Max stared in horror.
Two hundred meters away, silently and without warning, a massive chunk of snow disappeared. It had dropped into a void. And then other huge slabs followed and vanished. The slope they clung to was false. The snow had dammed itself up over the top of a massive chasm and this last tremor had released the pressure. Gravity sucked the crust of snow down, and the snowfield the size of a football pitch had disappeared into nowhere.
The monk saw the terror in Max’s eyes. He twisted his head and squeezed Max’s arm tighter. If another slab fell away they would both be dead-a drop of at least five hundred meters had opened up, like the mouth of a volcano, and it belched powdered clouds from the weight of the snow as it impacted far below.
The monk shook his head. It was useless. He knew he was going to die. His wounds were draining his strength and life force.
“Don’t let go!” Max screamed.
But the monk’s hand, slippery with blood, was losing its grip.
Max’s arm felt as though it was being torn out of its socket, and his ribs hurt from the pounding he’d taken, but despite the pain he pressed himself against the hidden boulder and pulled on the man’s weight as hard as he could.
The monk shouted again, the desperation as strident as before, this time in French, but a sucking, collapsing roar overtook the first words, and all Max heard was a broken cry. “…
Max stared in disbelief. There were only twenty meters of snow left behind the monk, the rest had gone. When this slab dropped, they would both die, plunging into a gray, mist-shrouded nothingness.
The monk’s other arm snatched something from around his neck, broke the cord that held it and threw it at Max. It was a crucifix and what looked like a medallion, but Max’s eyes were on the wounded man’s as they pleaded, and his faint, desperate words reached out again.
Max shook his head. Why didn’t the man realize he could not understand him? And then the remaining block of snow fell, and the monk with it, sucked from Max’s grip. His eyes stayed on the boy’s as his clawing fingers ripped away Max’s glove, his father’s watch; nails raked his skin.
In the fraction of a second it took before the monk was swallowed by the churning mist, he shouted one word that Max had no problem understanding.
“Lucifer!”
3
The ski patrol found Max less than an hour later, straddled across a jagged rock that, in turn, stuck out in space across a massive precipice. He was hypothermic and unconscious. The four-man team, wary of the gaping void, roped themselves together and brought Max up on a rescue stretcher. Within ten minutes they had eased him a safe distance down the slopes and called in the Mountain Air Rescue helicopter, which flew him straight to the main hospital at Pau, less than half an hour by air to the south.
Max stayed in the darkness of his mind, at times plummeting through the blackness as if that terrible vortex that had sucked out the bottom of the world was still trying to claim him. The helicopter’s mechanical shuddering snatched at his consciousness. Once, through half-open eyes, he saw the blurred whirring of blades against a gray sky and felt the exhaust vapor sting his nostrils. He tried to get up but he was strapped down and the winch man placed a gloved, comforting hand against his chest. The man smiled. Everything was OK. He was safe.
Max was still unconscious when the helicopter landed. His neck was braced in a medical collar, his arms and legs secured. The French medical team was excellent. Being this close to the mountains and the main highway, they all had extensive experience in shattered bones and hypothermic victims.
Inside the building the team listened to the airborne medics’ concise assessment of their patient. The doctor quickly realized that the young man the trauma team was helping onto the gurney was fit and strong. His muscle tone was good, his heartbeat steady and there was no sign of internal bleeding.
The doctor ordered an MRI scan. The nurse had already cut away his damaged jacket and was about to cut off Max’s cargo pants and fleece when he opened his eyes.
“Don’t cut my clothes,” he said. “They’re all I’ve got.” He slipped back into unconsciousness.
The doctor hesitated. There was something in the boy’s desperate plea that he recognized. Max could not know that Dr. Marcel Riveux was a volunteer in the mountains during his off-duty hours; that he was someone who understood the lure of the high valleys and felt an affinity with others who knew the thrill of the slopes.
He shook his head at the nurse. And instead of cutting Max’s clothes away, he helped ease them from his body.
The hospital was well equipped with the latest technology. The highly specialized teams of doctors meant that each patient received the most up-to-date treatment.
Max lay in the doughnut-shaped Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanner, eased slowly beneath the machine’s all-seeing eye. This tomb swathed him in technology. Illuminated only by the equipment’s beam, the darkened cocoon scanned his brain and spine. The machine made deep, resonant sounds. One like a car alarm running out of power, another like a badly tuned guitar amplifier, both giving way to hissing like a steam train’s. This sighing breath mimicked a breeze catching tree branches. Max saw dabs of light, speckled like snow on high boughs, as the sound soothed him into darkness and sleep.
The consultant was fascinated by his young patient. Everything seemed normal; there was no brain damage, no skull fracture. But the deep-brain activity indicated that Max had gone into an unusual neurological condition. Images scanned of Max’s brain were like satellite shots of Earth taken from space, colored details of shape and form, but different areas of his brain were hot spots of activity. A twisted knot of color, the neocortex, which is responsible for thought processes, and the limbic system, which takes care of emotions and dreams-both showed heightened activity. But it was the area called the reptilian brain-responsible for instinct, survival, breathing and heartbeat-that made the consultant conduct another test.
A PET scan has nothing to do with taking a sick animal to a vet-PET stands for positron emission tomography and it uses a highly specialized piece of equipment that investigates the biochemical composition of the brain. This boy had almost animal instincts. The scan showed virtually no sign of trauma for someone who had experienced extreme danger. For one moment during the scan the consultant thought Max had died-his brain had gone into an almost deathlike state. But then the man realized that this animal instinct, or whatever it was, had sent Max into a kind of deep sleep-like hibernation. No different from a bear in winter. The consultant’s logic grappled with the rare glimpses of the extraordinary activity within Max’s brain. There were secrets within the boy. Whatever they were, he needed more time to analyze them, but one thing was certain-he knew the boy was special.
Max finally awoke, stiff and sore, in a hospital room with the muted sounds of two nurses talking. The younger of the two had her dark hair tied back, and her slender fingers traced information on a chart at the foot of his bed. The other woman was older, more like the age his mum would be if she were still alive.
He lay still, his instincts keeping him from moving-like a wounded animal. His mind absorbed information and tried to fill in the blanks. He had no idea how he had got here, or which hospital he was in. And then he remembered. Jumbled words from a dying man hammered inside his skull. The memory triggered a gasp of breath and the two women looked at him.
The older woman moved closer and touched his brow. “What did you say?” she asked in her accented English.
“I don’t know …,” Max muttered. The foreign words wouldn’t form on his tongue. He saw the monk’s wild face again. Watched as his mouth made the sounds. Listened again.
The nurses looked at each other, and then the younger one spoke gently. “Do you know what you have just said, young man?”
Max shook his head. The women looked concerned. The same nurse said, “I am French Basque. That’s my
