A For Anything

13

Dick pressed his back against the leads to keep from falling. His knees had turned to water; he was breathing in great gulps that hurt his chest, and the rooftop world was swinging slowly, nauseously around him.

When it steadied, he looked out across a desolate sea of roofs -- angular, flat, sharp-peaked, blunt, set at all angles; here a church-like spire, there two twin minarets, yonder a flattened dome. In all that expanse, not a warm light showed; even the glow at the top of the Tower had gone out. He was alone.

Now he understood what Keel had hoped to do at the end of this journey -- reach that balcony and disappear through the door behind it, to leave him here on the ledge, afraid to make the jump and unable to get back the way he had come. It would have worked; it had worked ... Dick turned his eyes away from the balcony. Whatever happened, even if he died here of cold and exposure, he knew he could never bring himself to jump.

What other choice did he have? The roof was sheer at his back, impossible to climb. That left the three sides of the ledge itself, and kneeling down cautiously, hating himself for the effort it took, he peered over each of them in turn. On the right, there was sheer masonry, unornatnented; not a fly could get down that wall. Straight ahead, letting his head hang over, he could just make out the dim gleam of some ornamental stonework a dozen feet down; below that, nothing that offered any hope, and even that far it would be impossible to descend without climbing tackle.

On the left, the building abutted the gable-end of a somewhat lower roof, set back ten feet or so. The next building was of the same height and had a pyramidal roof; then there seemed to be a gap. Both roofs had stout gutters, and it looked to Dick as if he could make his way around that pyramidal roof on either side toward the east. It would be something, a beginning -- if only he could get from the ledge to the first roof.

But the wall on this side was as sheer as the other; only a faint continuation of the front wall's ornamental ridge -- a mere toe-hold, and that too far down to be of any use. No, Keel had known what he was doing; there was only one way to get to this ledge, and only one way to get off it. He was trapped.

He stood erect, looking and listening. Nothing had changed; there was no movement and no sound, except the faint, far-off singing of the wind. He forced himself to turn slowly, inspecting with minutest care every visible wall and roof: there might be some small thing he had missed that would save him. But everything was the same as before; every window was shuttered and barred.

Now that he was standing still, the cold numbed his body. He realized suddenly that this was the beginning of his death.

At that thought, his heart began hammering again; life ran thickly at his throat, impossible to deny. He dropped down on his knees again at the left side of the ledge, staring at the distant roofs and then at the blank wall below him -- concentrating fiercely, as if by an effort of will he could create a way across.

Moonlight was slanting down the wall, picking out every tiny irregularity. The more he stared, the more it seemed to him that some of those dark spots were actually pits in the masonry. There was a cluster of them directly below, and then a few more at random intervals to the left. About halfway to the next roof, a shallow groove began; if he could reach that, with his toes on the narrow ridge -- It began to seem remotely possible; but that first five feet of wall, with emptiness yawning under it: that was a horror.

The moonlight was deceptive; it was impossible to tell how deep the pits might be. The darkest ones were out of reach; Dick leaned over and probed the nearer ones with his fingertips, but found them disconcertingly shallow, mere hollows in the stonework.

Sitting with his legs crossed on the cold ledge, he stripped off his gloves -- another reminder of Keel -- and then, after a moment's hesitation, his boots and socks as well. The boots were too unwieldy to carry, but he would need them again if he managed the crossing, whereas if he didn't -- He slung them one at a time across to the adjoining roof, where they slid to the gutter with an unpleasant slithering rattle.

He knelt, then lay down with his legs dangling over. It was easy enough to find the crannies with his bare toes, although they already ached with cold; it was harder to let himself down with his weight on his forearms, searching for lower toe-holds; then the moment came when he was clinging by toes and fingertips, and could get no farther down without releasing the top of the wall: and that was impossible.

Somehow he did it, with one hand and then the other. Gripping with fingers and toes, he pressed himself to the wall. Once, when he took one hand away to hunt for another hold, the fingers of his other hand began to slip. A cold dizziness took him; he clawed for the same hold again, found it and hung panting, while the salt sweat stung his eyes.

