The Martians

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  They start down once more. But the exertion has triggered a reaction inside Roger, and suddenly peristalsis attacks him. He curses the cave silt and tries desperately to quell the urge, but it won't be denied. He signals his need to the others and jumars down the fixed rope away from them, to get out of the way of the descent and obtain a little privacy. Pulling his pants down while the wind drags him around the fixed rope is actually a technical problem, and he curses continuously as he relieves himself; it is without a doubt the coldest shit of his life. By the time the others get to him he is shivering so hard he can barely climb.

  They barge into Camp Eight around sunset, and Eileen gets on the radio. The lower camps are informed of the situation and given their instructions. No one questions Eileen when her voice has that edge in it.

  The problem is that their camp is low on food and oxygen. “I'll go down and get a load,” Dougal says.

  “But you've already been out a long time,” Eileen says.

  “No no. A hot meal and I'll be off again. You should stay here with Frances, and Roger's chilled down.”

  “We can get Arthur or Hans to come up.”

  “We don't want movement up, do we? They'd have to stay up here, and we're out of room as it is. Besides, I'm the most used to climbing in this wind in the dark.”

  Eileen nods. “Okay.”

  “You warm enough?” Dougal asks Roger.

  Roger can only shiver. They help him into his bag and dose him with tea, but it is hard to drink. Long after Dougal has left he is still shivering.

  “A good sign he's shivering,” Frances says to Eileen. “But he's awfully cold. Maybe too hypothermic to warm up. I'm cold myself.”

  Eileen keeps the stove on high till there is a fug of warm air in the tent. She gets into Frances's bag with her, carefully avoiding her injured side. In the ruddy stove light their faces are pinched with discomfort.

  “I'm okay,” Frances mutters after a while. “Good'n warm. Get him now.”

  Roger is barely conscious as Eileen pushes into his bag with him. He is resentful that he must move. “Get your outers off,” Eileen orders. They struggle around, half in the bag, to get Roger's climbing gear off. Lying together in their thermal underwear, Roger slowly warms up. “Man, you are cold,” Eileen says.

  “'Preciate it,” Roger mutters wearily. “Don't know what happened.”

  “We didn't work you hard enough on the descent. Plus you had to bare your butt to a windchill factor I wouldn't want to guess.”

  Body warmth, seeping into him. Long hard body pressed against him. She won't let him sleep. “Not yet. Turn around. Here. Drink this.” Frances holds his eyelids up to check him. “Drink this!” He drinks. Finally they let him sleep.

  Dougal wakes them, barging in with a full pack. He and the pack are crusted with snow. “Pretty desperate,” he says with a peculiar smile. He hurries into a sleeping bag and drinks tea. Roger checks his watch—midnight. Dougal has been at it for almost twenty-four hours, and after wolfing down a pot of stew he puts on his mask, rolls to a corner of the tent, and falls into a deep sleep.

  Next morning the storm is still battering the tent. The four of them get ready awkwardly—the tent is better for three, and they must be careful of Frances's arm. Eileen gets on the radio and orders those below to clear Camp Seven and retreat to the cave. Once climbing they find that Frances's whole side has stiffened up. Getting her down means they have to hammer in new pitons, set up rappelling ropes for her, lower her with one of them jumaring down the fixed rope beside her, while occasionally hunkering down to avoid hard gusts of wind. They stop in Camp Seven for an hour to rest and eat, then drop to the cave. It is dusk by the time they enter the dark refuge.

  So they are all back in the cave. The wind swirls in it, and the others have spent the previous day piling rocks into the south side of the cave mouth, to build a protective wall. It helps a bit.

  As the fourth day of the storm passes in the whistle and flat of wind, and an occasional flurry of snow, all the members of the climb crowd into one of the large box tents, sitting upright and bumping arms so they will all fit.

  “Look, I don't want to go down just because one of us has a busted arm,” Marie says.

  “I can't climb,” says Frances. It seems to Roger that she is holding up very well; her face is white and her eyes look drugged, but she is quite coherent and very calm.

