Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #213 Page 14

  "Namsing, do you copy?” Rono's voice was muted in his earpiece.

  "Copy.” The word took more out of his lungs than he'd expected.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Climbing.” Thunk-thunk, pak-pak, the picks and crampons went in.

  "You certainly are,” Rono said sardonically “Why?"

  "That's why ... I'm up here.” Thunk. Pak-pak. “Isn't it? To climb?"

  "You're at the headwall, aren't you?"

  "Yes.” Namsing unclipped one of the ice screws from the cable and climbed past it. He re-clipped it once his own carabiner was above the screw.

  "I have to admit, Nam, I was being optimistic. I thought perhaps you were pushing past seven thousand just to give yourself a workout. I thought maybe you would be walking back down to cache ten to catch some sleep. But turning around once you're on the headwall is no mean feat. Our game plan was to climb it only once."

  "Still is.” Thunk-thunk, pak-pak.

  "So you're serious about sleeping at eight thousand, then?"

  "Yeah.” Namsing passed another screw as he did the first one.

  "Are your suit monitors functional?"

  "Yes."

  "So you do know you've just exceeded your recommended limits for heart rate, sweat rate, oxygenization, CO2 emission, and blood toxicity?"

  "Yes.” He passed another ice screw.

  "Pushing all the limits for cerebral and pulmonary edema? You know, the stuff that'll kill you unless you can get back down? Which, as you know, you can't?"

  "Yes, yes, and yes.” Namsing paused for air. Luminescent snakes were dancing in his vision. Five breaths were not enough. He took five more.

  In the meantime Rono kept talking. “Nam, do I need to remind you what eight thousand meters represents? The Death Zone? You do remember that after eight thousand meters, the body stops cellular growth, right? You're literally dying: you slough off cells and you don't grow any new ones. I'm only asking this because altitude can do funny things to a guy's memory. You do remember all this, don't you?"

  "I'm not that hypoxic. Yet. I remember, all right."

  Rono began to speak again but Nam cut him off. “You know, Rono ... you should be happy ... I'm pushing this hard.” He couldn't string six words together without needing another breath. “If I don't send this climb ... first ascent's all yours."

  Finally a laugh from the other end of the radio. “Maybe so, but like you said before you left, our chances are better if we climb as a team. You know, listen to the other's advice and such?"

  "Point taken. Thing is ... we're not going to ... climb as a team ... anymore."

  "What?"

  Namsing pulled one of his picks out of the ice and sunk it higher up. “You're a great climber, Rono. Maybe better than me. Wish we could climb ... together again."

  There was enough silence for Nam to make it two steps higher. “What are you talking about, Namsing?"

  This time it wasn't exhaustion that forced Nam to sigh. “I don't know which ... is going to be harder. Rono ... there is no meteor."

  "Say again?"

  "No meteor coming. I lied to you. Had to."

  "Why?"

  Namsing's legs trembled as he punched in his crampons. “I'm dying, Rono. There's a tumor in my brain. In the comm center ... the day I told you about the meteor ... got a message from Mars. Doctor ... said the tumor is growing. Putting pressure on my brain. Sooner or later ... the pressure will be too great. Said I had ... about thirty days to live."

  "Thirty—? Nam, how long ago was that? How long ago did you tell me about the meteor?"

  "Thirty-three ... days ago."

  The Sherpa's crampons pierced the ice and he pushed himself up. “Namsing, what the hell are you doing up there? Why did you lie to me?"

  "Couldn't wait ... for your Tenzing. Been trying this for too ... too long. Couldn't die before seeing it done."

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "You know what the symptoms are ... for this kind of tumor? Lack of coordination. Failing reflexes. Strength and alertness suffer. Would you have let me ... climb like that?"

  There was no need to answer the question. Rono had a different one, though. “Why push so hard, Nam? Why risk edema in addition to the tumor?"

  "Have to get above eight thousand meters. Soon as possible."

  Namsing had a full thirty seconds of peace before his partner put it together. “The tumor. The Death Zone. At eight thousand meters it won't grow anymore."

