This side of Infinity (ssc), page 5
“I’ve sent for Doc and Kelly and Stan and Mallardi and Vincent. I checked a little earlier. They’ve all replied. They’re coming. Miguel and the Dutchman can’t make it, and they send their regrets. When we’re all together, I’ll tell the story. But I want to talk to Doc first. So hold tight and worry and don’t quote.”
He finished his drink.
“When’ll they be coming?”
“Four, five weeks,” I said.
“That’s a long wait.”
“Under the circumstances,” I said, “I can’t think of any alternatives.”
“What’ll we do in the meantime?”
“Eat, drink and contemplate the mountain.”
He lowered his eyelids a moment, then nodded, reached for his glass.
“Shall we begin?”
It was late, and I stood alone in the field with a bottle in one hand. Lanning had already turned in, and night’s chimney was dark with cloud soot. Somewhere away from there, a storm was storming, and it was full of instant outlines. The wind came chill.
“Mountain,” I said. “Mountain, you have told me to go away.”
There was a rumble.
“But I cannot,” I said, and I took a drink.
“I’m bringing you the best in the business,” I said, “to go up on your slopes and to stand beneath the stars in your highest places. I must do this thing because you are there. No other reason. Nothing personal…”
After a time, I said, “That’s not true.
“I’m a man,” I said, “and I need to break mountains to prove that I will not die even though I will die. I am less than I want to be, Sister, and you can make me more. So I guess it is personal.
“It’s the only thing I know how to do, and you’re the last one left—the last challenge to the skill I spent my life learning. Maybe it is that mortality is closest to immortality when it accepts a challenge to itself, when it survives a threat. The moment of triumph is the moment of salvation. I have needed many such moments, and the final one must be the longest, for it must last me the rest of my life.
“So you are there, Sister, and I am here and very mortal, and you have told me to go away. I cannot. “I’m coming up, and if you throw death at me I will face it. It must be so.”
I finished what remained in the bottle.
There were more flashes, more rumbles behind the mountain, more flashes.
“It is the closest thing to divine drunkenness,” I said to the thunder.
And then she winked at me. It was a red star, so high upon her. Angel’s sword. Phoenix’s wing. Soul on fire. And it blazed at me, across the miles. Then the wind that blows between the worlds swept down over me. It was filled with tears and with crystals of ice. I stood there and felt it, then, “Don’t go away,” I said, and I watched until all was darkness once more and I was wet as an embryo waiting to cry out and breathe.
Most kids tell lies to their playmates—fictional autobiographies, if you like—which are either received with appropriate awe or countered with greater, more elaborate tellings. But little Jimmy, I’ve heard, always hearkened to his little buddies with wide, dark eyes, and near the endings of their stories the corners of his mouth would begin to twitch. By the time they were finished talking, his freckles would be mashed into a grin and his rusty head cocked to the side. His favorite expression, I understand, was “G’wan!” and his nose was broken twice before he was twelve. This was doubtless why he turned it toward books.
Thirty years and four formal degrees later, he sat across from me in my quarters in the Lodge, and I called him Doc because everyone did, because he had a license to cut people up and look inside them, as well as doctoring to their philosophy, so to speak, and because he looked as if he should be called Doc when he grinned and cocked his head to the side and said, “G’wan!”
I wanted to punch him in the nose.
“Damn itl It’s true!” I told him. “I fought with a bird of fire!”
“We all hallucinated on Kasla,” he said, raising one finger, “because of fatigue,” two fingers, “because the altitude affected our circulatory systems and consequently our brains,” three, “because of the emotional stimulation,” four, “and because we were partly oxygen-drunk.”
“You just ran out of fingers, if you’ll sit on your other hand for a minute. So listen,” I said, “it flew at me, and I swung at it, and it knocked me out and broke my goggles. When I woke up, it was gone and I was lying on the ledge. I think it was some sort of energy creature. You saw my EEG, and it wasn’t normal. I think it shocked my nervous system when it touched me.”
“You were knocked out because you hit your head against a rock—”
“It caused me to fall back against the rock!”
“I agree with that part. The rock was real. But nowhere in the universe has anyone ever discovered an ’energy creature’.”
“So? You probably would have said that about America a thousand years ago.”
“Maybe I would have. But that neurologist explained your EEG to my satisfaction. Optical trauma. Why go out of your way to dream up an exotic explanation for events? Easy ones generally turn out better. You hallucinated and you stumbled.”
“Okay,” I said, “whenever I argue with you I generally need ammunition. Hold on a minute.”
I went to my closet and fetched it down from the top shelf. I placed it on my bed and began unwrapping the blanket I had around it “I told you I took a swing at it,” I said. ‘Well, I connected-right before I went under. Here!”
I held up my climbing pick—brown, yellow, black and pitted—looking as though it had fallen from outer space.
He took it into his hands and stared at it for a long time, then he started to say something about ball lightning, changed his mind, shook his head and placed the thing back on the blanket.
