Страница:
available. Let's face it, we're a good climbing team. Maybe the best
in the business. Probably. If it can be done, I think we can do it."
"I'll second that," said Stan.
"What you said, Kelly," said Mallardi, "about it being
supernatural--it's funny, because I felt the same thing for a minute
when I was looking at it. It reminds me of something out of the
_Divine Comedy_. If you recall, Purgatory was a mountain. And then I
thought of the angel who guarded the eastern way to Eden. Eden had
gotten moved to the top of Purgatory by Dante--and there was this
angel....Anyhow, I felt almost like I was committing some sin I didn't
know about by being here. But now that I think it over, a man can't
be guilty of something he doesn't know is wrong, can he? And I didn't
see that thing flashing any angel ID card. So I'm willing to go up
and see what's on top, unless he comes back with the Tablets of the
Law, with a new one written in at the bottom."
"In Hebrew or Italian?" asked Doc.
"To satisfy you, I suppose they'd have to be drawn up in the form
of equations."
"No," he said. "Kidding aside, I felt something funny too, when I
saw and heard it. And we didn't really hear it, you know. It skipped
over the senses and got its message right into our brains. If you
think back over our descriptions of what we experienced, we each
'heard' different words telling us to go away. If it can communicate
a meaning as well as a pyschtranslator, I wonder if it can communicate
an emotion, also....You thought of an angel too, didn't you, Whitey?"
"Yes," I said.
"That makes it almost unanimous then, doesn't it?"
Then we all turned to Vince, because he had no Christian
background at all, having been raised as a Buddhist on Ceylon.
"What were your feelings concerning the thing?" Doc asked him.
"It was a Deva," he said, "which is sort of like an angel, I
guess. I had the impression that every step I took up this mountain
gave me enough bad karma to fill a lifetime. Except I haven't
believed in it that way since I was a kid. I want to go ahead, up.
Even if that feeling was correct, I want to see the top of this
mountain."
"So do I," said Doc.
"That makes it unanimous," I said.
"Well, everyone hang onto his angelsbane," said Stan, "and let's
sack out."
"Good idea."
"Only let's spread out a bit," said Doc, "so that anything falling
won't get all of us together."
We did that cheerful thing and slept untroubled by heaven.
Our way kept winding right, until we were at a hundred forty-four
thousand feet and were mounting the southern slopes. Then it jogged
back, and by a hundred fifty we were mounting to the west once more.
Then, during a devilish, dark and tricky piece of scaling, up a
smooth, concave bulge ending in an overhang, the bird came down once
again.
If we hadn't been roped together, Stan would have died. As it
was, we almost all died.
Stan was lead man, as its wings splashed sudden flames against the
violet sky. It came down from the overhang as though someone had
kicked a bonfire over its edge, headed straight toward him and faded
out at a distance of about twelve feet. He fell then, almost taking
the rest of us with him.
We tensed our muscles and took the shock.
He was battered a bit, but unbroken. We made it up to the
overhang, but went no further that day.
Rocks did fall, but we found another overhang and made camp
beneath it.
The bird did not return that day, but the snakes came.
Big, shimmering scarlet serpents coiled about the crags, wound in
and out of jagged fields of ice and gray stone. Sparks shot along
their sinuous lengths. They coiled and unwound, stretched and turned,
spat fires at us. It seemed they were trying to drive us from beneath
the sheltering place to where the rocks could come down upon us.
Doc advanced upon the nearest one, and it vanished as it came
within the field of his projector. He studied the place where it had
lain, then hurried back.
"The frost is still on the punkin," he said.
"Huh?" said I.
"Not a bit of ice was melted beneath it."
"Indicating?"
"Illusion," said Vince, and he threw a stone at another and it
passed through the thing.
"But you saw what happened to my pick," I said to Doc, "when I
took a cut at that bird. The thing had to have been carrying some
sort of charge."
"Maybe whatever has been sending them has cut that part out, as a
waste of energy," he replied, "since the things can't get through to
us anyhow."
We sat around and watched the snakes and falling rocks, until Stan
produced a deck of cards and suggested a better game.
The snakes stayed on through the night and followed us the next day.
Rocks still fell periodically, but the boss seemed to be running low
on them. The bird appeared, circled us and swooped on four different
occasions. But this time we ignored it, and finally it went home to
roost.
We made three thousand feet, could have gone more, but didn't want
to press it past a cozy little ledge with a cave big enough for the
whole party. Everything let up on us then. Everything visible, that
is.
A before-the-storm feeling, a still, electrical tension, seemed to
occur around us then, and we waited for whatever was going to happen
to happen.
The worst possible thing happened: nothing.
This keyed-up feeling, this expectancy, stayed with us, was
unsatisfied. I think it would actually have been a relief if some
invisible orchestra had begun playing Wagner, or if the heavens had
rolled aside like curtains and revealed a movie screen, and from the
backward lettering we knew we were on the other side, or if we saw a
high-flying dragon eating low-flying weather satellites....
As it was, we just kept feeling that something was imminent, and
it gave me insomnia.
During the night, she came again. The pinnacle girl.
She stood at the mouth of the cave, and when I advanced the
retreated.
I stopped just inside and stood there myself, where she had been
standing.
She said, "Hello, Whitey."
"No, I'm not going to follow you again," I said.
"I didn't ask you to."
"What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?"
"Watching," she said.
"I told you I won't fall."
"Your friend almost did."
"'Almost' isn't good enough."
"You are the leader, aren't you?"
"That's right."
"If you were to die, the others would go back?"
"No," I said, "they'd go on without me."
I hit my camera then.
"What did you just do?" she asked.
"I took your picture--if you're really there."
"Why?"
"To look at after you go away. I like to look at pretty things."
"..." She seemed to say something.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Why not?"
"...die."
"Please speak up."
"She dies..." she said.
"Why? How?"
"....on mountain."
"I don't understand."
"...too."
"What's wrong?"
I took a step forward, and she retreated a step.
"Follow me?" she asked.
"No."
"Go back," she said.
"What's on the other side of that record?"
"You will continue to climb?"
"Yes."
Then, "Good!" she said suddenly. "I--," and her voice stopped
again.
"Go back," she finally said, without emotion.
"Sorry."
And she was gone.
Our trail took us slowly to the left once more. We crawled and
sprawled and cut holes in the stone. Snakes sizzled in the distance.
