by Mark Cain
BOOH was struggling to get us up to the level of the ladder. He was practically clawing his way, foot by foot, against the resistance of the mountain’s inverse gravity. Then it was all he could do to hover in place, his breath coming and going in great gasps.
“BOOH! It’s okay! I … I’ve got my hand on the ladder.” Then I put my second hand on the next rung. “Orson! Have you got a grip on it?”
“Yeah!”
“Good. Let go of us, BOOH. Let go!”
Reluctantly, it seemed to me, my batty friend opened his claws, and we were hanging by our hands from the ladder. My arms felt as if they were going to pull from their sockets, but with an effort I let go of one rung of the infernal jungle gym and grabbed the next one, then the next, moving foot by foot toward the base of Erebus.
Fifteen feet … ten feet … oh, hell, this is murder … five feet … four … three … two … one …
And then I felt as if I were in the middle of doing a cartwheel. Kicking my legs in the air, I sent myself tumbling forward and stood up. “Whew!”
Behind me, Orson was having more trouble, over two hundred pounds more. He had only managed to move about ten of the twenty feet necessary to reach the mountain.
“Steve!” he shouted. “I … I don’t think I can do it! Go on without me!”
“No! Hang on.” Quickly I rummaged in my bag and pulled out a length of rope. I tied it firmly to the ladder, which was now at my feet. “I’m going to throw our rope to you. Grab it, then make like Tarzan, understand?”
Orson’s face was turning from a bright red to a deep purple but he managed to nod. “Hurry!” he said with a gasp.
It took a couple of attempts before I got the rope close enough for Orson to catch it, but catch it he did and, hanging by one arm, he put his full trust in the strength of the line, relinquished his hold on the other rung, and swung toward the mountain.
When he crossed over the invisible barrier where Hell’s gravity was nullified and that of Erebus took over, he dropped up, that is to say down, making a very nice parabola with his swing.
“Ow, ow, ow! My arms feel like they’ve been stretched!” Then Orson just lay on the ground, gasping as he stared up at the peak of the mountain.
“BOOH, no!”
My batty friend was trying to follow us. He was hanging upside down, holding on by his claws. He had managed a few rungs, but seemed ready to drop. Perhaps if he weren’t already exhausted, he could have made it, but as it was, he was almost out of strength. Even if he could reach the base of Erebus, though, he’d likely be of little use to us in his weakened condition.
“BOOH!” I thought quickly. “I need you to get away from Erebus. You can’t help me here, but I may need you later, and you have to be rested. Drop, dive and glide yourself to somewhere safe!”
But BOOH refused to abandon me. He reached out with a claw, trying to move forward another rung. Then his strength failed, he lost his grip, and he dropped like a stone.
“BOOH!” both Orson and I screamed. But he was gone.
A feeling of great loss overwhelmed me. I found that I was crying. No. Bawling.
Then two big arms wrapped around me. “Don’t worry, Steve,” Orson said, trying to comfort me. “BOOH’s one of the toughest creatures I’ve ever known, and that includes most devils and all demons. If anyone can take a fall like that, he can.”
I wiped my eyes and nose on the sleeve of my parka. “Hope so,” was all I could say.
“Besides,” continued Orson. “We’ve got problems of our own. Look,” he said, indicating the mountain.
Above us loomed Erebus, a mile high mountain of ice. Its summit was draped in dark storm clouds; they looked as if they would drop snow on us at any moment. This was going to be a bitch. “Get the rope, would you?”
“Okay.” My assistant took a step and fell flat on his ass. I tried to help him up and found myself lying next to him. The icy surface of Erebus was as slick as a banana peel in a Buster Keaton movie.
“Maybe we put our ice cleats on now?” he suggested.
“Good idea.” We rummaged around in our Santa sacks and found them. The ice cleats were less like cleats than snow chains for tires, and they slipped over our boots in a not dissimilar fashion. We now had pretty good traction against the slick surface of the mountain, and while Orson untied and coiled the rope, I walked over to a portion of the fuel line. Pulling the stethoscope from my coveralls, I took a listen.
