"But you saw what happened to my pick," I said to Doc, "when I took a cut at that bird. The thing had to have been carrying some sort of charge."
"Maybe whatever has been sending them has cut that part out, as a waste of energy," he replied, "since the things can't get through to us anyhow."
We sat around and watched the snakes and falling rocks, until Stan produced a deck of cards and suggested a better game.
The snakes stayed on through the night and followed us the next day. Rocks still fell periodically, but the boss seemed to be running low on them. The bird appeared, circled us and swooped on four different occasions. But this time we ignored it, and finally it went home to roost.
We made three thousand feet, could have gone more, but didn't want to press it past a cozy little ledge with a cave big enough for the whole party. Everything let up on us then. Everything visible, that is.
A before-the-storm feeling, a still, electrical tension, seemed to occur around us then, and we waited for whatever was going to happen to happen.
The worst possible thing happened: nothing.
This keyed-up feeling, this expectancy, stayed with us, was unsatisfied. I think it would actually have been a relief if some invisible orchestra had begun playing Wagner, or if the heavens had rolled aside like curtains and revealed a movie screen, and from the backward lettering we knew we were on the other side, or if we saw a high-flying dragon eating low-flying weather satellites....
As it was, we just kept feeling that something was imminent, and it gave me insomnia.
During the night, she came again. The pinnacle girl.
She stood at the mouth of the cave, and when I advanced the retreated.
I stopped just inside and stood there myself, where she had been standing.
She said, "Hello, Whitey."
"No, I'm not going to follow you again," I said.
"I didn't ask you to."
"What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?"
"Watching," she said.
"I told you I won't fall."
"Your friend almost did."
"'Almost' isn't good enough."
"You are the leader, aren't you?"
"That's right."
"If you were to die, the others would go back?"
"No," I said, "they'd go on without me."
I hit my camera then.
"What did you just do?" she asked.
"I took your picture--if you're really there."
"Why?"
"To look at after you go away. I like to look at pretty things."
"..." She seemed to say something.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Why not?"
"...die."
"Please speak up."
"She dies..." she said.
"Why? How?"
"....on mountain."
"I don't understand."
"...too."
"What's wrong?"
I took a step forward, and she retreated a step.
"Follow me?" she asked.
"No."
"Go back," she said.
"What's on the other side of that record?"
"You will continue to climb?"
"Yes."
Then, "Good!" she said suddenly. "I--," and her voice stopped again.
"Go back," she finally said, without emotion.
"Sorry."
And she was gone.
VI
Our trail took us slowly to the left once more. We crawled and sprawled and cut holes in the stone. Snakes sizzled in the distance. They were with us constantly now. The bird came again at crucial moments, to try to make us fall. A raging bull stood on a crag and bellowed down at us. Phantom archers loosed shafts of fire, which always faded right before they struck. Blazing blizzards swept at us, around us, were gone. We were back on the northern slopes and still heading west by the time we broke a hundred sixty thousand. The sky was deep and blue, and there were always stars. Why did the mountain hate us? I wondered. What was there about us to provoke this thing? I looked at the picture of the girl for the dozenth time and I wondered what she really was. Had she been picked from our minds and composed into girlform to lure us, to lead us, sirenlike, harpylike, to the place of the final fall? It was such a long way down....
I thought back over my life. How does a man come to climb mountains? Is he drawn by the heights because he is afraid of the level land? Is he such a misfit in the society of men that he must flee and try to place himself above it? The way up is long and difficult, but if he succeeds they must grant him a garland of sorts. And if he falls, this too is a kind of glory. To end, hurled from the heights to the depths in hideous ruin and combustion down, is a fitting climax for the loser--for it, too, shakes mountains and minds, stirs things like thoughts below both, is a kind of blasted garland of victory in defeat, and cold, so cold that final action, that the movement is somewhere frozen forever into a statuelike rigidity of ultimate intent and purpose thwarted only by the universal malevolence we all fear exists. An aspirant saint or hero who lacks some necessary virtue may still qualify as a martyr, for the only thing that people will really remember in the end is the end. I had known that I'd had to climb Kasla, as I had climbed all the others, and I had known what the price would me. It had cost me my only home. But Kasla was there, and my boots cried out for my feet. I knew as I did so that somewhere I set them upon her summit, and below me a world was ending. What's a world if the moment of victory is at hand? And if truth, beauty and goodness be one, why is there always this conflict among them?
The phantom archers fired upon me and the bright bird swooped. I set my teeth, and my boots scarred rocks beneath me.
We saw the top.
At a hundred seventy-six thousand feet, making our way along a narrow ledge, clicking against rock, testing our way with our picks, we heard Vince say, "Look!"
We did.
Up and up, and again further, bluefrosted and sharp, deadly, and cold as Loki's dagger, slashing at the sky, it vibrated above us like electricity, hung like a piece of frozen thunder, and cut, cut, cut into the center of spirit that was desire, twisted, and became a fishhook to pull us on, to burn us with its barbs.
Vince was the first to look up and see the top, the first to die. It happened so quickly, and it was none of the terrors that achieved it.
He slipped.
That was all. It was a difficult piece of climbing. He was right behind me one second, was gone the next. There was no body to recover. He'd taken the long drop. The soundless blue was all around him and the great gray beneath. Then we were six. We shuddered, and I suppose we all prayed in our own ways.
--Gone Vince, may some good Deva lead you up the Path of Splendor. May you find whatever you wanted most at the other end, waiting there for you. If such a thing may be, remember those who say these words, oh strong intruder in the sky....
No one spoke much for the rest of the day.
The fiery sword bearer came and stood above our camp the entire night. It did not speak.
In the morning, Stan was gone, and there was a note beneath my pack.
_Don't hate me,_ it said, _for running out, but I think it
really is an angel. I'm scared of this mountain. I'll climb
any pile of rocks, but I won't fight Heaven. The way down is
easier than the way up, so don't worry about me. Good luck.
Try to understand._ S
So we were five--Doc and Kelly and Henry and Mallardi and me--and that day we hit a hundred eighty thousand and felt very alone.
The girl came again that night and spoke to me, black hair against black sky and eyes like points of blue fire, and she stood beside an icy pillar and said, "Two of you have gone."
"And the rest of us remain," I replied.
"For a time."
"We will climb to the top and then we will go away," I said. "How can that do you harm? Why do you hate us?"
"No hate, sir," she said.