The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  The snow under the tent is torn up by boot prints, and Roger’s sleeping surface is unbelievably lumpy. He rolls over until he is wedged against the length of Eileen’s bag, coveting the warmth and hoping for a flatter surface. It is just as lumpy there. Eileen snuggles back into him and he can feel the potential for warmth; he can tell he will warm up. He wonders if getting into one bag would be worth the effort.

  “Amazing what some people will do for fun,” Eileen comments drowsily.

  Short laugh. “This isn’t the fun part.”

  “Isn’t it? That climb…”

  Big yawn. “That was some climb,” he agrees. No denying it.

  “That was a great climb.”

  “Especially since we didn’t get killed.”

  “Yeah.” She yawns too, and Roger can feel a great wave of sleep about to break over him and sweep him away. “I hope Stephan gets better. Otherwise we’ll have to take him down.”

  * * *

  In the next few days everyone has to go out several times in the storm, to keep the high camp supplied and to keep the fixed ropes free of ice. The work is miserable when they can do it, and sometimes they can’t: the wind on some days shuts down everything, and they can only huddle inside and hope the tents hold to the face. One dim day Roger is sitting with Stephan and Arthur in low camp. Stephan has recovered from the edema, and is anxious to climb again. “No hurry,” Roger says. “No one’s going anywhere anyway, and water in the lungs is serious business. You’ll have to take it slow—”

  The tent door is unzipped and a plume of snow enters, followed by Dougal. He grins hello. The silence seems to call for some comment: “Pretty invigorating out there,” he says to fill it, and looks after a pot of tea. The shy moment having passed he chats cheerfully with Arthur about the weather. Tea done, he is off again; he is in a hurry to get a load up to the high camp. A quick grin and he is out the tent and gone. And it occurs to Roger that there are two types of climber on their expedition (another duality): those who endure the bad weather and accidents and all the various difficulties of the face that are making this climb so uncomfortable; and those who, in some important, peculiar way, enjoy all the trouble. In the former group are Eileen, who has the overriding responsibility for the climb—Marie, who is in such a hurry for the top—and Hans and Stephan, who are less experienced and would be just as happy to climb under sunny skies and with few serious difficulties. Each of these is steady and resolute, without a doubt; but they endure.

  Dougal, on the other hand, Dougal and Arthur: these two are quite clearly enjoying themselves, and the worse things get the more fun they seem to have. It is, Roger thinks, perverse. The reticent, solitary Dougal, seizing with quiet glee every possible chance to get out in the gale and climb.… “He certainly seems to be enjoying himself,” Roger says out loud, and Arthur laughs.

  “That Dougal!” he cries. “What a Brit he is. You know climbers are the same everywhere. I come all the way to Mars and find just the people you’d expect to find on Ben Nevis. Course it stands to reason, doesn’t it? That New Scotland school and all.”

  It is true; from the very start of the colonization British climbers have been coming to Mars in search of new climbs, and many of them have stayed.

  “And I’ll tell you,” Arthur continues, “those guys are never happier than when it’s blowing force ten and dumping snow by the dumptruck. Or not snow, actually. More like sleet, that’s what they want. One degree rain, or wet snow. Perfect. And you know why they want it? So they can come back in at the end of the day and say, ‘Bloody desperate out today, eh mate?’ They’re all dying to be able to say that. ‘bluidy dasperate, mite.’ Ha! Do you know what I mean? It’s like giving themselves a medal or something, I don’t know.”

  Roger and Stephan, smiling, nod. “Very macho,” Stephan says.

  “But Dougal!” Arthur cries. “Dougal! He’s too cool for that. He goes out there in the nastiest conditions he can possibly find—I mean look at him just now—he couldn’t wait to get back out there! Didn’t want to waste such a fine opportunity! And he climbs the hardest pitches he can find, too. Have you seen him? You’ve seen the routes he leaves behind. Man, that guy could climb buttered glass in a hurricane. And what does he say about it? Does he say that was pretty bloody desperate? No! he says,” and Roger and Stephan join in, like a chorus: “How invigorating!”

