At the foot of the Mount, damage to the port and town of Base is equally severe, but it is thought that at least the port facilities and the weather station can be returned to working order …
Billionaire Officially Declared Dead. Some five months after the disaster that destroyed his home, billionaire mountain climber Walter Richman has been declared officially dead by Tasmanian courts. Though Richman’s body has not been recovered from the ruins of the Observatory residence, it has been ruled that as his last known position was within the section of the residence most heavily damaged by the second earthquake, now inaccessible, it was legally reasonable to assume that his remains lie there. His estate and business empire, estimated to be worth in excess of seventy billion US dollars, will now pass to his family …
What Now for the Wheel? In the wake of the disaster upon Theodolite Isle in which billionaire climber Walter Richman and ninety-two others lost their lives, the focus has rightly been upon the recovery of the deceased and the treatment of the survivors. But with investigations into the disaster now winding up (the Coronial Inquest has finished with submissions and is due to report its findings next year) the climbing community has begun to discuss what all of this means for future expeditions to the Wheel.
The Wheel itself suffered little damage from the quakes that so devastated Theodolite Isle. And while a moratorium on all climbing was immediately called after news of the disaster broke, by the summer of next year climbers will fairly expect that the mountain will be open to them again. Much of the West Face’s snow cover was lost in the avalanche that caused the terrible tsunami, but all the major routes up the mountain—as far as can be told—remain open. However, without the support facilities that were available on Theodolite Isle, mounting a major expedition upon the Wheel will be troublesome for some years to come.
‘It’s a real pity,’ said one climber from the assessment team sent to study the Wheel. ‘I’ve never seen the mountain look friendlier, strange as that might sound. With the snow cover gone, it’s like the Wheel has shrugged off a whole lot of ugly weight and mean attitude. It’s a hard thing to explain to non-climbers, but all peaks have moods, and to me, even after all that’s happened, the Wheel is looking like a happy mountain.’
EPILOGUE 2
Selected articles, 2037 to 2120
October, 2037. Consolidated Press
The Mysterious Death of Walter Richman … Of all Richman’s intimate business companions and staff with him on Theodolite Isle during the disaster only his personal IT specialist, Eugene Morris, survived. But as Morris’s own published account of the event describes, he departed the upper residence some minutes before the initial earthquake struck. His tale is a gripping one to be sure, telling of the tsunami that struck the lower parts of the island, and of the subsequent adventures of the forty-seven people who survived it, marooned for a week in the ruins before rescue finally arrived. But he can shed no light on what was transpiring above in the Observatory during that time, nor reveal how Richman and the others perished.
Only one witness could possibly do that: Rita Gausse, daughter of the Observatory’s designer, and a guest to Richman that fateful day. But in the twenty years since, she has refused to do so.
There is, of course, her testimony at two inquiries, one into the disaster in general, and one into the death of Richman in particular. And on the face of it her tale is simple enough. The six people trapped in the Observatory, Richman included, decided at first to merely wait for rescue. Then, as rescue did not come, personal assistant to Richman and former mountain climber, Clara Lang, made an attempt to descend the complex’s emergency stairway, even though it had been badly damaged by the quake. The others waited another two days, but as it appeared that Lang had not succeeded in reaching the bottom (her body has never been found) Gausse herself then made an attempt. And succeeded, just before the final quake struck, destroying the Observatory and claiming all the others.
Which is all fair enough, as far as it goes. But in the twenty years since then, the silence of Ms Gausse, a veterinarian based in rural Victoria, is curious. The world, after all, has been eager ever since the disaster to know how a man like Richman behaved in the crisis. Accordingly, Ms Gausse has been offered a cavalcade of international book deals, film deals and television deals, all giving her the chance to elaborate on the dry details of her testimony, and all of them offering considerable financial recompense. But she has refused involvement in all of them.
Why?
Is it merely because, as Ms Gausse claims, she has no desire to relive what was undeniably a stressful experience? She received significant injuries in her escape, requiring surgery and long recovery, and in the years since has lived on a remote bushland property where, she declared to this reporter, she is ‘quite happy thanks and just wants to be left alone’.
Or is it because, as has been increasingly rumoured, the Richman family has pressured her to remain silent. The great Richman dynasty endures, after all, even following the loss of Richman himself. The billionaire’s second wife and his two sons inherited the bulk of his many enterprises, and it seems, if sources are to be believed, that they do not want details of Walter Richman’s last hours known.
It is idle to speculate, maybe. Did the dauntless conqueror of the Wheel perhaps not respond to the crisis with calm and courage? Was there panic and disorder in the Observatory before the final end? Did something even stranger take place upon that lonely mount?
Only one woman can say.
And, calmly, she chooses not to.
March, 2120. Paranormal News
A Multiplatform Experience for Seekers of the Truth in the 22nd Century. Mystery in the Hand of God
Of all the many Hand of God myths that have circulated in the climbing world through the centuries since the Wheel’s discovery, perhaps the most intriguing is also one of the most recent, for it emerged in the days after the second successful ascent of the Wheel, which took place in 2075, one hundred years exactly after the first ascent.
