by Allan Kaster
Families of the fallen climbers came to dismantle their tents, add their names to the memorial cairns. One by one they left, silent and in mourning. Soon, only two tents remained in camp: the ONE tent, and Margaret Malleore’s white tent.
Winter was beginning to bear down on the valley as we dismantled our tent, careful to disturb as little of the landscape as possible. I was struggling with a string of prayer flags when the wind caught the end of the string, pulling it from my hands. The flags spun through the air, and a chill lodged in my heart, knowing that they would likely be blown out of reach, desecrating the sacred mountain.
And then strong hands caught the string back from the wind. Margaret Malleore was half invisible against the snow, the blue of her eyes her only color. She folded the flags and handed them to me with a smile. By the time we finished dismantling our tent she had taken hers down, too, the valley once more empty.
Taking anything from the mountain was sacrilege for a priestess of ONE, enough to have your priestesshood revoked. I should have left the stone Margaret Malleore gave me at the base of Mt. Hargreaves before we returned to the permanent ONE temple in the city, left a request for someone to take it back up during the next season. I did not.
For three nights, I lay awake, the stone cradled in my palm. Even when the ambient temperature dropped, the stone remained warm as though it was alive. When I slept, I dreamed the stone was rising into the air, longing to return to the mountain.
On the morning of the fourth day, I went to the Temple Mother and requested an absence from ONE. Many priestesses took absences, went into seclusion or on retreats, and so my request was granted without question.
And I began to climb.
Small hills at first, my body soft and breath coming hard with only the smallest of efforts, but with each one I climbed, I grew stronger. I always made certain that I chose mountains tended by ONE temples without priests or priestesses who knew me, though I suspected that even those who knew me wouldn’t have recognized me in my climbing gear. Like Margaret Malleore, I chose to climb mountains only on planets terraformed to resemble old Earth before the changes.
I discovered a resilience I had never known, and even without geneering, I tolerated altitude well, could push on through climbs many experienced mountaineers turned away from. I found that I never needed to use oxygen at high altitudes; like my long-ago Sherpa ancestors, my lungs and circulatory system adapted easily to the thin air. I never suffered from any kind of altitude sickness or frostbite, always descended whole, never bitten by the Mother. Margaret Malleore never needed oxygen either, never suffered sickness or frostbite. She claimed it was proof of George Mallory’s blood in her veins, though he used oxygen when he attempted his Everest. No matter the provenance of our abilities, both Margaret Malleore and I walked up there in the heavens as though born to it.
Always I kept that stone in my pocket. I never took another from any mountain, and I was always careful to leave all of my camps as pristine as possible.
Like so many others before me, I came back to the mountains again and again, pushed on to ever higher peaks. Every time I reached the top of a mountain, I stood on the very edge of the summit, trespassing as little as possible. There, I took the stone from Mt. Hargreaves from my pocket, held it in my gloved hands and prayed.
Standing there above the roof of the world, I could appreciate the beauty of the land below me. Even when the winds were high, there was a stillness here. But I never felt the joy that I’d imagined I would feel, never felt connected to the Mother. The mountain below me never felt sacred, never felt like anything but rock and ice and snow.
7
The sound of the outer airlock door wakes me from a dreamless sleep.
A glance at my wrist comm tells me I have slept—or been unconscious—for over a full Icefall day. Long enough for the floodwaters to still, then retreat.
A dull headache tightens the bones of my skull, and my hands are numb, my eyes dry. Nausea is a dry stone in my throat and my thoughts come slowly.
When Maggie enters, I see her eyes are rimmed red, her hands curled into fists. She pulls me up from her bunk, draws me into the airlock. In the small space, our bodies are pressed together. She wraps her fingers around my wrist, and I feel my heartbeat beneath her skin. It is slow, the space between beats too stretched out, too empty. In low oxygen, my heart should be racing. My body isn’t even attempting to stay alive.
