It was cold. We had waited until afternoon, when the sun would be in the best position for seeing Muldoon, and the temperature at its highest. Still my breath was icy vapor, freezing in the air as I exhaled. I was well swaddled in warm clothes, and as long as I kept moving only my cheeks and the tip of my nose felt chilled. But what about the hours I proposed to spend perched on top of the tower, peering into the telecon?
If I didn't fall to death, I was going to freeze to death.
At the moment of that thought I felt a tap on my ankle, and heard Enderton's impatient, creaking voice, "Get on with it. What are you waiting for?"
I glanced down at him, which was a big mistake. He was right underneath me, waiting for his turn on the ledge. Below him, spread out like toys, were buildings and roads and hedges and fields. It seemed impossible that our house could appear so small, from just halfway up the water tower.
To fight my panic, I started to climb as fast as I could. Too fast. It was only when I slipped a rung with my left foot, and hung for a moment by just my hands, that I slowed to a more sensible pace. I could hear my own breath, loud in my throat. But soon the round bulk of the water tank loomed above me.
And finally I was there, sprawled on the balcony and recovering my wind. Only then did I realize that I could hear Enderton's gasping breath, too, far below me.
It was obvious. Take a man whose lungs had already been damaged by space and by an accident. Place him in air so cold that even healthy Jay Hara felt the killing chill in the depths of his chest. And then make that man climb a hundred-foot tower with a load of equipment lashed to his back.
Enderton would never reach the top. He would weaken and fall. For a moment I hoped he would, but then I nerved myself to start back down and help him. At least I had to look down and see where he was. Before I could do it, the ladder below me was creaking, and a faint, hoarse voice said, "Grab it. Lift the pack. Or I'm done for."
I leaned out over the edge. There was one dizzying glimpse of the far-off ground, and a random thought—Ridiculous. I want to be a spacer, and I'm scared of heights!—and then I focused all my attention on Paddy Enderton. He was a few rungs below me, clinging to the ladder. His usually pale face wore a tinge of unnatural purplish-blue. His backpack of equipment, hooked around his great shoulders, was just close enough for me to grab the top straps, and hoist. Twenty seconds later we were lying head to head, panting and shuddering on the narrow balcony at the top of the water tower.
Paddy Enderton had his faults—more of them than I knew at the time—but lack of willpower was not on the list. While I still thought that he was dying he was heaving himself upright, gazing across the lake towards Muldoon Port.
"Ah," he said. "Ah." His breath was a series of short, rattling gasps, enough for only brief, jerky speech fragments. "Right enough. Muldoon. Maybe. Maybe."
He gestured to me to help him, and began taking parts of the telecon from our packs. In his shaking hands the tubes seemed to join themselves. The skeleton was assembled in a couple of minutes, while I did nothing but sit and watch.
Last of all, Enderton lifted the twin eyepieces. He peered into them, out across the lake. And then he gave a whistling groan, as though all the air had gone from his lungs at once.
"It happened," he said. "Happened already. I'm a dead man."
He leaned back against the bulk of the water tank and laid the eyepieces on the balcony. I grabbed them and lifted them to my own eyes, their metal rims freezing cold against my unprotected face.
Muldoon Port was clearly visible, all the way to the ground as I had suggested. From the despairing tone in Enderton's voice I had almost expected the two-half-man to spring into view, a man without arms carrying a legless one on his back. But there was nothing unusual about Muldoon Port. It was quiet and peaceful, with only a handful of people walking between the buildings. Then I realized that was unusual. When I had last been there the port had hummed with life; now it was almost empty.
Winterfall. It had been and gone.
I was still staring when Enderton grabbed the viewing tubes from me again and rotated the assembly. From the direction that he pointed I knew what he must be doing. He was following the shore line, tracking the road leading out of Muldoon Port around the southern end of the lake toward Toltoona.
