Easiest climb, perhaps, but still frightful. Nora’s eyes had traveled up the wall, stopping at the last pitch. It was obviously the most difficult, a beetling brow of rock that hung out into space. But Sloane had just smiled. “Grade 1, 5.10, A-two,” she’d murmured, visually rating the difficulty of the climb. “Look at that secure crack system, goes almost all the way to the top. No problem.” And, in a spectacular feat of bravura climbing, she proved herself correct. An hour later, as they waited nervously below, slings and a haul bag tumbled down from above, indicating that Sloane had reached the top and was ready to hoist up the radio gear.
And now Sloane was making her way back down to the bench that held Quivira, placing the ladder as she went. Another ten minutes, and she dropped nimbly into the group to a round of applause.
“That was fantastic,” Nora said.
Sloane shrugged and smiled, obviously pleased. “Another ten feet and we’d have run out of ladder. Is everybody ready?”
Holroyd looked up, swallowing. “I guess so.”
“I have important work to do,” Black said. “Can someone remind me again why I have to risk life and limb on this little climbing expedition?”
“You won’t risk anything,” Sloane laughed in her deep contralto. “Those placements of mine are bombproof.”
“And it’s your misfortune,” Nora said, “that you’ve been on a lot of digs and know how to use the radio equipment. We need a backup for Holroyd.”
“Yeah, but why me?” Black asked. “Why not Aragon? He’s got more field experience than all of us put together.”
“He’s also got twenty years on the rest of us,” Nora replied. “You’re much better suited to a physical challenge like this.” The buttering-up seemed to have its intended effect: Black pulled in his chest and looked sternly up the cliff.
“Let’s get started, then.” Sloane turned briefly toward Smithback. “You coming?”
Smithback looked speculatively upward. “I’d better not,” he said. “Somebody has to stay behind to catch the ones that fall.”
Sloane raised one eyebrow, with a look that said she’d thought as much. “All right. Aaron, why don’t you lead, and I’ll follow. Peter, you come third, and Nora, please bring up the rear.”
Nora noticed that Sloane had staggered the inexperienced climbers with the more experienced ones. “Why do I have to go first?” Black asked.
“Believe me, it’s easier when nobody’s ahead of you. Less chance of eating a boot that way.”
Black looked unconvinced, but grasped the base of the rope ladder and began hoisting himself up.
“It’s just like climbing the ladder to Quivira, only longer,” Sloane said. “Keep your body hugged to the rock, and your feet apart. Take a rest at each bench. The longest pitch is the last one, maybe two hundred feet.”
But Black, scrabbling at the second step, suddenly lost his footing. Sloane moved with the swiftness of a cat as Black came lurching downward. She half caught, half tackled him, and they ended up sprawled in a soft drift of sand at the base of the cliff, Black atop Sloane. They lay still, and Nora came running over. She could see that Sloane was shaking and making a choking sound; but as she bent down in a panic she realized the woman was laughing hysterically. Black seemed frozen in either fear or surprise. His face was buried between Sloane’s breasts.
“Death, where is thy sting?” Smithback intoned.
Sloane continued to gasp with laughter. “Aaron, you’re supposed to be climbing up, not down!” She made no move to push Black away, and after a few moments the scientist sat up, hair askew. He backed away, looking from Sloane to the rope ladder and back to Sloane again.
Sloane sat up, still giggling, and dusted herself off. “You’re letting yourself get psyched out,” she said. “It’s just a ladder. But if it’s falling you’re afraid of, I’ve got a wall harness you can use instead.” She stood up and walked over to her equipment duffel. “It’s for emergencies, really, but you can use it to get familiar with the climb.” She pulled out a small harness constructed of nylon webbing and fastened it around Black. “You are just going to jumar your way up the rope. That way, you can’t fall.”
Black, strangely quiet, simply looked at Sloane and nodded. This time, with the mental security of the harness and Sloane’s encouragement, he got the hang of using the jumar and was soon moving confidently up the cliff. Sloane followed, then Holroyd reached hold of the lowest rung.
Nora had noticed that, in the sudden scramble, Sloane hadn’t bothered to check on the image specialist’s state of mind. “You up to this, Peter?” she asked.
Holroyd looked at her and smiled bashfully. “Hey, it’s just a ladder, like she said. Anyway, I’m going to have to climb this thing once a day. I’d better get used to it.”
He took a deep breath, then began to climb. Nora followed carefully. She tested one or two of Sloane’s placements and found them to be as tight and secure as the woman had said. She’d learned from experience it was best not to look down on a long climb, and she kept her eyes on the three figures ranged up the face above her. There were long minutes of almost vertical climbing. They caught their breaths at each ledge. The final pitch ended with a brief, frightening moment of hanging backward as she worked around the protruding rimrock. For an instant, Nora was reminded of the Devil’s Backbone: the scrabbling at the slickrock, the frightened screaming of the horses as they hurtled to their deaths below her feet. Then she took another determined step upward, hoisted herself onto the top of the cliff, and collapsed, gasping, to her knees. Nearby sat Holroyd, sides heaving, head resting on crossed arms. Beside him was Black, trembling with exhaustion and stress.
Sloane, alone, seemed unaffected by the climb. She began moving the small array of equipment a safe distance from the edge of the cliff: Holroyd’s satellite positioning unit, now sporting a long UHF whip antenna; the microwave horn; the solar panel and deep-cycle battery; rack-mounted receivers and transmitters. Beside them, winking in the morning light, the satellite dish was still enmeshed in nylon netting from the trip up the cliff face. Nearby was the weather-receiving unit.
Holroyd struggled to his feet and moved toward the equipment, followed reluctantly by Black. “Let me get this stuff set up and calibrated,” Holroyd said. “It shouldn’t take long.”
Nora glanced at her watch with satisfaction. It was quarter to eleven, fifteen minutes before the appointed hour for their daily transmission to the Institute. As Holroyd initialized the radio unit and aligned the dish, Nora looked around at the surrounding vista. It was breathtaking: a landscape of red, yellow, and sepia clifftops, unfolding for countless miles under brilliant sunlight, covered with sparse piñon-juniper scrub. Far to the southwest, she could make out the sinuous gorge through which ran the Colorado River. To the east stood the brooding rim of the Devil’s Backbone, running off and behind the Kaiparowits Plateau. The purple prow of the Kaiparowits thrust above the land, like a great stone battleship ploughing through the wilderness, its flanks stripped to the bone by erosion, riven by steep canyons and ravines. The landscape ran on endlessly in all directions, an uninhabited wilderness of stone covering many thousands of square miles.
To improve reception, Holroyd climbed into one of the stunted juniper trees nearby and screwed the twenty-four-hour weather receiver into the highest part of the trunk. He then wrapped the unit’s wire antenna around a long branch. As he adjusted the receiver’s gain, Nora could hear the monotonous voice of the forecaster reading out the day’s report for Page, Arizona.