They were with us constantly now. The bird came again at crucial
moments, to try to make us fall. A raging bull stood on a crag and
bellowed down at us. Phantom archers loosed shafts of fire, which
always faded right before they struck. Blazing blizzards swept at us,
around us, were gone. We were back on the northern slopes and still
heading west by the time we broke a hundred sixty thousand. The sky
was deep and blue, and there were always stars. Why did the mountain
hate us? I wondered. What was there about us to provoke this thing?
I looked at the picture of the girl for the dozenth time and I
wondered what she really was. Had she been picked from our minds and
composed into girlform to lure us, to lead us, sirenlike, harpylike,
to the place of the final fall? It was such a long way down....
I thought back over my life. How does a man come to climb
mountains? Is he drawn by the heights because he is afraid of the
level land? Is he such a misfit in the society of men that he must
flee and try to place himself above it? The way up is long and
difficult, but if he succeeds they must grant him a garland of sorts.
And if he falls, this too is a kind of glory. To end, hurled from the
heights to the depths in hideous ruin and combustion down, is a
fitting climax for the loser--for it, too, shakes mountains and minds,
stirs things like thoughts below both, is a kind of blasted garland of
victory in defeat, and cold, so cold that final action, that the
movement is somewhere frozen forever into a statuelike rigidity of
ultimate intent and purpose thwarted only by the universal malevolence
we all fear exists. An aspirant saint or hero who lacks some
necessary virtue may still qualify as a martyr, for the only thing
that people will really remember in the end is the end. I had known
that I'd had to climb Kasla, as I had climbed all the others, and I
had known what the price would me. It had cost me my only home. But
Kasla was there, and my boots cried out for my feet. I knew as I did
so that somewhere I set them upon her summit, and below me a world was
ending. What's a world if the moment of victory is at hand? And if
truth, beauty and goodness be one, why is there always this conflict
among them?
The phantom archers fired upon me and the bright bird swooped. I
set my teeth, and my boots scarred rocks beneath me.
We saw the top.
At a hundred seventy-six thousand feet, making our way along a
narrow ledge, clicking against rock, testing our way with our picks,
we heard Vince say, "Look!"
We did.
Up and up, and again further, bluefrosted and sharp, deadly, and
cold as Loki's dagger, slashing at the sky, it vibrated above us like
electricity, hung like a piece of frozen thunder, and cut, cut, cut
into the center of spirit that was desire, twisted, and became a
fishhook to pull us on, to burn us with its barbs.
Vince was the first to look up and see the top, the first to die.
It happened so quickly, and it was none of the terrors that achieved
it.
He slipped.
That was all. It was a difficult piece of climbing. He was right
behind me one second, was gone the next. There was no body to
recover. He'd taken the long drop. The soundless blue was all around
him and the great gray beneath. Then we were six. We shuddered, and
I suppose we all prayed in our own ways.
--Gone Vince, may some good Deva lead you up the Path of Splendor.
May you find whatever you wanted most at the other end, waiting there
for you. If such a thing may be, remember those who say these words,
oh strong intruder in the sky....
No one spoke much for the rest of the day.
The fiery sword bearer came and stood above our camp the entire
night. It did not speak.
In the morning, Stan was gone, and there was a note beneath my
pack.
_Don't hate me,_ it said, _for running out, but I think it
really is an angel. I'm scared of this mountain. I'll climb
any pile of rocks, but I won't fight Heaven. The way down is
easier than the way up, so don't worry about me. Good luck.
Try to understand._ S
So we were five--Doc and Kelly and Henry and Mallardi and me--and
that day we hit a hundred eighty thousand and felt very alone.
The girl came again that night and spoke to me, black hair against
black sky and eyes like points of blue fire, and she stood beside an
icy pillar and said, "Two of you have gone."
"And the rest of us remain," I replied.
"For a time."
"We will climb to the top and then we will go away," I said. "How
can that do you harm? Why do you hate us?"
"No hate, sir," she said.
"What, then?"
"I protect."
"What? What is it that you protect?"
"The dying, that she may live."
"What? Who is dying? How?"
But her words went away somewhere, and I did not hear them. Then
she went away too, and there was nothing left but sleep for the rest
of the night.
One hundred eighty-two thousand and three, and four, and five. Then
back down to four for the following night.
The creatures whined about us now, and the land pulsed beneath us,
and the mountain seemed sometimes to sway as we climbed.
We carved a path to one eighty-six, and for three days we fought
to gain another thousand feet. Everything we touched was cold and
slick and slippery, sparkled, and had a bluish haze about it.
When we hit one ninety, Henry looked back and shuddered.
"I'm no longer worried about making it to the top," he said.
"It's the return trip that's bothering me now. The clouds are like
little wisps of cotton way down there."
"The sooner up, the sooner down," I said, and we began to climb
once again.
It took us another week to cut our way to within a mile of the
top. All the creatures of fire had withdrawn, but two ice avalanches
showed us we were still unwanted. We survived the first without
mishap, but Kelly sprained his right ankle during the second, and Doc
thought he might have cracked a couple of ribs, too.
We made a camp. Doc stayed there with him; Henry and Mallardi and
I pushed on up the last mile.
Now the going was beastly. It had become a mountain of glass. We
had to hammer out a hold for every foot we made. We worked in shifts.
We fought for everything we gained. Our packs became monstrous loads
and our fingers grew numb. Our defense system--the projectors--seemed
to be wearing down, or else something was increasing its efforts to get
us, because the snakes kept slithering closer, burning brighter. They
hurt my eyes, and I cursed them.
When we were within a thousand feet of the top, we dug in and made
another camp. The next couple hundred feet looked easier, then a
rotten spot, and I couldn't tell what it was like above that.
When we awakened, there was just Henry and myself. There was no
indication of where Mallardi had gotten to. Henry switched his
communicator to Doc's letter and called below. I tuned in in time to
hear him say, "Haven't seen him."
"How's Kelly?" I asked.
"Better," he replied. "Those ribs might not be cracked at that."
Then Mallardi called us.
"I'm four hundred feet above you, fellows," his voice came in.
"It was easy up to here, but the going's just gotten rough again."
"Why'd you cut out on your own?" I asked.
"Because I think something's going to try to kill me before too
long," he said. "It's up ahead, waiting at the top. You can probably
even see it from there. It's a snake."
Henry and I used the binoculars.
