Paradox (19 page)

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DEEPER AND DEEPER INTO THE RUIN
Annja dragged Levi, as fast as she dared. And then a bit faster. She had
cracked a light stick of her own. He followed compliantly.
"Why are we going this way?" he asked mildly, stumbling over rubble.
"If we go out the front door we'll run straight into the guys with the
guns," she said. "I'm hoping there's another way out."
"And if there's not?"
Her cheeks drew back toward her ears, baring teeth in an expression that was
nothing like a smile. "We find a place to hide and try to ambush them.
Play it by ear. Unless you can think of something better on real short
notice."
"Oh, no, Annja. You'll find the best way. You always do. I have faith in
you."
He glanced back to the great chamber. "Look, the light's fading again in
there. Maybe the gods really are arm-wrestling over our fate." He grinned
dreamily at the thought.
"Whatever," she said. "I prefer to think my fate's in my own
hands."
"Couldn't find better ones," Levi said with complacent confidence
that half annoyed her and half made her despair.
His belief in me is like a child's in its parent, she thought. How can I let
him down? But—how will I not?
She heard voices calling from behind, echoing with deceptive gentleness through
the cathedral spaces of the Anomaly. The Young Wolves were on their trail. The
pack was giving chase.
The way narrowed around them. Annja grimaced. Their enemies had guns; they had
no need to close in and face the final surprise of her sword. I might've just
robbed us of room to dodge, she realized.
But the passage, illuminated by her light stick's eerie green glow, turned
abruptly left. That was, to the landward side, toward the unseen summit of
Ararat. Bending low and turning sideways was the only way to follow. Annja had
to let go of Levi's wrist to do so. But he was moving on his own quite well
now.
And then she stopped. Before her was a curve of dark wall. Whether stone, or
wood somehow fossilized, or simply preserved somehow, improbably, by pitch,
didn't matter. It was solid. Impassable.
Then Levi said, "Wait. There's a cleft here. See?"
He stepped out of view. "I'm out, Annja," she heard him call softly.
"This way. It's clear."
"Hey!" A triumphant shout came from too close behind. "This
way!"
She spun. "Annja," Levi whispered from outside. "Come on."
But she couldn't just follow him. Their pursuit would follow them quickly
enough. And they couldn't outrun bullets. She had to teach the Young Wolves
caution.
She had to teach them to fear what they thought was their helpless prey.
As quickly as she dared for fear of turning an ankle, which would be quickly
fatal, she moved back toward the bend in the narrowing passage. She heard boots
crunch and heavy breathing.
And then suddenly a pursuer appeared. It was one of the twins. His hood had
fallen back and he'd lost his goggles. His fair, clean-cut face was flushed,
the blue eyes wide with pure predatory lust. Only the red band around his
forehead identified him as Zeb.
The delight on those handsome youthful features when he saw her struck her as
almost demonic. "Well, what have we got here?" he said, his condensed
breath wreathing his face like smoke.
His eyes widened as he saw the slender tongue of steel dart toward his chest.
He tried to aim his pistol. But he'd gotten sloppy, forgotten the lessons Leif
Baron had almost certainly taught him. Instead of holding the weapon muzzle up,
ready to snap down onto target at a millisecond's notice, he'd let it fall by
his side as he used both hands to help keep himself clear of the narrowing
walls.
The sword hit him in the sternum and bit deep. The blade slipped effortlessly
between ribs to skewer his heart. His blue eyes went wide, more from final
surprise than fear.
The force of her side kick drove him literally off the blade. As soon as it
slipped clear in a sudden spray of blood she opened her hand. The sword
returned to the otherwhere, where it awaited her will.
Zeb Higgins bounced off the wall behind him. With a loud groan he toppled
sideways out of sight. His companions cried out in surprise and alarm.
Damn, Annja thought. I wanted that pistol. It was lost to her now. She bolted
for the open air. For a moment she stuck in the gap. It felt as if cold, hard
jaws had closed to trap her. She fought the panic that yammered in her brain,
emptied her lungs and slid out into the blessed icy air and milky light of
freedom.
Levi caught her arm to help her as she emerged. Then he pointed.
"Look!"
As she suspected they were near the end of the Anomaly, away from where they
had come up onto the glacier—the southwest, she remembered. From the ice sheet
below them Robyn Wilfork stood beckoning them urgently with his arm.

"Come on, then,"
Wilfork insisted. "We've precious little time."
Annja looked at Levi, who stood placidly in the snow to his boot tops, waiting
for her. He shrugged.
"Hurry," Wilfork urged. He turned and lumbered away through the fat,
swirling flakes.
Through narrowed eyes, Annja watched him go.
"Do we have any other options?" Levi asked.
They didn't so they followed the journalist around the end of the Anomaly to
the cliff. The wind had picked up and the temperature had dropped. The cold
stabbed at Annja's cheeks like knives. The snowfall thickened. Wind spiraled
the dense flakes around them. They reminded Annja uncomfortably of water swirling
down a drain.
