Dancing with Eternity

by John Patrick Lowrie

  [Not yet.]

  Great. I untied from the pillar and started fighting my way back to where Archie was, removing as I went the protection I’d just set coming up. All we needed was for her to start staggering around in a white-out on the edge of oblivion. Snow was dumping on us now, piling and drifting, making it harder to find good holds.

  I heard Archie’s moan in my auditory lobe as I brushed off a handhold and carefully moved my feet. “Archie! Archie, do you hear me?”

  Nothing. Maybe another groan. Just in case she could understand me, I said, “Don’t move! Stay where you are!”

  [Where I am?] It was her.

  “Hey, Archie! Glad to have you back!” It was hard to talk while I struggled down the ledge, but I didn’t want her to wander off, or worse, decide to untie from her protection.

  [I can’t ... I can’t see anything. Ow! Shiva!]

  “Don’t move! Don’t move, I’m on my way.”

  [What happened? I can’t see anything. What’s wrong with my eyes? I can’t see anything.]

  “Just stay put,” I panted, “I’ll be right there.” I didn’t know what could be wrong with her vision and I tried not to let it worry me. We’d fix it, whatever it was. I could barely see, myself.

  I almost missed the bolts in the cliff face. Snow had covered them and the ropes as well. If I hadn’t tripped over one of the lines, who knows how far I would have gone?

  When I got back down to the edge I looked around and my adrenaline spiked. No Archie. I couldn’t see her anywhere. Where could she be? There was no place to go.

  “Archie! Archie, can you hear me?” Nothing. Then, right under my feet, a lump of snow moved. I was standing on her. I got down on my hands and knees and started digging her out. I found an arm and moved toward the head. When I had her faceplate clear I said, “Hey, Archie, how’re you doing?”

  [What?]

  “How are your eyes? Can you see me?”

  [My eyes? They’re fine. Why?]

  “Well, you said ...” Great. She wasn’t blind; she’d just been covered with snow. “Never mind. We need to get you down to the hut.”

  [Hut? Where is it?]

  Steel asked me, [How does she look, Mo?]

  “Well, she’s conscious. She’s still pretty wobbly.”

  [Archie? How do you feel? Are you all right?]

  [Am I—? I don’t know. I guess I’m okay. What’s going on? OW! I can’t feel my arm.]

  I looked into her faceplate. “Archie, we have to get you down to the hut so we can get your suit off and check you out.”

  [Okay,] she said, amenably. [What happened to my arm?]

  [You took a spill,] Steel said, [You’re okay. We just need to get you inside so we can take a look at you. We can lower you. You don’t have to do anything. Just relax. Let Mo slip you over the edge and we’ll do the rest. Okay?]

  [Sure. Did I lose my arm? I can’t feel it.]

  “We didn’t see any blood. We think you’re okay,” I reassured her.

  [Just relax and let us lower you. All right?]

  [Yeah, okay.]

  “I need to tie you into this other line—”

  [What the hell happened to the weather? Is it winter? Where the hell are we?]

  “Just let me get this tied ...” I was starting to wear out. The wind was brutal and relentless. It obviously had no concern for what I was trying to accomplish; it just kept pounding and battering, roaring and wailing. I finally got the knot tied.

  “Okay, Archie ... Archie?” She was limp in my arms. “I think she’s faded out again, Captain.”

  [That’s all right. We can get her down. Just get her over the edge. I’m already on belay.]

  [I’m ready, too,] echoed Alice.

  “Okay.” I started sliding the two of us down to the edge, scooping buckets of gravel into the void. “Rock! ROCK!” I yelled.

  [We’re okay. We’re off to the side.]

  “Okay.” I got her right to the edge and started pushing her over when I noticed she was taking a chunk of the cliff with her. It was an oblong piece of granite about the size of my leg—probably didn’t weigh more than three hundred kilos—and there was not a thing I could do to get it back into place. I just watched helplessly as it toppled. “Mother of Allah, ROCK! Steel, Alice! Get behind something! This thing is huge!”

  [We’re on it. Alice! Get down!]

