To Climb a Flat Mountain

by G. David Nordley

  Jacques spotted it on the second day of looking, toward the south side of the pillar. About three hundred meters below the plateau, flutes from the pillar and plateau extended to meet each other. Almost. There was a gap of perhaps ten meters, with a treacherous narrow ridge leading to it on either side.

  “Everyone. Over here,” he called.

  “An easy jump in this gravity,” Soob said as he arrived, surveying the gap. “But staying where you land, maybe not so easy.”

  “There’s a tree about four meters up,” Colette said. “I was a long jumper in college. I think I can make it with a rope around my waist.”

  “Remember the air is three times thicker here,” Doc said. “You’ll lose speed quickly.”

  “What about a bridge?” Helen asked. “There are logs long enough, and we have line.”

  “Hmmm,” Jacques said.

  It was, possibly, the first suspension bridge on the planet; certainly the first human-built one. They used two twelve-meter logs; the first was erected vertically on the sky island side, set in a hole and held in place by rocks piled around it. A line, anchored to a tree, went over its top and was tied to the far end of the other log. This they pushed out over the gap, playing the line out as it went until it hung swaying over the far end. They anchored the near end with a pile of rocks, then raised and lowered the far end onto the far side of the chasm until it had pounded a secure groove for itself in the loose soil there. The party crossed one at a time, with lines around their waists in case they slipped.

  To get up the gravel on the other side, they made a human road to the nearest tree. Doc lay down on the slope with his feet securely on the log. Jacques crawled up over him and, with Doc’s help, placed his feet on Doc’s shoulders and lay down, extending the human road another meter and a half. Helen followed, then Collette with a line that she tied to the tree toehold on the plateau. Using the bridge and ropes, they got their gear across the gap and up to the level part of the plateau. It took them most of the day. They made camp on a secure flat near the edge of the cliff. It was somewhat risky, but they were beyond tired and the view of sea cliffs below, the sea, and the top of the mist-shrouded island they’d fled was to die for.

  “It’s like we’re on the edge of forever,” Doc said.

  The next morning, Jacques put up a cairn and on the more or less flat face of a rock, scratched their names and:

  Day 54. Camp Edge of Forever.

  * * * *

  The plateau proved to be one of the terraces Jacques had seen from the far shore; three kilometers in, they were faced with a kilometer-tall rock face.

  “In this gravity, a piece of cake,” Collette said, looking at the rough, crevice-filled rock face. She showed them how to jam flute plant stems in cracks as big, ersatz pitons and they scaled the thing in a couple of hours.

  They had enough provisions for three days’ climb, which took them up over a half dozen “terraces.” Jacques welcomed the break from breaking trail through the forest and the view at the top of each cliff. If they found an exceptionally tall tree at the top of a cliff, they would climb it and look back. The ocean would cover the eastern horizon, perhaps slightly bowed upward as it conformed to gravity and not the flat topography. In the far east, they could see a dark smudge, so small now that they could cover it with a hand. Smoke still rose from it like a strange plant with wispy gray leaves reaching impossibly high into the sky.

  Jacques assembled his electronic gear and waited for the sun to peek through the clouds and provide the power he needed. When they got another bearing to the shuttle, it was west and south of where they were. The signal had increased in strength, but not as much as he would have expected from the ocean crossing.

  Each day Jacques took readings; a hundred meters left, a hundred right. They were headed toward the shuttle, but the signal was not getting much stronger.

  Meanwhile, the flora and fauna changed. The broad fleshy-leafed bitterwood tree was giving way to a very tall tree with a rough yellowish bark that covered its trunk and limbs like scales. Its foliage seemed to come from a simple modification of the bark; the scales appeared to curl into finger-sized hollow tubes.

  Helen picked a leaf up from the forest floor. “The underside’s translucent,” she noted. “I’ll bet it’s a good insulator.”

  “Winter adaptation?” Soob asked.

  Jacques nodded and stretched his hand out and covered their sun with his thumb. In the week since arriving at Camp Edge of Forever, the star had gotten noticeably smaller. “Our sun is shrinking.”

  “Apastron?” Collette asked.

  Jacques frowned. He didn’t think they’d reached the farthest point of their planet’s orbit yet, but it was hard to tell how long it would be. “Not yet, but we’re well past periastron now. It’s not just the gain in altitude that’s making us chilly.”

  Soob nodded. “We’ll need to find a good campsite, one where we can settle long enough to make some winter clothes.”

  Helen laughed, then looked very thoughtful. At length she said, “We all still hope to find the shuttle, recover all our technology, and continue our mission. But it might not work out that way.”

  “You’re suggesting we locate a permanent settlement here?” Doc asked.

  Helen nodded. “At least a base camp. We’ll need to stop at a place that’s survivable with what we have.”

