine earthquakes and volcanic activity are concerned.'
'Is Alaska that volatile?' a scientist from Michigan asked, and Spada offered a somber statistic: 'Take any time span you wish a decade, a score of years, a century and list all the major earthquakes in the world, all the gigantic volcanic eruptions, and four out of the ten top disturbances, earthquake or volcano, occurred in Alaska.
This is incomparably the world's most volatile segment. Plate tectonics make it so.'
Everyone but Kendra knew this term, and when she asked: 'What's that?' Spada gave a brilliant half-hour summary of how in the middle of the Pacific Ocean' and also in the Atlantic, because in this part of the puzzle we're not unique' magma flowed up through an extensive fissure. 'Believe it or not, this erupted material spreads the ocean floor outward, forming the great plates upon which the surface of the earth rests, including the tallest mountains and the deepest oceans. Accept that and the rest becomes simple.'
Using his hands he showed how the Pacific Plate collided with the North American Plate along the line of the Aleutians, with the former subducting under the latter:
'And where this great clashing occurs, volcanoes are born, earthquakes help discharge the tensions.'
The scientists at T-7 queried him for several hours on recent refinements of accepted theories, and he flashed about the Pacific, laying out data from New Zealand, South America, the Antarctic, but coming always back to the Aleutians and his specialty, the Tsunami Warning System, which protected the people of Japan, Siberia, Alaska, Canada and the Hawaiian Islands from the disasters that used to strike them without warning when vast submarine earthquakes launched outward in all directions what used to be called tidal waves.
There, in the continuous darkness of winter, with their island moving imperceptibly in clockwise motion as if held in orbit by an invisible thread attached to a nonexistent North Pole, the scientists listened as Spada told of the event which had modified the marine history of the Pacific:
'April Fool's Day 1946. Qugang Volcano, out here on Lapak Island, erupted. No great deal. Ashes from the fiery belch didn't even reach Dutch Harbor, let alone the mainland.
But a little while later one hell of a submarine earthquake occurred on the south side of the island. Displaced millions of tons of soft, sliding earth.
'It gave birth to a tsunami of epic dimension. Not a tidal wave rearing its head high in the air, but a lateral displacement of tremendous force headed for the Hawaiian Islands. Three ships that day had it pass right under them and only one even noticed it. "Sudden rise ocean surface, but less than three feet," read the log. But five hours later when it hit the town of Hilo on the north coast of the Big Island, at a speed of four hundred eighty miles an hour, it just kept coming and coming and coming. But it did no damage. However, when the runoff back to the ocean came, it sucked cars and houses and nearly two hundred people to their deaths.
'A tsunami from somewhere wiped out the first Russian settlement on Kodiak Island in 1792. And you've heard about Lituya, where the water level rose more than seventeen hundred feet.'
The scientists wanted to know if such things were likely to be repeated, and Spada said: 'Absolutely not. The Rim of Fire will act up, of that we can be sure, but the consequences will always be different. If the April '46 earthquake had been pointed two degrees differently, its tsunami would have missed Hawaii by hundreds of miles.
And even so, it wasn't of maximum size, only seven-point-four on the Richter.'
Here Kendra broke in: 'Everybody talks about the Richter scale, but nobody ever says what it is,' and Spada offered a succinct description: 'It's an imprecise but helpful rule of thumb. It's a measurement taken about sixty miles from the point of origin and is reported on a logarithmic scale, which means that each major division is ten times more powerful than the one before. Thus, a four-point Richter has ten times the magnitude of a three-point, which is so weak that humans might not even feel it, while a nine-point "Richter, which tears the place apart and is close to the maximum so far recorded, has a magnitude a million times that of a three.'
He told them what they must remember in their studies was that Alaska did have those sixty-odd potentially active volcanoes, and that the word active meant that each one was capable of exploding at any moment: 'So in this part of the world we must be prepared for anything. I'm uneasy about being away from my warning system even for an instructive meeting like this, because a significant volcanic eruption or major slippage of the ocean floor could happen at any time.'
The more the scientists interrogated Spada, the more Kendra saw that their worlds and his interlocked, and that in the Arctic Ocean, while it presented unique features, mainly a permanently frozen body of water, the ever-changing ice followed patterns of its own, just as the edges of plates, where they clashed, established their own bizarre rules. 'But nobody's told me yet,' Kendra said, 'why it's the Pacific that's rimmed with fire and not the Atlantic,' and this provoked considerable guesswork, with some reminding her that Mont Pelee and Etna and Vesuvius had not been trivial volcanoes in their day, but the answer that she preferred came from Spada: 'I've considered two theories. It could be that the size of the Pacific Plate, its sheer magnitude, releases greater forces when it collides with the various continental plates. But a more likely explanation would be that the Atlantic Ocean does not ride upon its own plate. It's not surrounded by fracture zones.'
