Transported

by Tim Jones

'Why the hell didn't they give us any rope?'

  'Too easy, maybe?'

  'What the fuck, I'm going down.'

  So saying, the hero from Corporate Affairs lowered himself over the edge, scrabbling for footholds. He found one and was searching for another when the rock he was using as a handhold gave way and he crashed to the ice below. By the time he had recovered from the shock of landing, he was sliding, with no way of slowing himself. The snow slope ended far below in a scatter of boulders. He struck them like a human luge, hitting the first boulder with his feet and the second with his head.

  East Team watched for signs of life for a while, then began the climb back to safety. When they had almost reached their ledge, there was a shout of triumph.

  'Hey, there's a way down here. See? And it comes out above the snow, on that gravel. What do you reckon?'

  About half of them reckoned it was worth a go. The other half climbed back to the ledge, still shivering, and made their way back towards the campsite in the gathering gloom. As they got there, they could see the bedraggled remnants of West Team coming to join them. Everyone started talking at once.

  'One report at a time, please!' said HR. 'West Team.'

  'Shit, you've got to do something! Half our team are stuck in a gully, and Sally Wishart's broken her leg or something. We scrambled down into this basin and everything was fine till we got to the far side. There the stream shoots down through this gully filled with really big rocks. Some of us said that's way too dangerous, but Sally kept saying she could see a way down, and a dozen of our team went with her. We can't see what's happened to them, but there was a rockslide, and Sally's in a lot of pain down there.'

  'Is there an alternative way to reach the Waiatoto?'

  'Some of us think there might be if you go way off to the left and up a bit.'

  'Very well. East Team?'

  But the report back from East Team was delayed, because the clouds opened and the rain fell in cold grey sheets. East and West straightened out the tarpaulin, put rocks around three edges, and crawled under it for shelter. The open side faced south, so the first they knew of North Team's return was the sound of their stumbling feet.

  'Two of us went over the edge! And half the rest are stuck on a ledge, and water is starting to flow down it.'

  'Over the edge? How far?'

  'Maybe sixty metres.'

  Rain and overconfidence are never a good mixture in the mountains. The two indoor climbing experts had found a way down from the snowgrass onto a succession of mossy ledges, but rain-slicked rock and moss make for poor footing. A false step, a grab at the other for support, and two bodies were lying on the snowgrass fan at the base of the cliff. Those following them had tried to turn back, but it was too dangerous to move. The watchers from above had left a couple of hardy souls on the lip of the cliff and come back for help.

  'Can't you call in a helicopter or something?'

  HR nodded. 'It's about time.' They produced a mountain radio and set up the aerial. The clouds had lifted by the time the helicopters came. One headed for North Team's ledge. The other dropped directly in front of the campsite, and Cleve Cartmill stepped out. 'Welcome aboard, people,' he said.

  By the time the other helicopter came to pick up the two shattered corpses from the snowgrass below them, the sun had started to shine again on the shivering, ledgebound remnant of North Team. The group had split in two, half edging uphill to safety, half downhill to glory. The ascending half made their way back to the campsite and a waiting helicopter, while the descending half were left to fend for themselves. The rest of their descent was accomplished in tiny steps and terse whispers, but once they were on the flats below the cliff, it was comparatively easy to make their way down the south branch of the Wilkin to its junction with the north branch, where they found a hut to stay for the night.

  The next morning, it was full speed ahead down the Wilkin to the Makarora. Standing on the western bank of the Makarora, they could see cars on the Haast Highway across the river. That was when someone discovered they were back in cellphone range, and within half an hour the first jetboat had arrived to take them across the Makarora's unfordable depths. Once the first boatload reached the eastern shore, the race to Haast was on in earnest. By dawn the next day, all those who had survived the descent had dragged their weary bodies into the township.

  It was two hours after that before the first East Team member reached Haast. Having made it off the treacherous shale with no further casualties, they had pressed on down the East Matukituki Valley until they reached the fearsome Bledisloe Gorge. It took a lot of time, and two near-drownings, to conclude that it wasn't a good idea to tackle it by heading straight downriver. It took longer still to find that the only safe route lay high above them to the left. By the time they got past the gorge, most of them were revising résumés in their heads as they trudged the weary miles to Cameron Flat and the start of the road.

