At the Edge

by Lee Murray

  The Great and True Journey

  Richard Barnes

  With yet more effort, Voort pulled his ice axe from the concrete-hard wall of ice. He swung it back, stretched out and slammed it into the ice a little further up, then tugged on it, making sure the head of the axe was firmly embedded.

  Once sure it was secure, he paused, catching his breath. Every movement was hard work. The respirator in his mask helped him breathe in the micro-thin atmosphere, but the snow-suit was no vacuum-suit and cold was still cold.

  ‘Steady as she goes,’ said Grevill, his voice coming through Voort’s ear-piece. The older man hung on to the ladder behind Voort; the ladder stretched across a twenty-metre-wide crevasse, sloping up to Voort. Its top end dug into the ice wall, but there were about three metres between the end of the ladder and the top of the crevasse. Beneath the ladder, the two opposing sides of the crevasse sank straight down to deep blue depths.

  A step sideways, and within seconds this hell would be over.

  Everything ached. Sleep on the ice plain above would not be true sleep, just a period of semi-warm inactivity. The pain in his muscles, and the fiercer spike in his skull, would not abate. Altitude and thin air had been steadily swelling his brain. Death was on its way. Voort had been to war. Waking up from death and not knowing what the hell had happened was hardly new for him.

  But it was only another couple of metres to the top. Then another day’s trek to the foot of the crater’s edge. Then up and over the crater’s edge and down to the final, revelatory moment of the Great and True Journey.

  ‘In the name of Freespace,’ said Vella, behind Grevill and waiting in the fissure at the far end of the ladder, ‘either jump, or climb the fuck up, so Grevill and I can keep going.’ Was she reading his mind?

  ‘You’re getting there,’ said Grevill, ‘only another metre or so, and you’re over the lip.’

  ‘Fuck you, Vella,’ said Voort.

  ‘That’s better, soldier boy,’ said Vella. ‘I’d worried you’d died and were just hanging there, but Grevill was too polite to chuck you out of the way.’

  ‘Right foot then, lad,’ said Grevill. ‘Tenzig’s up there. He’ll help pull you over.’

  The vertical face of the ice wall stretched above them. Tenzig, expedition leader and guru of the Great and True Journey, had climbed out of the crevasse thirty minutes earlier. The short-range transmitters that enabled Voort to speak to Vella and Grevill were blocked by the sides of the crevasse, so they’d heard nothing from Tenzig since his feet had wriggled over the top.

  ‘Of course,’ said Vella, ‘a drasher might have eaten him and be waiting up there for us.’

  Voort didn’t have the energy to throw sarcasm back at her. Maybe Tenzig had been taken by one of the ice serpents. But the rational part of his mind, the part that had been fighting an ever-desperate battle to keep on top, reminded Voort that this ice wall he clung to would have been shaking violently if a drasher had surged to the surface and taken Tenzig.

  He took a deep breath, lifted his right foot and kicked the ice, his crampons digging into the hard surface. With his right foot secure and off the ladder, he moved his left foot up. Then his left hand with its ice axe, then the right again. Inch by inch, cold air streaming into his lungs and muscles on fire, Voort clawed his way to the top of the wall.

  His left hand swung over the lip and he moved his arm around, shoving snow aside to dig the axe-head into the ice. A hand grabbed his arm and Voort scrambled up the last couple feet, half climbing, half pulled. On the flat surface of the ice plain, he slumped onto his back, gasping and looking up at Tenzig.

  He couldn’t see the expedition leader’s face; like Voort’s, it was behind a mask, and his whole body was covered by the snow-suit. But it had to be Tenzig. There was no one else but the four of them on the icy ball that was Tunga.

  Tenzig dragged Voort a little further from the edge. ‘Brother, if it’s any comfort,’ wheezed Tenzig, ‘I have climbed over that crevasse forty-two times. It hasn’t got easier at all. And I am so fucking glad it’s the last time.’

  Voort sat up. ‘Oh, great Guru,’ he said. ‘You’re not sounding very spiritual. Where’s your enlightenment?’

  ‘Over there,’ said Tenzig, nodding towards the crater wall that awaited them. He slapped Voort on the shoulder. ‘Come on, let’s get Grevill and Vella up and over.’

