The phantom archers fired upon me and the bright bird swooped. I set my teeth, and my boots scarred rocks beneath me.
We saw the top.
At a hundred seventy-six thousand feet, making our way along a narrow ledge, clicking against rock, testing our way with our picks, we heard Vince say, "Look!"
We did.
Up and up, and again further, bluefrosted and sharp, deadly, and cold as Loki's dagger, slashing at the sky, it vibrated above us like electricity, hung like a piece of frozen thunder, and cut, cut, cut into the center of spirit that was desire, twisted, and became a fishhook to pull us on, to burn us with its barbs.
Vince was the first to look up and see the top, the first to die. It happened so quickly, and it was none of the terrors that achieved it.
He slipped.
That was all. It was a difficult piece of climbing. He was right behind me one second, was gone the next. There was no body to recover. He'd taken the long drop. The soundless blue was all around him and the great gray beneath. Then we were six. We shuddered, and I suppose we all prayed in our own ways.
--Gone Vince, may some good Deva lead you up the Path of Splendor. May you find whatever you wanted most at the other end, waiting there for you. If such a thing may be, remember those who say these words, oh strong intruder in the sky....
No one spoke much for the rest of the day.
The fiery sword bearer came and stood above our camp the entire night. It did not speak.
In the morning, Stan was gone, and there was a note beneath my pack.
_Don't hate me,_ it said, _for running out, but I think it
really is an angel. I'm scared of this mountain. I'll climb
any pile of rocks, but I won't fight Heaven. The way down is
easier than the way up, so don't worry about me. Good luck.
Try to understand._ S
So we were five--Doc and Kelly and Henry and Mallardi and me--and that day we hit a hundred eighty thousand and felt very alone.
The girl came again that night and spoke to me, black hair against black sky and eyes like points of blue fire, and she stood beside an icy pillar and said, "Two of you have gone."
"And the rest of us remain," I replied.
"For a time."
"We will climb to the top and then we will go away," I said. "How can that do you harm? Why do you hate us?"
"No hate, sir," she said.
"What, then?"
"I protect."
"What? What is it that you protect?"
"The dying, that she may live."
"What? Who is dying? How?"
But her words went away somewhere, and I did not hear them. Then she went away too, and there was nothing left but sleep for the rest of the night.
One hundred eighty-two thousand and three, and four, and five. Then back down to four for the following night.
The creatures whined about us now, and the land pulsed beneath us, and the mountain seemed sometimes to sway as we climbed.
We carved a path to one eighty-six, and for three days we fought to gain another thousand feet. Everything we touched was cold and slick and slippery, sparkled, and had a bluish haze about it.
When we hit one ninety, Henry looked back and shuddered.
"I'm no longer worried about making it to the top," he said. "It's the return trip that's bothering me now. The clouds are like little wisps of cotton way down there."
"The sooner up, the sooner down," I said, and we began to climb once again.
It took us another week to cut our way to within a mile of the top. All the creatures of fire had withdrawn, but two ice avalanches showed us we were still unwanted. We survived the first without mishap, but Kelly sprained his right ankle during the second, and Doc thought he might have cracked a couple of ribs, too.
We made a camp. Doc stayed there with him; Henry and Mallardi and I pushed on up the last mile.
Now the going was beastly. It had become a mountain of glass. We had to hammer out a hold for every foot we made. We worked in shifts. We fought for everything we gained. Our packs became monstrous loads and our fingers grew numb. Our defense system--the projectors--seemed to be wearing down, or else something was increasing its efforts to get us, because the snakes kept slithering closer, burning brighter. They hurt my eyes, and I cursed them.
When we were within a thousand feet of the top, we dug in and made another camp. The next couple hundred feet looked easier, then a rotten spot, and I couldn't tell what it was like above that.
When we awakened, there was just Henry and myself. There was no indication of where Mallardi had gotten to. Henry switched his communicator to Doc's letter and called below. I tuned in in time to hear him say, "Haven't seen him."
"How's Kelly?" I asked.
"Better," he replied. "Those ribs might not be cracked at that."
Then Mallardi called us.
"I'm four hundred feet above you, fellows," his voice came in. "It was easy up to here, but the going's just gotten rough again."
"Why'd you cut out on your own?" I asked.
"Because I think something's going to try to kill me before too long," he said. "It's up ahead, waiting at the top. You can probably even see it from there. It's a snake."
Henry and I used the binoculars.
Snake? A better word might be dragon--or maybe even Midgard Serpent.
It was coiled around the peak, head upraised. It seemed to be several hundred feet in length, and it moved its head from side to side, and up and down, and it smoked solar coronas.
Then I spotted Mallardi climbing toward it.
"Don't go any further!" I called. "I don't know whether your unit will protect you against anything like that! Wait'll I call Doc--"
"Not a chance," he said. "This baby is mine."
