“That’s all right, Randi, I’m coming.” Dr. Lotati turns and looks at me. “Come on, Wojciech. I want your head on that wall.”
Juanita gives me a pat on the rear, and surprisingly, Eloni gives me a silent hug. Inside her visor, her dark eyes are glistening. I think of how frightened the Kenyan student must be, but she has just contributed in the only way she could think of.
“Thanks, team,” I say, and squeeze her hand.
I clip my ascent ratchet on and start climbing. There are no problems and we reach Randi and Ed in half an hour.
Randi is calm. “Right arm. Won’t go above shoulder. Maybe dislocated. Left arm works, sort of. But hurts too much. Might faint. OK as long as I keep my hands down.”
“I’ll take you down, papoose-style,” Ed offers. “Then we’ll ride the elevator up.”
Dr. Lotati touches Randi. “OK?”
“I’ll make it, Dad.”
“Good, Wojciech and I will go up then, and set the anchor,” Dr. Lotati decides. His voice crackles with leadership and confidence. I smile. Everyone, including him, has forgotten about his age. It won’t be obvious on this climb; if anything, I will slow him down.
We replace Ed’s backpack with Randi, tying her to his shoulder harness, and help guide them down. When they are safe below, Dr. Lotati nods to me, and says “We have to consider everything we put into this surface to be hazardous, no?”
I nod. We are leaning out from a wall almost half a kilometer above a bridge about half a kilometer above a pool of cryogenic nitrogen trifluoride, talking about how the various things that hold our ropes to said wall may give way at any time.
“OK. We use four pitons, or bolts, or a combination, on each belay, and arrange the ropes like so.” He demonstrates, creating what looks at first glance to be a cat’s cradle of ropes between carabiners and pitons. “This equalizes forces among the pitons and minimizes the shock if one lets go.”
It takes me a couple of tries to get it right. He finally pats me on the shoulder, and without further ado says “climbing.”
“On belay,” I answer, wondering about people who seem to come alive only when staring death in the face. He ascends deliberately, and deceptively fast.
Actually, I keep up, but exhaust myself in the process. Dr. Lotati is only a centimeter or two taller than his daughter, and hardly much heavier. He is wiry strong; occasional rest stops are the only concession he makes to age—and I need them more than he does. We stop where the second line-bearing rocket buried itself in the fragile clathrate, six meters below the crater floor. The ledge is overhung by about a meter, more where the rocket impact dislodged a large hunk of wall.
“Can you stand a short fall?” he asks me. “I think we’ll need several tries to get around that edge.” I’ve never fallen on a belay line before. I want to impress Emilio; my Mirandas, moon and woman, are at stake. But the idea of trying to scramble almost upside down and free-falling six to ten meters, with only a questionable anchor to stop me if I slip, scares the crap out me. If there were any other way…
“Wojciech?”
“Yes.” Then, perhaps because my mind works best in an emergency, or under a deadline, the idea comes to me. “Dr. Lotati—this is fairly soft stuff. You don’t suppose we could just tunnel through it, up to the surface?”
He looks down at me. “Perhaps! I wouldn’t consider desecrating an Earth climb like that, but I think we will be forgiven here. I knew your head would be good for something!” Then he takes an ax from his belt and swings it into the ice overhead. A good sized hunk falls and shatters into tiny chips on my helmet.
“Ice!” He looks at his handiwork, says, “Sì,” and swings again, and again, cutting a notch more than a tunnel as it turns out. We are through and up to the crater floor in less than an hour.
There is a round of cheers when we say, “On top!” Mike and Karen wave from the other side of the crevasse—only a hundred meters away. It has taken us two days to go that hundred meters.
I help set the next set of anchors a hundred meters back from the edge, in firm regolith. The rest is ropes, ascenders and pulleys. Mike and Karen send the remaining gear, and themselves, across in an ersatz tram, and help us hoist the rest of the party. Juanita is the last one to emerge from the crevasse and we all cheer, intoxicated with our close call and our final victory. By the time everything is up or over, we have been awake for thirty hours. Dr. Lotati decides to set up camp immediately.
We have four two-person tents in addition to the large one. They can be independent or their entrances can be sealed to connecting ports in the large tent, forming a mini-base looking something like an inflated starfish minus an arm. That way, early risers can let others sleep.
Randi’s left shoulder is bad—a possible separation—and we have at least three days’ march ahead of us to our pickup point. We discuss an evacuation, but she won’t hear of it. Mike and Ed both have field medical training but Mike has more practice, so he is the closest thing to a doctor we have, and he consults with Earth. It turns out that our optical scattering imager is good enough to build up a picture of the injury; Randi’s humerus is not quite in its socket.
Earth recommends evacuation. Randi says no. Dr. Lotati supports her—we are in an age where injuries can be healed if they can be,endured, but the opportunities to do something more significant than entertain oneself and collect one’s automation stipend are few and far between.
Randi, Ed told me several nights ago, is Dr. Lotati’s only son. I laughed and asked Ed what that made him. “The gayest man on Mercury,” he answered—and threw such a convincing leer at me that it took me an unsettling second to get the joke. But the humor disguises a poignant situation—a young woman trying to be, for her father, the son he could never have. How much was from her nature, how much was from her love? Or was there a difference? And what of her mother? Randi’s mother was never mentioned by anyone, and the only public biographical info was that Emilio had divorced her when Randi was six and never married again.
Following instructions from the doctors on Earth, Mike resets the shoulder. It takes him two tries. Randi shuts her eyes and gasps—that is all. Then it is in. Painkillers, anti-inflammatory drugs, and reconstructive stimulants we have—she will be sore, but as good as new in a few months. Climbing is out, but she can walk the rest of the way.
Ed and Randi retire together, her arm immobilized to her body with tape.
Juanita decides to sleep with Emilio. Mike and Karen are a given.
Eloni is looking at me with dark pools of eyes and what could be a hopeful smile on her face. I look at the shy graduate student who had given me a hug to send me up a treacherous wall that had just come within the width of an idea of killing two people. I shrug and reach a hand out to her and she comes and sits by me with the widest grin on her face I have ever seen.
“You wish I were Randi, don’t you?” Eloni asks me.
“That’s not your fault.”
Her smile fades. “I almost got us all killed by being too slow. That was my fault.”
There are times when sympathy can do things lust cannot. I have my arms around her in a second. “No one blames you. You’re part of us, now. Time to enjoy it.”
She kind of melts into me and gently pushes me down onto my back on my sleepsack. She has a low, incredibly sexy voice. “That is about as much as I can enjoy. I hope I do not disappoint you.”
Tired as I am, I’m relieved, and confused. “Eloni, I write about the male and female thing, more from reading than experience, I’m afraid. I may sigh, but disappointment would be putting things a bit strong. But I’m curious. Do you believe in abstinence, and if so, can you tell me why?”