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"Go to hell," I tried to say.
He made as if he wished to draw nearer. He failed.
"Go away yourself," I said.
"_Climb back down. Depart. You may go no further._"
"But I am going further. All the way to the top."
"_No. You may not._"
"Stick around and watch," I said.
"_Go back._"
"If you want to stand there and direct traffic, that's your business," I told him. "I'm going back to sleep."
I crawled over and shook Doc's shoulder, but when I looked back my flaming visitor had departed.
"What is it?"
"Too late," I said. "He's been here and gone."
Doc sat up.
"The bird?"
"No, the thing with the sword."
"Where was he?"
"Standing out there," I gestured.
Doc hauled out his instruments and did many things with them for ten minutes or so.
"Nothing," he finally said. "Maybe you were dreaming."
"Yeah, sure," I said. "Sleep tight," and I hit the sack again, and this time I made it through to daylight without further fire or ado.
It took us four days to reach sixty thousand feet. Rocks fell like occasional ca
We hit a big, level shelf.
It was perhaps four hundred feet wide. As we advanced across it, we realized that it did not strike the mountainside. It dropped off into an enormous gutter of a canyon. We would have to go down again, perhaps seven hundred feet, before we could proceed upward once more. Worse yet, it led to a featureless face which strove for and achieved perpendicularity for a deadly high distance: like miles. The top was still nowhere in sight.
"Where do we go now?" asked Kelly, moving to my side.
"Down," I decided, "and we split up. We'll follow the big ditch in both directions and see which way gives the better route up. We'll meet back at the midway point."
We descended. Then Doc and Kelly and I went left, and the others took the opposite way.
After an hour and a half, our trail came to an end. we stood looking at nothing over the edge of something. Nowhere, during the entire time, had we come upon a decent way up. I stretched out, my head and shoulders over the edge, Kelly holding onto my ankles, and I looked as far as I could to the right and up. There was nothing in sight that was worth a facing movement.
"Hope the others had better luck," I said, after they'd dragged me back.
"And if they haven't...?" asked Kelly.
"Let's wait."
They had.
It was risky, though.
There was no good way straight up out of the gap. The trail had ended at a forty-foot wall which, when mounted, gave a clear view all the way down. Leaning out as I had done and looking about two hundred feet to the left and eighty feet higher, however, Mallardi had rested his eyes on a rough way, but a way, nevertheless, leading up and west and vanishing.
We camped in the gap that night. In the morning, I anchored my line to a rock, Doc tending, and went out with the pneumatic pistol. I fell twice, and made forty feet of trail by lunchtime.
I rubbed my bruises then, and Henry took over. After ten feet, Kelly got out to anchor a couple of body-lengths behind him, and we tended Kelly.
Then Stan blasted and Mallardi anchored. Then there had to be three on the face. Then four. By sundown, we'd made a hundred-fifty feet and were covered with white powder. A bath would have been nice. We settled for ultrasonic shakedowns.
By lunch the next day, we were all out there, roped together, hugging cold stone, moving slowly, painfully, slowly, not looking down much.
By day's end, we'd made it across, to the place where we could hold on and feel something--granted, not much--beneath our boots. It was inclined to be a trifle scant, however, to warrant less than a full daylight assault. So we returned once more to the gap.
In the morning, we crossed.
The way kept its winding angle. We headed west and up. We traveled a mile and made five hundred feet. We traveled another mile and made perhaps three hundred.
Then a ledge occurred, about forty feet overhead.
Stan went up the hard way, using the gun, to see what he could see.
He gestured, and we followed; and the view that broke upon us was good.
Down right, irregular but wide enough, was our new camp.
The way above it, ice cream and whiskey sours and morning coffee and a cigarette after di
"Hot damn!" said Kelly.
We all tended to agree.
We ate and we drank and we decided to rest our bruised selves that afternoon.
We were in the twilight world now, walking where no man had ever walked before, and we felt ourselves to be golden. It was good to stretch out and try to unache.
I slept away the day, and when I awakened the sky was a bed of glowing embers. I lay there too lazy to move, too full of sight to go back to sleep. A meteor burnt its way bluewhite across the heavens. After a time, there was another. I thought upon my position and decided that reaching it was worth the price. The cold, hard happiness of the heights filled me. I wiggled my toes.
After a few minutes, I stretched and sat up. I regarded the sleeping forms of my companions. I looked out across the night as far as I could see. Then I looked up at the mountain, then dropped my eyes slowly among tomorrow's trail.
There was movement within shadow.
Something was standing about fifty feet away and ten feet above.
I picked up my pick and stood.
I crossed the fifty and stared up.
She was smiling, not burning.
A woman, an impossible woman.
Absolutely impossible. For one thing, she would just have to freeze to death in a mini-skirt and a sleeveless shell-top. No alternative. For another, she had very little to breath. Like, nothing.
But it didn't seem to bother her. She waved. Her hair was dark and long, and I couldn't see her eyes. The planes of her pale, high cheeks, wide forehead, small chin corresponded in an unsettling fashion with certain simple theorems which comprise the geometry of my heart. If all angles, planes, curves be correct, it skips a beat, then hurries to make up for it.
I worked it out, felt it do so, said, "Hello."
"Hello, Whitey," she replied.
"Come down," I said.
"No, you come up."
I swung my pick. When I reached the ledge she wasn't there. I looked around, then I saw her.
She was seated on a rock twelve feet above me.
"How is it that you know my name?" I asked.
"Anyone can see what your name must be."
"All right," I agreed. "What's yours?"
"..." Her lips seemed to move, but I heard nothing.
"Come again?"
"I don't want a name," she said.
"Okay. I'll call you 'girl,' then."
She laughed, sort of.
"What are you doing here?" I asked.
"Watching you."
"Why?"
"To see whether you'll fall."
"I can save you the trouble," I said. "I won't."
"Perhaps," she said.
"Come down here."
"No, you come up here."
I climbed, but when I got there she was twenty feet higher.
"Girl, you climb well," I said, and she laughed and turned away.
I pursued her for five minutes and couldn't catch her. There was something u
I stopped climbing when she turned again. We were still about twenty feet apart.
"I take it you do not really wish me to join you," I said.