The Adversary - 4 (39 page)

"It's no use, Marialena," said Burke. "Tony Wayland's got his reprieve right from the drumhead Supreme Court."

She shot a murderous glance at the metallurgist. "Well, you don't get the shorts back," she hissed. Then she turned to the others and declared, "Now I will make lunch."

MARC: Cloud. Daughter.

CLOUD: Papa!

You shouldn't have come-there's dangerMARC: I'm only present in simulacrum. Like the sendings of your friend Kuhal. The garden is secluded, but Aiken Drum has fed the scanners my mental signature. I know better than to d-jump into the Castle of Glass.

CLOUD: You've been watching me as I come here?

MARC: Watching, not listening. Believe me.

CLOUD: ... What do you want?

MARC: Your help. With Hagen.

CLOUD: It's too late.

MARC: I deserve to be rejected by both of you. I was negligent, distracted by my work. Unfeeling toward you. Impatient with his weakness. Harsh. The incident with the tarpon was unforgivable. But I want to ask his forgiveness. He can't help being what he is, no more than I can. But he must understand that I was not being capriciously cruel. It was misguided therapy.

CLOUD: It was a calculated act of violence. You know he's always been afraid of you. You thought to break him, and instead he gained strength for escape ...

MARC: He mustn't, Cloud. I must have a chance to explain to him-to both of you-why you mustn't go.

CLOUD: We won't let the Milieu authorities come back through the gateMARC: I know. That was never a serious worry. There's a far more important reason why you mustn't return to the Milieu.

CLOUD: What is it, Papa?

MARC: Let me meet with both of you, in person. I'll explain everything.

CLOUD: I'm willing to trust you, but I'm afraid Hagen never will.

Tell me what you want to say to him. I'll transmit your message.

MARC: It won't work that way. I have to talk to you face to faceCLOUD: To coerce us? Oh, Papa.

MARC: My dear, what I have to ask of you can never be gained through coercion. That lasts only as long as the coercer's grip holds. I need your free cooperation, your commitmentCLOUD: Papa, it's too late! Years too late! We've made our choice. To be free.

MARC: But that's just it. You wouldn't be free in the Milieu. Not truly, any more than I was. You are my children, with my heritage. There are things you don't understand ... that I had not intended to tell you until the star-search succeeded.

For your own peace of mind. But now you've forced my hand.

CLOUD: Papa, for God's sake!

What?

MARC: I must tell you both. Face to face. Everything I've done was for your good. You must believe it.

CLOUD: I-all I can do is tell Hagen what you've told me. But he's afraid, Papa. And now ... so am I.

MARC: You need not be. Not with me. If you only have courage, your future can be wonderful. I'll tell you everything if you'll only meet with me.

CLOUD: I'll tell Hagen what you said. We'll talk about it.

MARC: Thank you, Cloud. I love you.

CLOUD: I love you, too, Papa, butMARC: Please.

MARC: Cloud?

CHAPTER EIGHT

As he vanished into the depths of the great crevasse, Basil's thought maintained its usual laconic tone: Falling. Everyone self-arrest.

Chazz, who was Number 2 on the rope, shouted an obscenity.

He fell on his face, ice-axe dangling impotently at the end of its keeper-strap, and was dragged through harsh, granular snow with arms and legs floundering. Derek, the Number 3, drove his axe into hard white ice simultaneously with Nirupam, the tail-man, just as Chazz reached the crack's edge. The rope went taut with a muffled twung!

Nirupam said: How you Baz?

Basil said: Dangling upside down like a snared hare. A moment while I shed my pack ... ah. Over we go. Good heavens I just missed pranging into a rather bad shelf. Good show on the arrest even if a bit tardy. Is Chazz in the hole too?

Chazz said: Right on the mothering lip.

Nirupam said: Please don't move anyone. Derek are you belayed good and fast?

Derek said: I wouldn't bet on it.

An echoing yelp came from Chazz. and he screamed aloud: "The damn rope's cutting into the crevasse edge like a knife into cheese! I'm going over-"

Basil said: I shall cut my rope to ease the strain.

"Don't do it, Baz, don't!" the man above cried. The image of Basil's body tumbling into a bottomless blue crystal chasm flooded his mind and was broadcast by his grey torc to the others.

Basil said: Easy my boy. I told you I was just above a shelf.

There. I'm down.

Nirupam said: Terrific. Everybody just hang cool or whatever while I drop anchor. Soon as I unpack a bit of gear we'll get the Death-Defying Baz & Chazz Rescue Act rolling.