This second ascent, known as the Anniversary Expedition, was mounted specifically to honour the 1975 achievement. It was a far simpler affair, however, than that earlier vast and unwieldy expedition. Walter Richman’s team consisted of hundreds of climbers and support staff, and their efforts involved the laying of kilometres of electrical cables and water pipes up the mountain. In comparison, the Anniversary Expedition consisted of only six climbers, and not a single metre of cable or piping was required, leaving the Wheel pristine.
Of course, there had been a century’s advance in technology between the two teams. There was no need for the Anniversary Expedition to lay cables or pipes, for instance, because everything was airlifted directly to the climbers by heavy-duty drones; standard prop-drive models below ten thousand metres, and c-pulse drones above ten thousand. The expedition’s water and food, their climbing equipment, the batteries for their suits and huts, the huts themselves, all of it was toted up the West Face to wherever the climbers happened to be. Likewise, all waste was carted away by air, leaving no trace behind.
In fact, as the drones were capable of carrying loads of up to two hundred kilograms each, the climbers themselves could easily have been airlifted directly to the summit, though that would hardly have been sporting. But it did prove crucial on two occasions—once, at eleven thousand metres, when a climber fell and shattered a femur; and again at sixteen thousand metres, when another of the climbers developed appendicitis. In both cases, the stricken individuals were safely airlifted from the mountain, leaving the remaining climbers free to continue their ascent.
The act of climbing itself was also a much simpler affair. This was no ‘siege’ assault on the Wheel, as was Richman’s, with its torturous placing of camp above camp, requiring endless trips up and down the mountain. The Anniversary team was climbing ‘Alpine’ style, which meant one ascent and one descent, and they did it at a speed that would have astonished Richman’s team. The 1975 ascent took nearly two years: the Ann
iversary climb was done in a mere fifty-nine days.
This was largely due to the drone system, of course, but advances in pressure-suit technology can also claim some of the credit. Richman’s suits were bulky, stiff and tiring to work in. The Anniversary suits, by comparison, made of environment-reactive ‘smart fabrics’, were scarcely more burdensome to wear than a thick jumpsuit.
Which is not to claim that the Anniversary ascent was without travail. Two injuries have already been mentioned, and the climbers faced all the usual dangers to be found upon the Wheel: ice and snow and avalanche, airless altitude, deadly cold and freakish winds. The Wheel threw it all at the Anniversary team, just as it had thrown it all at Richman’s climbers. And like Richman’s effort, the Anniversary Expedition was staggeringly expensive, the drones and smart suits being state-of-the-art, prototype equipment. Climbing the Wheel may have become easier, but it remains to this day a sport reserved for the very, very rich.
In any event, against all difficulties and in record time, the remaining four climbers of the Anniversary team made a last camp on the Wheel’s summit ridge on 11 August 2074, and the next morning set out on the last leg of their ascent, just as a hundred years earlier Richman and his three companions had set out for their own summit push. However, this time there was no debate as to how many of the climbers would actually be allowed to stand upon the Hand of God; the Anniversary team had sworn that they would all do so together, or none of them would.
And so it transpired. Late in the day, with the sun trending westwards in a fine blue sky, the two men and two women scaled the last few metres of the ridge and stepped onto the flat palm of the summit.
Before them rose the curved fingers of the Hand of God, the famous summit cave waiting darkly beneath. No one had stood there or looked into that cave since Walter Richman himself a century earlier, only to forever keep secret what he had seen.
Eagerly, the four climbers crowded about the cave and looked in.
And then … ?
Well, this is where it starts to get weird.
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In truth, there should have been no space for rumour or conspiracy theory to thrive, because the whole world was supposed to share the climbers’ view that day, via footage beamed live from the climbers’ helmet cameras. But an untimely glitch in the broadcast facility on the support ship made live transmission impossible, so it was decided that recorded footage of the summit moment would have to suffice.
And indeed some footage, showing the climbers reaching the Hand of God, was later screened to a fascinated audience.
But there was no footage showing the inside of the cave. Pressed as to why this was, expedition officials had excuses ready. It had been decided ‘in advance’, they claimed, to not film the cave in any detail, out of respect for the mountain, which should be allowed to keep its last mystery. After all, hadn’t the great Walter Richman done the same?
Which was fine, said critics, except that there had been no mention of this decision about the cave in any of the planning stages of the Anniversary Expedition. In fact, the intention had seemed just the opposite, to show the cave. So what had changed? To which the climbers and the officials said only this: No comment.
Soon enough, however, a different account of the summit day began to circulate through the climbing world. According to these rumours, what happened was this: what the climbers saw in the cave was so shocking that they decided there and then it could never be revealed.
Because it was impossible. There could not be a corpse at the top of the world, where only one other human had ever stood.
And such a corpse! Even if—an unlikely scenario—some secretly mounted expedition had reached the peak of the Wheel without anyone else knowing, and even if one of its members had died at the summit, the body would not look like this body, could not look this body.
