'We'll use the haul line, too,' Holden told Anna. 'Ever so much more civilized.'
As Iverson rigged himself to the traverse, Anna watched with a keen interest. One lesson, then the test. It crossed her mind how much better a student she would have been if in school the options had been learn or die.
Crouching on a thumb of rock as big around as a plate, eighteen inches of it thrust over the chasm, Oscar attached his safety, clipped his Croll into the rope, wrestled his two foot ascenders onto the line, then pushed till his torso and buttocks hung like a side of beef a hundred twenty feet above God knew what.
Anna kept her headlamp trained where he would find it useful, kept the light steady and out of his eyes. It was all she could do. There was no room for a second pair of hands to help him.
Holden was occupied with the business of tying the packs into trouble-free bundles that could easily be hauled across. Along with personal gear were medical supplies requested by Dr. McCarty, among them oxygen. In the case of a head wound it might be the only thing that could keep Frieda's brain tissue from permanent damage.
Iverson finished and snaked an elbow over the line so he could hold his head up. 'Check my gear?' he said to Holden.
'Right-o.'
Having been checked out by a fresh pair of eyes, Oscar began rope-walking over the rift. Suspended at four points along the line, his body was nearly horizontal, spine toward the center of the earth. As always in a traverse, there was an element of sag. It made the operation of the ascenders inefficient, and progress was measured in inches. As the line began to angle, rising steeply toward the Wormhole, the slack was taken up. After a few strangled kicks to get the cams to lock down, Oscar climbed like a pro, covering the last thirty feet in as many seconds. The rig was a work of art; not so much slack that he was head-down at the bottom, but enough so that he was standing upright when he reached the hole.
In the scattering light, Anna could see his skinny arms weaving some sort of magic near the top of the traverse, where his shoulders blocked her view.
'That's the tricky part alluded to earlier,' Holden said. Anna was startled at the nearness of his voice. She could feel his breath against her cheek. In their absorption, they'd knelt shoulder to shoulder on the edge of their limestone block like a couple of White Rock fairies in a troglodyte nightmare.
'What's he doing?' The words gusted out, and Anna realized she'd been holding her breath.
'There's no place to be, and the Wormhole's so tight it's sort of pay-as-you-go. He's changing ropes. Hooking onto the rebelay. He'll let himself loose a little bit at a time as he gets that part of himself into the hole. The hard bit is feeling for the Gibbs down at your feet. Sort of like tying your shoelaces when you're halfway down a python's throat.'
Iverson squirmed a moment more, Anna and Holden so entranced they forgot to talk. Then it was as if the rock swallowed his head. It was gone, and only the body remained, twitching with remembered life. The shoulders were next, melting seamlessly into the cliff, the pathetic stick legs kicking in short convulsive movements. Hips vanished, and Anna and Holden's lights played over a pair of size-thirteen boots flipping feebly. The image was ludicrous, but Anna didn't feel like laughing. Hands reappeared, only the hands, gloved and bulky. With no assistance from a corporeal body, they fussed and fluttered and danced like a cartoon drawn by an artist on acid.
'Removing the foot ascenders,' Holden said. 'Last link.'
Abruptly, the hands were sucked back into the limestone. The boots followed. All that remained to indicate that any life-form had ever existed was the gentle swaying of the rope.
'He's good,' Holden said admiringly. 'The man is good. He could thread himself through all four stomachs of a cow and never even give her the hiccups.'
Anna eased back from the edge of the rock and rearranged legs grown stiff from too long without movement. 'Me next,' she said, and was pleased at how normal her voice sounded.
'Not yet. Oscar will holler when he's ready. There's no room to turn around in the Wormhole. He's got to crawl on up a little ways. There's a chimney. He'll go up, spin himself about, then come back down so he can get the gear and pull you in. One of you guys will do the same for me.
'The creepy-crawly part of the hole's fifty feet or so.' Holden answered Anna's unasked question. 'Then it opens right up. Big stuff like we've been doing.'
Anna nodded. She'd not wanted to ask, but the Wormhole was eating away at her hard-won control. Fifty feet; she measured it out in her mind. Frieda's backyard in Mesa Verde was fenced to keep her dog, Taco, from wandering. The posts were eight feet apart. Anna had helped replace four of them at the beginning of the summer. Fifty feet: six pestholes. She could swim that far underwater. Sprint that far in high heels and panty hose. Fifty feet. Nothing to it.
'All set.' The words reverberated across the chasm, and Anna and Tillman trained their lights on the orifice that had swallowed Oscar. A disembodied hand waved to them from the solid fortress that was their destination.
'Now you next,' Holden said. 'Have fun.' He smiled and she smiled back, glad to know him, glad to have him with her. Holden Tillman's smile was better than a bottle of Xanax.
Anna was always careful with climbing gear. This time her attention to detail was obsessive. The contortionist movements required to hook ascenders with half her body bobbing over a crevice she couldn't see the bottom of required that each movement be thought through before it was attempted. She was glad the ranger from Rocky Mountains who had taught her to climb had insisted she practice everything one-handed, and by touch, not sight. Tillman trained his lamp on her hands and watched.
'Looks good,' he said when she had finished. 'See you on the other side.'
Anna nodded and pulled herself hand-over-hand along the rope till she could begin to kick in with her rope- walkers. For a brief eternity she floundered like a fish in a net. Because the Gibbs wouldn't lock regardless of how she angled her feet in an attempt to get the cams to catch, she was muscling her way along, using the strength of her arms and shoulders. Bad form, and something she couldn't maintain for any length of time. Exertion made the line sway. Coupled with the wild dancing of shadows every time she moved her head, it was dizzying. Adrenaline, already high, rose to poisonous levels.
Closing her eyes, she forced herself to relax, let the rope and metal take the weight. After a steadying breath, she began again her crippled walk, this time with more success. The rope inclined, tension increased, the cams locked and unlocked fluidly. Much to her amazement, she found she was enjoying herself. Deep in the bedrock of the Southwest, and she was probably as high as she'd ever climbed. She laughed aloud and hoped Holden wouldn't mistake it for hysteria.
The ascent was over too soon. Head against the wall, feet over the rift, she dead-ended. By craning her neck she could look back far enough to see the opening she was supposed to get into. It was nothing snort of miraculous that Iverson had managed it without aid. She felt utterly helpless.
'Oscar?'
'Right here.' An ungloved hand, looking sublimely human, came out several inches above her face and the fingers waggled cheerfully. 'Put your arms over your head like you're diving.'
It took a minor act of will, but Anna got both hands off the traverse line and did as she was instructed. Fingers locked around her wrists, and she was drawn into the Wormhole. Stone brushed against her left shoulder and her face was no more than two inches from the rock above. The dragging pulled her helmet over her eyes. Newly blind, her first sense that the environment had changed was the warm sweet smell of sweat mixed liberally with cotton and dust. An unseen hand tipped her hat back so she could see. Rock had been replaced by a maroon tee-shirt with pink lettering so close to her face she couldn't read it. She was less than an inch below Iverson's chest. The space was closing in. Her lungs squeezed and her throat constricted. An image of fighting like a maddened cat, clawing back out to fall into the abyss, ripped through her mind.
Now's not a good time, she warned herself. 'What next?' she asked, needing to move.
'Is your rear end in?'
'Feels like it.'
'Okay. There's space to your right. You're going to have to stretch over, reach down, and let loose your foot ascenders.'
Anna bent to the right at her waist. She tried to bring her knee up but cracked it painfully against the rock. Second try and she could feel the ascender on her boot. After a moment of fumbling she pulled the quick-release pin securing the cam and plucked the line out. 'Got it,' she said.