On this satisfying note she was about to go to bed, but as she left the mess hall alone, Rick being on duty monitoring ocean-current recordings, she saw in the night sky the most tremendous display of the aurora borealis she had witnessed in Alaska.
Running back to where the others still debated, she summoned them outside, where in a mild and windless minus-twenty-four degrees, they witnessed what even they admitted was an incomparable show of vast heavenly arcs, undulating waves and shifting colors.
When the others returned to their work or their beds, for clocks were of little significance in January, Kendra remained behind, trying to correlate these towering cathedrals of the northern lights, the eruptions of the Rim of Fire, the altering salinity of the various parts of the ocean, and the relationships between the Soviet Union and Norway, each of whom claimed with historic justification the ultra crucial Svalbard islands, past which the submarines would have to go in time of trouble.
As she stood there, she became aware that someone had joined her, and she saw that it was Vladimir Afanasi, who said: 'It's breathtaking. Maybe twice in a lifetime, spectacles like these.'
She led him to a bench
'Amy and Jonathan... it pains me even to say their names. Sometimes I feel that my stay in Desolation was full of heartbreak.'
'The heartbreak never ends, Kendra.' He fell silent and remained so for some time, but it was obvious he wanted to say much more, and so Kendra began, and with her sympathy for people she touched the precise nerve that was troubling him: 'I heard you say once, Mr. Afanasi, that your father and uncle taught you what not to do.
But you never explained.'
'They were tragic figures who tried to do the impossible. Stand with one, leg in the Eskimo world, one in the white man's. Can't be done.'
'You do it.'
'No, no! I've never really left the Eskimo. At the university I was an Eskimo. That's why I didn't graduate. At work in Seattle, always an Eskimo. Here on the T-Seven, I'm the Eskimo, me and the polar bears.'
'What happened with your father and his brother?'
'It really happened with their father, Dmitri Afanasi, my grandfather. Remarkable man. Born and dedicated a Russian Orthodox priest, had no trouble whatever becoming a Presbyterian missionary. But his Athapascan wife was a powerful influence on the boys. She was Russian Orthodox and refused to change. No fuss. No public argument.
"Just leave me alone as I am."So my father and uncle were Russian and Eskimo, Orthodox and Presbyterian, white man's world, Eskimo's world. And they both died.'
'Are you afraid of the word suicide?'
'No. Not afraid. My son committed suicide, just like the others. My father and uncle were murdered by the dreadful changes in their world.'
'It seems to skip generations, the impact I mean. Your grandfather had no problems.
His two sons did. Your generation had no problems. Your son did.'
'It's never that simple, Kendra. My brother, a wonderful lad, committed suicide at nineteen.'
'Oh Jesus! What a terrible burden!' She choked, lifted her hands to her lips, then turned to embrace this sterling Eskimo who had brought so much meaning to her life.
As new cathedrals were built, great towering edifices constructed of movement and heavenly design, they sat side by side on the bench, speculating on the dark significance of the north.
HISTORY OFTEN REPEATS, BUT RARELY DOES IT MAKE A complete closed circle, yet that is what happened to Malcolm Venn when he was called upon to reverse his family's efforts of over half a century ago.
The Ross and Venn families of Seattle were among the most respected on the Pacific Coast. Self-educated, principled, concerned always with the advancement of society and generous with their charities, they demanded only one thing: a monopoly on trade with Alaska. Once assured of that, and satisfied that it was protected by legislation in Washington, the Ross & Raglan heirs were about as worthy public citizens as the nation produced.
They had a sense of humor too, so that when Venn, a distinguished-looking man in his late seventies, received the preposterous assignment from his fellow industrialists in Seattle, he was more than aware of its sardonic overtones: 'Gentlemen, if I accept this job, and make any public statements about it, I'll be the laughingstock of Seattle, and Alaska too!' They agreed, but pointed out: 'This is a crisis situation, and no one has the credentials you do for dealing with it.' So, reluctantly, he agreed to place his head upon the chopping block.
Accompanied by his lovely wife, Tammy Ting, the outspoken Chinese-Tlingit beauty from Juneau, he arrived by plane in Sitka, rented a suite overlooking the gorgeous bay, and sat for several hours each day glued to his window with a pair of high-powered binoculars pressed against his face. It was July, and he was watching the arrival in Sitka Sound of an unending sequence of the most beautiful cruise ships in the world. Each morning at six, two or three of these graceful floating hotels would put into Sitka, about a thousand excited passengers would stream ashore from each one to see the old Russian town and spend huge amounts of money, then return to their ship for the conclusion of one of the finest tours in the world: the seven- or eight-day cruise of the fjords and glaciers of southeastern Alaska. If one wanted to see happy and contented tourists, one came to Sitka in the summer, for it was the general conclusion that 'we got the best bargain available anywhere.'
