by Dan Simmons
"Do you attend a church there, dear? In Boston, I mean."
"No," said Maggie.
"Oh, well," said Deedee. "I just thought you might have run into Joan if you did. The world is such a small place that way, isn't it?"
"Is it?" asked Maggie.
"The prognosis isn't good, I don't think," said Gavin. "But then, there's always the possibility of a miracle."
"Yes, it really is," said Deedee. "One time when we were all getting ready for the men's mission, Joan called me and asked if I'd come over to stay with their little boy while she went out shopping for Dick's birthday present. I had a friend visiting from Dallas but I said, 'Sure, we'll both come over.' Well, Scott was about seven then and Tommy was three or four . . ."
Baedecker stood up, crossed to his tent, crawled inside, and heard no more.
When Baedecker was seven or eight, sometime early in the war, he had accompanied his father on a fishing trip to a reservoir somewhere in Illinois. It had been the first overnight fishing trip he had been allowed to go on. He remembered sleeping in the same bed with his father in a tourist cabin near the lake and going out in the morning into a hot, brilliant late-summer day. The broad expanse of water seemed to both muffle and amplify all sounds. The foliage along the gravel road going down to the dock seemed too dense to penetrate, and the leaves were already covered with dust by six-thirty in the morning.
The small ritual of preparing the boat and outboard motor was exciting, a leave-taking within the larger trip. The life jacket was reassuring in its bulky, fish-smelling clumsiness. Their little boat moved slowly across the reservoir, cutting through the calm water, stirring sluggish rainbows where oil had been spilled, the throb of the ten-horsepower motor blending with the smell of gasoline and fish scales to create a perfect sense of place and perspective in Baedecker's young consciousness.
The old highway bridge had been stranded far out from shore when the dam had bottled up the river some years before. Now only two broken fragments of the span remained, glaring white as exposed thighbones against the blue sky and dark water.
The young Baedecker was fascinated with the idea of boarding the bridges, of standing on them far out on the hot expanse of lake, of fishing from them. Baedecker knew that his father wanted to troll. He knew the infinite patience with which his father would fish, watching the line for hours almost without blinking, letting the boat creep across the lake or even drift with the motor off. Baedecker did not have his father's patience. Already the boat seemed too small, their progress far too slow. The compromise was to let the boy off—still wrapped in his bulky life jacket—while his father explored the nearby inlets for a promising hole. He made Baedecker promise that he would stay in the center of the larger of the two spans.
The sense of isolation was wonderful. He watched as his father's boat disappeared from sight around a point and continued watching until the last echoes of the outboard faded away. The sunlight was very hot, and the effect of watching his fish line and bobber soon became hypnotic. The small waves lapping at the moss-covered undersides of the bridge six feet below created an illusion of movement, as if the two segments of bridge were moving slowly across the reservoir. Within half an hour the heat and sense of motion created a slight nausea in the boy, a throbbing pulse of vertigo. He pulled in his line, propped the pole against the cracked concrete railing, and sat on the roadbed. It was too hot. He took off his life jacket and felt better as sweat dried on his back.
He was not aware of the instant when the idea of jumping from one section of the bridge to the other occurred to him. The two pieces of the shattered span were separated by no more than eight feet of water. The smaller span's roadbed was six feet above the water, but the larger section upon which Baedecker stood had not settled as much as the other and was almost a foot higher, making the jump seem even easier.
The thought of jumping quickly became an obsession, a pressure swelling in Baedecker's chest. Several times he paced his steps to the edge of his span, planning his run, rehearsing his leap. For some reason he was sure that his father would be pleased and amused when he returned to find
his son on the different section of bridge. Several times he worked up his nerve, began the run, and stopped. Each time he felt the fear rise in his throat and he would stop, his sneakers making rough sounds on the concrete. He stood there panting, his fair skin burning in the hot sunshine, his face flushed with embarrassment. Then he turned back, took five long steps, and leaped.
He tried to leap. At the last possible second he tried to stop his forward momentum, his right foot slid out over the edge of the span, and he fell. He managed to twist in midair, there was a tremendous blow to his midsection, and then he was dangling—his feet and lower legs hanging above the water, his elbows and forearms flat on the roadbed.
