by Allan Kaster
She takes a deep breath, releases it slowly, visibly calming herself. Looking down at her boots, she begins transmitting her VIR feed. The first thing anyone clipping in will receive is this: the sensation of “their” boots pressing into fresh snow, white on white.
Still avoiding looking at the Mountain, Maggie reaches into the shuttle, shoulders a small bag and crosses to the place where I ministered to Farah. My footprints are still visible, and Maggie walks slowly beside them, matching her stride to mine. The snowdrift Farah had been propped against remains, the shape of Farah’s body pressed into the snow, the small depression slicked with a layer of ice that glitters in the half-light. Maggie kneels, presses a hand to the ice and murmurs something, her voice pitched too low for the Gorak’s sensors to pick up.
I look askance at the AI. It shrugs. Either what Maggie said didn’t register in VIR either, or it is unwilling to tell me. My chest tightens, and a dull pain begins to throb behind my eyes. Farah was in love with Maggie—was Maggie in love with her too, when they climbed together? Is Maggie still in love with her?
It was easy, when Maggie was standing here, to tell her to go and see. Now, I wish I’d asked her about Farah. Wish I’d asked her to stay.
Maggie is looking at the Gorak, frowning slightly. She holds up her gloved hand, left ring finger extended. You okay?
Anything I do other than observe Maggie is forbidden. Even a nod from the bot would constitute outside help and would invalidate any summit attempt she makes.
“Aisha.” The AI’s voice is hard, my name a warning on its virtual lips.
I look down, see that my right hand is extended over the board. I have no memory of moving it, and the pseudo-prosthetic is entirely numb. My fingers are held over the control that would make the Gorak nod.
Just one transmission, and Maggie would have to come back to me. Would have to be with me.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Force my right hand into my lap, hold it there with my left as I focus on my breathing. For once, the technique works, my heartbeat slows.
When I open my eyes again, Maggie has turned back to her work. Using fuel blocks, she builds a fire. The flames leap up, bright orange, red and yellow against the snow, sparks dancing in the still air. Ghost images imprint on my retinas, and when I blink, I see fractals: the shapes of trees, of veins branching into capillaries beneath the skin. Those same shapes flicker in my brain, the lightning of an impending cerebral storm building.
I clutch at the edge of the board. My right hand, still numb, locks and slips. I barely notice it as the storm bears down. It’s a bad one, the pain rising in a crescendo that darkens my sight, rushes in my ears like a torrent. This time there’s barely more than a glimpse of the field and flower before I am back in that cave on Mt. Hargreaves. I taste blood, my skin flushes hot then cold. Blind, I fumble for the medkit with my left hand. Even my real flesh fails me: the kit slips free, spins across the floor.
Prickling electricity moves in a wave across my skin, and there’s an odd sensation in the back of my skull, like fingers hooked beneath the bone and pulling hard. The pressure in my skull eases, and the edge of the storm recedes. My vision clears enough for me to see a small bot holding the medkit, a dose of light painkillers ready. I inject the medication. That odd pulling sensation remains, holding the storm away until the medication begins to take effect.
I blink, and my vision blurs as though underwater. My thoughts sluggish by the storm and medication, it takes me several minutes to realize that the AI has projected its holographic interface around me. That it had done the same at the onset of the last storm.
On the screen, I see Maggie, her finger held up, deep lines of worry between her brows. I breathe in, feel static prickling down the branched pathways in my lungs. More fractals there, passages dividing and dividing. My heartbeat steadies, becomes as slow and regular as Maggie’s. The storm rolls away.
The hologram dematerializes, forms again in the navigator’s chair. Its gaberdine and hobnailed boots have been replaced by a grey ship suit identical to mine.
“Did Maggie program you to do that?” I ask. “To stop the cerebral storms?”
“I am to keep you safe when she cannot,” the AI says.
I taste salt; my cheeks are wet with tears. On screen, Maggie is shearing her hair with her battered knife. She cuts closer than I have ever seen her do, removing even the stubble completely, but she is careful not to draw blood. The sun is rising over Icefall’s horizon, red light shining on her bared scalp.