Snake? A better word might be dragon--or maybe even Midgard
Serpent.
It was coiled around the peak, head upraised. It seemed to be
several hundred feet in length, and it moved its head from side to
side, and up and down, and it smoked solar coronas.
Then I spotted Mallardi climbing toward it.
"Don't go any further!" I called. "I don't know whether your unit
will protect you against anything like that! Wait'll I call Doc--"
"Not a chance," he said. "This baby is mine."
"Listen! You can be first on the mountain, if that's what you
want! But don't tackle that thing alone!"
A laugh was the only reply.
"All three units might hold it off," I said. "Wait for us."
There was no answer, and we began to climb.
I left Henry far below me. The creature was a moving light in the
sky. I made two hundred feet in a hurry, and when I looked up again,
I saw that the creature had grown two more heads. Lightnings flashed
from its nostrils, and its tail whipped around the mountain. I made
another hundred feet, and I could see Mallardi clearly by then,
climbing steadily, outlined against the brilliance. I swung my pick,
gasping, and I fought the mountain, following the trail he had cut. I
began to gain on him, because he was still pounding out his way and I
didn't have that problem. Then I heard him talking:
"Not yet, big fella, not yet," he was saying, from behind a wall
of static. "Here's a ledge...."
I looked up, and he vanished.
Then that fiery tail came lashing down toward where I had last
seen him, and I heard him curse and I felt the vibrations of his
pneumatic gun. The tail snapped back again, and I heard another
"Damn!"
I made haste, stretching and racking myself and grabbing at the holds
he had cut, and then I heard him burst into song. Something from
_Aida_, I think.
"Damn it! Wait up!" I said. "I'm only a few hundred feet
behind."
He kept on singing.
I was beginning to get dizzy, but I couldn't let myself slow down.
My right arm felt like a piece of wood, my left like a piece of ice.
My feet were hooves, and my eyes burned in my head.
Then it happened.
Like a bomb, the snake and the swinging ended in a flash of
brilliance that caused me to sway and almost lose my grip. I clung to
the vibrating mountainside and squeezed my eyes against the light.
"Mallardi?" I called.
No answer. Nothing.
I looked down. Henry was still climbing. I continued to climb.
I reached the ledge Mallardi had mentioned, found him there.
His respirator was still working. His protective suit was
blackened and scorched on the right side. Half of his pick had been
melted away. I raised his shoulders.
I turned up the volume on the communicator and heard him
breathing. His eyes opened, closed, opened.
"Okay...." he said.
"'Okay,' hell! Where do you hurt?"
"No place...I feel jus' fine....Listen! I think it's used up its
juice for awhile....Go plant the flag. Prop me up here first, though.
I wanna watch...."
I got him into a better position, squirted the water bulb,
listened to him swallow. Then I waited for Henry to catch up. It
took about six minutes.
"I'll stay here," said Henry, stooping beside him. "You go do
it."
I started up the final slope.
I swung and I cut and I blasted and I crawled. Some of the ice had
been melted, the rocks scorched.
Nothing came to oppose me. The static had gone with the dragon.
There was silence, and darkness between stars.
I climbed slowly, still tired from that last sprint, but
determined not to stop.
All but sixty feet of the entire world lay beneath me, and heaven
hung above me, and a rocket winked overhead. Perhaps it was the
pressmen, with zoom cameras.
Fifty feet....
No bird, no archer, no angel, no girl.
Forty feet....
I started to shake. It was nervous tension. I steadied myself,
went on.
Thirty feet...and the mountain seemed to be swaying now.
Twenty-five...and I grew dizzy, halted, took a drink.
Then click, click, my pick again.
Twenty....
Fifteen....
Ten....
I braced myself against the mountain's final assault, whatever it
might be.
Five...
Nothing happened as I arrived.
I stood up. I could go no higher.
I looked at the sky, I looked back down. I waved at the blazing
rocket exhaust.
I extruded the pole and attached the flag.
I planted it, there where no breezes would ever stir it. I cut in
my communicator, said, "I'm here."
No other words.
It was time to go back down and give Henry his chance, but I looked
down the western slope before I turned to go.
The lady was winking again. Perhaps eight hundred feet below, the
red light shone. Could that have been what I had seen from the town
during the storm, on that night, so long ago?
I didn't know and I had to.
I spoke into the communicator.
"How's Mallardi doing?"
"I just stood up," he answered. "Give me another half hour, and
I'm coming up myself."
"Henry," I said. "Should he?"
"Gotta take his word how he feels," said Lanning.
"Well," I said, "then take it easy. I'll be gone when you get
here. I'm going a little way down the western side. Something I want
to see."
"What?"
"I dunno. That's why I want to see."
"Take care."
"Check."
The western slope was an easy descent. As I went down it, I
realized that the light was coming from an opening in the side of the
mountain.
Half an hour later, I stood before it.
I stepped within and was dazzled.
I walked toward it and stopped. It pulsed and quivered and sang.
A vibrating wall of flame leapt from the floor of the cave,
towered to the roof of the cave.
It blocked my way, when I wanted to go beyond it.
She was there, and I wanted to reach her.
I took a step forward, so that I was only inches away from it. My
communicator was full of static and my arms of cold needles.
It did not bend toward me, as to attack. It cast no heat.
I stared through the veil of fires to where she reclined, her eyes
closed, her breast unmoving.
I stared at the bank of machinery beside the far wall.
"I'm here," I said, and I raised my pick.
When its point touched the wall of flame someone took the lid off
hell, and I staggered back, blinded. When my vision cleared, the
angel stood before me.
"_You may not pass here_," he said.
"She is the reason you want me to go back?" I asked.
"_Yes. Go back._"
"Has she no say in the matter?"
"_She sleeps. Go back._"
"So I notice. Why?"
"_She must. Go back._"
"Why did she herself appear to me and lead me strangely?"
"_I used up the fear-forms I knew. They did not work. I led you
strangely because her sleeping mind touches upon my own workings. It
did so especially when I borrowed her form, so that it interfered with
the directive. Go back._"
"What is the directive?"
"_She is to be guarded against all things coming up the mountain.
Go back._"
"Why? Why is she guarded?"
"_She sleeps. Go back._"
The conversation having become somewhat circular at that point, I
reached into my pack and drew out the projector. I swung it forward
and the angel melted. The flames bent away from my outstretched
hand. I sought to open a doorway in the circle of fire.