Swish swish.
“The pipe is still live.”
“With our luck,” Orson said, dropping the rope into his pack and pulling the drawstrings taut, “we’ll have to get to the top of this damned Popsicle before we find the problem.”
“That’s what Satan thought, though we’ll check the pipe every so often, just to make sure. Come on,” I said, looking up ruefully at the mountain. “The sooner we start, the sooner we finish.”
Bik peeked out of my pocket. “Damn. It’s cold out there!”
“No kidding,” I said, mildly peeved. “What did you expect, the Sahara?”
“What’s that?”
“Skip it. I told you not to come.”
The little guy climbed out of my pocket and sat on my shoulder. His flame was still out; I guess he was saving himself for later. “No,” he said, a glum expression on his face. “I needed to come. Besides, I have something I want to tell you.”
“Not now, little guy,” I said, handing him a toboggan (not the variety that you go down snowy slopes with, but the kind you put on your head), which he promptly wrapped himself in.
“But Steve … ”
“Later, Bik. Rest break, remember? Come on, Orson.”
And so we were off, two Santa lookalikes and a pint-sized fire giant, wrapped in a toboggan (the other kind).
We decided to stay close to the fuel line. We could see it, a green zigzag climbing up a snowy white peak until it disappeared in the storm clouds above. The path the pipeline traveled up the mountain side seemed to be the least treacherous way we could go. For one thing, we could use the rope to secure ourselves to the braces that supported the pipeline as it wended its way up the side of the mountain.
This soon became the standard approach to our ascent. We would loop the rope around one of the braces and tie the ends around our waists. When we reached the next brace, usually about fifty feet up the mountain - linear feet, unfortunately, instead of vertical feet, which meant we would travel far more than the mile distance from base to summit - we’d untie one end of the rope, haul it up, make another loop around the pipe support we’d just reached, and tie the rope back to whoever’s waist it had come off. In this fashion, we at least had the security of knowing that we couldn’t fall more than fifty feet without the brace and our own weight catching us.
This worked great until we got to a rather nasty crevasse that had opened in the ice of the mountainside. It was only ten feet across, but that was farther than either of us could jump. Then Orson surprised me. Turns out he could throw a pretty mean rope. He said he learned the trick from Will Rogers, but I think he was just name-dropping. Anyway, he tied a rock to one end of our line, and after three or four attempts managed to throw it across the ravine, hooking it on the next brace up the slope. We secured the other end to the brace behind us, threw our bags to the uphill side then shimmied our way across. Hanging upside-down, legs wrapped around the rope, hands pulling us along: not fun. Fortunately it was a short distance, we were each fifty pounds lighter without our bags, and we were across in no time.
Of course, now we were without a rope, or without a good portion of it. We salvaged what we could, but our line was now only fifty feet long instead of a hundred.
Not that it mattered. Five minutes later it was gone entirely. We had decided that, since the rope was now too short to be doubled and provide us with a little insurance between pipe braces, we’d try to copy Orson’s trick of throwing the rock and rope uphill, hook the next brace, and get our security that way.
; But I wanted to try it.
“Steve, it’s not as easy as it looks. You’d better let me.”
“No, I’ve got this. You’ll see.”
He saw, all right. He saw me build up lots of centrifugal force as I spun the rock around in the air, like David using his sling to pop Goliath in the noggin. Then I let go and watched the rock overshoot its target by ten feet. That, in and of itself, wouldn’t have been a problem, but I didn’t have a firm grip on the rest of the rope. It slipped through my fingers, and Orson and I watched in frustration as the rock-powered rope shot into another crevasse.
“Great. I told you to let me throw it.”
“Sorry.”
“Now what are we going to do?”
I thought hard then opened my parka and removed my toolbelt. Zipping the coat closed, I put the belt on the outside, resting my hands on the two rolls that now hung low, near my hips. “Duct tape?”