  “I know that,” Marie says. “But we could split up. It'll only take a few people to get you back down to the cars. The rest of us can take the rest of the gear and carry on. If we get to the cache at the top of the scarp, we won't have to worry about supplies. If we don't, we'll just follow you down. But I don't fancy us giving up now—that's not what we came for, eh? Going down when we don't have to?”

  Eileen looks at Ivan. “It'd be up to you to get Frances down.”

  Ivan grimaces, nods. “That's what Sherpas are for,” he says gamely.

  “Do you think four will be enough for it?”

  “More would probably just get in the way.”

  There is a quick discussion of their supply situation. Hans is of the opinion that they are short enough on supplies to make splitting up dangerous. “It seems to me that our primary responsibility is to get Frances to the ground safely. The climb can be finished another time.”

  Marie argues with him, but Hans is supported by Stephan, and it seems neither side will convince the other. After an apprehensive silence, Eileen clears her throat.

  “Marie's plan sounds good to me,” she says. “We've got the supplies to go both ways, and the Sherpas can get Frances down by themselves.”

  “Neither group will have much margin for error,” Hans says.

  “We can leave the water for the group going down,” Marie says. “There'll be ice and snow the rest of the way up.”

  “We'll have to be a bit more sparing with the oxygen,” Hans says. “Frances should have enough to take her all the way down.”

  “Yes,” Eileen says. “We'll have to get going again in the next day or two, no matter what the weather's like.”

  “Well?” says Marie. “We've proved we can get up and down the fixed ropes in any weather. We should get up and fix Camp Nine as soon as we can. Tomorrow, say.”

  “If there's a bit of a break.”

  “We've got to stock the higher camps—”

  “Yeah. We'll do what we can, Marie. Don't fret.”

  While the storm continues they make preparations to split up. Roger, who wants to stay clear of all that, helps Arthur to build the wall at the cave's entrance. They have started at the southern end, filling up the initial crack of the cave completely. After that they must be satisfied with a two-meter-high wall, which they extend across the entrance until the boulders on the floor of the cave are used up. Then they sit against the wall and watch the division of the goods. Wind still whistles through the cave, but sitting at the bottom of the wall they can feel that they did some good.

  The division of equipment is causing some problems. Marie is very possessive about the oxygen bottles. “Well, you'll be going down, right?” she demands of Ivan. “You don't need oxygen at all once you get a couple camps down.”

  “Frances will need it a lot longer than that,” Ivan says. “And we can't be sure how long it'll take to get her down.”

  “Hell, you can reel her down once you get past the Thank God Ledge. Shouldn't take you any time at all—”

  “Marie, get out of this,” Eileen snaps. “We'll divide the supplies. There's no reason for you to bother with this.”

  Marie glares, stomps off to her tent.

  Arthur and Roger give each other the eye. The division goes on. Rope will be the biggest problem, it appears. But everything will be tight.

  At the first break in the winds the rescue party—Frances and the four Sherpas—take off. Roger descends with them to help them cross the Thank God Ledge, and to recover the fixed rope there. The wind still gusts, but with less violence. In the middle of the
ledge crossing Frances loses her balance and swings around; Roger reaches her (not noticing he ran) and holds her in. “We have to stop meeting like this,” Frances says, voice muffled by her mask.

  When they reach the Great Gully, Roger says his goodbyes. The Sherpas are cheery enough, but Frances is white-faced and quiet. She has said hardly a word in the last couple of days, and Roger cannot tell what she is thinking. “Bad luck,” he tells her. “You'll get another chance, though.”

  “Thanks for grabbing me during the drop from Camp Nine,” she says just as he is about to leave. She looks upset. “You're awfully quick. That would have hurt like hell if I had rolled onto my left side.”

  “I'm glad I could help,” Roger says. Then, as he leaves, “I like how tough you've been.”

  A grimace from Frances.

