Part 4 (1/2)

Near noon, they came to a canyon that broke downward in a ragged jumble of broken boulders and shale slides Its bottom was a sharp vee, with hardly any floor at all. Seven hundred feet down and seven hundred feet up the other side-the descent would be easy, but the ascent difficult. The opposite wall of the chasm bowed outward toward the top until it formed an overhang which climbers would have to broach by climbing upside down for the distance of fifty feet, then swing over the edge onto the solid ground beyond.

Commander Richter called a lunch break, which was accepted with enthusiasm. The Banibaleer mess officer, a man named Daborot, broke out the food cases and used them as a table onto which the cured slabs of beef, the rounds of cheese, and stale rolls of bread were placed. Coffee was brewed in eight separate pots, and soon a line had formed to devour the simple but nouris.h.i.+ng meal.

Richter brought his mess tin to the place where the Shaker and his step-sons sat and ate with them. 'We'll not all be going down and then up,' the officer said. 'That overhang is a tough one even for mountaineers, and you three would never make it.'

'My prayers have been answered then,' Mace said. It was not said with any particular humorous note to it 'What magic do you intend to use to get us from here to there, then?' Gregor asked, his mouth full of bread and cheese so that his words were somewhat garbled.

'There you have the educated Shaker-to-be,' Mace said with scorn. 'Note his fine diction and his superb manners. But yes, Commander, just how will we get from here to there?'

'Ill lead a party down, up the other side. I've clambered round greater overhangs than that. We will leave a length of rope here to be tied down, and carry an unreeling coil with us as we cross. Once on the other side, we can attach it. It is but three hundred feet across by hand, which-'

'You can't expect the Shaker, a man his age, to crawl three hundred feet on the slender strand of that rope, supported by just his hands!' Gregor had sprayed some amount of crumbs over his lap in his e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.

'I hardly said that,' Commander Richter said. 'I doubt even I would wish to try it. It is not nearly the same as mountaineering, but engages an entire other set of muscles.'

'What then?' Mace asked, interested.

The first man to come across will be the one named Zito Tanisha. He is from the Coedone Gypsy tribes and is inclined to acrobatics of various lands. Indeed, the entire trick we will use was devised by Zito. He will cross hand over hand, for he is used to that. He will tie a second length of rope to the cut end of the first before he leaves, paying that one out as he crosses. When he reaches us, the second rope will be made fast to our end of the first. The ropes are thin, but strong, and the knots will be tight but small. On both sides of the gorge, after the knots have been tied, wax will be melted over them to seal them tighter and to guard against slippage. At that point, we will have a great loop of rope stretched across the canyon. Sergeant Crowler will break loose the anchor piton on this side and slip this end of the loop into a pulley system which men are now putting together. The pulley is built on a small platform, upon which four men will stand as anchor. On the other side of the gorge, we will then do the same with a second, matching pulley that we will take across with us. After that, a man need only grasp the lowest rope with both hands and be whisked across by our team of drawers and the team of pullers over here who will work on the upper rope while we pull on the lower. Perhaps three minutes per man to cross. A great time saver and far less chance of disaster.'

'Quite ingenius!' Mace said in obvious admiration.

'This Zito,' the Shaker said. 'He can be trusted?'

'We've used the same device three times before,' Commander Richter said.

That is not what I asked.'

If I can't trust Zito,' Richter said, shrugging wearily, 'I can trust no one. He has given me his bloodied kerchief once, and you know what that means among the Coedones.'

'Eternal fidelity,' the Shaker said. 'And they have never been known to break such a vow. Well, it is nice to know there is one of your men who is not suspect.'

Richter finished eating and went off to take care of the last of the arrangements. Ten minutes later, he and a party of seven enlisted men had started down this side of the canyon.

'One of us simply must remain with our baggage,' Gregor said firmly. 'And they say the luggage must go last, after the men. So I'll just stand here until it's across. They can send me over after it. Then the four men weighting down the pulley platform, and the two on the drawing team can pack up and make the climb down and up like Richter did.'

'Why don't I stay?' Mace asked.

The Shaker will be over there, and that is where the muscle must be, you lummox. I am small game compared to the Shaker. Now, no more arguments.'

'I guess you're right,' Mace said.

'You know I am.'

He gripped the smaller boy's shoulder, looked at Gregor with what pa.s.sed for love between them. 'Be cautious. It is a long way down to the bottom of the canyon and no cus.h.i.+ons when you get there.'

'That I see,' Gregor said. 'I will be quite careful indeed.'

Gripping the lower rope with both big, thick-fingered hands, Mace looked down at the shattered floor of the canyon seven hundred feet below. He had been told not to look down, but the temptation was too great. He was glad, now, that he had ignored that order, for the whirling, slowly turning spires of rock below were truly lovely from such an improbable viewpoint. His blood, too, sang with a rare excitement.

Excitement.

Not fear.

For Mace, there truly was no such thing as terror. He had never experienced anything which had brought him to the frazzled ends of his nerves. And that, despite the fact that being the a.s.sistant of a Shaker provided a goodly number of hair-raising experiences. And as he was never never terrified, he was terrified, he was seldom seldom even given to fear. It was as if he had been born without that portion of his soul, as if all the fear he had never felt was transformed into extra inches of height, extra pounds of muscle. even given to fear. It was as if he had been born without that portion of his soul, as if all the fear he had never felt was transformed into extra inches of height, extra pounds of muscle.

