MOST PEOPLE BELIEVED THAT THEY WOULD EVENTUALLY go to heaven, even the ones whom everybody else knew would never make it. Very few, however, believed they could get there without dying.
The mountain had always fascinated him, but he had never really understood the awe and fear it inspired in almost everyone else. The Mountain of the Gods, the Cheyenne called it, and to be sure it was peculiar.
Enormous, it had a conical, volcanic shape although it was not, nor had it ever been, a volcano. It rose up in the center of lesser, ordinary mountains, straight into the sky itself. None had ever seen its peak and lived to tell about it, for even on the clearest of days a dense ring of clouds shrouded its top from view. The clouds moved around the peak, usually clockwise, and sometimes seemed to swirl and boil as they did so, but the great cloud ring never dissipated, never thinned, and never revealed what was beyond the five-and-a-half-kilometer mark.
Certainly there was good reason for the people of the region to both fear and worship the mountain. It looked different, it behaved differently, and it had been there for as long as any of the People could remember. Why he felt more fascination than fear, and had felt that way even as a child, he couldn’t say, although he had always been somewhat different from others.
He was a Human Being—what the subhumans of other nations called a Cheyenne—and he was a hunter, a warrior, and an adult of some rank. He shared his people’s mystic sense of being one with nature, of the tangible and spiritual interrelationships between human and nature, and accepted most of what he had been taught. He did not, however, believe that gods lived inside mountains.
Both his chief and his medicine man knew of his obsession with the mountain, but they were unable to sway him. They argued that none who had ever dared to climb the sacred mountain had returned and that the spirits guarding its slopes were of the most powerful sort. He believed in spirits and in sacred ground, but he could not believe that the mountain was a part of this. The mythology alone was too new, by the way his people measured time, and quite unconvincing. He also knew that there were things of Heaven and things of Nature and things of men, and the mountain had always seemed to him to be the last of these, the legends and stories deliberately spread to prevent any questioning of the mountain’s existence. It was on the People’s land, but it was not a part of the People, nor had it been there in ancient times, as had the other mountains.
What the others saw as supernatural, he saw as insult and, perhaps, as sacrilege.
“We hunt the buffalo and deer, and we manage the land well for the Creator,” the medicine man noted. “It is a good life we have here, a precious thing. The mountain is a part of things, that’s all.”
“It is not a part of things,” the rebel argued. “It is unnatural but not supernatural. I know as well as you what it is like for those in the Council. There they live not by nature and the skill of their inner and outer selves but rather by machines and artifices. Everyone knows this, for they must return to us for a season every two years. This mountain is neither of god nor nature, but of men. You are a wise man. Surely in your heart you know this.”
“I know many things,” the medicine man replied. “I am not saying that you are not correct in this, but correct does not necessarily mean that you are right. You know, too, that the Creator once punished us for our pride and subjugated us not even to the subhumans but to demons with white faces who slaughtered the buffalo, slaughtered the People, and contained the rest on worthless land, condemning us to a living hell in which our very way of life was made impossible. Most of the white demons have been carried off now to the stars, and the rest given their own domain far across the Eastern Sea, but they left many works of evil here. You can still stand on peaks and see where they had blasted great roads through the mountains, and you can still go to many places and find the remains of their once-great cities.”
“Then you are saying that it is true.” The words were spoken with a curious sort of smile. “That the stories and legends of the mountain were created to keep people away. It is in fact something created by creatures of Earth, not heaven.”
“Creatures of Earth and hell,” the medicine man spat. “It is a foul place. It is perhaps the doorway to hell itself. Left alone, it does not bother us, and we do not disturb it. What if you challenge it, and it devours you as it devoured the few others who have gone to it? What is gained? And if you survive, and if you let loose the hordes of evil demons that it might imprison, then you might well bring down the wrath of the Creator upon all of us once more. Then much is lost.”
