have to speak to him so bluntly. She came across the room, put one hand
to his face. “You’ve surrendered your dignity and your selfrespect.
Piece by piece.” Her voice was low, almost a whisper; it wavered.
“I’m afraid for you, afraid that if you don’t stop throwing it away,
you’ll have nothing left. Nothing.”
“Connie . . .” He wanted to cry.
But he had no tears for Graham Harris. He knew precisely what he had
done to himself. He had no pity; he despised the man he’d become.
He felt that, deep inside, he had always been a coward, and that his
fall on Mount Everest had given him an excuse to retreat into fear.
Why else had he resisted going to a psychiatrist? Every one of his
doctors had suggested psychoanalysis. He suspected that he was
comfortable in his fear; and that possibility sickened him. “I’m afraid
of my own shadow.
I’d be no good to you out there.
Dem P- Koontr “You’re not so frightened today as you were yesterday,”
she said tenderly. “Tonight, you’ve coped damned well.
What about ‘ the elevator shaft? This morning, the thought of going
down that ladder would have overwhelmed you.”
He was trembling.
“This is your chance,” she said. “You can overcome the fear. I know
you can.”
He licked his lips nervously. He went to the pile of gear in front of
the photographic backdrop. “I wish I could be half as sure of me as you
are.”
Following him, she said, “I understand what I’m asking of you. I know
it’ll be the hardest thing you’ve ever done.”
He remembered the fall vividly. He could close his eyes any time-even
in a crowded room-and experience it again: his foot slipping, pain in
the chest as the safety harness tightened around him, pain abruptly
relieved as the rope snapped, breath caught like an unchewed lump of
meat in his throat, then floating and floating and floating.
The fall was only three hundred feet, and it had ended in a thick
cushion of snow; it had seemed a mile.
She said, “If you stay here, you’ll die; but it’ll be an easier death.
The instant Bollinger sees you, he’ll shoot to kill. He won’t hesitate.
It’ll be over within a second for you.” She took hold of his hand. “But
it won’t be like that for me.”
He looked up from the equipment. Her gray eyes radiated a fear as
primal and paralyzing as his own.
“Bollinger will use me,” she said.
He was unable to speak.
“He’ll cut me,” she said.
Unbidden, an image of Edna Mowry came to him. She had been holding her
own bloody navel in her hand.
“He’ll disfigure me.”
“Maybe-”
“He’s the Butcher. Don’t forget. Don’t forget who he is.
What he is.”
“God help me,” he said.
“I don’t want to die. But if I have to die, I don’t want it to be like
that.” She shuddered. “If we’re not going to make the climb, if we’re
just going to wait for him here, then I want you to kill me. Hit me
across the back of the head with something. Hit me very hard.”
Amazed, he said, “What are you talking about?”
“Kill me before Bollinger can get to me. Graham, you owe me that much.
You’ve got to do it.”
“I love you,” he said weakly. “You’re everything. There’s nothing else
for me.” She was somber, a mourner at her own execution.
“If you love me, then you understand why you’ve got to kill me.”
“I couldn’t do it.”
“We don’t have much time,” she said. “Either we get ready for the climb
right nowr you kill me. Bollinger will be here any minute.”
Glancing at the main entrance to see if anyone was trying to get in,
Bollinger crossed the marble floor and opened the white door. He stood
at the bottom of the north stairs and listened for footsteps. There were
none. No footsteps, no voices no noise at all. He peered up the
narrow, open core of the shaft, but he didn’t see anyone moving
alongside the switchback railing.
He went to the south stairs. Those too were deserted.