He thought of Jotunheim, the Land of Giants, and understood the better the myths of his ancestors with their accent on man's impermanency - the mortality of their very gods, their bleak worship of the forces of nature. Only here could he appreciate that the life span of the world itself might be infinite, but the life span of its denizens was necessarily subject to inevitable metamorphosis and eventual death. And, as he thought, his impression of the country changed so that instead of the feeling of invading sanctified ground, he felt as if a privilege had been granted him and he had been allowed, for a few moments of his short life, to experience eternity.
The mountains themselves might crumble in time, the planet cease, to exist, but that it would be reincarnated he was certain.
And this gave him humility and hope for his own life and, for the first time, he began to think that he might have a purpose in continuing to live, after all.
He did not dwell on the idea, since there was no need to.
- They came with relief to a dry place where they lighted a fire and cooked the last of their bacon in their strong metal frying pan. They ate their food and cleaned the pan with ashes from the fire, and he took it down to the nearest river and rinsed it, stooping to drink a little, not too much, since he had learned from his mistake earlier, for the water could be like a drug so that one craved to drink more and more until exhausted.
He realized, vaguely, that they had to keep as fit as possible.
For one of them to come to harm could mean danger for them both. But the thought meant little. There was no sense of danger here.
He slept and, before he fell in to a deep, dreamless sleep, he had a peculiar impression of being at once vast and tiny. His eyes closed, his body relaxed, he felt so big that the atoms of his body, in relation to the universe, hardly had existence, that the universe had become an unobservable electron, present but unseen. And yet, intratemporally, he had the impression that he was as small as an electron so that he existed in a gulf, a vacuum containing no matter whatsoever.
A mystic, perhaps, would have taken this for some holy experience, but he could do no more than accept it, feeling no need to interpret it. Then he slept.
Next morning, Nilsson showed him a map he had found in the village.
'That's where she's going,' he said, pointing at a mountain in the distance. ' It's the highest in this section and the second highest in the entire range. Wonder why she'd want to climb a mountain?'
Hallner shook his head.
Nilsson frowned.' You're in a funny mood. Think you won't have a chance with the girl?' When Hallner didn't answer, Nilsson said impatiently,' Maybe she's got some idea that she's safer on top of a mountain. With luck, we'll find out soon.
Ready to go?'
Hallner nodded.
They moved on in silence.
The range was discernibly closer, now, and Hallner could look at individual mountains. Although looming over the others, the one they headed for looked squat, solid, somehow older than the rest, even.
For a while they were forced to concentrate on the ground immediately in front of them, for it had become little more than thick mud which oozed over their boots and threatened to pull them down, to join, perhaps, the remains of prehistoric saurians which lay many feet below.
Nilsson said little and Hallner was glad that no demands were made on him.
It was as if the edge of the world lay beyond the last ragged pile of mountains, or as if they had left Earth and were in a concave saucer surrounded by mountains, containing only the trees and the lakes, marshes and hills.
He had the feeling that this place was so inviolable, so invulnerable, miles from the habitation of men so that for the first time he fully realized that men had ceased to exist along with their artifacts. It was as if they had never really existed at all or that their spell of dominance had appeared and disappeared in practically the same moment of time.
But now, for the first time since he had heard the hysterical voice on the radio, he felt some stirring of his old feeling return as he stared at the great mountain, heavy and huge against the ice-blue sky. But it was transformed. Ambition had become the summit, reward the silence, the peace that waited at the peak.
Curiosity was the desire to discover the cause of a freakish colouring half-way up the mountain and fear did not exist for in these enigmatic mountains there was no uncertainty. A vast, wall-less womb with the infinite sky curving above and the richlycoloured scenery, blues, whites, browns and greens, surrounding them, complete, cutting them off from even the sight of the ruined outside world.
It was a snow-splashed paradise, where well-fed wolves left the carcasses of their prey to lap at the pure water of the rivers. A wilderness replete with life, with lemming, reindeer, wolverine, wolf and even bear, with lakes swarming with freshwater herring and the air a silent gulf above them to set off the smack of a hawk's wing. Night could not fall and so the potential dangers of savage wild-life, which could not be felt in the vastness of a world where there was room for everything, could never be realized.
Occasionally, they would discover a slain reindeer, bones dull and white, its hide tattered and perishing, and they would feel no horror, no emotion at all, for although its obvious killer, the wolverine, was a cruel beast, destroying often for the sake of destroying, the wolverine was not aware of its crime and therefore it was no crime at all.
Everything here was self-sufficient, moulded by fate, by circumstance, but since it did not analyse, since it accepted itself and its conditions without question, it was therefore more complete than the men who walked and stumbled across its uncompromising terrain.
At length they came to the sloping, grass-covered roots of the mountain and he trembled with emotion to see it rising so high above him, the grass fading, parting to reveal the tumbled rock and the rock vanishing higher up beneath banks of snow.
'She will have taken the easiest face,' Nilsson decided, looking at the map he had found in the camp.' It will mean crossing two snow-fields.'
They rested on the last of the grass. And he looked down over the country through which they had passed, unable to talk or describe his feelings. It possessed no horizon, for mountains were on all sides, and within the mountains he saw rivers and lakes, tree-covered hills, all of which had taken on fresh, brighter colourings, the lakes reflecting the red of the sun and the blue of the sky and giving them subtly different qualities.
He was glad they were taking the easiest face for he felt no need, here, to test or to temper himself.
For a while he felt complete with the country, ready to climb upwards because he would rather do so and because the view from the peak would also be different, add, perhaps to the fullness of his experience.
He realized, as they got up, that this was not what Nilsson was feeling. Hallner had almost forgotten about the girl.
They began to climb. It was tiring, but not difficult for initially the slope was gradual, less than forty-five degrees. They came to the first snow-field which was slightly below them, climbed downwards carefully, but with relief.
Nilsson had taken a stick from the Lapp camp. He took a step forward, pressing the stick into the snow ahead of him, took another step, pressed the suck down again.