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er."
Cirocco did not argue, and Gaby hammered a spike into the wall as high as s he
could reach. She tied a rope to it and climbed high enough to hammer in a
second spike. When it was secure, she knocked the first one loose and dro
ve it in a meter above the second.
It took her an hour to reach the place. Cirocco shivered below, stamping he r
feet and shrugging off the showers of ice Gaby sent down around her. Then a
dislodged shelf of snow broke over her shoulders and brought her to her knees.
"Sorry about that!" Gaby called down. "But I've got something here. Let me get
it cleared and you can come up."
The entrance was barely large enough for Cirocco to squeeze through, even af
ter Gaby had chipped away most of the ice. In- side, it was a hollow bubble
with a diameter of about a meter and a half, and a floor to ceiling height s
lightly less than that. Cirocco had to remove her pack, then pull it in afte r
her. With both of them and two packs inside it seemed possible they might have
found room to stow a shoebox and still be able to breathe, but not much more
than that.
"Cozy, eh?" Gaby asked, removing Cirocco's elbow from her neck.
"Sorry. Oh, sorry about that, too. Gaby, my foot!"
"Excuse me. If you'd just scrunch . . . that's better, but I wish you wouldn't
s tand there."
"Where? Oh, my." She suddenly burst out laughing. She was crouched with her
back against the ceiling and her knees bent while Gaby edged to the rear a nd
tried to stay out of the way.
"What's so funny?"
"I was thinking of an old movie. Laurel and Hardy in their nightgowns, tryi ng
to bed down in an upper berth."
Gaby was smiling, but obviously didn't know what she was talking about.
"An upper berth, you know, on a cross-country train ... Skip it. I just thou
ght they should have tried it in arctic gear, and With a couple suitcases thr
own in. How do you want to work this?"
They shoveled the remainder of the snow out of the tiny cave and stacked the
gear in front of the opening to block it. When they did so, what little lig ht
there had been vanished, but the wind stopped blowing in, so they counted it a
gain. After struggling for twenty minutes they managed to settle down side by
side. Cirocco could barely move, but was not inclined to worry about such
things in the blessed warmth.
"You think we can get some sleep now?" Gaby wondered. "I sure feel like I
could. How are your toes?" "Okay. Tingling, but they're getting warm."
"Me, too. Good night, Gaby." She hesitated only a moment, then leaned over and
kissed her.
"I love you, Rocky."
"Go to sleep." She said it with a smile.
The next time Cirocco woke, sweat beaded her forehead. Her clothes were so
aked. She lifted her head groggily and realized she could see. Wondering i f
the weather had changed, she moved her pack slightly, then more urgently
, and discovered the en- trance to the cave had closed.
She almost woke Gaby, but thought better of it just in time.
"Try to get out first," she muttered. There was no sense telling Gaby she h ad
been eaten alive again unless it was really true. Gaby would not take th e
news wells the thought of being confined in such a small space-bad enough in
itself-was terrifying when she thought of Gaby and her contagious panic.
It turned out there was no cause for alarm. While she explored the wall where
the hole had been, it began to move, irising until it was, as large as it had
been before. There was a clear window of ice with faint light behind it. She h
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it it with her gloved fist and it shattered. Frigid air rushed in, and she has
tily blocked the hole again with her pack.
in a few minutes she moved the pack. The hole had closed to a few centimete
rs.
She looked thoughtfully at the tiny hole, putting it all together in her mind
. Only when she thought she understood it did she shake Gaby's shoulder.
"Wake up, kid, it's time to make adjustments again."
"Hmmm?" Gaby came awake quickly. "Hell, it's an oven in here."
"That's what I meant. We'll have to take off some clothes. You want to go fir
st? "
"Go ahead. I'll try to stay out of your way."
"Right. Why do you suppose it's so hot in here? Have you thought about that
? "
"I just woke up, Rocky. Have a heart."
"Okay. I'll tell you. Feel the walls." She performed the complex task of r
emoving her parka while Gaby made the same discovery she had made earlier.
"It's warm."
"Yeah. I couldn't figure out this wall from the first. I thought the trees we
re unplanned-for, like the growths on the cable, but they couldn't grow here,
as I see it, without the wall to nourish them. I tried to think what kind of
machine would do that best, and I came back to a natural biochemical machine
. An animal, or plant, possibly a genetically tailored one. I find it hard to
believe something like this could have evolved in any reasonable time. It's
300 kilometers high, hollow in the middle, and hugs the real wall."
"And the trees are parasites?" Gaby was taking it better than Cirocco had ex
pected.
"Only in the sense that they draw nourishment from another animal. But they'r
e not true parasites, because it was planned, that way. The builders designed
this large animal as a habitat for the trees, and in turn the trees provide
habitats for smaller animals, and probably for the angels."
Gaby considered it, and looked narrowly at Cirocco.
"Pretty much like the very large animals that we presume live below the rim,"
she said, quietly.
"Yes, something like that." She watched Gaby for sips of' panic, but did not e
ven see her breathing heavily. "Does that ... ah . . . worry you?"
"You mean my well-known phobia?" Cirocco reached behind her pack and stim
ulated the entrance into opening again, then moved the pack and let Gaby see
it. It began to close slowly.
"I found this before I woke you up. See, it's closing, but it'll open again if
y ou tickle it. We're not trapped, and this isn't a stomach or anything like-"
Gaby touched her hand, smiling faintly. "I appreciate your concern." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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