All in all, it was fun, and they went to bed feeling cheerier. The booze also helped to raise their spirits.
When they arose, they ate breakfast over another fire. Then they loaded up with their heavy burdens and started off. Before the stone and the boat disappeared in the mists, Burton turned for a last look. There were his final links with the world he'd known, though not always loved, so long. Would he ever see a boat, a grailstone again? Would he soon never see anything?
He heard Joe's lion-thunderish voice, and he turned away.
"Holy thmoke! Look at what I got to carry! I got three timeth ath much ath the retht of you. My name ain't Thamthon, you know."
Turpin laughed and said, "You're a white nigger with a big nose."
"I ain't no nigger," Joe said. "I'm a packhorthe, a beatht of burden."
"Vhat'th the differenthe?" Turpin said, and he ran laughing as Joe swung a gigantic fist at him. The towering backpack unbalanced him, and he fell flat on his face.
Laughter rose up and bounced off the canyon walls.
"I'll wager that's the first time the mountains have made merry," Burton said.
After a little while though, they became silent, and they trudged onward looking like lost souls in a circle of the Inferno.
They soon came to the first cataract, the little one, Joe Miller said. It was so broad that they couldn't see the other end, but it had to be ten times the width of Victoria Falls. At least, it seemed so. It fell from the mists above in a roar that made conversation impossible even if they shouted in each others' ears.
The titanthrop led the way. They climbed upward past the waterfall, spray now and then falling over them. Their progress was slow but not overly perilous. When they had gotten to perhaps two hundred feet up, they stopped on a broad ledge. Here they let down their burdens while Joe climbed on up. After an hour, the end of a long rope fell through the fog like a dead snake. They tied the packs, two at a time, to the rope, and Joe pulled them bumping and swinging into the mists. When all the packs were on top of the plateau, they worked their way carefully up the cliff. At the top they resumed their burdens and walked on, stopping frequently for rests.
Tai-Peng related stories of his adventures in his native land and got them to laughing. They came to another cataract and quit laughing. They scaled the cliff beside it, and then decided to call it a day. Joe poured some grain alcohol over wood – a frightful waste of good booze, he said – and they had a fire. Four days later, they were out of wood. But the last of the "small" cataracts was behind them.
After walking for an hour over a stone-strewn gently sloping-upward tableland, they came to the foot of another cliff.
"Thith ith it," Joe said excitedly. "Thithe ith the plathe vhere ve found a rope made out of clothth. It vath left by Ekth."
Burton cast his lamp beam upward. The first ten feet was rough. From there on up, for as far as he could see, which wasn't far, there was a smooth-as-ice verticality.
"Where's the rope?"
"Damn it, it vath here!"
They went out in two parties, each going in opposite directions along the base of the cliff. Their electric lamps were beamed ahead of them, and they traced their fingers along the stone. But each returned without finding the rope.
"Thon of a bitch! Vhat happened?"
"I'd say that the other Ethicals found it and removed it," Burton said.
After some talk, they decided to spend the night at the base of the cliff. They ate vegetables which the grails had provided and dried fish and bread. They were already sick of their diet, but they didn't complain. At least, the liquor warmed them up. But that would be gone in a few days.
"I brought along a few bottleth of beer," Joe said. "Ve can have one last party vith them."
Burton grimaced. He disliked beer.
In the morning the two groups went out along the base again. Burton was with the one that went eastward or what he thought was that way. It was difficult to tell direction in this misty twilight. They came to the bottom of the huge cataract. There was no way for them to, get across to the other side.
When they got back, Burton spoke to Joe.
"Was the rope on the left or right side of The River?"
Joe, illumined in the beam of a lamp, said, "Thith thide."
"It seems to me that X might have left another rope on the right side. After all, he wouldn't know if his henchmen would come up the right or left side."
"Vell, it theemth to me that ve came up the left thide. But it'th been tho many yearth. Hell, I can't be thyure!"
The little big-nosed dark Moor, Nur el-Musafir, said, "Unless we can get to the other side – and it doesn't seem possible – the question is irrelevant. I went westward, and I think that I may be able to get up to the plateau."
After breakfast, the entire group walked five miles or so to the corner of the mountain and the cliff walls. These met at an approximately 36-degree angle as if they were the walls of a very badly built room. Nur tied a very slender rope around his waist.
"Joe says that it's about a thousand feet up to the plateau. That's his estimate based on his memory of its height, and at that time Joe didn't know the English system of measurement. It might be less than he remembers. Let's hope so."
"If you get too tired, come back down," Joe said. "I don't vant you to fall."
"Then stand back so I won't strike you," Nur said, smiling. "It would hurt my conscience if I hit you and both of us died. Though I think that you wouldn't be injured any more than if an eagle defecated on you."
"It vould hurt me a lot," Joe said. "Eagleth and their crap vere taboo to my people."
"Think of me as a sparrow."
Nur went to the angle and braced himself, his back against one wall and his feet against the other. He slowly worked his way up the angle, holding his feet against one wall, the left foot extended a few inches more than the right. When his footing was secure, he slid his back upward as far as he could before losing his bracing. Then he would slide one foot up until his knee was almost to his chin. Keeping the one foot against the wall, he would slowly work the other up. Then he would slide his back up, and repeat the same maneuvers.