  “We still have a mission,” Colette said.

  The quiet that ensued spoke of the elephant in the room. The urgency of the quest to find the shuttle had, necessarily, abated and he imagined that everyone was thinking like he was, though not saying it. Those that had stayed behind had either survived or not—either way, they would hardly need rescuing now. Building a new starship was a very long-term project—and they had been striving for all they were worth for almost a month now. It was time to scale back to a sustainable pace.

  “Maybe the next likely place after a week’s climb?” he said. “That will give us a week to get ready for apastron, and the season will likely lag.”

  There were assents all the way around.

  * * * *

  Chapter 13

  Eagle’s Nest

  They had settled into a routine, gaining about twelve kilometers a day horizontally and four vertically. At first light they were up, ate a hearty breakfast, and packed away the remaining food. Then they did four terraces, with a water break after scaling the second cliff of the day. During the break, they would recharge their electronics. The hard part of the day was the next two traverses and climbs. They would take a long rest after the fourth climb, then build camp and forage. After the sun went down, they’d have a light dinner by the fire and go to sleep, taking watch shifts.

  Jacques had just gone over the top of the fourth terrace on the day’s climb. The trees he saw seemed larger and farther apart than below; the effect was almost parklike. He gazed up at one giant that came up from near the terrace edge; it seemed almost twenty meters across and actually vanished into a wisp of cloud above him.

  Trying to find its top, he wasn’t looking where he was going and about thirty meters in from the terrace edge, he saw a small pit too late and felt the sandy ground give way under him. He tried to scramble back, but the ground gave way faster. “Falling! Belay!” he yelled as he slipped beneath the surface. His belay line pulled taut, and he soon found himself dangling about five meters below the surface in a huge cave. Below him was a pile of sharp rocks, many as big as small houses. Lava tube, he thought, when he stopped shuddering. The ceiling must have caved in here a long time ago—forest debris had almost filled in the hole. As his eyes adapted to the light, he could see that the volume around him was immense; the cave must have been a hundred meters across in places. He could hear a small stream running through it.

  Water supply, drainage, shelter, defendable ... he ticked through various pluses. “Soob,” he yelled. “Soob. I think I’ve found it!”

  When the group all reached the hole, they descended on ropes and
explored the cave. It led toward the face of the terrace, and as it did, the floor became smoother, like the dried bottom of a creek. The creek itself ended in a pool.

  Helen shook her head. “I can feel wind. The terrace face must be within a few meters of us.”

  Colette nodded. “The pile of dirt across the pool—it’s not lava. It looks like it came this way, inward from the face, not down the tube.” She waded through the pool and climbed up it, toward the cave roof. Suddenly she thrust her arm into the wall and brought it back holding a large white flower. “We have a window!”

  They built “Eagle’s Nest” over the next week, enlarging the silted-up window and leveling the floor behind it until they had an opening ten meters long and a meter high toward the east. For in the morning, the rising sun, if visible, would fill the cave with light back to the skylight fall. They built a rough stone wall at the edge of that, for defense and to keep from falling off; the terrace edge was slightly undercut, and the drop to the next level must have been a kilometer.

  On the second day, Soob and Jacques were hunting. The hirachnoids were larger at this altitude, with thicker legs, though Helen thought they weren’t as sweet as on the island. Jacques had a couple of sets of legs in his bag when he noticed the smell.

  “Jacques, something’s dead,” Soob said.

  “I’d say so.”

  “Hirachnoids are scavengers,” Soob added.

  “I was afraid you would mention that.”

  Following their noses, they found a megabat carcass, maybe three days old. Hirachnoids were going in and out of its cloacal opening, now somewhat enlarged, covered with little bits of what had been inside.

  “I’m going to be sick,” Jacques said, and turned to retch. When he was over it, he turned back to see Soob busy slicing away the webbing of the carcass’s right wing.

  “Fur coats,” Soob said. “I don’t think it’s been above ten Celsius since we got here.”

  Disgust aside, Jacques realized that fate had handed them a treasure trove. He quickly went to help. Soon, they had all the wing web pelt they could carry. Just as well, he thought, with a glance at one of the large, glistening hirachnoids.

  They dug an outlet for the pond and rigged a floodgate for it. All that nice, smooth silt had come from somewhere, and they didn’t want to be washed away by the next rainy season. They found a “bottomless” crack near the cave mouth across the pond from their camp. With a short stone wall for privacy, it would now have its share of bottoms.

  It snowed on the morning of the third day, in huge flakes as big as their hands. Almost ten centimeters of soft white snow built up in about no time, but it quickly melted. The storm did show them that the cave was too drafty, so they wove a barrier out of yellowbark branches that they could use to cover the entrance at night.

  The long days were full of unending labor; every fallen log from several kilometers around found its way down the skylight. Everything edible they could find went into the hole, too. Jacques figured they had about fifteen days of supplies when winter hit in earnest.

