It said: "_Go back_."
I couldn't answer it, though, for my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. And it said it again, and yet a third time, "_Go back_."
"Tomorrow," I thought, in my dream, and this seemed to satisfy it. for it died down and ceased, and the blackness rolled about me.
The following day, I climbed as I hadn't climbed in years. By late lunchtime I'd hit forty-eight thousand feet. The cloud cover down below had broken. I could see what lay beneath me once more. The ground was a dark and light patchwork. Above, the stars didn't go away.
The going was rough, but I was feeling fine. I knew I couldn't make ten miles, because I could see that the way was pretty much the same for quite a distance, before it got even worse. My good spirits stayed, and they continued to rise as I did.
When it attacked, it came on with a speed and a fury that I was only barely able to match.
The voice from my dream rang in my head, "_Go back! Go back! Go back!_"
Then it came toward me from out of the sky. A bird the size of a condor. Only it wasn't really a bird. It was a bird-shaped thing.
It was all fire and static, and as it flashed toward me I barely had time to brace my back against stone and heft my climbing pick in my right hand, ready.
III
I sat in the small, dark room and watched the spinning, colored lights. Ultrasonics were tickling my skull. I tried to relax and give the man some Alpha rhythms. Somewhere a receiver was receiving, a computer was computing and a recorder was recording.
It lasted perhaps twenty minutes.
When it was all over and they called me out, the doctor collared me. I beat him to the draw, though:
"Give me the tape and send the bill in care of Henry Lanning at the Lodge."
"I want to discuss the reading," he said.
"I have my own brain-wave expert coming. Just give me the tape."
"Have you undergone any sort of traumatic experience recently?"
"You tell me. Is it indicated?"
"Well, yes and no," he said.
"That's what I like, a straight answer."
"I don't know what is normal for you, in the first place," he replied.
"Is there any indication of brain damage?"
"I don't read it that way. If you'd tell me what happened, and why you're suddenly concerned about your brain-waves, perhaps I'd be in a better position to...."
"Cut," I said. "Just give me the tape and bill me."
"I'm concerned about you as a patient."
"But you don't think there were any pathological indications?"
"Not exactly. But tell me this, if you will: Have you had an epileptic seizure recently?"
"Not to my knowledge. Why?"
"You displayed a pattern similar to a residual subrythm common in some forms of epilepsy for several days subsequent to a seizure."
"Could a bump on the head cause that pattern?"
"It's highly unlikely."
"What else _could_ cause it?"
"Electrical shock, optical trauma--"
"Stop," I said, and I removed my glasses. "About the optical trauma. Look at my eyes."
"I'm not an ophtha--" he began, but I interrupted:
"Most normal light hurts me eyes. If I lost my glasses and was exposed to very bright light for three, four days, could that cause the pattern you spoke of?"
"Possible...." he said. "Yes, I'd say so."
"But there's more?"
"I'm not sure. We have to take more readings, and if I know the story behind this it will help a lot."
"Sorry," I said. "I need the tape now."
He sighed and made a small gesture with his left hand as he turned away.
"All right, Mister Smith."
Cursing the genius of the mountain, I left the General Hospital, carrying my tape like a talisman. In my mind I searched, through forests of memory, for a ghost-sword in a stone of smoke, I think.
Back in the Lodge, they were waiting. Lanning and the newsmen.
"What was it like?" asked one of the latter.
"What was what like?"
"The mountain. You were up on it, weren't you?"
"No comment."
"How high did you go?"
"No comment."
"How would you say it compares with Kasla?"
"No comment."
"Did you run into any complications?"
"Ditto. Excuse me, I want to take a shower."
Henry followed me into my room. The reporters tried to.
After I had shaved and washed up, mixed a drink and lit a cigarette, Lanning asked me his more general question:
"Well?" he said.
I nodded.
"Difficulties?"
I nodded again.
"Insurmountable?"
I hefted the tape and thought a moment.
"Maybe not."
He helped himself to the whiskey. The second time around, he asked:
"You going to try?"
I knew I was. I knew I'd try it all by myself if I had to.
"I really don't know," I said.
"Why not?"
"Because there's something up there," I said, "something that doesn't want us to do it."
"Something _lives_ up there?"
"I'm not sure whether that's the right word."
He lowered the drink.
"What the hell happened?"
"I was threatened. I was attacked."
"Threatened? Verbally? In English?" He set his drink aside, which shows how serious his turn of mind had to be. "Attacked?" he added. "By what?"
"I've sent for Doc and Kelly and Stan and Mallardi and Vincent. I checked a little earlier. They've all replied. They're coming. Miguel and the Dutchman can't make it, and they send their regrets. When we're all together, I'll tell the story. But I want to talk to Doc first. So hold tight and worry and don't quote."
He finished his drink.
"When'll they be coming?"
"Four, five weeks," I said.
"That's a long wait."
"Under the circumstances," I said, "I can't think of any alternatives."
"What'll we do in the meantime?"
"Eat, drink, and contemplate the mountain."
He lowered his eyelids a moment, then nodded, reached for his glass.
