Paradox

by Alex Archer

  And then she stopped. Before her was a curve of dark wall. Whether stone, or wood somehow fossilized, or simply preserved somehow, improbably, by pitch, didn't matter. It was solid. Impassable.

  Then Levi said, "Wait. There's a cleft here. See?"

  He stepped out of view. "I'm out, Annja," she heard him call softly. "This way. It's clear."

  "Hey!" A triumphant shout came from too close behind. "This way!"

  She spun. "Annja," Levi whispered from outside. "Come on."

  But she couldn't just follow him. Their pursuit would follow them quickly enough. And they couldn't outrun bullets. She had to teach the Young Wolves caution.

  She had to teach them to fear what they thought was their helpless prey.

  As quickly as she dared for fear of turning an ankle, which would be quickly fatal, she moved back toward the bend in the narrowing passage. She heard boots crunch and heavy breathing.

  And then suddenly a pursuer appeared. It was one of the twins. His hood had fallen back and he'd lost his goggles. His fair, clean-cut face was flushed, the blue eyes wide with pure predatory lust. Only the red band around his forehead identified him as Zeb.

  The delight on those handsome youthful features when he saw her struck her as almost demonic. "Well, what have we got here?" he said, his condensed breath wreathing his face like smoke.

  His eyes widened as he saw the slender tongue of steel dart toward his chest. He tried to aim his pistol. But he'd gotten sloppy, forgotten the lessons Leif Baron had almost certainly taught him. Instead of holding the weapon muzzle up, ready to snap down onto target at a millisecond's notice, he'd let it fall by his side as he used both hands to help keep himself clear of the narrowing walls.

  The sword hit him in the sternum and bit deep. The blade slipped effortlessly between ribs to skewer his heart. His blue eyes went wide, more from final surprise than fear.

  The force of her side kick drove him literally off the blade. As soon as it slipped clear in a sudden spray of blood she opened her hand. The sword returned to the otherwhere, where it awaited her will.

  Zeb Higgins bounced off the wall behind him. With a loud groan he toppled sideways out of sight. His companions cried out in surprise and alarm.

  Damn, Annja thought. I wanted that pistol. It was lost to her now. She bolted for the open air. For a moment she stuck in the gap. It felt as if cold, hard jaws had closed to trap her. She fought the panic that yammered in her brain, emptied her lungs and slid out into the blessed icy air and milky light of freedom.

  Levi caught her arm to help her as she emerged. Then he pointed. "Look!"

  As she suspected they were near the end of the Anomaly, away from where they had come up onto the glacier—the southwest, she remembered. From the ice sheet below them Robyn Wilfork stood beckoning them urgently with his arm.

  Chapter 23

  "Come on, then," Wilfork insisted. "We've precious little time."

  Annja looked at Levi, who stood placidly in the snow to his boot tops, waiting for her. He shrugged.

  "Hurry," Wilfork urged. He turned and lumbered away through the fat, swirling flakes.

  Through narrowed eyes, Annja watched him go.

  "Do we have any other options?" Levi asked.

  They didn't so they followed the journalist around the end of the Anomaly to the cliff. The wind had picked up and the temperature had dropped. The cold stabbed at Annja's cheeks like knives. The snowfall thickened. Wind spiraled the dense flakes around them. They reminded Annja uncomfortably of water swirling down a drain.

  Next to a sheer drop Wilfork stopped. A rope hung over the edge, belayed with special anchors called pickets designed for use in ice—basically long, thin pieces of aluminum angled lengthwise at ninety degrees with one side drilled with holes. Another line lay in a blue-and-white coil beside the picket.

  "It's all I could do," Wilfork said. "They've all gone totally berserkers. Like a hornet's nest somebody tried to use for a bloody football."

  Annja gritted her teeth and frowned. Without their packs they'd be limited to what they carried on their persons. It could be a fatal mistake. What other choice do we have? she thought.

  "What's going on?" Levi asked.

  "Isn't it obvious?" Wilfork said. "They're going to kill you to keep their secret. Your only hope of escape is to get down the mountain. There's no more time. No time to secure yourselves en route. You have to rappel as far down as you can before the secured line plays out."

  "Okay," Annja said. "Levi, do you know how to rappel?"

  "Oh, yes. It's easy enough even I can do it. Mr. Baron taught me after Mr. Bostitch hired me. 'Bringing me onboard,' they called it."

  "Good. You go first. I'll follow. Move as fast as you can. Find a good place to stand before the rope plays out and wait for me to join you," Annja said.

  Levi swallowed hard, but he pulled his goggles down and his hood up and grabbed the rope with pale bare hands. Annja felt a pang. He'd left his gloves inside the Anomaly.

  But he disappeared rapidly over the edge. The snow seemed to swallow him.

  Hoisting the rope coil over her shoulder Annja seized the anchored line and swung herself over the edge. She hoped the bulky journalist would have sense to go somewhere else in a hurry now that she and the rabbi had taken advantage of the literal lifeline he'd given them. Standing there by the sheer ice-faced drop he was conspicuous; he might as well have been a sign announcing that something was happening here.