For his first two days in town Venn was content merely to call off the names of the great ships as they arrived: 'That's the Royal Princess, of the great P & O Line in London. I forget what the initials mean, but it was the famous line that is supposed to have given us the word posh.
Legend claims that people of standing, on their cruise from London to Bombay, had their tickets stamped POSH, port out, starboard home. That kept them in the shade, escaping the sun. I'm told the handsomest ship of all, inside, is that Nieuw Amsterdam of the Dutch line. But the Chalmers told me: "If you ever take the Alaska cruise, take that one over there."' And against the dark peaks that rimmed the bay stood the Royal Viking, and beyond it the French Rhapsody, a more modest ship.
Tammy Venn, recording the names of the vessels as her husband called them off, said:
'They're all foreign. Why aren't there any American ships out there?' and Malcolm replied: 'That's what we're up here about. They are all foreign. They're all making simply potfuls of money. And not a cent of it is passing through Seattle.'
'Where do they come from?'
'Vancouver. Every damned one of them.'
Since her husband rarely used even mild profanity, Tammy knew he was angry, but she asked sweetly: 'Why don't you do something about it?' and he growled: 'I propose to.'
When he felt that he had a preliminary grasp of the situation, he visited commercial shops in Sitka and learned that during the summer season no cruise ship would dare head north in winter some two hundred and sixteen of the sleek ships put in to Sitka, with an even greater number, two hundred and eighty-three, docking at Juneau, where there were extraordinary tourist attractions like the great ice field in back of town and the glories of Taku Inlet with its own more typical glaciers.
Local experts calculated that, counting the smaller vessels, an average of about one thousand passengers arrived on each ship' There's never an empty bed on one of the good boats. The crew has rakes to drag in the money' which meant that more than a quarter of a million well-heeled tourists a year were coming to Alaska, always through Vancouver, never through Seattle. Counting the time most of them spent in Vancouver hotels, restaurants, nightclubs and taxicabs, the amount of money lost by Seattle in this traffic was astronomical.
Seeking to nail down a defensible figure, on his third day in town Malcolm Venn started visiting the lovely ships, all so clean and polished for display in the old Russian capital, and he happened to tour first the exquisite little Sagqfford, a jewel of the erasing trade. As onetime head of his own shipping company, Ross & Raglan having exited the field some years back, he was welcomed aboard, and learned to his astonishment that on this superior ship the fare for the Alaska cruise could run as high as $4,890, but when he gasped, the captain personally took him to a fine small cabin at a mere $1,950.
'What's an average?' he asked, and the captain said: 'That's easy. We've had a full ship, so you just multiply the figures,' but he warned that his figures were not representative of the trade in general: 'You want to study one of the really huge ships,' and just coming into the harbor was the stately Rotterdam.
It carried more than a thousand passengers, all berths taken, of course, at what the pursers said was an average rate of $2,195.
Back in his room, Malcolm multiplied the Rotterdam figures by the estimated number of Sitka visitors, and got a result of close to $400,000,000.
Adding in the money spent ashore at Vancouver, he stared at a total topping half a billion dollars: And every damn cent of it ought to be passing through Seattle!
In succeeding days he learned things about Alaskan cruising which caused him to whistle in admiration at the brilliance of the European operators who had put together this gold
She's really five separate ships. Officer cadre, exclusively British. Best men afloat.
The dining room, exclusively Italian, no other. Deck crew, Pakistani. Everyone below decks, Chinese. And the entertainment team, sixteen or eighteen real stars, all American.'
Tammy nodded to confirm each description, then said: 'And the Nieuw Amsterdam, the same divisions, with its own variations. Officers all Dutch. Dining room, what?
Italian too, or French? Deckhands all Indonesian. Below decks, I think Chinese. Singers, band, all that nonsense, Americans.'
With each of the great ships it was the same: wonderfully trained European officers ran them, Italians and Frenchmen provided elegant menus, Asians of one kind or another cleaned and maintained the ship, Chinese kept the engines operating, and Americans provided the fun. A whole world of enterprise had been wrested from the Americans and turned over to foreign experts who performed like magicians. Considering everything, the glaciers, fjords, wildlife and frontier towns along the shore, the Alaskan cruise was indeed the best bargain in the world.
Why had the Americans allowed this bonanza to slip through their fingers? In a series of small, intense meetings attended by both Malcolm and Tammy, he opened the first session: 'Gentlemen, we face a shipping crisis in Alaska and on the West Coast. Your tremendous Alaskan tourist trade, which I calculate to gross well over half a billion dollars a year, is all passing through Canada, Vancouver in particular, when it ought to be passing through the United States, Seattle to be specific.' There was at this point a very slight disturbance; someone in the back of the room was laughing, and not courteously, but Malcolm plowed ahead: 'You and I both know the cause of this disaster.' He paused dramatically, then blurted out: