Deathwatch

by Robb White

  He had to stop occasionally to replace the thongs which kept breaking, and at each stop he could see that the layer of woven leaves between his feet and the stones was thinner.

  He had hoped to have covered more ground in the cool of night but, as he walked on, he knew that he would be lucky to reach the area of breccia by dawn.

  At this slow pace he might even still be walking in the desert, perfectly visible to Madec from his vantage point on the cut terrace.

  There was nothing to gain by turning back and climbing again into the low mountains. He would die there as surely as he would die in the breccia.

  There was nothing to do but go on. But not at this slow pace.

  It took all his willpower and all his strength to force himself to start running.

  He ran awkwardly, the thick, ungainly sandals flopping, the bundle of leaves flapping against him, the slingshot swinging in the moonlight.

  From the Jeep, if Madec was watching, Ben would have been a pitiful thing to see; a naked man running in the moonlight across a savage waste of desert.

  7

  BEN STOOD at the base of the butte and hated it. The black column of stone went straight up into the starlit sky, rising from the rock-strewn desert as though it did not want to be associated with such a place.

  The stone of the butte was warm and smooth to his touch. It felt as implacable as the steel door of a vault. There seemed to be no flaw, no crack, no hand or foothold in the vertical wall. High above him it looked as though the climbing would be easy, but standing here at the base he could find no way to begin, no way to get his body up the first few feet of the smooth, black, silent stone.

  He had been all the way around the butte, hoping to find a way up the far side, out of sight of the Jeep, but the far side was even smoother than this side, and there was not a shadow of a crack lower than fifty feet.

  Here, in plain view of the Jeep which he could just make out on the terrace, there was a ledge or the edge of a stratum, or a crack—he could not tell what it was with only starlight—about twelve or thirteen feet above him, but he could not reach it. He had felt all along the face of the rock for some crevice or grip but there was none.

  Ordinarily it would have only taken some hard work to reach that ledge, but Ben recognized now that he was approaching the last stages of thirst; he was weak with it and spells of dizziness were coming faster. The flesh of his tongue was peeling off and, of all the pains of his body, he was most aware of the aching of his lips.

  The first symptoms of severe thirst had come during the time he was running. He had felt then the sudden loss of strength, a lassitude that made him think that he could not possibly raise his foot and swing it forward and put it down again. Even running, and knowing that his life depended on his running, he had felt a desire to sleep—to sleep as he ran, to sleep anywhere, anyhow.

  As he began the job of reaching that little ledge, what would have been a simple task was now an enormous obstacle, for he not only had to exert the physical effort, he also had to fight off both sleep and panic.

  Ben knew what the next symptoms would be. Toward the end after the lassitude and sleepiness and odd lack of hunger, a man dying of thirst begins to get dizzy. He vomits and his head aches. He aches all over. Finally the intolerable itching begins, an itching which affects every inch of his skin and does not stop until he dies. During this time a man is tortured with hallucinations; he sees water within reach and knows that it is there and he will, as many men have, scoop up dry sand with his hands and try to drink it.

  Ben hoped he could endure the physical symptoms, but he was afraid of the hallucinations; afraid that he would not recognize them when they came, afraid that there was no way he could stop them or continue to operate rationally through the periods of imagining.

  He was a pitiful sight as he worked, naked, at the base of that towering stone monument. Picking up boulders so small that ordinarily he could have thrown them like rocks now required all his strength. Staggering, he lifted and carried each stone to the base of the butte and placed it on the little pile he was building there.

  When he thought the pile was high enough he rested for a moment, preparing himself. Afraid that if he sat down he wouldn’t be able to get up again, he stood against the butte, his body sagging against it as he tied the slingshot and the sotol leaves together and then strung the tie thong around his neck so that the stuff hung down his back.

  Climbing onto his pile of stones he reached up, his hands flat against the smooth rock, his fingers reaching beyond his sight, for his face, too, was flat against the cliff.

  His fingers felt nothing, no place that curved inward. Just smooth, warm stone.

  Twisting a little so that he could bend his knees, he flattened against the butte again and, taking a deep, sobbing breath, rammed himself upward, his hands groping high above his head, his body scraping upward against the hard rock.

  The fingers of his left hand, as though maneuvering separately, found the ledge and snapped over it, reaching in at right angles to the face, until his four fingers were on the ledge and his thumb was pressed flat against the face. His right hand, the fingers scrabbling on the stone, could not make it, and as his upward thrust ended and his body began to drop down again, all he could do was flatten his right hand against the stone. His weight slammed upward through his left arm and concentrated in the four fingers on the ledge.

  They held, the dust under them making them slide off to the first knuckle, but then holding.

  The sotol sandals defeated him. Trying to pull himself high enough to get a grip with his right hand was impossible, for the sandals gave his feet no purchase at all on the smooth stone.

  He could not shake them off but shook them so nearly off that they hung, dangling and now totally useless.

  Ben let go and dropped, one sandal twisting his foot savagely when it struck the little pile of rocks.