It worked, sort of.
I pushed the projector forward, and the flames bent and bent and
bent and finally broke. When they broke, I leaped forward. I made it
through, but my protective suit was as scorched as Mallardi's.
I moved to the coffinlike locker within which she slept.
I rested my hands on its edge and looked down.
She was as fragile as ice.
In fact, she was ice....
The machine came alive with lights then, and I felt her somber
bedstead vibrate.
Then I saw the man.
He was half sprawled across a metal chair beside the machine.
He, too, was ice. Only his features were gray, were twisted. He
wore black and he was dead and a statue, while she was sleeping and a
statue.
She wore blue, and white....
There was an empty casket in the far corner....
But something was happening around me. There came a brightening
of the air. Yes, it was air. It hissed upward from frosty juts in
the floor, formed into great clouds. Then a feeling of heat occurred
and the clouds began to fade and the brightening continued.
I returned to the casket and studied her features.
I wondered what her voice would sound like when/if she spoke. I
wondered what lay within her mind. I wondered how her thinking
worked, and what she liked and didn't like. I wondered what her eyes
had looked upon, and when.
I wondered all these things, because I could see that whatever
forces I had set into operation when I entered the circle of fire were
causing her, slowly, to cease being a statue.
She was being awakened.
I waited. Over an hour went by, and still I waited, watching her.
She began to breath. Her eyes opened at last, and for a long time she
did not see.
Then her bluefire fell on me.
"Whitey," she said.
"Yes."
"Where am I...?"
"In the damnedest place I could possibly have found anyone."
She frowned. "I remember," she said and tried to sit up.
It didn't work. She fell back.
"What is your name?"
"Linda," she said. Then, "I dreamed of you, Whitey. Strange
dreams....How could that be?"
"It's tricky," I said.
"I knew you were coming," she said. "I saw you fighting monsters
on a mountain as high as the sky."
"Yes, we're there now."
"H-have you the cure?"
"Cure? What cure?"
"Dawson's Plague," she said.
I felt sick. I felt sick because I realized that she did not
sleep as a prisoner, but to postpone her death. She was sick.
"Did you come to live on this world in a ship that moved faster
than light?" I asked.
"No," she said. "It took centuries to get here. We slept the
cold sleep during the journey. This is one of the bunkers." She
gestured toward the casket with her eyes. I noticed her cheeks had
become bright red.
"They all began dying--of the plague," she said. "There was no
cure. My husband--Carl--is a doctor. When he saw that I had it, he
said he would keep me in extreme hypothermia until a cure was found.
Otherwise, you only live for two days, you know."
Then she stared up at me, and I realized that her last two words
had been a question.
I moved into a position to block her view of the dead man, who I
feared must be her Carl. I tried to follow her husband's thinking.
He'd had to hurry, as he was obviously further along than she had
been. He knew the colony would be wiped out. He must have loved her
and been awfully clever, both--awfully resourceful. Mostly, though, he
must have loved her. Knowing that the colony would die, he knew it
would be centuries before another ship arrived. He had nothing that
could power a cold bunker for that long. But up here, on the top of
this mountain, almost as cold as outer space itself, power wouldn't be
necessary. Somehow, he had got Linda and the stuff up here. His
machine cast a force field around the cave. Working in heat and
atmosphere, he had sent her deep into the cold sleep and then prepared
his own bunker. When he dropped the wall of forces, no power would be
necessary to guarantee the long, icy wait. They could sleep for
centuries within the bosom of the Gray Sister, protected by a colony
of defense-computer. This last had apparently been programmed
quickly, for he was dying. He saw that it was too late to join her.
He hurried to set the thing for basic defense, killed the force field,
and then went his way into that Dark and Secret Place. Thus it hurled
its birds and its angels and its snakes, it raised its walls of fire
against me. He died, and it guarded her in near-death--against
everything, including those who would help. My coming to the mountain
had activated it. My passing of the defenses had caused her to be
summoned back to life.
"_Go back!_" I heard the machine say through its projected angel,
for Henry had entered the cave.
"My God!" I heard him say. "Who's that?"
"Get Doc!" I said. "Hurry! I'll explain later. It's a matter of
life! Climb back to where your communicator will work, and tell him
it's Dawson's Plague--a bad local bug! Hurry!"
"I'm on my way," he said and was.
"There _is_ a doctor?" she asked.
"Yes. Only about two hours away. Don't worry....I still don't
see how anyone could have gotten you up here to the top of this
mountain, let alone a load of machines."
"We're on the big mountain--the forty-miler?"
"Yes."
"How did _you_ get up?" she asked.
"I climbed it."
"You really climbed Purgatorio? On the outside?"
"Purgatorio? That's what you call it? Yes, I climbed it, that
way."
"We didn't think it could be done."
"How else might one arrive at its top?"
"It's hollow inside," she said. "There are great caves and
massive passages. It's easy to fly up the inside on a pressurized jut
car. In fact, it was an amusement ride. Two and a half dollars per
person. An hour and a half each way. A dollar to rent a pressurized
suit and take an hour's walk around the top. Nice way to spend an
afternoon. Beautiful view...?" She gasped deeply.
"I don't feel so good," she said. "Have you any water?"
"Yes," I said, and I gave her all I had.
As she sipped it, I prayed that Doc had the necessary serum or
else would be able to send her back to ice and sleep until it could be
gotten. I prayed that he would make good time, for two hours seemed
long when measured against her thirst and the red of her flesh.
"My fever is coming again," she said. "Talk to me, Whitey,
please....Tell me things. Keep me with you till he comes. I don't
want my mind to turn back upon what has happened...."
"What would you like me to tell you about, Linda?"
"Tell me why you did it. Tell me what it was like, to climb a
mountain like this one. Why?"
I turned my mind back upon what had happened.
"There is a certain madness involved," I said, "a certain envy of
great and powerful natural forces, that some men have. Each mountain
is a deity, you know. Each is an immortal power. If you make
sacrifices upon its slopes, a mountain may grant you a certain grace,
and for a time you will share this power. Perhaps that is why they
call me...."
Her hand rested in mine. I hoped that through it whatever power I
might contain would hold all of her with me for as long as ever
possible.
"I remember the first time that I saw Purgatory, Linda," I told
her. "I looked at it and I was sick. I wondered, where did it
lead...?"
(Stars.
Oh let there be.
This once to end with.
