Our only obstacles now were time and a flagging of strength. As we continued to climb the chimney, knocking away more nests of dead scorpions and spiders and other denizens of the dark chimney that runs straight up through the mountain to Alto Arete, the air seemed thinner and less satisfying to breathe. But it was clean air now, thanks to the draft from the fire; and the tunnel was clear of life-threatening creatures, thanks to Pierre's lethal draft.
We no longer could inch our way up by using our backs and knees against opposing walls. The hole had narrowed so much that my shoulders barely cleared its sides. We used tiny notches and ledges and, in some stretches, found the walls so smooth that we actually wriggled like snakes to gain upward purchase.
We did run across several level areas where we could rest, but I kept looking at my digital watch, seeing the minutes flick away. The numbers seemed to be constantly changing. 7:45. 7:59. 8:05.
I lost all sense of place and had no idea how far we had come from the cave. It could have been five hundred feet, or five thousand. I knew only that sundown was rushing across the island and that Don Carlos would soon step onto a balcony of his palace up there on Alto Arete and fire his flare, signalling the beginning of a bloody revolution that would rock the island from end to end, side to side. Once that started, I would not have an ally in the whole country. All the Ninca Indians would be dead, as would the guerillas who opposed Don Carlos.
Without allies, I knew, there was no way for me to get off the island country of Nicarxa. There would be no report to David Hawk or the President because there would be no one to report.
"What time is it?" Elicia asked as we rested in a narrow tunnel that angled upwards at about forty five degrees.
"Almost eight o'clock," I lied. I had been lying about the time for the past two hours. Even though I'd told her earlier that we were no longer concerned with Don Carlos Italla's plans but with our own survival, I knew she didn't accept that anymore than I did. She still hoped to stop the maniac and save her country from a bloodbath. I had tried once to shatter that hope, when my own hope was at rock bottom — I wouldn't do it again. But I looked at my watch and saw that the numbers were clearly at 8:12.
"Do you think we're near the top?" Elicia asked.
"I'm pretty sure we are," I said.
This time, I wasn't lying. For the past several yards, the chimney had been getting narrower and narrower. I could barely squeeze my shoulders past small outcroppings. And I noticed that a number of smaller holes ran off into different directions. I had the sickening feeling that the chimney would degenerate into a series of tiny openings through which only smoke (and poison gas) could pass.
The feeling was justified. Just as my digital watch clicked into place at 8:15, I shone my flashlight ahead and saw that the main chimney ten feet ahead was no wider than a man's boot. Smaller chimneys led off from the channel like dark fingers, each about the size of a fist.
I stopped and probed the area above, but could find no way for us to get through. It was possible that this series of smaller holes represented only a small section of the overall chimney, that they funneled into a main chimney up above. The question was, how did we get past this natural obstruction to the main chimney?
What was needed now, I knew, was that divine intervention David Hawk had spoken of. I had no weapons to deal with the situation. As a matter of fact, no sophisticated weaponry or technology could solve this problem in time for us to stop Don Carlos.
I reached the point where my shoulders would no longer let themselves be squeezed any closer together. Ahead, the main chimney narrowed like dark railroad tracks in the distance. This time, though, the narrowing was no optical illusion. It was real.
We could go no farther.
"Why do you stop, Nick?" Elicia said. "We still have time to stop Don Carlos, but we must not stop. Not now."
Truth time.
There was no way I could lie my way out of this predicament. I would have to tell her and the two warriors that we were stopped, that we could not proceed. Pierre couldn't help. Hugo couldn't help. Wilhelmina could blast away forever and make no dent at all in the obstacle ahead.
Nick Carter had failed. Oh, sure, there might be people in the future who might say I had given it my best shot. That is, if any of us got out alive to tell the story. Even if they said I gave it my best shot, they'd still have to sigh and shake their heads and finish the statement: "Even though he gave it his best shot, he still failed."
"Nick, are you all right? Why have we stopped?"
I couldn't answer, couldn't tell her. I wanted to. I wanted to tell her that I expected failure all along, that I had been proceeding like a damned programmed automation, a brainless creature destined to smash itself on the rocks of total adversity, of hopelessness.
My fingers sought a higher ledge. My mind entertained the hope of squeezing my shoulders just a bit tighter, of going on; hope that the chimney would widen in just a few more feet and we would be able to continue to the top.
The hope, however, was faint and dim. What was really going through my mind was just how we four would spend our remaining hours alive. Would we talk among ourselves as hunger turned to starvation, as life began to seep away leaving our bones as evidence to some future archeologist that we had been here? Would that archeologist puzzle about our predicament, have any hint at all as to why we had wedged ourselves into this incredible mountain?
Hope was still alive and my fingers kept searching for one more ledge.
My mind, however, was still active in other areas. It was possible, I thought, that we could go back down to the cave and subsist on bats until desperation drove us to that dark pond and that impossible swim back to the well. We could eat scorpions. There were a lot of dead ones down there. We could eat the two warriors who had died in this hopeless endeavor. We…
"We're in deep trouble, aren't we?" Elicia said, the panic coming again to her voice. "We can't go any farther, can we?"
My fingers found a narrow depression in the rock. I didn't want to have to answer Elicia. I probed the depression and tried to get my fingertips into it. It wasn't a ledge and it wasn't deep enough to provide purchase. I kept trying.
"Answer me, Nick." We're trapped and it's almost time for Don Carlos to send his signal and I can't even find a ledge to pull me higher into this damned hole and we're going to die here while all your countrymen are dying outside. I opened my mouth to tell them all the truth, but I couldn't find my voice.
I was incapable, in that moment of frustration and failure, to admit that I was frustrated, that I had failed. My fingers worked frantically in the narrow depression. I slid my hands across the depression and found that it was a straight line, as though it had been chiseled there by man and not by nature.
"You don't have to answer," Elicia said, a slight choking in her throat. "Your silence tells me everything."
"I'm just thinking, Elicia," I said, lying again, although it wasn't a total lie. I was thinking. I was thinking about how bats and scorpions and human flesh would taste to a man about to perish of starvation.
"I want to tell you," Elicia said, a braveness in her voice now, "that I cherish those moments in the Council House. I am in love with Purano and would have married him and bore his children, but I would not have forgotten my love for you, for what we had together."
"Elicia, don't talk like that. You're giving up."
"Haven't you given up?"
I pushed against the rock wall just below the depression, a new hope rising. Nothing happened.
"No, I haven't given up. There's no reason to give up."
"Then, why won't you answer my questions? Why don't we continue on?"
I pushed hard against the rock wall, then slid my hands down the wall close to my chest. I found another faint line there, another slight depression. I worked my fingers across it, gouging out crumpled rock. It was another straight line and the crumpling rock felt like mortar in my hands.