“Swell,” Orson grumbled.
“Hey! I’m good with duct tape!”
“Yeah, you are, but duct tape is a crummy substitute for rope.”
“Well, maybe we won’t have to use it,” I said. “We’ve mostly been walking, and the rope has only been important for getting over that crevasse.”
“Not to mention the two or three times that one of us slipped. The rope kept us from playing Jack and Jill. I for one don’t relish the thought of breaking my crown.”
I spun my two rolls of duct tape. “If you fall, I’ll catch you. Promise.”
“You’d better. This place is weird, and I don’t know what would happen if I fell down the mountainside.”
“You’d break your crown. You already said so.”
“Yes, but would it heal?”
“I … I don’t know.” Satan had implied that the rules for Erebus were different than those for the rest of Hell. So far, that had only applied to gravity, but there might be other ways things were different up here.
Like, for example, what if I can’t handle duct tape as well on Erebus? Then we’d really be in trouble.
There was nothing for it, though. We had to keep moving, so with a sigh from me and another one of Orson’s patented grumbles, we continued our climb.
Chapter 26
After what seemed like an eternity of scrabbling up the icy side of Erebus, we were near its peak. But we had hit a serious check. The way above us would require a vertical climb. Actually, more than vertical, since the cliff we needed to reach hung behind as well as above us. We looked to see if there was an alternative, but without some serious backtracking, we could not avoid the climb.
Orson set down his bag and started rummaging through its contents.
“What are you doing?”
“Time to break out the pitons.”
“And then what?” I asked.
“Then it will be, ‘drive one into the mountain, grab, pull yourself up; drive another one higher up, grab again, pull again; repeat.’”
“Sounds like a lot of work.”
Orson shot me a withering look as he handed me a mess of pitons. “What did you expect? We’re climbing a mountain here.”
“Why are you giving these all to me?” I asked, pocketing them in my parka.
“You’re lighter than I am, and you’re better with a hammer.”
“So what?”
“So you’d better get hammering.”
Orson was right about that. I was better with a hammer than he was. Marginally. I couldn’t use the hammer with the gloves I had on though, so I took them off. The cold of the mountain felt like tiny pricks of frost poking my hands in dozens of places. It made me even more awkward than usual, and I hit my thumb more than once as I drove the pitons into whatever cracks in the icy surface I could find. Fortunately, my hands were so cold that I didn’t even feel it when I hit myself.
The going was slow, but foot by foot we were climbing the face of the cliff. Orson had also removed his gloves so he could better grasp the pitons. The downside was that our skin would sometimes stick to the steel, but fingers pulled off metal more easily than tongues, so it wasn’t any big deal.
“Hurry up, Steve. I can see the top of the cliff and … Ow!”
“Ow what?” I said looking down. Orson had been following a little too closely and, when I shifted my weight, I had stepped on his hand. In my distraction, I let go of my own handhold.
We were both scratching at the side of the cliff, in a desperate but what would ultimately be futile attempt not to fall. There was only one chance. Quickly (which for me is very quick - I’m preternaturally gifted with duct tape), I looped some tape around the ankle that in my fall had all too quickly become at eye level, pulled out seven or eight yards more, and made a lasso. Then just before gravity claimed me completely, I tossed my noose of tape over the stony outcropping twenty feet above me.
Perhaps I should have attached the duct tape to my waist instead, because I was flipped upside down, suspended in midair. Yet this gave me a chance to help Orson. Just before he fell off the side of the cliff, I grabbed his wrist.
The Santa Claus bags were a bit of a nuisance. We had tied them to our waists for the climb, and they were now hanging somewhere around the backs of our heads, thumping us near where I imagined our medullas must be.
“Don’t let go!” he screamed.
“I’m not letting go!” I said, trying to figure out how we were going to get back on terra firma. Or Erebus firma anyway.
“For Go … for Heav … oh, shit … just DON’T let go!”
“I’m NOT letting go!”