Next to a sheer drop Wilfork stopped. A rope hung over the edge, belayed with
special anchors called pickets designed for use in ice—basically long, thin
pieces of aluminum angled lengthwise at ninety degrees with one side drilled with
holes. Another line lay in a blue-and-white coil beside the picket.
"It's all I could do," Wilfork said. "They've all gone totally
berserkers. Like a hornet's nest somebody tried to use for a bloody
football."
Annja gritted her teeth and frowned. Without their packs they'd be limited to
what they carried on their persons. It could be a fatal mistake. What other
choice do we have? she thought.
"What's going on?" Levi asked.
"Isn't it obvious?" Wilfork said. "They're going to kill you to
keep their secret. Your only hope of escape is to get down the mountain.
There's no more time. No time to secure yourselves en route. You have to rappel
as far down as you can before the secured line plays out."
"Okay," Annja said. "Levi, do you know how to rappel?"
"Oh, yes. It's easy enough even I can do it. Mr. Baron taught me after Mr.
Bostitch hired me. 'Bringing me onboard,' they called it."
"Good. You go first. I'll follow. Move as fast as you can. Find a good
place to stand before the rope plays out and wait for me to join you,"
Annja said.
Levi swallowed hard, but he pulled his goggles down and his hood up and grabbed
the rope with pale bare hands. Annja felt a pang. He'd left his gloves inside
the Anomaly.
But he disappeared rapidly over the edge. The snow seemed to swallow him.
Hoisting the rope coil over her shoulder Annja seized the anchored line and
swung herself over the edge. She hoped the bulky journalist would have sense to
go somewhere else in a hurry now that she and the rabbi had taken advantage of
the literal lifeline he'd given them. Standing there by the sheer ice-faced
drop he was conspicuous; he might as well have been a sign announcing that
something was happening here.
"Don't worry about me, Levi," she said over her shoulder. She was
relieved to see the lanky form of the rabbi swinging away from the cliff face
and sliding down, using his descenders properly. He may not have been the most
coordinated man on Earth, but rappelling isn't really all that demanding,
either. Annja thought maybe he really could do it.
"I won't kick you in the head," she assured him. "I—"
A
tink
sound suddenly came from above. The sheer ice wall vibrated
against the gloved hand holding the rope as she attempted to snap a carabiner
attached to her own harness by a quickdraw onto the line.
She frowned, totally failing to comprehend what caused the noise. Then a second
ringing note of metal on something hard sent a spear as cold as the heart of
the glacier right through her belly.
She looked up. She could see part of Robyn Wilfork's face, beet-red beneath his
headband. His right hand was upraised with an ice ax clutched in it.
"Robyn!" she said. "What are you doing?"
He slammed the ice ax down. This time the rope vibrated alarmingly in her grip.
"It should be obvious," he grunted. "I'm cutting the bloody
rope."
"Why?" Annja exclaimed.
"To earn a hearty reward, I hope." He swung again. By the way he
cursed he missed the rope cleanly, although Annja felt it vibrate again anyway.
He was clumsy to start with. With the wind, its whistle turning to a moaning
roar, coming up, the snow attacked his eyes like cold soft bees. Bulky mittens
made his hands even less dexterous than usual. Chill and fatigue seemed to be
combining with weight and age to drag on him.
And none of it could buy Annja and the rabbi more than a few seconds of
additional life….
"Levi," Annja called down desperately. "Grab rock and hang
on!" She knew it wasn't much of a chance. If Wilfork severed the rope her
weight would peel him off the wall anyway.
Scrambling frantically upward, she called, "How can you do this to
us?"
"I've lost my faith," he said. "In everything except money,
anyway. Ah." The last was a sound of satisfaction. The rope jerked
violently. Evidently he'd managed to cut partway through it.
"But you're a rationalist!" she said.
"I found the bloody boat, didn't I?" he screamed, bringing the ax
down in fury.
A mighty clang rang out, dulled oddly by the closing clouds, but still potent.
As Annja began her fall she saw the chopped-off rope end slither over the edge
after her.
Hearing her despairing scream, Wilfork turned away and vanished from her view.
Apparently he couldn't bear to see his handiwork. He didn't want to watch as a
helpless woman and man fell a thousand sheer feet to be smashed on the volcanic
rocks of Ararat.
But Annja wasn't falling. The rope hung limp from her harness. Beneath her Levi
hung like a terrified baby lemur to its mother's white-furred belly.
Both her hands were clamped hard on the hilt of the sword. The instant she felt
the rope start to go she'd summoned it and jammed it to half the three-foot
length of its blade in ice and rock. Once again the mysterious blade had saved
her.
She had screamed purely for effect. To deceive their treacherous foe.
It worked—at least partially. Wilfork suddenly reappeared on the rim.
Ever-cautious, the lapsed communist had decided to make sure of his prey—and of
his reward from the master of the wolf pack, which Annja could now hear baying
closer in the storm. In trembling mittened hands Wilfork held a large rock over
his own head, apparently to make sure of Rabbi Leibowitz's death if he'd
somehow avoided being taken to his doom by Annja's fall.
