The Doors Of His Face, The Lamps Of His Mouth

by Roger Zelazny

  “Yes,” I said.

  “That makes it almost unanimous then, doesn’t it?”

  Then we all turned to Vince, because he had no Christian background at all, having been raised as a Buddhist on Ceylon.

  “What were your feelings concerning the thing?” Doc asked him.

  “It was a Deva,” he said, “which is sort of like an angel, I guess. I had the impression that every step I took up this mountain gave me enough bad karma to fill a lifetime. Except I haven’t believed in it that way since I was a kid. I want to go ahead, up. Even if that feeling was correct, I want to see the top of this mountain.”

  “So do I,” said Doc.

  “That makes it unanimous,” I said.

  “Well, everybody hang onto his angelsbane,” said Stan, “and let’s sack out.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Only let’s spread out a bit,” said Doc, “so that anything falling won’t get all of us together.”

  We did that cheerful thing and slept untroubled by heaven.

  Our way kept winding right, until we were at a hundred forty-four thousand feet and were mounting the southern slopes. Then it jogged back, and by a hundred fifty we were mounting to the west once more.

  Then, during a devilish, dark and tricky piece of scaling, up a smooth, concave bulge ending in an overhang, the bird came down once again.

  If we hadn’t been roped together, Stan would have died. As it was, we almost all died.

  Stan was lead man, as its wings splashed sudden flames against the violet sky. It came down from the overhang as though someone had kicked a bonfire over its edge, headed straight toward him and faded out at a distance of about twelve feet. He fell then, almost taking the rest of us with him.

  We tensed our muscles and took the shock.

  He was battered a bit, but unbroken. We made it up to the overhang, but went no further that day.

  Rocks did fall, but we found another overhang and made camp beneath it.

  The bird did not return that day, but the snakes came.

  Big, shimmering scarlet serpents coiled about the crags, wound in and out of jagged fields of ice and gray stone. Sparks shot along their sinuous lengths. They coiled and unwound, stretched and turned, spat fires at us. It seemed they were trying to drive us from beneath the sheltering place to where the rocks could come down upon us.

  Doc advanced upon the nearest one, and it vanished as it came within the field of his projector. He studied the place where it had lain, then hurried back.

  “The frost is still on the punkin,” he said.

  “Huh?” said I.

  “Not a bit of ice was melted beneath it.”

  “Indicating?”

  “Illusion,” said Vince, and he threw a stone at another and it passed through the thing.

  “But you saw what happened to my pick,” I said to Doc, “when I took a cut at that bird. The thing had to have been carrying some kind of charge.”

  “Maybe whatever has been sending them has cut that part out, as a waste of energy,” he replied, “since the things can’t get through to us anyhow.”

  We sat around and watched the snakes and falling rocks, until Stan produced a deck of cards and suggested a better game.

  The snakes stayed on through the night and followed us the next day. Rocks still fell periodically, but the boss seemed to be running low on them. The bird appeared, circled us and swooped on four different occasions. But this time we ignored it, and finally it went home to roost.

  We made three thousand feet, could have gone more, but didn’t want to press it past a cozy little ledge with a cave big enough for the whole party. Everything let up on us then. Everything visible, that is.

  A before-the-storm feeling, a still, electrical tension, seemed to occur around us then, and we waited for whatever was going to happen to happen.

  The worst possible thing happened: nothing.

  This keyed-up feeling, this expectancy, stayed with us, was unsatisfied. I think it would actually have been a relief if some invisible orchestra had begun playing Wagner, or if the heavens had rolled aside like curtains and revealed a movie screen, and from the backward lettering we knew we were on the other side, or if we saw a high-flying dragon eating low-flying weather satellites…

  As it was, we just kept feeling that something was imminent, and it gave me insomnia.

  During the night, she came again. The pinnacle girl.

  She stood at the mouth of the cave, and when I advanced she retreated.

  I stopped just inside and stood there myself, where she had been standing.

  She said, “Hello, Whitey.”

  “No, I’m not going to follow you again,” I said.

  “I didn’t ask you to.”

  “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”

  “Watching,” she said.

  “I told you I won’t fall.”

  “Your friend almost did.”

  “ ‘Almost’ isn’t good enough.”

  “You are the leader, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “If you were to die, the others would go back?”

  “No,” I said, “they’d go on without me.”

  I hit my camera then.

  “What did you just do?” she asked.

  “I took your picture—if you’re really there.”

  “Why?”

  “To look at after you go away. I like to look at pretty things.”

  “…” She seemed to say something.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why not?”

  “… die.”

  “Please speak up.”

  “She dies…” she said.

  “Why? How?”

  “… on mountain.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “… too.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  I took a step forward, and she retreated a step.

  “Follow me?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Go back,” she said.

  “What’s on the other side of that record?”

  “You will continue to climb?”

  “Yes.”

  Then, “Good!” she said suddenly. “I—,” and her voice stopped again.

  “Go back,” she finally said, without emotion. “Sorry.” And she was gone.

  VI

  Our trail took us slowly to the left once more. We crawled and sprawled and cut holes in the stone. Snakes sizzled in the distance. They were with us constantly now. The bird came again at crucial moments, to try to make us fall. A raging bull stood on a crag and bellowed down at us. Phantom archers loosed shafts of fire, which always faded right before they struck. Blazing blizzards swept at us, around us, were gone. We were back on the northern slopes and still heading west by the time we broke a hundred sixty thousand. The sky was deep and blue, and there were always stars. Why did the mountain hate us? I wondered. What was there about us to provoke this thing? I looked at the picture of the girl for the dozenth time and I wondered what she really was. Had she been picked from our minds and composed into girlform to lure us, to lead us, sirenlike, harpylike, to the place of the final fall? It was such a long way down…

  I thought back over my life. How does a man come to climb mountains? Is he drawn by the heights because he is afraid of the level land? Is he such a misfit in the society of men that he must flee and try to place himself above it? The way up is long and difficult, but if he succeeds they must grant him a garland of sorts. And if he falls, this too is a kind of glory. To end, hurled from the heights to the depths in hideous ruin and combustion down, is a fitting climax for the loser—for it, too, shakes mountains and minds, stirs things like thoughts below both, is a kind of blasted garland of victory in defeat, and cold, so cold that final action, that the movement is somewhere frozen forever into a statuelike rigidity of ultimate intent and purpose thwarted only by the universal malevolence we all fear exists. An aspir
ant saint or hero who lacks some necessary virtue may still qualify as a martyr, for the only thing that people will really remember in the end is the end. I had known that I’d tad to climb Kasla, as I had climbed all the others, and I had known what the price would be. It had cost me my only home. But Kasla was there, and my boots cried out for my feet. I knew as I did so that somewhere I set them upon her summit, and below me a world was ending. What’s a world if the moment of victory is at hand? And if truth, beauty and goodness be one, why is there always this conflict among them?

  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—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 Midgaard 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 Aïda, 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 ic
e. 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 said.

  No answer. Nothing.

  I looked down. Henry was still clinging. 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…