Sos the Rope

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

When he woke again, he suspected that it had been a fantasy, like the oddities visible on the silent television, except that his bracelet was gone and his left wrist was pale where it had rested. This time he was gone, in another squared-off cabin, and feeling fit. Somehow he had been taken from the mountain and revived and left here, while his little friend Stupid had died. He could not guess the reason.

He got up and dressed, finding his clothing clean and whole, beside the bunk. If this were death, he thought, it was not unlike life. But that was foolishness; this was not death.

No food had been stocked, and there were no weapons upon the rack. As a matter of fact, the rack itself was absent. Sos opened the door, hoping to see familiar forest or landscape or even the base of the mountain-and found only a blank wall similar to the one he had traveled down in the vision. No vision after all, but reality.

"I'll be right with you, Sos." It was the voice of the little girl-the tiny woman who had teased him and outmaneuvered him and finally struck him down. His throat still ached, now that he thought of it, though not obtrusively. He looked at his bare wrist again.

Well, she had claimed to know what the bracelet meant. She trotted down the hail, as small as ever, wearing a more shapely smock and smiling. Her hair, now visible, was brown and curly, and it contributed considerably to her femininity. The bracelet on her arm glittered; evidently she had polished it to make the gold return to life. He saw that it reached all the way around her wrist and over lapped slightly, while the mark it left on his own wrist left a good quarter of the circle open. Had this tiny creature actually prevailed over him?

"Feeling better, Sos?" she inquired solicitously. "I know we gave you a rough time yesterday, but the doc says a period of exercise is best to saturate the system. So I saw that you got it."

He looked uncomprehendingly at her.

"Oh, that's right-you don't understand about our world yet:" She smiled engagingly and took his arm. "You see, you were almost frozen in the snow, and we had to bring you around before permanent damage was done. Sometimes a full recovery takes weeks, but you were so healthy we gave you the energizer immediately. It's some kind of drug-I don't know much about these things-it scours out the system somehow and removes the damaged tissue. But it has to reach everywhere, the fingers and toes and things-well, I don't really understand it. But some good, strenuous calisthenics circulate it nicely. Then you sleep and the next thing you know you're better."

"I don't remember-"

"I put you to sleep, Sos. After I kissed you. It's just a matter of touching the right pressure points. I can show you, if-"

He declined hastily. She must have gotten him to the cabin room, too-or more likely had a man haul him there. Had she also undressed him and cleaned his clothing, as Sola had done so long ago? The similarities were disturbing.

"It's all right, Sos. I have your bracelet, remember? I didn't stay with you last night because I knew you'd be out for the duration, but I'll be with you from now on." She hesitated. "Unless you changed your mind?"

She was so little, more like a doll than a woman. Her concern was quite touching, but it was hard to know what to say. She was hardly half his weight. What could she know of the way of men and women?

"Oh, is that so!" she exclaimed, flashing, though he had not spoken. "Well, let's go back to your room right now and I'll show you I don't just climb ladders!"

He smiled at her vehemence. "No, keep it. I guess you know what you're doing." And he guessed he liked being chased, too.

She had guided him through right-angled corridors illuminated by overhead tubes of incandescence and on to another large room. These seemed to be no end to this odd enclosed world. He had yet to see honest daylight since coming here. "This is our cafeteria. We're just in time for mess.

There was a long counter with plates of food set upon it-thin slices of bacon, steaming oatmeal, poached eggs, sausage, toasted bread and other items he did, not recognize. Farther down he saw cups of fruit juice, milk and hot drinks, as well as assorted jellies and spreads. It was as though someone had emptied the entire larder of a hostel and spread it out for a single feast. There was more than anyone could eat.

"Silly. You just take anything you want and put it on your tray," she said. "Here." She lifted a plastic tray from a stack at the end and handed it to him. She took one herself and preceded him down the aisle, selecting plates as she moved. He followed, taking one of each.

He ran out of tray space long before the end of the counter. "Here," she said, unconcerned. "Put some on mine."

The terminus opened into an extended dining area, square tables draped with overlapping white cloths. People were seated at several, finishing their meals. Both men and women wore coveralls and smocks similar to what he had seen already, making him feel out of place though he was normally dressed. Sosa led him to a vacant table and set the array of food and beverage upon it.

"I could introduce you to everyone, but we like to keep meals more or less private. If you want company you leave the other chairs open; if you want to be left alone, tilt them up, like this." She leaned the two unused chairs forward against the sides of the table. "No one will bother us."

