‘They’re not just any old fireworks, either,’ Richman continued, as the crack of the explosions faded with distance, even though the fusillade was unceasing out there in the void. ‘They’re twice as big as the shells used at public events, and shooting three times as high, up to over a kilometre.’
Yet for all their size and explosive power, the starbursts were shrinking away inexorably as the kilometres grew between them and the watchers—already they must have crossed halfway to the Wheel. Indeed, now the bulk of the mountain itself, lost before in the glare of the fireworks, was becoming a presence once more, a deeper shadow than the night, and vast beyond all reckoning compared to the shrinking starbursts that crept towards it.
Rita was aware of a strange, muffled, doubling of sound now, as if more fireworks were exploding than could be seen. She realised that it must be echoes, each explosion reaching her once directly, and then many seconds later reaching her again, reflected off the great wall that was the Wheel.
She shivered. The breeze was blowing more chill across the Terrace, the last of the smoke had cleared and the smell of powder departed. The faraway starbursts continued, almost at the foot the Wheel, and how small the silvery flowers had become, tiny spring blossoms against a louring monolith. The thump and mutter of explosions was still audible, but the effect had become ghostly and sad, lost in so much immensity, and Rita shivered again.
‘Keep watching,’ Richman warned. ‘We’re getting to the good part now.’
The rockets were no longer being fired from barges, it appeared, but rather were lofting up from the foot of the Wheel itself. It must be from Bligh Cove, there was nowhere else along that inhospitable shore where the pyrotechnicians would be able to set up their equipment.
The light from the explosions was now revealing, in flashes of lurid red and green, the landscape of the Wheel itself, giving glimpses of faraway stony cliffs and icy crags. But it was only a tiny portion of the great mountain. To the left and right of the fireworks, and far above them, the bulk of the Wheel remained in darkness.
There came at last a final flurry of starbursts, which must have been dazzling and deafening up close, but which from this distance was only a dispassionate glitter, fading to nothing, followed by a muffled crescendo of faraway thunder, echoing on itself. Then it too died, and the night and the darkness and the quiet leaned in, victorious.
Except, no.
For at the point where the last fires had faded, far across at Bligh Cove, a new and improbable light was rising, not an explosion, but a steadier, more piercing glow, tinted green. And simultaneously, on the Terrace, a deep peal of sound suddenly woke—a swell of music played on hidden speakers.
‘Ha!’ laughed Richman.
The glow at Bligh Cove was now a dazzling pinpoint, like a giant magnesium flare seen from afar. And belatedly Rita saw, stabbing out from some hidden position below her on the Observatory balconies, a pale rod of light glittered in the darkness, catching on the smoke from the fireworks. It extended in a straight line all the way across the ten-kilometre gulf to the bright point at the foot of the Wheel.
A laser, of course; she was seeing the beam of a laser. She could now detect additional beams lancing out from the Observatory, another four or five ghostly lines, all of them focussed on Bligh Cove, which was glowing ever brighter. The music—a soundtrack of strings and keyboards—trembled as if in anticipation of some momentous beginning.
And suddenly, in the flickering manner of laser writing, the words Bligh Cove appeared at the focus of the beams, inscribed in glowing green upon the mountainside. Rita drew a breath of amazement. Why, to be read at this distance, the letters must be enormous, dozens of metres tall.
But now the focus of light was distorting, elongating itself—a glowing line was striking out from Bligh Cove, climbing the Wheel’s lower slopes. It jagged this way and that, but crept ever upwards, leaving behind an unbroken green trail. Once it paused and widened into a dot, like a mark on a map, before moving on. Higher up, it did so again. And all the while the music on the Terrace swelled in accordance.
‘What is—?’ Rita began, but caught herself, for even as she spoke, a third dot was forming on the laser-lit line, and beside it more words appeared written in light. Base Camp.