She weighs the shorn hair in her hands and then lays it on the fire. The flames rise, scatter blue and green sparks that do not melt the snow.
“There’s something else,” the AI says.
Static crackles over the bridge’s speakers, and then I hear a bell ringing. I know that tone as well as I know my own voice. It is the sound of the bell announcing ONE’s Morning Calls.
I close my eyes as a priestess begins to sing, her voice joined by another and another, their songs interweaving, rising and falling. Wings unfurl behind my rib cage, my chest lifts, and I have to press my lips together hard to stop from joining in the song.
Only when the last note of song has faded do I open my eyes again. The AI has clipped a screen into an external camera feed, showing me the ONE Mother Temple ship that has joined us in orbit.
“Maggie?” I ask.
The AI shakes its head slightly. “I thought that perhaps you would need comfort while Maggie was on Icefall.”
I stare at it. “They came because an AI asked them to?”
“That, and the Temple Mother wanted to. She was there on Mt. Hargreaves.”
I look again at the Mother Temple. It will be Sarajen, I know it. “You called them for me. But you’re . . .” I trail off, feeling myself flush. For all that I’ve never trusted the AI, it seems impolite to tell it that to its face.
The AI smiles. “A machine? Not quite.” It reaches over, brushes a hand against mine. The touch of its light is oddly soothing. “If you call me Mallory, or George, it may make it easier.”
“Mallory.” The name flows from my lips like the rise and fall of mountains, waves of earth rolling across the land.
We turn back to the screens, watch Maggie as she stands over her fire. Only when it has burned down to ash does she finally turn, look up at the Mountain. I can see the summit reflecting in her eyes.
16
Maggie’s strategy is one used by mountaineers since the days of climbing on old Earth: climb high, camp low. As you move higher up a mountain, the air is thinner and, accordingly, has less oxygen. To compensate, you breathe faster and deeper, and your heart pumps a higher volume of blood. Eventually, your body produces more red blood cells, allowing the absorption of more oxygen. Maggie will adapt more quickly than someone without geneering or her natural abilities—no lingering at base camp, for example—but even her adaptation requires some time, especially when confronting altitudes such as those the Mountain reaches.
Our bandwidth quickly chokes from the number of people clipping into Maggie’s VIR feed. Mallory works, daisy chaining and expanding connections as much as possible. The AI also sets up a screen translating VIR chatter: text scrolls across the screen, people speculating about Maggie’s prospects, about Farah’s brief return to life.
For once, I am glad for my lack of implants. The 2-D feed from the Gorak is mine alone, shared with no one.
Maggie empties the shuttle, checking all of the Sherpas and her supplies before she sends the bots off to scan the icefall. It is the first part of the Mountain that she must climb, and the most deadly: towering seracs ready to topple without notice, crevasses yawning wide, often camouflaged by thin ice bridges such as the one Farah fell through.
Maggie waits for the Sherpas to return, scans their feeds and programs them. One by one, they fly off again.
Once the last of them is gone, she closes the shuttle door, pauses a moment before she turns and sets off. Her heartbeat beneath my skin accelerates.
I cannot tell from her expression if it is from excitement or fear. I fly the Gorak beside her, as close as I can without it being intrusive.
Even filtered through the Gorak’s eye sensors, I can feel the pull of the Mountain. When Maggie pauses at the foot of the icefall, I do, too. The sky is completely clear, spindrift pluming from the summit.
Maggie’s eyes are shining. I know well how she feels now, looking up at the Mountain. There’s a sense of intimidation, looking up at any mountain. The feeling that it could come crashing down on you at any moment, the wonder that it does not. You know intellectually that there will be great hardship ahead, that even if you make the summit, you will likely be so debilitated and weak that you will feel dull horror at the idea that you have to get yourself back down. Unless you are Maggie, anyway. On every summit, she has been exhilarated, brimming over with life, as strong and ready for the descent as she was for the ascent.
