Basil said: We angling down now. Steep steep pitch but near end perhaps 200 metres farther to safe shelf.
Do you all heart Not far now!
A few minds responded with formless transmissions.
The wind screamed.
Basil cut steps.
The line of five small figures and two larger ones now slanted downhill on the shining white slope above the Col. The air was brilliantly clear. No cloud marred the azure sky. High above them, Monte Rosa formed a monolith of heart-wrenching purity.
Almost all of her western face had been freshly plastered with snow by the late storm and she stood pristine.
A virgin mountain! Basil thought. The virgin queen of mountains, perhaps the highest Earth has ever borne. You will be mine. You will.
He cut steps.
Suddenly they were again in a region of swirling light snow, approaching a rock wall topped by a curling snow cornice. The wind scream diminished to a howl, to a moan, to a sob. Basil took a final step off the perilous forty-five degree slope onto crunchy level ice, thinly snow-clad. The cornice overhung him and looked as solid as white plascrete. Grey rocks coated with transparent ice jutted from its base. By moving a couple of metres farther on, Basil was able to see around the shoulder of the outcropping down the North Face of the mountain.
The Inner Helvetides, the Pliocene Alps, fell away in serrated waves to the horizon. From here, they would do down.
He said: Belay on! Come across! We"ve made it chaps!
There were feebly jubilant mind-shouts from the humans.
Ookpik appeared out of the sparkling surface blizzard, and then Bengt, grinning broadly. n.a.z.ir moved with agonized care to safety, breathing a prayer of thanks to Allah. Then there was Betsy, whacking st.u.r.dily at the final step with his axe to improve the crumbling foothold.
Basil called: Bleyn?
I am here.
Basil said. Come along. Can"t be ten metres.
Bleyn said: I regret most deeply.
Through their torcs the humans saw an image: A great body half-kneeling on a slanted, glaring whiteness. Cramponed feet wedged insecurely into two small holes. Arms stretched overhead gripping the shafts of implanted ice-axe and sharpnose hammer. From the belt of the harness a taut rope. At its end, five metres below, another form supine on the ice-slick, sliding lower centimetre by centimetre as the sustaining hands of the man above slipped from the shafts of his tools.
Basil cried: Mindstogetherall! COME BLEYN. HOLD.
They all wished it, compelled it: COME BLEYN. HOLD.
Bleyn"s flexed knees stiffened against gravity, against the pull of Aronn"s dead weight. His nerveless hands gripped the tool shafts. He forced himself up.
COME BLEYN. HOLD. HOLD.
Slowly, one arm bent, wrenching the poorly anch.o.r.ed axe free.
c.h.i.n.k!
Bleyn swung, reembedding the pick. He held.
Basil said: Wraprock Ookpik belayme strong.
HOLD BLEYN I COME.
The others said: HOLD BLEYN HOLD.
Ookpik said: Belayrockfast. Gogogo.
Basil said: Climbing climbing. HOLD BLEYN.
Bleyn said: I regret most deeply. I cannot hold.
Ookpik said: Gotem Basil gotem? Fast? HOLDHOLDHOLD Bleyn fell.
Basil screamed: Holdholdhold!
He fell.
The three bodies hurtled down the ice, gathering momentum, then arrested with a crashing jar as they came to the end of Basil"s firmly clipped rope. The don lifted his bruised head and grinned up at Ookpik. "They both seem to be unconscious," he called, "but I"ve got them quite securely."
"And I"ve got your rope fast to the winch cable," said Mr.
Betsy in triumph. "Ready to haul whenever you are, darling."
Basil said: Oh G.o.d now you f.u.c.king idiot!
"Tsk tsk," Betsy chided, switching the mechanism on.
After they had rested and recovered a little, they began the descent. It was cautious at first, with the two Tanu lashed to sledges. But then they found a broad avalanche runnel that had already dumped, and Basil said: "All aboard for the short cut!"
He showed the others what to do, each man according to his expertise, and sent them skidding and otter-sliding and tobogganing down more than a thousand metres of slope, whooping and screeching. And when they were safe he came down himself in a rooster-tailing glissade, schussbooming on the soles of his boots and broadcasting a great mind-roar of joy into the aether that reached not only Elizabeth and their colleagues on the other side of the mountain, but even the King in faraway Goriah.
And Aiken said: Well done.
After a long interval, Basil said (this time via Elizabeth"s relay): Thank you sir.
Aiken said: I understand that Bleyn and Aronn had to be carried down.
Basil said: They are recovering inside one of the reactivated aircraft High King. Its environmental system is providing sealevel oxygen concentration. They should be fully restored within a day or two.
Aiken said: Good good. So you lit up a flyer without much trouble?
Basil said: Several are easily accessible. Their powerplants must be recharged with distilled water of course and there will be labour involved in freeing some of them from the snowdrifts.
No serious problems are foreseen.
Aiken said: Kaleidoscopic! It"s all right then ...