  “Yeah,” Stephan says, laughing. “Pretty invigorating out there, all right.”

  “The Scots,” Arthur says, giggling away. “Martian Scots, no less. I can’t believe it.”

  “It’s not just the Scots are strange,” Roger points out. “What about you, Arthur? I notice you getting quite a giggle out of all this yourself, eh?”

  “Oh, yeah, yeah,” Arthur says. “I’m having a good time. Aren’t you? I’ll tell you, once we got on the oxygen I started feeling great. Before that it wasn’t so easy. The air seemed really thin, I mean really thin. Elevations here don’t mean anything to me, I mean you haven’t got a sea level so what does elevation really mean, right? But your air is like nothing, man. So when we got on the bottle I could really feel the difference. A lifesaver. And then there’s the gravity! Now that’s wonderful. What is it, two fifths of a gee? Practically nothing! You might as well be on the moon! As soon as I learned to balance properly, I really started to have a good time. Felt like Superman. On this planet it just isn’t that hard to go uphill, that’s all.” He laughs, toasts the other two with tea: “On Mars, I’m Superman.”

  * * *

  High altitude pulmonary edema works fast, and one either succumbs or recovers very quickly. When Stephan’s lungs are completely clear Hans orders him to keep on maximum oxygen intake, and he is given a light load and ordered to take it slow and only move up from one low camp to the next. At this point, Roger thinks, it would be more difficult to get him back down the cliff than keep on going to the top; a common enough climbing situation, but one that no one talks about. Stephan complains about his reduced role, but agrees to go along with it. For his first few days back out Roger teams with him and keeps a sharp eye on him. But Stephan climbs fairly rapidly, and only complains at Roger’s solicitousness, and at the cold winds. Roger concludes he is all right.

  * * *

  Back to portering. Hans and Arthur are out in the lead, having a terrible time with a broad, steep rampart that they are trying to force directly. For a couple of days they are all stalled as the camps are stocked, and the lead party cannot make more than fifty or seventy-five meters a day. One evening on the radio while Hans describes a difficult overhang, Marie gets on the horn and starts in. “Well, I don’t know what’s going on up there, but with Stephan sucking down the oxygen and you all making centimeters a day we’re going to end up stuck on this damn cliff for good! What? I don’t give a fuck what your troubles are, mate—if you can’t make the lead you should bloody well get down and let somebody on there who can!”

  “This is a big tuff band,” Arthur says defensively. “Once we get above this it’s more or less a straight shot to the top—”

  “If you’ve got any bloody oxygen it is! Look, what is this, a co-op? I didn’t join a fucking co-op!”

  Roger watches Eileen closely. She is listening carefully to the exchange, her finger on the intercom, a deep furrow between her eyes, as if she is concentrating. He is surprised she has not already intervened. But she lets Marie get off another couple of blasts, and only then does she cut in: “Marie! Marie! Eileen here—”

  “I know that.”

  “Arthur and Hans are scheduled to come down soon. Meanwhile, shut up.”

  And the next day, Arthur and Hans put up three hundred meters of fixed rope, and top the tuff band. When Hans announces this on the sunset radio call (Roger can just hear Arthur in the background, saying in falsetto “So there! So there!”), a little smile twitches Eileen’s mouth, before she congratulates them and gets on to the orders for the next day. Roger nods thoughtfully.

  * * *

&nbs
p; After they get above Hans and Arthur’s band, the slope lays back a bit and progress is more rapid, even in the continuous winds. The cliff here is like a wall of immense irregular bricks which have been shoved back, so that each brick is set a bit behind the one below it. This great jumble of blocks and ledges and ramps makes for easy zig-zag climbing, and good campsites. One day, Roger stops for a break and looks around. He is portering a load from middle camp to high camp, and has gotten ahead of Eileen. No one in sight. There is a cloud layer far below them, a grey rumpled blanket covering the whole world. Then there is the vertical realm of the cliff-face, a crazed jumble of a block-wall, which extends up to a very smooth, almost featureless cloud layer above them. Only the finest ripples, like waves, mar this grey ceiling. Floor and ceiling of cloud, wall of rock: it seems for a moment that this climb will go on eternally, it is a whole world, an infinite wall that they will climb forever. When has it been any different? Sandwiched like this, between cloud and cloud, it is easy not to believe in the past; perhaps the planet is a cliff, endlessly varied, endlessly challenging.