My fingers were slick with sweat, and I was beginning to lose my grip on him. At once a thousand fears hit me. Fears of losing my friend, fears of losing myself.
“Ow, ow, ow!” I would say periodically. I kept slamming my nose against the side of the cliff, and each time I did, I could hear cartilage break. Then we’d swing out again, giving my nose a chance to heal, if only briefly. Each time we swung out, though, my grip on Orson grew more tenuous.
“Steve! Do something! You know what will happen if I fall.”
I didn’t, but I didn’t want to find out either. With my left hand, I spooled out some duct tape and somehow managed to secure it around my wrist and that of my friend. We were now in no immediate danger of falling. Duct tape is strong, and the Infernal version, well, I’d bet my life on it, if I had any life left to bet.
Our initial pendulum-like momentum had ceased. We were dangling, upside down, a dozen feet from the cliff face. “Orson! Can you get us swinging again? We’ve got to get closer to the cliff and see if we can grab it.”
“I … I think so, now that I’m not worried about falling and crushing every bone in my body.”
“Okay, but wait a … Ow!”
“What?”
“Let me turn my head so I don’t break my nose again.”
“Again?”
“Yeah, that made the fifth time since we began dangling here.”
“Sorry. You ready now?”
“Uh huh. Go ahead. Each time we get close to the cliff, see if you can find something to grab onto. I’ll do the same.”
“Right.”
Swinging back and forth, while all the while my nose was bleeding, was making me a little nauseous, but I tried to add my own body weight to the not inconsiderable momentum a four hundred pound assistant was capable of generating. Soon we were swinging like the pendulum on a grandfather clock. On our third close encounter with the slope, I spotted something dark sticking out of the ice and reached for it.
It was Bik’s toboggan. It had gotten snagged on one of the pitons. When I reached for it, Bik appeared from the inside of the hat and grabbed my sleeve with a surprisingly strong grip. He pulled me up against the wall.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, thanks. Hey, you been working out?”
“Even a small fire giant is pretty strong.”
“No shit. Orson!” I yelled. “Do you have a handhold?”
“Yes. Now let’s get of
f this infernal cliff!”
Orson cut our wrists free with a penknife, but I left the lasso in place for security sake, though I moved the loop on my person from ankle to waist. As an afterthought, I tossed down a loop for Orson to put around his own waist, then fastened the new span of duct tape to our shared lifeline. My assistant handed me his hammer, since I’d dropped mine when I lost my grip on the mountain. I drove piton after piton into the cliff, and we inched our way to the top.
“Good grief!” Orson exclaimed, as I helped him over the lip of the precipice. “That was close.”
“No kidding,” I said, panting, as I slipped Orson's hammer into the vacant loop of my tool belt. “Let’s rest here a while.”
Looking above us, I felt as if I could almost reach out and touch the storm cloud. The cold was fierce, worse than anything I’d ever encountered on either side of the mortal divide. Orson’s beard was covered in ice particles. My nostrils were nearly frozen shut, and at that moment I felt we were very close indeed to all Hell freezing over. We were also very close to the summit, and probably Ymir as well.
Ymir: a primordial creature, one of the oldest in Norse mythology. In a way, he was like Surtr’s opposite, Ymir at the beginning of time, Surtr at the end. Bookends almost.
Hmmm. That seems a little too tidy for coincidence.
“Steve,” Bik interrupted. “I really need to tell you something.”
“Not now, Bik. I’m thinking.” An idea occurred to me. “Orson,” I said slowly.
“What?” He was cutting the duct tape loop off his waist.
“Don’t you think it’s strange that Ymir and Surtr, two characters from Norse mythology, are responsible for Hell’s HVAC system?”
“Hmmph. That does seem a little odd. Do you think Surtr’s involved in this?”
My brain made a few more connections. “Yes, in fact, I think he must be running the show.”
“Why?”
“Because Satan said Ymir was as dumb as a stump. And I know Surtr isn’t.”
“How do you know that?”