Abaddon - Chapter 14

28 February 2016

The rope was taut, so much so that it was singing in the wind like a harpstring. The young man glanced up at the belay point nervously. Taut ropes frayed on the rock if they draped over it. He knew little about mountaineering, but he knew that much. But he didn't appear to have snagged the cliff with the line at any point above him. This was good. He'd have to place his next anchor carefully. It would change the geometry of the rope.

At least he had the bolting drill at his belt. On this rock surface, there were no cracks to insert a nut or piton into. A man had to make his own holes before he could fill them.

"You're doing fine. Al you have to do is carry on in the same vein for another hundred metres."

All very well for you to say, Waldrop, but I've only done ten so far.

The Glass Waterfall was a smear of polished metamorphic rock that lay between two laps of the Devil's Staircase, smooth as mercury, hard enough to turn a tungsten carbide drillbit. Virtually unclimbable.

And yet, somehow, someone without access to any climbing aids at all lives in the centre of it. How?

Feeling like a Victorian deep sea diver descending into the realm of the merpeople, the young man descended to the next taped interval on the rope, then carefully drilled another hole into the face - even hanging on the drillbit with all his weight, the drill only went in slowly - placed and tightened a bolt with exquisite care, clipped a karabiner onto the bolt, clipped the karabiner onto the line.

"You're passing over the edge now - there's a bit of a swell in the face, you look like a drowning man going into a wave trough, haha, only kidding about the drowning. Don't be surprised if you lose communication, this area of the face is a bit of a radio dead spot -"

And Waldrop's voice cut out. Looking up, he was now entirely certain that he'd placed the bolt wrong. The line was now snagging the cliff. He should have bolted the overhang at its apex. He was relying on the rope alone, after all, not even trying to climb the cliff, which was impossible. The rope was under a constant stress of seventy-odd kilograms, and it went without saying that he couldn't afford for it to break.

Still, it couldn't be helped now. He'd dug his grave and he had to lie in it -

"Hey, you! Stop making holes in my cliff!"

He nearly lost his grip on the rope and fell off the face. His descender would have held him, but it might have tested his bolts to destruction.

He looked sideways. Somehow, almost within touching distance of him, a long, thin sliver of human being was clinging to ripples in the rock, covered by a mop of shaggy black hair. Neither rope nor Batman climbing suckers appeared to be in evidence.

"Don't worry", it said, winking. "You don't fall."

The young man could think of nothing to say. It briefly ran through his mind that, although the Browning was still in his backpack, the bolting gun at his belt might make a serviceable weapon.

"Easy enough for you to say, Oh, Mercy Me, I'm Just Making A Few Holes In The Rock To Plant Me Climbing Aids, Guvnor, So As I Don't Fall And All", continued the bearded spiderman, "but what you've got to remember is, this is only the first time. What happens next time, and next time, and the time after that? Pretty soon the whole of this originally pristine natural face starts looking like a bed of nails. Bolt pollution!" He wagged an admonitory finger, which almost caused him to lose his grip on the face. "Whoops!" He scrabbled at the rock, appearing to lose his grip again. "Whoops!" he said again, grinning winningly at the young man, and then suddenly frowned, clinging to the face like a human slug, and said, "At this point you stop thinking it's funny."

"I never thought it was funny", said the young man.

"It's all right", said the climber, though the young man hadn't asked whether it was. "I don't fall - at least, not till the first time ever, but that's not for years yet." He cast a glance over his shoulder and mock-winced. "Hooooeee, that's a long way down."

"You'll be the Stylite, I take it."

"There are some as calls me by that name, young master."

Like many climbers, the supposed Stylite was an outstanding physical specimen in some respects, a sorry wreck of a man in others. The strength he was using to adhere himself to the face was almost superhuman, but his skin was a mass of scrapes, sores and infections, and grin though he might, he had a smile like a Roman mosaic, pearly white but with many pieces missing. He was wearing a pair of faded lycra climbing bottoms that had once been striped like a tiger, and what the young man couldn 't rationalize as anything other than a World War 2 SS tunic with the sleeves ripped off and a HAVE A NICE DAY badge stuck over the death's heads and/or swastikas at the collar. Also, the source of the smell the young man had been wondering about for some minutes had now been definitely cleared up.