She viewed his array. "One thing, Sos-we don't waste anything. You eat everything you take."

He nodded. He was ravenous.

"We call this the underworld," she said as he ate, "but we don't consider ourselves criminals," She paused, but he didn't understand the allusion. "Anyway, we're all dead here. I mean, we all would have been dead if we hadn't- well, the same way you came. Climbing the mountain. I came last year. Just about every week there's someone- someone who makes it. Who doesn't turn back. So our population stays pretty steady."

Sos looked up over a mouthful. "Some turn back?"

"Most do. They get tired, or they change their minds, or something, and they go down again."

"But no one ever returns from the mountain!"

"That's right," she said uncomfortably.

He didn't press the matter, though he filed it away for future investigation.

"So we're really dead, because none of us will ever be seen in the world again. But we aren't idle. We work very hard, all of us. As soon as we're finished eating, I'll show you."

She did. She took him on a tour of the kitchen, where sweaty cooks worked full time preparing the plates of food and helpers ran the soiled dishes and trays through a puffing cleaning machine. She showed him the offices where accounts were kept. He did not grasp the purpose of such figuring, except that it was essential in some way to keep mining, manufacturing and exporting in balance. This made sense; he remembered the computations he had had to perform when training Sol's warriors, and this underworld was a far more complex community.

She took him to the observation deck, where men watched television screens and listened to odd sounds. The pictures were not those of the ordinary sets in the cabins, however, and this attracted his immediate interest.

"This is Sos," she said to the man in charge. "He arrived forty-eight hours ago. I took him in charge."

"Sure-Sosa," the man replied, glancing at -the bracelet.

He shook Sos's hand. "I'm Tom. Glad to know you. Matter of fact, I recognize you. I brought you in. You certainly gave it a try!"

"Brought me in?" There was something strange and not altogether likeable about this man- with the unusual name, despite his easy courtesy.

"I'll show you." Tom walked over to one of the screens that was blank. "This is a closed-circuit teevee covering the east slope of Helicon, down below the snowline." He turned it on, and Sos recognized the jumbled terrain he had navigated with the help of his rope. He had never seen a real picture on the television before-that is, one that applied to the present world, he corrected himself, and it fascinated

"Helicon-the mountain?" he asked, straining to remember where he had read of something by that name. "The home of. . . the muses?"

Tom faced him, and again there was a strangeness in his pale eyes. "Now how would you know that? Yes-since we remember the things of the old world here, we named it after-" He caught a signal from one of the others and turned quickly to the set. "There's one coming down now. Here, I'll switch to him."

That reminded Sos. "The ones that come down-where do they go?" He saw that Sosa had withdrawn from their conversation and was now showing off her bracelet to the other workers.

"I'm afraid you're about to find out, though you may not like it much," Tom said, watching him with a peculiar eagerness. Sos was careful not to react; these people obviously did not contest in the circle, but had their methods of trial. He was about to be subjected to something unpleasant.

Tom found his picture and brought the individual into focus. It was a middle-aged staffer, somewhat flabby. "He probably lost his woman to a younger warrior and decided to make the big -play," Tom remarked without sympathy. "A lot are like that. There's something about a broken romance that sends a man to the mountain." Sos's stomach tightened, but the man wasn't looking at hint. "This one ascended to the snowline, then turned about when his feet got cold. Unless he changes his mind again pretty soon-"

"They do that?"

"Oh yes. Some waver half a dozen times. The thing is, the mountain is real. Death looks honorable from a distance, but the height and snow make it a matter of determination. Unless a man is really serious about dying, that climb will make him reconsider. He wonders whether things back home are quite so bad as he thought, whether he couldn't return and try again. If he's weak, he vacillates, and of course we don't want the quitters. It's natural selection, really, not that that would mean anything to you."

Sos refused to be drawn out by the condescending tone and assumptions of ignorance. It occurred to him that his general knowledge could be a hidden asset, in case things got ugly here.

"A man who carries his conviction all the way to the end is a man worth saving," Tom continued as the picture, evidently controlled by the motions of his fingers on the knobs, followed the staffer unerringly. "We want to be sure that he really has renounced life, and won't try to run back at the first opportunity. The ordeal of the mountain makes it clear. You were a good example-you charged right on up and never hesitated at all. You and that bird-too bad we couldn't save it, but it wouldn't have been happy here anyway. We saw you try to scare it away, and then it froze. I thought for a moment you were going to turn back then, but you didn't. Just as well, I liked your looks."