  They crawled to the edge of the crevasse.

  ‘How’s the head?’ asked Tenzig.

  ‘Splitting,’ said Voort.

  ‘You’ll make it, okay? Only another day, brother.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Voort. ‘This enlightenment had better be worth it.’

  ‘It is, brother, it is,’ said Tenzig. ‘One more climb. Then comes the twin star rise, then the shuttle, then your mindstate will get copied and you can die. So stick with me.’

  Voort wanted to lay down and die right there, but Tenzig kept crawling so Voort kept going, too. They reached the edge of the crevasse. Voort hoped Grevill had reached the top. He really didn’t have the energy to haul the big old guy up.

  An axe smacked into the ice beneath Voort’s face.

  Voort jerked back. It wasn’t Grevill’s axe, nor his hand wielding it. Tenzig had already grabbed Vella’s arm and was pulling her up. Voort grabbed her other arm.

  ‘Grevill?’ said Tenzig.

  ‘Gone,’ said Vella, gasping.

  ‘What? What do you mean?’ said Voort. A moment later, Vella was sprawled next to them on the ice.

  Voort rolled and looked over the lip, to the far side and the dark fissure they had climbed from. Down the sheer ice face, he saw the grooves and gouges where the ladder had dug in, and the marks of their ice axes and crampons. There was no ladder and no Grevill.

  ‘The ladder slipped as he started climbing,’ said Vella. ‘He tried to climb faster, panicked, then he slipped sideways and…’

  ‘Oh man,’ said Tenzig, sitting up and looking over the crevasse and the vast plain behind them to the distant peaks of other mountains. ‘He’d made it so bloody far.’

  Voort felt sick. What little energy he had recuperated evaporated. Grevill had been a giant, letting himself get older, insisting any time he was regenerated that they kept him at the same physical age as when he’d been killed. Like Voort, Grevill had come from a combat zone. Unlike Voort, Grevill had been a veteran of a dozen combat zones, but he’d done his last tour and come to Tunga for the true life, as Tenzig called it. Now he was gone. Voort’s vision slipped to a dizzy white. His hands shook on the ice beneath him.

  ‘Shaking,’ said Vella.

  ‘What?’ said Voort. His mind swam back to reality. The ice was shaking.

  Tenzig was on his feet first, grabbing Voort and pulling him to his feet. Vella bounced up next to them.

  ‘Both of you, run,’ said Tenzig. ‘Run towards the crater. I’ll break away along the side of the crevasse. I’ve got the gun.’

  Vella grabbed Voort, who was about to topple over. ‘Come on, soldier boy,’ she yelled, ‘you heard the guru, let’s run.’ She started dragging him. The ground gave a hard jolt and Voort found some energy mixed in with the fear. He looked for Tenzig. The leader was sprinting away from Voort and Vella, piecing together lengths of steel pipe as he ran.

  The ice shook hard enough to throw Voort and Vella to the ground. Jets of steam shot out of a crack. The steam froze into tiny ice crystals and hung in the air for seconds. A larger chunk of ice broke from the surface, spiralling through the thin air and crashing down barely a foot from Voort.

  Again, adrenaline kicked in and Voort scrambled up. He tumbled towards Vella, reaching for her, but Vella jumped up and took hold of Voort’s arm instead. Her next jump carried them both a couple of metres further away.

  The ice where they had been split apart and the huge, triangular head of a drasher burst out, spraying s
teaming water, huge jaws open showing rows of ragged teeth. The drasher thrashed, stretching its massive, scaly body further out of the ice. Its trunk was more than a metre thick, and where it slid against the ice, the ice melted and steamed away. The beast shrieked a high-pitched screech that filled Voort’s already splitting head.

  Voort screamed before another chunk of ice slammed into his head and blackness took him.

  *

  Blue. Voort lived in a universe of deep, dark blue. Far below him, Tunga slid around the dark side of the blue gas giant, Tangaka. The icy moon with its super-dense core of iron, giving it a gravity that belied its small size, took eighty-four standard days to orbit the swirling mass of blue clouds. Half of that time was spent away from the sunlight of the twin stars, Tirana and Telyse, which Tangaka itself orbited. The distant third star, Tuul, circling the twins, but much, much further out, provided dim light for the dark half of the orbit, casting the moon’s icy surface in shades of blue, grey and black.

