Bram Möller's Arc

Chapter 47 of 63

The storm thinned near dusk. Sleet slackened to a hard drizzle. The bag rode low against the face, and the two lines held. Bram wiped his goggles and looked down the rock for the first time in hours. He needed a way off before the wind turned again. He opened the journal against his knee. The page for this face had three descent notes in his own hand. The direct chute below them was fastest, but he had drawn a slash through it two winters back. Loose scree over ice. The second was a traverse east to a bench, then a low drop. The third went west along a ledge to a saddle. He tapped the second line. "East to the bench. Then we drop the bag off the lip on short rope." Omondi leaned over the page. His glasses were fogged again. He wiped them on his shirt and squinted. "East is longer. If the wind swings north while we're on the traverse, the bag pins to the wall." "West is a mile of ledge with ice on it," Bram said. "The bench is a hundred yards." Cora stood at the rail with her mechanical owl on her wrist. Its brass plates ran with water. She had wound its wing joint tight with waxed thread that morning. "Send it," she said. "Let it walk the traverse first. It can feel the wind on the wall better than we can from here." Bram thought about the owl's damaged wing. He thought about guessing. "Go," he said. Cora set the owl on the rail and pointed east. It stepped off and glided low along the face, brass gears clicking under the sleet. It vanished around a shoulder of rock. They waited. Bram kept one hand on the brass ring of the orchid. The bag pulled and settled. Pulled and settled. The owl came back on foot along the ledge, walking hunched against the wind. It landed on Cora's wrist and clicked once, then twice. She read the pressure needle on its chest. "Steady on the traverse. Then it drops off past the shoulder. Sheltered air at the bench." "That's the lee," Omondi said. "We can set the bag down there." Bram closed the journal. "East. Cora on the vent. Kamau on the south line. We walk the bag along the face at half height. No lift. We ride the rock." They cut the north line first and payed out the south. Bram fed the vent by hand as they crept east, the bag scraping the wall on each gust. At the shoulder the wind fell off, as the owl had said. The bench opened below them, flat and dry in the lee. Bram vented the last of the lift and the bag sank onto the stone. Omondi tied the collar to a boulder. Cora sat down hard and laughed once, a short surprised sound. Bram wrote the bench into the journal in wet pencil. The bag was down. The route was still open.