"Nothing to see," he muttered after a few seconds. "But nothing means nothing. They'll know how to follow. They'll be on the way. It could be any time."
Again the eyepieces were laid on the balcony, while Enderton stood up and leaned dangerously over the rail. He stared, first south to Toltoona, then away in the opposite direction along the line of the lake.
"The shore road," he said abruptly. "How does it run north of here? Does it carry on right around?"
"Not close to the lake. It goes off west, then curves round to the Tullamore bridge. I've never been there, but it's on Doctor Eileen's rounds. She says it gets just about impossible in deep snow."
Enderton said not another word, but he grabbed the telecon, took it apart, and stuffed all the pieces that we had both struggled to carry up into one backpack. I didn't see any way that a single person could manage the whole thing. It was only when he set his foot on the first step of the ladder that I realized we weren't going to.
"The telecon!" I said.
"Safe enough up here." He was already three rungs down. "It's yours. You can get it any time you fancy. Come on."
I had no idea what he was doing, but I didn't want to stay on top of that water tower a second longer than necessary. The sun was low in the sky, a north wind was rising, and the air was becoming colder and colder. I took a last look at the precious telecon, sitting wedged on the balcony, then hefted my empty backpack and followed him. I didn't look at anything, and especially I didn't look down. But I could hear Enderton below me, wheezing and muttering.
"Can't be north, and can't be Toltoona. They'll have the roads covered. Water, then. It has to be water."
I was counting the rungs as we went down. After seventy-eight we were again at the ledge. Enderton did not stop this time to rest on it, and nor did I. At the hundred and thirtieth rung I paused and finally risked a glance down. He was almost at the bottom, his face purple-red and his every breath a groan.
I kept going, and soon my boots were crunching into deep snow. I felt a giddy sense of relief and safety. Within a moment it was gone, because Paddy Enderton had me by the arm. He was leaning against me for support, but at the same time he was dragging me down the hill—away from the house.
"You're going the wrong way," I protested, and tried to pull free.
"No. The only way." His fingers tightened around my biceps, hard enough to hurt. "We're sailing across the lake, Jay."
"We can't. In another half hour it will be dark." And then, when he ignored that, "What about your things back at the house?"
"I have all I need." He patted his pocket. "No more talk. You take me. Tonight."
"Mother doesn't know where I am. I can't do it."
"If you want to live, you can. Or do you think Molly Hara would prefer a dead son? It's your choice." He reached with his free hand into his jacket pocket, and pulled out a thin-bladed knife. "You sail me to Muldoon Port, Jay Hara. Tonight. Or I cut your throat here and now, and take my chances sailing across by myself."
CHAPTER 6
I thought I would describe what it felt like to be out on Lake Sheelin at night, in winter, with a blustery wind rolling and pitching the little sailboat, and a murderous man holding a naked knife blade just a couple of feet away from me.
I can't do it. I think that terror must be like an earache or a stomachache. After it's over you know that you had it and you know that it hurt bad, but you can't feel it or even imagine it, once it has gone away.
I know it must have been freezing cold in the boat; but I have no memory of being cold. I must have set the sail, too, and used the distant lights of Muldoon Port to guide our course, but I don't remember that, either. What I do remember is the
insane sense of relief, when we were a quarter of a mile offshore and Paddy Enderton put away his knife and pulled out of his pocket the same little wafer of black plastic that he had fiddled with back in the house, what seemed like weeks ago but was really only the previous day.
This time he must have done something different with it, because suddenly the plastic card disappeared. The volume around it became a three-dimensional pattern of colored points of light, moving in complicated spirals past each other. Enderton stared at them for a long time, then his hand reached out into the center of the display. The lights vanished. Once again he was gripping a plain black oblong.
It was the fascination of watching those lights that made me miss the other change, the one in Enderton himself. When we had first descended the water tower and floundered through deep snow down to the pier and the sailboat, my captor's breath had groaned and wheezed in his throat. Once seated in the boat, however, I had been too busy to take notice of it.