After a time he gathered up courage to try it again, and this time succeeded. Now his toes were on the masonry ridge, and the worst was over. In a few cautious steps he reached the groove at chest level. When the groove ended, the roof was tantalizingly close. He inched toward it, straining as far as he could from his last hold, then jumped. He landed flat on his chest, knee and one hand in the gutter.

It would have been pleasant just to lie there, with the roof solid under him. But he still had a long way to go. He found his arms and legs astonishingly weak, but contrived to get his boots back on, and climb to the ridge of the roof.

The pyramidal roof was set as a corner-piece between two gable roofs forming an L; it was too steep to climb safely, but it gave him only one nasty moment as he swung across the corner from one gutter to the next.

From the ridge of the third roof, far down, glimmering distantly, he saw a glow of yellow light.

It was a glass-roofed courtyard, and the light came from a row of antique city street lamps that lined the ornamental pathway, three levels down. Dick knew the place well; Vivian's suite overlooked it at the Back, and he even thought he could tell which was her bedroom window.

He had been over an hour reaching the spot across the roofs; he was tired and half frozen, and there was no more sensation in his fingers. He had fallen, coming down the lightning rod to the sunken glass roof, and bruised his shoulder; now he crouched on the glass, feeling the warmth from below while his breath steamed around his head. There was a maintenance door in the corner of the roof; from here he could see the ladder and the little platform that led up to it; but it was locked.

The lights, down under the glass, seemed to swell and contract as he looked at them. His head was clear, but everything he saw had an unreal vividness and beauty: the lamps, the flagstones glittering, the very stones of the facade held him with their unusual shapes and textures. He could see each leaf of the plane tree to his right, silhouetted, yellow-green intermingling with a mystery of darkness.

He was out of the wind here, and the slow warmth from the glass relaxed his limbs. He had no desire to be elsewhere, or even to get up from his knees; his body seemed almost to belong to someone else.

A vague idea came to him that he ought to make an effort now, while he still could. He got one foot up and stamped with it half-heartedly on the glass pane. He stamped harder: the outer pane broke, and a rush of warm air came up around his ankle.

He stepped down with both feet, pushing the slabs and splinters of glass aside. He stamped, with one foot at a time and then, holding onto the framework, with both. The inner pane cracked; he felt himself falling, and clutched hard at the framework. There was a wrench at his shoulders, then the balcony of the topmost window was coming up to meet him. He fell, and lay where he fell, looking up incuriously as a dim light came on inside.

Someone came to the windows and opened them; he saw eyes staring and heard exclamations. Then he had the notion that he was being carried, and some time afterward, looked up to see Vivian Demetriou bending over him, her dark eyes depthless in the lamplight.

It was a different bed, and a different room, but the impression was very strong that he was back in that bedroom after his fight with Ruell; he had a curious feeling that Clay had been here only a moment ago, but he was certainly not here now; there was no one in the room but Vivian and a servant girl moving quietly at the sideboard. She came across with a tray now, and Vivian took the ruby wineglass from it, dismissing her with a turn of the head.

With a rustle, Vivian moved to the bed beside him and leaned over to raise his head. She held the glass to his lips: it was tawny port, rich and warming on the tongue. His head rested in the curve of her arm; he could smell her scent, dry and fresh, like sandalwood.

"Was it a walk on the roofs?" she asked softly.

He closed his eyes briefly in assent.

"It must have been terrible," she said in the same drowsy half-whisper. Her brown satin negligee was open loosely down the front, lace-edged, and in the opening there was a shadowed gleam of flesh that moved liquidly when she moved. The rim of the glass touched his lower lip again; he shook his head.

She set the glass down behind her and let his head fall gently back to the pillow. "And the other man? ... Was he killed?"

He nodded, conscious of the warm curve of her side that pressed against him as she breathed. His lips were sweet and sticky with the wine.

Slowly she leaned nearer; slowly and deliberately her mouth descended on his.