Please.)
"Stars?"
in the business. Probably. If it can be done, I think we can do it."
"I'll second that," said Stan.
"What you said, Kelly," said Mallardi, "about it being
supernatural--it's funny, because I felt the same thing for a minute
when I was looking at it. It reminds me of something out of the
_Divine Comedy_. If you recall, Purgatory was a mountain. And then I
thought of the angel who guarded the eastern way to Eden. Eden had
gotten moved to the top of Purgatory by Dante--and there was this
angel....Anyhow, I felt almost like I was committing some sin I didn't
know about by being here. But now that I think it over, a man can't
be guilty of something he doesn't know is wrong, can he? And I didn't
see that thing flashing any angel ID card. So I'm willing to go up
and see what's on top, unless he comes back with the Tablets of the
Law, with a new one written in at the bottom."
"In Hebrew or Italian?" asked Doc.
"To satisfy you, I suppose they'd have to be drawn up in the form
of equations."
"No," he said. "Kidding aside, I felt something funny too, when I
saw and heard it. And we didn't really hear it, you know. It skipped
over the senses and got its message right into our brains. If you
think back over our descriptions of what we experienced, we each
'heard' different words telling us to go away. If it can communicate
a meaning as well as a pyschtranslator, I wonder if it can communicate
an emotion, also....You thought of an angel too, didn't you, Whitey?"
"Yes," I said.
"That makes it almost unanimous then, doesn't it?"
Then we all turned to Vince, because he had no Christian
background at all, having been raised as a Buddhist on Ceylon.
"What were your feelings concerning the thing?" Doc asked him.
"It was a Deva," he said, "which is sort of like an angel, I
guess. I had the impression that every step I took up this mountain
gave me enough bad karma to fill a lifetime. Except I haven't
believed in it that way since I was a kid. I want to go ahead, up.
Even if that feeling was correct, I want to see the top of this
mountain."
"So do I," said Doc.
"That makes it unanimous," I said.
"Well, everyone hang onto his angelsbane," said Stan, "and let's
sack out."
"Good idea."
"Only let's spread out a bit," said Doc, "so that anything falling
won't get all of us together."
We did that cheerful thing and slept untroubled by heaven.
Our way kept winding right, until we were at a hundred forty-four
thousand feet and were mounting the southern slopes. Then it jogged
back, and by a hundred fifty we were mounting to the west once more.
Then, during a devilish, dark and tricky piece of scaling, up a
smooth, concave bulge ending in an overhang, the bird came down once
again.
If we hadn't been roped together, Stan would have died. As it
was, we almost all died.
Stan was lead man, as its wings splashed sudden flames against the
violet sky. It came down from the overhang as though someone had
kicked a bonfire over its edge, headed straight toward him and faded
out at a distance of about twelve feet. He fell then, almost taking
the rest of us with him.
We tensed our muscles and took the shock.
He was battered a bit, but unbroken. We made it up to the
overhang, but went no further that day.
Rocks did fall, but we found another overhang and made camp
beneath it.
The bird did not return that day, but the snakes came.
Big, shimmering scarlet serpents coiled about the crags, wound in
and out of jagged fields of ice and gray stone. Sparks shot along
their sinuous lengths. They coiled and unwound, stretched and turned,
spat fires at us. It seemed they were trying to drive us from beneath
the sheltering place to where the rocks could come down upon us.
Doc advanced upon the nearest one, and it vanished as it came
within the field of his projector. He studied the place where it had
lain, then hurried back.
"The frost is still on the punkin," he said.
"Huh?" said I.
"Not a bit of ice was melted beneath it."
"Indicating?"
"Illusion," said Vince, and he threw a stone at another and it
passed through the thing.
"But you saw what happened to my pick," I said to Doc, "when I
took a cut at that bird. The thing had to have been carrying some
sort of charge."
"Maybe whatever has been sending them has cut that part out, as a
waste of energy," he replied, "since the things can't get through to
us anyhow."
We sat around and watched the snakes and falling rocks, until Stan
produced a deck of cards and suggested a better game.
The snakes stayed on through the night and followed us the next day.
Rocks still fell periodically, but the boss seemed to be running low
on them. The bird appeared, circled us and swooped on four different
occasions. But this time we ignored it, and finally it went home to
roost.
We made three thousand feet, could have gone more, but didn't want
to press it past a cozy little ledge with a cave big enough for the
whole party. Everything let up on us then. Everything visible, that
is.
A before-the-storm feeling, a still, electrical tension, seemed to
occur around us then, and we waited for whatever was going to happen
to happen.
The worst possible thing happened: nothing.
This keyed-up feeling, this expectancy, stayed with us, was
unsatisfied. I think it would actually have been a relief if some
invisible orchestra had begun playing Wagner, or if the heavens had
rolled aside like curtains and revealed a movie screen, and from the
backward lettering we knew we were on the other side, or if we saw a
high-flying dragon eating low-flying weather satellites....
As it was, we just kept feeling that something was imminent, and
it gave me insomnia.
During the night, she came again. The pinnacle girl.
She stood at the mouth of the cave, and when I advanced the
retreated.
I stopped just inside and stood there myself, where she had been
standing.
She said, "Hello, Whitey."
"No, I'm not going to follow you again," I said.
"I didn't ask you to."
"What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?"
"Watching," she said.
"I told you I won't fall."
"Your friend almost did."
"'Almost' isn't good enough."
"You are the leader, aren't you?"
"That's right."
"If you were to die, the others would go back?"
"No," I said, "they'd go on without me."
I hit my camera then.
"What did you just do?" she asked.
"I took your picture--if you're really there."
"Why?"
"To look at after you go away. I like to look at pretty things."
"..." She seemed to say something.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Why not?"
"...die."
"Please speak up."
"She dies..." she said.
"Why? How?"
"....on mountain."
"I don't understand."
"...too."
"What's wrong?"
I took a step forward, and she retreated a step.
"Follow me?" she asked.
"No."
"Go back," she said.
"What's on the other side of that record?"
"You will continue to climb?"
"Yes."
Then, "Good!" she said suddenly. "I--," and her voice stopped
again.
"Go back," she finally said, without emotion.
"Sorry."
And she was gone.
Our trail took us slowly to the left once more. We crawled and
sprawled and cut holes in the stone. Snakes sizzled in the distance.