The air in the corridor is warm and rich with oxygen. I take deep, gulping breaths, and my heart returns to its normal erratic pace.
Maggie rubs my hands between her palms. “The station’s shuttle collected Jeden and Dwa,” she says.
My fingertips prickle as blood returns to the skin. “And Farah?”
Around us is only the flat grey corridor, and yet when I meet Maggie’s gaze, I can see Icefall reflected in her eyes.
“She’s alive,” Maggie says. “Farah’s alive.”
8
The station AI has decided it is too risky to move Farah without medical intervention. Part of the training of every ONE priestess is basic mountaineering first aid. Maggie also knows first aid, and has far more experience applying it, but she doesn’t want to go down to the planet in case it invalidates her climb. There is no one else, and so I take our shuttle down to Icefall.
Metal rattles against metal as the shuttle lifts away from the Wanda R. I sit back, allow a seed of the AI to pilot the craft.
We are skimming the edge of Icefall’s atmosphere when a shadow emerges from behind a box. The Gorak lifts up, perches on the back of my chair. It regards me, head tilted to one side, and I know that Maggie is watching me through its eye sensors, probably chafing at the restriction of the 2-D feed.
Silver shines on the Gorak’s belly: a maintenance panel is ajar. I press it shut, assuming that Maggie has been working on it as well as the Sherpas. That rankles a little, for the Gorak was my project, but I admit that Maggie has a way with the bots that I have never had. She will only have improved it.
I close my eyes as the heat shields close. The shuttle shudders as we enter the atmosphere. The Gorak presses its polymer beak against my cheek. Maggie’s heart is beating fast beneath my skin. For once, my own pulse is slow and even.
The shields fold back. The first thing I see is the Mountain. I cannot pull my gaze away. Even during my time with ONE, as a priestess who revered mountains as sacred places, I never felt a presence like this.
The Mountain is a weight in my mind, a shadow in my soul. Simultaneously vast and terrible and beautiful.
My fingers catch at my collar, find that rough place. The Gorak’s beak lifts away. Cold air moves in to fill the space.
The shuttle lands, and I pull on a thermal suit, gloves and boots. All belong to Maggie, of course. There was no need to purchase thermal gear for me, who was never supposed to set foot off the ship. The suit crackles as I pull it on, reactive fibers trying to fit the suit to my body. When it settles, it is too tight around my torso and hips, the arms and legs too long, but it will do well enough for a short while.
I shoulder the medkit, open the door.
The air is cold, and tastes and smells of nothing at all. When I step out, my borrowed boots crunch through a rime of frost, kicking up ice particles from the loose snow beneath. The sky arches above, deep fathomless blue. Before me stretches the continent, the Mountain standing sentinel. When I turn back, and look beyond the shuttle, I can see the ocean. It is as blue as the sky, and utterly still. So calm I can barely discern the place where sky meets sea. It is an unsettling effect, and I am glad to turn my attention back to the land.
Farah sits propped up against a small drift of snow, her red suit bright as fresh blood. I approach her slowly, the Gorak flying behind me, its weight parting the air like a sigh.
“Farah?” I ask. My voice is flat and does not echo.
Farah does not move. Her eyes are open, seemingly staring out over the sea. Her suit appears brand new, apart from the Malay
sian flag patch on her shoulder, its colors faded and its edges worn to threads. Her feet, hands and head are all bare. Despite the cold, her skin is flushed with blood as though she was seated before a roaring fire.
I kneel down before her. Despite the thermal suit, cold leeches into my knees, my bones aching. “Farah, can you hear me? My name is Aisha. I’m a medic. I’m here to help you.”
At last, Farah turns to me, but her eyes do not focus. Her sclerae look swollen, the white shot through with red. Her pupils are so dilated that I can barely see anything at all of her irises.
The Gorak lands lightly next to me as I attach sensors to Farah’s throat and wrists to record her vitals. Her body temperature is lower than normal at the core but elevated at her extremities. Her blood pressure is stable, oxygen saturation normal, heartbeat strong. Everything the kit tests appears normal.
