Stories by Elizabeth Bear Part 75

V/O.

A Beautiful Mind Because confidence is s.e.xy.

Brigid Keating leaned forward under the weight of her pack and took another stride up the wooded mountain. The humidity was already stifling. The heat wasn't so bad, yet-but that would change as the sun rose over the cliff. The concentrated breathing and off-rhythm scuff of her colleague and climbing partner Val McKeen's footsteps rose through the breathless, sun-dappled air.

As they came to the top of the steepest part of the slope, Brigid straightened her shoulders, eased the pack straps out of the grooves in her shoulders, and heaved a sigh.

"This used to be easier."

Val was sarcastic, sharp, daring. Not much for observing societal rules and social controls. His voice rough with exertion, he said, "You said that last year."

"I mean it more now."

Just one more good push, no more than thirty meters or so. She stepped forward.

At the bottom of the cliff, she dumped her pack, pulled out a chiller bottle, and drank a few grateful swallows. Condensation from the outside ran down her arm to drip from her elbow as she tilted the bottle to her mouth. Her teeth ached slightly in the cold.

When she lowered the water and sealed the top, Val was already partway down the path along the cliff base, staring up speculatively. She trotted behind, catching up in a few quick strides, careful of rough footing. These traprock cliffs were a kind of basalt that left a litter of sharp-edged red-black stone at their bottoms. Val's wiry dark shape slipped confidently among ankle-munching boulders and pebbles, sweat from the climb beading on the caramel-colored skin below his hairline, soft morning light blurring the detail on his prosthetic leg.

It was barely after sunrise, and they were alone at the cliff. In the misty cool, Brigid scanned the wall she pa.s.sed under, examining climbing routes skinned over it. She'd shut off her mail, phone, other skins, and texting-she had no family anymore, and n.o.body had her emergency override codes except Val and her immediate superior-and was reveling in the blessed lack of connectivity. But it was still useful to know exactly where the route went up the cliff. The logged comments of other climbers didn't hurt, either.

Suddenly, Val stopped. The route he was eyeing highlighted in green.

"How do you feel about the 5.11?"

Brigid's stomach constricted looking up at it. It's just fear. It can't hurt you.

More in sensations than words, a more atavistic part of her brain responded, No, but the thing that you're afraid of can.

"Not confident," she admitted.

Val said, "Want to try a warmup first?"

She did, desperately. She wanted an excuse not to climb this at all. But if she started making those excuses, that was exactly what would happen.

She said, "After the approach, I'm warm enough."

They retrieved gear and slithered into their harnesses, checking buckles and straps. Brigid slung the clanking belt of cams and nuts around her waist and wriggled her feet into arch-bottomed, high-friction climbing slippers. They were exquisitely uncomfortable.

Val said, "You leading it?" He began flaking the rope-laying it out on a tarp so it was coiled easily and would not tangle. Brigid tied herself in while Val clipped the other end through his belay device.

She pulled on her helmet and gecko gloves. Fingerless mitts with microscopic carbon filaments on the palms, they wouldn't hold up a person's weight all by themselves but could support an iffy foot placement.

As Val moved up to spot her, Brigid laid her hands against the stone, verbally checked his belay status, and began to climb.

She left the beta on, her interface contacts projecting highlights over the holds that one climber or another had found useful over the years. Val stood below her, his hands upraised, ready to not so much break her fall (should she fall) as guide her to a safe landing position-if possible. The rope dragged below her-no use yet, and no help.

She traced the holds-awkward, fingertip-thin, usable only with delicate balance and fingerpressure-to the crack where she meant to place her first protection. A painful, pinching grip held her to the overhanging rock as she slipped an irregular hexagonal nut into the crack and wedged it against stone. A carabiner dangled from the pro on a twisted cable.

She found the rope by feel, the woven sheath b.u.mpy-smooth. If she slipped now, a ground fall was inevitable.

The line went into the biner and the gate snapped shut.

"Take."

The slight pressure of him pulling in slack put some air back into her lungs.

The rock was smoothed from many years of handling, slick and soapy against her palms and fingertips. Chalky palmprints and finger smudges of previous climbers matched the holds marked by her skins. The trick was finding the ones you could use, and having the technique and strength to use them.

Every climb was different for every body.

The cams and nuts on her equipment sling clinked. This is too scary. Too hard. I can't make it happen.

