Beyond Dry Portage, the people known to the official lists came to an end, and the land the lists called empty began.
The land called empty fed people. In the mornings the snow was patterned with hare tracks, and elk stood by the openings in the ice. Twice the party passed winter huts where dried fish hung under the roof and a spade was propped against the door: the owners had gone to check their traps and did not fear that a traveller would take more than he needed.
"Waste ground," the second surveyor dictated, looking through the telescope. "Standing timber, bog, unowned hunting grounds."
Prokop carried the ranging poles and said nothing.
Those hunting grounds had owners. One of them walked ahead of the party in a man's reindeer-fur coat and decided which names would enter the official journal.
"The locality of Goose Rapid," Aiga said, pointing with the handle of her whip at the white river. "Then Deaf Hollow. Beyond it, Bald Brow Hill, I told you."
Zotik wrote: Goose Rapid, Deaf Hollow.
Prokop listened and could not call what he heard a lie. Aiga invented nothing; she chose between two names, keeping the true one for her own people and giving strangers the plain one that meant nothing.
He realised this on the third day, at the rapid.
The party stopped for dinner. The horses' breath steamed. Aiga went ahead to inspect the ice shelves, and as Prokop dragged a chest towards the fire pit, he saw a thin thread of smoke on the far bank, beyond a ridge of spruce.
Thick smoke rose steadily from a good stove.
He looked at Aiga. She stood with her back to the smoke, giving Kapiton an uncharacteristically detailed account of the sheet ice in Deaf Hollow, trying to draw his attention away from the spruce on the far bank.
The clan's camp was there, beyond the ridge. A day's journey from the belt, perhaps less.
Prokop took a pot and walked towards the ice hole, past the second surveyor with his telescope.
"Keep off the ice shelf," he said loudly. "There's running water under the snow. I fell through there."
The surveyor lowered the telescope and moved away from the bank. The smoke beyond the ridge never entered the journal.
That evening, when the party was asleep and Prokop was mending a strap on the chest by the light of a candle stub, Aiga sat down opposite him. For a long time she did not speak.
"There is no Goose Rapid," she said at last.
"I guessed."
"Its true name is Rapid of the Hungry Spring. The reindeer died that year, and the clan survived on fish from this rapid. Grandfather says: as long as we remember the name, we remember that we can survive here." She looked into the fire. "A name like that is not given to strangers. Strangers turn it into a place to stop."
Prokop said nothing.
"Why did you tell me?"
"Because today you turned the telescope away from the smoke."
"I don't know what smoke you mean."
"That is why I told you."
She rose, and from the darkness by the sledges came her voice:
"You hear names, man of paper. That is more dangerous than seeing discrepancies."
She was right. A discrepancy was an error in the figures; it could be corrected. But once a true name had been heard, it was no longer possible to think of the land as empty.
He began to learn how to listen.
The chain of names was not a list but a spoken description of the road. Each name recalled how far there was to go and where to find water, forage or danger. Three-Elk Spring meant a day's journey, unfrozen water and elk country. Burn of the Old Fire meant another day's journey, young reindeer moss and no water until evening. The name of one crossing was so ancient that Aiga spoke it without translating.
The Unified Survey sheet divided the same land into versts and inches but said nothing about water, forage or dangerous places.
Prokop walked behind Aiga, carrying official ranging poles across land where every bend had two names. In the service he was a porter working for state pay. But the schoolmaster's son from an erased village was siding more and more often with those who hid their names.
Now Prokop noticed the difference even in small things. When the second surveyor asked about the lake ahead, Aiga answered, "Long Lake." Before answering, she hesitated almost imperceptibly.
That evening he asked her about that as well.
"The clan has a rule," Aiga said. "A stranger asks a name: count to one and give him a smooth one. Whoever gives a name at once will one day give away the true one. Grandfather taught me: a name is like a knife. You offer a stranger the hilt and keep the blade for yourself."
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