“All that you say might be true, yet I will challenge it. I will challenge it because it is there and because I choose knowledge over cowering like some child in a summer storm, its ignorance reinforcing its fear. It is the duty of Human Beings to conquer fear, not be ruled by it, or we become less than the subhumans. I respect the mountain, but I do not fear it, and there is but one way to show that to the mountain and to the Creator who raised us above all others in spirit. I do not accept your argument. If I do not go, then I show fear and lose my own worth. If I go and die, then I die in honor, in an act of courage. If I do not go because it might loose some demons upon the People, then the People as a whole will be subject to fear. If we allow ourselves to be ruled by fear in anything, then we are not the true Human Beings, the highest of creation, but are instead subject to something else—fear of the unknown. And if we are subjected to that, then we are subjugated and deserve nothing less, for if fear can rule us in this, it can rule us in other things as well.”
The medicine man sighed. “I always knew I should have nominated you for Council training. You have the kind of mind for it. It is too late for that now, I fear, and too late for you. Go. Climb the mountain. Die with your honor and courage proven. I shall lead the weeping and lamentations for you and for myself, for erring in this way and having such a fine mind come to such a purposeless end. I will argue no more fine points of logic with you. There is a very thin line between stubbornness and stupidity, and I cannot shift someone back who has crossed that line. Go.”
The climb was dangerous but not difficult, which was all to the best because his people had little in the way of metals and metalworking, and he had to make do with rope and balance and sure footing. He had been afraid that he would be ill-prepared, but the slope was rough and craggy, and with patience and by trial and error he found a sort of path upward.
He had dressed warmly, with fur-lined clothes made to stand the toughest test and a hood and face mask to help keep out the terrible cold even at this time of year. An experienced mountain man, he also knew that the air would grow thinner as he made his ascent and that he would have to take the climb very slowly to give himself a chance to become acclimated to the altitude. He could carry only so much water, but after a while snow would do. It would have to, for his salt-packed rations caused great thirst and dehydration.
As he grew closer to the great ring of clouds, he began to wonder if in fact any of the others like him had ever even gotten this far. There were snow slides and hidden crevasses here, and the problems of weather, acclimation, and provisions would stop anyone not totally prepared for them and fully experienced in high-altitude work. The climb was not really difficult, but its relative ease would fill a novice with confidence and cause him to ignore the many other threats.
So far it had been like any other mountain that could be climbed without piton or grappling hook, only taller. It looked neither as regular nor as strange when one was on it as it did from afar, and he began to wonder if indeed imagination might have played cruel tricks on the People.
But there was still that swirling mass of thick, impenetrable clouds that should not have been there, at least not all the time and certainly not at that altitude. He might doubt his preconceptions, but he did not doubt his resolve. He would go into those clouds.
Still, he almost didn’t make it. Parts of him suffered from frostbite, and it seemed at times as if his eyes would freeze shut, but he finally made the base of the clouds. Here he knew he would face the greatest of all the dangers, for he might wind up moving blind in a freezing, swirling fog. He had always had the suspicion, now a fear, that the mountain might end right at the clouds and that he might well step off into space.
The clouds were dense, although not as much as he’d feared, and he had some visibility, although the wind was up, making every move treacherous. Still, there was no mistaking the fact that these clouds were nothing of nature; the air was suddenly relatively warm—above freezing, anyway—and he felt the pain of his frostbitten extremities along with a welcome relief that the fine mist that soon covered him remained a mist.
There was, however, a curious lack of odor. The clouds were getting their heat from somewhere, yet there were none of the earth-fumes he would have expected from a volcanic area. He continued his climb and was shocked to break out of the clouds only twenty or thirty meters up from their start. It was not the end of the clouds; really, but rather a break between two layers of cloud, formed by a trapped mass of warm air. Above him swirled a solid ceiling of clouds. He did not worry about them, though; the mountain did not extend any farther than a dozen meters, beyond the end of the lower cloud barrier.