  "Don't worry about me, Levi," she said over her shoulder. She was relieved to see the lanky form of the rabbi swinging away from the cliff face and sliding down, using his descenders properly. He may not have been the most coordinated man on Earth, but rappelling isn't really all that demanding, either. Annja thought maybe he really could do it.

  "I won't kick you in the head," she assured him. "I—"

  A tink sound suddenly came from above. The sheer ice wall vibrated against the gloved hand holding the rope as she attempted to snap a carabiner attached to her own harness by a quickdraw onto the line.

  She frowned, totally failing to comprehend what caused the noise. Then a second ringing note of metal on something hard sent a spear as cold as the heart of the glacier right through her belly.

  She looked up. She could see part of Robyn Wilfork's face, beet-red beneath his headband. His right hand was upraised with an ice ax clutched in it.

  "Robyn!" she said. "What are you doing?"

  He slammed the ice ax down. This time the rope vibrated alarmingly in her grip.

  "It should be obvious," he grunted. "I'm cutting the bloody rope."

  "Why?" Annja exclaimed.

  "To earn a hearty reward, I hope." He swung again. By the way he cursed he missed the rope cleanly, although Annja felt it vibrate again anyway. He was clumsy to start with. With the wind, its whistle turning to a moaning roar, coming up, the snow attacked his eyes like cold soft bees. Bulky mittens made his hands even less dexterous than usual. Chill and fatigue seemed to be combining with weight and age to drag on him.

  And none of it could buy Annja and the rabbi more than a few seconds of additional life….

  "Levi," Annja called down desperately. "Grab rock and hang on!" She knew it wasn't much of a chance. If Wilfork severed the rope her weight would peel him off the wall anyway.

  Scrambling frantically upward, she called, "How can you do this to us?"

  "I've lost my faith," he said. "In everything except money, anyway. Ah." The last was a sound of satisfaction. The rope jerked violently. Evidently he'd managed to cut partway through it.

  "But you're a rationalist!" she said.

  "I found the bloody boat, didn't I?" he screamed, bringing the ax down in fury.

  A mighty clang rang out, dulled oddly by the closing clouds, but still potent. As Annja began her fall she saw the chopped-off rope end slither over the edge after her.

  Hearing her despairing scream, Wilfork turned away and vanished from her view. Apparently he couldn't bear
to see his handiwork. He didn't want to watch as a helpless woman and man fell a thousand sheer feet to be smashed on the volcanic rocks of Ararat.

  But Annja wasn't falling. The rope hung limp from her harness. Beneath her Levi hung like a terrified baby lemur to its mother's white-furred belly.

  Both her hands were clamped hard on the hilt of the sword. The instant she felt the rope start to go she'd summoned it and jammed it to half the three-foot length of its blade in ice and rock. Once again the mysterious blade had saved her.

  She had screamed purely for effect. To deceive their treacherous foe.

  It worked—at least partially. Wilfork suddenly reappeared on the rim. Ever-cautious, the lapsed communist had decided to make sure of his prey—and of his reward from the master of the wolf pack, which Annja could now hear baying closer in the storm. In trembling mittened hands Wilfork held a large rock over his own head, apparently to make sure of Rabbi Leibowitz's death if he'd somehow avoided being taken to his doom by Annja's fall.

  Finding a foothold Annja released the sword's hilt. It vanished instantly. Like an angry monkey she swarmed up the ice wall. A natural athlete who kept herself fit with the fanatical intensity of the Young Wolves, her hands and feet found holds in imperfections in the frozen-over rock without her consciously looking.

  As the journalist held his rock up for maximum velocity he overbalanced slightly backward. It was deadly easy for Annja to reach up, hook his heavily booted ankle and pull.

  Bellowing like a bee-stung bull, Wilfork sat down with an impact that clacked his teeth audibly in his head. The heavy rock fell from his clumsy hands. It glanced off his own unprotected head. But the blow was not hard enough to crack his skull.

  However, it was hard enough to stun him momentarily. Annja, who'd relinquished her initial grip, seized him by the leg of his insulated blue pants and pulled, twisting her hips outward both for added pull and to clear herself out of the way as his bulky body slipped over the edge and fell free.

  Robyn Wilfork's buffalo bellows turned to wounded-horse shrieks. Glancing down, Annja saw Levi looking up, eyes huge behind goggles and glasses. The rabbi quickly hugged ice. Barely missing him, the traitorous journalist plummeted by, arms and legs windmilling futilely. He vanished quickly in the snow.

  His screams went on and on.

  Once she knew Levi was still safe Annja stopped paying attention to Wilfork's fall from grace. Instead she unlimbered the ice ax hung from her own harness and quickly hammered a piton through thick ice into rock and tied the cut rope to it. Then she called down, as softly as she could, so as not to attract bullets or avalanches they had somehow miraculously avoided so far.

  "Levi, do you hear me? Go ahead and rappel down. When you've gone as far as you can—safely!—tug the rope and I'll come down."

  He nodded. At once he pushed away from the precarious safety of his grips and vanished in the milky churn of snow.

  He has such naive faith in me, Annja thought. I hope I don't let him down.

