Pliocene Exile - The Adversary Part 70

ELIZABETH: And you Tanu?

BLEYN: [Malaise.] Both Aronn and I suffer greatly from headache, shortness of breath, and muscle weakness. Basil thinks our large exotic bodies have not acclimatized to the high alt.i.tude as readily as those of the humans. We are trying to consume additional fluids and redact one another through the night.

ELIZABETH: [Concern.] Wouldn't sleep be more therapeutic?

BLEYN: You know that we Tanu naturally require less sleep than your race. We are far more comfortable awake, when we can maintain our respiration at a higher rate and alleviate the effects of anoxia.

ELIZABETH: Well ... be careful. I understand that mountain sickness can afflict the strong as well as the less rugged among humans. This is doubtless true among Tanu as well.

BLEYN: Tomorrow we reach the high point of our journey. We will endure ... Do you have the route selected for us? I have the chart ready to mark.

ELIZABETH: [Image.] It seems that the snowy ridge above Camp 3 still provides your best access to the Col. After the storm the snow will be deeper and you can expect soft and slow going. Tell Basil there are dangerous cornices that have formed within the saddle of the Col, so he can no longer count upon using that route. You'll have to traverse the hardfrozen snowfield at the foot of Rosa's West Face. It means an additional climb, I'm afraid, but only about 400 metres total gain.

BLEYN: to 8210! G.o.ddess sustain us. The breath burns in my lungs at the very thought.

ELIZABETH: But from then on, it's downhill all the way-and in good weather. You should have clear blue skies for at least three days.

BLEYN: Tana willing, there is a good chance we may even reach the aircraft tomorrow. Did the storms bury them?

ELIZABETH: They're still quite visible. Only slightly hidden in drifts.

BLEYN: Something hidden. Go and find it. Something lost behind the Ranges ... [laughter].

ELIZABETH: [Anxiety.] BLEYN: No-it's only a silly poem that Basil quoted to us, a human glorification of adventures such as this one. I find the poem, and the att.i.tude it celebrates, incomprehensible. Yet of the five humans in our party, only Mr. Betsy has the good sense to despise and abominate our travels through this terrible place. The others are thrilled at the prospect of the mountain's conquest! ... Tell me, Elizabeth. Is it true that in your future world, humans climb peaks such as this purely for sport?

ELIZABETH: Quite true.

BLEYN: How will we ever understand your race!

ELIZABETH: If I told you, you would never believe it.

In the morning, Bleyn and Aronn felt better. Basil decided to revert to their original climbing configuration of two parties.

He, Betsy, and Bleyn led the way, with Ookpik, Bengt, n.a.z.ir, and Aronn following some fifteen minutes behind. The snow on the ridge was knee-deep, and very soft after the early morning sun went to work on it. Basil's team ploughed ahead breaking trail for three tedious hours; then Ookpik's group had their turn. In some places, the humans floundered nearly waist-deep, but it was the long-legged Tanu who seemed most depleted by the effort. Aronn, especially, had gone ashen-faced and sluggish.

He seemed confused by Ookpik's simplest orders and found it difficult to keep up with the modest pace set by the humans in the team.

By noon the climbers had nearly attained the elevation of the West Col. Basil decreed a lunch halt in a sheltered snow hollow.

"Do you see that foggy glitter ahead?" He pointed up the slope. "It's wind, blowing through the Col, and it means the end of this beastly soft stuff. However, I'm afraid we'll have to-er-lean into it a bit crossing the snowfield on the upper slope. The traverse will be short, but possibly rather grim, until we get down onto the northern flank and out of the venturieffect wind. What we need now is good hot food, and plenty to drink. Soup and sweet tea. Dehydration is one of our deadliest enemies now. It aggravates the fatigue and hypothermia and mountain sickness and other stresses on our bodies."

"The worst stress I suffer is when I look into a mirror," Mr.

Betsy complained. "My poor nose and cheeks are sunburned to a frazzle!"

Ookpik thrust a portable stove and a large decamole pot at him. "Go melt snow and spare us the b.i.t.c.hing and I'll let you have some of my rhinoceros lard. It's only a little rancid."

"Ugh!" cried Betsy and flounced off.

