66 The Best Cook

Sven arrived at the mine just as the afternoon was changing into evening. By that time, he was in a shape resembling Ulla's. Her blood had mixed with his own to run and crust all over his legs and arms and face. He was exhausted and looked it, looked very much the devoted leader who didn't abandon fallen comrades even when it meant lugging a dead body for many hours.

"Fell from a cliff," he said, in response to a flurry of questions. He put Ulla's body down by the fire, and sat down nearby and waited for the two other teams to return.

He had a very long wait. Karl and Erik returned right after sunset with nothing to report; but Henrik and Lasse didn't turn up until close to midnight, with plenty to report. They'd come across the kids' camp, the camp Sven had seen from the clifftop. It had turned out to be nothing but a desolate huddle of shacks with little of value: all Henrik and Lasse had found was a few primitive tools, and some untreated animal hides.

Henrik and Lasse had spent a lot of time going through the camp with a fine-toothed comb, and as a result night had fallen before they could complete their journey home. They'd gotten lost, and had nearly wept with joy when they smelled the smoke of the fire burning at the mine. If it wasn't for that, they might have spent the whole night wandering around in the forest.

Sven listened patiently to everything Henrik and Lasse had to say, and examined the kids' tools. Made of stone and wood, they were very crude. His New World duties done, Sven promptly went to sleep and woke up back at his farm near Jokkmokk.

Things had changed in his absence. He could hear the bleating of sheep from the yard: it seemed Olaf had succeeded in buying some from Persson. Sven got up from the hiber bed, feeling tired even though he had had over seven hours of sleep.

He wondered, not for the first time, whether physical exertion in the New World affected his Old World self. It definitely felt that way, and he suspected that it did, although the effect was very muted, just as it was with physical pain. He had cracked a rib during one of his excursions in the New World, and he had felt a persistent itch in the same spot for a couple of Old World days until his rib had healed.

He left his room and made his way outside, gingerly stepping between and over the sleeping Vikings. It put him in a bad mood. He had to find a way to accommodate all those people elsewhere. It tired him out, having so many people living at his farm for such a long period of time. He needed some peace, privacy, and solitude. He had his bedroom all to himself, true, but that wasn't enough.

Olaf was standing right in the center of the yard, examining the ear of a sheep. He had turned it inside out and was prodding at it with the tip of his finger. The sheep objected by uttering a series of plaintive bleats. Sven grimaced, and shouted:

"Olaf! Leave that unhappy animal alone and come here."

When Olaf joined him, Sven asked:

"What the fuck were you doing to that sheep?"

"I think it's got an ear infection."

"Are you out of your fucking mind? You'll be eating that sheep tonight."

"Maybe it's not wise to eat a sheep with an ear infection."

Sven stared at Olaf for a while, then said:

"From now on, I forbid you to have any more contact with those fucking sheep except when eating roast mutton. You'll be wanting to marry one, next. It's off to the hiber bed with you. You need a proper dose of the New World."

"That's great. It's kinda boring back here. But you know, my guy in Svenborg is bored out of his skull as well. I mean he's sitting on his ass and listening to bitching and complaints all day."

"I left you with a lot to do."

Olaf shrugged.

"It's all getting done," he said. "It was all just a matter of getting things properly organized. By the way, the guys have finished working on the crossbow. They're making a bunch of bolts now. They're saying it packs a hell of a punch. It put an iron bolt clean through five centimeters of wood at fifty steps."

"Sounds good," said Sven. "Now go and wash and have some rest. Spend a day in Svenborg and maybe get laid. At least you can still find some privacy over there. I'll wake you up in time for dinner."

Sven watched Olaf go into the house. Getting concerned about a sheep's ear was a disturbing sign. What was happening to everyone? They all seemed to be going nuts, in both worlds.

He frowned, and made his way across the muddy yard to the stable, where the communal kitchen had been set up. A space around ten meters square had been cleared in one of the corners. That was where stuff sent from the New World arrived.

Ulla was busy cooking an enormous pot of soup. It smelled good: she really was a great cook, capable of making a good meal out of next to nothing. Sven saw that the shining blue dot was missing from her forehead. He ignored her, and went over to the corner to examine the new arrivals. There was a bunch of crude copper ingots, flecked with impurities of all sorts. They would have to be smelted down again before being used to mint coins.

This reminded him: he had to go into town to talk to the jeweler who was making the coin dies for Sven's mint. Jokkmokk's only jeweler, close to bankruptcy before the catastrophe, was now working around the clock on coin dies for at least twenty newly registered mints. He was the only person in town with the right tools for the job.

Sven wanted to make sure his order was right at the front of the queue. He needed to make money fast. He would need to have at least a couple of sacks of coins in a week's time, when the new currency became the only legal tender.

There was a solitary bar of silver among the copper. Sven picked it up, and looked it over. Like the copper, it was full of impurities. He sighed; he would have to set up a proper smelter at the farm. There was so much to do! Running a drug operation was pure relaxation, by comparison. It had mostly consisted of talking to people on the phone, with a drink parked in front and a joint in his telephone-free hand. This New World thing was turning him into its slave.

He walked up to Ulla, and waited until she had finished chopping up a large onion and turned to him, wiping her hands on the dirty apron hanging from her waist.

"How is it going?" he asked.

"We've nearly run out of vegetables," she said. "We've got two sacks of potatoes and another of turnips and some onions. And that's it. I have no idea how we're going to feed all those people in a few days' time."

"I'll think of something," he told her. "How do you feel?"

"Better. You were right. I'd had a little too much of the New World."

"Yeah," Sven said. "Too much of a good thing always ends badly. You've kept your signal muted?"

"Yes, it was nice without that voice jabbering away all the time. Why?"

"You didn't feel any shock or discomfort? Particularly in the last couple of hours or so?"

"No. Why?"

It had worked! She wasn't even aware that her second self was dead. She seemed to be much better, too. The hints of craziness that had hung around in her face were gone.

"Your Ulla in the New World is dead," he told her. "We were fucking on top of a cliff and we fell down. She broke her neck. My guy was pretty badly knocked about too, no serious injuries though."

Ulla actually smiled.

"Death while fucking," she mused. "You know, Sven, I wouldn't mind going out like that. For real."

He grinned and said:

"Yeah. I wouldn't mind that, too."

"We're still going on that trip? That tour on the motorbike you talked about?"

"Yes."

"Good," she said. She shuddered and added:

"I'm starting to feel claustrophobic here."

"Me too. As soon as the first of March rolls around and I'm done with the colony formalities, we're off."

"I can't wait."

"Neither can I," said Sven.

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