"Listen! You can be first on the mountain, if that's what you want! But don't tackle that thing alone!"
A laugh was the only reply.
"All three units might hold it off," I said. "Wait for us."
There was no answer, and we began to climb.
I left Henry far below me. The creature was a moving light in the sky. I made two hundred feet in a hurry, and when I looked up again, I saw that the creature had grown two more heads. Lightnings flashed from its nostrils, and its tail whipped around the mountain. I made another hundred feet, and I could see Mallardi clearly by then, climbing steadily, outlined against the brilliance. I swung my pick, gasping, and I fought the mountain, following the trail he had cut. I began to gain on him, because he was still pounding out his way and I didn't have that problem. Then I heard him talking:
"Not yet, big fella, not yet," he was saying, from behind a wall of static. "Here's a ledge...."
I looked up, and he vanished.
Then that fiery tail came lashing down toward where I had last seen him, and I heard him curse and I felt the vibrations of his pneumatic gun. The tail snapped back again, and I heard another "Damn!"
I made haste, stretching and racking myself and grabbing at the holds he had cut, and then I heard him burst into song. Something from _Aida_, I think.
"Damn it! Wait up!" I said. "I'm only a few hundred feet behind."
He kept on singing.
I was beginning to get dizzy, but I couldn't let myself slow down. My right arm felt like a piece of wood, my left like a piece of ice. My feet were hooves, and my eyes burned in my head.
Then it happened.
Like a bomb, the snake and the swinging ended in a flash of brilliance that caused me to sway and almost lose my grip. I clung to the vibrating mountainside and squeezed my eyes against the light.
"Mallardi?" I called.
No answer. Nothing.
I looked down. Henry was still climbing. I continued to climb.
I reached the ledge Mallardi had mentioned, found him there.
His respirator was still working. His protective suit was blackened and scorched on the right side. Half of his pick had been melted away. I raised his
shoulders.
I turned up the volume on the communicator and heard him breathing. His eyes opened, closed, opened.
"Okay...." he said.
"'Okay,' hell! Where do you hurt?"
"No place...I feel jus' fine....Listen! I think it's used up its juice for awhile....Go plant the flag. Prop me up here first, though. I wanna watch...."
I got him into a better position, squirted the water bulb, listened to him swallow. Then I waited for Henry to catch up. It took about six minutes.
"I'll stay here," said Henry, stooping beside him. "You go do it."
I started up the final slope.
VII
I swung and I cut and I blasted and I crawled. Some of the ice had been melted, the rocks scorched.
Nothing came to oppose me. The static had gone with the dragon. There was silence, and darkness between stars.
I climbed slowly, still tired from that last sprint, but determined not to stop.
All but sixty feet of the entire world lay beneath me, and heaven hung above me, and a rocket winked overhead. Perhaps it was the pressmen, with zoom cameras.
Fifty feet....
No bird, no archer, no angel, no girl.
Forty feet....
I started to shake. It was nervous tension. I steadied myself, went on.
Thirty feet...and the mountain seemed to be swaying now.
Twenty-five...and I grew dizzy, halted, took a drink.
Then click, click, my pick again.
Twenty....
Fifteen....
Ten....
I braced myself against the mountain's final assault, whatever it might be.
Five...
Nothing happened as I arrived.
I stood up. I could go no higher.
I looked at the sky, I looked back down. I waved at the blazing rocket exhaust.
I extruded the pole and attached the flag.
I planted it, there where no breezes would ever stir it. I cut in my communicator, said, "I'm here."
No other words.
It was time to go back down and give Henry his chance, but I looked down the western slope before I turned to go.
The lady was winking again. Perhaps eight hundred feet below, the red light shone. Could that have been what I had seen from the town during the storm, on that night, so long ago?
I didn't know and I had to.
I spoke into the communicator.
"How's Mallardi doing?"
"I just stood up," he answered. "Give me another half hour, and I'm coming up myself."
"Henry," I said. "Should he?"
"Gotta take his word how he feels," said Lanning.
"Well," I said, "then take it easy. I'll be gone when you get here. I'm going a little way down the western side. Something I want to see."
"What?"
"I dunno. That's why I want to see."
"Take care."
"Check."
The western slope was an easy descent. As I went down it, I realized that the light was coming from an opening in the side of the mountain.
Half an hour later, I stood before it.
I stepped within and was dazzled.
I walked toward it and stopped. It pulsed and quivered and sang.
A vibrating wall of flame leapt from the floor of the cave, towered to the roof of the cave.
It blocked my way, when I wanted to go beyond it.
She was there, and I wanted to reach her.
I took a step forward, so that I was only inches away from it. My communicator was full of static and my arms of cold needles.
It did not bend toward me, as to attack. It cast no heat.
I stared through the veil of fires to where she reclined, her eyes closed, her breast unmoving.
I stared at the bank of machinery beside the far wall.
