Sincerely, A Friend
P.S. If you don't happen to feel well enough to come, I'll understand perfectly; I wouldn't dream of calling you a coward the next time we meet.
Dick crumpled the paper. His hands were cold; his heart was thumping with anger and apprehension. Coward, was he? Keel was the coward, ducking a fair fight for a crazy thing like this. Probably he wouldn't even be there himself; it was ridiculous ... even in daylight, the thought of those dizzy heights was unpleasant; it would be twice as bad at night, in the cold, with that wind rushing up the mountain.
He turned. No, he'd be a fool to walk into such a trap. Besides, it was late, and he was tired, and not completely sober ... .
Reluctantly, he halted. That was all true, but it didn't make any difference: of course he'd have to go.
He picked up the wadded paper where he had dropped it, and burned it in an ashtray. It went up with a mocking whoosh, as if it had been soaked in some inflammable solution. Nerves jangling, Dick went back to his wardrobe to dress. He chose the warmest clothes he could find, heavy riding pants, a fleece-lined sweat shirt, loose and comfortable, worn over a turtle-necked jersey. He hesitated between warm gloves and thin ones; finally chose the latter. It would be bad to have numb fingers, but worse, probably, to have a clumsy grip. He put on a pair of his Army riding boots; they were strong, but as flexible as chamois. He clipped his stick to the belt, but removed the elbow chains. As an afterthought, he filled a small flask with brandy and stuffed it into his pocket. He cast a glance around the apartment, at the warm bed waiting and the rich disarray of the wardrobe. Then he slipped out into the corridor.
The Upper Promenade was deserted under the stars. Dick found the maintenance door, an unobtrusive gray-painted square of metal, under the ornamental scrollwork on the north wall. It had a stout latch, hanging open.
He slid the door open against its spring and cautiously put
His head out. It was a bright, cold night, the blue of gun-metal. High in the starred dome hung a crazy, three-quarter moon, and here below, all things were flooded with an eerie whiteness: roofs, copings, cupolas, and the upper slopes of the mountain itself, all silent and bare in the night.
A few yards away, standing at ease on the ribbed metal roof, was Keel. His breath puffed white. Under the shelf of his brow, his eyes glittered.
Dick moved forward, letting the door close behind him. The wind was chill on his face; the stars in their vast dome seemed to crackle with cold. He looked around. Beyond the bulk of the Promenade, from which he had just emerged, Eagles showed itself as a forest of peaked roofs, domes and minarets. Every window was a dark eye; only the Tower itself, looming like a mirage beyond the sea of roofs, sprayed yellow light from its peak.
The wind howled steadily, beyond the short roof on which they stood. Keel's voice rang hollow: "Well met by moonlight!"
Dick kept advancing until he was only a few paces from Keel. The blond man was dressed much like himself, in leather jacket and whipcord trousers with high laced boots. With the moon behind him, his face was in shadow, lit only by the faint reflection that came from the polished roof. Behind a puff of vapor, his teeth gleamed. "I thought I had suggested that we come without weapons?"
Dick pointed to the long-handled pickaxe that protruded over Keel's shoulder. "What about that?"
Keel glanced toward it. "Climbing equipment ... very useful, but let's start even." He unslung the axe, together with the coil of light rope that was clipped at his shoulder, and flung them together toward the edge of the roof. They fell into silence.
Dick shrugged and removed his stick. It clattered briefly on the roof, then a gust took it and he saw it whirling end over end, receding into the void, before it dipped downward again and was lost.
Keel was waiting with an ironic smile. "Ready, then? Let's go." He turned his back and started off diagonally across the roof. At a corner of the Promenade there was a steel ladder. Keel grasped the rungs and clambered quickly up. Dick watched him a moment, then followed. The rungs were icy cold in his hands, and he wished he had chosen the other gloves. Keel's white, foreshortened form was silhouetted a moment against the sky, then it disappeared. Dick climbed, with the wind fluttering and pawing at his back.
At the top of the ladder, he found himself facing an unsuspected slant of metal roof, rising steeply to a peak high over his head. Keel stood up there, in silver and black, waiting.
The ladder continued in widely spaced steel rungs up the slope of the roof. There was nothing for it but to keep on climbing. As he ascended, Keel made him a mocking salute and moved on out of sight again.
The peak of the roof turned out to be one end of a long ridge that ran straight away into the distance and then made a sharp turn, ending in a blocky tower. Tower and roofs were washed in clear white; below them, everything was one inky gulf of shadow, without a gleam to tell its depth.
The ridge itself was flattened, forming a sort of catwalk perhaps eight inches across. On this precarious perch, a few dozen yards away, Keel was standing with his arms akimbo, waiting.
By stretching upward from the last rung, it was possible to plant one foot on the ridge, and then, raising the other, to bring yourself up in an awkward, crouching position. With the cold wind whipping unpredictably against one side and then the other, it was all he could do to steady himself with hands and feet; but shame drove him upright. He stood, with his heart thundering, fighting for balance.
There was a long moment when he was certain he would fall; then that passed, and he could stand without windmilling his arms. The distant figure of Keel made him another ironic salute, and, turning, made off toward the bend in the ridge ...
He followed, planting one cautious foot after the other, in an unreal stillness. Except for the wind, and Keel's distant figure moving, there was not a stir of life anywhere in the world; they had left all that down below. The thought of the warm, lighted, busy corridors gave Dick a curious pang: how many times had he walked by down there, without ever suspecting the existence of this lonely world a few yards overhead?
His moon-shadow glided along ahead of him. He could make out the Little Bear, low over the rooftops, and a little higher, the Big Bear, upside down. The Milky Way sprawled hi a gigantic arch high above; he hardly dared glance at it, for fear of losing his balance. Imperceptibly, as the minutes went by, he was growing light-headed from the height and the cold, and the theatrical white glare of the rooftops. Up the low tower he went, following Keel, and down the other side into a bewildering maze of roofs and walls. They climbed ladders sometimes, and sometimes scaled crowstep gables where the pitch of the roof was too steep to walk. Dick's ears were singing with the cold, his fingers and toes numb with it, but he followed wherever Keel led; his sense of danger was muted, almost inaudible, like a familiar sound droning away somewhere in the distance.
After a long time they paused to rest, each astride the ridge of a steep roof; Keel turned and they sat facing each other, a dozen yards apart. All around them was the sky and the silent sea of rooftops.
Keel's breath puffed frostily over his head, and his eyes glittered. From somewhere he produced a leather-covered flask, raised it in salute. Remembering, Dick took out his own flask and unscrewed the top. They drank together. The brandy was cold and smooth down his throat, spreading fiery inside his body.
He saw Keel's teeth glitter. "Sorry you came?"
"No!" he called; and hi a strange way it was true.