Deep in his roofed canyon of blue ice, Basil moved cautiously along the shelf a few metres so he was no longer directly beneath the severed climbing rope, to which his pack remained clipped by a lighter line. Showers of soft snow dribbled constantly from overhead as Chazz was slowly winched back to safety. Then abruptly, a chunk of snow as large as an ATV module cracked from the lip and crashed onto the shelf, disintegrating into a sugary cloud.

Basil said: Not to worry. I believe I'll try walking out.

The others exclaimed: What?

Basil said: The shelf rises and the crevasse is closing as I move northward. Hello. The ice is warping up here and the snow cover getting very thin. I believe-can you see me?

He had poked his arm up through the snow crust and waggled it. A moment later his entire upper body was at the surface. He laughed to see the expressions on the others as he traced a curved path back to the winch-belay.

"Will you look at the man?" Derek exclaimed. "Cool as the proverbial gherkin. My God-when I saw you drop out of sight and Chazz go sliding after, I thought you were both on the way to join poor Phillipe in Valhalla!"

Basil's pack came slithering over the snow, drawn in by the solar-powered donkey engine. The classics professor and the three technicians hunkered to enjoy a fast cup of tea and a bar of chocolate algiprote.

"Crevasses needn't be lethal," Basil said, "as long as one isn't injured in the fall-or, in the case of Phillipe, drowned in meltwater. He was unlucky enough to fall into a moulin, a kind of drainpipe crevasse in the rotten ice of the glacier snout. With the tortuous nature of the fissure and the fast-moving water, there was no helping him-not even with Lord Bleyn's psychokinesis."

"My memory still retains his final mind-shouts," said Nirupam softly.

"How ironic to die on the very first day of our support operation."

Chazz was smearing his abraded face with ointment. "Sure taught the rest of us grunts to stick to your flagged trail-even to take a leak. Beats me how you and Basil and Ookpik can tell where crevasses are hiding under the snow."

"We do miscalculate occasionally," observed the don. He took a tiny monocular from his anorak and studied the Middle Tine Ridge, toward which they had been trekking.

"Found us a fast route?" Nirupam inquired. "Time's getting on. We'll have stonefall in the gullies as the sun heats the frosty rock, and that ridge has some ugly-looking little snowfields that might be thinking about going avalanche before supper."

"It's a straightforward slog across the rest of this glacial tongue," Basil said, handing over the scope. "Just a small randkluft moat where the ice falls away from the ridge wall. Then we must pick and choose among the couloirs for the ascent. I rather fancy the darkish one, shaded by that second spur. It promises to hold tight longer than the others."

Nirupam squinched his Mongoloid features. "Hold tight, all right. It looks like it hadn't had any sun since the Miocene!

Sharp and deep and probably black ice from top to bottom, as tough as cured solicrete. Our ice-axes will bounce right off it.

Unless we melt steps with the blaster, we could be five hours gaining the ridgetop. I'm for one of the more open chutes. We can stay well to the shady side and keep alert. The third couloir north of your buck beauty is steep enough to avalanche regularly. It can't have much snow buildup. I'd try that first." He gave Basil the glass and waited as the don considered the suggestion.

"Well? You like?"

Basil sighed. "Very well. I christen it Darjeeling Gutter in your honour, if you will forgive the-er-ecumenical usage."

They finished their tea, repacked the equipment, roped up, and were on their way.

Taking advantage of a brilliant waning moon and clear weather, they had begun the day's trek at 0300 hours, departing from the supply dump at the base of the Gresson Icefall when that unstable jumble of seracs was at its most quiescent. Basil and the experienced Indian climber each carried forty kilos and Chazz and Derek took twenty-eight, and the bulk of that was left at Camp 1, newly established at 5585 metres. At dawn they had set off again to reconnoitre a route to Camp 2, taking flagged wands, a bivouac kit, the winch, and plenty of rope.

Ideally, after they had gained the crest of Middle Tine via one gully or another they would scout about until they located a good spot for a "flywalk" winch-belay. Once the machinery and ropes were permanently emplaced, other climbers could simply latch on, signal the faithful donkey, and be drawn up the rocky ridge flank with minimum effort.

The pioneering team, however, had to do it the hard way.