And suddenly she understood. The laser show was marking the route by which Walter Richman and his expedition had climbed the Wheel! It was obvious now, the way the glowing green line cut back and forth in switchbacks in some places, or in others plunged straight up. Rita dimly remembered her history lessons. There had been a supply camp at Bligh Cove, but Base Camp had been on the great ledge called the Plateau, five thousand metres up. And between there had been subsidiary camps. That’s what the unmarked dots must represent.
The green line was now climbing above Base Camp. In fact, it had split into two lines which took separate though roughly parallel paths upwards, strung with dots along the way, sparse beads on a necklace. Rita remembered the two lines of camps that had been run up the mountain, with dozens of huts set along either path, refuges where the climbers could rest in pressurised air, with running water on tap and electricity to recharge the batteries of their suits.
She stared, utterly fascinated as the laser-illustrated route ascended ever higher. In those long-ago lessons, Rita had been shown photographs of the mountain with the route the climbers took clearly marked, and she had been quite uninterested. But this was entirely different. This was three-dimensional; this was alive, with the Wheel right there before her, and the scale of it all, the truth of what Richman and his team had done, was staggering.
Up, up climbed the twin lines, bright against the bulk of the mountain. The night remained too dark for any detail of the West Face to be seen, and the laser lines illuminated nothing but themselves, but even so, ridges and cliffs and couloirs could be guessed by the way the lines either crabbed sideways or leapt upwards. And they were climbing so high, it was impossible to believe the Wheel could really be that tall. Yes, its shadow was ever present in all its grandeur, but the bright line of ascent defined the terror of its heights all anew.
The strings of the soundtrack swelled across the Terrace as the lines rose. Rita did not recognise the piece, and wondered, with a kind of horror, if it was original, if Richman had ordered it composed just for this memorial to his great achievement.
And still the lines, dotted with camps, continued to etch their paths upwards. She could hardly imagine how the effect was achieved. How many lasers were involved? How powerful were they? How was it that the twin lines, even as they now approached the summit, twenty kilometres and more above her, still seemed as crisp and bright as the lines on the lower slopes, which were so much closer?
Far above in the night, just below where the two great shoulders of the Wheel met against the stars, likewise the two green lines had now drawn together. This single line progressed swiftly to the summit ridge, where it jagged leftwards and climbed on. Until, just below the hump of the Wheel’s pinnacle, a last dot appeared, and a third piece of writing was cut in light, fine and far away, but just distinct enough to read. Hut 122.
The last camp, Rita knew. The hut from which the man standing beside her here and now on the Terrace had, all those years ago, set out with three companions to reach the peak.
There the line went now, a bright scratch somehow drawn from twenty-five thousand metres distance, creeping along the crest of the ridge towards the summit. And as the line at last reached the very Hand of God (though of course it was much too far away to see any details of the palm and the fingers) and as the music swelled to ecstasy, the entire diagram of lines and camps drawn across the Wheel flared bright and golden in triumph, a pathway to heaven, and the summit blazed like a new star.
For a long moment it held like that, then in a blink it vanished, a switch thrown to off.
But the show was not over. Colours danced all over the Wheel for a confusing instant, the beams of the lasers swinging wildly through the smoky airs ab
out the Observatory. Then a new pattern of lines coalesced on the mountain, forming not a route this time, but arms, legs, shoulders, a head … it was a man, a figure in outline, drawn across the entire West Face, a giant standing twenty kilometres tall.
It was Walter Richman.
The figure possessed no recognisable facial features, for all Rita knew such detail was beyond the capacity of the laser projectors, and in any case, the figure wore a helmet. But she knew it was Richman anyway, for the image was a copy of one of the most famous photos ever taken, a shot of Richman standing upon the pinnacle of the Wheel, snapped by one of his companions waiting on the ridge below. The photo showed him turned half away from the camera, a bulky form in a pressure suit, his head tilted to the sky, a climbing axe draped over his shoulder. It was an image that had always projected victory, humility and exhaustion all at once. And now that same image flickered in glowing green outline across the vast screen of the mountain he had conquered.