It wasn't long before he disappeared into the fog. Those below could tell his progress by the rate at which the slim rope was pulled up. It was very slow.
Alice said, "He'll have to have tremendous endurance to get to the top. And if he doesn't find a place to tie his rope to so he can haul up another, he might as well come back down."
"Let's hope the cliff isn't that high," Aphra Behn said.
"Or that the corner doesn't widen out," Ah Qaaq said.
When Burton's wristwatch indicated that Nur had been up for twenty-eight minutes, they heard him shout.
"Good luck! There's a ledge here! Large enough for two people to stand on, if you don't count Joe! And there's a projection I can tie the rope to!"
Burton looked at the titanthrop.
"Evidently the cliff isn't glass smooth."
"Yeah. Vell, I mutht have gone up on the right thide of The River, Dick. That'th thmooth all the way up. At leatht, the part I vent up on vath ath thlick ath a cat'th athth."
The Ethicals hadn't bothered to make the cliff unscalable all the way. They'd made the lower part smooth but had left the upper part, invisible in the fog, in its original state.
Had X been responsible for that decision?
Had he also arranged it so that the corner here, and perhaps the corner across The River, was angled so that a small light person could use his back and legs to get up the angles?
It was very probable.
If he had done so, then he'd planned on arranging this angle before it had been formed. This was no natural formation. The Ethicals had designed and built these mountains with whatever vast machines they had used.
Nur called down for them to fasten a heavier rope to the end of the light one. They did so, and presently he called down that the second rope was secured.
Burton hauled h
imself up on it, bracing his feet against the cliff, his body extended almost at right angles to it. He was panting and his arms hurt by the time he reached the ledge. Nur, surprisingly strong for such a skinny little man, helped him get up onto the ledge.
Then they hauled up the backpacks.
Nur looked up through the fog.
"The face is rough," he said. "It looks like I could climb up on the projections if I used the pitons."
He removed a hammer and some pitons from the pack. The latter were steel wedges which he would drive into the surface of the rock wall. Some of them contained holes through which a rope could be passed.
Nur disappeared into the mists. Burton heard his hammer now and then. After a while, the Moor called down for Burton to come on up. Nur was on another ledge.
"Actually, the surface is so irregular that we might be able to climb just using our hands. But we won't!"
By then Alice had climbed the rope up to the projection on which Burton stood. Burton kissed her and went on up after Nur.
Ten hours later, the entire group sat on top of the cliff. After they'd recovered, they walked on looking for a place to shelter them from the wind. They found none until they had traversed at least three miles. Here they came, as Joe said they would, to the base of another cliff. To their left The River, some miles away now, roared as it hurtled over the lip of the falls.
Joe played the beam of his lamp along the rock.'
"Damme! If I did go up along the right side of The River, then ve're thcrewed. The tunnel ith on that thide, and ve can't get across The River!"
"If the Ethicals found X's rope and removed it, then they must have found the tunnel," Burton said.
They were too tired to search for the fissure which would be the gate to the tunnel. They walked along until they came to an overhang. Joe used some of his few remaining sticks to make a small fire, and they ate supper. The fire went out quickly. They piled heavy cloths on the rock floor and more over them and slept while The River thundered.
In the morning, while they were eating dried fish, pemmican, and bread, Nur said, "As Dick's pointed out, X wouldn't know which side his recruits would come up. So he must have left two ropes. Therefore, he must have made two tunnels. We should find one on this side."
Burton opened his mouth to say that that tunnel, if it existed, would also have been plugged. Nur held up his hand to forestall him.
"Yes, I know. But if the plug is thin, we can locate it, and we have the tools to dig through it."
One search party hadn't gone more than twenty feet from the camp when it found the plug. It was a few feet inside a fissure broad enough for even Joe to enter.
Great heat had been applied to melt the round plug into the surrounding quartz.
"Hot dog!" Joe said. "Thimmety tham! Maybe ve got a chanthe after all!"
"Perhaps," de Marbot said. "But what if the entire tunnel is plugged up?"
"Then we try the corner. If X was smart enough, he would've figured out that the tunnels might be found. So he would have arranged for a climbable angle here just as he did at the other place."
Burton scanned the face of the cliff while his lamp poked a bright hole through the fog. Ten feet from the base, the rock was wrinkled and fissured. But it abruptly became as smooth as a mirror from there to as far as he could see.
Joe swung his hammer against the plug. Burton, his ear close to the rock, said, "It's hollow!"
"Jutht great," Joe said. He removed several tungsten-steel alloy chisels from his backpack and began hammering. When he'd cut out enough of the quartz to make six holes, he and Burton inserted plastic explosive into them. Burton would have liked to daub clay over the plastic, but there wasn't any.
He stuck the ends of wires into the plastic and retreated along the face of the cliff, rolling out the wires. When the group was far enough away, he pressed one wire of his small battery against another. The explosions deafened them, and pieces of quartz flew out.