“I don’t know,” he finally said, and this time his freckles remained unmashed, except for those at the edges of his hands which got caught as he clenched them, slowly.
IV
We planned. We mapped and charted and studied the photos. We plotted our ascent and we started a training program.
While Doc and Stan had kept themselves in good shape, neither had been climbing since Kasla. Kelly was in top condition. Henry was on his way to fat. Mallardi and Vince, as always, seemed capable of fantastic feats of endurance and virtuosity, had even climbed a couple times during the past year, but had recently been living pretty high on the tall hog, so to speak, and they wanted to get some practice. So we picked a comfortable, decent-sized mountain and gave it ten days to beat everyone back into shape. After that, we stuck to vitamins, calisthentics and square diets while we completed our preparations. During this time, Doc came up with seven shiny alloy boxes, about six by four inches and thin as a first book of poems, for us to carry on our persons to broadcast a defense against the energy creature which he refused to admit existed.
One fine, bitter-brisk morning we were ready. The newsmen liked me again. Much footage was taken of our gallant assemblage as we packed ourselves into the fliers, to be delivered at the foot of the lady mountain, there to contend for what was doubtless the final time as the team we had been for so many years, against the waiting gray and the lavender beneath the sunwhite flame.
We approached the mountain, and I wondered how much she weighed.
You know the way, for the first nine miles. So “I’ll skip over that. It took us six days and part of a seventh. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred. Some fog there was, and nasty winds, but once below, forgotten.
Stan and Mallardi and I stood where the bird had occurred, waiting for Doc and the others.
“So far, it’s been a picnic,” said Mallardi “Yeah,” Stan acknowledged.
“No birds either.”
“No,” I agreed.
“Do you think Doc was right-about it being an hallucination?” Mallardi asked. “I remember seeing things on Kasla…”
“As I recall,” said Stan, “it was nymphs and an ocean of beer. Why would anyone want to see hot birds?”
“Damfino.”
“Laugh, you hyenas,” I said. “But just wait till a flock flies over.”
Doc came up and looked around.
“This is the place?”
I nodded.
He tested the background radiation and half a dozen other things, found nothing untoward, grunted and looked upwards.
We all did. Then we went there.
It was very rough for three days, and we only made another five thousand feet during that time.
When we bedded down, we were bushed, and sleep came quickly. So did Nemesis.
He was there again, only not quite so near this time. He burned about twenty feet away, standing in the middle of the air, and the point of his blade indicated me.
“Go away,” he said, three times, without inflection* “Go to hell,” I tried to say.
He made as if he wished to draw nearer. He failed. “Go away yourself,” I said.
“Climb back down. Depart. You may go no further “But I am going further. All the way to the top.”
“No. You may not”
“Stick around and watch,” I said.
“Go back”
“If you want to stand there and direct traffic, that’s your business,” I told him. “I’m going back to sleep.” I crawled over and shook Docs shoulder, but when I looked back my flaming visitor had departed.
“What is it?”
“Too late,” I said. “He’s been here and gone.”
Doc sat up.
“The bird?”
“No, the thing with the sword.”
“Where was he?”
“Standing out there,” I gestured.
Doc hauled out his instruments and did many things with them for ten minutes or so.
“Nothing,” he finally said. “Maybe you were dreaming.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Sleep tight,” and I hit the sack again, and this time I made it through to daylight without further fire or ado.
It took us four days to reach sixty thousand feet. Rocks fell like occasional cannonballs past us, and the sky was a big pool, cool, where pale flowers floated.
When we struck sixty-three thousand, the going got much better, and we made it up to seventy-five thousand in two and a half more days. No fiery things stopped by to tell me to turn back. Then came the unforeseeable, however, and we had enough in the way of natural troubles to keep us cursing.
We hit a big, level shelf.
It was perhaps four hundred feet wide. As we advanced across it, we realized that it did not strike the mountainside. It dropped off into an enormous gutter of a canyon. We would have to go down again, perhaps seven hundred feet, before we could proceed upward once more. Worse yet, it led to a featureless face which strove for and achieved perpendicularity for a deadly high distance: like miles. The top was still nowhere in sight.
“Where do we go now?” asked Kelly, moving to my side.
“Down,” I decided, “and we split up. We’ll follow the big ditch in both directions and see which way gives the better route up. We’ll meet back at the midway point.”
We descended. Then Doc and Kelly and I went left, and the others took the opposite way.
After an hour and a half, our trail came to an end. We stood looking at nothing over the edge of something. Nowhere, during the entire time, had we come upon a decent way up. I stretched out, my head and shoulders over the edge. Kelly holding onto my ankles, and I looked as far as I could to the right and up. There was nothing in sight that was worth a facing movement.
“Hope the others had better luck,” I said, after they’d dragged me back.
“And if they haven’t?” asked Kelly.
“Let’s wait.”
They had.
It was risky, though.
There was no good way straight up out of the gap. The trail had ended at a forty-foot wall which, when mounted, gave a clear view all the way down. Leaning out as I had done and looking about two hundred feet to the left and eighty feet higher, however, Mallardi had rested his eyes on a rough way, but a way, nevertheless, leading up and west and vanishing.
