"My memory still retains his final mind-shouts," said Nirupam softly.
"How ironic to die on the very first day of our support operation."
Chazz was smearing his abraded face with ointment. "Sure taught the rest of us grunts to stick to your flagged trail-even to take a leak. Beats me how you and Basil and Ookpik can tell where creva.s.ses are hiding under the snow."
"We do miscalculate occasionally," observed the don. He took a tiny monocular from his anorak and studied the Middle Tine Ridge, toward which they had been trekking.
"Found us a fast route?" Nirupam inquired. "Time"s getting on. We"ll have stonefall in the gullies as the sun heats the frosty rock, and that ridge has some ugly-looking little snowfields that might be thinking about going avalanche before supper."
"It"s a straightforward slog across the rest of this glacial tongue," Basil said, handing over the scope. "Just a small randkluft moat where the ice falls away from the ridge wall. Then we must pick and choose among the couloirs for the ascent. I rather fancy the darkish one, shaded by that second spur. It promises to hold tight longer than the others."
Nirupam squinched his Mongoloid features. "Hold tight, all right. It looks like it hadn"t had any sun since the Miocene!
Sharp and deep and probably black ice from top to bottom, as tough as cured solicrete. Our ice-axes will bounce right off it.
Unless we melt steps with the blaster, we could be five hours gaining the ridgetop. I"m for one of the more open chutes. We can stay well to the shady side and keep alert. The third couloir north of your buck beauty is steep enough to avalanche regularly. It can"t have much snow buildup. I"d try that first." He gave Basil the gla.s.s and waited as the don considered the suggestion.
"Well? You like?"
Basil sighed. "Very well. I christen it Darjeeling Gutter in your honour, if you will forgive the-er-ec.u.menical usage."
They finished their tea, repacked the equipment, roped up, and were on their way.
Taking advantage of a brilliant waning moon and clear weather, they had begun the day"s trek at 0300 hours, departing from the supply dump at the base of the Gresson Icefall when that unstable jumble of seracs was at its most quiescent. Basil and the experienced Indian climber each carried forty kilos and Chazz and Derek took twenty-eight, and the bulk of that was left at Camp 1, newly established at 5585 metres. At dawn they had set off again to reconnoitre a route to Camp 2, taking flagged wands, a bivouac kit, the winch, and plenty of rope.
Ideally, after they had gained the crest of Middle Tine via one gully or another they would scout about until they located a good spot for a "flywalk" winch-belay. Once the machinery and ropes were permanently emplaced, other climbers could simply latch on, signal the faithful donkey, and be drawn up the rocky ridge flank with minimum effort.
The pioneering team, however, had to do it the hard way.
It was nearly 0930 when they reached the moatlike randkluft that was the western edge of the Tine Glacier. Late in the afternoon, the half-rock, half-ice corridor would be perilous with running melt.w.a.ter. But now it was frozen solid and almost like a staircase to their crampon-shod feet. They ascended easily to the base of Darjeeling Gutter, crossed the miniature bergschrund where its cascading snows joined the main glacier, and began to creep up the sixty-degree slope of dazzling white. They bore as far to the left as possible in order to avoid the deadly warming effect of the sun, trigger of rockfalls and avalanches.
It was about 900 metres to the top. Over most of that distance the couloir was a constantly changing patchwork of hardened snow, opaque and brittle ice formed by the daily thaw-andfreeze cycle, tough "live ice" that resisted the gla.s.s fangs of crampons and ice-axes, and rare patches of powder snow.
At first they moved briskly, but after an hour or so, Chazz and Derek weakened. Only amateur climbers, they had to use the easily learned but tiring crampon technique called frontpointing-digging the horizontal toe-points of the crampons into the ice as they hauled themselves along with the aid of their axes. Basil and Nirupam, using the more efficient flat-footed technique, found that they had to slow their pace drastically-then begin to belay their fatigued rope-mates and even cut steps over the worst stretches of live ice.
The sun climbed and the gully became a heat trap. They all wore sun goggles but the light was blinding. Chunks of brittle ice began to zoom down the chute. They were not large and the climbers had hard hats, but the psychological effect was harrowing.
Above the halfway point the slope eased and the two amateurs regained their spirits. Lunch was a scratch affair taken hurriedly on a small rock cleaver that split the snowslope. Chazz"s sc.r.a.ped face was aggravated by the strong sunlight and the flesh around his eyes was swollen and raw. But it had become so warm that the thought of even a lightweight silk mask-bandage was intolerable, so he simply smeared on more antibiotic goo.
They had been climbing again for less than half an hour when Basil"s telepathic voice signalled a halt just above a tiny ledge.
He said: Niru oldman don"t much like looks of this pitch.
Nirupam said: Getting late snow deep enough to be slabby.
Basil said: It could go.
Nirupam said: Alternative traverse couloir go up rock southside. h.e.l.l scramble take us twice long we could still make the Gutter work not even 1400 hours yet.
Basil said: Risky.
