ELIZABETH: [Concern.] Wouldn't sleep be more therapeutic?
BLEYN: You know that we Tanu naturally require less sleep than your race. We are far more comfortable awake, when we can maintain our respiration at a higher rate and alleviate the effects of anoxia.
ELIZABETH: Well ... be careful. I understand that mountain sickness can afflict the strong as well as the less rugged among humans. This is doubtless true among Tanu as well.
BLEYN: Tomorrow we reach the high point of our journey. We will endure ... Do you have the route selected for us? I have the chart ready to mark.
ELIZABETH: [Image.] It seems that the snowy ridge above Camp 3 still provides your best access to the Col. After the storm the snow will be deeper and you can expect soft and slow going. Tell Basil there are dangerous cornices that have formed within the saddle of the Col, so he can no longer count uponusing that route. You'll have to traverse the hard-frozen snowfield at the foot of Rosa's West Face. It means an additional climb, I'm afraid, but only about 400 meters total gain.
BLEYN: To 8210! Goddess sustain us. The breath burns in my lungs at the very thought.
ELIZABETH: But from then on, it's downhill all the way—and in good weather. You should have clear blue skies for at least three days.
BLEYN: Tana willing, there is a good chance we may even reach the aircraft tomorrow. Did the storms bury them?
ELIZABETH: They're still quite visible. Only slightly hidden in drifts.
BLEYN: Something hidden. Go and find it. Something lost behind the Ranges...[laughter],
ELIZABETH: [Anxiety.]
BLEYN: No—it's only a silly poem that Basil quoted to us, a human glorification of adventures such as this one. I find the poem, and the attitude it celebrates, incomprehensible. Yet of the five humans in our party, only Mr. Betsy has the good sense to despise and abominate our travels through this terrible place. The others are thrilled at the prospect of the mountain's conquest!...Tell me, Elizabeth. Is it true that in your future world, humans climb peaks such as this purely for sport?
ELIZABETH: Quite true.
BLEYN: How will we ever understand your race!
ELIZABETH: If I told you, you would never believe it.
In the morning, Bleyn and Aronn felt better. Basil decided to revert to their originalclimbing configuration of two parties. He, Betsy, and Bleyn led the way, with Ookpik, Bengt, Nazir, and Aronn following some fifteen minutes behind. The snow on the ridge was knee-keep, and very soft after the early morning sun went to work on it. Basil's team plowedahead breaking trail for three tedious hours; then Ookpik's group had their turn. In someplaces, the humans floundered nearly waist-deep, but it was the long-legged Tanu who seemed most depleted by the effort. Aronn, especially, had gone ashen-faced and sluggish. He seemed confused by Ookpik's simplest orders and found it difficult to keep up the modest pace set by the humans in the team.
By noon the climbers had nearly attained the elevation of the West Col. Basil decreed a lunch halt in a sheltered snow hollow.
"Do you see that foggy glitter ahead?" He pointed up the slope. "It's wind, blowing through the Col, and it means the end of this beastly soft stuff. However, I'm afraid we'llhave to—er—lean into it a bit crossing the snowfield on the upper slope. The traverse will be short, but possibly rather grim, until we get down onto the northern flank and out of the venturi-effect wind. What we need now is good hot food, and plenty to drink. Soup and sweet tea. Dehydration is one of our deadliest enemies now. It aggravates the fatigue and hypothermia and mountain sickness and other stresses on our bodies."
"The worst stress I suffer is when I look into a mirror," Mr. Betsy complained. "My poor nose and cheeks are sunburned to a frazzle!"
Ookpik thrust a portable stove and a large decamole pot at him. "Go melt snow and spare us the bitching and I'll let you have some of my rhinoceros lard. It's only a little rancid."
"Ugh!" cried Betsy and flounced off.
Basil beckoned to Bleyn and led him apart from the others. "I'm quite worried about Aronn. His condition seems to be deteriorating."
"I have noted it." The Champion's eyes turned to his Guild Brother, who sat apathetically in front of an infrared heating unit, holding an untasted chocolate bar in one mittened hand.
