Paradox

by Alex Archer

  For his part even Levi seemed too exhausted for the usual cheerful banter he tried to fill time with when circumstances kept him from his beloved reading. He gave her a smile, weakly, slowly blinking long lashes behind his goggles and thick glasses. Just below the soles of Annja's boots, Robyn Wilfork groused to the Higgins twins beneath him, past an untalkative Zack Thompson, who climbed right after the New Zealander to help secure him. What, if anything, Jeb and Zeb said in reply she couldn't hear.

  It happened, as disasters did, with a suddenness that stole the breath like a plunge into icy water. Somewhere above the vertical procession a rock gave way with a crack and a rumble. Josh cried out a frantic warning and caught himself by sinking his ice ax with a ringing clang into the rock as his legs swung free.

  The falling rock was about half the size of a human torso. It struck Jason's shoulder and knocked him free. He cried out sharply and fell off the mountain's face.

  Continuing down the rock missed Annja by the breadth of her outspread fingers. Whether it had struck Charlie Bostitch or not she couldn't tell. But the bulky shape twenty feet above her dropped toward her goggled face with shocking speed. At the same moment she heard Wilfork bellow in terror below her and knew he'd lost his grip, too.

  "Hang on, Levi!" she shouted to the man above her.

  Jason plummeted past. Annja caught a nightmare glimpse of his face, eyes and mouth strained wide. His arms and legs moved as if he were trying to swim on air. His camera's brilliant beam wheeled around him like a spoke of yellow-white light.

  Annja pressed herself against the rock, clung with outflung hands as well as boot-tips to the rock. She thought the plentiful safety anchors and lines should keep anyone from falling too far.

  That was the idea, anyway. But the more climbers who peeled, the greater the risk that pitons would rip free of rock, or the ropes themselves might break. Annja's body took a brutal shock as Wilfork's considerable weight hit the length of the rope that separated them. She gasped for breath and clung for all she was worth.

  A second shock almost tore her from the cliff. Bostitch's hurtling mass had plucked Levi right off the wall. The rabbi flailed as he dropped the short distance toward Annja.

  "Grab onto me!" she screamed. She probably didn't get it out in time to do any good.

  But somehow Levi managed to get a grip on her right leg. He clung with both hands, his own legs swinging wildly above white emptiness that swirled into oblivion.

  For a moment Annja seemed to be single-handedly supporting the combined weight of several helplessly flailing men, more by strength of will than body. Below her she heard more cries as other climbers fell. She braced herself.

  But she knew she couldn't take any more. As it was she could only hope to hold out seconds more against the killing weight that hung from her climbing harness. She felt her fingers weaken, seeming to squeeze the handholds out like watermelon seeds.

  No further shocks hit her. The mountaineering training the Rehoboam grads had received evidently kicked in. The party was still anchored. They'd survive, she told herself. If only I can hold out…

  She heard Baron's voice, low yet penetrant, speaking reassuringly to his boss. The former SEAL and current security-contractor mogul hunched like a big dark spider. He had lost his cap. His bare head jutted from his jacket like a bullet from its casing.

  Annja felt the relief as Charlie Bostitch's weight came off her harness. Baron had taken up the slack. A moment later the tycoon himself had gotten his own purchase on the rock and even found the presence of mind to screw in a fresh camming device to help hold him.

  At the same time the load from below diminished further as somebody secured Wilfork once again. And then Zack was alongside Levi, snapping a safety line onto the scholar's harness, lashing them together. Levi released his death-grip on Annja's legs as Thompson made both fast to the wall.

  "Are you okay, Ms. Creed?" the young ex-marine called softly, his words echoing between cliff and cloud.

  All she could do was nod weakly.

  As if they had passed some kind of test the sky cleared. The snow stopped. The wind died. Shafts of golden late-afternoon light stabbed past the mountain to either side, illuminating the rolling few miles of land between Ararat and Iran. Annja found the side-scatter light almost blinding after the terrible white night of moments before.

  By the golden fading sunset light they hauled themselves up to a substantial ledge, perhaps twenty feet deep and fifty long. Josh had been on the verge of laying a gloved hand over the actual lip of safety when the big rock had broken loose.

  They all made it up to lay gasping, exhausted and safe, on ice-sheathed stone. All except Jason.

  Examining the lines they quickly learned that tempers weren't the only thing that had frayed on the climb. The television crew chief's belaying rope had parted. Jason had fallen away down the steep northern face of the Mountain of Pain, to vanish forever in the storm.

  Chapter 20

  Before Annja even caught her breath Baron had his men busy checking all the other ropes.

  "Are you all right?" Levi asked, hunkering down beside her. His skin looked paler than normal behind his goggles and he was breathing raggedly through his mouth.

  From somewhere he pulled his red asthma rescue inhaler and took a puff. His breath came in such short frenzied chops he could barely hold the medicine in for an entire second. The thin air was torture to Annja, who was in splendid shape. It must have been unimaginably brutal for him. Even though she'd performed more strenuous activity than the rabbi, fear and panic and the strain of clinging to her had to have left him starved for air.