"I have a message -" began the young man.

"I know you have a message."

The young man was exasperated. "It's not a message for you, but I've been told you might be able to explain it."

"Might be, might be. Depends on how much truth you can take, don't it?" The Stylite suddenly, somehow, turned himself diametrically upside-down on the face and scuttled away downward like a lycra spider. "Come into my parlour." He looked back up over his shoulder. "The look on your face! You can only do that on this bit here, the cliff slopes outward, any other place and no man alive'd be able to hold on. I'm giving away trade secrets here, I hope you understand." He turned right-side-up again and raised himself up off the face indignantly like a sunning crocodile. "What's the matter, slowcoach? Ahhh, you'd better put yourself one or two more of them cissy pegs in and shimmy on down your rope. What difference will it make? I've seen the future, and it's bolted. Twenty years from now, this cliff looks like a Meccano model of itself, I'm telling you." He scrawmed on down the face like a lizard running down a paving slab. "There's three more overhangs to go, over the third one and slightly to the left, you can't miss it. I'll put the kettle on."

***

"Yes", said the Stylite. "I know her."

The cell was remarkably roomy. It seemed St. Vladimir, a former cathedral mason, had chiselled it out himself using tools begged and stolen from former colleagues on the surface far above, while dangling in a leather harness suspended from a wooden crane the vespertiliani had used to mine bat poo. It had taken over two years for the hermit to chip out his cell.

The Stylite was full of such information. Certainly, the walls around the young man seemed to bear the marks of chisels. The ledge in the rock was wide enough for one man to lie full length - "more luxurious than many hotel beds", the Stylite had quipped. It also sloped, thoughtfully, from side to side to prevent a hermit sent evil dreams by Satan from tossing himself out of bed to his death. There was just enough room in the alcove for two men to squat abreast in extreme discomfort. The young man's knees were hurting. Outside the alcove, the world was all vertical. There were cavities for storing minor personal possessions, filled with all manner of unmentionable junk - Nazi desk ornaments, Soviet soldiers' Great Patriotic War memorabilia, a massive Seventies digital watch, its red wire numerals dead and dark. And most importantly, a single large alcove, apparently chiselled in some haste after the main chamber had been made, in front of which two knee-holes had been worn into the sleeping shelf.

"Don't know what he kept in there", said the Stylite, stirring what were definitely teabags, Tetley's teabags, in a Trangia pan of boiling water, "but I use it for keeping tea in. It was important to him, whatever it was."

"Not the altar cross of St. Justinian's, by any chance?" fished Percival. "The largest and most valuable piece of ecclesiastical jewellery in Na, which the Turks searched for for seven days without success, putting over a hundred monks to the torture to find? It was always suspected Vladimir took it into the Abyss with him. Big heavy gold thing set with five rubies that were popularly held to be sparks from the Star of Bethlehem, you can't miss it."

The Stylite looked shifty. "Religious iconography. Probably a whole bunch of pictures of geezers being nailed to stuff by other geezers. Whatever it was, it's gone now. He must have took it with him."

"I thought Vladimir died down there."

"I never said that", said the Stylite. He tapped a tin disc sitting on a store shelf. It had red stars on it, sickles, hammers, and a great deal of writing in Soviet. He flipped it open. "My watch", he said proudly. "A Russian watch. A medal from World War 2. It doesn't work, of course. It's Russian. Mind you, it wouldn't work anyway, not even if it was Swiss."

"Your point being?"

"There's less time down here", said the Stylite, seeming to wonder at his own words. "The deeper you go, the less there is. If you go deep down enough, well, there might not be any time at all."

The young man looked doubtful. "Where do you get the tea?" he said, changing the subject.

