Ringclimber

Chapter 9 - The Summit

The bubble is quiet and Sharon awakens alone. The walls are cold with frost and thin runnels of moisture. Where is everyone, she wonders? She squirms in the sleeping sack, loath to leave the warmth for the cold.

The softlock slips aside and the entering suit frosts with a hiss. So there they are, she thinks. Working outside getting ready to leave. So considerate, letting me sleep in.

Hands reach up and detach the helmet. And a smiling face shakes his ponytail free. "Sleepyhead." he quips.

She feels a sudden load lifted from her shoulders, like the moment when a vehicle goes into free fall and all of the bonds of earth have been slipped. "But Rael," she asks, slowly. "Everything's OK... you're all right."

"Of course," he smiles, startled, looking up as he unlatches the suit and floats free. He kicks off lightly and drifts over to her. His face is very close. His eyes are very bright. She feels lost in them as she kisses him.

But when she really awakens into the Martian pre-dawn, she only feels the parting more.

Anne awakens into darkness and silence, the watch at her bedside speaking softly into her ear. She reaches up and turns it off, but she lies there, thinking, time to start.

Finally, she struggles out of sleep, and she sits, staring into the darkness and the faint edge of light at the horizon, wrapped in her bag, cold until her door signal sounds. She runs a hand through her hair and sighs. "I'm coming," she yells. She turns up her light until it casts dim, frightful shadows from her gear across the curved walls.

It is Sharon who pokes her visored head through the softlock, asking "Getting ready?"

"Soon," Anne promises. Sharon nods and departs. Anne stretches.

Suit on the bedside, pack by the lock. She gathers what she won't need and puts it on the other side of the lock. Then she pulls the pack on and pushes through.

The horizon is edged with crimson beyond the ridge. They stand in the dimness, and their faces are hidden behind the faint reflection of the dawn. They clasp hands; then Anne breaks down and hugs Pat. Sharon feels a pulse in her throat; she says farewell. Erin smiles. Then they turn and head for the ridge.

The plan is a minimum of twelve kilometers a day -- not impossible, but in this terrain, extremely difficult. They would take the first wall; then two more small walls and they would begin the final slopes leading to the caldera. They would have to negotiate a narrow rim along the edge of the Spider; past that smouldering minor caldera, more than two kilometers deep below them. The complexity of its rim is unknown. Beyond that, there are only the rugged cliffs of the main caldera rise.

It is not as difficult as the route they had originally planned, but it is challenging enough. It is a simpler route because of the simplicity of the team, and the logistics -- basically, what they can carry will be their supply line. Once they are committed, the only way out is to summit.

At the base of the ridge, near the buried Camp 2, they pause to select a route up the face. They choose a thin buttress that flanks the avalanche path, hoping that any falls will be confined to the chute between. Sharon hands the sharp end of the rope to Anne. "You lead this one," she says.

Anne nods and leans back to judge the face. Then she begins. As usual, she plants protection as she reaches each important crevice, leaving them behind for Sharon to clean. Step by cautious step she clings to the kilometer arete, the wasteland receding slowly below. Already the sun has begun its march across the plain toward them, and soon the frost will release its grip on smaller rocks that will fall slowly, clicking on the tops of their hoods.

When she stops to belay Sharon, she can feel the other woman's impatience vibrating through the rope. Then Sharon appears, and her face is beaded with sweat, hair matted to her cheek. She is breathing hard as she levers herself up beside Anne, dropping the rack in a heap beside her before she starts to sort the gear without a word. Anne forces herself to rig a belay for the next pitch as Sharon leads through.

It requires most of the day to cover the arete. The climbing is demanding, consistent complex laybacks and mantles on sharp but friable edges of tuff. Anne puts herself across the top of the wall just as the sun is grazing the horizon. Then she braces herself as Sharon scrambles up the last sloping portion of the cliff to the knife point, where they share an awkward moment of repositioning before Sharon can clip in behind Anne and rest.

They are roughly ten kilometers above the plain, and seven below the summit. The rusty slope ahead above, a slab, grades into the dimness of the aerosol choked distance, broken with crags, seeming to reach into infinity. The sky thickens below them into a hazy dome, detailed with irregular tendrils that rise with imperceptible motion to the sky. The two climbers sit together, too entranced to move or to speak, even as night races toward them across the world. Finally, Sharon stirs. Without a word, she traverses back to the widening of the ridge, unpacks the bubble and begins inflating it; Anne joins her a moment later.