Nirupam said: You boss. But Chazz running on ballpower small disaster you shrugged off back at creva.s.se got to him maybe delayed shock on top sore face & nearly blind.
Basil said: Chazz oldman we"re going to move you to Number 3 on rope. It be safer for all incase I come cropper leading.
Chazz said: Sorry to be the crock of the flock guys.
Derek said: Spare us bouillabaisse goodbuddy. Just switch with me. Snap on safety lines? Okay. Easy! You stomp me with tackety boots they hear my screech in basecamp!
Basil said: Please be very quiet all of you ... even if stepped on. The consequences of sudden noise this point could be lamentable.
Chazz said: He means avalanche could be set off by your bigmouth Derek.
Derek said: Or your clumsy feet.
Basil was looking down on the pair, who had unsnapped their harnesses from the main rope. Both were manoeuvring carefully on the tiny ledge of compacted snow, Chazz linked to Derek by a light safety line and Derek ready to refasten them to the rope as soon as the position switch had been accomplished.
Nirupam, the low man, was keeping a sharp eye on the two amateurs, offering advice and encouragement. And then there was a distant crackling sound. Nirupam caught sight of a small wisp of white blurring the dazzle of the upper icefield. A jagged blue line spread across the high face of the chute and opened like a fanged mouth before disappearing behind a foaming cloud of snow.
"She"s coming down!" Nirupam yelled. "Hold! Hold!"
His cries were smothered in a musical rumble, as if someone had trod upon the pedals of a great organ. A cascade of broken thin crust came jangling and hissing ahead of the snowslide. The climbers cringed, hugging the slope and drawing their heads down between their shoulders. Basil whipped his tube-pointed hammer from its holster and sank the second tool into the ice with his left hand, clinging to axe and hammer with all his strength as the avalanche rolled over them.
He said: Hold on boys hold!
Chazz"s mind spoke first, incredulous, refusing to admit that he was cartwheeling through opaque white air instead of clinging to a slope by the tips of his toes and an insecurely anch.o.r.ed axe. Derek was torn screaming from his place by a forty-kilo slab of snow that slammed into him like a skating chunk of sidewalk. He flailed out with his axe in a futile attempt at selfarrest and cut the rope linking Nirupam to Basil. The Indian mountaineer, struck by Derek"s body, tumbled helplessly as the strap of his dropped ice-axe banged about his ankles. The tool was still tethered to his harness, but he could not haul it up because his neck was broken and the motor nerves of his arms refused to function.
The rushing snow pa.s.sed Basil by. He dared to lift his head and look down, in time to see the avalanche reach the base of the couloir and make glittering puffb.a.l.l.s as it buried the bergschrund. Chazz spoke a last telepathic curse and Derek simply said: Goodbye. Nirupam was serenely reciting a Buddhist prayer as he expired from a severed spinal cord. Basil called the names of all three men telepathically and out loud, and then he hung there facing the ice and let tears course down his weathered cheeks. It was sunny and very quiet.
After a while he summoned the long-range faculty of his farspeech and bespoke Bleyn the Champion in Camp Bettaforca. No, he said, he would not turn back. Since he still carried the winch and cable, he would complete the climb up the now avalanche-free slope and see to the installation of the apparatus, so that Camp 2 might be set up easily by the next support team. It would be a simple matter for him to return to Camp 1 by nightfall by winching down and then following the marked route across Tine Glacier.
Reluctantly, Bleyn agreed to this. And for some time he watched the dogged human creep upward, and heard with his mind"s ear the tag that spun endlessly through Basil"s mind, to be broadcast inadvertently into the aether: I, demens, et saevas curre per Alpes, ut pueris placeas et declamatio fias.
The Tanu knew that Basil was quoting from a human poet again, as he had done when delivering his orientation speech at the start of the climb. The verse from Kipling had appealed to Bleyn"s native bravura; but this one, oddly enough, seemed to come from Basil"s own unconscious: Go, madman, and hurry over the cruel Alps, that you may delight small boys and inspire f.e.c.kless adulation.
Humans, thought Bleyn the Champion, were a paradoxical lot.
CHAPTER.
NINE Aiken was alone on his balcony in the Castle of Gla.s.s, watching Kyllikki with his fa.r.s.ense. Although it was night in Goriah the sun had just set in the region of the Atlantic just north of the Azores where the great schooner ploughed along in a fair breeze. Her solar-collector sails gleamed like bronze in the warm light. She sailed on a flaming sea with the evening star over her shoulder and deep night her destination.
Aiken called: Elizabeth.
Yes. How are you dear?
Cultivating lionheartedness. I"ve been watching Kyllikki and drinking Laphroaig and stuffing myself with Scotch eggs. There are three portable sigmas all charged and ready to hang around my royal neck when I decide to go to sleep and I can"t help thinking how a beam from an X-zapper could slice through those shields like a sgian dhu through a G.o.ddam clootie dumpling ... I don"t suppose you know where Marc is?