I made haste, stretching and racking myself and grabbing at the holds he had cut, and then I heard him burst into song. Something from _Aida_, I think. “Damn it! Wait up!” I said. “I’m only a few hundred feet behind.” He kept on singing. I was beginning to get dizzy, but I couldn’t let myself slow down. My right arm felt like a piece of wood, my left like a piece of ice. My feet were hooves, and my eyes burned in my head. Then it happened. Like a bomb, the snake and the swinging ended in a flash of brilliance that caused me to sway and almost lose my grip. I clung to the vibrating mountainside and squeezed my eyes against the light. “Mallardi?” I called. No answer. Nothing. I looked down. Henry was still climbing. I continued to climb. I reached the ledge Mallardi had mentioned, found him there. His respirator was still working. His protective suit was blackened and scorched on the right side. Half of his pick had been melted away. I raised his shoulders. I turned up the volume on the communicator and heard him breathing. His eyes opened, closed, opened. “Okay….” he said. “‘Okay,’ hell! Where do you hurt?” “No place…I feel jus’ fine….Listen! I think it’s used up its juice for awhile….Go plant the flag. Prop me up here first, though. I wanna watch….” I got him into a better position, squirted the water bulb, listened to him swallow. Then I waited for Henry to catch up. It took about six minutes. “I’ll stay here,” said Henry, stooping beside him. “You go do it.” I started up the final slope.
VII
I swung and I cut and I blasted and I crawled. Some of the ice had been melted, the rocks scorched. Nothing came to oppose me. The static had gone with the dragon. There was silence, and darkness between stars. I climbed slowly, still tired from that last sprint, but determined not to stop. All but sixty feet of the entire world lay beneath me, and heaven hung above me, and a rocket winked overhead. Perhaps it was the pressmen, with zoom cameras. Fifty feet…. No bird, no archer, no angel, no girl. Forty feet…. I started to shake. It was nervous tension. I steadied myself, went on. Thirty feet…and the mountain seemed to be swaying now. Twenty-five…and I grew dizzy, halted, took a drink. Then click, click, my pick again. Twenty…. Fifteen…. Ten…. I braced myself against the mountain’s final assault, whatever it might be. Five… Nothing happened as I arrived. I stood up. I could go no higher. I looked at the sky, I looked back down. I waved at the blazing rocket exhaust. I extruded the pole and attached the flag. I planted it, there where no breezes would ever stir it. I cut in my communicator, said, “I’m here.” No other words.
It was time to go back down and give Henry his chance, but I looked down the western slope before I turned to go. The lady was winking again. Perhaps eight hundred feet below, the red light shone. Could that have been what I had seen from the town during the storm, on that night, so long ago? I didn’t know and I had to. I spoke into the communicator. “How’s Mallardi doing?” “I just stood up,” he answered. “Give me another half hour, and I’m coming up myself.” “Henry,” I said. “Should he?” “Gotta take his word how he feels,” said Lanning. “Well,” I said, “then take it easy. I’ll be gone when you get here. I’m going a little way down the western side. Something I want to see.” “What?” “I dunno. That’s why I want to see.” “Take care.” “Check.” The western slope was an easy descent. As I went down it, I realized that the light was coming from an opening in the side of the mountain. Half an hour later, I stood before it. I stepped within and was dazzled.
I walked toward it and stopped. It pulsed and quivered and sang. A vibrating wall of flame leapt from the floor of the cave, towered to the roof of the cave. It blocked my way, when I wanted to go beyond it. She was there, and I wanted to reach her. I took a step forward, so that I was only inches away from it. My communicator was full of static and my arms of cold needles. It did not bend toward me, as to attack. It cast no heat. I stared through the veil of fires to where she reclined, her eyes closed, her breast unmoving. I stared at the bank of machinery beside the far wall. “I’m here,” I said, and I raised my pick. When its point touched the wall of flame someone took the lid off hell, and I staggered back, blinded. When my vision cleared, the angel stood before me. “_You may not pass here_,” he said. “She is the reason you want me to go back?” I asked. “_Yes. Go back._” “Has she no say in the matter?” “_She sleeps. Go back._” “So I notice. Why?” “_She must. Go back._” “Why did she herself appear to me and lead me strangely?” “_I used up the fear-forms I knew. They did not work. I led you strangely because her sleeping mind touches upon my own workings. It did so especially when I borrowed her form, so that it interfered with the directive. Go back._” “What is the directive?” “_She is to be guarded against all things coming up the mountain. Go back._” “Why? Why is she guarded?” “_She sleeps. Go back._” The conversation having become somewhat circular at that point, I reached into my pack and drew out the projector. I swung it forward and the angel melted. The flames bent away from my outstretched hand. I sought to open a doorway in the circle of fire. It worked, sort of. I pushed the projector forward, and the flames bent and bent and bent and finally broke. When they broke, I leaped forward. I made it through, but my protective suit was as scorched as Mallardi’s. I moved to the coffinlike locker within which she slept. I rested my hands on its edge and looked down. She was as fragile as ice. In fact, she was ice…. The machine came alive with lights then, and I felt her somber bedstead vibrate. Then I saw the man. He was half sprawled across a metal chair beside the machine. He, too, was ice. Only his features were gray, were twisted. He wore black and he was dead and a statue, while she was sleeping and a statue. She wore blue, and white…. There was an empty casket in the far corner…. But something was happening around me. There came a brightening of the air. Yes, it was air. It hissed upward from frosty juts in the floor, formed into great clouds. Then a feeling of heat occurred and the clouds began to fade and the brightening continued. I returned to the casket and studied her features. I wondered what her voice would sound like when/if she spoke. I wondered what lay within her mind. I wondered how her thinking worked, and what she liked and didn’t like. I wondered what her eyes had looked upon, and when. I wondered all these things, because I could see that whatever forces I had set into operation when I entered the circle of fire were causing her, slowly, to cease being a statue. She was being awakened.