by John Varley
The crashing grew louder and she saw Gene sail up through the room to her left. She dived right and down, catching a girder two floors below and diverting her momentum to the right again. She came to rest, her bare feet on another girder. Around her, broken glass settled slowly.
She would not have known he was so close if the shower of glass had not preceded him. He had been walking along the girders, but the weight of part of his foot was too much for an unbroken pane that already supported debris from Cirocco’s passage. It shattered, and the glass came down like snowflakes. She swung around the girder and pushed downward with her feet.
She hit hard, and turned, dazed, to see him land on his feet, as she would have done if she had any damn sense and counted floors. She remembered thinking that as he stood over her, then she saw the hatchet hit his head, and she passed out.
She came to her senses suddenly, screaming, which was something she had never done before. She did not know where she was, but she had been back in the belly of the beast, and not alone. Gene was there, explaining calmly why he intended to rape her.
Had raped her. She stopped screaming.
She was not in the glass castle. There was a rope around her waist. The ground sloped down in front of her. Far below was the dark silver sea of Rhea.
Gaby was beside her, but she was quite busy. She had two ropes around her waist. One went up the slope to the same tree Cirocco was attached to. The other hung taut over darkness. Tears had washed a channel through the dried blood on her face. She was using a knife to saw through one of the ropes.
“Is that Gene’s pack there, Gaby?”
“Yeah. He won’t be needing it. How are you feeling?”
“I’ve been better. Bring him up, Gaby.”
She looked up, her mouth hanging open.
“I don’t want to lose the rope.”
His face was a bloody wreck. One eye was swollen shut, the other merely a slit. His nose was broken and three of his front teeth were gone.
“Quite a fall he took,” Cirocco observed.
“Nothing to what I had in mind.”
“Open his pack and bandage that ear. He’s still losing blood.”
Gaby was building toward an explosion, but Cirocco cut her off with an unwavering stare.
“I’m not going to kill him, so don’t suggest it.”
His ear had been severed by Gaby’s hatchet throw. That had been unintentional on her part; she had meant to plant it in the side of his head, but it had turned in the air and hit him a glancing blow powerful enough to knock him out. He moaned while Gaby bandaged him.
Cirocco began rummaging through his pack, taking things they could use. She kept the provisions and the weapons, threw everything else over the side.
“If we let him live, he’s going to follow us, you know that.”
“He might, and I could definitely do without it. He’ll have to go over the edge.”
“Then why the hell am I—”
“With his chute. Untie his legs.”
She fitted the harness around his crotch. He moaned again, and she looked away from what Gaby had done to him there.
“He thought he killed me,” she was saying, tying the last knot on the bandages. “He meant to, but I turned my head.”
“How bad is it?”
“Not deep, but bloody as hell. I was stunned, and it’s lucky I was too weak to move after what he … after …” Her nose was running, and she wiped it on the back of her hand. “I passed out pretty quick. The next thing I knew he was bending over you.”
“I’m glad you woke up when you did. I made a mess of my escape. And thank you for saving my ass again.”
Gaby looked at her bleakly, and Cirocco was immediately sorry about her choice of words. Gaby seemed to feel personally responsible for what had happened. It couldn’t be easy, Cirocco thought to lie still while someone you love is being violated.
“Why are you letting him live?”
Cirocco looked down at him, and fought through a sudden burning rage until she felt in control again.
“I … you know he was never like this before.”
“I do not know it. He was always a fucking animal underneath, or how could he have done it?”
“We all are. We suppress it, but he can’t anymore. He talked to me like a little boy who’s hurt—not angry, just hurt—because he’s not been getting his way. Something happened to him after the crash, just like something happened to me. And you.”
“But we didn’t try to kill anyone. Listen, let him parachute down. That’s okay. But I think he ought to leave his balls up here.” She hefted the knife, but Cirocco shook her head.
“No. I never liked him much, but we got along. He was a good crewman, and now he’s insane, and …” She was going to say it was partly her responsibility, that he would never have gone insane if she had kept her ship in one piece, but she could not get it out.
“I’m giving him a chance because of what he was. He said he had friends down there. Maybe he was just raving, or maybe they’ll take him in. Cut his hands free.”
Gaby did, and Cirocco gritted her teeth and pushed him with her foot. He began to slide, and seemed to become aware of his surroundings. He screamed as the parachute trailed out behind him, then vanished around the curve of the cable.
They never saw if it opened.
The two women sat there for a long time. Cirocco was afraid to say anything. There was the possibility she would start crying and be unable to stop, and there was no time for it. There were wounds to care for, and a trip to finish.
Gaby’s head was not bad. It should have had stitches, but the disinfectant and a bandage was all they could do. She would have a scar on her forehead.
So would Cirocco, from her impact with the castle floor. There would also be one from the point of her chin to her left ear, and another across her back. None of the cuts were serious enough to worry her.
They tended each other and loaded their packs, and Cirocco looked up at the long stretch of the cable yet to climb before they reached the spoke.
“I think we should go back to the castle and rest before we tackle it,” she said. “A couple days. Get our strength.”
Gaby looked up.