Up here it did at least look like a volcano, one of those great mountains of the west. The summit was a crater and appeared perfectly round, but it was less than a hundred meters across. It was as unnatural as were the clouds and the warmth. It was certainly the source of the heat: The air seemed to shimmer all around that basin. Laboriously he made his way, half walking, half crawling, to the edge, and with hurting eyes he peered down inside and froze in awe and wonder, his jaw dropping. For a moment he wondered if the climb had cost him his reason.
Faces . . . Huge faces coming out of the rock wall and extending all the way around the crater. Men’s faces, women’s faces, strange-looking, alien faces none of which seemed to have the features of the People.
Demon faces.
Giant faces extended out of the crater wall, carved of some whitish rock or some other substance. The noses alone were eight or more meters long; the mouths, though closed now and expressionless, looked as if they each could swallow a herd of buffalo.
Who carved such faces? he wondered. And why?
About forty meters below the faces was a floor that appeared to be made of very coarse cloth, although he was sophisticated enough to realize that it must be metal. The fine mesh of the grating allowed the warm air to rise from inside the mountain, creating the odd cloud effects and giving the region of the peak its moderate temperature. The mesh grate also had five circles painted on it, four in a sort of square surrounding a fifth in the middle, and there were designs in each circle. He could not make out the designs, partly because of the distance and the condition of his eyes and partly because there seemed to be material covering parts of all five circles. The material, whatever it was, was randomly scattered about and certainly not native to the place.
He stared again at the giant carved faces and felt a chill go through him. They were certainly both mysterious and awesome; most people who made it this far would worship them, knowing they had seen the faces of the sleeping spirits of the mountain. He counted twenty-five faces around the rim just inside the crater, all expressionless, all seemingly asleep, eyes closed. With a start he realized that there weren’t twenty-five different faces but only five, each repeated four more times.
There was the man with short, curly hair, thick lips, and a broad, flat nose. There was a chubby, elderly-looking woman with puffy cheeks and short, stringy hair. There was a younger, prettier woman with a delicate face whose features in some ways resembled that of his own people but whose eyes seemed oddly slanted, almost catlike. There was a very old man with wrinkled skin and very little hair. And, last, there was a strange-looking man with a very long face, a lantern jaw, and a birdlike nose.
Each of these was repeated so that the same five, had their eyes been open, would have been looking out, or down, at any point within.
Who were they? The ones who built this place? If so, why had they built it, and why here, and what was the source of the warmth below? Had they built this place and then added these faces as a monument to their work, a permanent sort of memorial? Would that question ever be answerable?
He paused, trying to decide what to do next. He’d challenged the mountain and won, and proved his point, but now what? He’d never taken it any further than this. Now it seemed idiotic to return below, reversing the climb, facing even more dangers in the descent than in the ascent if only because, going down, one was always a bit careless compared to facing the unknown ascent. To go down and say what? That there were twenty-five huge carved heads of five sleeping men and women in a crater, and below them a huge net through which blew warm air? Would he even be believed? Would he believe this sight if he weren’t now seeing it, and would he believe an account of it if teller and listener were reversed?
Now what?
He needed something tangible to take from this place. He needed more than just this bizarre vision.
He needed to go down there.
But could he? Was there any place here to fasten a rope securely? Was his rope long enough and strong enough to bear him down and back out again?
He walked carefully around the crater until he spied something sticking out of the ground perhaps a meter and a half from the rim. He went to it and then stopped.
It was a metal stake. A piton, driven expertly into the rock and still containing the rotting remains of the rope knot, although not the rope itself. He was not the first to make it up here, that was clear, and he was not the first to consider the descent into that place.
The piton had not been traded from one of the metal-working nations: Although rusted, it was too smooth, too regular, too exact, and too strong. This was a thing of machines, of Council origin or higher. The rope, too, seemed strange and far too thick and complex to be handmade.
He flattened himself, crawled along the line to the edge, and looked down between the old man’s face and the face of the woman with the strange-looking eyes. What had happened? Had the rope rubbed against the crater rim and worn through? He thought again of the indistinct litter on the mesh floor below and sighed.
Rope. Rope remains—and human remains as well. Skeletal remains. All the others who had made it this far were still here.
