The Dark Design by Phillip Jose Farmer

Rohrig thought she was crazy, but she intrigued him. Also, he wasn’t so sure that the solution to the mystery of this world did not lie at the beginning of The River.

He knew that no one had ventured into the fog-laden land further north. If he accompanied her party of eleven, he would be among the first to reach the North Pole. If he had anything to do with it, he would be the very first person to get there. When their goal was in sight he was going to sprint ahead and plant on the site of the North Pole a stone statuette of himself, his name incised at the base.

From then on, anybody who got there would know that he’d been beat out for first place by Robert F. Rohrig. Agatha wouldn’t take him, however, unless he believed in the Lord and the Holy Book. He hated to lie, but he told himself that he wasn’t really deceiving her. Deep down, he did believe in a god, though he wasn’t sure whether its name was Jehovah or Rohrig. As for the Bible, it was a book, and all books told the truth in the sense that their authors believed they were writing a kind of truth.

Before the expedition reached the end of the grailstones, five had turned back. When they got to the enormous cave out of which The River fell, four decided that they would starve to death if they kept on going. Rohrig went on with Agatha Croomes and Winglat, a member of an Amerind tribe that had crossed from Siberia to Alaska sometime in the Old Stone Age. Rohrig would have liked to turn back, but he wasn’t going to admit that a crazy black woman and a paleolithic savage had more courage than he.

Besides, Agatha’s preachings had almost convinced him that she had had a true vision. Maybe Almighty God and sweet Jesus were waiting for him. It wouldn’t do to hold up the schedule.

After they had crawled along the ledge in the cave and Winglat had slipped and fallen into The River, Rohrig told himself that he was as crazy as Agatha. But he went on.

When they came to the place where the ledge sloped downward into the fog, the fog that covered a sea the sounds of which faintly reached them, they were very weak from hunger. There was no turning back now. If they did not find food within the day, they would die. Agatha, however, said that all they could eat was close at hand. She knew it was so because she had had a vision while they slept on the ledge within the cave. She had seen a place where meat and vegetables were in abundance.

Rohrig watched her crawl away from him. After a while, he followed. But he’left his grail behind because he was too weak to drag it. If he survived, he could always come back for it. The statuette was in the grail, and for a few seconds he considered removing it and taking it with him. To hell with it, he thought, and he went down the path.

He never made it. Weakness overcame him; his legs and arms just would not obey his will.

Thirst killed him before starvation did its job. It was ironic that The River had rushed by him, and he could not drink because he had no rope with which to lower his grail and collect the precious fluid.

A sea was booming against the rocks at the base of the cliffs, and he could not descend it it.

“Coleridge would appreciate this,” he thought. “I wish I did.”

He muttered, “Now I’ll never get the answers to my questions. Maybe it’s just as well. I probably wouldn’t have liked them anyway.”;

Now Rohrig was sleeping uneasily in a hut by The River in the equatorial zone. And Frigate, standing watch on the deck of a cutter, was chuckling. He was recalling Rohrig’s ordeal while defending his thesis.

Perhaps it was telepathy that evoked the incident in their minds at the same time. It’s preferable to use Occam’s razor, that never dull but seldom used blade. Call it coincidence.