Roger Zelazny - Doorsways in the Sand

It saw me coming. It mounted a heap, a crate, sprang to the floor above. I took hold of a strut and the side of a beam, swung myself up, found purchase for my left foot at the head of the strut, raised myself, caught hold of the girder overhead, pulled myself up.

As I came to my feet, I saw it vanishing over the edge of the platform on the next floor above. I repeated my climb.

It was nowhere in sight. I could only assume that it had continued on upward. I followed.

Three floors above that I glimpsed it again. It had paused to peer down at me from a narrow width of planking that served as an elevator landing for workmen. The light from below and behind caught its eyes once more.

Then movement!

I clung to my support and raised an arm to shield my head. But this proved unnecessary.

The clatter and the bouncing, pinging, ringing that spilled from the bucket of bolts or rivets it had pushed over the edge came to me, passed by me, echoed on down to the ground, where it ended/ended/finally ended.

I saved the breath I might have used on curses for purposes of climbing and resumed my vertical trek once more as soon as the air was clear. A cold wind began to tug at me as I went. Glancing back and down, I saw figures on the still-illuminated rooftop next door, looking upward. How much they could see I was not certain.

By the time I reached the place from which the flak had fallen, the subject of my pursuit was two floors higher and apparently catching its breath. It was easier for me to see now, as the platforms had dwindled down to a precious few bits of planking and we were coming into a realm of hard, straight lines and cold, clean angles as classic and spare as a theorem out of Euclid.

The winds pushed and pulled with a bit more force as I mounted higher, slowly surrendering their randomness and growing constant. Starting at my fingertips and entering into the rest of me came a sense of the slight arrhythmic swaying that possessed the structure. The sleep sounds of the city grew indistinguishable in terms of isolated noises. It was a snoring, then a humming and finally the winds ate it and digested it. The stars and the moon traced the geometry through which we maneuvered and all the surfaces were dry, which is really about all that a night climber can ask for.

I kept on after it, up. Up. Up the two levels that separated us. Then one more.

It stood one level above me then, glaring down. There were no more stories. This was as high as things had gotten. And so it waited.

I paused and glared back.

"Ready to call it quits?" I shouted. "Or do we play it out all the way?"

There was no answer. No movement either. It just stood there and watched me.

I ran my hand upward along the beam that rose beside me.

My quarry grew smaller. It had crouched, bunched up, tensed itself. As if to spring ...

Damn it! I would be at a disadvantage for several moments when I reached that level. My head exposed, my arms and hands occupied as I drew myself up.

Yet, it would be taking quite a chance itself, springing at me, up there, bringing itself into range.

"I think you are bluffing," I said. "I'm coming up."

I tightened my grip on the upright.

A thought came into my mind then, of the sort that seldom entered there: =What if you fall?=

I hesitated-it was such a novel notion-an idea one simply does not entertain. Of course I was aware that it could occur. It had happened to me a number of times, with varying results. It is not the sort of thing one dwells on to the point of preoccupation, however.

=Still, it is a long way down. Do you ever wonder what your final thought will be, just before the lights go out?=

I suppose that everyone has, at some time or other, for a moment or so. It is hardly worth prolonged cerebration, however, and would probably be classifiable as a symptom of something that ought to be sacrificed on the smudgy altar of mental health. But ...

=Look down. How far? How great a distance? What does it feel like to fall? Is there a tingling in your wrists, hands, feet, ankles?=

Of course. But again-

Vertigo! It swept over me. Wave upon wave. A thing I had never before experienced with such intensity.

Simultaneously, I realized the unnatural source of my discomfort. It would require a superfluity of naivete not to.

My furry little enemy was broadcasting the sensation, trying to create an acrophobic attitude, succeeding.

But some things must go beyond the physical, the somatopsychic. At least, those small shreds of mysticism which make up the only religion I know kept insisting it wasn't all that simple to turn love into hate, passion to fear, to overcome the will of a lifetime with the irrationality of a moment.

I beat my fist against the beam, I gnawed at my lip. I was scared. Me. Fred Cassidy. Scared to climb it.

=Falling, falling ... Not the drifting of a leaf or a stray bit of paper, but the plummeting of a heavy body ... The only interference, perhaps, the bars of our cage ... A bloody print here, there ... That is the only statement you may record on your passage down ... As from the trees where your not-so-distant ancestors clung, fearfully-=

I saw it then. It had just given me what I needed, what I had been groping for while trying to bear the assault: an object outside myself on which I could focus my attention fully. It had allowed a patronizing attitude toward the whole human race to slip through just then. Sibla had irritated me with a touch of the same sentiment back at Merimee's place. It was all that I needed.

I allowed myself to get mad as hell. I encouraged it, stoked it.

"All right," I said. "Those same ancestors used to poke things like you off limbs just for laughs-to watch you spit and fall, to see whether you always landed on your feet. It's an old game. Hasn't been played properly in ages. I am about to revive it, in the name of my fathers. Behold the riant anthropoid, beware its crooked thumbs!"

I seized the beam and pulled myself up.

It backed up, paused, advanced, paused again. I felt a growing elation at its indecisiveness, a sense of triumph over the halting of the bombing of my mind. When I reached its level I ducked my head low and thrust both hands up onto the girder far enough apart so that whichever got clawed the other would still be sufficient for support.

It made as if to attack, apparently thought better of it, then turned and ran.

I pulled myself up. I stood.

I watched it scamper away, not halting until it was on the opposite side of the square of steel we held. Then I moved to the nearest corner and it moved to the farthest corner. I started up the next side. It started down the opposite side. I halted. It halted. We stared at each other.

"Okay," I said, taking out a cigarette and lighting it "With a stalemate you lose, you know. Those folks below aren't just sitting on their hands. They're calling for assistance. Every route down will be covered before long. I'm betting someone will be by soon in a chopper, too-with a mercy gun with infra-red sights. I have always understood it to be a little better thing to surrender than to resist arrest when you are in trouble. I am a bona fide representative of both my country's State Department and the United Nations. Choose whichever one you prefer. I-"

"Very well," the thought came into my mind. "I will surrender to you in your capacity as a State Department employee."

It immediately moved to the next corner, turned there and advanced along that side at a steady pace. I turned back, moving toward the corner I had recently quit. It reached that point before I did, however, turned and continued on toward me.

"Hold it right there," I said, "and consider yourself in custody."

Instead, it bounded forward and sprang toward me, my mind instantly filling with something which, when supplied with words, came through, roughly, as "It is (satisfying / noble) to die with your (teeth / claws) (in / at) the (throat / heart) of the enemy of (nest / totem / civilization)! Die, nestmolester!"