by Ian Stewart
The other three monks watched as the elevator doors closed behind the visitors and their escorts and then resumed their normal duties. There were many things to prepare. In a few days they would receive other visitors, and these would require a very different reception.
They were walking in a small procession from one village to the next, by the side of an icy stream, crossing it every so often on homemade bridges of rope and wood. Yaks and mdzo-mo — a crossbreed of yak and cow—grazed the fields beside the stream. It was all very pastoral, which was peculiar given that the habitat's main function within the Way of the Wholesome's religious-commercial structure was the construction of large machinery. Very large machinery—cruisers, cargo transports, but above all, mass-drivers. Right now they were starting work on one that would make even the Pitching Machine seem puny. Construction facilities, though, were toward the outside of the habitat's hull—or, from the point of view of the inhabitants, some way underground. The New Tibetans lived in the rural interior. Some commuted to work down shafts that had been bored through the hull, leading to a vast complex of work areas reserved for tasks that were best carried out in the presence of artificial gravity. Low-gee factories were clustered at the two ends, close to the axis, also within the hull.
The procession was heading toward Chumulangma, the most distant of the six mountains. Quite why the Cuckoo was insisting on that destination was unclear, but each day a three-mile stroll brought them to another monastery, another group of New Tibetans, another cluster of small villages. They were learning the way of meditation, cleansing their minds of irrelevant dross. Nobody would explain why this was necessary, but everyone seemed convinced that it was, and polite visitors defer to their hosts. Moses seemed to be deriving real satisfaction from the experience, perhaps because it was helping him to shed some of the worst memories of his past; Prudence found the ritual strangely calming; Charles didn't much care what he was asked to do as long as it was done out in the open during the day and indoors at night.
Whatever the Cuckoos intentions were, he was keeping them well hidden. The visitors had given up asking: the monks were courteous, but if they knew the true purpose of this slow hike, they were not prepared to reveal it. Instead, they turned the conversation to the customs and history of New Tibet.
The Way of the Wholesome had conceived the habitat as a rescue mission. The history of their order was steeped in the culture of Old Tibet, once an autonomous nation-state, overrun by China nearly three centuries before and slowly strangled— language, culture, religion, agriculture all being squeezed, slowly but relentlessly, into the Chinese mold. Even so, many aspects of Old Tibetan culture survived, but when the Pause engulfed most of the worlds nations and China turned inward to become totally isolationist, the heritage of Old Tibet finally began to vanish at an alarming rate. And so the Buddhists of the Belt consulted the By a chos, and there they read this:
Deep and vast, the aftermath of evil.
Deep and vast, the midden of wickedness.
Therefore make ready to abandon the Samsaric world.
They interpreted this advice as an instruction: as many Tibetans as possible must be removed from Earth. And, it followed logically, located elsewhere. The Way of the Wholesome tended to take the long view, and it saw an opportunity to try out an old idea and spin a habitat from a molten asteroid. Several hundred Tibetans were spirited out of Free China, male and female, young and old, mostly entire families; the group included farmers, builders, weavers, herders, hunters, seamstresses, teachers— wherever possible, individuals unusually well versed in the ancient ways of Tibetan culture. The Belters rescued as many Tibetans as they could slip past the tight border security of Free China, and even then they triggered a repressive clamp-down when the disappearances came to light. They transferred the refugees to their bases on the Moon, and from there to the Belt, for training. The refugees formed the basis of a workforce that, over several decades, constructed within the habitat a rough simulacrum of part of the Tibetan plateau, with a few added mountains to maintain the right kind of ambience. Chumulangma, Shishabangma, and Nyainchentanglha formed a group at one end; Guerla Mandata, Nganglong Kangri, and Kangrinboche matched it at the other. The most sacred of these was Chumulangma—Goddess Mother of the Wind.
Today, the visitors from Tiglath-Pileser were to attend a wedding. The two families had consulted their lama and an astrologer to ensure that the bride and groom were compatible, and the lama and the astrologer had secretly consulted the bride and groom to find out.
To Prudence's relief—weddings weren't her strong point and the ceremony was only interesting for its archaeological aspects, as far as she was concerned—the ceremony, which took place in the couple's new home, was short and simple. Once it was over, colorful prayer flags were hauled up to the roof of the house to cement the relationship between the two families. This was the signal for a raucous party, lubricated with plenty of chang, accompanied by yak meat, pork, mutton, vegetables of unidentifiable kinds, and barley-flour confections. Prudence and Moses entered fully into the spirit of the event, joining in the dances, chattering with the villagers. Charles spent a large part of the evening swapping shaggy dog stories with the astrologer and trying to avoid the local tea, which was boiled in soda water and liberally doused with slightly rancid butter.
The next day's walk took them past fields of pale blue poppies and wild pansies to the edge of a forest. They followed a broad track between rhododendrons, oaks, birches, and bamboo thickets. Langur monkeys could occasionally be seen high
up in the trees, and much more frequently heard. Supposedly many other species of animal lived in the forests—wild boars, buffalo, stone martens, lynxes, and a rare spotted cat known as a g'sa —but they saw none of these; their group was making too much noise. Even so, they saw plenty of jungle fowl—and raucous, impertinent mynahs, the comedians of the bird world, were everywhere.
