by Allan Kaster
Maggie looks back at me. Her eyes are slightly unfocused, indicating she is viewing both the VIR and real worlds simultaneously. She holds up her left ring finger. The capsule beneath her skin is visibly moving, my heart and the q-dot linked cells are beating so fast. The capsule looks like it is trying to tear free from Maggie’s skin.
This is Maggie’s moment. The first time she has ever seen the Mountain. I cannot take away from that. I force a smile. “Headache. Just a regular headache. The painkillers will kick in soon.” It’s a half truth, at least. This feeling of wrongness, it isn’t a cerebral storm. It’s something else entirely, pushing the side effects of the painkillers aside, sharpening the world to almost painful clarity.
Maggie and the AI turn back to the screens. My hands move to my collar, find that rough place again. The palm-sized pendant had been smooth but for three shallow depressions in the side that rested against my skin. Beneath those depressions were encased a pinch of soil, a wheat seed and a droplet of water, all originating on old Earth. Once, the wearing of that symbol proclaimed me a priestess of ONE, the Order of the New Earth. Among other things, ONE considered mountains to be sacred, every rock a part of the Mother, the creator who watches over us all. Though I am no longer a priestess, seeing the Mountain makes me want to fall to my knees.
The old prayer rises within me: May the Mother watch over us. May we watch over the Mother. I do not speak it, of course. I have no right to that prayer now and to speak it would be the deepest blasphemy.
Maggie looks back at me, her eyes filled with light. She holds up her left hand, and I twine my fingers with hers, pressing our encapsulated heartbeats together. I breathe slowly, trying to synchronize my heart with hers. I never manage it, but I try anyway.
“We’re here, Aisha,” Maggie says. “I’m going to summit the Mountain. Because it’s there.”
Because it’s there. Words which the flesh-and-blood George Mallory may or may not have said about his Everest. Words which make me shudder, because, like Maggie, I understand that pull all too well.
The ship turns, the Mountain sliding from view. Even out of direct line of sight, I can still feel its presence. Can still feel that wrongness.
The hull creaks and cracks as we dock with the station, as though the Wanda R. too is having to fight against that gravitational pull. Data flows back and forth between ship and station. An atonal chime: something has gone wrong. Maggie slides out of the seat and I take her place, expecting to see nothing more serious than another dropped transmission.
For once, I see the problem before the AI does. My unease deepens, and my left hand prickles, numbness creeping up my fingers. I check the numbers again and again with the same result. Maggie’s hands tighten on my shoulders, and I know she has seen it, too.
There is a clear disparity between what our internal ship sensors and Icefall station read as current time. Our journey through greyspace has taken approximately half the time it should have. Nothing I can see on the board explains why.
My hands clench together in my lap. The jagged pattern of prosthetic mesh presses out from beneath my skin, a dark web.
The AI clips a screen into feeds streaming from Icefall’s satellites, scans through until it finds a view of the Mountain and slowly zooms in. I feel as though I am falling. Cold rises around me, and I see white. My right hand goes numb, the prosthetic web locking in place, turning my fingers into a useless claw. My hands clamp down on the edge of the board, its solidity stabilizing me.
The screen zooms in on a close view of the Mountain. Maggie and the AI lean forward, their eyes shining.
That wrongness writhes within me, scrapes at the marrow of my bones.
Amidst the pure white of the Mountain’s glaciers there is a burgeoning darkness, like blood rising toward the surface of a wound.
The Mountain is weeping.
2
Two colonies have been established on Icefall.
In the first wave of human colonization beyond the solar system, megaconglomerates ruled the stars. MacGregor Corporation, one of the largest of the megacons, had terraformed and established successful colonies on a dozen planets when they discovered Icefall.
Icefall was the most similar planet to old Earth yet discovered. Macgregor’s other colonized planets had required varying amounts of terraforming in order to sustain human life, but Icefall needed little. Only slightly smaller than old Earth, Icefall had comparable gravity and atmosphere. The planet had no native fauna, and the soil, buried beneath a thick layer of permafrost, supported only a few strains of simple microflora. Tests showed the native microflora was easily outcompeted by old Earth organisms, and rendered a rich, fertile soil after such treatment.