So all the agonies of his private demise had been observed by this cynical voyeur? Sos maintained the slightly stupid expression he had adopted since becoming suspicious, and watched the staffer pick his way along the upper margin of the projecting metal beams. There would be some later occasion, perhaps, to repay this mockery.

"How did you-fetch me?"

"Put on a snowsuit and dragged you into the nearest hatch. Took three of us to haul the harness. You're a bull of a man, you know. After that-well, I guess you're already familiar with the revival procedure. We had to wait until you were all the way under; sometimes people make a last-minute effort to start down again. We don't bring them in if they're facing the wrong way, even if they freeze to death. It's the intent that counts. You know, you almost made it-to the top. That's quite something, for an inexperienced climber."

"How did you know I wouldn't kill myself when I woke up?"

"Well, we can never be sure. But generally speaking, a person doesn't choose the mountain if he's the suicidal type. That sounds funny, I know, but it's the case. Anyone can kill himself, but only the mountain offers complete and official oblivion. When you ascend Helicon, you never come back. There is no news and no body. It's as though you have entered another world-perhaps a better one. You're not giving up, you're making an honorable departure. At least, that's the way I see it. The coward kills himself; the brave or devout man takes the mountain."

Much of this made sense to Sos, but he didn't care to admit it yet. "But you said some turn back."

"Most turn back.- They're the ones who are doing it for bravado, or as a play for pity, or just plain foolishness. We don't need that kind here."

"What about that staffer out there now? If you don't take him in, where will he go?"

Tom frowned. "Yes, I'm afraid he really means to give up." He raised his voice. "Bill, you agree?"

"'Fraid so," the- man addressed called back. "Better finish it; there's another at the base. No sense having him see it."

"This is not a pleasant business," Tom said, licking his lips with an anticipation that seemed to be, if not pleasure, a reasonable facsimile. "But you can't maintain a legend on nothing. So-" He activated another panel, and wavy crosshairs appeared on the screen. As he adjusted the dials the cross moved to center on the body of the staffer. He pulled a red handle.

A column of fire shot out from somewhere offscreen and engulfed the man. Sos jumped, but realized -that he could do nothing. For a full minute the terrible blaze seared on the screen; then Tom lifted the handle and it stopped.

A blackened mound of material was all that remained.

"Flamethrower," Tom explained pleasantly.

Sos had seen death before, but this appalled him. The killing had been contrary to all his notions of honor; no warning, no circle, no sorrow. "You mean-if I had?-?"

Tom faced him, the light from the screen reflecting from the whites of his eyes in miniature skull-shapes. This was the question he had been waiting for. "Yes."

Sosa was tugging at his arm. "That's enough," she said. "Come on, Sos. We had to show you. It isn't all bad."

"What if I decide to leave this place?" he demanded, sickened by such calculated murder.

She pulled him on. "Don't talk like that. Please."

So that was the way it stood, he thought. They had not been joking when they named this the land of the dead. Some were dead figuratively, and some dead inside. But what had he expected when he ventured upon the mountain? Life and pleasure?

"Where are the women?" he inquired as they traveled the long passages.

"There aren't many. The mountain is not a woman's way. The few we have are-shared."

"Then why did you take my bracelet?"

She increased her pace. "I'll tell you, Sos, really I will, but not right now, all right?"

They entered a monstrous workshop. Sos bad been impressed by the crazies' "shop," but this dwarfed it as the underworld complex dwarfed an isolated hostel. Men were laboring with machines in long lines, stamping and shaping metal objects. "Why," he exclaimed, "those are weapons!"

"Well, someone has to make them, I suppose. Where did you think they came from?

"The crazies always-"

"The truth is we mine some metals and salvage some, and turn out the implements. The crazies distribute them and send us much of our food in return. I thought you understood about that when I showed you the accounting section. We also exchange information. They're what you call the service part of the economy, and we're the manufacturing part. The nomads are the consumers. It's all very nicely balanced, you see."

"But why?" It was the same question he had asked at the school.

"That's something each person has to work out for himself."

And the same answer. "You sound like Jones."

"Jones?"

"My crazy instructor. He taught me how to read."

She halted, surprised. "Sos! You can read?"

"I was always curious about things." He hadn't meant to reveal his literacy. Still, he could hardly have concealed it indefinitely.