  On the way back Roger must free the fixed rope to recover it for the climb above, so on the Thank God Ledge he is always belayed only to the piton ahead. If he were to fall he would drop—sometimes up to twenty-five meters—and swing like a pendulum over the rough basalt. The ledge becomes new again; he finds that the smooth surface of the sidewalk is indeed wide enough to walk on, but still—the wind pushes at his back—he is alone—the sky is low and dark, and threatens to snow—and all of a sudden the hair on his neck rises, the oxygen whistles in his mask as he sucks it down, the pitted rock face seems to glow with an internal light of its own, and all the world expands, expands ever outward, growing more immense with every pulse of his blood; and his lungs fill, and fill, and fill.

  Back in the cave Roger says nothing about the eerie moment on the ledge. Only Eileen and Hans are still in the cave—the others have gone up to supply the higher camps, and Dougal and Marie have gone all the way up to Camp Nine. Eileen, Hans, and Roger load up their packs—very heavy loads, they find when they duck out the cave—and start up the fixed ropes. Jumaring up the somewhat icy rope is difficult, in places dangerous. The wind strikes from the left now rather than from above. By the time they reach Camp Seven it is nearly dark, and Stephan and Arthur already occupy the single tent. In the mirror dusk and the strong side wind, erecting another tent is no easy task. There is not another level spot to set it on either—they must place it on a slope, and tie it to pitons hammered into the cliff. By the time Eileen and Roger and Hans get into the new tent, Roger is freezing and starving and intensely thirsty. “Pretty bloody desperate,” he says wearily, mimicking Marie and the Sherpas. They melt snow and cook up a pot of stew from their sleeping bags, and when they are done eating, Roger puts on his oxygen mask, sets the flow for sleep, and slumps off.

  The moment on the Thank God Ledge jumps to mind and wakes him momentarily. Wind whips the taut walls of the tent, and Eileen, penciling logistic notes for the next day, slides down the slope under the tent until their two sleeping bags are one clumped mass. Roger looks at her: brief smile from that tired, puffy, frost-burned face. Great deltas of wrinkles under her eyes. His feet begin to warm up and he falls asleep to the popping of the tent, the hiss of oxygen, the scratching of a pencil.

  That night the storm begins to pick up again.

  The next morning they take down the tent in a strong wind—hard work—and start portering loads up to Camp Eight. Halfway between camps it begins to snow. Roger watches his feet through swirls of hard, dry granules. His gloved fingers twist around the frigid jumar, sliding it up the frosted rope, clicking it home, pulling himself up. It is a struggle to see footholds in the spindrift, which moves horizontally across the cliff face, from left to right as he looks at it. The whole face appears to be whitely streaming to the side, like a wave. He finds he must focus his attention entirely on his hands and feet. His fingers, nose, and toes are very cold. He rubs his nose through the mask, feels nothing. The wind pushes him hard, like a giant trying to make him fall. In the narrow gullies the wind is less strong, but they find themselves climbing up through waves of avalanching snow, drift after drift of it piling up between their bodies and the slope, burying them, sliding between their legs and away. One gully seems to last forever. Intermittently Roger is concerned about his nose, but mostly he worries about the immediate situation: moving up the rope, keeping a foothold. Visibility is down to about twenty meters—they are in a little white bubble flying to the left through white snow, or so it appears.

  At one point Roger must wait for Eileen and Hans to get over the boulder that Frances had such trouble with. His mind wanders and it occurs to him that their chances of success have shifted radically—and with them, the nature of the climb. Low on supplies, facing an unknown route in deteriorating weather—Roger wonders how Eileen will handle it. She has led expeditions before, but this kind only comes about by accident.

  She passes him going strong, beats ice from the rope, sweeps spindrift from the top of the boulder. Pulls up and over it in one smooth motion. The wind cuts through Roger as he watches Hans repeat the operation: cuts through the laminated outer suit, the thick bunting inner suit, his skin. . . . He brushes spindrift from his goggles with a frigid hand and heaves up after them.