"Oh", said the Stylite, removing the brewed bags with a pair of silver tongs that sported swastikas on the sides, "people bring me things."

"Who brought you these things?"

"A man who wanted to know if he would die if he attempted the overhang below the Totalitarian Complex. I told him he would. And he did, of course."

"How did he die?"

"Ah, a hero's death. He didn't place any bolts, and his nuts came loose. Terrible thing when your nuts come loose."

"So it's not so bad a thing to place bolts after all."

"No, placing bolts makes you a terrible bad man. More likely to live to a ripe old age, but it's quality of life we care about, not quantity. After all, it's what you say when you take your cat to the vet's to avoid having to carry on paying all those bills to keep the poor old bugger alive." He stopped in mid-flow to deliver a great cough like a Kzaer 2000 starting. A massive gobbet of phlegm filled the palm of his hand, and he looked at it like a surgeon performing a diagnosis before gobbling it back down again without apparent concern.

“You should get someone to look at that cough”, said Percival.

“No need”, said the Stylite. “Everyone coughs down here.”

"You're English", observed the young man. "Is your name Sean Bogdanovich?"

The Stylite nodded. "Yes, you do ask me that., don't you. It was, once. Names mean less down here. Down here your value is measured by what you can supply. Down here I'm the man who can tell you if you're going to survive tomorrow's caving trip or not."

"You can tell the future?"

"Does it matter if I can or can't?" He passed a mug of steaming brown stuff, which smelled surprisingly good, to the young man. "Most people come back from most trips anyway. You think this place is dangerous? You should try cave diving. Back when cave diving started, the death rate was one per three cavers, per trip."

"What's the death rate in the Abyss below the three-kilometre line?" said the young man.

The Stylite shrugged and grinned stupidly. "Aha, I'm afraid you have me there. It's been holding steady at about forty-eight per fifty cavers per trip for the last five years."

"Implying two survivors?" said the young man. "If you're one, Sean, who's the other?"

"You and I both know the answer to that one, I imagine", said the Stylite. "She sent you a message, I think. I already know what's in the message, but if you don't read it out I won't be able to remember it, so..." he shrugged. "You may as well read it."

"So if I don't read it", said the young man perspicaciously, "you'll not be able to remember it, and I'll have changed the future."

"Ah", grinned the Stylite, "but you are going to read it."

"I might....and I might not."

"You're going to", said the Stylite. "You know you are."

With a hurt look at the hermit, the young man tugged a sky-blue rectangle of Basildon Bond out of a side pocket of his rucksack, unfolded it and began to read. The Stylite settled back against the wall of his habitat, sighing luxuriantly, clasping his arms behind his head.

"From: Penelope Simpson", the young man began, "To: Sir Reginald Washburton, OBE. It's in memo format, you see."

"Ah, yes, very meticulous", said the Stylite. "That's our Pen."

"It then gives a date of last month, and continues "Dear Sir Reginald; we apologize for this somewhat baroque means of communication. We urgently require that you recruit an army chaplain by the name of Percival. Percival is his last name. We do not know his first. We know that he is an Army Chaplain currently attached to the Grenadier Guards. He will come here because he must, and he must come here because he will. We have seen it and you cannot prevent it. You must send him down the Abyss to us. We are unable to descend further, but he will go where we cannot.

"Please inform our family that we are dead. This is the kindest explanation. Certainly we will not be returning either to them, or to you. In contrast to the Russians' and Americans' recent unprovoked aggression of our people, Lieutenant Percival will proceed unarmed and, we promise, unharmed. He is absolutely necessary to our further purpose. Without him, everything fails.

"I trust you are all well, and we wish you a Merry Christmas, though I regret this letter will not reach you before Easter, Yours sincerely, HM Penny Simpson, Queen of the Nether Regions 2006-2031."

The Stylite let out a brief guffaw. "Queen of the Nether Regions. I do like that. Well, I suppose she is now."

"There were also many rather densely-written pages of notes", said the young man, "which I can read to you if you want to hear them. The notes suggested that you survived the expedition of 2011. It took a little while for us to link them with you, of course, but ..."

