The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth by Roger Zelazny

Author:Roger Zelazny [Zelazny, Roger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Relato, Ciencia ficción, Fantástico, Terror
Publisher: ePubLibre
Published: 1971-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Don’t hate me, it said, for running out, but I think it really is an angel, I’m scared of this mountain. I’ll climb any pile of rocks, but I won’t fight Heaven. The way down is easier than the way up, so don’t worry about me. Good luck. Try to understand. S

So we were five—Doc and Kelly and Henry and Mallardi and me—and that day we hit a hundred eighty thousand and felt very alone.

The girl came again that night and spoke to me, black hair against black sky and eyes like points of blue fire, and she stood beside an icy pillar and said: “Two of you have gone.”

“And the rest of us remain,” I replied.

“For a time.”

“We will climb to the top and then we will go away,” I said. “How can that do you harm? Why do you hate us?”

“No hate, sir,” she said.

“What, then?”

“I protect.”

“What? What is it that you protect?”

“The dying, that she may live.”

“What? Who is dying? How?”

But her words went away somewhere, and I did not hear them. Then she went away too, and there was nothing left but sleep for the rest of the night.

One hundred eighty-two thousand and three, and four, and five. Then back down to four for the following night.

The creatures whined about us now, and the land pulsed beneath us, and the mountain seemed sometimes to sway as we climbed.

We carved a path to one eighty-six, and for three days we fought to gain another thousand feet. Everything we touched was cold and slick and slippery, sparkled, and had a bluish haze about it.

When we hit one ninety, Henry looked back and shuddered.

“I’m no longer worried about making it to the top,” he said. “It’s the return trip that’s bothering me now. The clouds are like little wisps of cotton way down there.”

“The sooner up, the sooner down,” I said, and we began to climb once again.

It took us another week to cut our way to within a mile of the top. All the creatures of fire had withdrawn, but two ice avalanches showed us we were still unwanted. We survived the first without mishap, but Kelly sprained his right ankle during the second, and Doc thought he might have cracked a couple of ribs, too.

We made a camp. Doc stayed there with him; Henry and Mallardi and I pushed on up the last mile.

Now the going was beastly. It had become a mountain of glass. We had to hammer out a hold for every foot we made. We worked in shifts. We fought for everything we gained. Our packs became monstrous loads and our fingers grew numb. Our defense system—the projectors—the projectors—seemed to be wearing down, or else something was increasing its efforts to get us, because the snakes kept slithering closer, burning brighter. They hurt my eyes, and I cursed them.

When we were within a thousand feet of the top, we dug in and made another camp. The next couple hundred feet looked easier, then a rotten spot, and I couldn’t tell what it was like above that.

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