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way that before today she wouldn’t have imagined.
    They followed Jack as he led them along a corridor and into a small departure lounge. There were fifteen to twenty men, most wearing F.B.F. caps and overalls, a few with Am-Fuels caps. Yasmin took hold of Ruby’s hand. She feared the day men like these would no longer see Ruby as a child. To her relief, the men didn’t notice their arrival, focused instead on a slight man wearing a suit, his back was towards them, his blond hair shining in the artificial lights. Yasmin could sense their hostility towards the suited blond man, almost feel its abrasiveness against her skin.
    ‘Fuckin’ tree-hugger,’ one of them said to him.
    ‘Ain’t no trees up in North Alaska, no one told you that?’ said another.
    The blond man met their aggression with superiority. ‘Aren’t you concerned, or at least interested in what you’re working with? Carcinogens that cause cancers, radioactive chemicals—’
    A man with a tattooed face interrupted, towering over the blond man. ‘Do we look sick?’ He turned to other workers. ‘Comes here and does his party piece every fuckin’ week.’
    Yasmin could see the blond man’s face now and was surprised that he was in his fifties, his eyebrows grey, his skin pallid.
    The man with tattoos continued, ‘Heard it all before, fella. Know what F.B.F. stands for? “Frack Baby Frack”. Sarah Palin. The lady had vision.’
    The blond suited man’s tone was still superior. ‘You’ve been taken over by American Fuels, so you can’t make that joke any more.’
    Yasmin saw that Ruby, lip-reading, was intimidated by these men and their language.
    ‘He said “frack baby frack”,’ she told Ruby, finger-spelling ‘frack’. She asked her not to lip-read any more; she’d tell her if there was anything important.
    She saw that the men were now staring at her. Jack came closer.
    ‘This lady and her daughter are gettin’ a ride with us to Deadhorse,’ he said.
    One of the men laughed. ‘Got a mall now, has it?’
    ‘We want to get to Anaktue,’ Yasmin said. ‘We’re getting a taxi plane from Deadhorse.’
    ‘Ain’t you seen the news?’ a muscular man said to her. ‘It’s burned to fuckin’ toast, everyone and everythin’.’ He looked around the others. ‘Said on the news, stupid fuckers stored fuel right by their houses.’
    ‘Hydraulic fracturing may have caused the fire,’ the blond man said, his pallid face animated as if this stimulated him. ‘Anaktue is only forty or so miles north of Am-Fuels’ wells at Tukapak.’
    ‘Wouldn’t know ’bout that,’ the muscular man said. ‘But I’d be guessin’ it’s forty or so miles of fuckin’ snow .’
    ‘People have set fire to the water coming out of their faucets,’ the blond man said.
    ‘Yeah right,’ the muscular man said. ‘It ain’t fuel explodin’ like the news said, it’s water burnt everythin’ down.’
    ‘The fumes could well have ignited,’ the blond man said. ‘That’s always a risk.’
    ‘Oh for cryin’ out loud,’ Jack said and Yasmin was sure he was moderating his language because of her and Ruby. ‘You’re tellin’ us fumes from a frackin’ well went forty miles across northern Alaska, in minus thirty, in high winds without breakin’ up then got to Anaktue and exploded? Spontaneously ?’
    ‘It’s possible,’ the blond man said.
    ‘That’s bullshit and you know it,’ Jack said. He stared at the blond man’s face, as if reading him a line at a time. ‘Jesus. You’d like it to be a frackin’ accident. You want somethin’ like this to happen.’
    ‘OK, you’re right,’ the blond man said. ‘Hydraulic fracturing is an accident waiting to happen; a disaster waiting to happen. Better a small village in Alaska has everyone die than a highly populated area. So yes, if wiping out a village is what it takes to stop this madness, then yes.’
    Yasmin was repulsed, but she had to talk to him because he knew where Anaktue was –