As they strip their suits, they can smell each other -- it has been over two weeks since anyone on the team has bathed, and they ignore it. Sharon drapes herself across her bedpad, and she lies there immobile, blue eyes glinting in the lamplight.

"Thirsty?" Anne asks.

Sharon nods, her eyes closing with the effort as she thrusts herself up to sit and accept the bulb from Anne. She gasps as she feels the cool water in her throat. "Best thing I've tasted in a long time," she says, finally. "Thanks."

"Drink more," Anne encourages. She remembers once being too tired to drink, in Noctis; the thin, dry air of the tents sucks the water out of the body, and the weakened mind sometimes fails to notice. Dehydration came close to killing her. She realizes that the effort they will be making contains more peril than the gravity and the mountain.

Sharon drinks again. She passes the bulb back to Anne. "Your turn." She tugs her hair back and knots it.

They cook a rudimentary supper in near silence. Sharon cuts the light and prepares for sleep. She lies looking at the faint dome of the bubble, seeing only images of rock and crack, feeling her hands move, even though they lie still at her side. There is no room in her mind for Rael, or Erin; only the rock is real as she becomes one with the silence of Mars.

The narrow ridge falls away to rugged depths on either side. The sky darkens as it thins, and the wave clouds glow faintly only a few hundred meters above them. They walk the ridge with caution, roped ten meters apart.

It is sudden when it comes -- the rock shivers like gelatin. They are simul-climbing, rope loosely linked between them. Sharon drops to straddle the ridge; Anne tries, but it is too late. The rock buckles underneath her, draining away. She grasps vainly at the cascading fragments, but she can feel it: Mars is opening beneath her - she is starting to fall.

Then she swings, pendulous on the rope, sliding and grinding against the still-vibrating rock. Fragments rain across her, battering her shoulders.

"Hold on, Anne. I've got you," Sharon calls.

The ground is a thousand meters or more below where Anne hangs from the sharply sloping rock. The avalanche tapers off and the rumbling of the quake fades away. Anne clings to the surface, shifting and probing until she can support her own weight.

"I'm on the rock," she calls, voice tremulous.

"Right, hold on."

Sharon looks around. She spots a boulder embedded solidly in the ridge. "Okay," she says. "I'm going to need some slack until I can get some leverage."

"I'll try."

Anne carefully releases one hand. A special effort raises it above her head, and she jams two fingers into a thin crack. Then she brings up her foot and finds a sloping hold. For a moment, she pauses, trembling; then she moves the next hand, the next foot. Again. Fragments break loose under her hands and feet, leaving her scrambling, terrified at the shattered surface. She has moved almost half a meter when some loosened fragments fall from above, and she has to stop, almost unable to breathe in her fear that the holds will . "You've got half a meter. Is it enough?"

"Maybe. Are you secure?"

"Yes."

"Can you get some protection in?"

"I -- I'm afraid to let go. I can't see very well. Everything's in pieces. The holds keep falling off."

"Okay, okay. Don't worry about it, I've got a good hold. I'll get something in." Is Anne blinded? Or is a concussion possible? She doesn't seem about to panic, but it may be that her blindness is a symptom of having passed the point of hysteria, into the strange, non-rational tranquillity beyond.

Sharon creeps slowly toward the boulder. She needs another half a meter. She hesitates a moment, trying to figure out a way to do it without having to ask Anne to move, but there is no way.

"I have to have another half a meter, Anne. Can you do it?"

"I'll try. Hold on."

Again Anne moves. It seems to help, releasing the strain of taut muscles. It seems to take forever in her isolated personal time. "All right, is that enough?"

Sharon crawls toward the boulder. "I think it is," she cries with relief. "Now just hold on and let me get something in." She clings to the ridge with her legs, frantically searching through her rack for something that will fit into any opening in or under the rock... A cam slips into a thin placement, and she hastily knots the rope into the carabiner.

She sinks back against the rock, weak with relief. As suddenly, she drags herself back to the situation. "All right, I've got a piece in for you. Let me get one or two more, and then I hope you're ready to walk right up that face."

Anne would have laughed, but her shoulders and thighs are aching from the strain. "I'm ready." She inhales deeply, once, twice. "I can do it."

Sharon inserts a nut and another cam, and swiftly backs up her original knot. She pushes the rope into her belay device and grins. "Go for it. You're on."

It is less than a minute before Anne appears over the edge, pulling her way up the rope, gasping as she mantles onto the ledge. Sharon calls: "Off?"

