Earthbound (The Reach, Book 1) (25 page)

Ursie started and seemed to come out of her stupor.  “Yes.”

“You follow up behind me and take the carabiners out as you go.  We’ll need to reuse them again later.  You got it?”

“Yeah,” Ursie said quietly.  Then, with more resolve, “Yeah, I got it.”

“Good.  You’ll need to hold the rope while I’m climbing.  I’ll do the same when it’s your turn.”  He clipped the last of the carabiners into his harness.  “Just don’t panic out there and you’ll be fine.”

“Okay.”

“You can do this, Ursie.”

She nodded, trying hard to regain her composure.  “I know.”

He led her along the walkway, and as they reached the precipitous drop she could see the hazy landscape spreading out to the horizon far below.  The sight of it made her stomach turn, but she bit her lip and told herself to keep going.

“There’s nowhere to clip in right here,” Knile said, raising his voice.  Out in the open the wind whipped against the side of the structure, ruffling their clothes and creating a great deal of noise as it swept between hollows and gaps in the exterior.  “Grab hold of my belt and follow along.  And whatever you do, don’t fall.”

He stepped out onto the ledge and Ursie linked sweaty fingers through his belt.  Her mouth was suddenly dry and her palms clammy.  She took a deep breath and moved in close behind him.

The ledge they were standing on was quite narrow, maybe half a metre wide, and she made the mistake of looking over it.  The sight was terrifying – a vertical drop straight down.  It was like looking down a sheer cliff face from the top of a mountain.  The vertigo was instant.  She wobbled and then reeled backward.  Knile cried out in alarm.

“Hey, cool it!” he yelled, grabbing her by the shoulders to straighten her.  “Keep it together, will you?  And don’t look down,” he added.

“Thanks for the heads up.  I’ll remember that.”

Ursie pressed in close against Knile’s back as they shuffled along the ledge.  She found that she felt dizzy no matter which way she looked, so in the end she simply buried her face in Knile’s backpack and slid one foot after the next, praying they would reach their destination quickly.

It happened sooner than she’d anticipated.  Before long, Knile stopped and turned gently, taking her hand and guiding it toward a steel handle that jutted out from the wall.  She gripped it ardently, wrapping both arms around it as if it were a life saver in a turbulent ocean, and turned her head to watch Knile ready himself for the climb.

“Now,
listen,” he said over the noise of the wind, “with all of this air flapping around, it’s going to be difficult to communicate.  If there’s something you need to ask, do it now.”

“Let’s just get this over with.”

Knile nodded and gripped the rusted ladder, turning once more to check that she was all right before pulling himself up carefully one rung at a time.  The sun glinted dully off the solar panels on either side, and he judged from the amount of gunky build up present that the maintenance crew had not visited this patch of the exterior in some time.  Either that, or the pollution was getting so thick that the crew couldn’t keep up a fast enough schedule to clean it off again.

He came to the first hook and clipped the carabiner in place, then threaded the rope through in turn.  Glancing back down he saw Ursie huddled against the handle, looking up at him with something approaching abject terror as she imagined making the same climb herself.  He had to hand it to her – she was holding it together as well as could be expected.  Knile was certain that there were grown men who would have turned back by now, but Ursie stood there gritting her teeth and forcing herself to go through with it.

Perhaps that big payday at the end of this ordeal is giving her the courage to keep going
, he thought.

He kept climbing and soon found a section of the ladder that had broken away.  It wasn’t a huge gap, maybe the height of an average man, but it was something he really didn’t need with Ursie in tow.  She was going to find it hard enough just to negotiate the ladder, let alone make it past an obstacle such as this.  He glanced around for ideas but realised that
t
here was nothing he could do about it now.  They would lose too much time doubling back and trying to find another way up.  He tried to ignore his misgivings and concentrated on finding handholds to bridge the gap.  Luckily the edges of the solar panels afforded him a good grip and he was able to lever himself upward and reach the next section of ladder without too much difficulty.

He reached the top of the ladder and hauled himself up onto the next ledge, taking a moment to catch his breath.  Ursie was a long way down, way too far for her to hear him even without the wind.  He could see the pale dot of her face as she looked up, but that was it.  Clipping himself into the handle nearby, he leaned out over the edge and waved extravagantly, hoping to make his intentions clear.  Ursie didn’t budge, and for a moment he feared that she was going to chicken out.  If she didn’t follow, how on earth was he going to handle a predicament such as that?  Would he be able to climb down again over that gap without falling?  And what would he do once he made it to the bottom again?  Tuck her under his arm?

Then he felt the rope stiffen, and as he looked down he saw Ursie had begun to climb.

She was understandably tentative at first and progress was slow.  In the vast space below her, Knile could see pigeons wheeling through the sky, returning to their roosts as the day wound down.  Link was almost featureless from this high up, just another stain on the
yellow-and-brown tapestry of the ruined Earth.

The wind had not abated and he felt somewhat precarious leaning out over the ledge as he peered down at the small figure of the girl below.  He gently took up the slack on the rope and coiled it neatly beside him, hoping that the turbulence would die down soon, for Ursie’s sake at least.