  Voort’s journey, the Great and True Journey on which the six had set out, began as Tunga drifted across the terminator on Tangaka and into its dark time. From Voort’s strange vantage point, high above Tunga’s surface, the terminator couldn’t be seen, just the great dark bulk of Tangaka, looming to Voort’s left. To his right was a line of light at the edge of Tangaka.

  They had started forty days earlier, aiming for the vast crater with the cleft in its eastern wall. The twin stars rose in a perfect line when seen through this cleft. This, it was said, was a vision of true, natural and profound beauty that could shatter and rebuild even the jaded, undying souls of Freespace citizens.

  But to reach the star-rise and enlightenment, one had to live. Live free of the securities of Freespace, live knowing that to die on the journey would be to die as real a death as possible. To die, knowing that none of your experience on Tunga would be recalled by your regenerated self.

  Voort looked at the line of light, spreading across the massive horizon of the gas giant and realised that he’d miss all that enlightenment, if he stayed in space. This wasn’t death. The drasher hadn’t got him. Death would mean waking up in a regeneration pod on a ship several light years away. He looked down and, despite being hundreds of kilometres up, spotted their tent, huddled close to the crater’s edge.

  *

  He wasn’t dead, just felt like he should be. The fabric of the tent hummed as the harsh surface wind pummelled it but the tent, unlike three of the original members of their group, had survived the grim trek so far, assuming that Tenzig and Vella had not been torn apart by the drasher. If Voort was still alive, surely Vella and Tenzig – both fitter and stronger than Voort – were too?

  Tenzig’s shot may have killed the drasher, but the gun may have just blown up. Voort wondered if Tenzig’s luck had run out. What a shitty end for Tenzig’s truly great Great and True Journey. Forty-two journeys of forty-two days each. Nearly ten years without dying or mind-state back-up.

  The gun was not what Voort would call a gun. It was really nothing more than tubes of steel and gunpowder and explosive balls. Having done what so many young citizens of Freespace had done, and signed up to fight in the war against the terrorists, Voort had learned a thing or two about guns. The terrorists of the various so-called insurgent worlds may have been happy fighting with mechanical projectile weapons, but the good soldiers of Freespace used energy weapons.

  Yes, let Voort have a solid plasma rifle and he’d sort out a drasher. Maybe the beasts had scales that burned at over 150 degrees and jaws big enough to swallow a man whole; a few blasts of super-charged plasma bolts would still take the fucker’s head off.

  And while he was dreaming about the comforts of home, how about some battle armour? Temperature-controlled so there was none of this non-stop cold, and with augmented nano-motors to lend additional strength and endurance to his arms and legs.

  But no, no tech or bio-enhancements of any kind were allowed on the Forty-Two Days of Enlightenment of the Great and True Journey. For one, electrical impulses attracted drashers to the surface, but more importantly, the journey was meant to be pure.

  What a great idea, Voort had thought as their shuttle had landed on the wind-blasted plateau of ice. After six months of fighting and dying and re-starts and fighting and killing and dying all over again in the Offensive Corp, Voort needed to find something else.

  ‘He’s not going to make it,’ said Vella. Voort had been aware of the rumbling of voices for a while, but they had seemed far away. Vella’s voice now sounded much nearer, although it still seemed that Voort’s ears were stuffed with wool.

  ‘We are not leaving him in the ice,’ said Tenzig.

  ‘Do you want to make it to the star-rise?’ said Vella. ‘We can’t bloody carry him. And you’re the one who’s done this forty-one times. Do you really want to miss the forty-second?’

  Voort thought he might as well play nearly dead for a while longer.

  ‘I could bust his head in with my axe,’ said Vella. ‘At least then, he’s not freezing to death.’

  No immediate response from Tenzig once more. Voort couldn’t be bothered to wait. He pushed himself up and opened his eyes.

  ‘Thanks Vella,’ said Voort, with a voice that sounded and tasted like cold gravel. ‘If it looks like you’re a bit tired, I’ll happily smash your skull in too.’

  ‘Still with us, then, brother?’ said Tenzig.