It was nearly 0930 when they reached the moatlike randkluft that was the western edge of the Tine Glacier. Late in the afternoon, the half-rock, half-ice corridor would be perilous with running meltwater. But now it was frozen solid and almost like a staircase to their crampon-shod feet. They ascended easily to the base of Darjeeling Gutter, crossed the miniature bergschrund where its cascading snows joined the main glacier, and began to creep up the sixty-degree slope of dazzling white. They bore as far to the left as possible in order to avoid the deadly warming effect of the sun, trigger of rockfalls and avalanches.

It was about 900 metres to the top. Over most of that distance the couloir was a constantly changing patchwork of hardened snow, opaque and brittle ice formed by the daily thaw-andfreeze cycle, tough "live ice" that resisted the glass fangs of crampons and ice-axes, and rare patches of powder snow.

At first they moved briskly, but after an hour or so, Chazz and Derek weakened. Only amateur climbers, they had to use the easily learned but tiring crampon technique called frontpointing-digging the horizontal toe-points of the crampons into the ice as they hauled themselves along with the aid of their axes. Basil and Nirupam, using the more efficient flat-footed technique, found that they had to slow their pace drastically-then begin to belay their fatigued rope-mates and even cut steps over the worst stretches of live ice.

The sun climbed and the gully became a heat trap. They all wore sun goggles but the light was blinding. Chunks of brittle ice began to zoom down the chute. They were not large and the climbers had hard hats, but the psychological effect was harrowing.

Above the halfway point the slope eased and the two amateurs regained their spirits. Lunch was a scratch affair taken hurriedly on a small rock cleaver that split the snowslope. Chazz's scraped face was aggravated by the strong sunlight and the flesh around his eyes was swollen and raw. But it had become so warm that the thought of even a lightweight silk mask-bandage was intolerable, so he simply smeared on more antibiotic goo.

They had been climbing again for less than half an hour when Basil's telepathic voice signalled a halt just above a tiny ledge.

He said: Niru oldman don't much like looks of this pitch.

Nirupam said: Getting late snow deep enough to be slabby.

Basil said: It could go.

Nirupam said: Alternative traverse couloir go up rock southside. Hell scramble take us twice long we could still make the Gutter work not even 1400 hours yet.

Basil said: Risky.

Nirupam said: You boss. But Chazz running on ballpower small disaster you shrugged off back at crevasse got to him maybe delayed shock on top sore face & nearly blind.

Basil said: Chazz oldman we're going to move you to Number 3 on rope. It be safer for all incase I come cropper leading.

Chazz said: Sorry to be the crock of the flock guys.

Derek said: Spare us bouillabaisse goodbuddy. Just switch with me. Snap on safety lines? Okay. Easy! You stomp me with tackety boots they hear my screech in basecamp!

Basil said: Please be very quiet all of you ... even if stepped on. The consequences of sudden noise this point could be lamentable.

Chazz said: He means avalanche could be set off by your bigmouth Derek.

Derek said: Or your clumsy feet.

Basil was looking down on the pair, who had unsnapped their harnesses from the main rope. Both were manoeuvring carefully on the tiny ledge of compacted snow, Chazz linked to Derek by a light safety line and Derek ready to refasten them to the rope as soon as the position switch had been accomplished.

Nirupam, the low man, was keeping a sharp eye on the two amateurs, offering advice and encouragement. And then there was a distant crackling sound. Nirupam caught sight of a small wisp of white blurring the dazzle of the upper icefield. A jagged blue line spread across the high face of the chute and opened like a fanged mouth before disappearing behind a foaming cloud of snow.

"She's coming down!" Nirupam yelled. "Hold! Hold!"

His cries were smothered in a musical rumble, as if someone had trod upon the pedals of a great organ. A cascade of broken thin crust came jangling and hissing ahead of the snowslide. The climbers cringed, hugging the slope and drawing their heads down between their shoulders. Basil whipped his tube-pointed hammer from its holster and sank the second tool into the ice with his left hand, clinging to axe and hammer with all his strength as the avalanche rolled over them.

He said: Hold on boys hold!

Chazz's mind spoke first, incredulous, refusing to admit that he was cartwheeling through opaque white air instead of clinging to a slope by the tips of his toes and an insecurely anchored axe. Derek was torn screaming from his place by a forty-kilo slab of snow that slammed into him like a skating chunk of sidewalk. He flailed out with his axe in a futile attempt at selfarrest and cut the rope linking Nirupam to Basil. The Indian mountaineer, struck by Derek's body, tumbled helplessly as the strap of his dropped ice-axe banged about his ankles. The tool was still tethered to his harness, but he could not haul it up because his neck was broken and the motor nerves of his arms refused to function.