Contextual fear conditioning, she told herself scornfully. If somebody had though to shoot you up with a glucocorticoid antagonist before you got yourself orphaned, you wouldn't be having this problem now. So get the h.e.l.l over it.

Resentment tautened her throat. It was only her cowardly endocrine system holding her back, weakening her muscles, crus.h.i.+ng her resolve. Look at Val: missing half a leg and still hiking, still climbing, utterly fearless. And here she was scared shaking of a little trad climb.

Irritation with herself gave her strength. She clicked the line through another carabiner gate. Higher now, aware of the tension in her limbs, the balance, the way her body used opposition and leverage to take strain off her hands and biceps. Night-cool rock gritted against her fingertips, moist in the corners and cracks. She briefly forgot the anxious squeeze of her heart in the accomplishment of moving up.

One more piece of pro-a sketchy placement-before she faced a long runout: four and a half meters of sustained hard and technical moves with no good place to set. This was where she'd quailed the last time, and the time before.

When you didn't trust your pro, you got conservative. She wasn't a good enough climber to manage a 5.11 without exceeding her range of confidence-and you didn't get to be a better climber by staying within your limits. She'd climbed this route behind Val, so she knew she could get past the rock.

Getting past herself was something else again.

It was slick-looking face climbing, a little overhung. She knew there were ledges up there, flakes, side pulls, fingertip crimpers. She just had to reach them-and having reached them, she had to use them. If she fell at the top of the runout, the rope stretch might let her toetips brush the earth, but it still wouldn't be a ground fall-as long as that top piece of protection held. If the nut popped out of the crack when her weight hit it, though, she could go all the way down onto the rocks below.

"This is not a bomber set," she called down.

"So don't fall on it," Val yelled back.

Belayers were always so helpful.

One at a time, she dipped her hands into the chalk bag that hung against her b.u.t.t. The chalk would soak up the sweat that slicked her hands. A nice thing about the humidity: she could pretend that she didn't know it was fear sweat.

Go, she told herself.

And she went.

Left foot up, test. Feel the high-friction rubber stick the rock, the tight pinch of the shoe compressing her foot. The hold was too high to stand up on, but she had techniques for that. She managed a fingertip grip, awkwardly off to the left, and supported it with the pressure of the palm shoving the gecko glove into the rock.

Her right palm contacting a little rippled b.u.mp in the rock face, she levered herself up onto the left foot. Her right foot flagged out, a counterweight, and she held the precarious position by balance and the friction of her left hand and left foot against stone. Breathing shallowly, belly against the rock, she maintained her balance. She brought her right hand up on a sweeping arc, reaching for the ledge her skinned perceptions hinted at, just above. Two centimeters of crimp snagged her fingertips. She latched on, her arms stretched on a wide diagonal, her right foot still swinging free. Strain across her shoulders, now, the pull through tendons and lats and rotators.

She was a meter and a half above her that last nut. Her heart stammered. She concentrated on her breathing, on moving smoothly, on turning her head slowly to search out a ledge, a pocket, anything she could get her toe against. There was a little overhang next, which would put her four meters above the nut.

Which translated to eight meters of fall before you took rope stretch into account. For every meter she fell, she'd fall faster than the one before, and when her sixty-three kilos. .h.i.t that nut whose placement she wasn't too secure about- "Come on, Bridge," she muttered under her breath. "If Val can do it on a leg and a half, what's your excuse?"

She gathered herself, looked up to judge the distance to the roof, and then turned her head aside to increase the length of her reach and went for it. Foot up, swing, and lunge. Below her, Val cheered loudly. She felt the tug of the rope's weight below her, the solid pressure of her toe edged on a flake that was far more secure than it looked.

Trust your feet. Trust your feet and go.

She hit it just right, balance and opposition making the move feel easier than it had any right to. Her body a tensile line of strength between hand and foot, she strained up, reached, found the edge. Her fingers gripped; slowly she transferred weight to the hand. Slowly, she eased herself onto the hold- Her right foot popped off the wall and all her weight fell on her fingertip grip at full arm extension. Pain lanced through her shoulder and the palm of her hand; she swung for a moment, clinging reflexively, and then her own momentum pulled her from the wall.