  "I'll be fine, Levi, thanks," she managed to gasp. "But no. I'm not all right." He collapsed beside her, wheezing like a landed trout.

  Desperate guilt about Jason's death all but overwhelmed her. Part of her knew that was irrational. She'd never had the slightest chance of doing anything to arrest his fall. A far greater argument could be made that she was culpable in Fred's death. But not Jason's.

  And yet…they wouldn't be here if it weren't for me, she thought. Steeling herself she glanced toward Trish and Tommy. Their duties to record the expedition forgotten in disaster's bare face, they huddled together up against the cliff face like lost puppies. They didn't even glance her way. Somehow that hit her harder than reproachful stares or even words would have.

  She became aware of a big shape looming over her. It was an effort to raise her head and look up.

  "Thanks for saving me," Robyn Wilfork said. Then he lumbered off to sit down somewhere.

  If he planned to take a hit from his hypothetical hidden hip flask, she reckoned, he was entitled to it. She wished she could find such easy sanctuary.

  Baron was a whirlwind of activity, a raging demon. Or as he'd probably put it, an avenging angel. Though his Young Wolves were themselves completely wrung-out and shaken he raged at them until Larry Taitt volunteered to climb down and search for the fallen man. Red-headed Eli Holden would join him; the twins would belay from above. Meanwhile Thompson and Fairlie could begin pitching tents.

  The ex-SEAL seemed to blame Fairlie for causing the disaster. Or else he thought it was a good motivational technique to lash him with it. Maybe it was. The pallid, evidently exhausted young man picked himself up and shambled off to work assiduously in the inadequate atmosphere by the light of chemical glow sticks.

  The climbers sent to search for Jason wore more chemical sticks looped around their necks like ravers. Larry and Eli carried flashlights as well. Their beams swept the cliffs and vertical ice sheets as they descended.

  But a layer of clouds, deceptively fluffy but looking so dense it seemed as if you ought to be able to walk across them, hung a few hundred feet below. Dead or alive—and Annja, for one, couldn't imagine the cameraman and crew chief could possibly still be alive—Jason Pennigrew lay below those clouds. Loath to leave a man behind, Baron ordered the searchers to keep going down through the cloud layer to search for him or his body
.

  With visible reluctance, and generally green around the gills, Bostitch countermanded the order. "We can't risk anybody else, Leif. Especially in the dark like this."

  Shaking his head in disgust, Baron told the twins to reel Larry and Eli back in. Then he walked off muttering to himself, as far away from the others as the ledge's small area permitted. He and Jason hadn't had much use for each other, and neither had seemed to exert himself too much to hide the fact. But Leif Baron seemed to take his loss personally.

  He was reacting in a way, Annja couldn't help notice, that he hadn't done when his own man was killed by somebody Baron had not only hired but also entrusted with his own life, along with everyone else's. Maybe this was his graceless way of overcompensating.

  In desolated silence they ate their wood-flavored self-heating rations. They had broken into small groups. Bostitch and Baron sat with Wilfork; the surviving acolytes huddled together against the cliff twenty feet away from Tommy and Trish. Annja ate with Levi. The rabbi kept looking at her and bobbing his head as if wanting to say something soothing to her, but unable to think of what. She found it comforting rather than annoying.

  Later she made her way alone among the tents, cautiously, heading back to bed after relieving herself. A dark figure suddenly loomed in the darkness. The stars shining from a mostly cloudless sky were all that enabled her to see anything.

  Annja recoiled. She started to form her right hand into a partial fist. At the last moment she caught herself. She made herself relax.

  "Why so tense, Ms. Creed?" asked the goofily genial voice of Charlie Bostitch. "Afraid of the abominable snowman?"

  "There's no such thing," she said quickly. "And not on this part of the Eurasian landmass in any event. It's just that you startled me. I'm a bit tightly wound up."

  He laughed disarmingly. "Aren't we all. Hey, I just wanted to talk to you for a few minutes."

  "All right."

  He seemed taken off guard by her simple response. "Out here? I mean, we're out in the open right by a sheer drop—"

  "Does it make any difference to what you want to talk about?" Annja asked.

  He shook his head. It seemed to weigh heavily on his neck. The notion of his own possible smuggled-along stash of alcohol sprang into her mind. She shoved it aside. We're above ten thousand feet here, she reminded herself. And we've had a hell of a day. Don't go multiplying explanations.

  "I'm tired, Mr. Bostitch. All respect, can't we please just make this quick?"

  To her astonishment he burst into tears. "Please, Annja. Please! You got to help me."

  He dropped to his knees in the snow in front of her and grabbed her gloved hands with his own. "I don't have anywhere else to turn," he sobbed. "I'm at the end of my rope. I'm the worst sinner in the whole world. I need this to be the Ark. Don't you see? It's my last hope of redemption."

  "No," Annja said. "I don't see." She found herself, totally embarrassed, more dragging the big man to his feet than helping him up.

  "You probably think I'm a wealthy man," he blubbered. "And I've been a wealthy man. Very wealthy. But then came the recession, and I made some bad, bad choices…Annja, I tell you, I'm busted. Worse than that. I'm so deep in debt I can never swim out. Not without a miracle.

