The landscape outside the window was black and white, with the ocean like gray metal beneath a dark sky. The cliffs were bare and steep, ribboned by bird droppings, the beaches stony and empty with off-white trimmings of dried foam and salt.
It was a lifeless landscape, even this far into “spring.” The polar night had lost its grip on day and let it slide into twilight along the horizon in the south. I looked toward the metallic reflection of sunlight and felt invisible feathers rise around my neck. I blinked my eyes.
Why were they this far north?
I thought of my boss as an owl. A great white snow-owl with a cloud of light feathers. With big yellow eyes in a round head. With a sharp and cynical beak. With spastic movements. I felt like that when the Owl took me over, I discovered such movements in my own body when the Owl left me.
What did he really want from me? Why was not I, like the others of whom I had heard, guided to the ghetto on Hawaii? What was an extraterrestrial doing on Bear Island, 74 degrees north?
Bear Island is the southernmost of the Spitsbergen Islands. Its area is approximately 180 square kilometers. Its shape is triangular, with the famous Bird’s Mountain on the southernmost point. It was discovered by the Dutch polar explorer Willem Barents in 1596, and fishermen were attracted to the island by huge populations of elephant seal and whale. The climate is quite mild: in the warmest month the average temperature is not more than 4 degrees centigrade, but the average drops in the coldest month to −7 degrees, quite mild for a latitude halfway between the North Pole and the northernmost point of Alaska.
Bear Island was placed under Norwegian sovereignty in 1925. Since 1918, Norway has maintained a station on the island, partly to keep radio contact with the fisheries fleet, partly for meteorological observations. The station was destroyed when the Allies withdrew in 1941, to make it useless for the Germans. A new station was constructed in 1947 at Herwig Port, a few kilometers from the old.
The station was my closest neighbor. I could in principle visit there, either in the boat if there was not too much ice along the coast, or in the small but efficient helicopter in the tin hangar outside the buried bunker in which the Institute was housed. It would take just a little while to fly north and west from Cape Levin to Herwig Port. But I did not fly.
Of course.
After I was possessed, I did not do such things.
I blinked my great yellow eyes, flexed my clawlike fingers over the keyboard of my computer, and did not remember anything…until I later shuddered and blinked in front of the screen.
My eyes were sore and staring. More than eleven hours had passed. I got back to the bunk I had made up in the terminal room just before being overwhelmed by deep sleep.
It was, of course, contrary to normal procedure to let one man live through the polar night on his own. There should have been two of us.
Normally, there were, both specialists, experts on the analysis of geotechnical data from sonar probes. We were rather good friends, Norway being small enough to make most people within the same field acquaintances. His name was Johannes Hansen; he was from the small town Mo in northern Norway and was used to long and sunless winters. I was from the south, but I needed the bonus which a winter would bring. We had rather looked forward to a quiet winter of routine work—and a computer, which we could use in our spare time to process the material we had both collected for a paper, perhaps a thesis.
It was not many nights after equinox before the white and dark wings closed over my thoughts and my boss took power.
A few days later Johannes Hansen became seriously ill. I am sure that my boss induced the illness, though I do not know in what way.
Johannes Hansen was collected by a helicopter from a coast guard vessel. He died before he reached the mainland.
The doctors had problems in determining the cause of death, and no replacement was sent out. I remained alone in the bunker of the Institute on the east coast of Bear Island. People from the meteorological station did not visit. Nor did I visit them, though I talked to them by radio from time to time in order to reassure them. It was important that they should not grow suspicious, important to my boss.
My boss knew why he was there. I did not. I did not know what the Owl wanted from me and the bunker of the Institute at Bear Island. I only knew that in this bunker for the better part of the winter a possessed person lived, a person who flapped invisible wings and hooted like an owl toward the night lying across the snow, and the ice outside the windows.
Institute for Polar Geology is the official name. It may sound rather academic. Formally, the Institute is part of the University of Tromsø—the world’s northernmost university—but in reality it is financed by the government. Norway had for many years conducted quite sensitive negotiations with the Soviet Union over possible economic exploitation of the Barents Sea; that is, the ocean north of Norway and the Kola Peninsula which stretches between Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya toward the pole.
The negotiations were difficult for several reasons. First, the Soviets had considerable military activity on the Kola Peninsula—for instance, its largest navy base. Second, preliminary surveys indicated major natural resources on the continental shelf, especially in oil. The coal mines of Spitsbergen were an obvious sign of what might lie hidden by the cold sea. In the summer of 1984 the Soviets made the first major find of natural gas and oil, midway between the Norwegian coast and Novaya Zemlya.