Scientists commented on the similarity of Icefall to old Earth before the changes, spoke of long odds and strange coincidences. Religious leaders said that it meant that Icefall was meant to be ours. A new home, a new Earth.
The only drawback was the unpredictable twisting of greyspace within the system, which MacGregor marketed as an oddness—something to add to the adventure of pioneering. The first promotional image they rolled out was of a pioneer farmer, his thick body geneered for the cold, holding aloft an Icefall-grown apple, the red skin of the fruit bright against the blue sky. Behind him, children laughed as they skipped around the edges of the shadow cast by the Mountain.
The colony thrived. The permafrost was melted, the exposed soil treated to become rich and fertile. Abundant crops were reaped and fat-cheeked babies were born, the first generation of Icefall. Icefall Station became one of the busiest space hubs of local space. The first extra-Earth ONE temple was established, bells and voices ringing out Morning and Evening Calls.
For seven years, everything was perfect.
And then the Mountain wept.
3
The Mountain is over two thousand meters higher than Chomolungma—the mountain known to George Mallory as Everest—was in the last measurements made before the Himalayan range crumbled. In profile, the Mountain bears an eerie resemblance to Chomolungma, apart from the network of glaciers that twist through the land surrounding the Mountain, all of them converging into a massive icefall.
An icefall: a steep part of a glacier like a frozen waterfall. Compared to the rest of the glacier, the icefall moves fast, crevasses opening and closing like mouths as the ice shifts. Towers of ice known as seracs form where the crevasses intersect; often larger than houses and precariously balanced, they can collapse at any moment. Huge blocks of ice and avalanches can fall from the mountain above, especially during the day when the snow begins to melt. The icefall on Chomolungma, the Khumbu Icefall, was one of the deadliest places on the mountain, many lives lost to its shifting crevasses and collapsing seracs. To me, icefalls are a reminder that mountains are alive, that in their high places you are only ever a heartbeat from death. If you look down into the blue shadows deep in a crevasse, it’s as though you can see eternity. You feel small, insignificant. Human. Afraid.
This is how the Mountain weeps: first, there is a darkening beneath the ice of the glaciers, and all of the seracs in the icefall collapse. Then, all of the ice and snow on the Mountain liquefies. Millions of megaliters of water wash down over the continent, salty and warm as blood. The flood destroying everything in its path.
For the span of a single Icefall day—just marginally longer than an old Earth day—the floodwaters lie quiescent. Not so much as a ripple moves across this new and strange sea. The Mountain, too, is quiet, a bare jut of bone-pale rock slicing into the sky. And then, impossibly, over the span of the next day, the waters retreat, moving against gravity. The Mountain draws everything back toward it; the glaciers, the icefall and the continental ice all reform.
Through all of this, there is no change in ambient temperature. And by the time the sun rises the next day, there is no sign that anything has happened at all.
4
The Mountain wept, and the MacGregor colony was washed away. After the waters receded
and the ice reformed, nothing of the fields or houses or gardens remained.
All that was left were the bodies of the colonists. Lined up in neat ranks along the frozen shore, they lay on their sides, every trace of life gone, down to the Earth bacteria that should have colonized their flesh.
MacGregor offered to pay for burials on Icefall, but every family chose to fly the bodies at their own expense to other planets and have them buried there.
The losses incurred by MacGregor from the destruction of the colony were astronomical. People lost faith in the megacon and began to migrate from their other colonies. Soon after, MacGregor Corporation collapsed.
The second Icefall colony was purely scientific in nature. No farms, no permanent structures, funded only by curiosity.
Geoengineers probed the Mountain, ships searched the ocean for any sign of the lost colony. Navigators and AIs tried to make sense of the twisted system greyspace.
A single ONE ship arrived, placed a memorial to the lost temple. The ship remained in orbit, transmitting Morning and Evening Calls.