  Rage and defeat and helplessness brought him almost to tears as he tried to untie the knots holding the sandals on. Unable to loosen the knots, he tried breaking the stiff fibers of the sotol leaf but could not do that either and had to return to the knots. It took all his will just to keep his fingers from attacking them wildly and uselessly.

  Once the knots were loose he started to throw the sandals away in a rage but calmed himself and strung them with the other stuff.

  Knowing that he could reach the ledge seemed to give him strength, and it did not seem as difficult the second time to get a grip there with his left hand.

  Then, the rock tearing at his feet, he swung his body against the cliff face, everything clinging to it and moving against it, until his right hand slid over the edge.

  He hung there, his feet bleeding down the rock. There was a sound close to him and it took a little while for him to recognize that the odd, whistling noise was his breath against the stone.

  Feeling down from his fingers through all the muscles of his body, he tried to decide by the feel, the touch, the thickness of the dust, which of his hands had the better grip, which the most strength.

  Possibly because his left hand had brushed away some of the dust when he had let go the first time, it seemed to him that that hand was the one to use. The fingers of his left hand seemed more in contact with the raw stone, more closely welded to it.

  He turned loose slowly with his right hand, feeling all his weight jam up his left arm, and grasped his left wrist with the fingers of his right hand.

  Holding tightly, he felt around with his feet and knees and thighs; he could even feel the muscles of his stomach searching along the stone. His feet found only small roughnesses, his knees seemed useless.

  Pressing his body tight against the stone, he threw himself upward, pulling up hard with his right hand so that the fingers holding the ledge were almost yanked off it.

  Blindly his right hand flew over the ledge, his fingers dancing across it, reaching, feeling, searching until his body began to drop, scraping, down again, and he caught the ed
ge with his right hand and stopped falling.

  The ledge above him was about a foot wide and slanted a little to the east.

  He had so little strength left now that he could not even stop to rest, the pain of his hanging shooting through him, a numbness beginning in the fingers wrapped around the sharp edge.

  He began to swing his body like a pendulum from side to side, his stomach and knees and chest scraping as he swung.

  He kept swinging in wider and wider arcs until he knew that any more would snatch one hand or the other away from the ledge. At this point he swung as far to the right as he dared and then, instead of letting his body swing downward again, began with all his strength to fight his way on up the side of the stone. With the inside edge of one foot and the outside edge of the other he tried to walk up the face; his knees feeling like blind, fingerless hands grasping at the smooth stone. His skin grabbed the rock and held and pushed, the short beard on his cheek giving it a grip.

  His right foot, flying, scrambling up the rock, lost the feel of rock for a second and moved in open space as it passed the ledge. He flung the foot inward, his toes reaching and grabbing, and at the same time, hunching his shoulders, he let go with his right hand and swung his right elbow up over the ledge.

  He hung there a moment, his left hand holding, his right elbow and right foot over the edge, his left leg hanging useless below and under his right leg.

  That could ruin it, Ben thought, feeling all the separate parts of his body one at a time. With that left leg under his right the only way he could get up on the ledge was to roll himself over. If his left foot had gotten there first it would be easier, he would just have to pull with leg and arm and hand and slide up on the stone step.

  It was too late to start over; he did not have that much strength left. If he let his right foot slide off the ledge now, let his body drop down again, he doubted whether he could even keep from falling all the way back down to the desert again. If he did that he knew that he could never get this high again.

  The muscles in his arms and legs had started to tremble. It was not the easy shaking, the melted feeling after a sudden burst of exercise, this was a jerking, jumping motion, uncontrollable and dangerous, for, with each jerk, his muscles seemed to lose all capacity for tension.

  He had to move and could not move. He could not stay where he was, or go anywhere except down.

  For a long time Ben had felt as though he were moving in some sort of thin, pearly fog so that nothing he thought was sharp and clear. Now, for a few seconds, the fog seemed to lift and he could see and feel and think again with an acute sharpness.

  He had to go up. Just that simple. Up.

  If he did not, Madec could sit in the Jeep cracking walnuts on the steering-wheel spokes and watch him die.

  Ben tried to move, to roll himself over onto the ledge. He could not do it. He simply did not have strength enough left, and he slumped back, just hanging there by foot and hand and elbows, his body sagging down against the rock.

  It was pure, raw rage that at last swept him upward, rolling, sobbing, grabbing with knees and legs and skin and toes.

  He was there, lying on his back on the ledge, the edge of it running along his backbone so that half his body lay in space, held there by an arm and a leg down along the face of the butte.

  He lay with his eyes closed, his breath coming in hard, dry gasps, his stomach heaving and his muscles painful now with that sharp jerking. Some part of the slingshot was cutting into his back, but he did not have strength enough to move it.

  The sun came up as he lay there, the light turning the stone high above him from black to coppery gold. Some birds flew around up there, sometimes lighting on the high stone but mostly flying.

  Ben watched the light moving slowly, as though it were some thick, invisible fluid. It came lower and lower, until it touched him, washing over him.