There’s a distance to the sound filtering through the Gorak’s sensors, but I can hear the groaning of the icefall. When I could climb, it was one of the things that discomforted and fascinated me, all at once. You lie in your tent at night, everything dark, and all you can hear are sounds like distant thunder, cracks and moans and sighs. They remind you that the mountain is alive, that everything is moving.
Maggie free climbs much of the icefall, using only ice axes and her crampons. Here and there she’s programmed the Sherpas to set ropes and lay collapsible ladders over the widest crevasses, the bots waiting for her to cross so they can gather the equipment once more.
Each time Maggie crosses over a ladder, she pauses in the middle of the crevasse, balancing with her hands held out to her sides, and looks down into the blue abyss. Each time she does this, the chatter spins across the screen. Many of the viewers pause their VIR feed, several claiming physical illness. I cannot look away. I feel as though there is something down there, something moving just out of sight in the darkness, something that looks back at me, knows me. My hands clench the arms of my chair; the right locks and slips again, useless.
Mallory watches me, says nothing.
Despite the complaints, every one of the people clipped into Maggie’s feed when she began broadcasting from Icefall remains with her. In VIR, they are her, it is their boots crunching over ice, the cold air moving in and out of their lungs.
Maggie climbs as high as she can that day, then descends to a Sherpa-set camp just above the icefall. Her heartbeat is smooth and even again, her movements as easy as though she was walking across flat land.
The bots buzz off, scanning as much of the terrain ahead as they can before night falls. I settle the Gorak into the corner of the tent, watch as Maggie melts ice for water, brews tea. Fluid intake is of prime importance on any mountain. You dehydrate quickly in the thin air, and dehydration accelerates the development of both altitude sickness and frostbite. I watch her as she eats and drinks, assessing her as much as I can from her appearance alone. She looks alert and strong, utterly capable of making the summit. Even her white thermal suit remains pristine, gleaming in the dimming light.
The Sherpas return, and she scans their feeds and programs them for the next morning. It is only when she slides into her sleeping bag that I realize she hasn’t said a word since whatever she murmured at the site where I tended to Farah. Usually when Maggie is transmitting VIR, she narrates almost constantly.
She closes her eyes and is asleep immediately, her implants still broadcasting. I watch her, wondering what it is like to clip into someone’s feed as they sleep. Do you experience their dreams, or is everything just grey and empty, like greyspace? It’s one of those things that no one talks about, at least outside of VIR. One of those things that everyone knows, maybe, so no one ever feels the need to say.
Mallory orders bots to bring me food, and I eat mechanically. Amongst its many effects on the human body, altitude kills hunger. I know from experience that if I were with Maggie, even in a relatively low camp like the one in which she sleeps, my appetite would be waning. Though I am on the Wanda R. and not there, the food I eat tastes like nothing, dissolves to ash in my mouth. As I would on any mountain, I force myself to eat anyway.
When I am finished, I recline my seat, lie back. The sound of Maggie’s breathing fills the bridge. I synchronize my own breath with it, and my heart slows, too, matching hers beat for beat.
17
The Sherpas set ropes more frequently the next day, though more often than not, Maggie doesn’t actually clip onto them.
Near the end of the day, as she is descending to her Sherpa-set camp, she slips. This time she is clipped onto the rope, and she dangles from it, held to the Mountain only by titanium and nylon. She hangs there, laughing, her head tipped back so she is staring straight down. Even in 2-D, the sight makes my head spin and stomach lurch. I can only imagine what it feels like for those watching via VIR.
Maggie’s laughter fades away, but she hangs there for a long time, staring down into the abyss. The whole time since the fall, her heartbeat has not accelerated at all, remaining even and strong. She is not afraid. She is not exhilarated. I look at her face through the Gorak’s eyes, and I have no idea if she is feeling anything at all.
When she finally pulls herself up, she clips onto every rope until she reaches camp.
That night, after she has finished eating and drinking, scanning the Sherpas’ feeds, she talks properly for the first time since she landed on Icefall.