There was a delay at the first carabiner as Ursie fiddled and wrestled with the clip like it was glued in place, her frustration evident even from a distance.  She continually glanced up at Knile as if to say
What am I doing wrong?
but there was little instruction he could give her from this distance.  Knile sensed that it was possibly an exercise in procrastination – the girl had a major mental block about removing one of her anchor points, and he guessed that her confusion was more akin to reluctance to unfasten herself from the wall – but in the end she had no choice.  She could not progress further until the rope had been removed from the carabiner.

Eventually she got the job done, taking the carabiner and clipping it onto her harness for safekeeping.  Then she continued to climb the rungs, and Knile thought he could sense her confidence growing by the minute.

Then she came to the broken section of ladder and things fell apart.  She stopped dead and just stared at it for a good minute, then looked up at Knile and began gesticulating helplessly.  He could see her mouth moving but her words were ripped apart and scattered by the wind.  In any case, it was clear what she was trying to convey:
What the hell do I do now?

Knile could only wave his arms, indicating that she should continue, but this garnered no response.  He then tried to pantomime a climb action, pointing to the solar panels to demonstrate she should try using them for purchase.  This suggestion, too, was met with no reaction.  Either Ursie didn’t understand what he was trying to say, or she simply didn’t want to.

In the end, the girl obviously realised that she was going to have to move well outside her comfort zone if she wanted to get out of her predicament.  She clasped the edges of the panels and began to draw herself upward.  It was a more difficult task for the girl, Knile had to admit, since she was shorter than he was and didn’t have his strength, so her ability to find handholds was more limited.

She made it about halfway up the gap before she slipped.

Knile had been taking up the slack with each of her movements, so her drop was minimal, but even so she fell almost the length of her body as the rope tensed under her full weight.  This time she made a noise loud enough for Knile to h
ear clearly – a hysterical high-
pitched scream that cut through the wind like a distant ghostly wail.  Knile gritted his teeth as he held the rope firm, trying to keep it level, and then Ursie spun in the air, her legs kicking upward as she almost inverted.  The satchel slid from her shoulders and she groped at it madly, screaming again, and caught it in her fingertips.

Knile tried frantically to help swing her back toward the ladder by tugging at the rope.  She moved through the air in a long arc, a bundle of flailing limbs, and then she thumped solidly into the wall of solar panels and bounced off again.  Moving back across the ladder like a pendulum, she scraped and slid along the glass and righted herself, and Knile decided that the time had come for him to take matters into his own hands.  Pulling on the rope, he yanked her upward one arm’s length at a time, like drawing a bucket from a well.  Ursie managed to plant her feet on the panels and direct herself back toward the ladder, and in a few moments she had crossed the gap successfully.  She thrust herself gratefully at the relative safety of the first metal rung, her satchel still safely on her shoulder.

She clung there for a good two or three minutes, and Knile allowed her the time to steady herself and catch her breath.  Neither she nor the satchel were in any danger of falling, a great relief to both of them.  It would be a cruel twist to lose their cargo, Knile thought, after going through all of this trouble to haul it up the Reach.

Eventually Knile grew restless and he began to gently tug on the rope to gain Ursie’s attention.  She snapped her head up, and even from this distance he could feel the heat in her gaze.  He ignored that and waved his hand again, trying to convey a sense of urgency, and in a few moments she complied and began to continue her climb.

Her ascent was now far more rapid than before, and as she drew closer Knile could see the reason why – she was furious.  Her removal of the carabiners was now far more speedy, accentuated by jerky movements as she pulled the clips from the wall and thrust them onto her belt.  At one point she pulled so hard to free a carabiner that it slipped from her hand and went sailing out into the void.  She did not seem apologetic in the least.

When she reached Knile, he reached out a hand to assist her up onto the ledge.  She took it reluctantly and glared at him as he pulled her toward him.  She sprawled on the narrow walkway, exhausted, like a drowning man finding the golden sands of a beach.

“There,” Knile said soothingly.  “Wasn’t so bad after all.”

“Fuck you!” Ursie snarled over her shoulder.  “You almost fucking killed me.”

“Actually, I pulled you to safety.”

“I mean by bringing me out here, you shithead.  You didn’t have to come this way.”

“We did have to come this way,” Knile said calmly.

“Bullshit.  You’re trying to make things hard for me.  You’re trying to make me quit and give you the case so you can have it for yourself.”

“Climbing the Reach
is
hard,” Knile said sternly.  “What did you expect?  A goddamn chair lift to the top?  If it was easy
, then everyone would be doing it.”

“Yeah, whatever.”  Ursie swatted at the grime that
had
been deposited on her coveralls when she’d slid along the panels.  “At least it’s over.”

“Over?” Knile said.  “I don’t think so.”  He pointed upward.  “We’re not done yet.  We’re about to do it again.”

Ursie’s mouth fell open.  “What?  No way?  Isn’t there a way back inside on the end of this walkway?”

“Yes, there is, but we’d waste a lot of time going that way.  If we go higher out here it will save us a lot of time.”

“Screw it, let’s go inside.”

“No.  We’re going up.”

She shook her head.  “I can’t do it yet.  I need time.”

“There’s no time,” Knile said.  “Dark is closing in and we need to climb this section and find our way back inside before then.  Unless you want to try climbing out here in the dark?  I can tell you that’s not going to end well.”

Ursie covered her eyes with her hand as she gathered her emotions.  She took a deep breath and
then looked at Knile again, her countenance indicating that she was ready to continue the argument.