"Would you show me how? We have so many books here-"

"It isn't that simple. It takes years to learn."

"We have years, Sos. Come, I want to start right away." She fairly dragged him in a new direction, despite the disparity in their sizes. She had delightful energy.

It was easy to recognize the library. In many respects the underworld resembled the crazies' building. "Jim, this is Sos. He can read!"

The spectacled man jumped up, smiling. "Marvelous!" He looked Sos up and down, then, a trifle dubiously. "You look more like a warrior than a scholar. No offense."

"Can't a warrior read?"

Jim fetched a book. "A formality, Sos-but would you read from this? Just a sample passage, please."

Sos took the volume and opened it at random. "BRUTUS: Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius, To cut the head off and then to hack the limbs, Like wrath in death and envy afterwards; for Anthony is but a limb of Caesar; Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius. We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar; And in the spirit of men there is no blood; Oh! that we then-"

"Enough! Enough!" Jim cried. "You can read, you can read, you certainly can. Have you been assigned yet? We must have you in the library! There is so much to-"

"You can give classes in reading," Sosa added excitedly. "We all want to learn, but so few know how-"

"I'll call Bob immediately. What a discovery!" The librarian fumbled for the intercom on his desk.

"Let's get out of here," Sos said, embarrassed by the commotion. He had always considered reading a private pursuit, except in the school, and found this eagerness upsetting.

It was a long day in the perpetual artificiality of the underworld, and he was glad to retire at the end of it. He was hardly certain he wanted to spend the rest of his life under the mountain, extraordinary as this world might be.

"But it really isn't a bad life, Sos," she said. "You get used to it-and the things we do are really important. We're the manufacturers for the continent; we make all the weapons, all the basic furnishings for the hostels, the prefabricated walls and floors, the appliances and electronic equipment-"

"Why did you take my bracelet?"

The question brought her up short. "Well, as I said, there aren't many women here. They have it scheduled so that each man has a night with someone each week. It isn't quite like a full-time relationship, but on the other hand there is variety. It works out pretty well."

The game of traveling bracelets. Yes, he could imagine how certain people would enjoy that, though he had noticed that most men did not use the golden signals here. "Why am I excluded?"

"Well you can, if you want. I thought-"

"I'm not objecting, girl. I just want to know why. Why do I rate a full-time partner when there aren't enough to go around?"

Her lip trembled, "Do-do you want it back?" She touched the bracelet.

He grabbed her, unresisting, and pressed her down upon the bunk. She met his kiss eagerly. "No I don't want it back. I-oh, get that smock off, then!" What use to demand reason of a woman?

She divested herself of her clothing, all of it, with alacrity. Then, womanlike, she seemed to change her mind. "Sos-"

He had expected something like this. "Go ahead."

"I'm barren."

He watched her silently.

"I tried-many bracelets. Finally I had the crazies check me. I can never have a baby of my own, Sos. That's why I came to the mountain . . . but babies are even more important here. So-"

"So you went after the first man they hauled off the mountain."

"Oh, no, Sos. I took my turn on the list. But when there isn't any love or any chance for-well, some complained I was unresponsive, and there really didn't seem to be much point in it. So Bob put me on the revival crew, where I could meet new people. The one who is on duty when someone is brought in is, well, responsible. To explain everything and make him feel at home and get him suitably situated. You know. You're the nineteenth person I've handled-seventeen men and two women. Some of them were old, or bitter. You're the first I really-that sounds even worse, doesn't it!"

Young, strong, pliable: the answer to a lonely woman's dreams, he thought. Yet why not? He had no inclination to embrace assorted women in weekly servicings. Better to stick to one, one who might understand if his heart were elsewhere.

"Suppose I happen to want a child of my own?"

"Then you-take back your bracelet."

He studied her, sitting beside him, halfway hiding behind the balled smock as though afraid to expose herself while the relationship was in doubt. She was very small and very woman-shaped. He thought about what it meant to be denied a child, and began to understand as he had not understood before what had driven Sol.

"I came to the mountain because I could not have the woman I loved," he said. "I know all that is gone, now but my heart doesn't. I can offer you only-friendship."

"Then give me that," she said, dropping the smock.

He took her into the bed with him, holding her as carefully as he had held Stupid, afraid of crushing her. He held her passively at first, thinking that that would be the extent of it. He was wrong.

But it was Sola his mind embraced.