Basil beckoned to Bleyn and led him apart from the others.

"I'm quite worried about Aronn. His condition seems to be deteriorating."

"I have noted it." The Champion's eyes turned to his Guild Brother, who sat apathetically in front of an infrared heating unit, holding an untasted chocolate bar in one mittened hand.

"We'll have to go roped on the slope," Basil said. "There may be some steep pitches of ice and the wind will be severe.

I'm afraid it's out of the question for Aronn to continue as tailman to Ookpik's team. If he should fall, his great weight would tear the other three loose. They would slide down the slick chute into the lap of the Col, perhaps more than a thousand metres."

"Very likely," said the Tanu.

"I have seen other climbers with Aronn's symptoms," Basil went on. "I must tell you that there is a chance of your friend becoming irrational. He could panic, even become madly euphoric and decide to throw away his ice-axe, or go dancing about the slope. Will you be able to control him through your golden torc?"

"I can coerce him, certainly. But Aronn is a stalwart psychokinetic , and if he becomes crazed he may override my compulsion.

When persons of my race suffer mental disorder, it is redaction and not coercion that they require-and my brain, impelled by self-preservation, concentrates this faculty w.i.l.l.y-nilly to my own benefit. There is another problem. Even though I am normally Aronn's coercive superior, his powers may at times exceed my own when he is stimulated by aberrant mental impulses."

Basil said, "We cannot leave Aronn here and we cannot turn back. Once we get across the Col, we can put him into a decamole sledge for the downhill slog. But somehow, he's going to have to make it across that snowfield. I propose that we transfer Betsy to Ookpik's rope. You and I will be Aronn's ropemates.

We will lead the way, and I will provide-uh-bombproof belays all the way."

"Aronn weighs near one hundred and eighty of your kilos.

Would this not put you at considerable hazard? I myself am greatly weakened. I do not think I could sustain Aronn with my psychokinesis. It would have to be done physically."

"We could put him between us-"

"And if all three of us should fall," Bleyn said starkly, "who will lead the others to the aircraft? Ookpik, I will remind you, is not nearly so experienced in alpine mountaineering as was the late Thongsa. My orders from the King command me to retrieve the aircraft at any cost."

"We will not abandon Aronn." Basil was firm.

"No," Bleyn agreed softly. "But you will lead the others in a five-man team, and I and my Guild Brother will follow, roped together. We will trust in Tana to sustain us. If we fall, it is her will."

Basil said, "If you fall, we humans will come to the aircraft with no Tanu overlord to compel us! How do you know we won't abscond with a s.h.i.+p and fly to freedom? Neither you nor the King could coerce us at long distance."

"There is no need to coerce you. I have said that humans are impossible to understand-but I was wrong. I understand you well enough, Basil, to know that you will do as you have promised, whether or not Aronn or I survive."

The don gave a diffident nod. "That's all right, then. Shall we get on with it?"

The wind screamed. Its chill factor, Basil estimated, was probably better than minus sixty Celsius. He felt his face congealing inside the rime-coated fur ruff of his anorak hood. His fingers grew more and more numb with the cutting of each step in the tough white ice. He sank an ice screw, made fast, and said: Belay on! Climb away.

Ookpik said: Climbing. He scuttled quickly across the freshly cut footholds, then anch.o.r.ed himself in turn. Meanwhile Basil was chopping, chopping, cramponing along, with Ookpik belayed and braced against a possible fall of the leader. As the line of slots extended across the steep slope, Bengt followed on the rope, then n.a.z.ir, then Betsy; and ten metres or so in the rear and dropping farther and farther behind came the two Tanu.

Basil swung his axe in time to the rhythm of his labouring heart. His lungs strained to extract oxygen from the thin, frigid air and the pain drove him to greater effort. Faster. He worked out to the end of the rope that Ookpik had secured, chopping ice with as much speed as he dared; for speed was the only thing that would bring them out of the screaming wind that was freezing them slowly to death. Basil knew it and Bleyn the Champion knew it. The others were too weak and miserable to care.

Basil said: How Aronn doing Bleyn?

Bleyn said: Weak very weak halfstupefied but no mania Tanabethanked he responds my coercion.