  "I need you to bring me this miracle, Annja. You're the only one who can deliver it. Deliver me. You and the rabbi have to help me. I need to redeem myself."

  "You think if we find the Ark it'll get you out of debt?" Annja asked.

  "It can't hurt, can it? And it'll be a sign of the Lord's favor. And maybe it'll be the sign that's needed, just the missing piece to help Our Lord come back to judge the world in fire before the world's descent into wickedness and sin make Him turn His face away forever in disgust. Maybe it's up to you to open the way so our Lord and Savior can return to walk the Earth once more. Think of it, Annja! Think of it!"

  "Wait. Are you talking about financial rescue or Armageddon?" Annja asked, wondering what he was talking about.

  "It's all tied up together. Don't you see? This is my shot at forgiveness."

  She shook her head. If anything, she saw less than she had before. She wondered if the altitude really was getting to him.

  "All I can do is what you hired me to do, Mr. Bostitch," she said wearily. "Which is to search for whatever's up there, and if we find it, I'll examine it as thoroughly and professionally as possible. And then I'll report the truth. Whatever it turns out to be. Whoever's ox it gores—yours, mine, whoever's. Wouldn't that be what your Lord would want?"

  "Oh, sure, sure. He's the Way, the Truth and the Light. He wouldn't hold with lies," Bostitch said feebly.

  "Then you and He should be square, whatever. Because no matter what the truth is, doesn't He already know it? It's not as if, whether that's somehow really the Ark or just a rock formation, or even something else entirely, it's going to come as a big surprise to Him, is it?" Annja said.

  "You're right. Of course you're right. You're a young woman of really remarkable wisdom, Annja, you know that?" Bostitch said.

  He enfolded her in a vast and clumsy bear hug. "You comfort me," he said, disengaging with obvious reluctance. "Could you maybe see your way clear to coming back to my tent with me and talking a little longer? It would give my soul ease, I have to tell you."

  "I'm flattered," Annja said, quickly stepping back. "But I'm afraid I have to get back to my own tent and my own sleeping bag before I fall down. My body needs its ease. Or I won't be in any shape to make the final push to the Ark tomorrow."

  And before he could protest she turned away and slipped into the mouth of the small tent she shared with Levi. The rabbi already lay softly snoring on his back with his mouth open. His hands were outside the bag, clutching his dog-eared paperback like a teddy bear. She smiled at him, climbed into her own bag with every muscle in her body screaming in agony, and was asleep in moments.

  * * *

  THE FINAL ASCENT WAS ON ICE. Whether it was the glacier that crowned much of the vast high cinder cone and held the Anomaly in its slow cold embrace, or just a random stretch of rock sheathed in ice, Annja didn't know. Their path had circled clear around the northern side of the main peak to come up at the Anomaly from almost directly below, on the mountain's northwest face.

  How they had settled on the route Annja was unsure. Hamid had obviously had some input into selecting their initial path up the mountain, which she didn't find too reassuring. Still, Baron remained briskly confident and in charge. It wasn't her decision to make. And frankly she was glad. It was painful enough just taking part in this ordeal without bearing the ultimate responsibility for it.

  The sun, peeping up over the mountains of Iran and Azerbaijan but hidden from them by Ararat's bulk, filled the world with bloodlike red. Above them the sky was an almost cloudless mauve, shading into peach, that promised metamorphosis into that almost-painful blue the sky sometimes takes on above high mountains. As the party stood staring up the wall to the summit, the ice tinted delicate rose-pink with side-scatter dawn, Levi said, "It's strange, you know."

  "What?" asked Wilfork, who stood aside with Annja and Levi, looking somewhat glum, with a cream-colored band around his head and his unruly hair tufting out the top.

  "We've had alternating swings of bad fortune with good. We've been both plagued and aided by weird coincidences and freaks of nature. It's as if gods with differing agendas were dueling over our destiny."

  "You're a man of God, Rabbi!"

  The snarl made their heads turn. Baron was scowling furiously at them past his black sunglasses. "This is not a good time to make blasphemous jokes."

  "Okay," Levi said with a shrug. He turned to Annja and gave her a sly, shy grin. He was good at shutting up. Maybe too good, too self-effacing. Yet under the circumstances Annja reluctantly had to admit she was glad. This was not the time for a debate of any sort unless it concerned survival.

  Levi's bearded lips moved silently. Annja was no lip-reader. But she was pretty sure he sa
id, But I wasn't joking.

  She gave him a thumbs-up. Eppur si muove, she replied the same way. She was quoting Galileo's legendary last words to the Inquisition on the question of whether Earth was fixed at the center of creation. She wasn't sure he'd catch it. But he laughed, still silently.

  Larry and Josh helped everybody fix crampons to their boots and adjust them to bite forward, into vertical ice. Ice axes were distributed to those who wanted them. Annja accepted; Robyn Wilfork and Rabbi Leibowitz declined. Then Larry led off, planting pitons and camming devices specially designed to protect the ice from shattering around them as he climbed. Josh belayed from below.