CLOUD: You"ve been watching me as I come here?
MARC: Watching, not listening. Believe me.
CLOUD: ... What do you want?
MARC: Your help. With Hagen.
CLOUD: It"s too late.
MARC: I deserve to be rejected by both of you. I was negligent, distracted by my work. Unfeeling toward you. Impatient with his weakness. Harsh. The incident with the tarpon was unforgivable. But I want to ask his forgiveness. He can"t help being what he is, no more than I can. But he must understand that I was not being capriciously cruel. It was misguided therapy.
CLOUD: It was a calculated act of violence. You know he"s always been afraid of you. You thought to break him, and instead he gained strength for escape ...
MARC: He mustn"t, Cloud. I must have a chance to explain to him-to both of you-why you mustn"t go.
CLOUD: We won"t let the Milieu authorities come back through the gateMARC: I know. That was never a serious worry. There"s a far more important reason why you mustn"t return to the Milieu.
CLOUD: What is it, Papa?
MARC: Let me meet with both of you, in person. I"ll explain everything.
CLOUD: I"m willing to trust you, but I"m afraid Hagen never will.
Tell me what you want to say to him. I"ll transmit your message.
MARC: It won"t work that way. I have to talk to you face to faceCLOUD: To coerce us? Oh, Papa.
MARC: My dear, what I have to ask of you can never be gained through coercion. That lasts only as long as the coercer"s grip holds. I need your free cooperation, your commitmentCLOUD: Papa, it"s too late! Years too late! We"ve made our choice. To be free.
MARC: But that"s just it. You wouldn"t be free in the Milieu. Not truly, any more than I was. You are my children, with my heritage. There are things you don"t understand ... that I had not intended to tell you until the star-search succeeded.
For your own peace of mind. But now you"ve forced my hand.
CLOUD: Papa, for G.o.d"s sake!
What?
MARC: I must tell you both. Face to face. Everything I"ve done was for your good. You must believe it.
CLOUD: I-all I can do is tell Hagen what you"ve told me. But he"s afraid, Papa. And now ... so am I.
MARC: You need not be. Not with me. If you only have courage, your future can be wonderful. I"ll tell you everything if you"ll only meet with me.
CLOUD: I"ll tell Hagen what you said. We"ll talk about it.
MARC: Thank you, Cloud. I love you.
CLOUD: I love you, too, Papa, butMARC: Please.
MARC: Cloud?
CHAPTER EIGHT.
As he vanished into the depths of the great creva.s.se, Basil"s thought maintained its usual laconic tone: Falling. Everyone self-arrest.
Chazz, who was Number 2 on the rope, shouted an obscenity.
He fell on his face, ice-axe dangling impotently at the end of its keeper-strap, and was dragged through harsh, granular snow with arms and legs floundering. Derek, the Number 3, drove his axe into hard white ice simultaneously with Nirupam, the tail-man, just as Chazz reached the crack"s edge. The rope went taut with a m.u.f.fled twung!
Nirupam said: How you Baz?
Basil said: Dangling upside down like a snared hare. A moment while I shed my pack ... ah. Over we go. Good heavens I just missed pranging into a rather bad shelf. Good show on the arrest even if a bit tardy. Is Chazz in the hole too?
Chazz said: Right on the mothering lip.
Nirupam said: Please don"t move anyone. Derek are you belayed good and fast?
Derek said: I wouldn"t bet on it.
An echoing yelp came from Chazz. and he screamed aloud: "The d.a.m.n rope"s cutting into the creva.s.se edge like a knife into cheese! I"m going over-"
Basil said: I shall cut my rope to ease the strain.
"Don"t do it, Baz, don"t!" the man above cried. The image of Basil"s body tumbling into a bottomless blue crystal chasm flooded his mind and was broadcast by his grey torc to the others.
Basil said: Easy my boy. I told you I was just above a shelf.
There. I"m down.
Nirupam said: Terrific. Everybody just hang cool or whatever while I drop anchor. Soon as I unpack a bit of gear we"ll get the Death-Defying Baz & Chazz Rescue Act rolling.
Deep in his roofed canyon of blue ice, Basil moved cautiously along the shelf a few metres so he was no longer directly beneath the severed climbing rope, to which his pack remained clipped by a lighter line. Showers of soft snow dribbled constantly from overhead as Chazz was slowly winched back to safety. Then abruptly, a chunk of snow as large as an ATV module cracked from the lip and crashed onto the shelf, disintegrating into a sugary cloud.
Basil said: Not to worry. I believe I"ll try walking out.
The others exclaimed: What?
Basil said: The shelf rises and the creva.s.se is closing as I move northward. h.e.l.lo. The ice is warping up here and the snow cover getting very thin. I believe-can you see me?
He had poked his arm up through the snow crust and waggled it. A moment later his entire upper body was at the surface. He laughed to see the expressions on the others as he traced a curved path back to the winch-belay.
"Will you look at the man?" Derek exclaimed. "Cool as the proverbial gherkin. My G.o.d-when I saw you drop out of sight and Chazz go sliding after, I thought you were both on the way to join poor Phillipe in Valhalla!"
Basil"s pack came slithering over the snow, drawn in by the solar-powered donkey engine. The cla.s.sics professor and the three technicians hunkered to enjoy a fast cup of tea and a bar of chocolate algiprote.
"Creva.s.ses needn"t be lethal," Basil said, "as long as one isn"t injured in the fall-or, in the case of Phillipe, drowned in melt.w.a.ter. He was unlucky enough to fall into a moulin, a kind of drainpipe creva.s.se in the rotten ice of the glacier snout. With the tortuous nature of the fissure and the fast-moving water, there was no helping him-not even with Lord Bleyn"s psychokinesis."