  West Team was later still. After Sally Wishart had been helicoptered to safety, the remaining Westies had held a team meeting, as frank as it was open. Then they clambered back to the gently sloping basin, paid better attention to their surroundings, and found a difficult but safe way down. Of course, that still left them in the upper reaches of the Waiatoto River, with its sudden floods, its water milky with rock flour, its gorges, and its dangerous crossings. They were a long way from their destination.

  But at last, every surviving employee of Cleve Cartmill Consulting made it out of the mountains. All those who stumbled and struggled to Haast after the harrowing descent from Rabbit Pass were met at the temporary Nansen and Associates office by Hannelore Nansen, given a mug of coffee and a pat on the back, and told to go right on through to HR, don't bother about washing. Sudha from HR was there, and she stood behind her desk and handed them each a letter of termination and their tickets back to Wellington. 'Contact Security to retrieve your personal effects from the office,' she said. 'Your redundancy cheque is enclosed. Good luck!'

  The seventy who passed the test — all those who had given up on the three hazardous descents, plus the HR team — were whisked back to Head Office in Wellington to find the furniture changed, the walls repainted, and the Nansen and Associates logo everywhere. Soon they were back on the job, greenwashing the image of the country's worst polluters and setting up artificial grassroots groups to oppose the real ones. The latest was Citizens for Wise Use of National Parks, a front for the mining industry. Many survivors of the selection exercise were more than happy to sign up for that one.

  The selection exercise had cost three lives, and there was some muttering in official circles; but Nansen and Associates knew how to spread the corporate goodwill around, and before long it was concluded that an enquiry would be an unjustified drain on the public purse. Death by misadventure was common enough in the mountains.

  The 2001 Nansen and Associates Christmas function was held in the office. After far too many whiskies, some idiots decided to traverse the outside of the building, from balcony to balcony. A few people popped their heads out the window to watch, but it was cold out there, and the party was humming indoors. A little later, there was a scream, then another. The party fell silent for a moment.

  'Wanted: Web Developers. Must have no head for heights,' someone said. And even HR laughed at that.

  ROBINSON IN LOVE

  Lisa gave Robinson a knife, a bowl, a chopping board, and three tomatoes. Later, she gave him lettuce, cucumber, and carrots. By the time he'd run out of ingredients, he had made a salad, and Lisa had cleared the table, split bread rolls, and set out slices of Camembert and little pottles of dips and spreads. Robinson would have settled for Marmite.

  He wasn't sure where to sit. There was the table, overflowing with food, with three wooden chairs around it, and off in the distance a couple of armchairs and a sofa. Would sitting on the wooden chairs be too formal, would heading straight for the sofa be too familiar? He waited for her lead.

  'You okay?'

  'Oh
yes, fine, fine. That's a great view you have there.' Squint and you could see a corner of the harbour gleaming in the sun.

  'It's better from the deck. Let's go outside.'

  They put their plates on a small white table shaded by a sun umbrella. Surely that wouldn't stay up for long in Wellington's winds. She must have erected it especially for his visit — a good sign, Robinson decided.

  She went inside to get drinks, and he watched her. What was she wearing? Robinson forced himself to concentrate: he wasn't good on such details, but he knew they were important. A patterned blouse — was it silk, or would that be too thin for the conditions? But maybe silk was warmer than it looked. Red trousers. The same sort of outfit she had on yesterday, with some changes to the actual clothes.

  She was coming outside again. Should he look debonair? He decided that debonair was not in his range. Be yourself, young Kevin, that's all you can ever be.

  She joined him at the railing, and as they talked of the view, he wanted only to slip his hand in hers, put his arm around her, nuzzle her neck with his lips.

  A fly was buzzing at the food. She shooed it away, and they sat down.