  Voort sat up fully, but let his head slump. His headache remained, like a spike through his skull. ‘You got the drasher, then?’

  Tenzig nodded. ‘You should thank Vella for saving you, though. She may be keen to bludgeon you to death right now, but she scrambled both of you out of its way before I could get a shot together. She gave the bastard a race before I finally got the gun to work and blasted its brains out.’

  ‘Letting you get eaten alive seemed a touch too far,’ said Vella.

  ‘How’s the head?’ asked Tenzig.

  ‘Like my brain is about to squeeze out of my ears.’

  Tenzig nodded.

  ‘And we’ve got to climb even higher,’ said Vella. ‘He’s not going to make it.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to carry me,’ said Voort.

  ‘Hey,’ said Tenzig. ‘Everyone calm down. Even you, Vella.’

  Voort saw Vella sit back, saw her shoulders unbunch.

  ‘This happens, believe me,’ continued Tenzig. ‘This tension. We’ve had a rough day. We lost Grevill, we nearly got eaten by a drasher. But we’re so close to the end.’

  ‘I can’t believe Grevill’s gone,’ said Voort.

  ‘The Great Journey tests us all, brother,’ said Tenzig. ‘We will honour Grevill, and Scoby and Sorin. We will honour those who started the Great Journey; we will find their truth.’

  Vella nodded, her expression calmer now. ‘Sorry, brothers,’ she said. ‘The others, even though they didn’t get this far, I think they still found something. They’ll know they set out. They say it’s impossible, but I know part of their journey will be with them.’

  Tenzig gave a small smile, reached out and took Vella’s hand. He took Voort’s hand too, then Voort and Vella joined hands to complete the circle. Tenzig and Vella closed their eyes.

  Before Voort closed his eyes, he saw Vella’s face fall sombre and reflective. His head pounding, he thought he saw a smirk behind the downturned mouth. He blinked. Her face was as before, sober and serious. He closed his eyes, but still saw Vella’s nasty smile. Hallucinations now.

  He tried to settle into the meditation. He focused on a vision of the twin stars coming up above the far crater’s edge. He had no idea what it would look like; only those who made the forty-two day trek would ever know, but he pictured a deep blue expanse suddenly lightening, becoming sapphire, then sky-blue, and finally all the colours refracted through the ice.

  By the time he made it to the end, Voort
would probably have no idea what was reality and what was just his deluded and dying brain. Hopefully, the hallucination would be as good as the real thing.

  *

  ‘He must be cheating,’ said Vella. Sarcastic Vella had soon shoved spiritual Vella aside once Tenzig was out of transmitter range. She trudged up the steep slope, about two metres ahead of Voort. Voort’s eyes had been focused on the ground, just trying to keep his feet plodding on, one step at a time. He raised his head and looked up beyond the hunched form of Vella, towards the highest point on the ridge where he could just make out the dark-suited Tenzig.

  Maybe Tenzig was cheating, somehow using stimulants or tech or bio-enhancements. Surely Vella was cheating somehow, too. Both were in far better condition than Voort. He found it hard to believe that anyone, no matter how fit and strong, could possibly make it so far and not feel like death.

  ‘Seriously,’ said Vella. ‘Look at how quickly he made it up there. “I’m going to check out the route ahead,” he said, and he bounded off like a Mimbinite Argut.’

  ‘A what?’ muttered Voort.

  ‘An argut,’ replied Vella. ‘One of those cute furry things with the springy legs. They live on Mimbinus, a mountain world. And they bound up slopes as easily as, say, our spiritual guide, Tenzig. Taste great, too.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Voort. Arguing with Vella had been pointless nearly forty days ago when he’d had the energy for it. Now, all that mattered was placing one foot in front of the other. An argut bounced past him, paused for a moment to stick its tongue out, then bounced to the right of the ridge and straight down the sheer slope into the crater below. His hallucinations were mocking him.

  He slipped, coming down on both knees. His right hand went out, finding nothing but empty air. For a moment, Voort started to topple forward, the spiky grey rockface and white cloud swirling about twenty metres below. The view offered him a sudden moment of clarity, and he leaned back, away from the drop.

  ‘Oh fuck, look at you,’ said Vella. She was further up the ridge now.