On the Terrace, Richman was applauding. ‘Yes, goddamn it. Yes!’
Slowly, the titanic figure turned, its shape flickering as the lasers redrew, and faced the Observatory. A hand the size of ten football fields raised, and waved to the watchers.
Around Rita, the others laughed and applauded, and Richman whooped his joy, but Rita, staring at this monstrous apparition, felt something chill and dreadful awake in her gut.
This … this was awful.
The giant now bowed to the watchers, a god acknowledging its worshippers, and then, with a final flourish from the music, it straightened and faded away. The multiple beams of the lasers disappeared, leaving the air around the Observatory empty, and across the ocean the great wall of the Wheel was dark once more. The show was over. But it gave Rita no recourse from the sick feeling.
It was more than awful …
She gulped at the cold air, feeling flushed and nauseous and dizzy. What was wrong with her? Was she falling ill? Had she drunk too much? But no, it wasn’t a physical discomfort exactly, it was more as if … as if some moral sense within her was in revolt, as if she had witnessed something indecent, and was sickened now with the shame of not having stopped it.
She shook her head. What did she mean by that? It had been entertainment, that was all. A party trick, vast and complicated and technically a marvel, but just a trick and no more.
The lights were coming up on the Terrace now, and Richman was receiving congratulations from his guests. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ he was saying. ‘Of course, there’ll be somewhat more fireworks on the actual night. And the laser show will have some commentary to explain about the route up the mountain. But you get the gist of it.’
The vertigo was withdrawing from Rita a little, thank the lord. But even so she felt hollowed out and cold, and soiled somehow.
The billionaire turned to her at last. ‘Rita? It’s a wild extravagance, I know. But after all, if you’re going to throw a party then—’ He paused, looked at her more closely. ‘Are you okay?’
Disgust had overcome her again. An extravagance? To spend what must have been hundreds of thousands of dollars, no, more likely millions of dollars, for the amusement of just six people? You could not call that merely extravagant; it was degenerate. But that wasn’t what really bothered her. It was Richman’s money, after all. He could waste it how he liked.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, wiping cold sweat from her forehead. ‘I think it was just watching all those lights in the dark. Made me a bit dizzy.’
‘Would you like a glass of water?’
‘No, thank you.’
What she wanted was to be away from him. Loathing filled her, not for his wealth, but for his ego, for the sheer vastness of his conceit.
That was what repulsed her so much about the show she had just witnessed. The staggering vanity of it. Richman had projected his own image, twenty kilometres tall, upon the mountain. He had turned the mighty Wheel, and all its towering grandeur of snow and ice, into a screen on which to glorify himself. And he expected congratulations for it.
Faintly she said, ‘It was a wonderful show, though. Amazing.’ Because how else could she rid herself of such narcissism? Praise was the only way to make him leave her alone.
He was nodding. ‘Everyone told me it couldn’t be done. It was beyond laser technology, they said, at that distance and scale. But it’s like anything else, you don’t take no for an answer.’
No. And wasn’t that the irony of invincible egotism—how often it did get the apparently impossible done, by sheer force.
‘Anyway,’ the billionaire said brightly, turning to the others. ‘Now that we’re done with the festivities, we can get out of the cold. Dessert is being served in the Conservatory—shall we go in?’
So ushered, the others made off towards the airlock doors. Rita, however, hung back. Clara, passing by, gave her a questioning look.
‘I’ll be along in a minute,’ Rita said. ‘I just need a breath of clear air after all that smoke.’
The major-domo nodded politely and moved on, leaving Rita alone, aside from the bar attendant and the waitress, who were now cleaning up.
Wrapping her coat tight, Rita wandered away along the eastern edge of the Terrace. It felt very cold now, the breeze beginning to stiffen into a wind. Back by the bar there was still light—but elsewhere none of the fires that had been ablaze before Richman’s show had been reignited, leaving the Terrace abandoned to the wind and the night.