"Shall we begin?"
It was late, and I stood alone in the field with a bottle in one hand. Lanning had already turned in, and night's chimney was dark with cloud soot. Somewhere away from there, a storm was storming, and it was full of instant outlines. The wind came chill.
"Mountain," I said. "Mountain, you have told me to go away."
There was a rumble.
"But I cannot," I said, and I took a drink.
"I'm bringing you the best in the business," I said, "to go up on your slopes and to stand beneath the stars in your highest places. I must do this thing because you are there. No other reason. Nothing personal...."
After a time, I said, "That's not true.
"I am a man," I said, "and I need to break mountains to prove that I will not die even though I will die. I am less than I want to be, Sister, and you can make me more. So I guess it _is_ personal.
"It's the only thing I know how to do, and you're the last one left--the last challenge to the skill I spent my life learning. Maybe it is that mortality is the closest to immortality when it accepts a challenge to itself, when it survives a threat. The moment of triumph is the moment of salvation. I have needed many such moments, and the final one must be the longest, for it must last me the rest of my life.
"So you are there, Sister, and I am here and very mortal, and you have told me to go away. I cannot. I'm coming up, and if you throw death at me I will face it. It must be so."
I finished what remained in the bottle.
There were more flashes, more rumbles behind the mountain, more flashes.
"It is the closest thing to diving drunkenness," I said to the thunder.
And then she w
inked at me. It was a red star, so high upon her. Angel's sword. Phoenix' wing. Soul on fire. And it blazed at me, across the miles. Then the wind that blows between the worlds swept down over me. It was filled with tears and with crystals of ice. I stood there and felt it, then, "Don't go away," I said, and I watched until all was darkness once more and I was wet as an embryo waiting to cry out and breathe.
Most kids tell lies to their playmates--fictional autobiographies, if you like--which are either received with appropriate awe or countered with greater, more elaborate tellings. But little Jimmy, I've heard, always hearkened to his little buddies with wide, dark eyes, and near the endings of their stories the corners of his mouth would begin to twitch. By the time they were finished talking, his freckles would be mashed into a grin and his rusty head cocked to the side. His favorite expression, I understand, was "G'wan!" and his nose was broken twice before he was twelve. This was doubtless why he turned it toward books.
Thirty years and four formal degrees later, he sat across from me in my quarters in the lodge, and I called him Doc because everyone did, because he had a license to cut people up and look inside them, as well as doctoring to their philosophy, so to speak, and because he looked as if he should be called Doc when he grinned and cocked his head to the side and said, "G'wan!"
I wanted to punch him in the nose.
"Damn it! It's true!" I told him. "I fought with a bird of fire!"
"We all hallucinated on Kasla," he said, raising one finger, "because of fatigue," two fingers, "because the altitude affected our circulatory systems and consequently our brains," three, "because of the emotional stimulation," four, "and because we were pretty oxygen-drunk."
"You just ran out of fingers, if you'll sit on your other hand for a minute. So listen," I said, "it flew at me, and I swung at it, and it knocked me out and broke my goggles. When I woke up, it was gone and I was lying on the ledge. I think it was some sort of energy creature. You saw my EEG, and it wasn't normal. I think it shocked my nervous system when it touched me."
"You were knocked out because you hit your head against a rock--"
"It _caused_ me to fall back against the rock!"
"I agree with that part. The rock was real. But nowhere in the universe has anyone ever discovered an 'energy creature.'"
"So? You probably would have said that about America a thousand years ago."
"Maybe I would have. But that neurologist explained your EEG to my satisfaction. Optical trauma. Why go out of your way to dream up an exotic explanation for events? Easy ones generally turn out better. You hallucinated and you stumbled."
"Okay," I said, "whenever I argue with you I generally need ammunition. Hold on a minute."
I went to my closet and fetched it down from the top shelf. I placed it on my bed and began unwrapping the blanket I had around it.
"I told you I took a swing at it," I said. "Well, I connected--right before I went under. Here!"
I held up my climbing pick--brown, yellow, black and pitted--looking as though it had fallen from outer space.
He took it into his hands and stared at it for a long time, then he started to say something about ball lightning, changed his mind, shook his head and placed the thing back on the blanket.
"I don't know," he finally said, and this time his freckles remained unmashed, except for those at the edges of his hands which got caught as he clenched them, slowly.
IV
We planned. We mapped and charted and studied the photos. We plotted our ascent and we started a training program.
While Doc and Stan had kept themselves in good shape, neither had been climbing since Kasla. Kelly was in top condition. Henry was on his way to fat. Mallardi and Vince, as always, seemed capable of fantastic feats of endurance and virtuosity, had even climbed a couple times during the past year, but had recently been living pretty high on the tall hog, so to speak, and they wanted to get some practice. So we picked a comfortable, decent-sized mountain and gave it ten days to beat everyone back into shape. After that, we stuck to vitamins, calisthenics and square diets while we completed our preparations. During this time, Doc came up with seven shiny, alloy boxes, about six by four inches and thin as a first book of poems, for us to carry on our persons to broadcast a defense against the energy creatures which he refused to admit existed.
