I don’t define them, though. I only climb them.
I looked up again, and a few clouds were brushing against her now. From the photos I had taken, she might be an easy ascent for a good ten or twelve miles. Like a big hill. There were certainly enough alternate routes. In fact, I thought she just might be a pushover. Feeling heartened, I repacked my utensils and proceeded. It was going to be a good day. I could tell.
And it was. I got off the slope and onto something like a trail by late afternoon. Daylight lasts about nine hours on Diesel, and I spent most of it moving. The trail was so good that I kept on for several hours after sundown and made considerable height. I was beginning to use my respiration equipment by then, and the heating unit in my suit was turned on.
The stars were big, brilliant flowers, the way was easy, the night was my friend. I came upon a broad, flat piece and made my camp under an overhang.
There I slept, and I dreamt of snowy women with breasts like the Alps, pinked by the morning sun; and they sang to me like the wind and laughed, had eyes of ice prismatic. They fled through a field of clouds.
The following day I made a lot more height. The “trail” began to narrow, and it ran out in places, but it was easy to reach for the sky until another one occurred. So far, it had all been good rock. It was still tapering as it heightened, and balance was no problem. I did a lot of plain old walking. I ran up one long zigzag and hit it up a wide chimney almost as fast as Santa Claus comes down one. The winds were strong, could be a problem if the going got difficult. I was on the respirator full time and feeling great.
I could see for an enormous distance now. There were mountains and mountains, all below me like desert dunes. The sun beat halos of heat about their peaks. In the east, I saw Lake Emerick, dark and shiny as the toe of a boot. I wound my way about a jutting crag and came upon a giant’s staircase, going up for at least a thousand feet. I mounted it. At its top I hit my first real barrier: a fairly smooth, almost perpendicular face rising for about eighty-five feet.
No way around it, so I went up. It took me a good hour, and there was a ridge at the top leading to more easy climbing. By then, though, the clouds attacked me. Even though the going was easy, I was slowed by the fog. I wanted to outclimb it and still have some daylight left, so I decided to postpone eating.
But the clouds kept coming. I made another thousand feet, and they were still about me. Somewhere below me, I heard thunder. The fog was easy on my eyes, though, so I kept pushing.
Then I tried a chimney, the top of which I could barely discern, because it looked a lot shorter than a jagged crescent to its left. This was a mistake.
The rate of condensation was greater than I’d guessed. The walls were slippery. I’m stubborn, though, and I fought with skidding boots and moist back until I was about a third of the way up, I thought, and winded.
I realized then what I had done. What I had thought was the top wasn’t. I went another fifteen feet and wished I hadn’t. The fog began to boil about me, and I suddenly felt drenched. I was afraid to go down and I was afraid to go up, and I couldn’t stay where I was forever.
Whenever you hear a person say that he inched along, do not accuse him of a fuzzy choice of verbs. Give him the benefit of the doubt and your sympathy.
I inched my way, blind, up an unknown length of slippery chimney. If my hair hadn’t already been white when I entered at the bottom…
Finally, I got above the fog. Finally, I saw a piece of that bright and nasty sky, which I decided to forgive for the moment. I aimed at it, arrived on target.
When I emerged, I saw a little ledge about ten feet above me. I climbed to it and stretched out. My muscles were a bit shaky, and I made them go liquid. I took a drink of water, ate a couple of chocolate bars, took another drink.
After perhaps ten minutes, I stood up. I could no longer see the ground. Just the soft, white cottony top of a kindly old storm. I looked up.
It was amazing. She was still topless. And save for a couple spots, such as the last—which had been the fault of my own stupid overconfldence—it had almost been as easy as climbing stairs.
Now the going appeared to be somewhat rougher, however. This was what I had really come to test.
I swung my pick and continued.
All the following day I climbed, steadily, taking no unnecessary risks, resting periodically, drawing maps, taking wide-angle photos. The ascent eased in two spots that afternoon, and I made a quick seven thousand feet. Higher now than Everest, and still going, I. Now, though, there were places where I crawled and places where I used ropes, and there were places where I braced myself and used my pneumatic pistol to blast a toehold. (No, in case you’re wondering: I could have broken my eardrums, some ribs, an arm and doubtless ultimately, my neck, if I’d tried using the gun in the chimney.) Just near sunset, I came upon a high, easy winding way up and up and up. I debated with my more discreet self. I’d left the message that I’d be gone a week. This was the end of the third day. I wanted to make as much height as possible and start back down on the fifth day. If I followed the rocky route above me as far as it would take me I’d probably break forty thousand feet. Then, depending, I might have a halfway chance of hitting near the ten-mile mark before I had to turn back. Then I’d be able to get a much better picture of what lay above.
My more discreet self lost, three to nothing, and Mad Jack went on.
The stars were so big and blazing I was afraid they’d bite. The wind was no problem. There wasn’t any at that height. I had to keep stepping up the temperature controls on my suit, and I had the feeling that if I could spit around my respirator, it would freeze before it hit the trail.
I went on even further than I’d intended, and I broke forty-two thousand that night.
I found a resting place, stretched out, killed my hand beacon.
It was an odd dream that came to me.
It was all cherry fires and stood like a man, only bigger, on the slope above me. It stood in an impossible position, so I knew I had to be dreaming. Something from the other end of my life stirred, however, and I was convinced for a bitter moment that it was the Angel of Judgment. Only, in its right hand it seemed to hold a sword of fires rather than a trumpet. It had been standing there forever, the tip of its blade pointed toward my breast. I could see the stars through it. It seemed to speak.
I couldn’t answer, 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 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 doct
or collared me. I beat him to the draw, though:
“Give me the tape and send me 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 subrhythm 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 my 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?”
“Possibly…” 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 at 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’m 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 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 divine drunkenness,” I said to the thunder.
And then she winked 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 partly 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 EEC, and it wasn’t normal. I think it shocked my nervous system when it touched me.”
“You were knocked out because you bit 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 EEC 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.
The Doors Of His Face, The Lamps Of His Mouth Page 14