  "Exactly. Can we stop talking now ... so I can climb?"

  Rono's reply fell on deaf ears. The next swing of Namsing's axe found a fault line in the headwall. A two-meter wide slab of ice split vertically down the length of the headwall and toppled like a falling tree. Namsing's crampons both slipped out and he was airborne.

  He fell three times his own height before his carabiner caught on the clip of the next ice screw down. The pillar of ice still loomed above him. Under enhanced gravity he fell faster than everything else and now several tons of ice were tumbling down on him. Desperately he stabbed an ice pick as far left of the cable as he could and pulled himself in that direction. With one crampon he scrabbled at the remaining ice for balance. With the other he kicked at the first piece of the falling slab he could reach. His foot connected solidly, and in the meager Callistan gravity it managed to alter the course of the icefall.

  Numb with fear, utterly spent, he watched the slab pass by within centimeters of his facemask. As it crumbled below him in a series of spectacular snowy explosions, he hung limply from his harness and watched for more falling ice.

  There was none. He was safe. From the icefall at least. He struggled to regain his balance and restored four points of contact with what remained of the headwall. Below was a junkyard of massive toothy blocks, barely visible under the billowing particles of ice that would remain airborne for many minutes before settling to the ground. Namsing had felt the cable shudder with the force of the avalanche, but the sheer destructiveness was steeped in impenetrable silence. Even after the danger had passed, Namsing felt he should still be able to hear something.

  "Nam! Nam, all my scopes are going mad. What the hell is going on?"

  "Icefall. Big one. I'm fine. Time to climb now. Time to go.” .

  * * * *

  Twenty-seven hours later Namsing fell to his knees on the summit of Gungnir. The mountain was named for the spear of Odin, described in the lays of the Norsemen as being ‘as strong as it was slender'. Gungnir's summit was indeed as slender as a blade, and strong enough to support the full Earth weight of Namsing Lopje Sherpa, the first living thing to set foot upon it. His Tenzing's altimeter read 9,939 meters, more than a kilometer higher than his ancestral home of Chomolungma.

  Looking out from the summit, Nam realized that the spear-point of Gungnir pointed directly at the Callistan sunrise. As the brilliant speck climbed over the horizon, it highlighted every scar on the pockmarked surface. The rings of Valhalla followed each other like waves on a frozen ocean, and from this height Namsing could see more of them than he'd ever seen before. Foremost among them, in the closest ring, was a great broken gap known as Valgrind, Valhalla's outer gate. On Callisto as in Nordic myth, Valgrind opened out onto the mountains of Gladsheim. The realm of gladness.

  With something like gladness in his heart Namsing turned his weary eyes to the tiny blinking star still in shadow behind the mountains of Gladsheim. He knew he would never see more of the camp than its beacon light. The sun had risen just high enough to caress the peaks of Huginn and Muninn, standing like sentinels on either side of the beacon. Odin's ravens. In the original tongue their names meant Thought and Memory. Odin sent them to fly over Asgard every morning, seeing the world for him. Every evening he feared Thought would not return to him, and still greater was his fear that Memory might do the same.

  Namsing was beyond those worries now. His thoughts were blurred by hypoxia. The Tenzing's computer estimated that at this altitude on Earth the air would bear only n
ineteen percent of the oxygen it would hold at sea level. That was a third less than was found at the summit of Chomolungma, not nearly enough to piece more than a couple of thoughts together. His memory was equally hazy. For a moment he thought he was standing atop Chomolungma under the full moon. In the next moment he thought he could feel a tiny ball pulsing within the wrinkles of his brain.

  With the aid of his axe he pushed himself to his feet, and for three minutes he stood atop the most difficult peak ever attained by man. For the first time on his grueling ascent, he considered violating the design of the climb. It would be all too easy to unlock the panel on his chest plate and twist the dial that would turn off his EGC. With the rest of his strength he could leap from the highest peak in the realm of gladness and soar down toward Valhalla.