"Oh, yes..." Anne whispers. She crumples to the ground. Sharon leans over her with concern, and Anne looks at her vacantly for a moment, then her eyes clear. "Sorry about the aid..." she whispers.

In bivouac that night, Anne once again has to remind Sharon to eat and drink. The look she sees in Sharon's eyes is strange, as if the slope is filling her every moment's vision with obsession; it frightens Anne, who withdraws beyond the circle of lamplight. Sharon sits hunched and silent above the lamp, eyes glinting harshly, immobile.

But Sharon is wondering if she is going to make it. In one of those inexplicable reversals of energy that can happen on any climb, she, who had been so strong at the beginning, is now checking her resources and finding them wanting. There are two more days to go, and tomorrow they will pass the Spider. She is exhausted, every morning, and it is becoming more and more of an effort to keep moving. She wonders at Anne's strength. It surprised her - shyness concealing tenacity. She wishes for more strength, for conversation, but her thoughts kept whirling, and there is nothing in them to be said.

The next morning, the sky is amber with dust, and the surface further than five meters from the tent is invisible.

"I hope this isn't the global," Anne whispers.

Sharon kneels beside her, looking out. "No, it can't be. We still have at least a few days."

She dials up the weather. The phenomenon seems local to Arsia, and there is a forecast that it will dissipate in hours. "Maybe," she says. Still, there is no certainty in the Martian weather. She turns her back on the outside and leans against the wall. She is surprised to find herself feeling so reticent with Anne, but they are trapped together, and there must be something to talk about other than the day-to-day work of the climb...

"Maybe it's better this way. We've been pushing so hard," Anne says.

Sharon sighs. "I know." She shakes her head sadly. "I'm just too tight. Fighting myself."

"I know how you feel," Anne replies. "The closer I get to finishing, the more careful I'm being; the more tired I am. I'm almost as afraid to finish as to fail."

Sharon laughs. She leans back and turns her head to look at Anne.

"You're enjoying this?" Sharon asks, searching Anne's quiet face. The thoughts she has are... different from what she had expected.

There is something unusually distinct about Anne's eyes as she responds, smiling almost as if there are hidden tears. "Oh, it's like I imagined; and better. Sharon, I always wanted to come here. Did you know I was originally from Earth? Yes, of course, I did write that, didn't I?" She looks back to the roiling dust beyond the dome. "I don't know how to thank you for giving me this chance."

"What, a chance to sit in a tent in the middle of a dust storm? Don't thank me - " Sharon cuts herself off. She realizes that she is as embarrassed as she always is by compliments and thanks. "Listen, if we have a chance to make it, it's going to be us, you know."

Anne looks surprised, and hurt. "Oh, you don't think I meant - "

"No, no - that's not what I meant, Anne. I meant... oh damn it, I picked you because I thought you were the best choice. I still think that. But you don't need me to give you a chance, or you wouldn't be here, would you?"

Anne smiles, and touches Sharon's hand. "That's a compliment from you, isn't it? Listen, I'd like to be up here with you even if we were going back down. Just trying on this climb is something important. To me."

Sharon grins ruefully. "I've never been very good at compliments, I'm afraid."

Anne draws her legs up and leans back against the wall. "So you're like that, and I'm shy. I suppose neither of us have very good reasons for it, do we?"

"I hadn't thought of it that way."

"Well, we're both successful."

"Mmm."

Anne looks up at the dome. "You know, I wanted to climb for a long time. My uncle started taking me out on the off-day to a butte in Marineris, when I was still in med school, because I kept pestering him once I found out he climbed. I still like the butte climbs, and the valley walls. But anybody who wants to expedition climb on Mars eventually turns to the volcanos. Mostly, it's like Vinson -- not so hard to climb as it is to endure."

"You've done Vinson?"

"Once, quite a while ago. Seven years maybe."

"You've been climbing for what, fifteen?"

"Yeah."

"That must have been around the time of the McLaren climb. Is that right?"

Anne looks at her, shocked. "Not around. That was the climb."

Sharon is even more surprised. "You're kidding."

"No. Why?"

"Did you know, a young climber, black hair -- kind of Latin, kind of Oriental, long hair, maybe a moustache then? Rael Perez-Chartenay? On the climb?"

"Of course I knew him. Everybody liked him. He was good, even then. Soloed the final pitch on the first attempt, right? I imagine he must have become an excellent climber by now, but its hard to keep up."

Sharon looks at the rocky floor. "Oh, he did."

"You know him?"