“Oh, sure. But the next part’s going to be easier. Bringing you two down here, I found a stairway.”
Chapter Twenty
The stairway emerged from a heap of sand at the uppermost border of the glass castle and went straight as an arrow until it could no longer be seen. Each step was a meter and a half wide and forty centimeters high, and appeared to have been carved into the face of the cable.
After Cirocco and Gaby had followed it for a time, they began to think it might actually do them little good. It was curving to the south, toward the drop-off. Before long it would surely be impassable.
But the steps remained perfectly level. Soon they were walking on a terraced shelf with a huge wall rising on one side and a sheer drop on the other. There was no handrail, no protection at all. They pressed close to the wall, and trembled with every gust of wind.
Then the shelf began to turn into a tunnel.
It was a gradual thing. There was still open space on the right, but the wall had begun to curl over their heads. The path was curving under the cable.
Cirocco tried to visualize it: always rising, but corkscrewing around the outside of the cable.
After another 2000 steps, they were in pitch blackness.
“Stairs,” Gaby muttered. “They build a thing like this, and they put in stairs.” They had stopped to get out their lamps. Gaby filled hers and trimmed the wick. They would burn one at a time and hope there was enough oil to get them out the other side.
“Maybe they were health nuts,” Cirocco suggested. She struck a match and held it to the wick. “More likely this was an emergency measure, for a loss of power.”
“Well, I’m glad they’re here,” Gaby admitted.
“They were probably here all the way but down lo
wer they’re covered with dirt. It means this place has been unattended for a long time. The trees up here must be new mutations.”
“Whatever you say.” Gaby held the lamp high and looked ahead, then back where she could still see a wedge of light. Her eyes narrowed.
“Look, it’s like we’re at an angle in the road. It curves along the outside, then it cuts to the left and goes straight in.”
Cirocco studied it, and thought Gaby was right.
“It looks like we might be cutting right through the center.”
“Oh, yeah? Remember the place of winds? All that air is going through here, someplace.”
“If this tunnel led to it, we’d know it already. It would have blown us right off the side.”
Gaby looked at the ascending staircase in the flickering lamplight. She sniffed the air.
“It’s pretty warm in here. I wonder if it gets hotter?”
“No way to know but by going in.”
“Uh-huh.” Gaby swayed and the lamp threatened to fall from her fingers. Cirocco put a hand on her shoulder.
“You all right?”
“Yeah, I’m … no, dammit, I’m not.” She leaned against the warm corridor wall. “I’m dizzy, and my knees are weak.” She held out her free hand and looked at it; it trembled slightly.
“Maybe a day of rest wasn’t enough.” Cirocco studied her watch, gazed up the corridor, and frowned. “I’d hoped to be out on the other side and back on the top of the cable again before we rested.”
“I can make it.”
“No,” Cirocco decided. “I don’t feel so hot myself. The question is do we camp here in the corridor where it’s so hot, or go outside?”
Gaby looked back at the drop-off many steps behind them.
“I don’t mind a little sweat.”
There was something about having a fire, even when the weather was unbearably hot. They did not discuss it; Cirocco took small twigs and moss from Gene’s pack and started to build one. Soon she had a small blaze crackling. She fed it like a miser as they went about the mechanical business of setting a meager camp. Sleeping bags were unrolled, pans and knives brought out, provisions searched for the night’s food.
We’re a good team, Cirocco thought, hunkered down while she watched Gaby dice vegetables into the bubbling remains of last night’s stew. Her hands were small and deft, with brown dirt ground into the palms. They could no longer spare water for washing.
Gaby wiped her brow with the back of her hand and glanced up at Cirocco. She smiled—a flickering, tentative thing that broadened when Cirocco smiled back. One eye was nearly covered by a bandage. She dipped the spoon into the stew and slurped noisily.
“Those radish dinguses are best left crunchy,” she said. “Give me your plate.”
She ladled a generous helping and the two of them sat back, side by side but at arm’s length, and ate.
It was delicious. Listening to the small sounds, the pop of the fire and the scraping of spoons on wooden plates, Cirocco was grateful to relax and think of nothing.
“Do you have any more salt?”
Cirocco dug in her pack and found the sack, and also two forgotten sweets, wrapped in yellow leaves. She pressed one into Gaby’s hand and laughed when her eyes lit up. She put her own plate down and unwrapped the chewy, bite-sized confection, held it under her nose and sniffed. It smelled too good to eat all at once. She bit it in half, and the flavor of sugared apricots and sweet cream burst through her mouth.
Gaby was just short of hysterical at Cirocco’s expression of delight. She ate the other half, then began casting covetous glances at the sweet Gaby had put at her side, while Gaby tried to keep a straight face.
“If you’re keeping that for breakfast, you’re going to have to stay awake all night.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I just have enough manners to know dessert is for after dinner.”
She made the unwrapping last five minutes, then examined it critically for another five, sputtering helplessly at Cirocco’s antics. Cirocco did a passable imitation of a cocker spaniel at the dinner table and a homeless waif looking in the window of the bakery, and gasped when Gaby finally put it in her mouth.
