Part 71 (1/2)

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 s.h.i.+ning 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.