  Though it is spring, the winterlike low-pressure system over Olympus Mons is in place, drawing the wet winds up from the south, creating stable storm conditions on the south and east arcs of the escarpment. The snow is irregular, the wind constant. For the better part of a week the seven climbers left on the face struggle in the miserable conditions. One night at sunset radio hour they hear from Frances and the Sherpas, down at base camp. There is a lot of sand in Martian snow, and their voices are garbled by static, but the message is clear: They are down, they are safe, they are leaving for Alexandria to get Frances's arm set. Roger catches on Eileen's averted face an expression of pure relief, and realizes that her silence in the past few days has been a manifestation of worry. Now, looking pleased, she gives the remaining climbers their instructions for the next day in a fresh determined tone.

  Into camp at night, cold and almost too tired to walk. Big loaded packs onto the various ledges and niches that serve for this particular camp. Hands shaking with hunger. The camp—Thirteen, Roger believes—is on a saddle between two ridges overlooking a deep, twisted chimney. “Just like the Devil's Kitchen on Ben Nevis,” Arthur remarks when they get inside the tent. He eats with gusto. Roger shivers and puts his hands two centimeters above the glowing stove ring. Transferring from climbing mode to tent mode is a tricky business, and tonight Roger hasn't done so well. At this altitude and in these winds, cold has become their most serious opponent. Overmitts off, and everything must be done immediately to get lightly gloved hands protected again as quickly as possible. Even if the rest of one's body is warmed by exertion, the fingertips will freeze if they have enough contact with cold things. And yet so many camp operations can be done more easily with hands out of mitts. Frostnip is the frequent result, leaving the fingers tender, so that pulling up a rock face, or even buttoning or zipping one's clothes, becomes a painful task. Frostnip blisters kill the skin, creating black patches that take a week or more to peel away. Now when they sit in the tents around the ruddy light of the stove, observing solemnly the progress of the cooking meal, they see across the pot faces splotched on cheek or nose: black skin peeling away to reveal bright pink new skin beneath.

  They climb onto a band of rotten rock, a tuff-and-lava composite that sometimes breaks right off in their hands. It takes Marie and Dougal two full days to find decent belay points for the 150 meters of the band, and every morning the rockfall is frequent and frightening. “It's a bit like swimming up the thing, isn't it?” Dougal comments. When they make it to the hard rock above, Eileen orders Dougal and Marie to the bottom of their “ladder” to get some rest. Marie makes no complaint now; each day in the lead is an exhausting exercise, and Marie and Dougal are beat.

  Every night Eileen works out plans for the following day, revising them as conditions and the climbers' strength and health change. The logistics are complicated, and each day the seven climbers shift partners and positions in the climb. Ei
leen scribbles in her notebook and jabbers on the radio every dusk, altering the schedules and changing her orders with almost every new bit of information she receives from the higher camps. Her method appears chaotic. Marie dubs her the “Mad Mahdi,” and scoffs at the constant changes in plans; but she obeys them, and they work: Every night they are scattered in two or three camps up and down the cliff, with everything that they need to survive the night and get them higher the next day; and every new day they leapfrog up, pulling out the lowest camp, finding a place to establish a new high camp. The bitter winds continue. Everything is difficult. They lose track of camp numbers, and name them only high, middle, and low.

  Naturally, three-quarters of everyone's work is portering. Roger begins to feel that he is surviving the rigors of the weather and altitude better than most of the rest; he can carry more faster, and even though most days end in that state where each step up is ten breaths' agony, he finds he can take on more the next day. His digestion returns to normal, which is a blessing—a great physical pleasure, in fact. Perhaps improvement in this area masks the effects of altitude, or perhaps the altitude isn't bothering Roger yet; it is certainly true that high altitude affects people differently, for reasons unconnected with basic strength—in fact, for reasons not yet fully understood.

  So Roger becomes the chief porter; Dougal calls him Roger Sherpa, and Arthur calls him Tenzing. The day's challenge becomes to do all one's myriad activities as efficiently as possible, without frostnip, excessive discomfort, hunger, thirst, or exhaustion. He hums to himself little snatches of music. His favorite is the eight-note phrase repeated by the basses near the end of the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth: six notes down, two notes up, over and over and over. And each evening in the sleeping bag, warm, well fed, and prone, is a little victory.