"We'll have to go roped on the slope," Basil said. "There may be some steep pitches ofice and the wind will be severe. I'm afraid it's out of the question for Aronn to continue as tail-man to Ookpik's team. If he should fall, his great weight would tear the other three loose. They would slide down the slick chute into the lap of the Col, perhaps more than a thousand meters."
"Very likely," said the Tanu.
"I have seen other climbers with Aronn's symptoms," Basil went on. "I must tell you that there is a chance of your friend becoming irrational. He could panic, even become madly euphoric and decide to throw away his ice axe, or go dancing about the slope. Will you be able to control him through your golden tore?"
"I can coerce him, certainly. But Aronn is a stalwart psychokinetic, and if he becomescrazed he may override my compulsion. When persons of my race suffer mental disorder, it is redaction and not coercion that they require—and my brain, impelled by self-preservation, concentrates this faculty willy-nilly to my own benefit. There is another problem. Even though I am normally Aronn's coercive superior, his powers may at times exceed my own when he is stimulated by aberrant mental impulses."
Basil said, "We cannot leave Aronn here and we cannot turn back. Once we get across the Col, we can put him into a decamole sledge for the downhill slog. But somehow, he's going to have to make it across that snowfield. I propose that we transfer Betsy to Ookpik'srope. You and I will be Aronn's ropemates. We will lead the way, and I will provide—uh—bombproof belays all the way."
"Aronn weighs nearly one hundred eighty of your kilos. Would this not put you at considerable hazard? I myself am greatly weakened. I do not think I could sustain Aronn with my psychokinesis. It would have to be done physically."
"We could put him between us—"
"And if all three of us should fall," Bleyn said starkly, "who will lead the others tothe aircraft? Ookpik, I will remind you, is not nearly so experienced in alpine mountaineering as was the late Thongsa. My orders from the King command me to retrieve the aircraft at any cost."
"We will not abandon Aronn." Basil was firm.
"No," Bleyn agreed softly. "But you will lead the others in a five-man team, and I and my Guild Brother will follow, roped together. We will trust in Tana to sustain us. If we fall, it is her will."
Basil said, "If you fall, we humans will come to the aircraft with no Tanu overlord tocompel us! How do you know we won't abscond with a ship and fly to freedom? Neither you nor the King could coerce us at long distance."
"There is no need to coerce you. I have said that humans are impossible to understand—but I was wrong. I understand you well enough, Basil, to know that you will do as you have promised, whether or not Aronn or I survive."
The don gave a diffident nod. "That's all right, then. Shall we get on with it?"
***
The wind screamed. Its chill factor, Basil estimated, was probably better than minus sixty Celsius. He felt his face congealing inside the rime-coated fur ruff of his anorak hood. His fingers grew more and more numb with the cutting of each step in the tough white ice. He sank an ice screw, made fast, and said: Belay on! Climb away.
Ookpik said: Climbing. He scuttled quickly across the freshly cut footholds, then anchored himself in turn. Meanwhile Basil was chopping, chopping, cramponing along, with Ookpik belayed and braced against a possible fall of the leader. As the line of slots extended across the steep slope, Bengt followed on the rope, then Nazir, then Betsy; and ten meters or so in the rear and dropping farther and farther behind came the two Tanu.
Basil swung his axe in time to the rhythm of his laboring heart. His lungs strained toextract oxygen from the thin, frigid air and the pain drove him to greater effort. Faster. He worked out to the e
nd of the rope that Ookpik had secured, chopping ice with as muchspeed as he dared; for speed was the only thing that would bring them out of the screaming wind that was freezing them slowly to death. Basil knew it and Bleyn the Champion knew it. The others were too weak and miserable to care.
Basil said: How Aronn doing Bleyn?
Bleyn said: Weak very weak halfstupefied but no mania Tanabe-thanked he responds my coercion.
Basil said: We angling down now. Steep steep pitch but near end perhaps 200 meters farther to safe shelf. Do you all hear? Not far now!
A few minds responded with formless transmissions.
The wind screamed.
Basil cut steps.
The line of five small figures and two larger ones now slanted downhill on the shiningwhite slope above the Col. The air was brilliantly clear. No cloud marred the azure sky. High above them, Monte Rosa formed a monolith of heart-wrenching purity. Almost all of her western face had been freshly plastered with snow by the late storm and she stood pristine.