This place, then, was some sort of trap. No, traps had been set, but this was far too elaborate to be established simply as a trap. These faces, then, represented the spirits set to guard whatever was down there. What powerful thing could be down there that would make people take such a risk?
He peered down, straining to see. Nothing on the grating, certainly; either the object of his search was below that grate, or there was some way in—a door or something. He saw what looked like a fresco, a design built into the wall at about a meter and a half above the grating. He made his way carefully around the rim, but there was only this one thing on the walls, nothing more. Otherwise, the pit was plain and featureless.
The faces were not to be trusted. Their features could hide almost anything; the eyes might open to reveal ports for weapons. However, the one who’d been able to use the piton had also thought of this and have descended quite clearly between two faces. Something had still cut the rope and dropped him to the grate below. The pit represented power—but the pit was also death. He was smart enough to know that going down in ignorance was no test of honor or courage, just stupidity. He backed off, then lay there and relaxed for a while and checked his provisions. There was little left, despite his careful rationing. It had taken five careful days to get this far, but it might well take two equally careful days to get back down.
He knew, though, that he would not tempt the pit. Perhaps others, someday, hearing of it, would explain it to him or give him its mysterious key, but he did not have it. To descend to the grate was death, either quick from falling or slow by being trapped down there with only corpses and statue faces for company.
He settled back and decided to get some sleep before attempting any real move back down to his own domains below. He was quite tired, and the warmth of the air beguiled him into rest, but he did not sleep easily. He dreamed, and the dream was a terrible one.
He was standing in the pit, looking up at the far-off opening above. The faces were there, but they were no longer dead faces but living things, eyes opened, looking down at him with mixed amusement and contempt.
He tried to look away and found himself deep in skeletons. He backed off in horror but found his feet tangled in ropes—his own and those of the dead—and fell with a crash onto the grate, coming face to face with grinning skulls. Skeletal hands on skeletal arms seemed to reach out for him. He yelled and somehow pushed them away, then got up against a side wall.
He looked across and saw the inlaid panel clearly now. The same five designs as were on the floor, but clear, with strange symbols that looked very much like the cave and rock drawings done by some of his own people. Inside each circle there seemed to be a small black square, as if a single tile had been removed.
The faces above now seemed to whisper to him with such force that they stirred up a great wind. They were not speaking his language, yet he somehow understood what they were saying.
“The rings . . . The rings . . . The five gold rings,” they whispered to him. “Do you have the rings?”
“What rings are these?” he heard himself shouting. “I know of no rings!”
“He doesn’t have the rings,” one of the male figures whispered, and the other male faces took it up. “No rings. No rings. He comes without the rings.”
“No fruit, no birds, no rings,” the female faces chimed in.
“Then why do you come?” the male faces asked him.
“I come only to see what is here, to know why this mountain exists on my people’s sacred land! I wish nothing else!”
There was a collective sigh from the faces. “We’re sorry,” they all responded, their voices echoing eerily around the pit. “We’re so very sorry. But, you see, reconnaissance is not allowed.”
And then the skeletons, those remains of the ones who have come before, stirred, and they seemed to come together and reach out for him, to make him one of them . . .
He awoke with a start, feeling the chilled sweat caused by the dream. The wind was up, and it seemed to be getting colder. The queer cloud cap above whirled at impossible speed, and the one below seemed to match it. He got hurriedly to his feet, not really thinking of anything but getting out of this place, getting away. It was neither cowardice nor a loss of honor to leave; this was beyond his power, an evil place of magic that would take far more than a warrior to combat. There was no honor in suicide, and that was what it was to remain here.
Although it was growing late in the day and the region below was bound to be bitterly cold, he did not hesitate to make his way down as far as he could. He quickly reached the swirling mass of clouds below and entered them, and was immediately engulfed in a maelstrom.
The winds were so powerful and so loud that they masked his scream as they blew him off the mountainside, hurling his body hundreds of meters straight down to the nearest rocks below.