"We went to Saturn together."

"Oh, tell me about it. What's it like there?" She couldn't hear the strange dirge behind Sharon's attentive eyes.

"A perpetual avalanche."

"Oh."

"Rael died there."

Anne hears a door slam in her mind. Of course it had to be him. Why hadn't she connected before; she should have been reading more deeply ...Obviously she had brought up something painful, and in a stupid, roundabout way she hadn't been able to control. Now what?

"I'm sorry," she replies. "He was a good companion."

Sharon rubs the line of her jaw, and there is, amazingly, a trace of tears at the corner of her eyes, but a faint smile at the corner of her lips. "Yes, he was." She looks around. "I don't imagine I'll go back again."

Anne bites her lip and says nothing.

"You wonder why?" Sharon asks.

"Not if you don't want to say."

Sharon frowns and leans her cheek against the cool plastic. "I deal with it better, now. I held onto the pain at first, because I didn't want to let him go, and the pain was all I had left of him. I thought I wouldn't ever be climbing again. But here I am. I guess it's stronger than that."

"You love him," Anne says; it is a statement, not a question.

Sharon shakes her head. "You can't hold on past death. I've lost friends, a lover. In space, in mountains. People I cared about. Gone. Sometimes I used to think I'd never get close to anyone again. How could I? But I can't keep that up. I can't hide from everything."

Anne is startled. "I see death every day. It's my job, and I can't escape it; But I can't spend my life afraid of it."

"The Rings can't be done, Anne. You can't go a hundred thousand kilometers through that thing in nothing but a suit. Nobody can. Not now. Maybe not ever."

The dust sinks along the mountainside, cresting below the low midafternoon sun. Sharon estimates they have a few hours before nightfall. They are eager and rested.

They set out along the jagged ridge toward the Spider, hoping to make the rim before night. Sharon leads, and for the first time in a long while, feels peace, not the automation of the climb, but a peace that brings arms, legs, mind, and emotion into proximity. It is as if Anne's interest had drained a festering wound, and the cool quietude that follows is doubly welcome for the unperceived heat that had gone before. In this one morning, she had not only exposed to her own sight the healing she had performed, but she had learned about her companion's caring and tact; she feels she has made the beginnings of a real friendship.

And maybe the dead are really at rest. For the moment.

The Spider falls away below their feet, two kilometers down to a surface glowing through an intricate pattern of cracks, here and there boiling in pools. Even this high, the hot wind of the molten Martian soil beats against their hoods, making the far side of the caldera seem to shiver.

"Quite a sight, isn't it?" Sharon says.

"Amazing."

"I've never made it this far before. We're almost there."

"Another day, and that's it."

Sharon turns to Anne and grabs her shoulders. "I'm going to eat like a maniac tonight, Anne. We're going to need it. One more day. That's it."

Anne laughs, and they hug.

The surface steepens again on the last march to the caldera, reaching a precarious eighty-five degrees in some places. They proceed up in parallel, soloing, ignoring protection, even as the grade rises to a stiff Martian 5.10. On this scraggly surface, brittle under the near vacuum, gravity diminishing with the inverse square, skill is sufficient, but smearing and friction are difficult to maintain. When they rope, they switch the lead every pitch, and the rope becomes like a cable of nerve, communicating without words every move before it is made. Sharon feels like she wants to laugh constantly.

The sky is completely black, crinkled with stars, and the slope falls away behind them, to be taken up by the vast curve of the horizon and the atmosphere. They rest, looking back, and for Anne, the sight of this altitude, so laboriously won, is like a cool breeze. There isn't much to say.

It is four hours later and they reach the rim of the main caldera; behind is the world they left; ahead, the fault scarps drop away, revealing the result of the shattering fall of the caldera roof, sloping down to the vast lava plain and the gentle bulges of huge shields on the caldera floor, an afterthought against the vastness of Arsia. The climbers stand silent, exhausted and overwhelmed. When the triumph reaches them, they smile.

Sharon turns to Anne. Blue eyes meet brown, and their hands clasp in the silent, understated sharing of success. Then the reserve breaks away so that they hug and dance, their voices ringing in their headphones. Agony slips like a shredded curtain into an unnoticed heap.

When the shuttle has settled with a cloud of dust onto the outthrust shelf of rock, Sharon leaps to its outer door. She steps through and is grabbed and pummeled by jubilant people. She is released to laugh silently inside her hood.

Content, Layout, and Images Copyright © 1999 by Mark Cashman except where indicated (NASA photos)