They were with us constantly now. The bird came again at crucial
moments, to try to make us fall. A raging bull stood on a crag and
bellowed down at us. Phantom archers loosed shafts of fire, which
always faded right before they struck. Blazing blizzards swept at us,
around us, were gone. We were back on the northern slopes and still
heading west by the time we broke a hundred sixty thousand. The sky
was deep and blue, and there were always stars. Why did the mountain
hate us? I wondered. What was there about us to provoke this thing?
I looked at the picture of the girl for the dozenth time and I
wondered what she really was. Had she been picked from our minds and
composed into girlform to lure us, to lead us, sirenlike, harpylike,
to the place of the final fall? It was such a long way down....
I thought back over my life. How does a man come to climb
mountains? Is he drawn by the heights because he is afraid of the
level land? Is he such a misfit in the society of men that he must
flee and try to place himself above it? The way up is long and
difficult, but if he succeeds they must grant him a garland of sorts.
And if he falls, this too is a kind of glory. To end, hurled from the
heights to the depths in hideous ruin and combustion down, is a
fitting climax for the loser--for it, too, shakes mountains and minds,
stirs things like thoughts below both, is a kind of blasted garland of
victory in defeat, and cold, so cold that final action, that the
movement is somewhere frozen forever into a statuelike rigidity of
ultimate intent and purpose thwarted only by the universal malevolence
we all fear exists. An aspirant saint or hero who lacks some
necessary virtue may still qualify as a martyr, for the only thing
that people will really remember in the end is the end. I had known
that I'd had to climb Kasla, as I had climbed all the others, and I
had known what the price would me. It had cost me my only home. But
Kasla was there, and my boots cried out for my feet. I knew as I did
so that somewhere I set them upon her summit, and below me a world was
ending. What's a world if the moment of victory is at hand? And if
truth, beauty and goodness be one, why is there always this conflict
among them?
The phantom archers fired upon me and the bright bird swooped. I
set my teeth, and my boots scarred rocks beneath me.
We saw the top.
At a hundred seventy-six thousand feet, making our way along a
narrow ledge, clicking against rock, testing our way with our picks,
we heard Vince say, "Look!"
We did.
Up and up, and again further, bluefrosted and sharp, deadly, and
cold as Loki's dagger, slashing at the sky, it vibrated above us like
electricity, hung like a piece of frozen thunder, and cut, cut, cut
into the center of spirit that was desire, twisted, and became a
fishhook to pull us on, to burn us with its barbs.
Vince was the first to look up and see the top, the first to die.
It happened so quickly, and it was none of the terrors that achieved
it.
He slipped.
That was all. It was a difficult piece of climbing. He was right
behind me one second, was gone the next. There was no body to
recover. He'd taken the long drop. The soundless blue was all around
him and the great gray beneath. Then we were six. We shuddered, and
I suppose we all prayed in our own ways.
--Gone Vince, may some good Deva lead you up the Path of Splendor.
May you find whatever you wanted most at the other end, waiting there
for you. If such a thing may be, remember those who say these words,
oh strong intruder in the sky....
No one spoke much for the rest of the day.
The fiery sword bearer came and stood above our camp the entire
night. It did not speak.
In the morning, Stan was gone, and there was a note beneath my
pack.
_Don't hate me,_ it said, _for running out, but I think it
really is an angel. I'm scared of this mountain. I'll climb
any pile of rocks, but I won't fight Heaven. The way down is
easier than the way up, so don't worry about me. Good luck.
Try to understand._ S
So we were five--Doc and Kelly and Henry and Mallardi and me--and
that day we hit a hundred eighty thousand and felt very alone.
The girl came again that night and spoke to me, black hair against
black sky and eyes like points of blue fire, and she stood beside an
icy pillar and said, "Two of you have gone."
"And the rest of us remain," I replied.
"For a time."
"We will climb to the top and then we will go away," I said. "How
can that do you harm? Why do you hate us?"
"No hate, sir," she said.
"What, then?"
"I protect."
"What? What is it that you protect?"
"The dying, that she may live."
"What? Who is dying? How?"
But her words went away somewhere, and I did not hear them. Then
she went away too, and there was nothing left but sleep for the rest
of the night.
One hundred eighty-two thousand and three, and four, and five. Then
back down to four for the following night.
The creatures whined about us now, and the land pulsed beneath us,
and the mountain seemed sometimes to sway as we climbed.
We carved a path to one eighty-six, and for three days we fought
to gain another thousand feet. Everything we touched was cold and
slick and slippery, sparkled, and had a bluish haze about it.
When we hit one ninety, Henry looked back and shuddered.
"I'm no longer worried about making it to the top," he said.
"It's the return trip that's bothering me now. The clouds are like
little wisps of cotton way down there."
"The sooner up, the sooner down," I said, and we began to climb
once again.
It took us another week to cut our way to within a mile of the
top. All the creatures of fire had withdrawn, but two ice avalanches
showed us we were still unwanted. We survived the first without
mishap, but Kelly sprained his right ankle during the second, and Doc
thought he might have cracked a couple of ribs, too.
We made a camp. Doc stayed there with him; Henry and Mallardi and
I pushed on up the last mile.
Now the going was beastly. It had become a mountain of glass. We
had to hammer out a hold for every foot we made. We worked in shifts.
We fought for everything we gained. Our packs became monstrous loads
and our fingers grew numb. Our defense system--the projectors--seemed
to be wearing down, or else something was increasing its efforts to get
us, because the snakes kept slithering closer, burning brighter. They
hurt my eyes, and I cursed them.
When we were within a thousand feet of the top, we dug in and made
another camp. The next couple hundred feet looked easier, then a
rotten spot, and I couldn't tell what it was like above that.
When we awakened, there was just Henry and myself. There was no
indication of where Mallardi had gotten to. Henry switched his
communicator to Doc's letter and called below. I tuned in in time to
hear him say, "Haven't seen him."
"How's Kelly?" I asked.
"Better," he replied. "Those ribs might not be cracked at that."
Then Mallardi called us.
"I'm four hundred feet above you, fellows," his voice came in.
"It was easy up to here, but the going's just gotten rough again."
"Why'd you cut out on your own?" I asked.
"Because I think something's going to try to kill me before too
long," he said. "It's up ahead, waiting at the top. You can probably
even see it from there. It's a snake."
Henry and I used the binoculars.
Snake? A better word might be dragon--or maybe even Midgard
Serpent.