Two days later, they arrived at a group of yak-hide tents in a grassy field spattered with yellow bell-shaped shang-dril flowers, close to the foothills of Chumulangma. And there, finally, they were told when and where they were to meet the Cuckoo. It was, Charles remarked to Prudence that evening in the privacy of their tent, quite a burden to place on an unvvdtting visitor.
Of course, the visitors could pohtely refuse. But then they'd never find out what the hell it was all about.
Prudence had a theory. "They want to purify our spirits, Charles. First we must meditate, until we are in the right frame of mind for the final stage of our journey. Then we must undergo privations of the flesh to test our courage and resolve."
"Yeah, I know that... I thought this was going to be a holiday, not a holy quest. Do you think we ought to get Moses over here, join in the discussion? He must be wondering what its all about."
"Not necessary. I'm pretty sure he knoYJs; he's worked it out from the monks' body language. Won't tell us, of course. Typical." She reassembled her scattered thoughts. "I'll tell you this: whatever we do, he's going. And my curiosity is piqued: I want to go, too. Anyway, we could do with the exercise: too much food and chang at the wedding party, time to burn it off." Charles remained unconvinced, she could see. "It will get easier the higher we go, you know—unlike Earthly mountains. The gravity falls off as you approach the axis. The first few days will be the worst."
"I guess. But it still gets colder the higher you go, and the air gets thinner and makes breathing more difficult."
"That, Charles, is why we've been brought here in such a leisurely fashion. To help us get acclimatized. And they're supplying us with guides and porters, at least until the last few thousand feet. They know the way, they can watch out for overhanging snow cornices and hidden crevasses and potential avalanches. And the habitat is too small for real weather, we won't get hit by a storm. All we've got to do is climb."
Charles grumbled. "Yes, but why?"
"To see what we can see." Prudence's mood became more serious. "Look, I've known the Cuckoo a long time
, and he never does anything unless he has a very good reason. He's brought us on some kind of pilgrimage, he's putting us through some sort of spiritual ordeal, and he's leading us to a magic place at the core of the world. I don't know about you, but J intend to find out what he's done all that for. It will be important. The only question is: how important?"
"You're right. There's only one way to find out. Let's sleep on it; we'll need all the energy we can conserve."
"Spoilsport."
"I suppose I could risk a small expenditure of energy in a good cause."
"Definitely. You'll sleep better." Along with much else, their calamitous disagreement at Giza had been relegated to another universe—the one before the Death Comet.
The original Chumulangma still existed: it was Earth's highest mountain, and even Free China could make little impact on it. Its namesake in New Tibet was roughly the same size, but the part between plateau and sea level—half its height—was missing. Not that that bit was visible back on Earth, so it was a convincing copy. Not quite as daunting as the original, for the
reasons Prudence had pointed out: assured fair weather and steadily reducing gravity.
Although the New Tibetans had built Chumulangma to make themselves feel at home, they had reconstructed the whole mountain—Nepalese side as well as Free Chinese (Old Tibetan). The route now being taken up the mountain followed the path pioneered by its first conquerors, centuries before. Despite the easier conditions, it took the visitors and their guides several days to get past the Khumbu glacier with its daunting icefall, but the higher they climbed, the lighter the porters' loads became, and the less they themselves weighed. By then they had put on special mountaineering clothes of yak wool, which covered all save their eyes; their hands were protected from the cold by many-layered gloves. Breathing wasn't as much of a problem as it had been for the early mountaineers, either, because the pressure within the New Tibet Habitat fell off more slowly with height than it did on the real mountain. The cold, however, was entirely genuine, and climbing required a lot of effort and concentration, for even in half a gee a thousand-foot fall would almost certainly be fatal.
They spent the whole of one day confined to their tents while a sudden wind raged. Although there were no major storms inside the habitat, thermal instabilities sometimes caused a helical cyclone, spiraling along the cylinder's axis from one end to the other. Moses, who was becoming much more communicative, passed the time by telling them about his childhood in the Village.
They climbed for two weeks altogether, eating like pigs but losing weight, growing in strength and confidence, perpetually awed by the rugged beauty of the counterfeit peaks and the astounding views of the habitat's curved plateau. The most out-of-character feature was the birds that occasionally flew past, skirting the snowfields en route to some more enticing destination. Ptarmigans, even cranes. One night a flock of ducks landed on
the tent—^not what you'd expect to find on the slopes of the western cirque. Moses spent more than an hour with them— telling jokes in fluent Duck, to judge by the barrage of quacks and hoots. Or maybe it was just duck gossip—he wouldn't say.
They had much time to think, but there was something strangely relaxing about the whole endeavor. The problems caused to their homeworld by the near-collision with the Death Comet seemed not just far away in space, but far away in mind-space. The awesome immensity of the universe seemed far more present than the mundane realities of human affairs.
Not bad for a fake mountain.
In the evenings, the three travelers talked—not about anything very specific, just whatever was on their minds. They got to know one another on a deeply personal level, valuing each others' faults just as much as their virtues—for every human being is a complicit combination of both.
