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It paused there. It glanced back. Mocking me? I caught the flash from those eyes.
"You've had it," I said, and started forward.
It turned and raced along the wall then. Too fast, it seemed, to be able to atop when it reached the corner.
Nor did it.
I did not think it would make it, but I had underestimated its strength.
The lights came on just as it sprang into the air, and I had a full view of the black cat shape, sailing, forelimbs extended, far out beyond the edge of the building. Then descending, dropping from view-no nine lives to fool with either, I felt sure-followed by a soft impact, a scratching, a clicking.
Racing forward, I saw that it had made it across. It was onto the skeleton of the building that stood beside the hall, onto it and already retreating across a girder.
I did not break my stride.
I had taken an easier way across that night I had last visited the roof, but there was no time for such luxury now-at least, that was how I had rationalized it after the fact. Actually, I suppose, those impetuous spinal nerves should have the credit this time, too. Or the blame.
I estimated the jump automatically as I approached, leaped from what my body told me was precisely the proper spot, cleared the guard wall, kept my eyes on my target and my arms ready.
I always worry about my shins on something like this. One bad bash to them and the pain could be sufficient to break the chain of necessary actions. And a close bit of coordination was required here-another bad feature. An ideal climbing situation involves one key action at a time. Two can still be okay. Too much to coordinate, though, and you get into the foolish risk area. At any other time this one would be foolish. I seldom jump for handholds. If there is an alternative save, I may. But that is about all. I'm not one for the all-or-nothing feat. However ...
My feet struck the girder with a jolt I felt in my wisdom teeth. My left arm hooked about the upright I-beam beside which I had landed, things of which Torquemada would have approved occurring within my shoulder. I fell forward then but was simultaneously swung leftward as I lost my footing, thrusting my right arm across and around to catch hold of the same upright. Then I drew myself back onto the girder, caught my balance and held it. I released my hold on the upright as I sighted my quarry.
It was heading for the platformed section where the workmen kept their things in barrels and tarp-covered heaps. I started for that place myself, ru
It saw me coming. It mounted a heap, a crate, sprang to the floor above. I took hold of a strut and the side of a beam, swung myself up, found purchase for my left foot at the head of the strut, raised myself, caught hold of the girder overhead, pulled myself up.
As I came to my feet, I saw it vanishing over the edge of the platform on the next floor above. I repeated my climb.
It was nowhere in sight. I could only assume that it had continued on upward. I followed.
Three floors above that I glimpsed it again. It had paused to peer down at me from a narrow width of planking that served as an elevator landing for workmen. The light from below and behind caught its eyes once more.
Then movement!
I clung to my support and raised an arm to shield my head. But this proved u
The clatter and the bouncing, pinging, ringing that spilled from the bucket of bolts or rivets it had pushed over the edge came to me, passed by me, echoed on down to the ground, where it ended/ended/finally ended.
I saved the breath I might have used on curses for purposes of climbing and resumed my vertical trek once more as soon as the air was clear. A cold wind began to tug at me as I went. Glancing back and down, I saw figures on the still-illuminated rooftop next door, looking upward. How much they could see I was not certain.
By the time I reached the place from which the flak had fallen, the subject of my pursuit was two floors higher and apparently catching its breath. It was easier for me to see now, as the platforms had dwindled down to a precious few bits of planking and we were coming into a realm of hard, straight lines and cold, clean angles as classic and spare as a theorem out of Euclid.
The winds pushed and pulled with a bit more force as I mounted higher, slowly surrendering their randomness and growing constant. Starting at my fingertips and entering into the rest of me came a sense of the slight arrhythmic swaying that possessed the structure. The sleep sounds of the city grew indistinguishable in terms of isolated noises. It was a snoring, then a humming and finally the winds ate it and digested it. The stars and the moon traced the geometry through which we maneuvered and all the surfaces were dry, which is really about all that a night climber can ask for.
I kept on after it, up. Up. Up the two levels that separated us. Then one more.
It stood one level above me then, glaring down. There were no more stories. This was as high as things had gotten. And so it waited.
I paused and glared back.
"Ready to call it quits?" I shouted. "Or do we play it out all the way?"
There was no answer. No movement either. It just stood there and watched me.
I ran my hand upward along the beam that rose beside me.
My quarry grew smaller. It had crouched, bunched up, tensed itself. As if to spring ...
Damn it! I would be at a disadvantage for several moments when I reached that level. My head exposed, my arms and hands occupied as I drew myself up.
Yet, it would be taking quite a chance itself, springing at me, up there, bringing itself into range.
"I think you are bluffing," I said. "I'm coming up."
I tightened my grip on the upright.
A thought came into my mind then, of the sort that seldom entered there: =What if you fall?=
I hesitated-it was such a novel notion-an idea one simply does not entertain. Of course I was aware that it could occur. It had happened to me a number of times, with varying results. It is not the sort of thing one dwells on to the point of preoccupation, however.
=Still, it is a long way down. Do you ever wonder what your final thought will be, just before the lights go out?=
I suppose that everyone has, at some time or other, for a moment or so. It is hardly worth prolonged cerebration, however, and would probably be classifiable as a symptom of something that ought to be sacrificed on the smudgy altar of mental health. But ...
=Look down. How far? How great a distance? What does it feel like to fall? Is there a tingling in your wrists, hands, feet, ankles?=
Of course. But again-
Vertigo! It swept over me. Wave upon wave. A thing I had never before experienced with such intensity.
Simultaneously, I realized the u
My furry little enemy was broadcasting the sensation, trying to create an acrophobic attitude, succeeding.
But some things must go beyond the physical, the somatopsychic. At least, those small shreds of mysticism which make up the only religion I know kept insisting it wasn't all that simple to turn love into hate, passion to fear, to overcome the will of a lifetime with the irrationality of a moment.
I beat my fist against the beam, I gnawed at my lip. I was scared. Me. Fred Cassidy. Scared to climb it.
=Falling, falling ... Not the drifting of a leaf or a stray bit of paper, but the plummeting of a heavy body ... The only interference, perhaps, the bars of our cage ... A bloody print here, there ... That is the only statement you may record on your passage down ... As from the trees where your not-so-distant ancestors clung, fearfully-=
I saw it then. It had just given me what I needed, what I had been groping for while trying to bear the assault: an object outside myself on which I could focus my attention fully. It had allowed a patronizing attitude toward the whole human race to slip through just then. Sibla had irritated me with a touch of the same sentiment back at Merimee's place. It was all that I needed.