It was coiled around the peak, head upraised. It seemed to be
several hundred feet in length, and it moved its head from side to
side, and up and down, and it smoked solar coronas.
Then I spotted Mallardi climbing toward it.
"Don't go any further!" I called. "I don't know whether your unit
will protect you against anything like that! Wait'll I call Doc--"
"Not a chance," he said. "This baby is mine."
"Listen! You can be first on the mountain, if that's what you
want! But don't tackle that thing alone!"
A laugh was the only reply.
"All three units might hold it off," I said. "Wait for us."
There was no answer, and we began to climb.
I left Henry far below me. The creature was a moving light in the
sky. I made two hundred feet in a hurry, and when I looked up again,
I saw that the creature had grown two more heads. Lightnings flashed
from its nostrils, and its tail whipped around the mountain. I made
another hundred feet, and I could see Mallardi clearly by then,
climbing steadily, outlined against the brilliance. I swung my pick,
gasping, and I fought the mountain, following the trail he had cut. I
began to gain on him, because he was still pounding out his way and I
didn't have that problem. Then I heard him talking:
"Not yet, big fella, not yet," he was saying, from behind a wall
of static. "Here's a ledge...."
I looked up, and he vanished.
Then that fiery tail came lashing down toward where I had last
seen him, and I heard him curse and I felt the vibrations of his
pneumatic gun. The tail snapped back again, and I heard another
"Damn!"
I made haste, stretching and racking myself and grabbing at the holds
he had cut, and then I heard him burst into song. Something from
_Aida_, I think.
"Damn it! Wait up!" I said. "I'm only a few hundred feet
behind."
He kept on singing.
I was beginning to get dizzy, but I couldn't let myself slow down.
My right arm felt like a piece of wood, my left like a piece of ice.
My feet were hooves, and my eyes burned in my head.
Then it happened.
Like a bomb, the snake and the swinging ended in a flash of
brilliance that caused me to sway and almost lose my grip. I clung to
the vibrating mountainside and squeezed my eyes against the light.
"Mallardi?" I called.
No answer. Nothing.
I looked down. Henry was still climbing. I continued to climb.
I reached the ledge Mallardi had mentioned, found him there.
His respirator was still working. His protective suit was
blackened and scorched on the right side. Half of his pick had been
melted away. I raised his shoulders.
I turned up the volume on the communicator and heard him
breathing. His eyes opened, closed, opened.
"Okay...." he said.
"'Okay,' hell! Where do you hurt?"
"No place...I feel jus' fine....Listen! I think it's used up its
juice for awhile....Go plant the flag. Prop me up here first, though.
I wanna watch...."
I got him into a better position, squirted the water bulb,
listened to him swallow. Then I waited for Henry to catch up. It
took about six minutes.
"I'll stay here," said Henry, stooping beside him. "You go do
it."
I started up the final slope.
I swung and I cut and I blasted and I crawled. Some of the ice had
been melted, the rocks scorched.
Nothing came to oppose me. The static had gone with the dragon.
There was silence, and darkness between stars.
I climbed slowly, still tired from that last sprint, but
determined not to stop.
All but sixty feet of the entire world lay beneath me, and heaven
hung above me, and a rocket winked overhead. Perhaps it was the
pressmen, with zoom cameras.
Fifty feet....
No bird, no archer, no angel, no girl.
Forty feet....
I started to shake. It was nervous tension. I steadied myself,
went on.
Thirty feet...and the mountain seemed to be swaying now.
Twenty-five...and I grew dizzy, halted, took a drink.
Then click, click, my pick again.
Twenty....
Fifteen....
Ten....
I braced myself against the mountain's final assault, whatever it
might be.
Five...
Nothing happened as I arrived.
I stood up. I could go no higher.
I looked at the sky, I looked back down. I waved at the blazing
rocket exhaust.
I extruded the pole and attached the flag.
I planted it, there where no breezes would ever stir it. I cut in
my communicator, said, "I'm here."
No other words.
It was time to go back down and give Henry his chance, but I looked
down the western slope before I turned to go.
The lady was winking again. Perhaps eight hundred feet below, the
red light shone. Could that have been what I had seen from the town
during the storm, on that night, so long ago?
I didn't know and I had to.
I spoke into the communicator.
"How's Mallardi doing?"
"I just stood up," he answered. "Give me another half hour, and
I'm coming up myself."
"Henry," I said. "Should he?"
"Gotta take his word how he feels," said Lanning.
"Well," I said, "then take it easy. I'll be gone when you get
here. I'm going a little way down the western side. Something I want
to see."
"What?"
"I dunno. That's why I want to see."
"Take care."
"Check."
The western slope was an easy descent. As I went down it, I
realized that the light was coming from an opening in the side of the
mountain.
Half an hour later, I stood before it.
I stepped within and was dazzled.
I walked toward it and stopped. It pulsed and quivered and sang.
A vibrating wall of flame leapt from the floor of the cave,
towered to the roof of the cave.
It blocked my way, when I wanted to go beyond it.
She was there, and I wanted to reach her.
I took a step forward, so that I was only inches away from it. My
communicator was full of static and my arms of cold needles.
It did not bend toward me, as to attack. It cast no heat.
I stared through the veil of fires to where she reclined, her eyes
closed, her breast unmoving.
I stared at the bank of machinery beside the far wall.
"I'm here," I said, and I raised my pick.
When its point touched the wall of flame someone took the lid off
hell, and I staggered back, blinded. When my vision cleared, the
angel stood before me.
"_You may not pass here_," he said.
"She is the reason you want me to go back?" I asked.
"_Yes. Go back._"
"Has she no say in the matter?"
"_She sleeps. Go back._"
"So I notice. Why?"
"_She must. Go back._"
"Why did she herself appear to me and lead me strangely?"
"_I used up the fear-forms I knew. They did not work. I led you
strangely because her sleeping mind touches upon my own workings. It
did so especially when I borrowed her form, so that it interfered with
the directive. Go back._"
"What is the directive?"
"_She is to be guarded against all things coming up the mountain.
Go back._"
"Why? Why is she guarded?"
"_She sleeps. Go back._"
The conversation having become somewhat circular at that point, I
reached into my pack and drew out the projector. I swung it forward
and the angel melted. The flames bent away from my outstretched
hand. I sought to open a doorway in the circle of fire.
It worked, sort of.