Now I heard his breathing change again, to a loud, painful grunt. Enderton's hand suddenly jerked up to paw at his throat. I could see his face only as a pale oval in the darkness, and I leaned forward to peer at it more closely. As I did so he gasped, shuddered, and flopped forward. His head met my knee, then slipped sideways to hit the wooden seat with a solid thud.
At first I thought he was doing it on purpose, and for a few seconds I was too scared to react. Then I reached out and shook his shoulder.
"Mr. Enderton!"
He lay face down, his legs caught under the seat. If it had not been for that, I think he would have toppled sideways and gone right overboard. As it was, the boat was too narrow for me to turn him over and I was not strong enough to lift him.
I crouched forward myself, my head down close to his. He was breathing, but in shallow, rasping breaths like troubled snoring.
I peered ahead of us, across the lake. We were less than a quarter of the way to Muldoon Port. The wind was with us, the lights of the port were plainly visible, and we could certainly keep going as we were. But what would I do when we arrived? I felt sure that Paddy Enderton had made his plans, but I had no idea what they were. With Muldoon Port almost deserted, it was not even certain that there would be anyone around to lift him out of the boat.
On the other hand, what would he do if I turned back, and then he recovered consciousness and learned that I had disobeyed his orders?
The weather made my mind up for me. As I sat hesitating, it began to snow again. Within a few minutes the lights of Muldoon Port blurred, then disappeared behind a veil of white.
I reached forward and groped around in Enderton's jacket pockets until I found the knife. I threw it overboard. Only then did I turn the boat around, reset the sail, and head back for the western shore of the lake.
The lights of Toltoona had also vanished into the falling snow, so I could not tell just where I was heading. It was luck, not skill, that brought me to shore no more than a couple of hundred yards south of the pier that led up to our house.
I eased us along to the jetty and tied up the boat, but even in the best of weather I could not have carried the weight of Paddy Enderton up the path. He had to stay there face down, the snow falling to cover his broad back and exposed head, while I ran all the way up to the house, praying that Mother had not gone off looking for me and that somebody would be there to give me a hand.
She was in the kitchen. So was Uncle Duncan.
"There, Molly," he said, as I blundered in. "I told you he'd be safe enough."
"Jay!" began Mother. "I've told you a thousand times—" Then she saw my face.
"Mr. Enderton," I gasped. "He's really sick. Down by the shore. I can't lift him."
When spacer visitors were around, Mother liked to act weak and helpless. She was neither, of course, and now she proved it.
"Unconscious?" she snapped.
"He was, when I left."
"Right," she said. And then, without another word to me, "Duncan, we'll need a blanket, and maybe something to carry him on. I'll find those. You get the flashlight and our coats. Hurry."
Mother had taken over. And with that, I became empty and deflated. All I wanted to do was sink down on the floor of the warm kitchen and go to sleep. But I couldn't, because Mother was hustling me out of the door so I could lead them to the pier.
Paddy Enderton had not moved since I left, and I thought for a horrible moment that he was dead. He groaned, though, when Uncle Duncan straightened him, and he was muttering something under his breath as they heaved him up onto the pier and wrapped him in a blanket. I stood by ready to help, but all I was allowed to do was hold the flashlight. Mother and Uncle Duncan between them carried him up to the house, where they laid him on a couch dragged close to the stove.
His color was awful, a uniform grey pallor except for isolated spots of purple-red flaming on his cheekbones. Mother lowered her head to his chest and remained stooped over him for a long time. Finally she straightened and came to where I was sitting slumped in a chair at the kitchen table.
"I'm sorry, Jay," she said quietly, "But you have to go out again. We'll do what we can, but without a physician's help he's probably going to die. Whatever persuaded him to go out on the lake in weather like this, with his chest and lungs?"
