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"Mountain," I said. "Mountain, you have told me to go away."
There was a rumble.
"But I ca
"I'm bringing you the best in the business," I said, "to go up on your slopes and to stand beneath the stars in your highest places. I must do this thing because you are there. No other reason. Nothing personal...."
After a time, I said, "That's not true.
"I am a man," I said, "and I need to break mountains to prove that I will not die even though I will die. I am less than I want to be, Sister, and you can make me more. So I guess it _is_ personal.
"It's the only thing I know how to do, and you're the last one left--the last challenge to the skill I spent my life learning. Maybe it is that mortality is the closest to immortality when it accepts a challenge to itself, when it survives a threat. The moment of triumph is the moment of salvation. I have needed many such moments, and the final one must be the longest, for it must last me the rest of my life.
"So you are there, Sister, and I am here and very mortal, and you have told me to go away. I ca
I finished what remained in the bottle.
There were more flashes, more rumbles behind the mountain, more flashes.
"It is the closest thing to diving drunke
And then she winked at me. It was a red star, so high upon her. Angel's sword. Phoenix' wing. Soul on fire. And it blazed at me, across the miles. Then the wind that blows between the worlds swept down over me. It was filled with tears and with crystals of ice. I stood there and felt it, then, "Don't go away," I said, and I watched until all was darkness once more and I was wet as an embryo waiting to cry out and breathe.
Most kids tell lies to their playmates--fictional autobiographies, if you like--which are either received with appropriate awe or countered with greater, more elaborate tellings. But little Jimmy, I've heard, always hearkened to his little buddies with wide, dark eyes, and near the endings of their stories the corners of his mouth would begin to twitch. By the time they were finished talking, his freckles would be mashed into a grin and his rusty head cocked to the side. His favorite expression, I understand, was "G'wan!" and his nose was broken twice before he was twelve. This was doubtless why he turned it toward books.
Thirty years and four formal degrees later, he sat across from me in my quarters in the lodge, and I called him Doc because everyone did, because he had a license to cut people up and look inside them, as well as doctoring to their philosophy, so to speak, and because he looked as if he should be called Doc when he gri
I wanted to punch him in the nose.
"Damn it! It's true!" I told him. "I fought with a bird of fire!"
"We all hallucinated on Kasla," he said, raising one finger, "because of fatigue," two fingers, "because the altitude affected our circulatory systems and consequently our brains," three, "because of the emotional stimulation," four, "and because we were pretty oxygen-drunk."
"You just ran out of fingers, if you'll sit on your other hand for a minute. So listen," I said, "it flew at me, and I swung at it, and it knocked me out and broke my goggles. When I woke up, it was gone and I was lying on the ledge. I think it was some sort of energy creature. You saw my EEG, and it wasn't normal. I think it shocked my nervous system when it touched me."
"You were knocked out because you hit your head against a rock--"
"It _caused_ me to fall back against the rock!"
"I agree with that part. The rock was real. But nowhere in the universe has anyone ever discovered an 'energy creature.'"
"So? You probably would have said that about America a thousand years ago."
"Maybe I would have. But that neurologist explained your EEG to my satisfaction. Optical trauma. Why go out of your way to dream up an exotic explanation for events? Easy ones generally turn out better. You hallucinated and you stumbled."
"Okay," I said, "whenever I argue with you I generally need ammunition. Hold on a minute."
I went to my closet and fetched it down from the top shelf. I placed it on my bed and began unwrapping the blanket I had around it.
"I told you I took a swing at it," I said. "Well, I co
I held up my climbing pick--brown, yellow, black and pitted--looking as though it had fallen from outer space.
He took it into his hands and stared at it for a long time, then he started to say something about ball lightning, changed his mind, shook his head and placed the thing back on the blanket.
"I don't know," he finally said, and this time his freckles remained unmashed, except for those at the edges of his hands which got caught as he clenched them, slowly.
IV
We pla
While Doc and Stan had kept themselves in good shape, neither had been climbing since Kasla. Kelly was in top condition. Henry was on his way to fat. Mallardi and Vince, as always, seemed capable of fantastic feats of endurance and virtuosity, had even climbed a couple times during the past year, but had recently been living pretty high on the tall hog, so to speak, and they wanted to get some practice. So we picked a comfortable, decent-sized mountain and gave it ten days to beat everyone back into shape. After that, we stuck to vitamins, calisthenics and square diets while we completed our preparations. During this time, Doc came up with seven shiny, alloy boxes, about six by four inches and thin as a first book of poems, for us to carry on our persons to broadcast a defense against the energy creatures which he refused to admit existed.
One fine, bitter-brisk morning we were ready. The newsmen liked me again. Much footage was taken of our gallant assemblage as we packed ourselves into the fliers, to be delivered at the foot of the lady mountain, there to contend for what was doubtless the final time as the team we had been for so many years, against the waiting gray and the lavender beneath the sunwhite flame.
We approached the mountain, and I wondered how much she weighed.
You know the way, for the first nine miles. So I'll skip over that. It took us six days and part of a seventh. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred. Some fog there was, and nasty winds, but once below, forgotten.
Stan and Mallardi and I stood where the bird had occurred, waiting for Doc and the others.
"So far, it's been a picnic," said Mallardi.
"Yeah," Stan acknowledged.
"No birds either."
"No," I agreed.
"Do you think Doc was right--about it being an hallucination?" Mallardi asked. "I remember seeing things on Kasla...."
"As I recall," said Stan, "it was nymphs and an ocean of beer. Why would anyone want to see hot birds?"
"Damfino."
"Laugh, you hyenas," I said. "But just wait till a flock flies over."
Doc came up and looked around.
"This is the place?"
I nodded.
He tested the background radiation and half a dozen other things, found nothing untoward, grunted and looked upwards.
We all did. Then we went there.
It was very rough for three days, and we only made another five thousand feet during that time.
When we bedded down, we were bushed, and sleep came quickly. So did Nemesis.
He was there again, only not quite so near this time. He burned about twenty feet away, standing in the middle of the air, and the point of his blade indicated me.
"_Go away_," he said, three times, without inflection.