"I'm here," I said, and I raised my pick.
When its point touched the wall of flame someone took the lid off hell, and I staggered back, blinded. When my vision cleared, the angel stood before me.
"_You may not pass here_," he said.
"She is the reason you want me to go back?" I asked.
"_Yes. Go back._"
"Has she no say in the matter?"
"_She sleeps. Go back._"
"So I notice. Why?"
"_She must. Go back._"
"Why did she herself appear to me and lead me strangely?"
"_I used up the fear-forms I knew. They did not work. I led you strangely because her sleeping mind touches upon my own workings. It did so especially when I borrowed her form, so that it interfered with the directive. Go back._"
"What is the directive?"
"_She is to be guarded against all things coming up the mountain. Go back._"
"Why? Why is she guarded?"
"_She sleeps. Go back._"
The conversation having become somewhat circular at that point, I reached into my pack and drew out the projector. I swung it forward and the angel melted. The flames bent away from my outstretched hand. I sought to open a doorway in the circle of fire.
It worked, sort of.
I pushed the projector forward, and the flames bent and bent and bent and finally broke. When they broke, I leaped forward. I made it through, but my protective suit was as scorched as Mallardi's.
I moved to the coffinlike locker within which she slept.
I rested my hands on its edge and looked down.
She was as fragile as ice.
In fact, she was ice....
The machine came alive with lights then, and I felt her somber bedstead vibrate.
Then I saw the man.
He was half sprawled across a metal chair beside the machine.
He, too, was ice. Only his features were gray, were twisted. He wore black and he was dead and a statue, while she was sleeping and a statue.
She wore blue, and white....
There was an empty casket in the far corner....
But something was happening around me. There came a brightening of the air. Yes, it was air. It hissed upward from frosty juts in the floor, formed into great clouds. Then a feeling of heat occurred and the clouds began to fade and the brightening continued.
I returned to the casket and studied her features.
I wondered what her voice would sound like when/if she spoke. I wondered what lay within her mind. I wondered how her thinking worked, and what she liked and didn't like. I wondered what her eyes had looked upon, and when.
I wondered all these things, because I could see that whatever forces I had set into operation when I entered the circle of fire were causing her, slowly, to cease being a statue.
She was being awakened.
I waited. Over an hour went by, and still I waited, watching her. She began to breath. Her eyes opened at last, and for a long time she did not see.
Then her bluefire fell on me.
"Whitey," she said.
"Yes."
"Where am I...?"
"In the damnedest place I could possibly have found anyone."
She frowned. "I remember," she said and tried to sit up.
It didn't work. She fell back.
"What is your name?"
"Linda," she said. Then, "I dreamed of you, Whitey. Strange dreams....How could that be?"
"It's tricky," I said.
"I knew you were coming," she said. "I saw you fighting monsters on a mountain as high as the sky."
"Yes, we're there now."
"H-have you the cure?"
"Cure? What cure?"
"Dawson's Plague," she said.
I felt sick. I felt sick because I realized that she did not sleep as a prisoner, but to postpone her death. She was sick.
"Did you come to live on this world in a ship that moved faster than light?" I asked.
"No," she said. "It took centuries to get here. We slept the cold sleep during the journey. This is one of the bunkers." She gestured toward the casket with her eyes. I noticed her cheeks had become bright re
d.
"They all began dying--of the plague," she said. "There was no cure. My husband--Carl--is a doctor. When he saw that I had it, he said he would keep me in extreme hypothermia until a cure was found. Otherwise, you only live for two days, you know."
Then she stared up at me, and I realized that her last two words had been a question.
I moved into a position to block her view of the dead man, who I feared must be her Carl. I tried to follow her husband's thinking. He'd had to hurry, as he was obviously further along than she had been. He knew the colony would be wiped out. He must have loved her and been awfully clever, both--awfully resourceful. Mostly, though, he must have loved her. Knowing that the colony would die, he knew it would be centuries before another ship arrived. He had nothing that could power a cold bunker for that long. But up here, on the top of this mountain, almost as cold as outer space itself, power wouldn't be necessary. Somehow, he had got Linda and the stuff up here. His machine cast a force field around the cave. Working in heat and atmosphere, he had sent her deep into the cold sleep and then prepared his own bunker. When he dropped the wall of forces, no power would be necessary to guarantee the long, icy wait. They could sleep for centuries within the bosom of the Gray Sister, protected by a colony of defense-computer. This last had apparently been programmed quickly, for he was dying. He saw that it was too late to join her. He hurried to set the thing for basic defense, killed the force field, and then went his way into that Dark and Secret Place. Thus it hurled its birds and its angels and its snakes, it raised its walls of fire against me. He died, and it guarded her in near-death--against everything, including those who would help. My coming to the mountain had activated it. My passing of the defenses had caused her to be summoned back to life.
The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth and Other Stories Page 16