Apart from the bodies, no trace was ever found of the lost colony.
The Mountain was just rock and ice and snow.
The system greyspace refused to be mapped.
The scientific colony was dismantled, and the scientists retreated to Icefall Station. They set satellites in orbit and sent sensors down to the surface, and they waited. Precisely seven Icefall years after the first colony was lost, the Mountain wept again. The satellites captured imagery of the flood, but every one of the surface sensors failed the moment the ice fell.
Feeds on all of the colonized planets were thick with the imagery streaming from Icefall. All of humanity watched.
Over the next seven years, humanity continued expanding out into the New Universe. One by one, the scientists left Icefall, turning to questions for which answers could be calculated. The ONE ship remained in orbit the longest, transmitting Morning and Evening Calls, but eventually it too was recalled. Soon only the satellites remained, and the station with its ageing AI.
The next time the Mountain wept, no one but the satellites and AI watched.
5
I leave Maggie and the AI on the bridge. The sound of rushing water follows me, echoing in the narrow corridor as if I’m walking through a flood that I cannot see, cannot feel.
Halfway to the ship’s main living space, my wrist comm vibrates. Maggie, no doubt. I mute it, twist it around my wrist so I can’t see the display. If she wants to know how I am, she can come and find me.
I pull the living space hatch closed behind me, sag against it. In the blessed silence, I take a deep breath, release it slowly. Focus on what’s real. Six tall screens on the walls, all darkened now. Two long tables down the center of the room, their surfaces strewn with the bots Maggie has been working on. Silver maintenance bots no larger than my palm dart around the tables, stopping now and then to check a coupling or a control panel. Larger maintenance bots move along the sides of the room, vanish into hatches set low in the walls. The ship hums with familiar activity, the bots keeping the Wanda R. running just as my own cells do my body. It’s comforting and predictable. Soothing.
I run my fingers over the edges of one of the box-shaped bots Maggie has been working on. There are a dozen, all purchased new for this expedition. They are known as Sherpas, named for the Nepalese ethnic group from old Earth, many of whom used to act as guides and porters on the mountains, especially Chomolungma. The Sherpa bots are workhorses used by most mountaineers, able to scan routes for climbers and be programmed by them to set ropes and camps, as well as carry supplies. Maggie has lacquered ours white, affixed gleaming Union Jack plaques to their sides.
Leaving the Sherpas, I move down to the end of the table. There, standing alone, is a large bot formed in the shape of a winged bird. I stroke my hand over its head, feel the slight give of pseudo-prosthetic beneath the tough black polymer skin. Its eye sensors can stream 2-D audio and video back to a remote viewer, and the prosthetic and polymer should give it the ability to continue functioning at any altitude a human can survive.
I designed this bot, had the pseudo-prosthetic cloned from my own cells. Through its eyes, I will be able to see and hear Maggie. She will stream VIR for anyone who wants to clip into her feed, but this 2-D feed will be mine alone.
This bot is named Gorak, after the Nepalese raven-like birds who used to be seen on Chomolungma and her sister mountains. Goraks flew high on the mountain, and were known to scavenge food from camps, and even feed on the corpses of those who died on the mountain. An ill-luck name for the bot, some would say, but in ONE, ravens and other carrion eaters are seen as the guardians of the place that stands between life and death, between humans and the Mother. This one will be my eyes on the Mountain; it will keep Maggie safe.
Giving the Gorak’s head a final pat, I stand up, move down the ship’s main corridor, past the cargo bays and the green compartments that supply us with food and oxygen.
At the airlock that leads down to the VIR pod, I pause. The pod is Maggie’s domain. Unlike the rest of the ship, the apparent gravity in the pod is adjustable. Maggie spends long hours in here exercising in higher gravity, longer floating in zero-G. She claims that being weightless is relaxing. All zero-G does to me is turn my stomach.