  Some of his nerves had eased, and he was hungry. This was good, to sit in the sunlight, eating summer food, drinking wine with a beautiful woman. He, Kevin Robinson, thirty-two years old, unlovable and unloved, was lunching with a beautiful woman. Who owned her own home. It was wooden, and needed painting. The back garden was small, falling away on one side; broken trellis-work climbed up a rusty iron fence. He would take it down, pile rocks against the fence, plant—

  She had asked him a question. Sorry, said Robinson, ask me again.

  'Do you realise we've met before?'

  Oh hell. How to answer this? 'No' was truthful. 'Yes' would sound better, but carried risks of its own.

  'No. When?'

  'At the conference in '93. Do you remember that party in Don Archer's room?'

  'Where the hotel management threatened to evict everyone if we didn't keep the noise down?'

  'So Don moved the party to the lift?'

  Robinson smiled. He remembered, all right. He had had a thing for Maria Osbourne then, and had spent most of the night trailing disconsolately after her from room to room and party to party. About midnight, she had disappeared with her arms around that woman from the Scripps Institute. After ten minutes standing on a balcony looking at the welcoming pavement below, he had thought to hell with it and headed straight for Party Central, which was bound to be Don Archer's room. Twenty minutes of that and he was down in the lobby, talking with a few other refugees from the noise. There was Irihapeta Purvis, Dave Sims, and this other woman . . .

  'That was you in the lobby!'

  'That's right, sitting on the arm of Dave Sims' chair. I was tired, but you looked half-dead. I couldn't work out if you were drunk or just depressed.'

  'What sort of fool did I make of myself?'

  'A quiet one. I thought, he's kind of cute, in a woebegone way.'

  'You looked cute too, but I thought, you know, Dave Sims . . .'

  'Oh, no. Dave and I have known each other for ages. Did you know he got married last year?'

  'Someone I know?'

  'No, a lawyer. Anyway, you sat there for a while, and then you said, "I have been on my feet for eighteen hours and it's too loud even here," and staggered away.'

  'I must have been sozzled. I don't remember much about the next day. But why the hell didn't I recognise you this year? You look different somehow . . .'

  'I was a redhead then.'

  'Of course. Well, it makes a big difference. You look so good.'

  'Thank you.'

  There was something in her expression — had he offended her? What the hell. Press on regardless.

  They ate. The wind rose, so they went inside. He sat on the sofa with his plate balanced on his knee and the wineglass on the speaker. She sat opposite, legs tucked beneath her. Probably she did yoga or something like that.

  They talked about this year's conference. He came every year; this was her first since '93. Neither was an academic in the strict sense: she was a mapmaker, he a map curator. They would make a good couple, thought Robinson: yes, a good couple, together, in a house like this, waking up in the morning, eating breakfast, cleaning their teeth, going to work, coming home. They would have lunch together when the weather was nice, sitting by the waterfront, looking at the waves.

  Lucky, so lucky to have met again yesterday. The conference proper was over, and most of the out-of-towners were waiting for transport in the hotel lobby. Robinson was there too, but he had decided to stay an extra night and catch a cheap flight back on the Tuesday. He was considering his options for the rest of the day:

  1. Stay in the hotel and attend the AGM of the New Zealand Mapmakers' Circle, thus spending the afternoon debating constitutional amendments.

  2. Head out the door and go somewhere, anywhere: to the movies, or the beach, or walking in the hills.

  A hip came by. It had a nametag on it. 'Oh, you're Lisa Bryant!' Looking up at her, catching his breath.

  'That's right. And this means?'

  That took some explanation: how Ben Drummond had been talking about her before the conference, how Ben thought she would be interested in the exhibition Robinson was curating, how Robinson ought to get in touch with her. 'I hear she likes geeks like you, Robbo,' Ben Drummond had said, chucking him under the chin. That had put Robinson off, and he had made no effort to find her.

  Lisa and Robbo talked in the lobby for ten minutes or so. Robinson told her about his exhibition, 'Continuity and Change'. The punters would enter beneath an archway of ice and be taken through a history of Antarctica in maps, from the early efforts of Bellingshausen and Palmer right through to the present day. Continuity, because the attitudes of those explorers — the awe and the fear — were still mirrored today; change, because the continent itself was changing. Then he saw Lisa looking at her watch. He paused.