  It snowed heavily on the fourth day of occupying Eagle’s Nest, gusts of wind bringing flakes through the cave. Despite their barrier, the freezing wind found its way to them and they huddled close in their blankets. They fed the fire frugally and waited, then finally arranged a fire watch, using a crude water clock as a timer—it let a stone fall when the cup became too light—and slept.

  Jacques had the first shift and spent much of it in wonder at how he’d gone from a reasonably prosperous childhood on Cislunar L5 Grissom to his present circumstances. He wondered about his mother and father: Where were they now? They’d certainly have given him up for dead and had likely passed on one way or another themselves.

  Did they keep their religion to the end, he wondered. Did they ever regret the beatings? How could one profess love one minute, then scream and hit the next? He had never married; what happened to him ran in families and he had vowed it would end with him. He was going to have to have an honest talk with Collette.

  The rock dropped, surprising him. He put another piece of wood on the fire and blew the embers until it caught, then went to wake Soob for the next shift. He snuggled under his blankets and thought about humankind expanding through the galaxy, wondering how long it would take for them to get this far.

  Jacques felt a gentle shaking, opened his eyes, and saw Collette, who planted a quick kiss on his cheek.

  “It’s morning,” she said, nodding to the pale light from the cliff face window. “The wind’s stopped.”

  Jacques yawned and pushed himself up. She reached for his hand and he found himself in her arms, naturally, unbidden. Their embrace lasted as long as it needed to—no urgency to it, but a bond renewed. They had become special to each other. Not intentionally, but it had happened. He felt comfortable, warm, and at peace in her arms. The conversation could wait, he thought.

  “Let’s check the entrance,” she said.

  Jacques smiled, wondering if it was an excuse to get away from the others.

  “There’s hardly a breeze,” she said. “It might be blocked.”

  Situation awareness, Jacques thought, getting his head back to reality. They were in a survival situation on an alien world. He nodded. “Yeah. We should check.”

  The vertical entrance was, indeed, completely blocked, a pillar of compressed snow like a white trumpet, bell down, rising from the gnarly cave floor to its ceiling. Only the cliff-face window remained open. They were in for the season, it seemed.

  * * * *

  They settled into a routine of sleeping by the fire, eating, and working on small projects. They found a large piece of obsidian, with an edge of about ten centimeters width, that they could use to shave bitterwood logs. They could write on the shavings with wet charcoal, not very finely, but good enough for some haiku and other short poems.

  They peeled apart the megabat web skin pelts, scraped away the small amount of flesh between the skin layers, soaked them in water and ash, rinsed them in the pool, then suspended them over the fire until they steamed, hopefully killing any decay-causing bacteria and preserving them for use. They smelled better, anyway.

  Cut and folded, with a hole in the center for someone’s head and a strip of skin for a belt, the megabat skins made passable ponchos. They were almost impermeable, and the short fur, turned inside, made them comfortable to wear.

  They made plans for the next summer’s exploration, learned each other’s personal histories, and spun many untestable, unobservable theories about Cube World’s origins. Doc carved a passable model of the world, complete with the slight bulges for oceans on each face.

  Soob made a chess set and became their local grand master, though Jacques wondered if he would have succeeded so well if Helen had participated in his tournaments. She claimed to not know how to play, but Jacques thought she watched the board with more than casual interest.

  Helen spent her time making a wooden necklace of interlaced rings, carved from a single piece of bitterwood branch. It was a topological marvel they all admired.

  Many years ago, Jacques had taught himself how to play a Peruvian flute: a simple tube with a slanted notch and holes for an octave’s worth of notes. He’d had that in the back of his mind when he named the “flute plant.” It was a project, with some cut-and-try to get the intervals right, but finally they had four passable flutes, two bass and two tenor. Helen, Soob, and Collette learned to play, and they eventually managed a truncated, ersatz performance of the New World Symphony, with Doc playing a batskin drum and singing “going home.”

  They gossiped about their days in training and various couplings imagined and real.

  “Evgenie told me he had a hard time making up his mind about Ascendant,” Helen said.

  “I thought he was soft on Arroya,” Doc said. “And he was dating you too?”

  Helen laughed. “I was his safety valve! I’m a good listener and was obviously not looking for an exclusive relationship.” />
  “When we split,” Jacques said, “she was looking at you—almost fearfully, I thought. Any history there?”

  Collette shook her head. “Maybe she doesn’t like cops. What about Leo?” she asked. “Was he involved with anyone?”

  Helen shrugged. “He didn’t seem interested in anyone, that I could see.”

  “Not even you?” Collette smiled when she said that.

  Helen laughed. “The lack of interest was mutual. There’s something about him ... maybe it’s stature compensation.”