Once, Shaker Sandow had explained to Mace just why he was so fearless. 'Mace,' the Shaker bad said, 'you are a very small magician. You have within you just the barest stirrings of a Shaker's power. That glimmer of power makes you faster on your feet than other men, quicker to react, more clever to understand, more cunning to perceive that which others wish not perceived. But there the power ends. It will never be great, nor even moderate within you. You will never do readings, never tell the future, never read minds. Such is your lot, and there is a danger in it. The minor magician, such as yourself, feels superior to other men and knows he can best them no matter what the odds-and he is only honest. But the minor magician never learns to fear, and that may one day trip him up. The major magician, in his wisdom, understands the value of fear. The major magician sees more deeply into life and realizes that fear is a most expedient emotion at the proper times. So you must always make an effort to know terror, to be afraid when the time requires fear. It is something you must culture, since it does not come naturally to you.'

But Mace never had learned it. And culturing it was far too much bother.

Watching the scenery, he made his way happily across the gorge as men toiled on either side to draw him to safety.

Well, Shaker Sandow thought, it has been a good life. I have led sixty years of it, sixty years of sunrises and sunsets, of which I have watched perhaps more than two thirds. Sixty years of thunder and lightning and storms, sixty years without ever knowing want and without ever suffering bodily injury. If I am to die now, so be it. But please, please, make my heart stop before I reach the stones below.

The good Shaker was not making the journey across the canyon with the same stoic good humor that young Mace had possessed. He had often advised Mace to learn how to fear, and he never gave advice that he did not follow himself: he was afraid.

Not terrified, though. A good magician learned that there was a limit to the usefulness of fear. Terror soon turned to panic, and that to foolishness. And so he hung on the ropes, the wind buffeting him in a slow arc, antic.i.p.ating death in a rather scholarly manner, so that if it should come upon him suddenly, he would not be ill-prepared for it.

A lone, white bird flew by him quite close, screeching at him, its clear blue eyes curious.

Perhaps forty more years of life ahead of me, Sandow thought. 'We Shakers live to ripe old ages by routine. And here I am, out on a rope above a deadly canyon- and what for? Why am I risking all those decades of life here on this cold, barren mountain?

But that was easy enough to understand. He was risking those decades of life for knowledge, the one thing which the Shaker had never been able to resist in his long life. There had been many women, yes, in many beds. But there had never been one who could dictate the course of his life, not one whose b.r.e.a.s.t.s and loins could hold him to her vision of the future. Money? Ah, but he always had a great deal of that. No, only knowledge could lead him to extremes, to risk all.

His great curiosity about the Blank and about the nature of the Shakers-and-Movers (who had come, through the centuries, merely to be called Shakers, the import of the ancient saying lost to time) had begun when he learned, as a child, that he had killed his mother. Not with an axe or a garrot, surely. But he found that all Shakers' mothers perished during childbirth, screaming under a tremendous burden of pain that was far worse than normal childbirth. Now, so long a time later, he thought he understood why those deaths happened. Even as a newborn child, he had had the power. And perhaps upon birth, his mind had transmitted the shock and pain of birth to the mind of his mother while they were still linked by the umbilical. Perhaps clear, vicious images of birth shock had struck deep into his own mother's mind, amplified her own pain, and brought her brain to hemorrhaging. It seemed the only answer.

Forty years ago, he had mentioned the theory to other Shakers. He would never do that again. They had scorned him, had accused him of stupidity and near-heresy. A Shaker's mother died, they said, because she was being rewarded with an immediate place in heaven for the production of such a gifted child. Some few said it was evil spirits that claimed these women, punis.h.i.+ng them for delivering a saint into the world. In any case, all their explanations relied on the supernatural, on spirits and demons and angels and ghosts. Not on hard facts, not on science. When he spoke of a more logical reason, he was ridiculed into flight.

Perhaps, in the east, beyond these mountains, there was evidence of those things he had believed for so long. For this possibility he was risking his life.

''Well shall you hang there all day or are you coming aground?' Mace asked, leaning out to snare him.

Shaker Sandow looked about him, surprised. 'Daydreaming, I guess,' he said. 'Yes, pull my tired old carca.s.s in by all means.' He reached out for the huge hand that had been offered him.

Mace kept careful watch on each man who came across the canyon on the pulley ropes. It was not that he was so concerned about the lives of strangers and casual acquaintances-but just that each man across meant one less before the cargo and, at last, Gregor. Though the giant could not feel fear for his own well-being, he readily evidenced it for the lives and health of the Shaker and of his step-brother Gregor.

In time, all but two enlisted men had been brought across-and the cargo and Gregor, of course. The next to last private, according to the commander, was a fellow by the name of Hastings. He was slight, but apparently rugged, in his early thirties. He grasped the lower rope firmly and kicked off from the ledge, swung over the chasm and began his journey. He was but half a minute from his side of the gorge when he evidenced weakness. His head drooped between his shoulders, like a man embarra.s.sed, his chin upon his chest. He shook himself, aware of the danger all about, and he seemed to recover for a short moment- -before he lost his grip with his left hand and maintained life only by the tenacity of the right.

'Faster!' Richter ordered the men drawing the rope. They began to pull more quickly, more dedicatedly, reeling the exhausted man in. They were as aware as anyone that the fewer of them left alive, the worse each man's chances became.

Hastings was a third of the way across now, batting at the rope with his free hand, trying to obtain a solid grasp of it. But it seemed as if he were seeing double or triple, for he could never quite do more than brush it with his fingertips.