We camped in the gap that night. In the morning, I anchored my line to a rock, Doc tending, and went out with the pneumatic pistol. I fell twice, and made forty feet of trail by lunchtime.
I rubbed my bruises then, and Henry took over. After ten feet, Kelly got out to anchor a couple of body-lengths behind him, and we tended Kelly.
Then Stan blasted and Mallardi anchored. Then there had to be three on the face. Then four. By sundown, we’d made a hundred-fifty feet and were covered with white powder. A bath would have been nice. We settled for ultrasonic shakedowns.
By lunch the next day, we were all out there, roped together, hugging cold stone, moving slowly, painfully, slowly, not looking down much.
By day’s end, we’d made it across, to the place where we could hold on and feel something-granted, not much—beneath our boots. It was inclined to be a trifle scant, however, to warrant less than a full daylight assault. So we returned once more to the gap.
In the morning, we crossed.
The way kept its winding angle. We headed west and up. We traveled a mile and made five hundred feet. We traveled another mile and made perhaps three hundred.
Then a ledge occurred, about forty feet overhead.
Stan went up the hard way, using the gun, to see what he could see.
He gestured, and we followed; and the view that broke upon us was good.
Down right, irregular but wide enough, was our new camp.
The way above it, ice cream and whiskey sours and morning coffee and a cigarette after dinner. It was beautiful and delicious: a seventy-degree slope full of ledges and projections and good clean stone.
“Hot damn!” said Kelly.
We all tended to agree.
We ate and we drank and we decided to rest our bruised selves that afternoon.
We were in the twilight world now, walking where no man had ever walked before, and we felt ourselves to be golden. It was good to stretch out and try to unache.
I slept away the day, and when I awakened the sky was a bed of glowing embers. I lay there too lazy to move, too full of sight to go back to sleep. A meteor burnt its way bluewhite across the heavens. After a time, there was another. I thought upon my position and decided that reaching it was worth the price. The cold, hard happiness of the heights filled me. I wiggled my toes.
After a few minutes, I stretched and sat up. I regarded the sleeping forms of my companions. I looked out across the night as far as I could see. Then I looked up at the mountain, then dropped my eyes slowly along tomorrow’s train.
There was movement within shadow.
Something was standing about fifty feet away and ten feet above.
I picked up my pick and stood.
I crossed the fifty and stared up.
She was smiling, not burning.
A woman, an impossible woman.
Absolutely impossible. For one thing, she would just have to freeze to death in a miniskirt and a sleeveless-shell top. No alternative. For another, she had very little to breathe. Like, nothing.
But it didn’t seem to bother her. She waved. Her hair was dark and long, and I couldn’t see her eyes. The planes of her pale, high cheeks, wide forehead, and small chin corresponded in an unsettling fashion with certain simple theorems which comprise the geometry of my heart. If all angles, planes, curves be correct, it skips a beat, then hurries to make up for it.
I worked it out, felt it do so, said, “Hello.”
“Hello, Whitey,” she replied.
“Come down,” I said.
“No, you come up.”
I swung my pick. When I reached the ledge she wasn’t there. I looked around, then I saw her.
She was seated on a rock twelve feet above me.
“How it is that you know my name?” I asked.
“Anyone can see what your name must be.”
“All right,” I agreed. “What’s yours?”
“…” Her lips seemed to move, but I heard nothing.
“Come again?”
“I don’t want a name,” she said.
“Okay. I’ll call you ‘girl,’ then.”
She laughed, sort of.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Watching you.”
“Why?”
“To see whether you’ll fall.”
“I can save you the trouble,” I said. “I won’t.”
“Perhaps,” she said.
“Come down here.”
“No, you come up here.”
I climbed, but when I got there she was twenty feet higher.
“Girl, you climb well,” I said, and she laughed and turned away.
I pursued her for five minutes and couldn’t catch her.
There was something unnatural about the way she moved.
I stopped climbing when she turned again. We were still about twenty feet apart.
“I take it you do not really wish me to join you,” I said.
“Of course I do, but you must catch me first.” And she turned once more, and I felt a certain fury within me.
It was written that no one could outclimb Mad Jack. I had written it.
I swung my pick and moved like a lizard.
I was near to her a couple of times, but never near enough.
The day’s aches began again in my muscles, but I pulled my way up without slackening my pace. I realized, faintly, that the camp was far below me now, and that I was climbing alone through the dark up a strange slope. But I did not stop. Rather, I hurried, and my breath began to come hard in my lungs. I heard her laughter, and it was a goad. Then I came upon a two-inch ledge, and she was moving along it. I followed, around a big bulge of rock to where it ended. Then she was ninety feet above me, at the top of a smooth pinnacle. It was like a tapering, branchless tree. How she’d accomplished it, I didn’t know. I was gasping by then, but I looped my line around it and began to climb. As I did this, she spoke:
