August 5, 2025 • 36 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
A matter of proportion by Anne Walker. In order to
make a man stop, you must convince him that it's
impossible to go on. Some people, though, just can't be convinced.
In the dark. Our glider shoots zeroed neatly on target.
Only Art Benjamin missed the edge of the gorge. When
(00:23):
we were sure invader hadn't heard the crashing of bushes,
I climbed down after him. The climb and what I've
found left me shaken. A special Corps squad leader is
not expendable by order. Clyde Esterbrook, my second and ic
e G mate, would have to mine the viaduct while
(00:44):
my nerve and glycogen stabilized. We timed the patrols. Clyde said,
have to wait till a train's coming. No time otherwise,
well it was his show. When the next pair of
burliin the coated men came over at a trot, he
breathed now and ghosted out. Almost before they were clear.
(01:08):
I switched on the iceg enter cortical encephalograph planted in
my temporal bone. My own senses could hear young furred breathing,
feel and smell the mat of pine needles under me
through Clyde's I could hear the blind whuffle of wind
in the girders, feel the crude wood of ties and
(01:28):
the iron cold molding of rails. In the star dark.
I could feel too, an odd, lilting elation in his mind,
as if this savage universe were a good thing to
take on. Spray guns, cold and all. We wanted to
set the mine so the wreckage would clabber a trail
below one like they'd built in Burma and Japan, where
(01:49):
you wouldn't think a monkey could go. But it probably
carried more supplies than the viaduct itself. So Clyde made
adjustments precisely, just as we'd figured it with the model
back at base. It was a tricky, slow job in
the bitter dark. I began to figure if he armed
it for this train and ran, she'd go off while
(02:10):
we were on location, and we'd be drenched in searchlights
and spray guns. Already. Through his fingers, I felt the
hum in the rails that every tank town reared kid knows.
I turned up my icy e. G all right, Clyde,
get back, arm it when she's gone past for the
next one. I felt him grin, felt his lips form words.
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I'll do better than that, Willie, Look, daddy, O no hands.
He slid over the edge and rested elbows and ribs
on the raw tie. Ends we're all acrobats in the core.
But I didn't like this act one little bit. Even
if he could hang by his hands, the heavy train
would jolt him off. But I swallowed my thoughts. He
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groped with his foot, contacted a sloping beam, and brought
his foot in. I felt a dull, scraping slither under
his moccasin soles. Frost, he thought, calmly rubbed a clear
patch with the edge of his foot, put his weight
on it, and transferred his hands to the beam with
a twist we hadn't learned in Corse school. My heart
(03:20):
did a double take. One slip and he'd be off
into the gorge, and the frost stung, melting under his
bare fingers. He lay in the trough of the massive
h beam, slid down about twenty feet to where it
made an angle with an upright, and wedged himself there.
It took all of twenty seconds, really, but I let
out a breath as if I'd been holding it for minutes.
(03:44):
As he settled, searchlights began skimming the bridge. If he'd
been running, he'd have been shot to a sieve. As
it was, they'd never see him in the mingled glare
and black. His heart hadn't even speed it up beyond
what was required by exertion. The train roared around his
shoulder and on to the viaduct, shaking it like an
(04:04):
angry hand. But as the box cars thunder clattered above
his head, he was peering into the gulf at a
string of feeble lights threading the bottom. There's the flywalk, Willie.
They know they're stuff, but we'll get it. Then, as
the caboose careened over and the searchlights cut off, well,
that gives us ten minutes before the patrol comes back.
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He levered on to his side, a joint at a
time and began to climb the beam. Never again for me,
even by proxy, you just couldn't climb that thing, nohow.
The slope was too steep, the beam was too massive
to shinney, yet too narrow to lie inside an elbow up.
The metal was too smooth and scummed with frost. His
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fingers were beginning to numb, and he was climbing in
each wach fin of the beam, every foot or so
was a round hole. He'd get one finger into a
hole and pull, inching his body against the beam, he
timed himself into some striding music I didn't know, not fast,
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but no waste motion, even the pauses rhythmic. I tell
you I was sweating under my leathers. Maybe I should
have switched the icy e g off for my own sake,
if not to avoid distracting Clyde. But I was hypnotized climbing.
In the old days, when you were risking your neck,
you were supposed to think great solemn thoughts. Recently you're
(05:38):
supposed to think about something silly, like a singing commercial.
Clyde's mind was neither posturing in front of his mental
mirror nor running in some feverish little circle. He faced
terror as big as the darkness from gorge bottom to stars,
and he was just simply as big as it was
sheer life, exulting in defying the dark, the frogs, and
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wind with the zombie grip of invader. I envied him.
Then his rhythm checked. Five feet from the top, he
reached confidently for a finger hole. No hole, he had
already reached as high as he could without shifting his
purchase and risking a skid, and even his wrestler's muscles
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wouldn't make the climb again. My stomach quaked. Never see
sunlight in the trees anymore, just cling till dawn picked
you out, like a crow's nest in a dead tree
or drop. Not Clyde, his flame of life crouched in anger,
not only the malice of nature and the rage of enemies,
but human shiftlessness against him. Too good. He'd take it
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on shoulder, thigh, knee, foot scraped off frost. He jammed
his jaw against the wet iron. His right hand never
let go, but it crawled up the fin of the
strut like a blind animal, while the load on his
points of purchase mounted watchmaker coordination where you'd normally think
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in boiler maker terms. The flame sank to a spark
as he focused, but it never blinked out. This was
not the anticipated warded danger, but the trick punch from nowhere.
This was it a sneak squall buffeted him. I cursed thinly,
but he sensed an extra purchase from its pressure, and
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reached the last four inches with a swift glide. The
next hole was there. He waited five heartbeats and pulled.
He began at the muscular disadvantage of a lying joints.
He had to make it the first time. If you
can't do it with a dollar, you won't do it
with the change. But as elbow and shoulder bent, the
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flame soared again. Score one more for life. A minute later,
he hooked his arm over the butt of a tie,
his chin his other arm, and hung a moment. He
didn't throw a knee up, just rolled and lay between
the rails. Even as he relaxed, he glanced at his watch.
Three minutes to spare leisurely, he armed the mine and
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jogged back to me inferred. As I broke icy eg contact,
his flame had sunk to an emberglow of anticipation. We
had almost reached the cave pricked on our map when
we heard the slam of the mine. Wee and far off.
We were lying doggo looking out at the snow peaks,
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incandescent in dawn, when the first invader patrols trailed by below.
Our equipment was a miracle of hot food and basic medication,
not pastimes, though, and by the second day of hiding,
I was thinking too much. There was Clyde, an inka
chief with a thread of black mustache and incongruous hazel eyes,
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My friend, an icy eg mate. What made him tick?
Where did he get his delight in the bright eyes
of danger? How did he gear his dare devil valor?
Not to the icy iron and obligatory killing, but to
the big music and stars over the gorge? But in
the core we don't ask questions, and above all never
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eavesdrop on icy e g. Young Ferd wasn't so inhibited.
Benjamin's death had shaken him. Losing your icy e g
made is like losing an eye. He began fly fishing Clyde.
How had Clyde learned that stunt in the dark with
a few minutes he'd had There's always a way, Ferd,
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if you're fighting for what you really want? Well, I
want to throw out invader, all right, But that's the start,
of course. But beyond that he changed the subject. Perhaps
only I knew of his dream about a stronghold for
rebels far in these mountains. He smiled. I guess you
get used to calculated risks. Except for imagination. You're a
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safe walking alleged twenty stories up as down on the sidewalk.
Not if you trip, that's the calculated risk. If you
climb it, you get used to it. Well, how did
you get used to it? Were you a mountaineer or
an acromat in a way both Clyde smiled again a
(10:24):
trifle bitterly, and switched the topic. Anyway, I've been in
action for the duration, except for some time in hospital.
Fird was onto that boner like an infielder. To get
into s C you have to be not only championship fit,
but have no history of injury that could crop up
to haywire you in a pinch, so hospital, you sure
(10:47):
don't show it now Clyde was certainly below par. To
cover his slip, he backed into a bigger, if less
obvious one. Oh, I was in that operation Armada at
Golden Gate had to be patched. He must have figured
Ferd had been a kid then and I hadn't been
too old. Odds were we'd recall the episode and no more. Unfortunately,
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i'd been a ham operator, and i'd been in the
corps that beamed those fire ships on to the invader
supply fleet in the dense fog. The whole episode was
burned into my brain. It had been Kamikazi stuff, though
there'd been a theoretical chance of the thirty men escaping
to justify sending them out. Actually, one escape boat did
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get back with three men. I'd learned about those men
out of morbid, conscious, scalded curiosity. Their leader was Edwin Scott,
a medical student. At the very start, he'd been shot
through the lower spine, so his companions put him in
the escape boat while they clinched their prey. But as
the escape boat sheared off, the blast of enemy fire
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killed three and disabled two. Scott must have been some boy.
He'd already doctored himself with hemistatics and local anesthetics, but
from the hips down he was dead as salt pork,
and his visceral reflexes must have been reacting like a
worm cut with a hoe. Yet somehow he doctored the
two others and got that boat home. The other two
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had died, but Scott lived as sole survivor of Operation Armada.
And he hadn't been a big bronze Latin Indian with
incongruous hazel eyes, but a snub nosed redhead, and he'd
been wheel chaired for life. They'd patched him up, decorated him,
sent him to a base hospital in Wisconsin, where he
could live in whatever comfort was available. So he dropped
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out of sight. And now this Clyde was lying. Of course,
he'd picked the episode at random, except that so much
else about him didn't square, including his name compared to
his physique. Now I thought about it. I tabled it
during our odyssey home, but during post mission leave it
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kept bothering me. I checked and came up with what
I'd already known. Scott had been sole survivor and the
others were certified dead. But about Scott, I got a
run around. He'd apparently vanished. Oh, They'd check for me,
but that could take years, which didn't lull my curiosity
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any into Clyde's past. I was sworn not to pry.
We were training for our next assignment when word came
through of the surrender at Kelowna. It was a flare
of sunlight through a black sky. The end was suddenly close.
Clyde and I were in Victoria, British Columbia. Not subscribing
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to the folk way that prescribed sea sick intoxication as
an expression of joy. We did the town with discrimination.
At midnight, we found ourselves strolling along the waterfront in
that fine Vancouver Island mist with just enough drink taken
to be moving through a dream. At one point we
leaned on a rail to watch the mainland lights twinkling dimly,
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like the hope of a new world blackout being lifted.
Suddenly Clyde said, what's fraying you? Recently? Will? When we
were taking our icee e g. Reconditioning, it came through
strong as garlic, though you wouldn't notice it normally. Why
be coy about an opening like that? Clyde? What do
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you know about Edwin Scott? That had let him spin
any yarn he chose, if he chose. He did the
cigarette lighting routine and said quietly, well I was Edwin Scott.
Will Then, as I waited, yes, really me, the real
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me talking to you this, he held out a powerful
coppery hand once belonged to a man called Marco Dassanhow
you've heard of transplanting limb I had, but this man
was no transplant job. And if a spinal cord is cut,
transplanting legs from Ippolovski, the primo ballerino is worthless, I said,
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what about it? I was the first successful brain transplant
in man. For a moment, it queered me, but only
a moment. Hell. You read in fairy tales and fantasy
magazines about one man's mind in another man's body, and
it's marvelous, not horrible. But by curiosity, I know a
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bit about such things. A big surgery journal back in
the forties had published a visionary article on grafting a
whole limb with colored plates, as if for a real procedure.
Footnote Hall Whole upper extremity Transplant for human Beings Annals
of Surgery, nineteen forty four, Page one, twenty, paragraph twelve.
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Then they'd develop techniques for acclimating a graft to the
host's serum so it would not react as a foreign body.
First they'd transplanted hunks of ear and such, then in
the sixties fingers, feet, and whole arms in fact, But
a brain is another story. A cut nerve can grow together.
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Every fiber has an insulating sheath which survives the cut
and guides growing stumps back to their stations in the
brain and spinal cord. No sheaths. Growing fibers have about
the chance of restoring contact that you'd have of traversing
the Amazon jungle on foot without a map. I said,
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so I know, he said, I learned all I could,
and as near as I can put it. It's like this,
when you cut your finger, it can heal in two ways.
Usually it bleeds scabs and skin grows under the scab,
taking a week or so. But if you'll line the
edges exactly at once, they may join almost immediately, healing
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by first intent. Likewise, in the brain, if they line
up cut nerve fibers before the cutoff bit degenerates, it'll
join up with the stump. So take a serum conditioned
brain and fit it to the stem of another brain
so that the big fiber bundles are properly fitted together,
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fast enough, and you can get better than ninety percent recovery. Sure,
I said, parading my own knowledge. But what about injury
to the masses of nerve cells, and you'd have to
shear off the nerves growing out of the brain. There's
always a way, Willie. There's a place in the brain
stem called the isthmus. No cell masses, just bundles of
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fiber running up and down. Almost all the nerves come
off below that point, and the few that don't can
be spliced together except the smell nerves and optic nerve. Ever,
notice I can't smell Willie. And they transplanted my eyes
with the brain. Biggest trick of the whole job, it figured.
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But I'd still hate to go through with it. What
could I lose? Some paraplegics seemed to live a fuller
life than ever me. I was going mad, and I'd
seen the dogs. This research team at my hospital was
working on old dog's brains in whelp's bodies, spry as natural.
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Then came the chance. Dasanjo was a Brazilian wrestler stranded
here by the war. Not his war, he said, but
he did have the decency to volunteer as medical orderly.
But he got conscripted by a bomb that took off
a corner of the hospital and won off his head.
They got him into chemical stasis quicker than it had
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ever been done before, but he was dead as a
human being, no brain worth salvaging above the isthmus. So
the big guns at the hospital saw a chance to
try their game on human material. Superb body and lower
nervous system in ideal condition waiting for a brain only
whose naturally some big shots near the end of his
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rope and willing to gamble. But I decided it would
be a forgotten little shot name of Edwin Scott. I
already knew the surgeons from being a guinea pig on
ic e g. Of course, when I sounded them out,
they gave me a kindly brush off. The matter was
out of their hands. However, I knew whose hands it
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was in, and I waited for my chance, a big
job that needed somebody expendable. Then I'd make a deal,
writing my own ticket, because they'd figure i'd never collect.
Did you hear about Operation seed Corn? That was the
underground railway that ran thousands of farmers out of occupied territory.
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Man power was what finally broke Invader Improbable as it seems.
Epidemics desertions over extended lines thinned that overwhelming combat strength,
and every farmer spirited out of their hands equaled ten casualties.
I nodded well, I planned that with myself as director
and sold it to Phillipson. I contemplated him just a
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big man in a trench coat and droop brimmed hat,
silhouetted against the lamplet mist. I said, you directed seed
corn out of a wheelchair in enemy territory and came
back to get transplanted into another body. Man. You didn't
tell Ferd a word of a lie when you said
you were used to walking up to death. But there
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was more besides that. Dower Scott's fortitude. Where did he
come by that high hearted valor? He shrugged. You do
what you can with what you've got. Those weren't the
big adventures I was thinking about when I said that
I had a team behind me. In those, I could
only josh, I'd sure like to hear the capperoo. Then
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he towed out his cigarette. You're the only person who's
equipped for it. Maybe you'd get it, Willie, How do
you mean? I kept an icy e G record, not
that I knew it was going to happen, just wanted proof.
If they gave me a deal and I pulled it off,
Philipson wouldn't renig. But generals were expendable. No one knew
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I had that transportmitter in my temporal bone, and I
rigged it to get a tape on my home receiver,
like to hear it. I said, what anyone would and
steered him back to quarters before he'd think better of it.
This would be something on the way he filled In
the background, Scott had been living out of hospital in
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a small apartment, enjoying as much liberty as he could manage.
He had equipment so he could stump around, and an
antique car specially equipped. He wasn't complimentary about them. Orthopedic
products had to be unreliable, hard to service, unsightly, intricate,
and uncomfortable if they also squeaked and cut your clothes fine.
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Having to plan every move with an eye on weather
and a dozen other factors, he developed an uncanny foresight.
Yet he had to improvise at a moment's notice. With
life a continuous high wire act, he trained every surviving
fiber to precision, dexterity, and tenacity. Finally, he avoided help,
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not pride self preservation. The compulsively helpful have rarely the
wit to ask before rushing in to knock you on
your face, So he learned to bide his time till
the horizon was clear of beaming simpletons. Also, he found
an interest in how far he could go. These qualities
and the time he had for thinking begot seed corn
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When he had it convincing, he applied to see General Phillipson,
head of Regional Intelligence, a man with both insight and
authority to make the deal, but also as tough as
his post demanded. Scott got an appointment two weeks ahead
that put it early in April, which decreased the weather hazard,
a major consideration in even a trip to the supermarket.
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What was Scott's grim consternation then, when he woke on
d Day to find his windows plastered with snow under
a driving wind not mentioned in last night's forecast. Of course,
he could concoct a plausible excuse for postponement, which Philipson
was just the man to see through, or call help
to get him to h Q and have Philipson bark, man,
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you can't even make it across town on your own
power because of a little snow. No come hell or blizzard,
he'd have to go solo. Besides, when he faced the
inevitable unexpected behind invader lines, he couldn't afford a precedent
of having flinched. Now he dressed and breakfasted with all
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the petty foresights that can mean the shaving of clearance
in a tight squeeze and got off with all the
margin of time he could muster In the apartment court,
he had a parking space by the basement exit, and
for a wonder no free wheeling nincompoop had done him
out of it last night. Even so, getting to the
car door illustrated the ordeal ahead. The snow was the damp,
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heavy stuff that packs and glares. The streets were nasty,
but he had the advantage of having learned restraint and foresight.
H Q had been the post office, a ponderous red
stone building filling a whole block. He had scouted it
thoroughly in advance, outside and in, and scheduled his route
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to the General's office allowing for minor hazards. Now he
had half an hour exit for the unscheduled major hazard.
But on arriving he could hardly believe his luck. No
car was yet parked in front of the building, and
the walk was scraped clean and salted to kill the
still falling flakes. No problems. He parked and began to
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unload himself quickly to forestall the elderly m P who
hurried towards him, But as Scott prepared to thank him
off the man said, sorry, Mac, no one can park
here this morning. Scott felt the chill of nemesis, knowing
it was useless. He protested his identity and mission. But sorry, Major,
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but you'll have to park around back. They're bringing in
the big computer. General himself can't park here, them's orders.
He could ask the sergeant to park the car, but
the man couldn't leave his post. Would make a to do,
calling some one, And that was Philipson's sweet overlooking the scene,
No dice, go see what might be possible. But side
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and back parking were jammed with refugees from the computer,
and so was the other side. And he came around
to the front again. Five minutes wasted, He thought searchingly
he could drive to a taxi lot, park there and
be driven back by taxi, disembark on the clean walk,
and there you were. Of course, he could hear Philipson's
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thought you drove your own car huh, and his own
damaging excuses. But even out yonder you'd cut corners in emergency.
It was all such a comfortable out He relaxed, and
relaxing saw his alternative. He was driving around the block
again and noted the back entrance. This was not ground
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level because of the slope of ground. It faced a
broad landing reached by a double flight of steps. These
began on each side at right angles to the building,
and then turned up to the landing along the right
face of the wall. Normally they were no negotiable, but now,
even had he found parking near them, he hadn't the
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chance of the celluloid cat In hell, of even crossing
the ten feet of uncleaned sidewalk, you might as well
climb an eighty degree fifty foot wall of rotten ice.
But there was always a way, and he saw it.
The unpassable walk itself was an avenue of approach. He
swung his car onto it at the corner and drove
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along it to the steps to park in the angle
between steps and wall, and discovered a new shutout. He'd
expected the steps to be a mean job in the
raw wind that favored this face of the building, but
a wartime janitor had swept them sketchily, only down the middle,
far from the balustrades he must use. By the balustrades,
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early feet had packed a semi ice far more treacherous
than the untouched snow, and the two bottom steps curved
out beyond the balustrade. So a sufficiently reckless alpinist might
assay a cliff in a sleet storm and a gale.
But he couldn't even try it if it began with
an overhang. Still time for the taxi, and so again
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Scott saw the way that was always there. Set the
car so he could use its hood to heft up
those first steps. Suddenly his thinking metamorphosed. He faced not
a miserable, unwarranted forlorn hope, but the universe as it
was titanic pressure suit against the hurricanes of Jupiter and
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against a gutter freshet. Life was always outclassed, and always
fought back. Proportions didn't matter, only mood. He switched on
his iceg to record what might happen. I auditioned it,
but I can't disentangle it from what he told me.
For example, in his words, multiplied distances by five, heights
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by ten and slickness by twenty, and in the playback
thirty chin high ledges loaded with soft lard, and only
finger holds and toe holds. And you did it on
stilts that began not at your heels, at your hips.
Add the hazard of helpful hosea here, let me give
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you a hand, Mac grabbing a key arm and crashing
down the precipice on top of you. Switching on the
iceg took his mind back to the snug apartment, where
its receiver stood, the armchair, books, desk of diverting work.
It looked awful good, but life fought back and always
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had found a way. He shucked his windbreaker because it
would be more encumbrance than help in the showdown. He
checked shoelaces and strapped on the cleats he had made
for what they were worth. He vetoed the bag of
sand and salt he kept for minor difficulties. Far too slow,
he got out of the car. This could be the
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last job he'd have to do incognito seed corn he'd
get credit for. Therefore he cherished it triumph for its
own sake. Alternatively, he'd end at the bottom in a
burlesque clutter of chrome alum splints and sticks, with maybe
a broken bone to clinch the decision. For some men,
death is literally more tolerable than defeat and humiliation. Eighteen
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shallow steps to the turn, twelve to the top. Once
he'd have cleared it, in three heartbeats. Now he had
to make it to a twenty minute deadline without rope
or alpenstock. A moon man adapted to a fraction of
Earth gravity with the help of the car hood. The
first two pitches were easy. For the next four or five,
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wind had swept the top of the balustrade, providing damp,
gritty hand hold before the going got tougher. He developed
a technique, a rhythm and system of thrusts proportioned to
heights and wits, a way of scraping holds where ice
was not malignantly welded to stone, an appreciation of snow
texture and depth, an economy of effort. He was enjoying
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a premature elation when on the twelfth step a cleat
strap gave. Luckily, he was able to take his lurch
with a firm grip on the balustrade, but he felt
depth yawning behind him. Dourly, he took thirty seconds to
retrieve the cleat stitching had been sawed through by a
metal edge. Just as he'd told the cocksure workmen, it
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would be oh to have a world where imbecility wasn't entrenched. Well,
he was fighting here and now for the resources to
found one. He resumed the escalade, his rhythm knocked cock
eyed things even out. Years back, an invader bomber had
scored a near miss on the building, and minor damage
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to stone work was unrepaired. Crevices gave finger hold, chipped
out hollows gave barely perceptible purchase to the heel of
his hand. Salutes to the random effects of unlikely causes.
He reached the turn considered swiftly. His fresh strength was blunted.
His muscles, especially in his thumbs, were stiffening with chill.
(32:21):
Now he could continue up the left side by the building,
which was tougher and hazardous with frozen drippings, or by
the outside right hand rail, which was easier but meant
crossing the open half swept wide step and recrossing the
landing up top. Damn, why hadn't he foreseen that? Oh,
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you can't think of everything. Get going left side. The
wall of the building was rough hewn and ornamented with
surplus carvings cheers for the eighteen nineties art architect qualified cheers.
The first three lifts were easy, with hand holds in
a frieze of life. For the next he had to
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heft with his side jaw against a boss of stone.
A window ledge made the next three facile. The final
five stared an open gap without recourse. He made two
by grace of the janitors. Having swabbed his broom a
little closer to the wall, his muscles began to wobble
in waver in his proportions. He'd made two hundred feet
(33:24):
of almost vertical ascent, but climbing a real ice fall,
you'd unleash the last convulsive effort because you had to here.
When you came down to it, you could always sit
and bump yourself down to the car, which was in
that context a mere safe forty feet away. So he
went on because he had to. He got the rubber
(33:45):
tip off one stick. The bare metal tube would bore
into the snow pack. It might hold if he bore
down just right and swung his weight just so, and
got just the right sliding purchase on the wall, and
the snow didn't give underfoot or under cane, And if
it didn't work, it didn't work. Beyond the landing westwards,
(34:08):
the sky had broken into April blue, far away over
Iowa and Kansas, over Operation seed Corn, over the refuge
for rebels that lay at the end of all his roads.
He got set and lifted a thousand miles nearer the refuge,
got set and lifted. Balanced over plunging gulfs, his reach
(34:31):
found a round pilaster at the top, a perfect gripped
for a hand. He drew himself up, and this time
his cleated foot cut through snow to stone and slipped.
But his hold was too good, and there he was.
No salutes, no cheers, only one more victory for life.
Even in victory, un life gave you no respite. The
(34:55):
doorstep was three feet wide, hollowed by eighty years of traffic,
and filled with frozen drippings from its pseudo Norman arch.
He had to tilt across it and catch the brass knob,
like snatching a ring in a high dive. No danger
now except sitting down in a growing puddle till someone
came along to hoist him under the armpits, and then
(35:16):
arriving at the generals late with his seat black wet. You, unhorse,
your fulman, curve it up to the Royal box to
receive the victor's chaplet, Swing from your saddle and fall
flat on your face. But he cogitated on the bench inside,
getting his other cleat off and the tip back on
his stick. Things do even out. No hearty helper had intervened,
(35:40):
No snot nosed, gaping child had twitched his attention. Nobody's secretary,
pretty of course, had scurried to helpfully knock him down
with the door. They were all out front, superintending arrival
of the computer. The general said, only if tartly. Oh yes, major,
come in late, aren't you. It's still icy, said Ed.
(36:03):
Scott had to drive carefully, you know. In fact, he
had lost minutes that way, enough to have saved his
exact deadline, and that excuse, being in proportion to Philipson's
standard dimension was fair game. I wondered what dimension Clyde
would go on to now that the challenge of war
was passed to his rebels refuge at last. Maybe does
(36:28):
it matter? Whatever it is, life will be outclassed, and
Scott Esterbrook's brand of life will fight back. The end
A matter of proportion by Anne Walker. In order to
make a man stop, you must convince him that it's
impossible to go on. Some people, though, just can't be convinced.
In the dark. Our glider shoots zeroed neatly on target.
Only Art Benjamin missed the edge of the gorge. When
(00:23):
we were sure invader hadn't heard the crashing of bushes,
I climbed down after him. The climb and what I've
found left me shaken. A special Corps squad leader is
not expendable by order. Clyde Esterbrook, my second and ic
e G mate, would have to mine the viaduct while
(00:44):
my nerve and glycogen stabilized. We timed the patrols. Clyde said,
have to wait till a train's coming. No time otherwise,
well it was his show. When the next pair of
burliin the coated men came over at a trot, he
breathed now and ghosted out. Almost before they were clear.
(01:08):
I switched on the iceg enter cortical encephalograph planted in
my temporal bone. My own senses could hear young furred breathing,
feel and smell the mat of pine needles under me
through Clyde's I could hear the blind whuffle of wind
in the girders, feel the crude wood of ties and
(01:28):
the iron cold molding of rails. In the star dark.
I could feel too, an odd, lilting elation in his mind,
as if this savage universe were a good thing to
take on. Spray guns, cold and all. We wanted to
set the mine so the wreckage would clabber a trail
below one like they'd built in Burma and Japan, where
(01:49):
you wouldn't think a monkey could go. But it probably
carried more supplies than the viaduct itself. So Clyde made
adjustments precisely, just as we'd figured it with the model
back at base. It was a tricky, slow job in
the bitter dark. I began to figure if he armed
it for this train and ran, she'd go off while
(02:10):
we were on location, and we'd be drenched in searchlights
and spray guns. Already. Through his fingers, I felt the
hum in the rails that every tank town reared kid knows.
I turned up my icy e. G all right, Clyde,
get back, arm it when she's gone past for the
next one. I felt him grin, felt his lips form words.
(02:33):
I'll do better than that, Willie, Look, daddy, O no hands.
He slid over the edge and rested elbows and ribs
on the raw tie. Ends we're all acrobats in the core.
But I didn't like this act one little bit. Even
if he could hang by his hands, the heavy train
would jolt him off. But I swallowed my thoughts. He
(02:55):
groped with his foot, contacted a sloping beam, and brought
his foot in. I felt a dull, scraping slither under
his moccasin soles. Frost, he thought, calmly rubbed a clear
patch with the edge of his foot, put his weight
on it, and transferred his hands to the beam with
a twist we hadn't learned in Corse school. My heart
(03:20):
did a double take. One slip and he'd be off
into the gorge, and the frost stung, melting under his
bare fingers. He lay in the trough of the massive
h beam, slid down about twenty feet to where it
made an angle with an upright, and wedged himself there.
It took all of twenty seconds, really, but I let
out a breath as if I'd been holding it for minutes.
(03:44):
As he settled, searchlights began skimming the bridge. If he'd
been running, he'd have been shot to a sieve. As
it was, they'd never see him in the mingled glare
and black. His heart hadn't even speed it up beyond
what was required by exertion. The train roared around his
shoulder and on to the viaduct, shaking it like an
(04:04):
angry hand. But as the box cars thunder clattered above
his head, he was peering into the gulf at a
string of feeble lights threading the bottom. There's the flywalk, Willie.
They know they're stuff, but we'll get it. Then, as
the caboose careened over and the searchlights cut off, well,
that gives us ten minutes before the patrol comes back.
(04:29):
He levered on to his side, a joint at a
time and began to climb the beam. Never again for me,
even by proxy, you just couldn't climb that thing, nohow.
The slope was too steep, the beam was too massive
to shinney, yet too narrow to lie inside an elbow up.
The metal was too smooth and scummed with frost. His
(04:54):
fingers were beginning to numb, and he was climbing in
each wach fin of the beam, every foot or so
was a round hole. He'd get one finger into a
hole and pull, inching his body against the beam, he
timed himself into some striding music I didn't know, not fast,
(05:15):
but no waste motion, even the pauses rhythmic. I tell
you I was sweating under my leathers. Maybe I should
have switched the icy e g off for my own sake,
if not to avoid distracting Clyde. But I was hypnotized climbing.
In the old days, when you were risking your neck,
you were supposed to think great solemn thoughts. Recently you're
(05:38):
supposed to think about something silly, like a singing commercial.
Clyde's mind was neither posturing in front of his mental
mirror nor running in some feverish little circle. He faced
terror as big as the darkness from gorge bottom to stars,
and he was just simply as big as it was
sheer life, exulting in defying the dark, the frogs, and
(06:00):
wind with the zombie grip of invader. I envied him.
Then his rhythm checked. Five feet from the top, he
reached confidently for a finger hole. No hole, he had
already reached as high as he could without shifting his
purchase and risking a skid, and even his wrestler's muscles
(06:22):
wouldn't make the climb again. My stomach quaked. Never see
sunlight in the trees anymore, just cling till dawn picked
you out, like a crow's nest in a dead tree
or drop. Not Clyde, his flame of life crouched in anger,
not only the malice of nature and the rage of enemies,
but human shiftlessness against him. Too good. He'd take it
(06:46):
on shoulder, thigh, knee, foot scraped off frost. He jammed
his jaw against the wet iron. His right hand never
let go, but it crawled up the fin of the
strut like a blind animal, while the load on his
points of purchase mounted watchmaker coordination where you'd normally think
(07:08):
in boiler maker terms. The flame sank to a spark
as he focused, but it never blinked out. This was
not the anticipated warded danger, but the trick punch from nowhere.
This was it a sneak squall buffeted him. I cursed thinly,
but he sensed an extra purchase from its pressure, and
(07:29):
reached the last four inches with a swift glide. The
next hole was there. He waited five heartbeats and pulled.
He began at the muscular disadvantage of a lying joints.
He had to make it the first time. If you
can't do it with a dollar, you won't do it
with the change. But as elbow and shoulder bent, the
(07:50):
flame soared again. Score one more for life. A minute later,
he hooked his arm over the butt of a tie,
his chin his other arm, and hung a moment. He
didn't throw a knee up, just rolled and lay between
the rails. Even as he relaxed, he glanced at his watch.
Three minutes to spare leisurely, he armed the mine and
(08:14):
jogged back to me inferred. As I broke icy eg contact,
his flame had sunk to an emberglow of anticipation. We
had almost reached the cave pricked on our map when
we heard the slam of the mine. Wee and far off.
We were lying doggo looking out at the snow peaks,
(08:35):
incandescent in dawn, when the first invader patrols trailed by below.
Our equipment was a miracle of hot food and basic medication,
not pastimes, though, and by the second day of hiding,
I was thinking too much. There was Clyde, an inka
chief with a thread of black mustache and incongruous hazel eyes,
(08:57):
My friend, an icy eg mate. What made him tick?
Where did he get his delight in the bright eyes
of danger? How did he gear his dare devil valor?
Not to the icy iron and obligatory killing, but to
the big music and stars over the gorge? But in
the core we don't ask questions, and above all never
(09:18):
eavesdrop on icy e g. Young Ferd wasn't so inhibited.
Benjamin's death had shaken him. Losing your icy e g
made is like losing an eye. He began fly fishing Clyde.
How had Clyde learned that stunt in the dark with
a few minutes he'd had There's always a way, Ferd,
(09:39):
if you're fighting for what you really want? Well, I
want to throw out invader, all right, But that's the start,
of course. But beyond that he changed the subject. Perhaps
only I knew of his dream about a stronghold for
rebels far in these mountains. He smiled. I guess you
get used to calculated risks. Except for imagination. You're a
(10:01):
safe walking alleged twenty stories up as down on the sidewalk.
Not if you trip, that's the calculated risk. If you
climb it, you get used to it. Well, how did
you get used to it? Were you a mountaineer or
an acromat in a way both Clyde smiled again a
(10:24):
trifle bitterly, and switched the topic. Anyway, I've been in
action for the duration, except for some time in hospital.
Fird was onto that boner like an infielder. To get
into s C you have to be not only championship fit,
but have no history of injury that could crop up
to haywire you in a pinch, so hospital, you sure
(10:47):
don't show it now Clyde was certainly below par. To
cover his slip, he backed into a bigger, if less
obvious one. Oh, I was in that operation Armada at
Golden Gate had to be patched. He must have figured
Ferd had been a kid then and I hadn't been
too old. Odds were we'd recall the episode and no more. Unfortunately,
(11:10):
i'd been a ham operator, and i'd been in the
corps that beamed those fire ships on to the invader
supply fleet in the dense fog. The whole episode was
burned into my brain. It had been Kamikazi stuff, though
there'd been a theoretical chance of the thirty men escaping
to justify sending them out. Actually, one escape boat did
(11:32):
get back with three men. I'd learned about those men
out of morbid, conscious, scalded curiosity. Their leader was Edwin Scott,
a medical student. At the very start, he'd been shot
through the lower spine, so his companions put him in
the escape boat while they clinched their prey. But as
the escape boat sheared off, the blast of enemy fire
(11:54):
killed three and disabled two. Scott must have been some boy.
He'd already doctored himself with hemistatics and local anesthetics, but
from the hips down he was dead as salt pork,
and his visceral reflexes must have been reacting like a
worm cut with a hoe. Yet somehow he doctored the
two others and got that boat home. The other two
(12:18):
had died, but Scott lived as sole survivor of Operation Armada.
And he hadn't been a big bronze Latin Indian with
incongruous hazel eyes, but a snub nosed redhead, and he'd
been wheel chaired for life. They'd patched him up, decorated him,
sent him to a base hospital in Wisconsin, where he
could live in whatever comfort was available. So he dropped
(12:41):
out of sight. And now this Clyde was lying. Of course,
he'd picked the episode at random, except that so much
else about him didn't square, including his name compared to
his physique. Now I thought about it. I tabled it
during our odyssey home, but during post mission leave it
(13:03):
kept bothering me. I checked and came up with what
I'd already known. Scott had been sole survivor and the
others were certified dead. But about Scott, I got a
run around. He'd apparently vanished. Oh, They'd check for me,
but that could take years, which didn't lull my curiosity
(13:23):
any into Clyde's past. I was sworn not to pry.
We were training for our next assignment when word came
through of the surrender at Kelowna. It was a flare
of sunlight through a black sky. The end was suddenly close.
Clyde and I were in Victoria, British Columbia. Not subscribing
(13:44):
to the folk way that prescribed sea sick intoxication as
an expression of joy. We did the town with discrimination.
At midnight, we found ourselves strolling along the waterfront in
that fine Vancouver Island mist with just enough drink taken
to be moving through a dream. At one point we
leaned on a rail to watch the mainland lights twinkling dimly,
(14:07):
like the hope of a new world blackout being lifted.
Suddenly Clyde said, what's fraying you? Recently? Will? When we
were taking our icee e g. Reconditioning, it came through
strong as garlic, though you wouldn't notice it normally. Why
be coy about an opening like that? Clyde? What do
(14:28):
you know about Edwin Scott? That had let him spin
any yarn he chose, if he chose. He did the
cigarette lighting routine and said quietly, well I was Edwin Scott.
Will Then, as I waited, yes, really me, the real
(14:48):
me talking to you this, he held out a powerful
coppery hand once belonged to a man called Marco Dassanhow
you've heard of transplanting limb I had, but this man
was no transplant job. And if a spinal cord is cut,
transplanting legs from Ippolovski, the primo ballerino is worthless, I said,
(15:11):
what about it? I was the first successful brain transplant
in man. For a moment, it queered me, but only
a moment. Hell. You read in fairy tales and fantasy
magazines about one man's mind in another man's body, and
it's marvelous, not horrible. But by curiosity, I know a
(15:35):
bit about such things. A big surgery journal back in
the forties had published a visionary article on grafting a
whole limb with colored plates, as if for a real procedure.
Footnote Hall Whole upper extremity Transplant for human Beings Annals
of Surgery, nineteen forty four, Page one, twenty, paragraph twelve.
(16:00):
Then they'd develop techniques for acclimating a graft to the
host's serum so it would not react as a foreign body.
First they'd transplanted hunks of ear and such, then in
the sixties fingers, feet, and whole arms in fact, But
a brain is another story. A cut nerve can grow together.
(16:20):
Every fiber has an insulating sheath which survives the cut
and guides growing stumps back to their stations in the
brain and spinal cord. No sheaths. Growing fibers have about
the chance of restoring contact that you'd have of traversing
the Amazon jungle on foot without a map. I said,
(16:41):
so I know, he said, I learned all I could,
and as near as I can put it. It's like this,
when you cut your finger, it can heal in two ways.
Usually it bleeds scabs and skin grows under the scab,
taking a week or so. But if you'll line the
edges exactly at once, they may join almost immediately, healing
(17:05):
by first intent. Likewise, in the brain, if they line
up cut nerve fibers before the cutoff bit degenerates, it'll
join up with the stump. So take a serum conditioned
brain and fit it to the stem of another brain
so that the big fiber bundles are properly fitted together,
(17:26):
fast enough, and you can get better than ninety percent recovery. Sure,
I said, parading my own knowledge. But what about injury
to the masses of nerve cells, and you'd have to
shear off the nerves growing out of the brain. There's
always a way, Willie. There's a place in the brain
stem called the isthmus. No cell masses, just bundles of
(17:49):
fiber running up and down. Almost all the nerves come
off below that point, and the few that don't can
be spliced together except the smell nerves and optic nerve. Ever,
notice I can't smell Willie. And they transplanted my eyes
with the brain. Biggest trick of the whole job, it figured.
(18:11):
But I'd still hate to go through with it. What
could I lose? Some paraplegics seemed to live a fuller
life than ever me. I was going mad, and I'd
seen the dogs. This research team at my hospital was
working on old dog's brains in whelp's bodies, spry as natural.
(18:33):
Then came the chance. Dasanjo was a Brazilian wrestler stranded
here by the war. Not his war, he said, but
he did have the decency to volunteer as medical orderly.
But he got conscripted by a bomb that took off
a corner of the hospital and won off his head.
They got him into chemical stasis quicker than it had
(18:55):
ever been done before, but he was dead as a
human being, no brain worth salvaging above the isthmus. So
the big guns at the hospital saw a chance to
try their game on human material. Superb body and lower
nervous system in ideal condition waiting for a brain only
whose naturally some big shots near the end of his
(19:19):
rope and willing to gamble. But I decided it would
be a forgotten little shot name of Edwin Scott. I
already knew the surgeons from being a guinea pig on
ic e g. Of course, when I sounded them out,
they gave me a kindly brush off. The matter was
out of their hands. However, I knew whose hands it
(19:39):
was in, and I waited for my chance, a big
job that needed somebody expendable. Then I'd make a deal,
writing my own ticket, because they'd figure i'd never collect.
Did you hear about Operation seed Corn? That was the
underground railway that ran thousands of farmers out of occupied territory.
(19:59):
Man power was what finally broke Invader Improbable as it seems.
Epidemics desertions over extended lines thinned that overwhelming combat strength,
and every farmer spirited out of their hands equaled ten casualties.
I nodded well, I planned that with myself as director
and sold it to Phillipson. I contemplated him just a
(20:24):
big man in a trench coat and droop brimmed hat,
silhouetted against the lamplet mist. I said, you directed seed
corn out of a wheelchair in enemy territory and came
back to get transplanted into another body. Man. You didn't
tell Ferd a word of a lie when you said
you were used to walking up to death. But there
(20:45):
was more besides that. Dower Scott's fortitude. Where did he
come by that high hearted valor? He shrugged. You do
what you can with what you've got. Those weren't the
big adventures I was thinking about when I said that
I had a team behind me. In those, I could
only josh, I'd sure like to hear the capperoo. Then
(21:09):
he towed out his cigarette. You're the only person who's
equipped for it. Maybe you'd get it, Willie, How do
you mean? I kept an icy e G record, not
that I knew it was going to happen, just wanted proof.
If they gave me a deal and I pulled it off,
Philipson wouldn't renig. But generals were expendable. No one knew
(21:32):
I had that transportmitter in my temporal bone, and I
rigged it to get a tape on my home receiver,
like to hear it. I said, what anyone would and
steered him back to quarters before he'd think better of it.
This would be something on the way he filled In
the background, Scott had been living out of hospital in
(21:53):
a small apartment, enjoying as much liberty as he could manage.
He had equipment so he could stump around, and an
antique car specially equipped. He wasn't complimentary about them. Orthopedic
products had to be unreliable, hard to service, unsightly, intricate,
and uncomfortable if they also squeaked and cut your clothes fine.
(22:18):
Having to plan every move with an eye on weather
and a dozen other factors, he developed an uncanny foresight.
Yet he had to improvise at a moment's notice. With
life a continuous high wire act, he trained every surviving
fiber to precision, dexterity, and tenacity. Finally, he avoided help,
(22:39):
not pride self preservation. The compulsively helpful have rarely the
wit to ask before rushing in to knock you on
your face, So he learned to bide his time till
the horizon was clear of beaming simpletons. Also, he found
an interest in how far he could go. These qualities
and the time he had for thinking begot seed corn
(23:02):
When he had it convincing, he applied to see General Phillipson,
head of Regional Intelligence, a man with both insight and
authority to make the deal, but also as tough as
his post demanded. Scott got an appointment two weeks ahead
that put it early in April, which decreased the weather hazard,
a major consideration in even a trip to the supermarket.
(23:25):
What was Scott's grim consternation then, when he woke on
d Day to find his windows plastered with snow under
a driving wind not mentioned in last night's forecast. Of course,
he could concoct a plausible excuse for postponement, which Philipson
was just the man to see through, or call help
to get him to h Q and have Philipson bark, man,
(23:48):
you can't even make it across town on your own
power because of a little snow. No come hell or blizzard,
he'd have to go solo. Besides, when he faced the
inevitable unexpected behind invader lines, he couldn't afford a precedent
of having flinched. Now he dressed and breakfasted with all
(24:10):
the petty foresights that can mean the shaving of clearance
in a tight squeeze and got off with all the
margin of time he could muster In the apartment court,
he had a parking space by the basement exit, and
for a wonder no free wheeling nincompoop had done him
out of it last night. Even so, getting to the
car door illustrated the ordeal ahead. The snow was the damp,
(24:33):
heavy stuff that packs and glares. The streets were nasty,
but he had the advantage of having learned restraint and foresight.
H Q had been the post office, a ponderous red
stone building filling a whole block. He had scouted it
thoroughly in advance, outside and in, and scheduled his route
(24:54):
to the General's office allowing for minor hazards. Now he
had half an hour exit for the unscheduled major hazard.
But on arriving he could hardly believe his luck. No
car was yet parked in front of the building, and
the walk was scraped clean and salted to kill the
still falling flakes. No problems. He parked and began to
(25:18):
unload himself quickly to forestall the elderly m P who
hurried towards him, But as Scott prepared to thank him
off the man said, sorry, Mac, no one can park
here this morning. Scott felt the chill of nemesis, knowing
it was useless. He protested his identity and mission. But sorry, Major,
(25:38):
but you'll have to park around back. They're bringing in
the big computer. General himself can't park here, them's orders.
He could ask the sergeant to park the car, but
the man couldn't leave his post. Would make a to do,
calling some one, And that was Philipson's sweet overlooking the scene,
No dice, go see what might be possible. But side
(26:01):
and back parking were jammed with refugees from the computer,
and so was the other side. And he came around
to the front again. Five minutes wasted, He thought searchingly
he could drive to a taxi lot, park there and
be driven back by taxi, disembark on the clean walk,
and there you were. Of course, he could hear Philipson's
(26:22):
thought you drove your own car huh, and his own
damaging excuses. But even out yonder you'd cut corners in emergency.
It was all such a comfortable out He relaxed, and
relaxing saw his alternative. He was driving around the block
again and noted the back entrance. This was not ground
(26:44):
level because of the slope of ground. It faced a
broad landing reached by a double flight of steps. These
began on each side at right angles to the building,
and then turned up to the landing along the right
face of the wall. Normally they were no negotiable, but now,
even had he found parking near them, he hadn't the
(27:04):
chance of the celluloid cat In hell, of even crossing
the ten feet of uncleaned sidewalk, you might as well
climb an eighty degree fifty foot wall of rotten ice.
But there was always a way, and he saw it.