I pushed the projector forward, and the flames bent and bent and
bent and finally broke. When they broke, I leaped forward. I made it
through, but my protective suit was as scorched as Mallardi's.
I moved to the coffinlike locker within which she slept.
I rested my hands on its edge and looked down.
She was as fragile as ice.
In fact, she was ice....
The machine came alive with lights then, and I felt her somber
bedstead vibrate.
Then I saw the man.
He was half sprawled across a metal chair beside the machine.
He, too, was ice. Only his features were gray, were twisted. He
wore black and he was dead and a statue, while she was sleeping and a
statue.
She wore blue, and white....
There was an empty casket in the far corner....
But something was happening around me. There came a brightening
of the air. Yes, it was air. It hissed upward from frosty juts in
the floor, formed into great clouds. Then a feeling of heat occurred
and the clouds began to fade and the brightening continued.
I returned to the casket and studied her features.
I wondered what her voice would sound like when/if she spoke. I
wondered what lay within her mind. I wondered how her thinking
worked, and what she liked and didn't like. I wondered what her eyes
had looked upon, and when.
I wondered all these things, because I could see that whatever
forces I had set into operation when I entered the circle of fire were
causing her, slowly, to cease being a statue.
She was being awakened.
I waited. Over an hour went by, and still I waited, watching her.
She began to breath. Her eyes opened at last, and for a long time she
did not see.
Then her bluefire fell on me.
"Whitey," she said.
"Yes."
"Where am I...?"
"In the damnedest place I could possibly have found anyone."
She frowned. "I remember," she said and tried to sit up.
It didn't work. She fell back.
"What is your name?"
"Linda," she said. Then, "I dreamed of you, Whitey. Strange
dreams....How could that be?"
"It's tricky," I said.
"I knew you were coming," she said. "I saw you fighting monsters
on a mountain as high as the sky."
"Yes, we're there now."
"H-have you the cure?"
"Cure? What cure?"
"Dawson's Plague," she said.
I felt sick. I felt sick because I realized that she did not
sleep as a prisoner, but to postpone her death. She was sick.
"Did you come to live on this world in a ship that moved faster
than light?" I asked.
"No," she said. "It took centuries to get here. We slept the
cold sleep during the journey. This is one of the bunkers." She
gestured toward the casket with her eyes. I noticed her cheeks had
become bright red.
"They all began dying--of the plague," she said. "There was no
cure. My husband--Carl--is a doctor. When he saw that I had it, he
said he would keep me in extreme hypothermia until a cure was found.
Otherwise, you only live for two days, you know."
Then she stared up at me, and I realized that her last two words
had been a question.
I moved into a position to block her view of the dead man, who I
feared must be her Carl. I tried to follow her husband's thinking.
He'd had to hurry, as he was obviously further along than she had
been. He knew the colony would be wiped out. He must have loved her
and been awfully clever, both--awfully resourceful. Mostly, though, he
must have loved her. Knowing that the colony would die, he knew it
would be centuries before another ship arrived. He had nothing that
could power a cold bunker for that long. But up here, on the top of
this mountain, almost as cold as outer space itself, power wouldn't be
necessary. Somehow, he had got Linda and the stuff up here. His
machine cast a force field around the cave. Working in heat and
atmosphere, he had sent her deep into the cold sleep and then prepared
his own bunker. When he dropped the wall of forces, no power would be
necessary to guarantee the long, icy wait. They could sleep for
centuries within the bosom of the Gray Sister, protected by a colony
of defense-computer. This last had apparently been programmed
quickly, for he was dying. He saw that it was too late to join her.
He hurried to set the thing for basic defense, killed the force field,
and then went his way into that Dark and Secret Place. Thus it hurled
its birds and its angels and its snakes, it raised its walls of fire
against me. He died, and it guarded her in near-death--against
everything, including those who would help. My coming to the mountain
had activated it. My passing of the defenses had caused her to be
summoned back to life.
"_Go back!_" I heard the machine say through its projected angel,
for Henry had entered the cave.
"My God!" I heard him say. "Who's that?"
"Get Doc!" I said. "Hurry! I'll explain later. It's a matter of
life! Climb back to where your communicator will work, and tell him
it's Dawson's Plague--a bad local bug! Hurry!"
"I'm on my way," he said and was.
"There _is_ a doctor?" she asked.
"Yes. Only about two hours away. Don't worry....I still don't
see how anyone could have gotten you up here to the top of this
mountain, let alone a load of machines."
"We're on the big mountain--the forty-miler?"
"Yes."
"How did _you_ get up?" she asked.
"I climbed it."
"You really climbed Purgatorio? On the outside?"
"Purgatorio? That's what you call it? Yes, I climbed it, that
way."
"We didn't think it could be done."
"How else might one arrive at its top?"
"It's hollow inside," she said. "There are great caves and
massive passages. It's easy to fly up the inside on a pressurized jut
car. In fact, it was an amusement ride. Two and a half dollars per
person. An hour and a half each way. A dollar to rent a pressurized
suit and take an hour's walk around the top. Nice way to spend an
afternoon. Beautiful view...?" She gasped deeply.
"I don't feel so good," she said. "Have you any water?"
"Yes," I said, and I gave her all I had.
As she sipped it, I prayed that Doc had the necessary serum or
else would be able to send her back to ice and sleep until it could be
gotten. I prayed that he would make good time, for two hours seemed
long when measured against her thirst and the red of her flesh.
"My fever is coming again," she said. "Talk to me, Whitey,
please....Tell me things. Keep me with you till he comes. I don't
want my mind to turn back upon what has happened...."
"What would you like me to tell you about, Linda?"
"Tell me why you did it. Tell me what it was like, to climb a
mountain like this one. Why?"
I turned my mind back upon what had happened.
"There is a certain madness involved," I said, "a certain envy of
great and powerful natural forces, that some men have. Each mountain
is a deity, you know. Each is an immortal power. If you make
sacrifices upon its slopes, a mountain may grant you a certain grace,
and for a time you will share this power. Perhaps that is why they
call me...."
Her hand rested in mine. I hoped that through it whatever power I
might contain would hold all of her with me for as long as ever
possible.
"I remember the first time that I saw Purgatory, Linda," I told
her. "I looked at it and I was sick. I wondered, where did it
lead...?"
(Stars.
Oh let there be.
This once to end with.
Please.)
"Stars?"