  I waited as it fell. I didn’t hear it hit the first ledge; it must have fallen clean all the way. It sounded like a cannon going off when it finally reached the second ledge, the hump where Steel and Alice were, hopefully, out of range and undercover. It must have just exploded when it hit; the initial boom reverberated up and down the cliff, followed by the clatter and rattle of smaller pieces bouncing back to earth. Then the roar of the wind once again blew its angry solo unaccompanied.

  “Steel? Alice? Are you okay?”

  The wind howled.

  [I’m all right. Alice?]

  [Yeah. A big piece whizzed right above me. I heard it. It was really moving.]

  [But you’re okay?] Steel asked.

  [Yeah, yeah. I’m okay.]

  I was shaking from relief. I couldn’t stop. I think the cold was getting to me, too. “Okay,” I said, “let’s get Archie down there.”

  [Right,] Steel answered, [Belay on.]

  I let Archie slip out of my grasp and onto the rope. She hung there for a moment and then receded from me haltingly, vanishing into snow, into fog, into wind, into nothingness.

  Chapter 20

  The snow danced around me, hard and icy, chattering against my suit in percussive sprays. I absentmindedly wiped it off my faceplate from time to time, brushed it from my sleeves, my chest. The external thermometer read minus twenty-six; it had dropped thirty degrees since the storm started. Wind chill probably kicked that down to minus sixty or worse. I sat there in my little person-shaped cabin, watching the storm through the window, watching the uncaring universe continue to unfold, watching the tiny evidence of human endeavor fighting against it—Archie’s belay line hissing over the edge. I must have been looking somewhere else when it stopped.

  Steel was talking to Alice, [Can you see what she’s caught on?]

  What now? I thought.

  [No.] Effort and worry tightened Alice’s voice.

  [Try whipping your line around. Every time I look up, my face plate gets covered with snow.]

  [Okay.]

  [No, that’s not doing it. Mo?] It was Steel.

  “Yes.” I was really tired.

  [Mo, Archie’s hung up on something. Can you see from up there?]

  “Uh, not from where I am. I’d have to scoot down to look over the edge.” My breath made little mist flowers bloom on the inside of my face plate before the tiny wind inside my suit carried them away.

  [Could you do that?]

  “Yeah. I don’t want to knock anything down on her.”

  [I understand. She’s just stuck. We can’t budge her.]

  “Okay. Let me stand up.” I got carefully to my feet, trying not to move them unnecessarily. The snow had been thick and wet. It now had a frozen crust just thick enough to make it difficult to kick steps, but not so thick as to solidify the mess of rocks and gravel underneath. I had to wriggle my foot around until I felt rock, make sure the step was stable, and then repeat the process. It took time. The big chunk of granite Archie had knocked loose had left a scar—a nice clean ledge to stand on right at the edge. I worked my way down to it.

  I could see her. A trick of wind currents had left a slim shaft of clear air next to the cliff. I could even follow the two lines down, writhing like snakes, and find the minuscule figures of Steel and Alice silhouetted on the snowy ledge, impossibly inaccessible, infinitely removed, but closer because I could see them.

  Archie was spinning and swinging in the merciless wind, but I couldn’t see anything that would stop her from descending. “She’s well past that little ledge,” I said, “She’s just dangling free. The line looks good.”
/>
  [Well, she’s not moving.] I saw Steel flick the belay line. The wave she caused climbed up the rope, all the way to the ledge where I was standing, reflected off, and descended again, but to no good effect that I could see. The rope wasn’t caught on the edge; it was encrusted with ice.

  “Just a second,” I said, and started working my way up to the top of the ledge where Steel had set the bolt in the cliff face. It took a lot longer than a second. I had to be painstakingly careful when planting my feet because Archie was directly below me with no way to get clear, and fatigue was taking its toll. The leg my weight wasn’t on would start to vibrate every time I stopped to rest.

  When I got up to the bolt, the problem was easy to see. A big clump of ice was preventing the line from sliding through the carabiner.

  “Ice,” I panted.

  [What?]

  “Ice is all over the rope. I’ll chip it off.” I sidled up to it and readied my ice ax. “Are you under tension?” I asked.