The unpassable walk itself was an avenue of approach. He
swung his car onto it at the corner and drove
(27:26):
along it to the steps to park in the angle
between steps and wall, and discovered a new shutout. He'd
expected the steps to be a mean job in the
raw wind that favored this face of the building, but
a wartime janitor had swept them sketchily, only down the middle,
far from the balustrades he must use. By the balustrades,
(27:48):
early feet had packed a semi ice far more treacherous
than the untouched snow, and the two bottom steps curved
out beyond the balustrade. So a sufficiently reckless alpinist might
assay a cliff in a sleet storm and a gale.
But he couldn't even try it if it began with
an overhang. Still time for the taxi, and so again
(28:12):
Scott saw the way that was always there. Set the
car so he could use its hood to heft up
those first steps. Suddenly his thinking metamorphosed. He faced not
a miserable, unwarranted forlorn hope, but the universe as it
was titanic pressure suit against the hurricanes of Jupiter and
(28:35):
against a gutter freshet. Life was always outclassed, and always
fought back. Proportions didn't matter, only mood. He switched on
his iceg to record what might happen. I auditioned it,
but I can't disentangle it from what he told me.
For example, in his words, multiplied distances by five, heights
(28:59):
by ten and slickness by twenty, and in the playback
thirty chin high ledges loaded with soft lard, and only
finger holds and toe holds. And you did it on
stilts that began not at your heels, at your hips.
Add the hazard of helpful hosea here, let me give
(29:19):
you a hand, Mac grabbing a key arm and crashing
down the precipice on top of you. Switching on the
iceg took his mind back to the snug apartment, where
its receiver stood, the armchair, books, desk of diverting work.
It looked awful good, but life fought back and always
(29:41):
had found a way. He shucked his windbreaker because it
would be more encumbrance than help in the showdown. He
checked shoelaces and strapped on the cleats he had made
for what they were worth. He vetoed the bag of
sand and salt he kept for minor difficulties. Far too slow,
he got out of the car. This could be the
(30:04):
last job he'd have to do incognito seed corn he'd
get credit for. Therefore he cherished it triumph for its
own sake. Alternatively, he'd end at the bottom in a
burlesque clutter of chrome alum splints and sticks, with maybe
a broken bone to clinch the decision. For some men,
death is literally more tolerable than defeat and humiliation. Eighteen
(30:29):
shallow steps to the turn, twelve to the top. Once
he'd have cleared it, in three heartbeats. Now he had
to make it to a twenty minute deadline without rope
or alpenstock. A moon man adapted to a fraction of
Earth gravity with the help of the car hood. The
first two pitches were easy. For the next four or five,
(30:51):
wind had swept the top of the balustrade, providing damp,
gritty hand hold before the going got tougher. He developed
a technique, a rhythm and system of thrusts proportioned to
heights and wits, a way of scraping holds where ice
was not malignantly welded to stone, an appreciation of snow
texture and depth, an economy of effort. He was enjoying
(31:15):
a premature elation when on the twelfth step a cleat
strap gave. Luckily, he was able to take his lurch
with a firm grip on the balustrade, but he felt
depth yawning behind him. Dourly, he took thirty seconds to
retrieve the cleat stitching had been sawed through by a
metal edge. Just as he'd told the cocksure workmen, it
(31:36):
would be oh to have a world where imbecility wasn't entrenched. Well,
he was fighting here and now for the resources to
found one. He resumed the escalade, his rhythm knocked cock
eyed things even out. Years back, an invader bomber had
scored a near miss on the building, and minor damage
(31:58):
to stone work was unrepaired. Crevices gave finger hold, chipped
out hollows gave barely perceptible purchase to the heel of
his hand. Salutes to the random effects of unlikely causes.
He reached the turn considered swiftly. His fresh strength was blunted.
His muscles, especially in his thumbs, were stiffening with chill.
(32:21):
Now he could continue up the left side by the building,
which was tougher and hazardous with frozen drippings, or by
the outside right hand rail, which was easier but meant
crossing the open half swept wide step and recrossing the
landing up top. Damn, why hadn't he foreseen that? Oh,
(32:42):
you can't think of everything. Get going left side. The
wall of the building was rough hewn and ornamented with
surplus carvings cheers for the eighteen nineties art architect qualified cheers.
The first three lifts were easy, with hand holds in
a frieze of life. For the next he had to
(33:02):
heft with his side jaw against a boss of stone.
A window ledge made the next three facile. The final
five stared an open gap without recourse. He made two
by grace of the janitors. Having swabbed his broom a
little closer to the wall, his muscles began to wobble
in waver in his proportions. He'd made two hundred feet
(33:24):
of almost vertical ascent, but climbing a real ice fall,
you'd unleash the last convulsive effort because you had to here.
When you came down to it, you could always sit
and bump yourself down to the car, which was in
that context a mere safe forty feet away. So he
went on because he had to. He got the rubber
(33:45):
tip off one stick. The bare metal tube would bore
into the snow pack. It might hold if he bore
down just right and swung his weight just so, and
got just the right sliding purchase on the wall, and
the snow didn't give underfoot or under cane, And if
it didn't work, it didn't work. Beyond the landing westwards,
(34:08):
the sky had broken into April blue, far away over
Iowa and Kansas, over Operation seed Corn, over the refuge
for rebels that lay at the end of all his roads.
He got set and lifted a thousand miles nearer the refuge,
got set and lifted. Balanced over plunging gulfs, his reach
(34:31):
found a round pilaster at the top, a perfect gripped
for a hand. He drew himself up, and this time
his cleated foot cut through snow to stone and slipped.
But his hold was too good, and there he was.
No salutes, no cheers, only one more victory for life.
Even in victory, un life gave you no respite. The
(34:55):
doorstep was three feet wide, hollowed by eighty years of traffic,
and filled with frozen drippings from its pseudo Norman arch.
He had to tilt across it and catch the brass knob,
like snatching a ring in a high dive. No danger
now except sitting down in a growing puddle till someone
came along to hoist him under the armpits, and then
(35:16):
arriving at the generals late with his seat black wet. You, unhorse,
your fulman, curve it up to the Royal box to
receive the victor's chaplet, Swing from your saddle and fall
flat on your face. But he cogitated on the bench inside,
getting his other cleat off and the tip back on
his stick. Things do even out. No hearty helper had intervened,
(35:40):
No snot nosed, gaping child had twitched his attention. Nobody's secretary,
pretty of course, had scurried to helpfully knock him down
with the door. They were all out front, superintending arrival
of the computer. The general said, only if tartly. Oh yes, major,
come in late, aren't you. It's still icy, said Ed.
(36:03):
Scott had to drive carefully, you know. In fact, he
had lost minutes that way, enough to have saved his
exact deadline, and that excuse, being in proportion to Philipson's
standard dimension was fair game. I wondered what dimension Clyde
would go on to now that the challenge of war
was passed to his rebels refuge at last. Maybe does
(36:28):
it matter? Whatever it is, life will be outclassed, and
Scott Esterbrook's brand of life will fight back. The end
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