  Namsing looked down and saw his chest plate was open. If there was still a border between imagination and fact, Namsing could no longer find it. Distractedly he pushed his chest plate shut again and began descending the ridge. To jump from here was not climbing. It was falling.

  It did not occur to him to increase his oxygen flow. It would have made little difference had he done so. His body had started dying twenty-seven hours ago, the moment he crested eight thousand meters. That process could no longer be reversed. Maintaining current oxygen levels would lead to death by cerebral edema, and increasing the flow would allow his tumor to metastasize. All of this information lay somewhere in his brain, but Namsing was only distantly aware of it. He knew only that he was going to die doing what he loved, and that there was no better way to go.

  When he collapsed fifty meters below the summit, he barely registered it. Some vague memory told him the sun had just risen, but for some reason the mountain was growing very dark. A familiar voice was speaking to him, weeping to him, and though his brain could no longer register the meaning of the words, he wept at the unadulterated beauty of the emotion they carried. Just before his eyes closed forever he saw a star flashing on and off far below him. “Strange to be above a star,” he said. “So beautiful."

  Copyright © 2007 Steve Bein

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  THE LOST XUYAN BRIDE—Aliette De Bodard

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Illustrated by Paul Drummond

  * * * *

  Aliette lives in Paris. She works as a Computer Engineer but moonlights as a writer of speculative fiction. This is her second story in Interzone, after ‘Deer Flight’ in issue 211. Visit aliettedebodard.com for more about her work.

  * * * *

  "They say you are the one to see if I want to track down a missing person,” the woman said, pulling to her the only chair in my office. She wore silk, embroidered with a qi'lin unicorn, a rank reserved to the highest business people of Fenliu.

  I saw her long, lacquered nails and the impeccable yellow of her skin, the way she moved, sinuous and yet in perfect control, and I came to a conclusion. “I don't take clients from your background."

  "Indeed?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “Too much trouble, Mr Brooks?” She'd switched from Xuyan to English on the last sentence. She was good. Likely she also spoke Nahuatl, the language of Greater Mexica. A true businesswoman, who would be at ease anywhere in North America.

  "Yes,” I said. “How odd that it's the richest that cause the most difficulties."

  "I assure you I have no intention of causing difficulties,” the woman said. “I will be straightforward."

  That was familiar territory. “And leave me free rein?” I felt myself slide into the rhythm of an oft-practised dance, politeness relayed back and forth until we both reached an agreement. Xuyans could be difficult to handle, but I was used to dealing with them.

  She surprised me by putting both hands on the table. “I have no time to bargain with you, Mr Brooks. If you will not take the case, I will find another investigator."

  Money was tight, tight enough to make me regret moving west of the Rocky Mountains, into Xuyan territory. I could not afford to refuse her; and likely she had seen the peeling paint and the basic computer on my desk. But she was good at showing nothing. A good liar.

  "Tell me the case,” I said. “And I'll see whether I can take it."

  She looked at me from under long lashes. “I am He Chan-Li. I work for Leiming Tech. I want you to find my daughter."

  I said nothing, watching her her eyes tell me all I needed to know: she was deciding what she could afford to tell me. And when she started speaking again, I knew I did not have her full trust. “He Zhen did not come home seven nights ago,” she said. “Her fiancé hasn't heard from her either."

  "Seven nights is a bit early to declare her missing,” I said slowly.

  He Chan-Li did not look at me. At last she said, “She had a tracking implant. We found it abandoned in a derelict building south of Fenliu."

  A tracking implant. Not really surprising, for most of Fenliu's elite equipped their children with those, fearing kidnappings. Though ... I remembered the fiancé. “How old is she?” I asked.

  "Sixteen,” He Chan-Li said.

  Sixteen was old. Sixteen was adulthood for girls in Xuya, far too late to bother with tracking. Most teenagers ran amok anyway, tracking implants or not.

  "Why a private investigator? The tribunal militia could..."