The man was—supposedly—all but naked. There was no sign of an altitude suit, no trace of any climbing gear at all, just a few shreds of clothing that proved (in later testing by forensic scientists, so the rumours ran) to be no more than a pair of Levi’s jeans, a white cotton shirt, light underwear and socks, and a pair of casual sneakers.
Baffling enough. But what was worse were the signs suggesting that the man, unsuited, in an environment without air and at minus seventy degrees Celsius, had survived for some time in the cave. How else to explain what had happened to his skin? Bits of it were torn off, especially about his hands, feet and buttocks, leaving livid bloody holes in him, perfectly preserved in the frozen conditions, and proving that he had been bleeding and therefore alive at the time of the injuries.
Corresponding patches of torn skin, the story goes, remained stuck at various points on the icy walls of the cave. It was as if the man had blundered from place to place under the overhang, grazing up against the brutal cold of the stone, his skin freezing on contact, so that he had to tear it away to be free. As one of the four witnesses was supposed to have said, ‘It was like that damn cave had eaten him alive.’
Then there was the matter of the position of the corpse, and the expression on his face. As all climbers know, freezing conditions can be cruel to dead bodies, posing them in all sorts of undignified or strange poses. But even so, none of the four witnesses had ever seen anything like this, for the wretched corpse was apparently kneeling on all fours, the head turned up torturously, the flesh gone to alabaster, the eyes to unseeing veined marble, and the mouth drawn back to teeth of ice, as if pleading, or begging, or imploring … but for what?
For rescue? For mercy?
And even that, as the tale went, wasn’t the most shocking thing. The most shocking thing was that the climbers recognised the man’s face.
Who better to recognise it, after all? The Anniversary team had spent much of their preparation studying Walter Richman and his great achievement of a century earlier. They had read his books, they had seen dozens of photos of him and watched hours of videos. His face was as familiar to them as each other’s. So yes, they knew him when they saw him, kneeling frozen in the Hand of God.
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A fantasy? A ghost story?
Of course it is, most would say.
Still, there are questions that linger. The whole macabre tale could be dispelled in an instant, for example, if just a few seconds of actual footage from the cave, or even a single still from the recording, had ever been released. But no such proof has ever been forthcoming.
Why not?
And after all, the whereabouts of Walter Richman’s body remains unknown. His death in 2017—in the series of earthquakes that destroyed his grand home on the summit of Observatory Mount—is an established fact. But his corpse was never found. It could only be assumed at the time that he lay buried within. As it is assumed to this day.
But assumption is not proof.
What is more, even before the Anniversary Expedition took place, there had long been strange rumours about Richman’s death and the events leading up to it. The source of these reports is supposedly a manuscript that many have heard of but few have seen. Known as the Gausse Manuscript, it was, apparently, found in the estate of a woman named Rita Gausse, who was the daughter of the famous architect Richard Gausse, the designer of Richman’s Observatory residence.
Now, it’s a fact of history that Rita Gausse was staying with Richman as a guest at his grand house when the disaster began. It’s a fact too that she was the sole survivor of the six individuals who were in the residence when the first of the quakes struck. But other than her testimony to the official inquest, in which she pleaded ignorance in regards to the manner of Richman’s ultimate end, she never in her lifetime made further comment upon what she had witnessed.
According to legend, however, after her death in 2049, a printed manuscript was found with her belongings, which, among other autobiographical matters, detailed Richman’s demise.
Of course, this manuscript, even if it really exists, has never been seen publicly, and even by repute it was full of ma
ny ludicrously farfetched claims and events, which perhaps explains why Ms Gausse never released it during her lifetime: no one would have believed her. But what is interesting is that Walter Richman’s descendants, owners still of vast commercial enterprises, went to some lengths and expense to purchase Ms Gausse’s estate, including all writings and documents.
At the time, a spokesman for the family said merely that Ms Gausse’s papers included historically valuable documents pertaining to her father’s life and to the building of the Observatory, which Richman family archivists were eager to obtain. No mention was made of any book. But of course, if the book indeed existed, then the Richman family could now ensure it never saw the light of day.
For the tale the manuscript told—according to the rumours—was very different to the official finding of Richman’s death by natural disaster. More damningly, it was deeply unflattering of Richman himself, painting him as grossly narcissistic and even accusing him of contributing to the deaths of the others trapped in the Observatory.
Still, would that matter? Isn’t this all ancient history? Maybe, but on the other hand, Walter Richman remains today much as he was in his lifetime, a titanic figure in the history of climbing, a hero, an inspiration who died too soon in tragic circumstances. His family and their companies still trade heavily on the aura that he left behind. They would not want that image tarnished. Which would explain why, if the manuscript exists, they purchased it, and kept it hidden.
But does it also explain why, seventy years after the Gausse book was found and suppressed, four climbers who had no apparent connection to the Richman dynasty, decided to keep secret something so monumental as the discovery of Walter Richman’s corpse atop the Wheel? Maybe it does, for though it was not known at the time, the Anniversary Expedition was funded by—you guessed it—the Richman family. It was done through various subsidiary companies, but researchers have since followed the paper trail, and there is no doubt that the entirety of the money was provided by the Richmans.
The Rich Man’s House Page 59