  [Yes. Tension.] I saw the line tighten as Steel took up the slack.

  “All right, here goes.” I started chipping. When I got the first piece knocked off about two meters of line slid quickly through the ’biner—there’s only so much tension you can put on three hundred meters of rope.

  [Whoa! All right. I’ve got her.] The line started to flow through more steadily, until it got to the next chunk.

  “Hold!” I said, and the line stopped. I cleaned off as much line as I could reach, then said, “Okay, lower away.” We went on like that for what seemed forever. Long before Archie reached the bottom, the gloom of the storm had thickened to full night and I had to turn on my helmet’s headlamp to see what I was doing.

  Even after she was down on the next ledge I kept cleaning until I remembered to simply open the carabiner and unclip the rope from it. We should have done it that way up on top, too, I mused. We should have clipped a ’biner into the bolt and run the rope through that. It would have saved a little time. Too late now. We’d been rushed. ‘We need to not rush,’ I thought. ‘We need to think things through.’

  I held the line in my hand. “Line!” I said.

  [Ready,] came Steel’s reply. I let it go.

  The world had reduced to a black tunnel filled with dancing flakes, backed sometimes with glimpses of rock, sometimes with nothing. It struck me that night is much larger than day; night is connected to everything. The universe is night, infinite night, lightless, bottomless, endless, impermeable night. The tiny places that are day shrink to infinitesimal points in a few million kilometers, points besieged by that which is not. Absence. Of heat, of light, of life.

  My headlamp made a tiny pool of light that preceded me—my campfire, my hedge against the blackness. At least I was already where I needed to be, at the top of the ledge. I found the fixed rope, methodically tied into it, and readied myself to rappel. Then I untied from the other bolt.

  “Ready to descend,” I said. “Is everybody out of the way?”

  [Come ahead.]

  “Descending.”

  I leaned into the rope and started backing down the pile of rubble that had been my home for the last hour. As I stood out from the cliff, the wind caught me and knocked me off my feet. I slid a couple of meters before I caught myself, sending a small avalanche of snow and gravel sliding into the dark.

  “Rock!” I said, with less urgency than I should have. It was all seeming rather surreal.

  [We’re okay. We’ve shifted south about twenty meters and are setting up the last leg.] Steel’s voice. Or maybe Alice’s. It was a really nice voice. Even here. Maybe especially here.

  “Okay.” That was good, I guessed. Need to keep moving.

  I regained my feet and crouched low, trying to stay out of the wind, looking between my feet to see when the edge arrived. The wind was brutal. When I backed over the lip it caught me again, slamming me into the face and spinning me around a couple of times. The rope slipped out of my hand and I toppled over, hanging upside down on my descender. The beam of my headlamp swung chaotically through the driven night.

  I grabbed frantically for the line, caught it again and hung there for a moment, resting, breathing hard, feeling the blood start to pound in my temples. Righting myself, I managed to get my feet on the face, fighting the relentless pressure of the wind. I was faced with a dilemma: when I got my feet planted and leaned out into the rope, the wind was just ferocious; it knocked me all over the place. When I stayed in close to the face, trying to stay out of the wind, I’d lose my leverage and my feet would slip off, leaving me dangling in space with no control, spinning and crashing into the rock.

  Randomly alternating these two equally unpalatable techniques I managed to descend twenty or thirty meters—where I was stopped cold. The fixed rope had iced up, too. A big chunk of it had lodged in my descender. I tried to knock it loose with my gauntlet, but it was unyielding as a landlord. I wanted my ice ax. It hung from a loop on my belt, but I needed to tie it to my wrist before I got it out; I didn’t want to drop it.

  “Uh, Steel? Captain?” I snapped the webbing into the clip on my gauntlet.

  [Yes?]

  I withdrew the ax and started chipping as I spun dizzily in the wind. “Ah, I got a problem up here. It’s gonna take me some time to get down.”

  [What’s wrong?]

  “Everything’s iced up. I have to chip my way down.”

  [What?]

  “The rope. The rope’s covered with ice. How are you doing down there?”

  [We’re ready for the next drop. Can you make it?]

