“Is this it?” Fred said, looking up at the building.
“Yes.” She was checking out the street, looking back and forth.
“Have you been here before?”
“No.”
That made him uneasy, but there was nothing he could do but follow her and hope for the best. They walked across the little plaza and up the road toward the luxury apartments’ gated driveway.
She stopped all of a sudden and turned into Fred. Again she hugged him hard, and he felt her pregnant belly against him.
“They’re here too,” she muttered.
“How can you tell?”
“I know them,” she said.
“You mean individually? You know them in particular?”
“No no.” She knocked her forehead against his collarbone. “It’s them though, believe me. I know them when I see them.”
“I believe you. But how could they know you would come here?”
“They know Ella and I were at school together. It must be that. They’re guarding anywhere I might go.”
“Okay, let’s just walk it back here. Hold on to me, come on.”
“We can’t go back down into the city the way we came up.”
“No?”
“No, I don’t want to. There’s too many cameras, too many eyes.”
Fred looked around. “Can you climb?”
“No. Can you?”
“A little.” His brother had once taken him out to a bouldering site and taught him the basic rope techniques and moves, and the following week they had climbed a short and easy wall together, his brother leading every pitch. This was another of his brother’s attempts to get him out of his head, but the experience had not been to Fred’s liking. Exposure, a climbers’ term, was a partial description; they didn’t say what the exposure was to, which turned out to be death by falling. Fred had felt that was going too far in the search for something interesting. When you were stunned by the fact that a fermion rotated 720 degrees before returning to its original position, you did not need to hang by your fingers and toes from a cliff to get your thrills. But the whole experience had been etched on his mind quite forcefully.
“Can we do it?” she asked, seeing his uncertainty.
“I don’t know. But if it doesn’t get too steep, I think so.”
“Okay then. Let’s do it.”
They hurried as casually as they could back to the intersection of roads in the low point on the ridge, then walked down the lower road that also headed west. As soon as they were out of the sight of the plaza and the upper road, Fred peered over the south side of the road and gulped at the steepness: treetops dropped swiftly away, and the sea was a long way down and yet not very far off. He continued along the road, hoping for a lessening of the slope’s angle, while trying also to adjust to the sudden reversal of roles. Now he was leading her, and needed to choose a good way—a good way to get a pregnant woman who was not a climber down a slope that looked to be dropping at an angle of at least forty-five degrees, and was concreted over in many places! It was hard to say whether the concrete was an advantage or disadvantage. It might be less slippery. On the other hand if they did slip it would be disastrous. The many trees covering the slope, and the open cups of concrete-rimmed dirt they emerged from, would probably be his best chance of finding good holds.
They passed a stream that coursed through a tunnel under the road, its pitch so steep that below the road it became a waterfall. That was certainly not the way down, and he continued anxiously on, feeling the weakness in him from the night’s vomiting. He was a little light-headed.
Then the road took a turn out and around a bump in the hill. Here the slope below them was a little bit of a buttress. Just past the broad nose of this buttress the slope was less steep than what they had passed so far, and more covered with trees. “Okay, over we go,” he said to her, and helped her over the road’s low guardrail.
They descended in short sideways steps. Quickly they found themselves on a slope so steep that they had to sit down, then slide very slowly down on their butts. The concrete facing that covered the hill was so rough they couldn’t slip down it even if they wanted to, which was reassuring. Fred went first and led her from tree to tree. They held on to tree trunks, and put their shoes against the rims of the tree holes in the concrete, and sometimes against each other. Mostly this meant Qi put her foot against Fred from above, to ease herself down to him. The angle of the slope was proving to be laid-back enough to allow them to stay stuck to it. He found he couldn’t estimate the angle very well—possibly thirty-five degrees, but who knew really. Angle of repose was thirty-two degrees, he seemed to recall, but what kind of repose? A round ball would roll down any incline, so maybe they meant a cube or something. In practical terms, it was as steep as it could be and them still stick to it.
Almost immediately they were down the slope far enough that they couldn’t see the road above, and Fred felt sure they would not be visible from it either. That being the case, they could slow down and take it more carefully, so he did that. Qi looked scared but resolute, her lips clamped to a white line, her eyes fixed on her footwork. She could not fall, so she would not: this was what her expression said. She would stay stuck in one spot forever if that was what it took—get rescued by climbers or helicopters, go to prison—but no falling.
Fred tried to get a better view down. It wasn’t possible to see far through the trees. If the slope got steeper than what they were on now, they would be in big trouble. Even as it was he was not happy with the angle. Any slip that created any momentum and the results would be awful.
He kept going first, and when possible kept one hand free to reach up and hold her hand or foot, knee or elbow. Sometimes he reached up and gripped her wrist. She used him as a foothold without hesitation or compunction. Every few moves they had to put their butts to the slope, or sometimes their knees, and the occasional brief scraping slide downward hurt even through clothes. He tried to calculate how long it was going to take them to descend, but didn’t know enough to do it. He had no idea if there was another road on this side of the mountain, or how far down the slope it might be if there was one. They still couldn’t see far through the broad leaves of the trees, in any direction. It seemed like this island was so thoroughly urbanized that there would have to be a road down there somewhere, but he didn’t really know.
“Let’s stop and rest for a while,” he said to her when they were both securely sitting in a skinny tree’s open bowl, feet against the concrete rim of the downhill side. They sat there, breathing hard at first, sweating freely in the humid air. Now he caught a glimpse of the ocean down there through the leaves. He guessed it was still at least a thousand feet below them.
“Are there any roads down this way, do you know?” he asked.
“I don’t. I’ve only been to Hong Kong a few times. As far as I know, people don’t come to this side very much. I think I remember hearing the city’s water comes from this side. There’s a reservoir or something. So people must come over here, right?”
“I think so, yeah. But… Well, I guess we’ll figure it out when we get down there.”