He had hurt himself. His arms and hands were badly scraped, there was the taste of blood in his mouth, and his stomach and ribs ached more than he had ever imagined possible. He did not have the strength left to pull himself up onto the bridge surface. His knees were under the slab of the roadbed and try as he might he could not lift his legs high enough to find purchase on the cracked concrete. The lake water seemed to create a suction that threatened to pull him in. Baedecker quit struggling and hung there with only the friction against his torn hands and arms keeping him from sliding backwards into the lake. With his child's imagination he could see the great depths of darkness that lay beneath the bridge, could sense the submerged trees far below the surface, and could feel his descent to the muddy lake bottom. He could imagine the drowned streets and houses and graveyards of the valley turned reservoir, all waiting beneath the dark waters. Waiting for him.
Two feet in front of Baedecker's eyes, a weed grew out of a narrow fissure in the bridge surface. He could not reach it. It would not hold him if he did. He felt the saving pressure on his torn hands and arms lessening. His shoulders ached and he knew that it was only minutes, perhaps seconds, until his trembling upper arms gave way and he would slide backward with a terrible rasping of palms and forearms across the burning concrete.
Then, dreaming but rising from his dream like a diver rising from depths, Baedecker became aware of the wind rising and the tent flapping and of the smell of rain approaching, but he could also clearly hear—as he had heard forty-five years before—the steady throb of the approaching outboard motor, falling into silence now, and then the touch of strong hands on his side and the calm sound of his father's voice. "Let go, Richard. Jump. It's all right. I've got you. Let go, Richard."
Thunder was rumbling. A cold wind blew in when the tent flap was parted. Maggie Brown slid in, settled her foam pad and sleeping bag next to his.
"What?" said Baedecker. His palms and arms were sore.
"Tommy wanted to trade places," whispered Maggie. "I think he wants to do some solitary drinking. I said okay. Shhh." Maggie touched her finger to his lips. The darkness in the tent was broken by sudden, brilliant flashes of lightning, followed scant seconds later by thunder so loud that it seemed to Baedecker that freight trains were rumbling across the high tundra toward them. The next explosion of light showed Maggie slipping out of her shorts, tugging them over her hips and down. Her underpants were small and white.
"Storm's here," said Baedecker, blinking away afterimages of the lightning flash that had illuminated Maggie removing her shirt. Her breasts had looked pale and heavy in the brief, stroboscopic flash.
"Shhh," said Maggie and slid against him in the darkness. He had fallen asleep wearing only his jockey shorts and a soft flannel shirt. Her fingers unbuttoned the shirt in the darkness, pulled it off. He was rolling next to her on the soft jumble of sleeping bags, his arms enfolding her, when
her hand slid under the elastic waistband of his shorts. "Shhh," she whispered and pulled off his underpants, using her right hand to free him. "Shhh."
The lightning illuminated their lovemaking in images of frozen light. The thunder drowned all sound except heartbeats and whi
spered entreaties. At one point Baedecker looked up at Maggie as she straddled him, their arms extended like dancers', fingers intertwined, the nylon of the tent bright behind her as lightning flash followed lightning flash and the waves of thunder rolled through them and across them. A second later, rocked tight in her arms, resisting the explosion of his own orgasm, he was sure he heard her whisper above the cascade of external sound, "Yes, Richard, let go. I've got you. Let go."
Together, still moving slightly, they rolled over in the tangle of sleeping bags and foam pads, and listened as the wind rose to terrible heights, the tent strained and flapped wildly against its restraints, and the lightning flash and thunder crash were no longer separated by so much as a second. Together they huddled against the storm.
"COME ON, GODDAMN YOU GODS, LET'S SEE YOU DO YOUR WORST! COME ON, YOU COWARDS!" The scream came from just outside the tent and was followed by a blast of thunder.
"Good God," whispered Maggie. "What is that?"
"COME ON, LET'S HAVE A GODDAMN GOD OLYMPICS. SHOW YOUR STUFF. YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN THAT! SHOW US, YOU SHITS!" This time the scream was so raw and shrill that it barely sounded human. The last words were followed by a lightning flash and a sound so great that it seemed the sky's fabric was being torn by giant hands. Baedecker tugged on his shorts and stuck his head out of the tent flap. A second later Maggie joined him, pulling on Baedecker's flannel shirt. It was not raining yet, but both of them had to squint against dust and gravel thrown up by the gale-force winds.
