'Yes.' She said it in a tone that suggested she wasn't at all sure that was a good idea. Yet she wanted to surrender, he was sure of it.
'I'm tired of exile. I think I want to get back to the dome.'
'Yes.'
Suddenly he was excited. Isolation out in Clean Air was preferable to being ostracized inside the dome. But Abby's confession of attraction made everything different. Here at least was a friend. Ally. He'd work side by side with her. Talk to her. Endure the winter with her.
'Go talk to Rod for me. Tell him to bring me in.'
'I don't know if Doctor Bob thinks that's a good idea yet.'
'To hell with Doctor Bob.'
'He's trying to protect you.'
'Isolate me for his observations.' He'd seen Norse confer with Abby. Maybe the shrink wanted to put the moves on her himself. His own exile was a convenience. 'Screw Norse. I want to be with you.'
'Well, then you talk to Cameron. It will be embarrassing if I do it.'
'Yes. Absolutely.' He felt energized. She was receptive to a partnership. He could talk the station manager into anything.
'You'll have to call him but he's pretty stressed out.'
'I will.'
'Maybe in the morning. He's a little more rested then.'
'Good idea.'
'People are still pretty edgy in the dome. Snapping at each other. It's not going to be easy for you if you come back.'
'I'll be okay if I can get to talk to you.'
'That's all I'm promising.'
'I know.'
'Rod is pretty jumpy. Be patient.'
'I will.'
But when she left to do some maintenance work on the computers in astronomy he decided he couldn't wait. To hell with patience. To hell with tomorrow. He was sick of being isolated in Clean Air like some kind of germ. He went to the phone and called Cameron's office. There was no answer, so he dialed the galley. Pulaski told him to try a radio. 'Our station manager is making his rounds. Can't it wait?'
'No, it can't.' Lewis hung up and picked up the radio. 'Enzyme to Ice Pick. Over.'
After a few tries, Cameron's raspy, tired voice finally came on. 'This is Cameron.'
'This is Lewis. Where are you?' Anybody with a radio could listen in but he was too determined to care.
'Checking the fuel arch.'
'Rod, can we meet to talk?'
There was a wary silence. Then: 'I'm kind of busy.'
'I'm going nuts in Clean Air.'
'It's for your own good, buddy.'
'I've been talking with Abby. Let me come back to the dome. She can keep an eye on me. Lock me in my room at night if you have to.'
He stalled. 'I'll talk about it to Doctor Bob.'
'Doctor Bob has no authority here. You do. I've been exiled without charges. That's unconstitutional, isn't it?'
More uncomfortable silence. 'I don't know. It's easier having you out there.' The implication was plain.
'Rod, I think it was suicide. Suicide and an accident. You can't blame me and you can't blame yourself.'
'Things are kind of messy, Jed.'
'You mean Tyson?'
Cameron's voice was cold. 'Tyson's a dead man. Don't bring him up to me.'
'Don't blame me for him. Let me come over to talk. Let's meet privately, you and me. To talk.'
Another long silence. 'I have to check out these tanks.'
'I'll find you there. We'll talk in private.'
'Enzyme…' Cameron sounded besieged, reluctant. 'Listen. Stay in Clean Air. When I finish this inspection I'll swing by and see how you're doing, okay?'
'Will we talk?'
'Yes.' It was a sigh. 'We'll talk.'
'Talk about changing things?'
'We'll talk.'
It was enough. 'Roger that.' He put down the radio, impatient and hopeful. Maybe with Abby Dixon he could find a way to live in this place.
I Choose Survival
Every once in a while you arrive at a point in life where you can't afford to make a mistake. Might be a job. Might be a romance. Might be a gamble or the way you choose to answer with a gun pointed to your head. Might be an icy road and oncoming headlights and that drink you had that was one too many. You can't know when or how it's going to come. But when it does, you have to get things right.
If you don't, you're dead, figuratively and literally.
My climbing companions didn't get it right.
For the first two hundred feet I was optimistic. It was difficult climbing but not impossible, even for relative amateurs. There were cracks and toeholds and chimneys enough to squirt our way upward, though the rocks we dislodged banged down and set off a fresh round of squeals and shouts from the kids below. Crash! Sorry about that. Hey, we were making it, inching back up, getting to a point where maybe everyone but Fat Boy could climb back out of purgatory, Chisel Chin and Carrot Top straining up to each piton, breathing hard, eyes wide, limbs trembling, yes- but making it. Our lives were at stake. The two kids were doing what they had to do.
I was feeling good about saving them. I was pulling us out of the trap.
To understand my choice you have to picture how piss-poor miserable it was on Wallace Wall. At first the light had strengthened as the sun rose, giving a crumb of encouragement, but then the storm blotted out any sight of Old Sol and the morning grew dim and murky. Snow was blowing horizontally, turning the rock slippery, and small puffs of snow broke off from the cornice at the top of the wall and rained down on us like sand into a pit, each of us tensing in case the drizzle heralded a larger avalanche. The gusts were up to forty, I learned later, and the windchill well below zero. Our mittens were off to allow us to grip but the rock was shredding our glove liners and our fingers were turning numb and bloody. The wall angle wasn't vertical but almost so, and it was a strain to stay glued. The farther we ascended, the more anxious I became. I could imagine the fear the two kids were feeling, the exposure, the helplessness. I kept remembering Kressler and Fleming pinwheeling off that cliff.
It was Chisel Chin who made the mistake. The first rule of climbing is to keep at least three of your four limbs in contact with the mountain at any one time. He was impatient and had both a foot and a hand reaching for fresh holds when a rock broke and both legs were suddenly churning in empty space. He hung for a moment on one exhausted arm, kicking in the air for substitute footholds he'd failed to locate first- I'd warned him! — and then with a grunt he dropped, all of this happening in the flash of a second. I had time to jam one forearm in a crack, almost breaking it, and braced against the shock. He fell to the limit of his rope, yelling, and it cinched on my waist so hard that I felt like I was being crushed against a wall by a car bumper, the impact expelling my breath and igniting my adrenaline.
With an experienced team we probably would have recovered. If Chisel Chin had a few seconds to dangle in space until he forced down his panic and found fresh purchase he could have taken the pressure off the line, we could have stabilized, and after a minute's shaky breathing we could have started up again. But when he dropped past Carrot Top the second boy jerked in surprise and panicked, coming off the wall for no reason at all, his wits gone in a blaze of shock. He dropped heavily, a condemned man through a trapdoor, wrenching at me, and then hung like a cow, both of them swinging and screaming and sawing on me with the weight of four hundred pounds.
'Grab something! Get the weight off me!' My own panic erupted and all I could see was that picture of