  'I'm going to the dining room for lunch,' said Lisa. 'Do you want to join me?'

  Robinson watched his answer slide from his mouth, each word glistening wetly on its way to her ears.

  'I can't, sorry. I've got to go to the AGM.'

  'Oh,' she said. He fancied she looked disappointed. 'See you round, then,' she said, and headed off to the dining room.

  An inky wave of gloom rolled over Robinson, pressing him deep into his chair. He stared up through it at the dim lights, the ceiling, the palm fronds waving like seaweed. He had caught her, and then he had tossed her back.

  Kevin, he told himself, it's now or never. He got up, wiped his eyes, and walked. Through the doors, up the stairs, turn left. She was sitting with her back to him, waiting for her order to arrive. He tapped her shoulder and said look, I really do have to go to this AGM, but I don't leave town till tomorrow afternoon. Maybe we could do something tonight? Or tomorrow?

  Lisa smiled, guardedly, and said, I'm busy tonight (and oh, the pang in his heart at those words) but how about lunch tomorrow, then she could run him out to the airport afterwards?

  And so she had picked him up from the hotel today, taken him with her to the supermarket to buy the lunch things — unexpected and nerve-wracking, this, as Robinson tried to cope with twenty types of exotic cheeses and a profusion of specialty breads — and now here they were.

  'Do you like music, Kevin?' she asked.

  'Well, I like some music . . .'

  'What sort of music?'

  'Oh, I guess — well, I don't like country at all, and I've never been very keen on folk, or rap, or disco . . . Eighties stuff, mainly, and a few newer bands — Massive Attack, Radiohead.'

  'How about jazz?'

  'Never really listened to it. Do you?'

  'When I feel like it.'

  Robinson watched her stretch to the CD rack, bend to the player, fold gracefully back into her chair. It was Billie Holiday. He had noticed that women liked Billie Holiday — all that melancholy, all that washed-out
regret. It wasn't really his cup of tea.

  'Do you like to dance?'

  Oh no, thought Robinson. Please, not that. Last night, he had run through a range of possible disasters, but he had never thought it would come to this. In Standard Three, the teacher, Mr Willis, had made them do folk dancing. Mr Willis concealed an elderly record-player somewhere about his person and would, with the aid of a series of frayed extension cords, set it up in the playground. He would then produce one of a series of records by Alex Lindsay and His Orchestra, put it on, and order the children to line up in pairs and do the strathspey, or the springle-ring, or whatever other bizarre form of torture appealed to him that day. Mr Willis would (for those were innocent times) take the hand of some mortified girl and lead her through the required steps while the other children watched silently. Then he would remove the needle, return the tone arm to the beginning of the record, and watch as the children shuffled around, with a hey-nonny-no and a tirra-li-li and a bow for Good Queen Bessie. If they performed below Mr Willis's expectations, they would still be out there dancing when playtime came around. The taunts of the younger children rang in Robinson's ears every time 'dance' was mentioned. The most he was prepared to do was flail away, energetic but uncoordinated, the archetypal white boy, when the floor was already packed and no one was watching. But this? Dance to Billie Holiday? With a woman?

  'Well,' said Robinson, aware that he was saying 'well' a lot, 'not really . . .'

  'There's nobody watching.'

  'You'll be watching.'

  'No I won't. I'll be dancing, and I'm shorter than you.'

  He suffered himself to be raised up from the sofa and drawn into her arms. There was some low-key debate about who should lead, but in the end they kicked off their shoes and compromised. Billie Holiday was singing about reaching for the moon. 'You don't have to leave your hands on my shoulders,' Lisa murmured. He slid one hand down her back, as his mother had once tried to teach him.

  After a minute or so, Robinson relaxed enough to regain some body awareness. There were conflicting signals. Lisa's hair was tickling his nose; he turned his head away slightly and tried not to sneeze. Her breasts were pressing against his chest, which was pleasant. And there was his erection, which she must be able to detect. Surely this would not surprise her. It was perfectly natural, after all.