At night, they slept likes babes, untroubled.
By day, they climbed.
And soon, too soon, they reached the ridge that led to the summit. Gravity here was so low that they almost felt they could fly to the peak—which made them all the more cautious, because the snow was as light as a layer of feathers, and at least as treacherous underfoot. The porters watched from below as the three initiates—for such they were—set off on the last stage of their long pilgrimage: the final climb up the final ridge.
At the top, they found the Cuckoo.
He was sitting in the lotus position on a small, circular mat, exquisitely woven but completely plain. Like them, he wore warm clothing, but his hands and face were unprotected. Mostly, though, he kept his hands folded inside his robes. It was cold on top of Chumulangma, even for one born in New Tibet and trained in yoga.
Charles was awed—the man had such presence.
Prudence flung her arms around the Cuckoo's neck, being
careful not to push him off the mountain in her enthusiasm. "Mfeha'-gro/ It's been so long! You haven't changed a bit."
The elderly lama seemed unruffled by the onslaught; if anything, he was enjoying it. "Neither have you, dear Prudence, and I've told you before not to call me 'skywalker.' Especially in view of the term's more Earthly—or should I say 'earthy'—connotations."
" 'Assistance will come from the love of the fairies,' " Prudence quoted. "The Golden Goose." Charles had no idea what the byplay was about: he'd ask Prudence later, if he remembered.
The Cuckoo chuckled. "I am hoping that help will come from a more tangible source. My reasons for asking you to join me here are in some ways complex, but in others quite simple. I am uncertain how to begin." His gaze lingered on each of them.
"I am ready," said Moses. "I cannot speak for Charles or Prudence."
The Cuckoo nodded. "Yes ... I was told of your abilities, young man. Most impressive. I was, indeed, wondering whether the three of you are ready However, believing oneself to be ready is not the same as being ready."
Moses said nothing. The Cuckoo was right. Nevertheless, he knew he was ready For what? Ah, that was another matter altogether That's what he had come to find out.
"Ready for what?" asked Charles, echoing Moses' thoughts.
"I will answer that question soon, my friends, but there is a more immediate matter to attend to. It is why you have come here by the route you have taken—and I am not referring to geography alone."
As far as they could tell, the Cuckoo did nothing, but a few yards away one of the boulders was sliding aside, shedding a thin veil of powdered snow. An unearthly apparition rose from the cavity thus revealed—tall, domed, swathed in what looked like rumpled plastic sheeting.
Through transparent windows, a ring of eyes looked out.
"Halfholderr yelled Moses.
* * *
The Jovlan's voyage had mirrored their own. Accompanied by a small retinue of wheelers, in the safety of a small but comfortable transpaut, she had undertaken the ultimate in skydiving—a journey up through the cloud layers and out into the immensity of space, boosted by a repulsion beam. The Way of the Wholesome had made independent contact, and the importance of making such a voyage had been impressed upon her. It had hardly been necessary: Halfholder had always craved excitement: it was a character flaw, but it seemed to have worked out for the best, on the whole.
Her ship had not docked at the habitats axis: instead, it had made its way inside the huge indentation that was Chumulangma, eventually coming to a rest not far below its summit. Some complicated improvisation made it possible to secure her vessel to the mountain's inner wall, and her wheeler-manufactured life-support bag—stronger than it looked, virtually indestructible— was entirely adequate to protect her as she made her way along the maze of tubes and tunnels that ran through the habitat's hull metal to the summit of its sacred mountain.
She had known what to expect. The Cuckoo knew that she was ready, had always been ready—it was an integral part of the skydiver creed, a consequence of their reverence for the Life-soul Cherisher. Halfholder's pilgrimage had been the trip through space, an act of courage for her, whereas for the humans that part had been ro
utine. That made it only fair that while they had to climb the mountain from base to peak, she was permitted to float up through the tunnels with hardly any effort. Beside her floated a wheeler, its interior glowing with cold anti-gravitic fires, vanes extended.
She also knew who she was going to meet, because her wheelers had been monitoring Tiglath-Pilesefs position ever since it left Jovian orbit. The wheeler was along to act as interpreter.
Charles stared at the wheeler: it looked familiar. "Reliant Robin . . . ? But you were destroyed on lo."
"I am an exact copy," said the wheeler, "though with the capability of voice recognition and human speech. Before lo exploded, my mind was hard-downloaded from the one you call Reliant Robin, and I was offcast to have the same external form. As far as you are concerned, I am the original. Though for a few hours the true original would have known that I was not." Charles had no answer to that.
"Let us proceed," said the Cuckoo. The representatives of two races faced each other, brought together on the top of an artificial mountain inside the greatest artifact humanity had ever created. It was the ideal setting, a compromise between the intense cold of Jupiter's cloud layer and the warmth preferred by humans. The atmosphere was terrestrial, not Jovian, but the pressure was well within the tolerances of both races: the pressures in Jupiter's cloud layer were comparable to the Earth's at sea level; moreover, Halfholder's species had evolved to cope with rapid changes of pressure. So a simple covering of flexible organic polymer provided adequate protection—for a few hours, at least, and that was all that the Cuckoo needed.