  Moving carefully, Ben let first one leg and then the other slip over the edge and hang as he pushed himself up, his back grinding against the stone behind him, until he was upright, the muscles of his butt grasping the stone beneath him.

  Looking down, he saw the blood dripping from his feet. It was a beautiful color in the early morning light and looked pretty on the stones below.

  His hands were bleeding too and so was his right elbow and the inner surface of both knees, the skin abraded off them as though by a file.

  Sitting there, he wished that he could remember exactly when he had last had a drink of water. Had it been just before they left the Jeep to stalk the bighorn? Or had it been before that, say half an hour before? An hour?

  It was important to know, and it angered him now that he could not remember.

  If it had been just before they left, that would have been close to noon. Assuming that, he still had six more hours.

  But had it been earlier?

  He grew so angry about this that he began to shake, and he could feel the blood of anger rushing up into his face.

  Suddenly Ben stopped it all.

  What difference does it make? Six hours. Five. Four.

  There was nothing he could do about it and the useless anger he had felt frightened him. Was this the beginning of hallucinations, this anger which had been for a moment a kind of insanity?

  It scared him, and he raised his head and looked around.

  Madec was standing beside the Jeep relieving himself in the sand.

  The sun had cleared the eastern mountains and was already smaller—and hotter.

  Looking down, his little pile of rocks seemed remarkably far away, and this pleased him.

  The ledge was not more than a foot wide, but the stone slab which had once been a part of it had broken off cleanly so that the top of the ledge was almost perfectly flat.

  Twisting his body and pulling with his hands, he got the slingshot and sandals around where he could handle them.

  The sandals looked thick and clumsy in the daylight, and he decided that they were too hazardous.

  His bare feet were also hazardous, the blood could cause him to slip and, when he was higher on the butte, this could kill him.

  He opened the fly of his shorts and tore them along the seam until he could work them out from under him and then down and off his legs. Once off, he tore them in half.

  The ledge was so narrow and his perch on it so insecure that he did not do a very good job of wrapping the pieces of his shorts around his feet and tying them, but when he had finished, he knew that walking would not be as clumsy as with the sandals, although it would be more painful.

  Holding his hands fiat against the rock, his shoulders pressed against it, he pushed himself up until he was on his feet, spread-eagled as he faced outward.

  Madec was now sitting on the hood of the Jeep scanning the range of mountains with the binoculars.

  Easing himself along, first one foot and then the other, his back pressing against the stone face, he went upward along the ledge, his hands always in contact with the stone.

  For forty or fifty feet it was slow but easy going, the ledge neither widening nor narrowing as his bandaged feet shuffled along in the thin dust, turning it to a damp brown mud which quickly dried.

  Looking down, Ben guessed that he had moved up ten or fifteen feet on the ledge incline so that he was now about thirty feet above the breccia.

  The ledge ended sharply at a great vertical crack in the butte. Standing at the end of the ledge and craning his neck around the corner, Ben could see only that it was a crack, an open chimney, too wide to jump across and with nothing to land on on the other side.

  With his back against the rock he could not look up and so, holding carefully, he turned around so that his chest and knees and stomach were against the butte.

  It gave him an odd, shivering feeling to stand this way, his naked back to Madec and his face pressed against the stone. Again he felt his flesh trembling as he waited for the first touch of the bullet.

  The only sound was of the birds wheeling around h
igh above him.

  The crack was wedge-shaped, wide across on the outside with the two walls coming together on the inside.

  The width of the crack where he stood was, Ben estimated, about six feet from wall to wall. The crack was about fifteen feet deep. Above him it seemed to go right to the sky without changing shape, a straight, vertical V of stone, an open-sided chimney, the walls very smooth, almost slippery looking, and since they were not yet in sunlight, impossible to see clearly.

  Although he had not noticed it as he moved along the ledge he could now see that it curved a little outward and, as he looked back along it, discovered that it petered out at the lower end, coming finally to a point which blended into the stone face about ten feet above the ground.

  Leaning over as far as he could, he looked down the dark chimney.

  It shocked him. Although he knew that it could not be more than thirty or forty feet to the bottom, it looked immensely farther than that, a terrifying distance. To fall down it would kill you. A dark place, the sunlight seeming to have been cut off by a knife as it lay on sharp stones jumbled together and then ended in blackness.

  Craning his head back, he looked up along the wall.

  There was nothing. For as far up as he could see the stone face was smooth, almost glassy in the sunlight; smooth and golden looking. He did not see a place where he could get so much as a finger grip in that stone.

  To be sure he lowered his head, resting it against the wall and reached up with his hands, feeling all over the stone above him.

  There was no grip there.

  Lowering his arms he looked again at the wide mouth of the V.

  It seemed wider now. His guess of six feet across to the other wall seemed short. Seven? Eight?

  Turning, his shoulder pressed against the wall, he moved until he was standing sideways, his feet together on the narrow ledge, his side hugging the wall, as he faced the wide opening of the V.

  Far away—in another world—he heard the Jeep starter grinding, then grinding again. Finally the motor started, with Madec gunning and choking it. He didn’t handle motors well.