  Then in the corner of Roger’s eye, a flash of color. He looks at the deep crack between the ledge he is standing on and the next vertical block. In the twisted ice nestles a patch of moss campion. Cushion of black-green moss, a circle of perhaps a hundred tiny dark pink flowers on it. After three weeks of almost unrelieved black and white, the color seems to burst out of the flowers and explode in his eyes. Such a dark, intense pink! Roger crouches to inspect them. The moss is very finely textured, and appears to be growing directly out of the rock, although no doubt there is some sand back in the crack. A seed or a scrap of moss must have been blown off the shield plateau and down the cliff, to take root here.

  Roger stands, looks around again. Eileen has joined him, and she observes him sharply. He pulls his mask to the side. “Look at that,” he says. “You can’t get away from it anywhere!”

  She shakes her head. Pulls her mask down. “It’s not the new landscape you hate so much,” she says. “I saw the way you were looking at that plant. And it’s just a plant, after all, doing its best to live. No, I think you’ve made a displacement. You use topography as a symbol. It’s not the landscape, it’s the people. It’s the history we’ve made that you dislike. The terraforming is just part of it—the visible sign of a history of exploitation.”

  Roger considers it. “We’re just another Terran colony, you mean. Colonialism—”

  “Yes! That’s what you hate, see? Not topography, but history. Because the terraforming, so far, is a waste. It’s not being done for any good purpose.”

  Uneasily Roger shakes his head. He has not thought of it like that, and isn’t sure he completely agrees: it’s the land that has suffered the most, after all. Although—

  Eileen continues: “There’s some good in that, if you think about it. Because the landscape isn’t going to change back, ever. But history—history must change, by definition.”

  And she takes the lead, leaving Roger to stare up after her.

  * * *

  The winds die in the middle of the night. The cessation of tent noise wakes Roger up. It is bitterly cold, even in his bag. It takes him a while to figure out what woke him; his oxygen is still hissing softly in his face. When he figures out what did it, he smiles. Checking his watch, he finds it is almost time for the mirror dawn. He sits up and turns on the stove for tea. Eileen stirs in her sleeping bag, opens one eye. Roger likes watching her wake; even behind the mask, the shift from vulnerable girl to expedition leader is easy to see. It’s like ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny: coming to consciousness in the morning recapitulates maturation in life. Now all he needs is the Greek terminology, and he will have a scientific truth. Eileen pulls off her oxygen mask and rolls onto one elbow.

  “Want some tea?” he says.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’ll be a moment.”

  “Hold the stove steady—I’ve got to pee.” She stands in the tent doorway, sticks a plastic urine scoop into the open fly of her pants, urinates out the door. “Wow! Sure is cold out. And clear! I can see stars.”

  “Great. The wind’s died, too, see?”

  Eileen crawls back into her bag. They brew their tea with great seriousness, as if mixing delicate elixirs. Roger watches her drink.

  “Do you really not remember us from before?” he asks.

  “Nooo…” Eileen says slowly. “We were in our twenties, right? No, the first years I really remember are from my fifties, when I was training up in the caldera. Wall climbs, kind of like this, actually.” She sips. “But tell me about us.”

  Roger shrugs. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It must be odd. To remember when the rest don’t.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I was probably awful at that age.”

  “No, no. You were fine.”

  She laughs. “I can’t believe that. Unless I’ve gone downhill since then.”

  “Not at all! You sure couldn’t have done all this back then.”