She was not looking for an answer from me, although I could have given one, and she went right on, "You know where Doctor Eileen lives. I want you to go to her house. Tell her what happened here. Tell her that your mother says it's urgent, and bring her back with you. Go now, as fast as you can."
Before I knew it I was pushed out again into the freezing dark, big flakes falling silently on me as I started along the southern road. No one had been this way since the snow began, and in places I sank to my knees in undisturbed drifts. I put my head down and struggled on. One good thing was that the wind was steady and at my back. My eyes and face could at least remain sheltered. But there was little else to comfort me. The day had been exhausting, mentally as well as physically, and I felt ready to drop. After less than a hundred yards I halted and stood panting in the road.
At this rate I would never make it to Doctor Eileen's house. Sheer fatigue would stop me. If I tried to keep going, the first person along the road in the morning would discover my frozen corpse.
It was the wind, pushing persistently at my back, that gave me the idea that saved my life—and not for the reason that I thought at the time.
It occurred to me that if I left the road and went down the hill to my left, I would arrive at the place where the sailboat was tied up. With the wind at its present heading, it would then be child's play for me to hoist the sail and allow myself to be blown all the way to Doctor Eileen's lakeshore house. Even at night, the darkness of the lake and the reflection of light from the snow on shore would be enough to leave me in no doubt as to the land/water boundary.
Before I knew it I had made up my mind. My legs seemed like weighted pendulums as they carried me down the hill towards the pier. Two minutes later I was in the sailboat, scraping snow off the seat and struggling to shake it off the sail. One minute after that the boat was away, gliding smoothly before the following wind.
It had sounded so easy, but real life never seems to work out quite as simple and pleasant as imagination paints it. My hands froze almost at once, so I had to keep one tucked into my jacket and hold the rudder lines with the other. My bottom was the next victim. Sitting for three-quarters of an hour on the bare plank seat of a sailboat, cramped and freezing, was no joke. I felt thawed snow, cold enough to be painful, seeping into the seat of my pants. To add terror to discomfort I had an awful few minutes when I lost sight of the snowy shore. But easing the boat steadily to the right solved that, and once I was past the lights of Toltoona I knew the worst was over. Doctor Eileen's house came next, and the lights were on there all the time. The only question was whether she was home, or had been dragged out into the blizzard for some other nighttime emergency.
Either way, I knew one thing fo
r sure: Doctor Eileen's house would be my last port of call for the night.
* * *
I was wrong about that too, of course. For the past couple of days, it seemed that every time I thought I knew what would happen next, events took a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn.
Doctor Eileen was home, and despite the lateness of the hour she was up and fully dressed. She let me get only as far as "Mother says it's urgent," before she swept me into her cruiser and headed north towards our house.
The good news was that the vehicle floated as quickly and easily over snow as over anything else. The better news was that Doctor Eileen often lived in it for days, so hot food and drink could be produced on the little stove in the rear of the cabin. We were hardly through Toltoona before I was feeling, if not restored, at least human. I answered her questions as best I could, about my aborted trip across to Muldoon Port, about Paddy Enderton's collapse on the way, about his symptoms, and about my own desperate decision to reach her by water rather than by road.
It was the last answer that produced the most reaction. She had been sitting quietly in the driver's seat, taking us rapidly but carefully along the north road. I was behind her, paying no attention to anything outside, which from the moment we started had been little more than a whirlwind of white.
"Did I hear you right?" she said. "Did you say that you had trouble walking because the snow was unbroken?"
"Yes. From our house toward Toltoona, no one had been along it."
"Well, they certainly have now. A number of people. See for yourself."
The footprints were already filling, but they were unmistakable. Four or five separate tracks led in the direction we were traveling. There was no sign of them returning. I stayed up at the front of the cruiser and watched, convinced that at some point the trails in the snow would leave the road and head away, up the hill or down toward the shore.
They didn't. They continued, all the way to the path that served the front porch of my own house.
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