She was having so much fun that it hurt when she wondered—while sniffing eagerly with her face close to Gaby’s—if the silliness was wise. Gaby was obviously in heaven with all the attention; her face was flushed with laughter and excitement, her eyes sparkled.
Why couldn’t she just relax and enjoy it?
She must have let some of her worry show, because Gaby was immediately serious. She touched Cirocco’s hand and looked at her urgently, then slowly shook her head. Neither of them dared speak, but Gaby had told her more plainly than any words she might have said, “You have nothing to fear from me.”
Cirocco smiled, and so did Gaby. They spooned up the last of the stew, holding the plates close to their mouths and not worrying about table manners.
But it was not quite the same. Gaby was silent. Soon her hands began to tremble, and the plate clattered to the steps. She sat up, gasping and sobbing, and Cirocco’s hand on her shoulder brought her groping blindly. She drew her knees up and clenched her fists under her chin, buried her face under Cirocco’s neck and wept.
“Oh, I hurt, I hurt so much.”
“Then let it out. Cry.” She put her cheek on the short, black hair, very fine and beginning to look tousled, then lifted Gaby’s chin and looked for a place to kiss that wasn’t covered by bandage. She was going for the cheek but at the last moment, not sure why she did it, she kissed her lips. They were moist, and very warm.
Gaby looked at her for a long moment, sniffed loudly, and put her face back on Cirocco’s shoulder. She burrowed into the hollow of her neck, then was still. No shakes, no sobs.
“How are you so strong?” she asked, her voice muffled but very close.
“How are you so brave? You keep saving my life.”
Gaby shook her head. “No, I mean it. If I didn’t have you to lean on right now, I’d go crazy. And you don’t even cry.”
“I don’t cry easily.”
“Rape is easy?” She searched Cirocco’s eyes again. “God, I hurt so bad. I hurt from Gene, and I hurt for you. I don’t know which is worse.”
“Gaby, I’d be willing to make love to you if that would help stop the pain, but I hurt, too. Physically.”
Gaby shook her head.
“That’s not what I want from you, even if you were feeling great. If you’re ‘willing,’ that’s no good. I’m not Gene, and I’d rather keep the hurt than have you like that. It’s enough to love you.”
What to say, what to say? Stick to the truth, she told herself.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever love you back. Not that way. But so help me,” she hugged Gaby and wiped quickly at her nose, “so help me, you’re the best friend I ever had.”
Gaby let out her breath with a soft sigh.
“That will have to do, for now.” Cirocco thought Gaby was going to cry again, but she didn’t. She hugged Cirocco once, briefly, and kissed her neck.
“Life is very hard, isn’t it?” she asked in a small voice.
“It is that. Let’s get to bed.”
They started out on three steps; Gaby stretched on the highest, Cirocco tossing and turning on the next, and the embers of the fire on the step below her.
But Cirocco cried out in the night and woke in utter darkness. Sweat was pouring from her body as she waited for Gene’s knife to slash. Gaby pulled her down and held her until the nightmare had passed.
“How long have you been here?” Cirocco asked.
“Since I started to cry again. Thanks for letting me join you.”
Liar. But she smiled when she thought it.
It grew hotter for a thousand steps, so hot that the walls could not be touched and the soles of their boots were burning. Cirocco tasted defeat, knowing there had to be at least several thousand more steps before they were in the middle, from which point they might expect
it to cool again.
“One thousand more steps,” she said. “If we can make it that far. If it’s not cooler, we go back and try it on the outside.” But she knew the cable was too steep now. The trees had become inconveniently far apart even before they entered the tunnel. The tilt of the cable would reach eighty degrees before they arrived at the spoke. She would be faced with her hypothetical glass mountain, the worst possibility she had imagined when preparing for the trip.
“Whatever you say. Just a minute, I want to take off this shirt. I’m smothering.”
Cirocco stripped down, too, and they continued to hike through the furnace.
Five hundred steps later, they put their clothes back on. Three hundred steps beyond that, they opened their packs and got out their coats.
Ice began to form on the walls, and snow crunched underfoot. They donned gloves and pulled up the hoods on their parkas, then stood in lamplight which had become amazingly bright with the white walls to reflect it, watching ice crystals condense from their breaths and looking forward at a corridor that was unquestionably narrowing.
“A thousand more steps?” Gaby suggested.
“You must have read my mind.”
The ice soon forced Cirocco to bend her head, then get on her hands and knees. It quickly grew dark again as Gaby led with the lamp in front of her. Cirocco paused and blew on her stiff hands, then got on her belly and crawled.
“Hey! I’m stuck!” She was pleased to hear no panic in her voice. It was frightening, but she knew she could get free if she backed up.
The scrabbling sounds in front of her stopped.
“Okay. I can’t turn around here, but it’s getting wider. I’ll go ahead and see what it’s like. Twenty meters. Okay?”
“Right.” She listened to the sounds getting farther away. The darkness closed in and she had just enough time to work up a very cold sweat before the light dazzled her. In a moment Gaby was back. There were ice crystals on her eyebrows.
“This is the worst spot, right here.”