Chilled to the bone, Rita came to a small protruding balcony that jutted out over the eastern drop. In her distraction she dared even to lean against the rail at the outmost point, the wind curling up at her from the two and half thousand metres of darkness directly beneath. Ignoring it all, she stared across the gulf to the shadow that was the Wheel.
And she felt it then, emanating from the mountain, the way she could feel sunlight even when her eyes were closed. Only now it was as if she had turned her face towards a cold lightless sun, one that radiated only a single baleful emotion.
She drew a breath, unnerved. An image came to her, as clear as if she had just lived it. She was standing—impossibly—on the bitter summit of the Wheel, high above the Earth. And from that vantage she beheld the green flicker of laser lights searching up from far below, coming closer, closer, until suddenly the Hand of God was bathed in an icy green glow.
It was hateful, that light, in her vision. It was alien, a light where no such light, hard and artificial, had ever shone before. It was the intrusion of something man-made where mankind did not belong.
No, the intrusion of a single man. A man who long ago had defeated the mountain. A man who had returned now to tunnel into the native stone and to build his home mockingly at the mountain’s foot. A man who, in ultimate insult, had carved his own image in light upon the Wheel’s hide.
Rage at that enormity flowed in storm waves from the mountain. Rage, and yet it seemed to Rita that there was satisfaction too, an eager certainty that retribution was coming. Not yet, not now, not when the man was as protected as he was, but soon, when he was alone, or nearly alone, then—
Rita blinked, staggered back as if she had been hit, so appalling was the image that flooded her mind. But then it was gone, gone without a trace, as was all sense of otherness or enmity.
Blinking still, she strove to remember what the last shock had been, but there was nothing; it was a dream forgotten instantly on waking. All she knew was that the whole thing, the vision of the mountaintop, the sensing of emotion, had been like …
Oh no.
Like the old days, that’s what it had been like. When she had believed that she could … commune … with the bedrock of the hills.
But oh Christ, that was done with. She didn’t believe that anymore. There was nothing to commune with; she knew that perfectly well now. And anyway, even at her most delusional, she had never communed with an entire mountain, let alone a monster like the Wheel, and never, ever, from ten kilometres distance. Even by the logic of her old madnes
s, that was impossible on every level.
And yet …
‘Ma’am?’
Rita started. It was the young barman, braving the chill away from the heaters, his upper half clad only in a thin white coat and shirt and bow tie.
‘Ma’am, would you like a last drink of anything, before I close down the bar?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ll be going in now. Thank you. I’m fine.’
He nodded and withdrew.
Rita took a shuddering lungful of the cold air, felt her head steadying once more. She glanced back up at the Wheel, and felt—nothing. Only the cold and the wind. The mountain itself was an inscrutable shape of blackness against the stars, and in no way could she imagine what it would be like to stand upon the peak, or to resent the intrusion of mankind.
Of one man.
She puffed the air out.
No way at all.
And thus reassured, if only shakily, she turned from the Wheel and sought the safety of the doors, and the warmth and light within.
7
THE THEORY OF PRESENCES
Extract from The Spawn of Disparity
by Rita Gausse, 1995
Let’s get this out of the way then, straight up.
I think it’s important to state exactly what I believe from the outset.
I am not fearful about this.
I do not need to dance about the truth, or prepare the way for delicate souls who will have trouble accepting what I have to tell them. Fuck the delicate souls—these things are facts; they don’t need to be sugar-coated, nor should they be wrapped in cheap mysticism.
So here it is. In short, there are invisible non-human presences, nonhuman forms of consciousness, all around us in the landscape.
Let me stress the term non-human. They are not ghosts of humans departed; they not human-related spirits of any kind. Indeed, let me say further, they are not even of organic origin. They are not in any way related to animals or plants. They are inorganic. They are born only of stone, or of the atmosphere, or of water. They do not breathe, or need food. They will exist, I am certain, as readily on lifeless Mars as they do here on Earth. Perhaps more readily, in fact, for reasons that will become clear.
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