  I had to hold the lower part of the rope between my boots to keep tension on the descender while I chipped away, holding to the upper part with my other hand. I finally got the chunk to break loose. It disappeared into black nothing as it fell. “Ice! Coming down.”

  [We’re out of the way. Can you make it?]

  “I don’t know. The wind’s got to be up around sixty knots up here.” I slid another few meters down the rope, banging into the cliff face a few times in the process, until I hit the next chunk of ice. “Shiva, this is gonna take me forever.”

  [We need to get Archie down.]

  “Yeah, I know. You go ahead. I’ll just keep chipping. How’s the rope down there?”

  [It’s a little icy. Not bad.]

  “How’s Archie?”

  [She’s in and out. I think she’s asleep now. Her suit’s taking care of her. She’s stable.]

  “Alice? You okay?”

  [Yeah, I’m okay.]

  Steel said, [The drop from here is really not bad. Can’t be more than fifty or sixty meters. We can see the bottom with our headlamps.]

  “That’s great. How’s the wind down there?”

  [It gets better the lower we get.]

  “You two can get Archie down, then?”

  [We’re going to have to try.]

  “Yeah. Then I’ll see you at the hut.”

  [Right. Mo?]

  “Yeah.”

  [How’s your suit power?]

  Oh. Good thought. “Um, it’s down to about thirty per cent.”

  [Hmm. You probably better power down everything you don’t need.]

  I saw her point and I didn’t like it. The idea of spending the night out in the storm with nothing but the suit around me was not very attractive, but it was becoming more probable. The suits were designed to last for about eighteen hours before recharging. They were meant to get you from hut to hut. Each hut had a solar generator and storage system. At that particular moment it occurred to me that they could have designed the suits less optimistically.

  “Yeah, okay,” I answered. I powered down all the instrument lights, everything I could think of but the compressor and the heat. It was cold outside; I didn’t want to turn off the heat. Communicating over Steel’s system used my own metabolic power, so that wasn’t a problem, but the headlamp was another matter. I had to see to clean off the rope, but with it on I wasn’t going to make it through the night.

  The
biggest drain was the suit itself. There was no way I could move without the various servo-amplifiers moving the suit for me, it was just too damned heavy, and those little motors drew current like avant-garde theater draws critics. I didn’t know what I was going to do, so I started chipping again.

  I figured if I could just get down to the big hump where Steel and Alice were now wrestling Archie over the edge, I could at least find some rocks or something to keep me out of the wind and lessen the power drained by my heating unit. Where I was, Eden’s atmosphere was carrying away calories as fast as I could make them. The heater had been going full blast for quite some time, now.

  [Mo! Mo, we’ve got her down! We’ve got Archie down!]

  “Great! Alice?”

  [I’m descending now.]

  Steel again: [If you can make it to the bottom ledge, the rope’s pretty clean from there. Here comes Alice.]

  In a few moments I heard them struggling to carry Archie into the hut.

  [Here it is! Here it is! We’re here.]

  “Great!” I kept chipping, spinning, descending a little, cleaning some more, banging into the face, spinning, chipping, descending a little more, like a bad mantra.

  Steel’s voice flowed, sad and warm: [Oh, Archie! Oh, no. Let’s get her into the nano-doc.]

  [Okay.] Alice was quiet, reverent.

  “How is she? Did you get her out of her suit?” I harassed an icicle into the night, dropped a little, started on the next.

  [We’ve got her in the nano-doc.] Steel sounded tragic. [She’ll be okay.]

  “How is she?”

  [She’ll be okay.]

  “What is it? What happened?”

  They didn’t answer for a while. When they did, it was Alice who spoke, not Steel. [Mo?]

  “Yeah.”

  [We couldn’t get her suit off. We had to put her in the ’doc with it on. It was ... kind of stuck to her.]

  “Oh.” That sounded bad.

  [M—Steel—] Alice stopped, then started again, [The Captain thinks she might lose her arm.]

  I kept chipping. I didn’t have any other options.

  “I think I see the ledge!” It had taken me forever to get to where I was, but I’d just caught a glimpse of something as I’d followed a piece of falling ice.