Tommy Gavin Jr. was standing on the boulder between the tents. He was naked, legs apart for balance against the wind, arms raised, head thrown back. In one hand he was clutching an almost-empty bottle of Johnny Walker whiskey. In the other he held a three-foot section of aluminum tent pole. The metal glowed blue. Behind the boy Baedecker could see lightning coursing through the belly of thunderclouds looming darker and closer than the mountain peaks illuminated by each flash.
"Tommy!" Gavin yelled. He and Deedee had thrust their heads and shoulders from their writhing tent. "Get down here!" The words were whipped away by the wind.
"COME ON, GODS, SHOW ME SOMETHING!" screamed Tommy. "YOUR TURN, ZEUS. DO IT!" He held the tent pole high.
A blue-white bolt of lightning seemed to leap upward from a nearby summit. Baedecker and Maggie flinched as the shell fire of thunder rolled over them. A few feet away, the Gavins' tent collapsed in the rising wind.
"THAT'S A SIX POINT EIGHT," screamed Tommy as he held up an imaginary scorecard. He had dropped the bottle, but the tent pole still waved. Gavin was struggling to free himself from the collapsed tent, but the fabric was wrapped around him like an orange shroud.
"OKAY, SATAN, SHOW YOUR STUFF," shouted Tommy, laughing hysterically. "LET'S SEE IF YOU'RE AS GOOD AS THE OLD MAN SAYS." He pirouetted, almost fell, and caught
his balance five feet above them on the lip of the boulder. Baedecker saw that the boy had an erection. Maggie yelled something in Baedecker's ear, but the words were lost in thunder.
The two forks of lightning seemed to strike simultaneously, one on either side of the camp. Baedecker was blinded for several seconds during which he found himself incongruously reminded of electric trains he had owned as a boy. The ozone, he thought. When he could see again, it was to watch Tommy leaping and laughing atop the boulder, his hair whipping in the still-rising gale. "NINE POINT FIVE!" screamed the boy. "FUCKING AYE!"
"Get your ass down here," yelled Gavin. He was out of the tent and reaching, his hands inches short of Tommy's bare ankle. The boy danced backward on the boulder.
"GOTTA GIVE JESUS HIS TURN," cried Tommy. "GOTTA GIVE THE MAN A TRY. SEE WHAT SHIT HE CAN THROW. SEE IF HE'S STILL AROUND."
Gavin ran around to the low end of the rock and grabbed for handholds. Lightning rippled through a dark billow of cloud low above, exploded outward, and struck the summit of Uncompahgre Peak a mile to the east.
"FIVE POINT FIVE!" screamed Tommy. "BIG FUCKING DEAL."
Gavin slipped on the rock, slid back, began climbing again. Tommy danced back to the highest corner of the boulder. "ONE MORE!" he yelled over the wind. Baedecker could hear and smell the rain approaching now, dragging over the tundra like a heavy curtain. "YAHWEH!" screamed Tommy. "COME ON! LAST CHANCE TO GET IN THE GAME IF YOU'RE STILL AROUND, YAHWEH, YOU OLD FART, LAST CHANCE TO SCORE IN THE . . ."
It all happened simultaneously. The tent pole in the boy's upraised hand glowed as bright as a neon sign, Tommy's hair rose from his head and writhed like a nest of snakes, and then the dark form of Gavin merged with boy and the two tumbled off the boulder just as the world exploded in light and noise and a great implosion pressed Baedecker into the ground and submerged his senses in pulses of pure energy.
Whether the lightning struck the boulder or not, Baedecker was never to know. There was no mark on the rock in the morning. When he could hear and see again, Baedecker realized that he had shielded Maggie with his body at the same instant she had attempted to do the same to him. They sat up together and looked around. It was pouring rain now. Only Baedecker's tent had withstood the storm. Tom Gavin was on his hands and knees, head down, panting, face pale in the retreating flashes of light. Tommy was shivering and curled tightly into a fetal position on the wet ground. His hands were clasped together tightly over his eyes and he was sobbing. It was Deedee who crouched above him, half-holding him, half-shielding him from the darkened skies. Her T-shirt was plastered against her back so that each vertebra showed. Her face was upraised and in the final flashes of lightning before the storm disappeared to the east, Baedecker saw the exultation there. And the defiance.