"I haven't advertised my continued existence", said the Stylite. "I don't need to, you see. I don't return home, I die down here. I bear no grudges."

"The whole message was transmitted by hot air balloon", said the young man. "A Montgolfier balloon of the simplest sort, a skin bag held over an open fire. The letter was attached to it. It landed in the Gzel gzaraeye Tanku near Victory Square - you know, the one with the old Russian tank in."

"German", corrected the Stylite severely. "It's a German tank."

"Mea culpa. And the streetsweeper who found it recognized the address - it was addressed in Russian - and took it to the British Embassy. Who forwarded a request to my unit that I be dispatched to Na immediately. The, ah, balloon", he said, wrinkling his nose up with distaste, "was made of human skin. The skin of one Jeanette Dougal, in fact. A member of the 2011 US-Russian expedition. Believed to have been taken from beneath the left buttock. It had a small and readily authenticated tattoo of His Holiness the Pope."

Bogdanovich nodded. "With the legend 'YOU NO WANTA CONTRACEPZIONE, I SIT ON YOU FACE.' I remember." He sighed wearily. "And that one I really do remember from the past. She'd show it to anyone once she was drunk. And you", he said, indicating the young man, "are Lieutenant Percival."

"That's not difficult to guess", said the young man defensively.

"She sounds very certain that it's you she needs. Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope. What makes you think you'll survive ten yards into monster territory when only one woman has so far?"

"She knows my name", said the young man. "She seems to know a great deal about me. I was curious."

"She may even know how delicious your left buttock is going to taste fried in batshit", pointed out the Stylite. "She is not a majorly sane lady."

"Have you seen her?" said the young man anxiously.

"No", said the Stylite. "But I send her messages." He pulled back a curtain made of the Flag of the Na Republic to reveal a number of aluminium cylinders. "Waterproof luminous spray paint. Cavers bring me it. I usually use it to mark spots where men have died before them. Like roadsigns on a dangerous bend."

"Only where men have died before them?" said Percival.

The Stylite shrugged guiltily. "Okay, and where they will die after. Sometimes even where they're going to die themselves. But I don't tell them that unless they ask straight out."

"The man who died the other day", said Percival. "He asked straight out, and you told him, and he went anyway, and died."

"Who knows why?" shrugged the Stylite. "Maybe he figured he couldn't change fate. Maybe he didn't really believe me. Maybe he was happy to go out on a roll doing what he enjoyed doing best, rather than of some minor pneumonic infection on a piss-stinking bed in a geriatric ward fifty years from now."

Percival stared out of the cell into the cylindrical deep below him.

"Yeah", he said finally. "Maybe there's some truth in that."

"So you've been given this letter that tells you your presence has been urgently requested four kilometres below the earth's surface by a homicidal maniac, and your CO has suggested you might go, so here you are", said the Stylite eventually.

"I was given a choice", said Percival. "I could have refused."

"Do you know what this lady's people do to", the Stylite chose his words carefully, "anybody?"

Percival nodded. "I've seen photos."

"Don't show those photos to the public, I'll bet, do they?"

Percival shook his head. "I had no idea the military were even involved down here. That there were actually things down here that could stop an armoured convoy."

The Stylite did not reply with his usual sarcasm. "The Road is the first thing to beware of", he said. "It was constructed, I believe, for this reason. Those who decorate this place ensure that, however vilely unpleasant it may be, those who enter it come to acquire a false impression that it is like home." His accent went West. "Shucks, there's a road down here, we can drive right on down." It came back East again, as far as Moscow. "Thyese are clyearly Styone Yage syavages who have not even discyovered collyectivization, no myatch for styeel and byullets." The accent fell back to the outskirts of Berlin. "Zese Oracle Smowke poisonss are almost certainly nerve agents similar in structure to zowse currently being defeloped for fengeance on ze enemies of our glorious German Reich. There's something down here that makes sure all this happens, padre. It's not all happenstance. It's been going on for over two thousand years."

