Ким Робинсон - Red Moon

“Can we do it?” she asked, seeing his uncertainty.

“I don’t know. But if it doesn’t get too steep, I think so.”

“Okay then. Let’s do it.”

They hurried as casually as they could back to the intersection of roads in the low point on the ridge, then walked down the lower road that also headed west. As soon as they were out of the sight of the plaza and the upper road, Fred peered over the south side of the road and gulped at the steepness: treetops dropped swiftly away, and the sea was a long way down and yet not very far off. He continued along the road, hoping for a lessening of the slope’s angle, while trying also to adjust to the sudden reversal of roles. Now he was leading her, and needed to choose a good way—a good way to get a pregnant woman who was not a climber down a slope that looked to be dropping at an angle of at least forty-five degrees, and was concreted over in many places! It was hard to say whether the concrete was an advantage or disadvantage. It might be less slippery. On the other hand if they did slip it would be disastrous. The many trees covering the slope, and the open cups of concrete-rimmed dirt they emerged from, would probably be his best chance of finding good holds.

They passed a stream that coursed through a tunnel under the road, its pitch so steep that below the road it became a waterfall. That was certainly not the way down, and he continued anxiously on, feeling the weakness in him from the night’s vomiting. He was a little light-headed.

Then the road took a turn out and around a bump in the hill. Here the slope below them was a little bit of a buttress. Just past the broad nose of this buttress the slope was less steep than what they had passed so far, and more covered with trees. “Okay, over we go,” he said to her, and helped her over the road’s low guardrail.

They descended in short sideways steps. Quickly they found themselves on a slope so steep that they had to sit down, then slide very slowly down on their butts. The concrete facing that covered the hill was so rough they couldn’t slip down it even if they wanted to, which was reassuring. Fred went first and led her from tree to tree. They held on to tree trunks, and put their shoes against the rims of the tree holes in the concrete, and sometimes against each other. Mostly this meant Qi put her foot against Fred from above, to ease herself down to him. The angle of the slope was proving to be laid-back enough to allow them to stay stuck to it. He found he couldn’t estimate the angle very well—possibly thirty-five degrees, but who knew really. Angle of repose was thirty-two degrees, he seemed to recall, but what kind of repose? A round ball would roll down any incline, so maybe they meant a cube or something. In practical terms, it was as steep as it could be and them still stick to it.

Almost immediately they were down the slope far enough that they couldn’t see the road above, and Fred felt sure they would not be visible from it either. That being the case, they could slow down and take it more carefully, so he did that. Qi looked scared but resolute, her lips clamped to a white line, her eyes fixed on her footwork. She could not fall, so she would not: this was what her expression said. She would stay stuck in one spot forever if that was what it took—get rescued by climbers or helicopters, go to prison—but no falling.

Fred tried to get a better view down. It wasn’t possible to see far through the trees. If the slope got steeper than what they were on now, they would be in big trouble. Even as it was he was not happy with the angle. Any slip that created any momentum and the results would be awful.

He kept going first, and when possible kept one hand free to reach up and hold her hand or foot, knee or elbow. Sometimes he reached up and gripped her wrist. She used him as a foothold without hesitation or compunction. Every few moves they had to put their butts to the slope, or sometimes their knees, and the occasional brief scraping slide downward hurt even through clothes. He tried to calculate how long it was going to take them to descend, but didn’t know enough to do it. He had no idea if there was another road on this side of the mountain, or how far down the slope it might be if there was one. They still couldn’t see far through the broad leaves of the trees, in any direction. It seemed like this island was so thoroughly urbanized that there would have to be a road down there somewhere, but he didn’t really know.

“Let’s stop and rest for a while,” he said to her when they were both securely sitting in a skinny tree’s open bowl, feet against the concrete rim of the downhill side. They sat there, breathing hard at first, sweating freely in the humid air. Now he caught a glimpse of the ocean down there through the leaves. He guessed it was still at least a thousand feet below them.

“Are there any roads down this way, do you know?” he asked.

“I don’t. I’ve only been to Hong Kong a few times. As far as I know, people don’t come to this side very much. I think I remember hearing the city’s water comes from this side. There’s a reservoir or something. So people must come over here, right?”

“I think so, yeah. But… Well, I guess we’ll figure it out when we get down there.”

They sat there sweating. After a while they started down again. The concrete covering came to an end, and they found themselves on crumbling rock and scree and sand and dirt, quite a bit more slippery than the concrete had been, but also affording some places they could dig in with their shoes, also some knobs of hard rock to hold on to. Then this unclad slope got steeper, scaring Fred; but after a while it laid back a little, reassuring him. That repeated a few times. They took rests every fifteen or twenty minutes.

A couple of hours passed like that. Then, legs shaking, palms bleeding, sweating so profusely their shirts were soaked, they saw through the trees a paved road crossing the slope below them. One moment they were looking down on broad green leaves as always, then there was a road. It traversed the slope almost horizontally, as far as they could tell from above.

The final drop to it, though short, was almost vertical. Fred turned into the slope and climbed down about halfway, then held on to rock knobs and had Qi put her shoes right on his head and shoulders. Then she stepped down onto his thigh, which he had propped up by sticking his foot into a crevice. His brother had done this for him during their one try at climbing, coaxing him down the entire descent, as Fred had often frozen in place. His brother had been really worried.

Qi never froze. When she was down at his level, and had moved her feet and hands onto rocks in a way she said made her secure, he climbed down again, kicking for footholds on knobs in looser rock, until he was standing in the culvert next to the road. She climbed down him again, and he provided her last foothold with his linked hands. Finally she hopped down beside him.

They stood there and briefly exchanged a look, both flushed, soaked with sweat, streaked with blood. Quivering. Fred felt sick again, either with relief or because of a return of his nighttime nausea, he couldn’t tell. He tried to quell the feeling, not wanting a repetition of the vomiting. He put his hands on his knees and let his head hang. Slowly the nausea passed. It was a wretched feeling. After a while they clambered up onto the asphalt road.

“Which way?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

She gave him one of her looks. Possibly it had been a rhetorical question.

To the west the road was slightly uphill. Presumably that way would lead them around the island’s west side, where they had seen residential towers during the previous night’s ferry ride from Lamma Island. To the east it was slightly downhill, which was attractive, but they didn’t have any idea what lay that way, or how far away it might be.