Farah’s eyes focus on me. Her pupils constrict, dilate again, constrict once more and then shudder into a normal size. “Did I make the summit? I . . . don’t remember.”
She is a mountaineer; there is no need to lie to her. “You fell through a snow bridge into a crevasse.”
She blinks slowly, her hand going to the worn patch on her shoulder. “Why do we all wear these? Malaysia doesn’t even exist anymore.” Her eyes go to the patch on my borrowed suit. “Even the United Kingdom doesn’t exist now, except in story books.”
I pull a collapsible cup from the medkit, half fill it with clear water. The liquid slants in the cup, drawn to the Mountain. I’m no geoengineer or physicist, but I know enough to know that if the Mountain’s gravity was pulling against the liquid, it would be pulling against everything else as well. Unease tightens in the pit of my belly. Is my blood doing that, too? The fluid around my brain, the cytoplasm in my cells?
Farah takes the cup, but she does not drink. She presses her bare toes into the snow. The ice melts beneath her feet, small pools of water gathering at her heels. She nods at my suit. “That’s one of Maggie’s, isn’t it? I’d recognize it anywhere.”
Something twists in me. Something I don’t want to name. I nod.
Farah smiles, the expression spreading across her face like the sun breaking through clouds. “She came back for me. I fell, and she came for me right away. Rescued me. I always knew she would.”
Two things occur to me as I pack away the medkit, keeping my face turned away from Farah. The first, Farah is in love with Maggie. The second, Farah has no idea that she’s been frozen for seven years. I don’t want to have either of these conversations here, with the Mountain pulling at my bones. I stand, shoulder the medkit again. “The shuttle is waiting.”
Farah looks down at the water. “Doesn’t it seem strange to you that we’ve never found any higher life out in the universe? We’ve found plants, some low level fauna and flora, microflora, but nothing else. Nothing that can talk to us, answer our questions. Shouldn’t there be something out here?”
If I was still a priestess, I could placate Farah with scripture. But I am not, and I cannot. “Maybe we haven’t looked far enough. Maybe we don’t know how to look yet.” I hold out my left hand. “We should get you to some place warmer.”
Farah’s eyes sharpen, focusing on the implanted capsule beneath the pad of my ring finger. “You’re married?”
“Hypothermia can set in—”
“No.” Farah looks again at the patch on my shoulder, eyes moving to the places where the suit doesn’t fit. “Maggie didn’t come back for me, did she?” Her voice is small. “Not in that way?”
The Gorak shifts from foot to foot behind me. It whirs and clicks.
“We should go,” I say.
Farah doesn’t move.
I’m reaching for her when I realize she has stopped, like a machine switched off at its power source. Her skin is blue-white, her eyes sheened with frost. The water in the cup she still holds is frozen solid, sloping toward the Mountain.
9
BEFORE: MT. HARGREAVES, THE LAST SEASON
Mt. Hargreaves claimed more and more lives each season, until the government which oversaw it decided it was too dangerous and must be closed to mountaineering entirely. The Last Season was declared, with only six permits, all granted by lottery. Only experienced mountaineers were allowed to enter the lottery, and all were to climb alone and unsupported, apart from fixed lines set on the mountain before the season opened.
I only just had the experience to qualify, but I entered all the same.
I won a permit.
None of the climbers were allowed to know who the other winners were until we assembled at base camp. I was the last to arrive, trudging into camp late in the evening. The others were all in their tents, the brightly colored fabric lit from within by lanterns. My gaze slid past the red and yellows and oranges, found the white tent set slightly apart from the others as though I’d always known she would be here.
The next morning, I rose before sunrise, sat outside my tent and watched the ONE priests and priestesses performing Morning Calls. None of them glanced at me twice, seeing just another climber preparing to violate sacred land.
None of us climbers spoke to each other as we acclimatized. Most of us ate together, shared communal space, but we all knew that we were climbing alone, and there was no need for false friendships. None of us would be saving each other if we fell.