As she dropped, she tucked. She hit that sketchy placement, and she heard the nut screech loose. She had just enough time for an unformulated hope that the rest of the pro wouldn't zipper out of the rock when she felt the next piece catch her, and the rope stretch, and she struck the dirt and stones below with disorienting force.

[PAID CONTENT].

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Brigit hadn't finished bouncing when Val was beside her, crouched down as well as his prosthesis would allow, running hands across her legs and arms. "Lie still," he said, even as she reached to push his hands away. "Back up," she wheezed. "Let me get some air. I'm fine. I'm fine." Rope stretch had taken most of her weight and she was more embarra.s.sed than hurt, but residual adrenaline left her shaking and weak. She batted his hands away, and Val held his arms wide, recognizing her autonomy even if he didn't agree with it.

"You might have a spinal injury," he said.

Carefully, she wiggled her fingers and toes. "No," she said. "It wasn't as bad as it looked. My d.a.m.n foot popped. And then my tendons-"

"How bad?" he asked.

She wiggled her fingers. "Thing I maybe strained a pulley tendon. And the rotator cuff. I don't think anything is torn."

She looked up and sighed before continuing, "And I said that placement wasn't any good-"

"Well," he answered. "You were right."

Shakily, achily, Brigid got her feet under her and rolled onto them.

"You didn't commit," Val said. "You could have had it if you'd trusted the foot a little more."

"Tentative." Brigid shook her head. "I'm such a d.a.m.n coward."

Val shrugged and began unclipping the belay. "It's a tough route. Give yourself a little credit."

THE DAWN SHANE SHOW 06 June 2051 TRANSCRIPT CALLER (D'orothea from New York): "I know you find the ads offensive. But don't you think this kind of rightminding could save a lot of marriages?"

DAWN SHANE: "What I find offensive is that they're aimed so strongly at women. There's a subtextual message that women need to change in order to support a relations.h.i.+p-"

CALLER: "Okay, every relations.h.i.+p demands compromise."

DAWN SHANE: "Every relations.h.i.+p does demand compromise. But why can't men compromise, too? Why aren't we seeing ads about turning off your urge to philander when you're elected to the Senate?"

[Audience laughter]

CALLER: "Maybe it could be made mandatory under law." [Audience laughter]

DAWN SHANE: "Thanks for an interesting perspective, caller, even if it's one I don't agree with. And on to Kevin from South Dakota! Kevin, you're on the air!"

They started up again, this time with Val leading. He got up the thing like a d.a.m.ned mountain goat, edging on the rubber peg of his specialized prosthesis. He was sharp and confident and a little flashy, and Brigid loved watching him climb. But most of all, she envied him the grace and fearlessness with which he met every challenge the rock could provide. It must be easier, she thought, when you weren't terrified. Watching him climb was like watching Nijinsky dance: he was made for it, and nothing seemed to give him pause.

Even the moves that were too hard for him-of which, admittedly, there weren't any on the current climb. He'd just hit them, try, and fail undaunted. Until he found the way past whatever was slowing him down.

With the rope above her and Val on top belay, so she couldn't possibly fall more than a few feet, Brigid sent the route without a single glitch.

"Dammit," she said at the clifftop, staring down the ninety meters to the dirt below.

"You're just scared of it," Val said, rigging a rappel to descend. He'd be easier to resent if he wasn't so d.a.m.ned nice. "A little more practice."

"It's a sophipathology," Brigid admitted. "I could get my brain hacked. Call it buy in. Employee discount." She spent enough time developing rightminding protocols-chemical, cognitive, behavioral, and surgical strategies to a.s.sist in the development of a mentally healthy population- that it wasn't much of a stretch.

She continued, "All I want to do is just ... turn down my amygdalae a little."

"You are hacking your brain." He tested the rig, leaning some weight on it before trusting it to lower him to the dirt below. "The old fas.h.i.+oned way. Come on, let's get down off this rock and find a nice 5.10 you can lead."

FADE IN INT: A CHEERY MODERN KITCHEN - MORNING.

It is sunlit and spotlessly clean. Two attractive women sit at the table sharing coffee, a bowl of daffodils between them.

CHLOE:.

It's not what it used to be. Do you know what I mean?

MAUDE:.

You and Bobby?

CHLOE makes a face.

CHLOE:.

You could say that.

CHLOE looks aside guiltily and sips her coffee.

MAUDE:.

The same thing happened with Ajit and me, you know.