“Thanks for the heads up. I’ll remember that.”
Ursie pressed in close against Knile’s back as they shuffled along the ledge. She found that she felt dizzy no matter which way she looked, so in the end she simply buried her face in Knile’s backpack and slid one foot after the next, praying they would reach their destination quickly.
It happened sooner than she’d anticipated. Before long, Knile stopped and turned gently, taking her hand and guiding it toward a steel handle that jutted out from the wall. She gripped it ardently, wrapping both arms around it as if it were a life saver in a turbulent ocean, and turned her head to watch Knile ready himself for the climb.
“Now, listen,” he said over the noise of the wind, “with all of this air flapping around, it’s going to be difficult to communicate. If there’s something you need to ask, do it now.”
“Let’s just get this over with.”
Knile nodded and gripped the rusted ladder, turning once more to check that she was all right before pulling himself up carefully one rung at a time. The sun glinted dully off the solar panels on either side, and he judged from the amount of gunky build up present that the maintenance crew had not visited this patch of the exterior in some time. Either that, or the pollution was getting so thick that the crew couldn’t keep up a fast enough schedule to clean it off again.
He came to the first hook and clipped the carabiner in place, then threaded the rope through in turn. Glancing back down he saw Ursie huddled against the handle, looking up at him with something approaching abject terror as she imagined making the same climb herself. He had to hand it to her – she was holding it together as well as could be expected. Knile was certain that there were grown men who would have turned back by now, but Ursie stood there gritting her teeth and forcing herself to go through with it.
Perhaps that big payday at the end of this ordeal is giving her the courage to keep going, he thought.
He kept climbing and soon found a section of the ladder that had broken away. It wasn’t a huge gap, maybe the height of an average man, but it was something he really didn’t need with Ursie in tow. She was going to find it hard enough just to negotiate the ladder, let alone make it past an obstacle such as this. He glanced around for ideas but realised that there was nothing he could do about it now. They would lose too much time doubling back and trying to find another way up. He tried to ignore his misgivings and concentrated on finding handholds to bridge the gap. Luckily the edges of the solar panels afforded him a good grip and he was able to lever himself upward and reach the next section of ladder without too much difficulty.
He reached the top of the ladder and hauled himself up onto the next ledge, taking a moment to catch his breath. Ursie was a long way down, way too far for her to hear him even without the wind. He could see the pale dot of her face as she looked up, but that was it. Clipping himself into the handle nearby, he leaned out over the edge and waved extravagantly, hoping to make his intentions clear. Ursie didn’t budge, and for a moment he feared that she was going to chicken out. If she didn’t follow, how on earth was he going to handle a predicament such as that? Would he be able to climb down again over that gap without falling? And what would he do once he made it to the bottom again? Tuck her under his arm?
Then he felt the rope stiffen, and as he looked down he saw Ursie had begun to climb.
She was understandably tentative at first and progress was slow. In the vast space below her, Knile could see pigeons wheeling through the sky, returning to their roosts as the day wound down. Link was almost featureless from this high up, just another stain on the yellow-and-brown tapestry of the ruined Earth.
The wind had not abated and he felt somewhat precarious leaning out over the ledge as he peered down at the small figure of the girl below. He gently took up the slack on the rope and coiled it neatly beside him, hoping that the turbulence would die down soon, for Ursie’s sake at least.
There was a delay at the first carabiner as Ursie fiddled and wrestled with the clip like it was glued in place, her frustration evident even from a distance. She continually glanced up at Knile as if to say What am I doing wrong? but there was little instruction he could give her from this distance. Knile sensed that it was possibly an exercise in procrastination – the girl had a major mental block about removing one of her anchor points, and he guessed that her confusion was more akin to reluctance to unfasten herself from the wall – but in the end she had no choice. She could not progress further until the rope had been removed from the carabiner.
Eventually she got the job done, taking the carabiner and clipping it onto her harness for safekeeping. Then she continued to climb the rungs, and Knile thought he could sense her confidence growing by the minute.
Then she came to the broken section of ladder and things fell apart. She stopped dead and just stared at it for a good minute, then looked up at Knile and began gesticulating helplessly. He could see her mouth moving but her words were ripped apart and scattered by the wind. In any case, it was clear what she was trying to convey: What the hell do I do now?
Knile could only wave his arms, indicating that she should continue, but this garnered no response. He then tried to pantomime a climb action, pointing to the solar panels to demonstrate she should try using them for purchase. This suggestion, too, was met with no reaction. Either Ursie didn’t understand what he was trying to say, or she simply didn’t want to.
In the end, the girl obviously realised that she was going to have to move well outside her comfort zone if she wanted to get out of her predicament. She clasped the edges of the panels and began to draw herself upward. It was a more difficult task for the girl, Knile had to admit, since she was shorter than he was and didn’t have his strength, so her ability to find handholds was more limited.
She made it about halfway up the gap before she slipped.