  “I believe that. Getting half an expedition strung out all over a cliff, people sick—”

  “No, no. You’re doing fine.”

  She shakes her head. “You can’t pretend this climb has gone well. I remember that much.”

  “What hasn’t gone well hasn’t been your fault, as you must admit. In fact, given what has happened, we’re doing very well, I think. And that’s mostly your doing. Not easy with Frances and Stephan, and the storm, and Marie.”

  “Marie!”

  They laugh. “And this storm,” Roger says. “That night climb we did, getting Stephan down!” He sips his tea.

  “That was a wild one,” Eileen says firmly.

  Roger nods. They have that. He gets up to pee himself, letting in a blast of intensely cold air. “My God that’s cold! What’s the temperature?”

  “Sixty below, outside.”

  “Oh. No wonder. I guess that cloud cover was doing us some good.” Outside it is still dark, and the ice-bearded cliff-face gleams whitely under the stars.

  “I like the way you lead the expedition,” Roger says into the tent as he zips up. “It’s a very light touch, but you still have things under control.”

  Only slurping sounds from Eileen. Roger zips the tent door closed and hustles back into his bag.

  “More tea?” she asks.

  “Definitely.”

  “Here—roll back here, you’ll warm up faster, and I could use the insulation myself.” Roger nods, shivering, and rolls his bag into the back side of hers, so they are both on one elbow, spooned together.

  They sip tea and talk. Roger warms up, stops shivering. Pleasure of empty bladder, of contact with her. They finish the tea and doze for a bit in the warmth. Keeping the oxygen masks off prevents them from falling into a deep sleep. “Mirrors’ll be up soon.” “Yeah.” “Here—move over a bit.” Roger remembers when they were lovers, so long ago. Previous lifetime. She was the city dweller then, he the canyon crawler. Now … now all the comfort, warmth and contact have given him an erection. He wonders if she can feel it through the two bags. Probably not. Hmmm. He remembers suddenly—the first time they made love was in a tent. He went to bed, and she had come right into his little cubicle of the communal tent and jumped him! Remembering it does nothing to make his erection go away. He wonders if he can get away with a similar sort of act here. They are definitely pressed together hard. All that climbing together: Eileen pairs the climbing teams, so she must have enjoyed it too. And climbing together has that sort of dancelike teamwork—boulder ballet; and the constant kinetic juxtaposition, the felt relationship of the rope, has a certain sensuousness to it. It is a physical partnership, without a doubt. Of course all this can be true and climbing remain a profoundly non-sexual relationship—there are certainly other things to think about. But now …

  Now she is dozing again. He thinks about her climbing, her leadership. The things she said to him back down in the first camps, when he was so depresse
d. A sort of teacher, really.

  Thoughts of that lead him to memories of his past, of the failed work. For the first time in many days his memory presents him with the usual parade of the past, the theater of ghosts. How can he ever assume such a long and fruitless history? Is it even possible?

  Mercifully the tea’s warmth, and the mere fact of lying prone, have their way with him, and he dozes off himself.

  * * *

  The day dawns. Sky like a sheet of old paper, the sun a big bronze coin below them to the east. The sun! Wonderful to see sunlight, shadows. In the light the cliff face looks sloped back an extra few degrees, and it seems there is an end to it up there. Eileen and Roger are in the middle camp, and after ferrying a load to the high camp they follow the rope’s zig-zag course up the narrow ledges. The fine, easy face, the sunlight, the dawn’s talk, the plains of Tharsis so far below: all conspire to please Roger. He is climbing more strongly than ever, hopping up the ledges, enjoying the variety of forms exhibited by the rock. Such a beauty to rough, plated, angular, broken rock.

  The face continues to lay back, and at the top of one ledge ramp they find themselves at the bottom of a giant amphitheater filled with snow. And the top of this white half-bowl is … sky. The top of the escarpment, apparently. Certainly nothing but sky above it. Dougal and Marie are about to start up it, and Roger joins them. Eileen stays behind to collect the others.

  * * *