I press my palm against the lock control, and the door opens. I do not enter, merely stand on the threshold. The screen imagery has changed. Instead of Demeter’s sky, it now shows footage filmed by a drone flying over a mountain range. I recognize the Himalaya immediately. The imagery is old, taken before the changes on old Earth. I can see the tents and flags of base camp at Chomolungma, the smaller clusterings of tents huddled together in other camps higher on the mountain just barely visible. The drone flies higher, then hovers above the summit. Amidst the tangle of prayer flags stands a single climber, their form wreathed by a plume of spindrift.
There have always been people in love with high places, people who have climbed, who have looked to the summit. Who have longed to claim the highest places as their own.
There have also been people who have seen the mountains as sacred. My own ancestors lived in the shadow of Chomolungma herself, worshipped the mountain as the home of the Mother Goddess.
In ONE, I returned to that belief. I was taught it was sacrilege to set foot on any mountain’s summit and that the violation of these sacred places of old Earth was part of the vast spiral of events that led to the changes and the eventual exodus from the dying planet. ONE teaches us that, for our folly, for daring to place ourselves, mere humans, in the realm of gods and goddesses, humanity will never know a true home again. The Morning and Evening Calls every temple performs at dawn and dusk are a question that will never be answered, a mourning that will never end.
Back on old Earth, mountaineers were seen as heroes. Now, with humanity scattered through space, it is seen as folly, an old-fashioned sport. Why climb mountains when you can dance between the stars? We are heroes to no one but ourselves, ostracized by ONE, and yet we still climb.
Maggie was asked once why she climbed. It was after she became the first person to summit Mt. Hargreaves, then considered to be one of the most treacherous mountains in colonized space, an accomplishment that brought Maggie a brief flood of publicity. Maggie had simply smiled and closed the connection. Years later, when I asked her about it, she said that no one could truly understand it, not unless they had been up above the clouds themselves. Not unless they had been there and felt the world opening up around them.
I understand it. When I think about being up there in the thin air—even as the fear rises and my right hand clenches tight into that useless claw—I understand it.
Maggie remains the only person to solo Mt. Hillary, the only person to successfully summit and descend Mt. Messner. On her second climb of Mt. Hargreaves, she summited twice within the span of several hours.
All of these accomplishments, and yet she has always looked toward the Mountai
n.
This is what remains of the grand colony of Icefall: a climbing competition. The season opens once every seven years, climbers assigned individual windows during the three months after the Mountain weeps. There is no entry fee, and no one is certain who runs the competition or selects the season’s climbers from the applicants. There are no rules, except that the entrant must be the only human on the planet’s surface during the span of their climb, and that they must have no contact with the outside in any form. There is no reward but the summit itself.
The Mountain is not technically difficult. Apart from its height, there is nothing that makes it impossible to summit. There are no constraints on geneering for cold and altitude tolerance, nor limits on bot support.
And yet, in countless seasons, no one has reached the summit.
Some fall. Some lie down to sleep, apparently healthy, and do not wake. Some simply step off into the void.
On old Earth, it was customary to “bury” fallen climbers in crevasses when possible. The movement of the ice would eventually disgorge the bodies, oftentimes mangled from the grinding motion of the glacier. On Icefall, deceased climbers remain where they lie until the Mountain weeps.
All of the dead flow forth in the flood. Satellite feeds show only empty waters, but when the flood retreats and the ice reforms, the bodies are left behind on the shore. All else is gone. Autopsies of the bodies show no obvious cause of death: no sign of gross injury—even if the climber had fallen—and no evidence of heart attack or embolism, nor cerebral or pulmonary edema, the infiltration of fluid into the brain or lungs that happens sometimes as part of acute mountain sickness, even in geneered climbers.
The bodies are untouched. Unharmed. Perfect as sacrifices.
Last season, three climbers attempted the Mountain. Twins known publicly as Jeden and Dwa, wearing the colors of Poland, both of them null-gendered and geneered for altitude. Jeden climbed first, confident and strong. At exactly one thousand meters, ze turned from the ridge ze had been traversing, paused, unclipped from the rope and then stepped out into empty air. In orbit on their ship, Dwa watched, helpless and weeping. And yet when ze climbed, ze did exactly the same as zer twin.