  Yet just now she couldn't imagine—clinging for her life, exposed on a cliff waiting for their pursuers to come and shoot her, or just drop the same rock on her that Wilfork had failed to—what possible chance she had of not letting him down.

  But it was not in Annja Creed to just give up. That was the opposite of who and what she was. Also, she knew, purposeful activity was emotionally more comfortable than giving in to terror or despair. If she was going to die, she'd die busy and surprised, rather than squirming helplessly in futile self-inflicted mental agony….

  So she got busy. Trying to make as little noise as possible, aided by the sound-deadening effects of the blizzard, she pounded home a rappel anchor. She fed the spare rope through it and made ready to climb down herself when Levi signaled that he had found new purchase.

  From above she heard voices in the booming belly of the wind. Though she could make out no words there was no mistaking the high-pitched excitement of the Young Wolves, who sounded like the scarcely postadolescents most of them were. Then came a harder bark, assured and authoritative. Baron. The master killer.

  Why haven't they looked down and spotted me? she wondered. The closest of her pursuers must be barely feet from her. Then she realized the falling snow was making it difficult for the pack to spot the secured line.

  She clamped her teeth shut hard. Her heart seemed to be trying to escape right out her mouth. It beat so hard that, weakened as she was from extreme altitude and worse exertion, she started feeling dizzy.

  Must maintain, she commanded herself.

  "Hey!" It was Josh Fairlie's voice. "There's a rope here."

  She felt Levi's security rope jump against her chest and hip. Once, twice, three times. The rabbi's signal. He was waiting for her.

  A pink squarish face appeared, right above her. Josh Fairlie's blue eyes shot wide in surprise.

  He shouted something. She couldn't spare the attention to make it out. Cutting loose the rope that held her against the cliff face with a stroke of her ice ax—no point in losing it—she kicked off from the wall and let herself fall free as Fairlie swung a black object into sight toward her.

  The snow shut like a curtain above her. Orange flashes backlit it as Josh opened fire on her. The shots sounded oddly muted in the storm.

  Bullets cracked past her. None hit.

  Annja looked down. She refocused all her attention on her fast-roping descent. Found a place to brake her fall, flex her legs, push off again. There wasn't anything she could do about the bullets, anyway.

  It seemed one or two other handguns joined the fusillade, to equal lack of effect. Then they went silent. Baron, no doubt, concerned too much gunplay could break loose unstable snow and ice on the glacier upslope of them. The pack didn't lie at much of an angle, but it was an angle. It probably wouldn't take much more noise to start a slide that would sweep the rest of the expedition right over the edge.

  Of course, that would likely finish off Annja and Levi, too. It seems Leif Baron—or Good Time Charlie—isn't willing to sacrifice himself and his band of zealots just to stop us, Annja thought, bouncing again, whizzing downward into churning white blankness.

  Then she thought, or maybe it's only that Baron's confident enough not to think they have to make a sacrifice that desperate.

  Chapter 24

  So began the descent through nightmare.

  Through snow and keening wind and rapidly failing light, Annja rappelled down the merciless mountain. Her legs worked mechanically as pistons, flexing as she came in contact with the sheer face of ice and rock, driving her away again to plummet breathtakingly through the white vortex and the gathering darkness. She used her descenders sparingly to brake her speed, though it made her gut clench painfully at every push off, never knowing where she might hit. Or what might hit her. A broken leg or even a badly twisted ankle would doom them both.

  But so would getting caught by moving too slowly. Caution was not survival positive. It was a pure example of a choice between bad options.

  She left Levi at the top of each stage, allowing him to believe he was belaying her, although that was hardly necessary. She worried about leaving him closer to their pursuers.

  But they couldn't have it both ways. She was by far the better equipped to find a place to anchor for a new stage before the rope ran out. So it was Annja who launched herself again and again into deepening darkness at frightening speed.

  She took them through three breakneck descents, each to around the one-hundred-foot capacity of the doubled rope. It would be easy enough for the pursuit to follow, since she didn't move laterally away from their original line of descent. But she knew that it would take some time for the Young Wolves, fit and eager as they were, to get organized to safely start after her and Levi.

  Baron was far too professional to let his pack just swarm howling down the cliff after the fugitives. That could lead to disaster as readily as it might yield success. Too-reckless hunters could be ambushed by their prey; marooned on
the cliff face in a blizzard with no way to move in any direction; or get racked up by accident, dead or disabled, for simple failure to respect the mountain. At the very least, they'd quickly spread out and become scattered beyond hope of recall or tactical direction. Annja wanted to take advantage of that organizing interval to produce some separation.

  Also they had to do something with Charlie Bostitch. They couldn't very well leave him on top of the damn mountain by himself; he'd never consent to stay alone, and their own numbers were too few to spare anybody to babysit him. Despite the fact he'd gone through the Rehoboam mountaineering program, and held up surprisingly well on the climb, he was overweight and middle-aged and had to be feeling the effects of effort and altitude more than his keen young followers. Baron would probably send two of his bully boys down fast to scout for their quarry. But he wouldn't let them get too far from the rest, either. So Bostitch was going to act as a boat anchor for his crew.