The two countries had not arrived at a final agreement. There was still a contested sector midway between the two countries, popularly known as “the gray zone.” In 1984 it was discovered that one of the important members of the Norwegian delegation during the negotiations had been in contact with the KGB and was probably a Soviet agent. All these factors had combined to block the final solution of the gray-zone problem.
Soviet mining ships had made test drillings as close to the gray zone as possible, seeking information on which natural resources it might hide. Norway was too occupied with exploration and development of promising oil fields in the North Sea to start more than symbolic test drills farther north. The northernmost samples were taken at Tromsøflaket, a fishing bank off the shore of North Troms at a depth of 2,300 meters.
The Institute for Polar Geology was founded to furnish more information about the structures underneath the sea bottom in the north, and the sea bottom itself. An installation was constructed at Bear Island, approximately midway between the mainland and Spitsbergen proper. This installation was equipped with a computer system for analysis of data collected by sonar probes. The system was quite powerful. There was a sturdy minicomputer, databases with all available geological information on the northern seas, programs for analysis developed on the basis of experiments made in the North Sea, plotters and graphic screens for projection of maps and graphs.
The system received data through a radio link with the sonar probes. Some probes were anchored to the sea bottom, while others could be piloted—almost like unmanned mini-subs—by the computer system, into areas from which data was desirable.
The system had no permanent link to those on the mainland. However, through a disk antenna one of the polar orbiting satellite systems could be accessed for computer communication. There was also a link to the mainland by way of the meteorological station at Herwig Port.
It was a rather fancy computer system. But it was a considerably less expensive way of collecting information than test drilling. Perhaps the Soviets also would have chosen this alternative if it had been open to them, but the system in the bunker at Cape Levin was certainly on the embargo list of the US Department of Commerce. It was not possible for the Soviets to establish something similar. And this well-equipped bunker was the place where the invisible Owl had arrived, from a planet beyond the curtain of northern lights.
Obviously, it was to use this equipment that the Owl had chosen the bunker. It must be possible for the equipment to squeeze out information from the sonar probes. I did not know what it might be, except in rough outlines.
When the Owl had ridden me throughout days of polar night, I came to in an exhausted body. My tongue was dry and thick like a stopper in my throat, my eyes were red and swollen. The Owl showed little consideration for the fact that static electricity in the terminal screen gathered dust from the atmosphere of the electrically heated bunker, and that this concentration of dust irritated the mucous membranes in the eyes and prompted symptoms of allergy. The Owl used my body as long as necessary. It rode me, day after day, and let me recover only sufficiently to endure another ride—impatient with me, irritated by my bodily needs.
Perhaps I was too exhausted to revolt. I nursed myself back to some semblance of health time after time, though I knew that as soon as I became strong, the claws would grip my thoughts and I would be ridden through a new unconscious period.
I noticed the evidence of what had been done, read the log from the computer, and knew that new programs had been written, probes activated, new data collected. Several of the mobile probes frequently went into the gray zone. From time to time they crossed the territorial border to the Soviets. It was probably not out of respect for human agreements or the danger of creating an international incident that the Owl refrained from penetrating deeper into Soviet territory—but rather just because the radio signals became too weak to be received so far from the installation.
I tried to read the programs. They were, of course, written in FORTRAN or SIMULA—the Owl had to make do with what to him would seem naive languages. But I did not understand the programs, though I was a passable programmer myself.
It could not be oil resources that interested the Owl. I could only guess what he—and I, in my unconscious and feverish working periods—really was looking for. I guessed it would have something to do with the nodules, the bulbs of manganese covering great areas of the sea bottom.
And, of course, even manganese could not be the interesting thing. Next to iron, it is the heavy metal most common in the Earth’s crust, though the fraction is no higher than 0.77 percent. Manganese is also identified in meteorites and in the spectrum of stars, so it could not be the scarcity of this metal that made an extraterrestrial interested in the cold sea far in the north of the Earth.
But laboratory analysis of the nodules shows that they contain a profusion of other minerals, among these at least forty different metals, for instance iron, copper, nickel, and cobalt. I thought it might be a trace element that the Owl looked for. Perhaps his search related to the fact that the nodules were so far north, where temperature, magnetic fields, or the strong cosmic radiation had acted to catalyze an unknown process. Or perhaps the solution was to be found in some prehistoric volcanic catastrophe creating the core of the bulbs.
An unknown trace element…or an alloy, a chemical compound…
It was not the only riddle of the Owl.