Knile had been taking up the slack with each of her movements, so her drop was minimal, but even so she fell almost the length of her body as the rope tensed under her full weight. This time she made a noise loud enough for Knile to hear clearly – a hysterical high-pitched scream that cut through the wind like a distant ghostly wail. Knile gritted his teeth as he held the rope firm, trying to keep it level, and then Ursie spun in the air, her legs kicking upward as she almost inverted. The satchel slid from her shoulders and she groped at it madly, screaming again, and caught it in her fingertips.
Knile tried frantically to help swing her back toward the ladder by tugging at the rope. She moved through the air in a long arc, a bundle of flailing limbs, and then she thumped solidly into the wall of solar panels and bounced off again. Moving back across the ladder like a pendulum, she scraped and slid along the glass and righted herself, and Knile decided that the time had come for him to take matters into his own hands. Pulling on the rope, he yanked her upward one arm’s length at a time, like drawing a bucket from a well. Ursie managed to plant her feet on the panels and direct herself back toward the ladder, and in a few moments she had crossed the gap successfully. She thrust herself gratefully at the relative safety of the first metal rung, her satchel still safely on her shoulder.
She clung there for a good two or three minutes, and Knile allowed her the time to steady herself and catch her breath. Neither she nor the satchel were in any danger of falling, a great relief to both of them. It would be a cruel twist to lose their cargo, Knile thought, after going through all of this trouble to haul it up the Reach.
Eventually Knile grew restless and he began to gently tug on the rope to gain Ursie’s attention. She snapped her head up, and even from this distance he could feel the heat in her gaze. He ignored that and waved his hand again, trying to convey a sense of urgency, and in a few moments she complied and began to continue her climb.
Her ascent was now far more rapid than before, and as she drew closer Knile could see the reason why – she was furious. Her removal of the carabiners was now far more speedy, accentuated by jerky movements as she pulled
the clips from the wall and thrust them onto her belt. At one point she pulled so hard to free a carabiner that it slipped from her hand and went sailing out into the void. She did not seem apologetic in the least.
When she reached Knile, he reached out a hand to assist her up onto the ledge. She took it reluctantly and glared at him as he pulled her toward him. She sprawled on the narrow walkway, exhausted, like a drowning man finding the golden sands of a beach.
“There,” Knile said soothingly. “Wasn’t so bad after all.”
“Fuck you!” Ursie snarled over her shoulder. “You almost fucking killed me.”
“Actually, I pulled you to safety.”
“I mean by bringing me out here, you shithead. You didn’t have to come this way.”
“We did have to come this way,” Knile said calmly.
“Bullshit. You’re trying to make things hard for me. You’re trying to make me quit and give you the case so you can have it for yourself.”
“Climbing the Reach is hard,” Knile said sternly. “What did you expect? A goddamn chair lift to the top? If it was easy, then everyone would be doing it.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Ursie swatted at the grime that had been deposited on her coveralls when she’d slid along the panels. “At least it’s over.”
“Over?” Knile said. “I don’t think so.” He pointed upward. “We’re not done yet. We’re about to do it again.”
Ursie’s mouth fell open. “What? No way? Isn’t there a way back inside on the end of this walkway?”
“Yes, there is, but we’d waste a lot of time going that way. If we go higher out here it will save us a lot of time.”
“Screw it, let’s go inside.”
“No. We’re going up.”
She shook her head. “I can’t do it yet. I need time.”
“There’s no time,” Knile said. “Dark is closing in and we need to climb this section and find our way back inside before then. Unless you want to try climbing out here in the dark? I can tell you that’s not going to end well.”
Ursie covered her eyes with her hand as she gathered her emotions. She took a deep breath and then looked at Knile again, her countenance indicating that she was ready to continue the argument.
Then her face suddenly went white and she gasped beneath her respirator, her eyes locked onto something over Knile’s shoulder.
Knile spun and saw it immediately, but he couldn’t quite believe what he was witnessing.
Further along the walkway, alone on the ledge without gear or a harness, stood a young boy silently watching them.
22
Knile decided that the chemicals and the toxins in the air that he’d inadvertently consumed over the years were messing with his head. Those ubiquitous poisons that got into the water, into the food, into everything, had finally gotten to him, and now he was hallucinating. He had become too sick to distinguish fantasy from reality. What other explanation could there be for this absurd vision before him? How could he possibly be seeing what he was seeing?
He turned back to Ursie and it was clear that, if this was some kind of trick of the imagination, she was sharing it. Her eyes met his and she could only shake her head in response to the unasked question that hung between them.
Knile looked back to the boy, fully expecting him to be gone this time, dissolved into a cloud of dust and blown away by the wind, but this was not the case. He was still there. Knile got slowly to his feet. The boy was grubby and emaciated, naked from the waist up and wearing only rags for pants. His hair was dark brown and almost shoulder length, clotted with dirt, and he wore no respirator. His feet were bare.
The boy’s face betrayed no emotion as he regarded Knile and Ursie a short distance away.
“Hello?” Knile called out. The boy did not move or make any response. “What are you doing there?”
The boy continued to stare at them, seeming neither threatened nor surprised by their presence out here on the ledge. Knile turned to Ursie, who shrugged, dumbfounded.
“Are you okay?” Knile persisted. “Did you get locked outside?”