A virgin mountain! Basil thought. The virgin queen of mountains, perhaps the highest Earth has ever borne. You will be mine. You will.
He cut steps.
Suddenly they were again in a region of swirling light snow, approaching a rock wall topped by a curling snow cornice. The wind scream diminished to a howl, to a moan, to a sob. Basil took a final step off the perilous forty-five-degree slope onto crunchy level ice, thinly snow-clad. The cornice overhung him and looked as solid as white plascrete. Gray rocks coated with transparent ice jutted from its base. By moving a couple of meters farther on, Basil was able to see around the shoulder of the outcropping down the North Face of the mountain.
The Inner Helvetides, the Pliocene Alps, fell away in serrated waves to the horizon. From here, they would go down.
He said: Belay on! Come across! We've made it chaps!
There were feebly jubilant mind-shouts from the humans. Ookpik appeared out of the sparkling surface blizzard, and then Bengt, grinning broadly. Nazir moved with agonized careto safety, breathing a prayer of thanks to Allah. Then there was Betsy, whacking sturdilyat the final step with his axe to improve the crumbling foothold.
Basil called: Bleyn?
I am here.
Basil said: Come along. Can't be 10 meters.
Bleyn said: I regret most deeply.
Through their tores the humans saw an image: A great body half kneeling on a slanted, glaring whiteness. Cramponed feet wedged insecurely into two small holes. Arms stretched overhead gripping the shafts of implanted ice axe and sharpnose hammer. From the belt of the harness a taut rope. At its end, five meters below, another form supine on the ice-slick, sliding lower centimeter by centimeter as the sustaining hands of the man above slipped from the shafts of his tools.
Basil cried: Mindstogetherall! COME BLEYN. HOLD.
They all wished it, compelled it: COME BLEYN. HOLD.
Bleyn's flexed knees stiffened against gravity, against the pull of Aronn's dead weight. His nerveless hands gripped the tool shafts. He forced himself up.
COME BLEYN. HOLD. HOLD.
Slowly, one arm bent, wrenching the poorly anchored axe free. Chink! Bleyn swung, reembedding the pick. He held.
Basil said: Wraprock Ookpik belayme strong. HOLD BLEYN I COME.
The others said: HOLD BLEYN HOLD.
Ookpik said: Belayrockfast. Gogogo.
Basil said: Climbing climbing. HOLD BLEYN.
Bleyn said: I regret most deeply. I cannot hold.
Ookpik said: Gotem Basil gotem? Fast? HOLDHOLDHOLD...
Bleyn fell.
Basil screamed: Holdholdhold!
He fell.
The three bodies hurtled down the ice, gathering momentum, then arrested with a crashing jar as they came to the end of Basil's firmly clipped rope. The don lifted his bruised head and grinned up at Ookpik. "They both seem to be unconscious," he called, "but I've got them quite securely."
"And I've got your rope fast to the winch cable," said Mr. Betsy in triumph. "Ready to haul whenever you are, darling."
Basil said: O God now you fucking idiot!
"Tsk tsk," Betsy chided, switching the mechanism on.
***
After they had rested and recovered a little, they began the descent. It was cautious at first, with the two Tanu lashed to sledges. But then they found a broad avalanche runnel that had already dumped, and Basil said: "All aboard for the short cut!" He showed theothers what to do, each man according to his expertise, and sent them skidding and otter-sliding and tobogganing down more than a thousand meters of slope, whooping and screeching. And when they were safe he came down himself in a rooster-tailing glissade, schussbooming on the soles of his boots and broadcasting a great mind-roar of joy into the aether that reached not only Elizabeth and their colleagues on the other side of the mountain, but even the King in faraway Goriah.
And Aiken said: Well done.
After a long interval, Basil said (this time via Elizabeth's relay): Thank you sir.
Aiken said: I understand that Bleyn and Aronn had to be carried down.
Basil said: They are recovering inside one of the reactivated aircraft High King. Its environmental system is providing sea-level oxygen concentration. They should be fully restored within a day or two.
Aiken said: Good good. So you lit up a flyer without much trouble?