She speaks of the mountains she has climbed, of the friends she has lost above the clouds. She speaks of Farah for over an hour, talking of the night they spent huddled in a snow cave on Mt. O’Brien, their supplies lost, sharing their body warmth to keep alive. Back and back she goes, through so many climbs, so many lost friends. Friends who fell, friends whose hearts simply stopped, friends who suffered cerebral edema, friends who drowned in their own fluids as their lungs filled from the onset of pulmonary edema.
There are only two things that Maggie does not speak of. Me, and the future.
18
Maggie approaches eight thousand meters above sea level. The Death Zone.
She has climbed strongly until now. She’s made all of her camps with time to spare, she’s eating and drinking well, and apart from that one slip, she hasn’t set a foot wrong. Even the weather has been on her side: the sky has been clear, the air still, and there have been no avalanches or rock falls, every ridge and cornice she traverses holding strong beneath her weight. The translated VIR chatter is full of watchers speculating that perhaps the Mountain has, at last, agreed to be conquered. It looks as though the summit is within Maggie’s reach.
Every Icefall dawn and dusk, Mallory opens our channels so that the sound of Morning and Evening Calls fill the Wanda R. The Mother Temple even sends over some incense to us, and the sweet smoke fills the bridge as I listen, eyes closed, lips moving silently along as the song traces the rise and fall of the Mountain.
Other ships join us in orbit: newscasters mostly, but also smaller tourist ships that happened to have been within greyspace reach. I am asked repeatedly for interviews, to stream VIR of my own. I refuse them politely at first, but eventually Mallory simply blocks all incoming requests apart from the emergency channel, the Gorak feed and the ONE feed. It even switches off the VIR chatter, leaving us alone with Maggie.
We watch as Maggie hits eight thousand meters, climbs up for an hour and then descends to a camp just below the Death Zone. She still has several thousand meters more to climb, and she’s going to have to move quickly now to minimize the time spent this high. She is climbing as strongly as ever, and when she stands outside her tent that night looking up, I feel a confidence that I’ve not felt on this climb, nor any other. She’s going to make the summit, and she’s going to make it back down.
And why should I ever have doubted it? She is Margaret Malleore, descendent of the great George Mallory himself.
I raise my left ring finger. A moment later, on the screen, Maggie mimics the gesture
. I panic momentarily, wondering if I somehow made the Gorak signal her, but the board tells me that it is silent and still.
I smile, and warmth unfurls within me. I am a beacon guiding Maggie home.
When she is sleeping, I leave the bridge for the first time, take a proper shower instead of the chemical wipe-downs I’ve been making do with, lie down in my own bunk. I leave the hatch to my quarters open, angle myself so I can see into Maggie’s quarters. Mallory has had the bots reassemble the room the way it had been before the airlock was constructed. The covers on Maggie’s bunk are turned down, and the holo next to the bed shifts from Alison Hargreaves standing on the summit of Chomolungma to Wanda Rutkiewicz climbing to her unnamed summit. I smile at her and close my eyes, knowing that everything is going to be well.
It feels as though only moments have passed when I wake with a start, adrenaline lancing through me. My first thought is a cerebral storm, but there is no pain, no pressure within my skull. The lights in my quarters have dimmed, the flickering holo across the passage the brightest light I can see. The display has changed now to George Mallory, kitted out in gaberdine and hobnailed boots.
I lie back down. It must have been a dream that woke me, or some odd misfire in my brain.
My eyes are closing again when it happens. Maggie’s heart misses a beat.
I try to press my fingers against the encapsulated cells, but the pseudo-prosthetic locks immediately, my fingers suddenly cold and numb. I press my left ring finger against my lips instead.
One beat, two, three, four . . . and then that one slipped beat.
Across in Maggie’s quarters, the holo changes from Wanda Rutkiewicz back to Alison Hargreaves. It is the same holo image that was erected so many years ago at Mount Hargreaves base camp, showing a pregnant Alison climbing the Eiger. I’d asked Maggie about that holo once, and she’d professed not to know anything about it. This is the first time I’ve seen her personal holo project it; either Maggie was responsible for it, or she tracked down who was.