Knile took a few steps along the ledge and the boy finally made a response of sorts. He turned calmly and began walking the other way, around a bend in the wall and out of sight.
“Wait!” Knile called. “I’m not going to hurt you!” He quickened his pace as he moved along the ledge.
“Knile, what are you doing?” Ursie called after him.
“Just wait there,” Knile said. He took hold of the rope trailing after him and slung it over his shoulder to prevent himself from inadvertently tripping over it, then slightly quickened his pace. The edge of the precipice was disconcertingly close, but Knile had never had a problem with heights, and he did not allow it to slow him down. He made it to the place where the boy had stood moments before, but, finding him gone, continued further around the bend. Glancing over his shoulder, he discovered that he had lost sight of Ursie, and this caused him to slow his pace and show more caution, knowing that the rope wouldn’t stretch forever.
He came to a narrow cleft that led to a hatch much like the one that he and Ursie had emerged from below, and there he stopped. His puzzlement grew as he surveyed the area. There was still no sign of the boy, but something else inside the cleft captured his attention instead.
There was a garden here.
It wasn’t much of a garden, Knile had to admit. At first glance it had seemed more like a strip of dirt that had accumulated within the cleft, blown in by the wind and neatly trapped as if snared by a net, but now that he was closer Knile could see small green tips of plant life and some purple-tinted objects protruding from the soil that might have been vegetables.
Is this kid living out here?
The boy was nowhere to be seen. Since there was no place to hide inside the cleft, Knile could only assume that the boy had continued along the next bend and out of sight again. That was a fair distance, though. He would have had to move damn fast to make it that far in such a short amount of time.
Knile was suddenly assaulted by an almost irrational kind of apprehension, a panic that if he didn’t find out more about the boy, his entire quest to climb the Reach might be jeopardised. That the boy was somehow more important than he seemed, his secrets vital.
Knile squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head to try to clear it.
Get a grip on yourself, he thought. It doesn’t matter why he’s here or where he went. Stay focussed.
That was the truth. There simply wasn’t time to try to unravel the mystery further. As tantalising as it was, there were more important things at stake. He had to get back and continue the climb before the light faded completely.
Knile returned along the ledge carefully, gathering in the rope as he went. As he rounded the bend he could see Ursie still sitting pressed against the wall, scrunched as far away from the edge of the drop as she could manage.
“What did you find?” she called out as he drew near.
“A garden,” Knile said. “I think the kid might be living here.”
“A garden? How is that possible?”
“I don’t know. He was gone by the time I got there.”
“Should we keep looking for him?” Ursie said. “Maybe he needs our help.”
“There’s no time,” Knile said, casting an eye out toward the horizon. “We need to get climbing.”
“You’re going to leave him there?” Ursie said, almost pleading with him to change his mind. “He looked like he was starving.”
“Yes, I’m leaving him there,” Knile said in a matter-of-fact way, reaching down to take the carabiners from her harness. “He’s obviously survived this long by himself. I figure if he needed our help he would have asked for it.”
“But–”
“You ready?”
Ursie looked up at him for a moment longer before conceding that she wasn’t going to win the argument. She reluctantly got to her feet and took the rope.
“This one isn’t quite as high,�
� Knile said, clipping the last of the carabiners onto his harness. “Shouldn’t take too long.”
“I’m sure it’ll be a breeze,” Ursie said dryly.
Knile smirked and then hoisted himself upward, scaling the ladder quickly and smoothly. He’d become attuned to the process of placing the carabiners and linking the rope through with one hand, and his movements were now fluid and precise. There were no breaks in this section of the ladder either, and this helped him to complete the climb in only a matter of minutes.
Once at the top he secured himself to the next handle and signalled for Ursie to follow.
To his great relief, she also moved more quickly than during her first attempt. Whether she was gaining in confidence or simply eager to have the ordeal over and done with, he couldn’t be sure. In the end it didn’t matter. Either way, the result was that she made the climb without much delay, and as the sun dipped below the horizon she reached the ledge beside Knile.
“There we go,” he said cheerily. “No problems at all. What did I tell you?”
“Yeah,” Ursie said breathlessly. “A real walk in the park.”
“You did good,” Knile said encouragingly. “That’s all the climbing we need to do for now.”
“For now?” Her eyes widened again.
“Relax,” Knile laughed.
Ursie began to unhook the carabiners from her harness and hand them over to him again.
“What now?” she said.
“Now we find a way back inside and get some rest. I’m going to need some shut-eye for an hour or so at least. I haven’t slept in about two days.”
“Do we have time for that?”
“We’re on schedule,” Knile said, checking his watch. “We have less than twenty-four hours, now, but–”
A loud voice came suddenly from above, startling both of them and causing Ursie to cry out in fear.
“You are trespassing in a restricted zone,” it boomed. “Turn around now or we will be forced to take action.”
Both Ursie and Knile reacted by ducking into a crouch and glancing fearfully above, as if expecting to see a cohort of Enforcers standing above them, ready to pounce, but there was no one there.
Earthbound (The Reach, Book 1) Page 18
