Eileen crawls back into her bag. They brew their tea with great seriousness, as if mixing delicate elixirs. Roger watches her drink.
“Do you really not remember us from before?” he asks.
“Nooo. . . .” she says slowly. “We were in our twenties, right? No, the first years I really remember are from my fifties, when I was training up in the caldera. Wall climbs, kind of like this, actually.” She sips. “But tell me about us.”
Roger shrugs. “It doesn't matter.”
“It must be odd. To remember when the rest don't.”
“Yes, it is.”
“I was probably awful at that age.”
“No no. You were an English major. You were fine.”
She laughs. “Hard to believe. Unless I've gone down-hill since.”
“No, not at all. You sure couldn't have done all this back then.”
“I believe that. Getting half an expedition strung out all over a cliff, people sick—”
“No no. You're doing fine.”
She shakes her head. “You can't pretend this climb has gone well. I remember that much.”
“What hasn't gone well hasn't been your fault, as you must admit. In fact, given what has happened, we're doing very well, I think. And that's mostly your doing. Not easy with Frances and Stephan, and the storm, and Marie.”
“Marie!”
They laugh. “And this storm,” Roger says. “That night climb we did, getting Stephan down!” He sips his tea.
“That was a wild one,” Eileen agrees.
Roger nods. They have that. He gets up to pee, letting in a blast of intensely cold air. “My God that's cold! What's the temperature?”
“Sixty below, outside.”
“Oh. No wonder. I guess that cloud cover was doing us some good.” Outside it is still dark, and the ice-bearded cliff face gleams whitely under the stars.
“I like the way you lead us,” Roger says. “It's a very light touch, but you still have things under control.” He zips the tent door closed and hustles back into his bag.
“More tea?”
“Definitely.”
“Here—roll back here, you'll warm up faster, and I could use the insulation myself.”
Roger nods, shivering, and rolls his bag into the back side of hers, so they are both on one elbow, spooned together.
They sip tea and talk. Roger warms up, stops shivering. Pleasure of empty bladder, of contact with her. They finish the tea and doze for a bit in the warmth. Keeping the oxygen masks off prevents them from falling into a deep sleep. “Mirrors'll be up soon.” “Yeah.” “Here—move over a bit.” Roger remembers when they were lovers, so long ago. Previous lifetime. She was the city dweller then, he the canyon crawler. Now . . . now all the comfort, warmth, and contact have given him an erection. He wonders if she can feel it through the two bags. Probably not. Hmmm. He remembers suddenly—the first time they made love was in a tent. He went to bed, and she came right into his little cubicle of the communal tent and jumped him! Remembering it does nothing to make his erection go away. He wonders if he can get away with a similar sort of act here. They are definitely pressed together hard. All that climbing together: Eileen pairs the climbing teams, so she must have enjoyed it too. And climbing together has that sort of dancelike teamwork—boulder ballet; and the constant kinetic juxtaposition, the felt relationship of the rope, has a certain sensuousness to it. It is a physical partnership, without a doubt. Of course all that can be true and climbing remain a profoundly nonsexual relationship—there are certainly other things to think about. But now . . .
Now she is dozing again. He thinks about her climbing, her leadership. The things she said to him back down in the first camps, when he was so depressed. A sort of teacher, really.
Thoughts of that lead him to memories of his past, of the failed work. For the first time in many days his memory presents him with the usual parade of the past, the theater of ghosts. How can he ever assume such a long and fruitless history? Is it even possible?
Mercifully the tea's warmth, and the mere fact of lying prone, have their way with him, and he dozes off.
The day dawns. Sky like a sheet of old paper, the sun a big bronze coin below them to the east. The sun! Wonderful to see sunlight, shadows. In the light the cliff face looks sloped back an extra few degrees, and it seems there is an end to it up there. Eileen and Roger are in the middle camp, and after ferrying a load to the high camp they follow the rope's zigzag course up the narrow ledges. The fine, easy face, the sunlight, the dawn's talk, the plains of Tharsis so far below: All conspire to please Roger. He is climbing more strongly than ever, hopping up the ledges, enjoying the variety of forms exhibited by the rock. Such a beauty to rough plated angular broken rock.