ADAM HALL - The Pekin Target

"Where?" The only escape was an escape for me: to leave her, and let her keep her word to them in any way she wanted, and let her do it alone. There was no choice there either.

"The rings on the mountains here," she said. "Clive, you'd better listen — there's no time to think about anything else. The ridges go up the mountains here in a typical ring system, though it's been mostly obliterated by time. You might be able to reach the monastery by following the oblique cleft towards the south-east, out of sight from the ridge. Okay?"

I was rolling up the bandage. "Yes. I'll try that."

"If it doesn't work, then you'll have to climb straight up from the north or south. That's when you'll need the extra pitons. There's no sheer rockface anywhere, except that bit we hit when we came down. You've got something like forty-five minutes of darkness left, to stow the chutes and conceal them." She looked away. "And me."

I put the roll of lint back into the bag, and pulled the zip. One had to keep order.

"I'll remember what you've advised. I'll try the cleft."

"It could work. But don't try it while it's still dark; there's a nasty bit between here and where it begins; it's where the rock goes sheer down."

"I'll wait till daylight."

"That's about it, then." She turned her head and looked at me again. "Except that I've got a last request. I want you to make love to me."

I'd noticed a movement in the mist here, not long ago; there was a bluff of rock throwing its shadow across the ground where we were, and the shadow was creeping as the moon lowered towards the mountains in the west. I suppose a wind was getting up, though hardly what you'd call a wind: just a stirring of the air, its movement playing on the insubstantial vapours, giving them the life of ghosts. There'd been the hint of woodsmoke, too, before, coming from one of the villages, one of the villages that was so close that we could smell its fires, so far that she would never see it; now there was the scent of pines on the air; or it had been here too, before, but overlayed by the bitterness of the smoke. Make love, yes, a certain logic in that, the way she saw things; I was beginning to know her nature.

I'd been quiet for too long, because she said, "Of course I might not be your type. I don't want you to think I'm- you know — sort of soliciting." She tried a laugh but it didn't quite come off.

I told her quickly, "Certainly you're my type. You'd be anyone's. Newcomb could hardly keep his eye on the navigation, as you must have noticed."

"You were very well brought up."

"Last dance, is that it?"

"Last drink, or whatever. Last anything I can get. I'm not one to go out with a whimper."

But I knew it was more than that; it was her sense of affirmation, of life at the death. It had been a good party, and she wasn't going to leave until the music stopped.

"Can you smell the pines?" I asked her.

"Yes. I wondered if you'd noticed. Isn't it lovely?" She was lifting her hand to me and I kissed her fingers; they were deathly cold: there'd been a certain degree of shock, and I think anyone else would have passed out by now.

"We'll have to look out for your leg," I said.

"You bet. Forget the missionary position, but thank God there are plenty of other ways." She was trying to reach for one of the haversacks, and I got it for her. "Put it under my head, Clive; there's no need to be uncomfy." Then the tears began, as she let everything go; there was no grief in this, I thought, and no self-pity, but just the gathering sense of loneliness that even she couldn't hold back; and perhaps it was a sign that she could now trust me enough to let me hear tier cry, knowing I wouldn't think of it as weakness. I remember being surprised, as I put my mouth on hers, that her tears could feel so warm against the coldness of her face, and so tender in someone so strong.

"Clive," she said in a moment, "we're strangers, but it doesn't mean we can't find some kind of love, just while it lasts. Do what you can."

Her blood was black in the moonlight, pooling among the stones. My hand was over her wrist, held loosely there, and I don't know why; to stop the rhythmic spurting from staining her flying suit — one must, yes, keep order; or to tempt me to deny all her arguments and grip with sudden force and reach with my other hand for the pressure point and then a tourniquet and somehow carry her through the mountains; or simply to ease the soreness for her, by the comfort of touching.

"I could have done a lot worse, Clive." The strength was leaving her voice.

"A lot worse?"

"Than finding you, for the last dance."

Her cropped head turned sideways on the haversack, but she straightened it to look up at me, like someone falling asleep and then waking because the time wasn't right.

"I wouldn't have wanted anyone else to be here now," I told her.

"It was a privilege."

"A privilege?" A little dry laugh came. "Oh God, I'm in such a mess." Her lips could scarcely open now. "You must try the cleft in the ridge, Clive… the way I said…»

"Yes." Her head fell sideways again but this time she let it stay there, and closed her eyes. "Sleep well," I said.

"Dizzy… Clive?"

"I'm here." I lay beside her, covering her as much as I could so that she'd know she wasn't' alone. She felt like a child in my arms.

"Clive… good luck…»

The sunrise was beautiful, a filling of the sky with saffron and then rose and then a flood of blinding light across the peaks to the east.

I had stowed the two chutes together and spread rocks over them, and sorted out what extra equipment I'd take along. Helen de Haven was over there, where the heaped stones were catching the first light of the day. I turned away and moved through the rocky terrain, keeping clear of the sheer face and the drop below it.

In an hour I had reached the bottom of the ridge, where she had told me I should go, and rested for a moment against an outcrop; then the shot came and splinters of stone cut through the air near my face and I dropped flat.

I didn't move.

The splinters were still falling, one of them humming through the air with the loudness of a bee, its sharp edges spinning from the impact of the bullet until it struck ground and skittered across the shale.

Incoming data, item one: no echo to the shot.

He was in cover. There would have been an echo, otherwise, from the sheer rockface between here and the ridge higher up. He was shooting from cover but not from the monastery or anywhere near it: from here the monastery was out of sight above the ridge and a thousand feet higher. He was shooting from a north vector: without raising my head I could see the chipped rock, a few feet south of where I was lying prone.

Moving my eyes only, I looked for the bullet; if I could find it I could learn a lot more about him, and where he was.

At some time during the ritual of love she had said, Don't pity me; I can't stand that; besides, this could be the last time for you too.

There were grasses, higher towards the ridge, and I lay watching them; but their movement was so slight that I couldn't hope to tell the wind's direction; I took deeper breaths, alert for the smell of burnt powder, but as yet there was nothing; even if the wind were from the north he might be too far away for the scent to carry.

The sun was four diameters high, north-east by east and approaching the mountain; it would clear the peak in another hour, and I couldn't hope for shadow. The ground here was still moist from the receding mist, and I began digging into the soil between the rocks, using one of the sharp splinters his bullet had chipped from the rock; no thanks to him for the convenience: that bullet had been meant for my brain.