"Vell," Joe said, "at least my burden'll be lighter now. I von't have to carry thothe canth of plathtik and the battery anymore. That'th the end of them."
They went back into the fissure. Burton shot his light across it. The holes made by Joe had been enlarged. Several of them were big enough for him to see the tunnel beyond it.
He said, "We've got about twelve hours more work, Joe."
"Oh, thyit! Vell, here goeth nothing."
Shortly after breakfast, the titanthrop hacked out the last piece of rock, and the plug fell out.
"Now cometh the hard part," Joe said, wiping the sweat off his face and his grotesquely long nose.
. The tunnel was just large enough for Joe to crawl up it, but his shoulders would rub against the sides and his head against the ceiling unless he lowered it. It went at an approximately 45-degree angle upward.
"Wrap clothth around your kneeth and handth," Joe said. "Othervithe, you're going to rub them bloody. You'll probably do tho anyvay."
Frigate, Alice, Behn, and Croomes returned just then with canteens refilled at The River. Joe half-emptied his.
"Now," he said, "ve thyould vait avhile until everybody'th taken a good healthy thyit. Vhen I vath vith thothe Egyptianths, ve neglected that precauthyon. Halfvay up, I couldn't thtand it no longer, tho I emptied my bowelth."
He laughed thunderously.
"You thyould have heard thothe nothelethth little fellowth cuthth! They carried on thomething terrible. They vath hopping mad with no room to hop! Haw, haw!"
He wiped the tears from his eyes. "Jethuth! Did they thmell bad vhen they finally crawled out! Then they got even madder when they had to vath themthelveth off in The River. That vater'th ath cold ath a velldigger'th athth, ath Tham uthed to thay."
More tears flowed as he thought about Clemens. He snuffled, and he wiped off his proboscis on his sleeve.
Joe hadn't exaggerated the hardships. The tunnel was at least one mile long, every inch forward was an inch upward, and the air became increasingly thinner, though it howled through the shaft, and they had to drag their very heavy packs behind them. Moreover, for all they knew, the other end might have been plugged also. If it were, they would have to return to the base of the cliff.
Their joy at finding that the tunnel wasn't sealed renewed their strength for a while. However, the palms of their hands, their fingers, their knees, and their toes were skinned, bleeding, and hurting. They were unable to walk steadily for some time.
The wind was stronger and colder here despite its thinness. Joe sucked the oxygen-scarce air into his great lungs.
"Vone good thing about it. Ve only need one drink, and ve're loaded out of our thkullth."
They would have liked to make camp there, but the place was too exposed.
"Cheer up," Burton said. "Joe says that it's only .a ten-mile walk to the next cataract."
"The latht vone, the biggetht. You think the otherth vere noithy. Vait until you hear thith vone."
Burton strapped on his pack and staggered on, his knees feeling as if they'd rusted. Joe came close behind him. Fortunately, the tableland was comparatively level and free of rock rubble. However, Burton had only the tremendous thunder of the falls to guide him through the fog. When the sound became stronger, he veered back to the left. When it was weaker, he went back to the right. Nevertheless, he was probably making a fifteen-mile hike out of a ten-miler.
All had to stop often because of the lack of oxygen and to make sure that no one straggled. Every fourth person in the line kept his lamp on until Burton stopped and swore.
"Vhat'th the matter?"
"We're not thinking straight in this air," Burton said, gasping. "We only need one light. We're wasting electricity. We can use a rope for all to hang onto."
With the line tied around his waist and the others grasping it, they went on into the cold grayness.
But after a while they were too weak to go a step more. Despite the wind, they lay down on and under cloths and tried to sleep. Burton awoke from a nightmare a
nd turned his light on his watch. They'd been here ten hours.
He got them up, and they ate more than the rationing schedule allowed for. An hour later, the blackish face of a rock wall loomed out of the mists. They were at the foot of another obstacle.
42
* * *
Joe Miller hadn't complained much though he had groaned softly for the last half of the hike. He was ten feet tall and weighed eight hundred pounds and was as strong as any ten of Homo sapiens put together. But his giantism had disadvantages. One was that he suffered from fallen arches. Sam often called him the Great Flatfoot, and with very good reason. It hurt Joe to walk much, and when he was resting his feet still often hurt.
"Tham alvayth thaid that if it hadn't been for our feet, ve vould've conquered the world," Joe said. He was rubbing his right foot. "He claimed that it vath our broken-down dogth that made uth ekthinct. He may have been right."
It was obvious that the titanthrop needed at least two days of rest and therapy. While Burton and Nur, amateur but efficient podiatrists, worked on Joe, the others went out in two parties. They came back several hours later.
Tai-Peng, the leader of one, said, "I couldn't find the place Joe told us about."
Ah Qaaq, the other leader, said, "We found it. At least, it looks as if we could climb up there. It's very near the falls, though."
"In fact, it's so close," Alice said, "that it can't be seen until you're almost on it. It'll be dreadfully dangerous though. Very slippery with the spray.
Joe groaned, and said, "Now I remember! It vath the right thide that ve vent up on. The Egyptianth vent on it becauthe the left vath unlucky. Thith path mutht be one Ekth plathed here in cathe . . ."