One fine, bitter-brisk morning we were ready. The newsmen liked me again. Much footage was taken of our gallant assemblage as we packed ourselves into the fliers, to be delivered at the foot of the lady mountain, there to contend for what was doubtless the final time as the team we had been for so many years, against the waiting gray and the lavender beneath the sunwhite flame.
We approached the mountain, and I wondered how much she weighed.
You know the way, for the first nine miles. So I'll skip over that. It took us six days and part of a seventh. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred. Some fog there was, and nasty winds, but once below, forgotten.
Stan and Mallardi and I stood where the bird had occurred, waiting for Doc and the others.
"So far, it's been a picnic," said Mallardi.
"Yeah," Stan acknowledged.
"No birds either."
"No," I agreed.
"Do you think Doc was right--about it being an hallucination?" Mallardi asked. "I remember seeing things on Kasla...."
"As I recall," said Stan, "it was nymphs and an ocean of beer. Why would anyone want to see hot birds?"
"Damfino."
"Laugh, you hyenas," I said. "But just wait till a flock flies over."
Doc came up and looked around.
"This is the place?"
I nodded.
He tested the background radiation and half a dozen other things, found nothing untoward, grunted and looked upwards.
We all did. Then we went there.
It was very rough for three days, and we only made another five thousand feet during that time.
When we bedded down, we were bushed, and sleep came quickly. So did Nemesis.
He was there again, only not quite so near this time. He burned about twenty feet away, standing in the middle of the air, and the point of his blade indicated me.
"_Go away_," he said, three times, without inflection.
"Go to hell," I tried to say.
He made as if he wished to draw nearer. He failed.
"Go away yourself," I said.
"_Climb back down. Depart. You may go no further._"
"But I am going further. All the way to the top."
"_No. You may not._"
"Stick around and watch," I said.
"_Go back._"
"If you want to stand there and direct traffic, that's your business," I told him. "I'm going back to sleep."
I crawled over and shook Doc's shoulder, but when I looked back my flaming visitor had departed.
"What is it?"
"Too late," I said. "He's been here and gone."
Doc sat up.
"The bird?"
"No, the thing with the sword."
"Where was he?"
"Standing out there," I gestured.
Doc hauled out his instruments and did many things with them for ten minutes or so.
"Nothing," he finally said. "Maybe you were dreaming."
"Yeah, sure," I said. "Sleep tight," and I hit the sack again, and this time I made it through to daylight without further fire or ado.
It took us four days to reach sixty thousand feet. Rocks fell like occasional cannonballs past us, and the sky was like a big pool, cool, where pale flowers floated. When we struck sixty-three thousand, the going got much better, and we made it up to seventy-five thousand in two and a half more days. No fiery things stopped by to tell me to turn back. Then came the unforeseeable, however, and we had enough in the way of natural troubles to keep us cursing.
We hit a big, level shelf.
It was perhaps four hundred feet wide. As we advanced across it, we realized that it did not strike the mountainside. It d
ropped off into an enormous gutter of a canyon. We would have to go down again, perhaps seven hundred feet, before we could proceed upward once more. Worse yet, it led to a featureless face which strove for and achieved perpendicularity for a deadly high distance: like miles. The top was still nowhere in sight.
"Where do we go now?" asked Kelly, moving to my side.
"Down," I decided, "and we split up. We'll follow the big ditch in both directions and see which way gives the better route up. We'll meet back at the midway point."
We descended. Then Doc and Kelly and I went left, and the others took the opposite way.
After an hour and a half, our trail came to an end. we stood looking at nothing over the edge of something. Nowhere, during the entire time, had we come upon a decent way up. I stretched out, my head and shoulders over the edge, Kelly holding onto my ankles, and I looked as far as I could to the right and up. There was nothing in sight that was worth a facing movement.
"Hope the others had better luck," I said, after they'd dragged me back.
"And if they haven't...?" asked Kelly.
"Let's wait."
They had.
It was risky, though.
There was no good way straight up out of the gap. The trail had ended at a forty-foot wall which, when mounted, gave a clear view all the way down. Leaning out as I had done and looking about two hundred feet to the left and eighty feet higher, however, Mallardi had rested his eyes on a rough way, but a way, nevertheless, leading up and west and vanishing.
We camped in the gap that night. In the morning, I anchored my line to a rock, Doc tending, and went out with the pneumatic pistol. I fell twice, and made forty feet of trail by lunchtime.
I rubbed my bruises then, and Henry took over. After ten feet, Kelly got out to anchor a couple of body-lengths behind him, and we tended Kelly.
Then Stan blasted and Mallardi anchored. Then there had to be three on the face. Then four. By sundown, we'd made a hundred-fifty feet and were covered with white powder. A bath would have been nice. We settled for ultrasonic shakedowns.
By lunch the next day, we were all out there, roped together, hugging cold stone, moving slowly, painfully, slowly, not looking down much.
The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth and Other Stories Page 14