Basil said: Several are easily accessible. Their powerplants must be recharged with distilled water of course and there will be labor involved in freeing some of them from the snowdrifts. No serious problems are foreseen.
Aiken said: Kaleidoscopic! It's all right then...
Basil said: Yes.
Aiken said: Name your gratuity.
Basil said: One day's rest. Then while the others get on with the ferrying and reactivation I wish to climb to the summit of Monte Rosa. Alone. If I have not returned after three days you will assume that I have perished in the attempt. No one must risk his life or these aircraft in futile rescue maneuvers. This is the only personal request I make of you.
Aiken said: It is granted.
***
Phronsie Gillis set aside her book-plaque of Grey Lensmari and stared out of the flight-deck port of Old Number One at the thickening blizzard. "Sweet chariot, just look at that snow. If it's coming down like this on top of the mountain, poor Basil's quickfrozen by now. He hasn't got a Chinaman's chance."
Miss Wang looked up from her feng-huang embroidery and said plaintively, "I wish you would use less offensive metaphors."
"Honey," Phronsie retorted, "I got insults for every race, ethnic group, religious faith, and sexual orientation. Nothin' personal."
Miss Wang hung her head and sniffled. "Basil was a good leader. I shall miss him."
"We all will," said Stan Dziekonski. He slapped his cards on the navigator's tank. "Gin."
The three other cardplayers tossed in their hands gloomily. "Can't you catch anything with your farsight?" Ookpik demanded of Bleyn.
The Champion shook his great blond head. "It's the storm. If Elizabeth is frustrated in her attempts to locate Basil, how shall I hope to succeed? And there is no response to our telepathic calls."
"We have already waited longer than the specified time," Ochal the Harper told them. "We'll have to go."
"Damn the specified time!" Phronsie shouted, whacking the console of Old Number One with her book. "You go off with Stan and Ooky in Number Two, Lord Harper, and let us hang on here another day. Bleyn won't mind—will you, Champ?"
Bleyn said, "Both ships must go, Phronsie. We are the last, and it was Basil himself who laid down the conditions."
"He did," said Miss Wang in a small miserable voice. She wiped her nose on her sleeve, took the pilot's seat, and began the preflight very slowly. "Phronsie, please take the power readouts."
There was a collective exhalation of breath from the others. Stan said, "Well, guess Ooky and Lord Harper and I better slog back to Two."
"Yes," said Bleyn. "See you i
n Goriah."
The departing trio pulled up hoods, zipped anoraks, and stuffed their hands into mittens. They shuffled back to the belly hatch. When Miss Wang cracked it open, the blizzard moaned a dirge.
"Rho-field generators looking good," said Phronsie. "Environmentals go. Hatch secure."
Miss Wang stifled a sob. "R-power to the external web. Wings back full. Ready for lift."
Phronsie spoke into the RF com. "You guys safe in Two, come back?"
"Affirm," said Ookpik. "And Harper did another scan while we were outside. Zip to the nth. But Basil's where he wanted to be."
"Damn muffer could have planned it that way," Phronsie growled. "It wouldn't surprise me one little bit ... Oh, for God's sake, get us out of here, Wang!"
***
On the pinnacle of Monte Rosa, Basil sat secure in his snow cave until the hurricane roar of the wind died away. Then he plied his vitredur shovel and tunneled out. The sky above was velvet black, dusted with subtly colored stars. A vast cloud deck blanketed the world below 8000 meters. Off to the west, two purplish streaks like dying meteorites arcedout of sight behind the Proto-Matterhorn.
Basil sat down on a compacted pile of snow, stretching his legs with extreme caution. There were crackling sounds from the left tibia and the right ankle. Stars not of the cosmos danced momentarily before his eyes and he gasped out loud. The torn knees of his grintlaskin outer pants and down trousers were black with frozen blood. He had stumped up thelast two or three hundred meters after the fall. It had been rather easy, actually; but the granular snow had torn his clothing like broken glass, and he'd had to dig in precipitously before the blizzard struck.
He swiveled slowly about, surveying his world. His breath made frosty nebulae that drifted off into the void, one puff following another at shorter and shorter intervals. The warning band of constriction about his chest tightened with each filling of his lungs. Hewas very happy.