Maggie leaned toward Baedecker until the wet tangle of her hair touched his cheek. "Ten point oh," she said softly and kissed him.
The rain fell the rest of the night.
They reached the south ridge shortly before sunrise.
"This is odd," said Maggie. Baedecker nodded and they continued to climb, staying ten yards behind Gavin. Gavin had been packed and moving before five A.M., long before the first, gray light of morning had penetrated the drizzle. He had said only, "I came to climb the mountain. I'm going to do it." Neither Maggie nor Baedecker had understood, but they had come along. Baedecker could see their two tents far below, still in the shadow of Uncompahgre. They had been able to repitch Gavin's tent in the night, but Tommy's had been a total loss with shreds of nylon strewn far over the tundra. When Gavin and Baedecker had gone out in the dark to bring back the boy's sleeping bag and clothing, they had discovered two more whiskey bottles in the
debris of the tent. It was Deedee who mentioned that they had come from the bar that the Gavins kept stocked for company.
Now Gavin paused on the ridge as they caught up to him. They were well above twelve thousand feet. They had climbed directly east to the ridgeline, ignoring the easier approach from the south. Baedecker's heart was pounding and he was exhausted, but it was an exhaustion that he could deal with and still function adequately. Next to him, Maggie was flushed and breathing hard from the exertion. Baedecker touched her hand and she smiled.
"Somebody," said Gavin and pointed far up the ridge to where someone was struggling on a steep section of trail.
"It's Lude," said Baedecker. He could see the man slip, fall, and struggle to his feet again. "He still has the hang glider."
Gavin shook his head. "Why would anyone kill themselves to do something as useless as that?"
"How I yearn to throw myself into endless space," said Maggie, "and float above the awful abyss."
Both Baedecker and Gavin turned to stare at her.
"Goethe," she said as if in self-defense.
Gavin nodded, adjusted his climbing pack, and moved on up the trail. Baedecker grinned at her. "Can't memorize the first stanza of Thanatopsis, eh?" he said.
Maggie shrugged and grinned back. Together they moved up the trail toward the beckoning band of sunlight.
They found the tattered remains of the small backpack tent near the thirteen-tho
usand-foot level. A hundred yards farther on they found the girl named Maria. She was huddled against a rock, her hands clasped between her clenched knees, and, despite the direct sunlight now bathing them all in gold, she was shivering violently. She did not stop shaking even after Maggie wrapped her in a goosedown coat and sat hugging her for several minutes.
"St . . . st . . . storm t . . . tore the t . . . tent all to shit," she managed, the words coming through clenched and chattering teeth. "Got all . . . w . . . w . . . wet."
"It's okay," said Maggie.
"G . . . got . . . t . . . to get up the h . . . hill."
"Not today, young lady," said Gavin. He was rubbing the girl's hands. Baedecker noticed that the girl's lips were gray, her fingers white at the tips. "Hypothermia," said Gavin. "You've got to get down the hill as soon as possible."
"Tell L . . . L . . . Lude I'm s . . . sorry," she said and began crying. Her sobs were punctuated with fits of shivering.
"I'll go down with you," said Maggie. "We have hot coffee and soup down below." The two women stood, the smaller one still trembling uncontrollably.
"I'll go down with you," said Baedecker.
"No!" Maggie's voice was firm. Baedecker looked at her in surprise. "I think you should go on," she said. "I think you both should go up." Her eyes were sending Baedecker a message, but he was not sure what it was.
"You're positive?" he asked.
"Positive," she said. "You have to go, Richard."
Baedecker nodded and had turned to follow Gavin when Maria called out. "Wait!" Still shaking, she fumbled in her pack and came out with a rectangular plastic case. She handed it to Baedecker. "Lude for . . . forgot I was carrying it. He's g . . . got to have it."
Baedecker opened the case just as Gavin walked back to join him. Inside the carrying case, set into niches in foam, were two disposable syringes and two bottles of clear liquid.
"No," said Gavin. "We're not carrying that to him."
Maria looked uncomprehendingly at them. "You've g . . . g . . . got to," she said. "He'll n . . . need it. He forgot yesterday."