I did not understand why it operated in secrecy. The other reported incidents of “possession” of which I had heard had taken the host directly to Hawaii, where the bosses haggled among themselves in some sort of stock exchange of Babel, where terrestrial goods and services were traded on behalf of clients light-years away—who probably would not be able to enjoy the goods or services for many slow decades. In some way the Owl participated in this game, perhaps collecting secret information on natural resources.
I believed he operated outside the rules of the game. That’s why he had selected the lonely Bear Island, therefore had selected me…a lonely man in a wintery bunker at the shore of the Barents Sea.
I believed there might also be another reason.
My boss hated sunlight. It was perhaps for that reason I had dubbed him the Owl. He worked only at night. The long polar night allowed him to work without being disturbed by daylight—until my body failed.
From time to time I thought of his home planet. A waste-world, at the edge of a solar system. Perhaps the white wings of the Owl slid through an atmosphere of methane? Or perhaps his planet was covered by eternal clouds? Or perhaps it was tied in rotation to its sun, where the Owl and his kind inhabited the night side?
In my nightmares the Owl became a figure from fairy tales, and his home planet a magic forest. It felt nearly logical that he should share the predilection of the trolls from Norwegian fairy tales, by hiding from the sun.
And soon the polar night would be at an end.
There were long periods each day when I was free of the Owl. At last there were only a few hours each night when it dared to sink its claws into my subconscious.
But I understood that it had done something to me. I did not fully have free will. I contacted the meteorological station and declared that I would like to stay another winter. And that I did not really need a summer holiday.
They grew very concerned. I could count on a visit from a psychologist—at least a radio interview with one on the mainland. I would have liked to break my isolation—but I was controlled, guided by the rules the Owl had constructed in my subconscious.
But the polar night has its reflection in the polar summer. From April 30 till August 12, the sun never sets over Bear Island. The midnight sun burns in the north each night, and the shadows pivot like the pointers of a watch across the whole dial. The landscape explodes in seductive colors under melting snow. The air is light and transparent in white sunshine.
And for the whole of this period, more than three months, the Owl would stay away from me—though it still controlled my subconscious. During this period I had to take countermeasures to break out of my psychological jail. In the May sun I looked for the key to the barred door.
I found it. At least I thought so then.
The computer system at the bunker was quite advanced. It had access to, among other programs, a version of PROSPECTOR, one of the most successful examples of expert systems constructed. PROSPECTOR exploits the results of research in artificial intelligence and the knowledge from a large number of experts in geology and petrochemistry. This knowledge is structured in a large set of rules. And this rule system could assist another expert—for instance, myself. The results of analyses could be presented to PROSPECTOR, which at once would suggest that supplementing information should be collected, until it arrived at a conclusion on whether the geological structure described by the information was promising or not.
PROSPECTOR could become the key.
The version of PROSPECTOR to which I had access was a self-instructing program. Through use, the program learned more about the one using it, and about what it was being used for. It automatically constructed supplementing rules, constantly refining its expertise.
Of course, the Owl would not himself start using PROSPECTOR, or my special version, the OWLECTOR. I used the summer to hide the program in the operating system to the computer. It was a sort of extra layer in the program, rather like a hawk floating in the air and keeping an eye on what was happening below. This is how I saw OWLECTOR, like a hunting hawk programmed with a taste in owls. The more the Owl used the system, the more OWLECTOR would learn of the Owl. It would learn enough to take control from the Owl, fight the Owl. And the more the Owl fought to keep in control, the more OWLECTOR would learn of its opponent.
There was a fascinating justice in the scheme. Neither I nor any other human could fight the Owl or any of his galactic colleagues. We had not sufficient knowledge nor capacity in a brief human life to learn what we needed. But a computer does not have our limitations. It can learn as long as there is somebody to teach. It can learn until it knows as much as the teacher.
It can tap knowledge from the Owl until it becomes an owl itself.
And the computerized owl is loyal to humans. That is the way I have programmed it. And this loyalty will last as long as the program.
There will not be much time. Perhaps only a few hours, a few days. Who knows how soon the Owl will discover the hunting hawk somewhere above, like a dot against the sky?
But perhaps it does not expect such an attack. Perhaps the Owl is arrogant and impatient with weak humans, who fail from thirst and exhaustion. And then it will perhaps not search the sky for a hunting hawk in the form of a computer program, which studies the Owl as prey until it is ready to strike the bustling white bird and liberate me for all future time….
I do not know whether to believe in this or not. But I no longer dream of spectral owls in strange dark forests, but of white owls in snow, owls killed by birds of prey, blood splashing the snow. In my sleep I hear the seabirds cry: they dive and circle through the sunny nights, and I seem to hear the owls hoot.
It will soon be August 12. The sun already touches the horizon at midnight. Soon the Owl will be back, and I will know the answer….