Cirocco began rummaging through his pack, taking things they could use. She kept the provisions and the weapons, threw everything else over the side.
"If we let him live, he's going to follow us, you know that."
"He might, and I could definitely do without it. He'll have to go over the edge."
"Then why the hell am I---"
"With his chute. Untie his legs."
She fitted the harness around his crotch. He moaned again, and she looked away from what Gaby had done to him there.
"He thought he killed me. " she was saying, tying the last knot on the bandages. "He meant to, but I turned my head."
"How bad is it? "
"Not deep, but bloody as hell. I was stunned, and it's lucky I was too weak to move after what he... after ... " Her nose was running, and she wiped it on the back of her hand. "I passed out pretty quick. The next thing I knew he was bending over you. "
"I'm glad you woke up when you did. I made a mess of my escape. And thank you for saving my ass again."
Gaby looked at her bleakly, and Cirocco was immediately sorry about her choice of words. Gaby seemed to feel personally responsible for what had happened. It couldn't be easy, Cirocco thought, to lie still while someone you love is being violated.
"Why are you letting him live?"
Cirocco looked down at him, and fought through a sudden burning rage until she felt in control again.
"I... you know he was never like this before."
"I do not know it. He was always a fucking animal underneath, or how could he have done it?"
"We all are. We suppress it, but he can't anymore. He talked to me like a little boy who's hurt-not angry, just hurt-because he's not been getting his way. Something happened to him after the crash, just like something happened to me. And you.',,
"But we didn't try to kill anyone. Listen, let him parachute down. That's okay. But I think he ought to leave his balls up 'here." She hefted the knife, but Cirocco shook her head.
"No. I never liked him much, but we got along. He was a good crewman, and now he's insane, and... " She was going to say it was partly her responsibility, that he would never have gone insane if she had kept her ship in one piece, but she could not get it out.
"I'm giving him a chance because of what he was. He said he had friends down there. Maybe he was just raving, or maybe they'll take him in. Cut his hands free."
Gaby did, and Cirocco gritted her teeth and pushed him with her foot. He began to slide, and seemed to become aware of his surroundings. He screamed as the parachute trailed out behind him, then vanished around the curve of the cable.
They never saw if it opened.
The two women sat there for a long time. Cirocco was afraid to say anything. There was the possibility she would start crying and be unable to stop, and there was no time for it. There were wounds to care for, and a trip to finish.
Gaby's head was not bad. It should have had stitches, but the disinfectant and a bandage was all they could do. She would have a scar on her forehead.
So would Cirocco, from her impact with the castle floor. There would also be one from the point of her chin to her left car, and another across her back. None of the cuts were serious enough to worry her.
They tended each other and loaded their packs, and Cirocco looked up at the long stretch of the cable yet to climb before they reached the spoke.
"I think we should go back to the castle and rest before we tackle it," she said. "A couple days. Get our strength."
Gaby looked up. "Oh, sure. But the next part's going to be easier. Bringing you two down here, I found a stairway."
CHAPTER TWENTY
The stairway emerged from a great heap of sand at the upper- most border of the glass castle and went straight as an arrow until it could no longer be seen. Each step was a meter and a half wide and forty centimeters high, and appeared to have been carved into the face of the cable.
After Cirocco and Gaby had followed it for a time, they began to think it might actually do them little good. It was curving to the south, toward the drop-off. Before long it would surely he impassable.
But the steps remained perfectly level. Soon they were walking on a terraced shelf with a huge wall rising m one side and a sheer drop on the other. There was no handrail, no protection at all. They pressed close to the wall, and trembled with every gust of wind.
Then the shelf began to turn into a tunnel. It was a gradual thing. There was still open space on the right, but the wall had begun to curl over their heads. The path was curving under the cable.
Cirocco tried to visualize it: always rising, but corkscrewing around the outside of the cable.
After another 2000 steps, they were in pitch blackness.
"Stairs," Gaby muttered. "They build a thing like this, and they put in stairs." They had stopped to get out their lamps. Gaby filled hers and trimmed the wick. They would burn one at a time and hope there was enough oil to get them out the other side.
"Maybe they were health nuts," Cirocco suggested. She struck a match and held it to the wick. "More likely this was an emergency measure, for a loss of power."
"Well, I'm glad they're here," Gaby admitted.
"They were probably here all the way but down lower they're covered with dirt. It means this place has been unattended for a long time. The trees up here must be new mutations."
"Whatever you say." Gaby held the lamp high and looked ahead, then back where she could still see a wedge of light. Her eyes narrowed.
"Look, it's like we're at an angle in the road. It curves along the outside, then it cuts to the left and goes straight in."
Cirocco studied it, and thought Gaby was right.
"It looks like we might he cutting right through the center."
"Oh, yeah? Remember the place of winds? All that air is going through here, someplace."
"If this tunnel led to it, we'd know it already. It would have blown us right off the side."
Gaby looked at the ascending staircase in the flickering lamp- light. She sniffed the air.
"It's pretty warm in here. I wonder if it gets hotter?"
"No way to know but by going in."
"Uh-huh." Gaby swayed and the lamp threatened to fall from her fingers. Cirocco put a hand on her shoulder.
"You all right?"
"Yeah, I'm ... no, dammit, I'm not." She leaned against the warm corridor wall. "I'm dizzy, and my knees are weak." She held out her free hand and looked at it; it trembled slightly.
"Maybe a day of rest wasn't enough." Cirocco studied her watch, gazed up the corridor, and frowned. "I'd hoped to he out on the other side and back on the top of the cable again before we rested."
"I can make it."
"No," Cirocco decided. "I don't feel so hot myself. The question is do we camp here in the corridor where it's so hot, or go outside?"
Gaby looked back at the drop-off many steps behind them, "I don't mind a little sweat."
There was something about having a fire, even when the weather was unbearably hot. They did not discuss it; Cirocco took small twigs and moss from Gene's pack and started to build one. Soon she had a small blaze crackling. She fed it like a miser as they went about the mechanical business of setting a meager camp. Sleeping bags were unrolled, pans and knives brought out, provisions searched for the night's food.
We're a good team, sirocco thought, hunkered down while she watched Gaby dice vegetables into the bubbling remains of last night's stew. Her hands were small and deft, with brown dirt ground into the palms. They could no longer spare water for washing.
Gaby wiped her brow with the back of her hand and glanced up at Cirocco. She smiled- a flickering, tentative thing that broadened when Cirocco smiled back. One eye was nearly covered by a bandage. She dipped the spoon into the stew and slurped noisily.
"Those radish dinguses are best left crunchy," she said. "Give me your plate."
She ladled a generous helping and the two of them sat back, side by side but at arm's length, and ate.
It was delicious. Listening to the small sounds, the pop of the fire and the scraping of spoons on wooden plates, Cirocco was grateful to relax and think of nothing.
"Do you have any more salt?,, Cirocco dug in her pack and found the sack, and also two for- gotten sweets, wrapped in yellow leaves. She pressed one into Gaby's hand and laughed when her eyes lit up. She put her own plate down and unwrapped the chewy, bite-sized confection, held it under her nose and sniffed. It smelled too good to eat all at once. She bit it in half, and the flavor of sugared apricots and sweet cream burst through her mouth.