On the night before the Last Season opened, I watched from my tent as Margaret Malleore clipped her hair, fed it to the fire. In my pocket, as always, was the rock she had brought down from the summit of Mt. Hargreaves. I felt it warm as her hair burned, my skin pulsing against its heat.
I had learned enough about Margaret Malleore to know that the hair clipping and burning was a ritual she performed before every climb. Once, another mountaineer had thought it a joke to snatch the hair from her hands and fling some of it over a cliff before she could burn it. Margaret Malleore had said nothing, had simply packed up her tent and left, forgoing her chance at the summit entirely.
That night, I lay awake in my tent, my fingers curled around the stone. It was still warm, like a tiny coal nestled in the cup of my palm.
The next day dawned clear and still. We were blessed by the ONE priestesses, and we began to climb.
Over the next days, I caught glimpses of other climbers occasionally, but they were always in colored thermal suits, never white. I knew that Margaret Malleore was far ahead, far above us all. Dancing up to the summit, while we struggled in her wake.
Day after day, conditions were perfect.
And then one day they weren’t.
No one had predicted any storms, not the best of the weather models, but all the same, one blew in.
High on the mountain, in complete white out, I lost one of my outer gloves, snatched from my hand by the wind as I was adjusting it. Climbing as light as possible, I had no spare, and with the storm closing in, I crawled for the only shelter I could find. A shallow cave, only partially protected from the wind and snow.
It was only after I had crawled into the dubious shelter I realized that I shared the space with other bodies. Two people lying down, all but their boots buried by drifts of snow. One pair of boots was yellow, the other bright pink, almost small enough to be those of a child. Another man was sitting up, elbows on knees as though he was just resting for a moment to catch his breath. His eyes were frozen wide open, his expression caught somewhere between fear and wonder.
I tried to strip the frozen man’s gloves from his hands, but it was impossible, the fabric stuck fast to his skin. There was nothing I could do. My unprotected hand ached, the pain fading with frightening speed to numbness.
I huddled close to the frozen man, and I waited to die.
Out of the storm came Margaret Malleore. She wore an external VIR kit clamped to her skull, the sensors burrowed through the skin of her temples, the body of the kit—white, of course—encircling her head. I remember staring at the kit. VIR was a new technology, then, and the kit was the first one I had seen in real
life.
I don’t know how she knew I was there, how she knew I was alive. Certainly, I would have looked to anyone like just another fallen climber left on the mountain. But Margaret Malleore came straight to me, pulled a spare outer glove from her pack and slid it onto my hand.
Time slipped. One moment we were in that cave, Margaret Malleore looking into my eyes, and the next we were up and moving. I was only aware that we were moving, I think, when we broke through the top of the storm.
Standard protocol for any climber in trouble is for them to be taken down the mountain as quickly as possible. Staying at elevated altitude when frostbite or altitude sickness has begun to set in is suicide.
For some reason known only to her, Maggie had not led me down, but up.
My hand was still numb and useless, but Maggie aided me so skillfully I hardly noticed. The rest of my body warmed as we continued climbing. Everything around us was silent and still, an untouched world of pure serenity, even as the storm still roiled below.
Maggie led me to the edge of the summit plateau, stopped there. Close enough for it to count as a successful summit, but not close enough to truly violate the sacred place.
We stood above the world together, the last people ever to summit Mt. Hargreaves.
Maggie took my hand in hers, and she smiled at me. And for the first time, I felt it: a deep joy welling within me, a feeling of being connected utterly and completely to the Mother, to the mountain below.
I cannot describe it, how it was to stand there, the blue sky above, clouds below, the curve of the planet visible on the horizon. The closest I have ever been able to come is that it felt like coming home. Like finally being in the place that you were always meant to be.
Before we descended, I withdrew the stone from my pocket, replaced it on the summit. Maggie watched me, something in her eyes telling me that she’d known I would do that all along.