Finding a foothold Annja released the sword's hilt. It vanished instantly. Like
an angry monkey she swarmed up the ice wall. A natural athlete who kept herself
fit with the fanatical intensity of the Young Wolves, her hands and feet found
holds in imperfections in the frozen-over rock without her consciously looking.
As the journalist held his rock up for maximum velocity he overbalanced
slightly backward. It was deadly easy for Annja to reach up, hook his heavily
booted ankle and pull.
Bellowing like a bee-stung bull, Wilfork sat down with an impact that clacked
his teeth audibly in his head. The heavy rock fell from his clumsy hands. It
glanced off his own unprotected head. But the blow was not hard enough to crack
his skull.
However, it was hard enough to stun him momentarily. Annja, who'd relinquished
her initial grip, seized him by the leg of his insulated blue pants and pulled,
twisting her hips outward both for added pull and to clear herself out of the
way as his bulky body slipped over the edge and fell free.
Robyn Wilfork's buffalo bellows turned to wounded-horse shrieks. Glancing down,
Annja saw Levi looking up, eyes huge behind goggles and glasses. The rabbi
quickly hugged ice. Barely missing him, the traitorous journalist plummeted by,
arms and legs windmilling futilely. He vanished quickly in the snow.
His screams went on and on.
Once she knew Levi was still safe Annja stopped paying attention to Wilfork's
fall from grace. Instead she unlimbered the ice ax hung from her own harness
and quickly hammered a piton through thick ice into rock and tied the cut rope
to it. Then she called down, as softly as she could, so as not to attract
bullets or avalanches they had somehow miraculously avoided so far.
"Levi, do you hear me? Go ahead and rappel down. When you've gone as far
as you can—safely!—tug the rope and I'll come down."
He nodded. At once he pushed away from the precarious safety of his grips and
vanished in the milky churn of snow.
He has such naive faith in me, Annja thought. I hope I don't let him down.
Yet just now she couldn't imagine—clinging for her life, exposed on a cliff
waiting for their pursuers to come and shoot her, or just drop the same rock on
her that Wilfork had failed to—what possible chance she had of not letting him
down.
But it was not in Annja Creed to just give up. That was the opposite of who and
what she was. Also, she knew, purposeful activity was emotionally more
comfortable than giving in to terror or despair. If she was going to die, she'd
die busy and surprised, rather than squirming helplessly in futile
self-inflicted mental agony….
So she got busy. Trying to make as little noise as possible, aided by the
sound-deadening effects of the blizzard, she pounded home a rappel anchor. She
fed the spare rope through it and made ready to climb down herself when Levi
signaled that he had found new purchase.
From above she heard voices in the booming belly of the wind. Though she could
make out no words there was no mistaking the high-pitched excitement of the
Young Wolves, who sounded like the scarcely postadolescents most of them were.
Then came a harder bark, assured and authoritative.
Baron
. The master
killer.
Why haven't they looked down and spotted me? she wondered. The closest of her
pursuers must be barely feet from her. Then she realized the falling snow was
making it difficult for the pack to spot the secured line.
She clamped her teeth shut hard. Her heart seemed to be trying to escape right
out her mouth. It beat so hard that, weakened as she was from extreme altitude
and worse exertion, she started feeling dizzy.
Must maintain, she commanded herself.
"Hey!" It was Josh Fairlie's voice. "There's a rope here."
She felt Levi's security rope jump against her chest and hip. Once, twice,
three times. The rabbi's signal. He was waiting for her.
A pink squarish face appeared, right above her. Josh Fairlie's blue eyes shot
wide in surprise.
He shouted something. She couldn't spare the attention to make it out. Cutting
loose the rope that held her against the cliff face with a stroke of her ice
ax—no point in losing it—she kicked off from the wall and let herself fall free
as Fairlie swung a black object into sight toward her.
The snow shut like a curtain above her. Orange flashes backlit it as Josh
opened fire on her. The shots sounded oddly muted in the storm.
Bullets cracked past her. None hit.
Annja looked down. She refocused all her attention on her fast-roping descent.
Found a place to brake her fall, flex her legs, push off again. There wasn't
anything she could do about the bullets, anyway.
It seemed one or two other handguns joined the fusillade, to equal lack of
effect. Then they went silent. Baron, no doubt, concerned too much gunplay
could break loose unstable snow and ice on the glacier upslope of them. The
pack didn't lie at much of an angle, but it was an angle. It probably wouldn't
take much more noise to start a slide that would sweep the rest of the
expedition right over the edge.
Of course, that would likely finish off Annja and Levi, too. It seems Leif
Baron—or Good Time Charlie—isn't willing to sacrifice himself and his band of
zealots just to stop us, Annja thought, bouncing again, whizzing downward into
churning white blankness.
Then she thought, or maybe it's only that Baron's confident enough not to think
they have to make a sacrifice that desperate.