  He Chan-Li shook her head. “No. This is a private matter, Mr Brooks. I will not bring the militia into it."

  "I see.” There probably was a reason then, and I was going to have to find it, and soon. “Do you have leads? She might have run away—"

  "No,” He Chan-Li said. “She is not that kind of girl. And how would that explain the tracking implant? She never went into that area."

  I could think of a few reasons for the tracking implant's location, knowing that Xuyan teenagers were no wiser or more well-behaved than their American counterparts. But I said nothing, merely noted the ‘running away’ as a possible explanation.

  "I can show you her room,” He Chan-Li said. “And you can talk to Wen Yi, her fiancé."

  I pondered the matter for a while. When I did not answer, He Chan-Li added, “I will pay you, Mr Brooks. I will pay you well.” There was something in her voice, something she could no longer hide—worry, perhaps?

  I said, “I'll take the case. But I make no guarantees."

  She nodded, looking relieved. “This is a recent picture."

  I took the glossy paper, raised it to the light. He Zhen was smiling the careless smile of teenagers all over the world, displaying white, perfect teeth—probably enhancements, but they didn't look artificial. The expensive kind, then.

  "That's all you have?” I asked.

  "Yes. The tracking implant is at my house. I can give you the address where the security company found it. Is that enough?"

  I shrugged. “It's going to have to be."

  "I see. I'll take you to my house, Mr Brooks, and you can see for yourself."

  I shook my head. “I'll come in my own time.” There were several things I needed to do before leaving, things I could not let her see.

  He Chan-Li raised an eyebrow. “Some would say this is arrogance."

  I shrugged. I could maintain the polite facade my lover Mei-Lin had once taught me, but not for long. At heart, I remained an American, the elaborate subtleties of Xuya forever beyond me. “It is my way."

  He Chan-Li looked displeased, though only a slight tightness of the mouth betrayed that. “Indeed.” She waited for me to say something, but I did not. At length she rose, with a smile I knew was fake. “By the time you arrive at my house, Mr Brooks, I may be gone. I have a business meeting."

  I nodded, did not speak.

  "Someone will take care of you there,” He Chan-Li said.

  And as she turned to leave I saw, for a moment only, the emotion she was trying to hide from me. It wasn't worry. It was raw, naked fear, a fear so strong that I could almost smell it.

  Afterwards, I stared at the walls of the office for a while. I should have refu
sed the case. There was too much I did not know, too much I was going to have to pry out of the client. But I needed the money.

  Being an American in Xuya—a real American, a practising Protestant, and not one of those who'd converted to Taoism or Buddhism—meant you were on your own. No company would employ you; those few landlords that rented to you would do so at exorbitant rates. It was hard to get by, which was why I'd taken He Chan-Li on, against my better judgement.

  I did not know where He Zhen was, but it was entirely possible she had not left Fenliu. As the daughter of a wealthy woman, she would be a prime target for ransom. I hoped it was the case. I hated travelling abroad. Greater Mexica had stringent entry requirements, demanding either proof of familial ties or of religion, and while the impoverished United States was softer on immigration, I had no wish to return to a place where there was a warrant out for me.

  Before I left for He Chan-Li's house, I started a search on my computer, feeding it the names of He Chan-Li and of the fiancé. It was not an entirely legal search, since the program would trawl through administrative records as well as on the network. With luck, I would have some results by the time I came back.

  * * * *

  He Chan-Li's house was in the richer suburbs of Fenliu. I took the maglev train from my shabby building, through the centre of the city and its skyscrapers of glass—the heart of Xuya's economic dominion of North America—and then into the residential neighbourhoods. The view on either side of the train became apartment buildings decorated by red and yellow lanterns, which in turn gave way to individual houses with slanted roofs and whitewashed walls.

  At the address He Chan-Li had given me was a thick wall of bricks, covered by garlands of wisteria. When the door opened, I was surprised to find an old woman in traditional Xuyan dress: robes heavily embroidered with peaches, the ancient symbols for long life. Behind her, unobtrusive, stood a servant in livery.