The man whose presence I sense less than a yard away must be convinced that he's alone, that no one can hear or see him. And yet he is as soundless as if he never existed.

But not for one second am I tempted to move, to give in to the cold. Like one long, internal shriek my senses tell me that someone is waiting there. That he's waiting for me.

I don't even hear him leave. I close my eyes for a moment because the cold has made them run. When I open them, a shadow has torn away from the shed roof and is moving off. A tall figure with a quick, fluid gait. And above his head, like a halo or a crown, something white, maybe a hat.

There are two ways to tag polar bears. The usual way is to stun them from a helicopter. The machine drops down directly over the bear, you lean out of the cockpit, and the instant that the air pressure from the rotor strikes the animal, it falls to the ground and you shoot.

Then there's the other method that we used on Svalbard. From a snowmobile-"the Viking way." You shoot with a custom air rifle made by Neiendamm in southern Jutland. This method requires you to get close, less than fifty yards away. Less than twenty-five is better. The moment the bear stops and turns around, you get a good look at it. Not one of those living carcasses that amuse you at the zoo, but a polar bear, the one from the Greenlandic coat of arms, colossal, three-quarters of a ton of muscle, bone, and teeth. With an extreme, lethal ability to explode. A wild animal that has existed for only 20,000 years, and in that time has known only two types of mammals: its own species and its prey.

I have never missed. We used bullets in which a gas device injected a large dose of Zolatil. The bear fell almost instantaneously. But not for a moment was I free of the panicky, hair-raising fear.

It's the same feeling now. What is moving away from me is only a shadow, a stranger, a person who is not aware of my presence. But the hair on my skin, which is numb from the cold, is standing on end like spines on a porcupine.

I reach the stairway through the basement rooms. The, mechanic's door is locked, and the tape is in place.

The door of Juliane's apartment is standing open. As I pass, she comes out onto the stairs.

"You're going away, Smilla."

She looks weak and helpless. But I hate her, anyway.

"Why didn't you tell me about Ving?" I say. "That he came and picked up Isaiah?"

She starts to cry. "The apartment. He gave us the apartment. He's a big shot with the housing authority. He could take it away again. He said that himself. Aren't you coming back?"

"Of course I am," I say.

It's true. I'll have to come back. She's the only thing left of Isaiah. Just as, for Moritz, I'm his only connection with my mother.

I walk up to my own floor. The tape hasn't been touched. I let myself in. Everything is the way I left it. I gather up only the most essential clothes. They fill two suitcases, which weigh so much that I would have to call a moving van. I try to repack them. It's difficult, because I don't dare turn on a light but work by the reflection from tile city's lights on the snow outside. Finally I limit myself to one large duffel bag. But not without heart-rending sacrifices.

Standing in the middle of the room, I take one last look around. I pick up Isaiah's cigar box and put it in the bag. I say a brief mental farewell to my home.

Then the phone rings.

Of course I should just let it ring. I promised the mechanic not to come up here. And I wouldn't want to talk to the police. Everything else can wait. I should just let it ring,. I have everything to lose and nothing to gain.

I loosen the tape and pick up the receiver. "Smilla…"

The voice is languid, almost distracted. But at the same t ime golden and resonant, like in a TV commercial. I have iirvcr heard it before. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I know that it belongs to the person who was standing less than a yard away from me only monents ago. I'm absolutely sure of it.

"Smilla… I know you're there."

I hear his breathing. Deep, calm. "Smilla…"

I put down the receiver, not on the phone, but on the table. I have to use both hands so I won't drop it. I sling my bag over my shoulder. No time to change shoes. I race out the door and down the dark stairway, out the front door and along Strand Street, across the bridge, and up Havne Street. We can't control ourselves every second of our lives. There comes a time, for each of us, when panic takes the upper hand.

Lander is waiting with the engine running. I throw myself into the passenger seat and cling to him.

"This is a good start," he says.

Slowly I get my breathing down to a tolerable level. "It was purely a one-time acknowledgment of sympathy," I tell him. "Don't let it go to your head."

I let him drive me all the way up to the house. For tonight, anyway, I've lost all desire to be alone in the dark. And I don't know where else to go. Moritz opens the door himself. Wearing a white terrycloth robe, white silk shorts, his hair rumpled, his eyes sleepy.

He looks at me. He looks at Lander, who is carrying my bag. He looks at the Jaguar. Amazement, jealousy, old rage, temper, curiosity, and unctuous indignation roam and struggle through his half-asleep brain. Then he rubs the stubble on his face.

"Are you coming in?" he says. "Or should I just hand the money through the mail slot?"

5

The rib bones are the closed ellipses of the planets, with their focus in the sternum, the breastbone, the white center of the photograph. The lungs are the gray shadows of the Milky Way against the black leaden shield of space. The heart's dark contour is the cloud of ashes from the burned-out sun. The intestines' hazy hyperboles are the disconnected asteroids, the vagabonds of space, the scattered cosmic dust.

We're standing in Moritz's consultation room at the light box, on which three X-rays have been clipped. In the clinical reduction of photon photography it's more apparent than ever that the human being is a universe; a solar system seen from another galaxy. And yet this person is dead. With a jackhammer someone dug him a grave in the permafrost of Holsteinsborg, put stones on it, and poured cement over it to keep the Arctic foxes away.

"Marius Høeg, dead on the Barren Glacier, Gela Alta, July 1966."

I am standing with Moritz and forensics expert Dr. Lagermann in front of the light box. Benja is sitting in a wicker chair sucking her thumb.

The floor is yellow marble, the walls are covered with light brown fabric. There is wicker furniture and an examination table painted avocado green and covered with natural-colored leather. There is an original Dali on the wall. Even the X-ray machine looks as if it feels comfortable with this attempt to make advanced technology seem homey.

This is where Moritz earns a portion of the money which helps to make his later years golden, but at the moment he is working for free. He is examining the X-rays which Lagermann, in defiance of six paragraphs of the law, has taken from the archives of the Institute of Forensic Medicine.

"The report from the expedition in '66 is missing. It has simply been removed. Damn."

I told Moritz that they are looking for me and that I have no intention of turning myself in to the police. He detests illegalities but he acquiesces because, with or without permission from the police, it's better for me to be here than not.

I told him that I'm going to have a visitor and that we will need the light box in his clinic. His clinic is his inner sanctum, as private as his investments and his bank accounts in Switzerland, but he agrees.

I said that I wouldn't tell him what it was all about. He acquiesces. He's trying to pay back some of his debt to me. It's thirty years old and fathomless.