Percival absorbed this. He sipped his tea - black, sweet, and contained in half a Coca-Cola tin shaped round with window putty - gratefully.

"So, if you think there's something bigger than the both of us down there, why haven't you gone looking for it?"

The Stylite shrugged. "I can't. This place has hold of me, padre. Maybe men who've been living down here too long can't penetrate further into it. Maybe the Black Smoke is its...immune system. You know about the Black Smoke?"

Percival nodded as the hermit pinned out the teabags he had just used on a pulley-driven clothes line to dry. Percival saw no evidence of actual clothes drying on the line, or indeed of any clothes in the cell whatsoever other than those the Stylite was currently wearing.

"The Black Smoke", said Percival, "is the main reason why the Americans, British and Russians fear this place. It does not submit to analysis. They tried to set up a secure facility to study it in the Totalitarian Complex, with the highest levels of sterility our biological people use...the place was five or six levels deep, with only one door in each level -"

"I know", said Bogdanovich. "I saw them build it. I knew what they were up to. Don't forget, they were only trying to do what the Soviets and the Nazis did before them."

"And like the Soviets and Nazis, they failed", said Percival, shuddering. "The test samples...escaped. The research staff went mad. Washington and Moscow were within an ace of ordering a tactical nuclear strike on Na. It was only the scientists' advice that Oracle Smoke breaks down into ordinary household chemicals if removed from the Abyss that stopped them." He looked up again at athe Stylite. "But the thing you have to understand is, when I say the test samples escaped, I don't mean 'permeated through normal filters', or 'burned a hole in the test tube', or even 'were evolved after a laboratory accident'. Mr. Bogdanovich, Oracle Smoke will crawl up a bottle under acceleration in a centrifuge of its own accord. If put in containment structures that worked last week, it seems to analyze those structures and work out their weaknesses this week. Since the scientists stopped trying to figure out its chemical composition and contain it in laboratory glassware and started trying to study its behaviour in busting out of the same, they've had a far more interesting time of it, and they're all of the same opinion - it's alive."

The Stylite nodded. "I could have told you that. I've seen it change direction to attack a victim."

"Well, in any case, they've invented a new level of sterility to deal with it. All laboratory activities are now automated, total telemetric control. The scientists work from a bunker just outside Na city limits that communicates with the lab via shortwave radio. The military are terrified by their own lab experiments. Fascinated too, but definitely terrified. And they've sewn the press up tight."

The Stylite nodded. Lice were crawling visibly in his beard. "But they don't need to sew the caving community up tight, because if anyone goes down below two kilometres, believe me, they don't come back alive." He sighed and settled back against the cell wall. "Actually, that's not totally true; and I suppose saying none of them come back alive only serves to attract more idiots. And I was an idiot once", he said, patting his chest in disbelief, as if the thought he might once have been an idiot simply didn't bear contemplation nowadays.

Then, he looked back up at Percival again.

"So they offered you a choice, then. Very decent of them."

"It was very strange", said the young man, blinking. "My wife had just died, you see, quite unpleasantly, in a car crash. I had to watch her die, very painfully, over the course of about eight hours. I had my hand bones crushed by her holding my hand without having the accompanying pleasure of watching her give birth like most men have. We'd only been married a year. I was having, ah, some difficulty reconciling it with my profession, imagining how God could allow such things to happen and so forth, and then this...It was like a new door opening just as another one shut."

"Or like an ugly girl appearing on the rebound when you'd split with a good-looking one", warned the Stylite darkly. "A very, very ugly girl", he added.

Percival frowned. "She's actually quite pretty in her pictures, I think."

"Not her. Not Penelope. The Abyss, I mean. That fish-stinking cuntal crack in the flesh of Mother Earth that goes straight down to Hell. You know, the further a man goes down, the holier he has to be? How holy do you think you are, Percival?"

The young man examined his fingernails. He needed to. The Abyss had already splintered several of them.

"Not holier-than-thou, at any rate", he said, and smiled.