PEACHES FOR MAD MOLLY

by

Steven Could

Sometime during the night the wind pulled a one-pointer off the west face of
the building up around the 630th floor. I heard him screaming as he went by,
very loud, like this was his last chance to voice an opinion, but it was all
so sudden that he didn't know what it was. Then he hit a microwave relay off
542 ... hard, and the chance was gone. Chunks of him landed in Buffalo Bayou
forty-five seconds later.

The alligators probably liked that.

I don't know if his purchase failed or his rope broke or if the sucker just
couldn't tie a decent knot. He pissed me off though, because I couldn't get
back to sleep until I'd checked all four of my belay points, the ropes, and
the knots. Now if he'd fallen without expressing himself, maybe?

No, I would have heard the noise as he splattered through the rods of the
antennae.

Stupid one-pointer.

The next morning I woke up a lot earlier than usual because someone was
plucking one of my ropes,
adagio, thrum, thrum, like the second movement of Ludwig's seventh. It was Mad
Molly.

"You awake, Bruce?" she asked.

I groaned. "I am now. " My name is not Bruce. Molly, for some reason, calls
everyone Bruce. "Shto etta, Molly?"

She was crouched on a roughing point, one of the meter cubes sticking   out of
the tower face to induce the micro-turbulence boundary layer. She was   dressed
in a brightly flowered scarlet kimono, livid green bermuda shorts, a
sweatshirt, and tabi socks. Her belay line, bright orange against the   gray
building, stretched from around the corner to Molly's person where it   vanished
beneath her kimono, like a snake hiding its head.

"I got a batch to go to the Bruce, Bruce."

I turned and looked down. There was a damp wind in my face. Some low clouds
had come in overnight, hiding the ground, but the tower's shadow stretched a
long ways across the fluffy stuff below. "Jeeze, Molly. You know the Bruce
won't be on shift for another hour." Damn, she had me doing it! "Oh, hell.
I'll be over after I get dressed."

She blinked twice. Her eyes were black chips of stone in a face so seamed and
browned by the sun that it was hard to tell her age. "Okay, Bruce," she said,
then stood abruptly and flung herself off the cube. She dropped maybe five
meters before her rope tightened her fall into an arc that swung her down and
around the corner.

I let out my breath. She's not called Mad Molly for nothing.

I dressed, drank the water out of my catch basin, urinated on the clouds
(seems only fair) and rolled up my bag.

Between the direct sunlight and the stuff bouncing off the clouds below the
south face was blinding. I put my shades on at the corner.

Molly's nest, like a mud dauber's, hung from an industrial exhaust vent off
the 611th floor. It was woven, sewed, tucked, patched, welded, snapped,
zipped, and

tied into creation. It looked like a wasp's nest on a piece of chrome. It did
not blend in.

Her pigeon coop, about two floors lower down, blended in even less. It was
made of paper, sheet plastic, wire, and it was speckled with pigeon droppings.
It was where it was because only a fool lives directly under under defecating
birds, and Molly, while mad, was not stupid.

Molly was crouched in the doorway of her nest balanced on her feet like one of
her pigeons. She was staring out at nothing and muttering angrily to herself.

"What's wrong, Molly? Didn't you sleep okay?"

She glared at me. "That damn Bruce got another three of my birds yesterday."

I hooked my bag onto a beaner and hung it under her house. "What Bruce, Molly?
That red tailed hawk?"

"Yeah, that Bruce. Then the other Bruce pops off last night and wakes me up so
I can't get back to sleep because I'm listening for that damn hawk. " She
backed into her nest to let me in.

"Hawks don't hunt at night, Molly."

She flapped her arms. "So? Like maybe the vicious, son-of-a-bitchin' Bruce
gets into the coop? He could kill half my birds in one night!" She started
coiling one of her ropes, pulling the line with short, angry jerks. "I don't
know if it's worth it anymore, Bruce. It's hot in the summer. It's freezing in
the winter. The Babs are always hassling me instead of the Howlers, the
Howlers keep hassling me for free birds or they'll cut me loose one night. I
can't cook on cloudy days unless I want to pay an arm and a leg for fuel. I
can't get fresh fruit or vegetables. That crazy social worker who's afraid of
heights comes by and asks if he can help me. I say, 'Yeah, get me some fresh
fruit.' He brings me applications for readmittance! God, I'd kill for a fresh
peach! I'd be better off back in the house!"

I shrugged. "Maybe you would, Molly. After all, you're getting on in years."

"Fat lot you know, Bruce! You crazy or something? Trade this view for six
walls? Breathe that stale stuff they got in there? Give up my birds? Give up
my freedom? Shit, Bruce, who the hell's side are you on anyway?"

I laughed. "Yours, Molly."

She started wrapping the pigeons and swearing under her breath.

I looked at Molly's clippings, bits of faded newsprint stuck to the wall of
the tower itself. By the light coming through some of the plastic sheeting in
the roof, I saw a picture of Molly on Mt. McKinley dated twenty years before.
An article about her second attempt on Everest. Stories about her climbing
buildings in New York, Chicago, and L.A. I looked closer at one that talked
about her climbing the south face of El Capitan on her fourteenth birthday. It
had the date.

I looked twice and tried to remember what day of the month it was. I had to
count backwards in my head to be sure.

Tomorrow was Mad Molly's birthday.

The Bruce in question was Murry Zapata, outdoor rec guard of the south balcony
on the 480th floor. This meant I had to take the birds down 131 stories, or a
little over half a kilometer. And then climb back.

Even on the face of Le Bab Tower, with a roughing cube or vent or external
rail every meter or so, this is a serious climb. Molly's pigeons alone were
not worth the trip, so I dropped five floors and went to see Lenny.

It's a real pain to climb around Lenny's because nearly every horizontal
surface has a plant box or pot on it. So I rappeled down even with him and
shouted over to where he was fiddling with a clump of fennel.

"Hey, Lenny. I'm making a run. You got anything for Murry?"

He straightened up. "Yeah, wait a sec." He was wearing shorts and his climbing
harness and nothing else. He was brown all over. If I did that sort of thing
I'd be a melanoma farm.

Lenny climbed down to his tent and disappeared inside. I worked my way over
there, avoiding the plants. I smelled dirt, a rare smell up here. It was an
odor rich

and textured. It kicked in memories of freshly plowed fields or newly dug
graves. When I got to Lenny's tent, he came out with a bag.

"What'cha got," I asked.

He shrugged. "Garlic, cumin, and anise. The weights are marked on the outside.
Murry should have no trouble moving it. The Chicanos can't get enough of the
garlic. Tell Murry that I'll have some of those tiny muy caliente chilis for
him next week."

"Got it."

"By the way, Fran said yesterday to tell you she has some daisies ready to go
down."

"Check. You ever grow any fruit, Lenny?"

"On these little ledges? I thought about getting a dwarf orange once but
decided against it. I grow dew berries but none of them are ripe right now. No
way I could grow trees. Last year I grew some cantaloupe but that's too much
trouble. You need a bigger bed than I like."

"Oh, well. It was a thought." I added his bag to the pigeons in my pack. "I'll
probably be late getting back."

He nodded. "Yeah, I know. Better you than me, though. Last time I went, the
Howlers stole all MY tomatoes. Watch out down below. The Howlers are claiming
the entire circumference from 520 to 530."

"Oh, yeah? Just so they don't interfere with my right of eminent domain."
He shrugged. "Just be careful. I don't care if they want a cut. Like maybe a
clump of garlic."

I blinked. "Nobody cuts my cargo. Nobody."

"Not even Dactyl?"

"Dactyl's never bothered me. He's just a kid."

Lenny shrugged. "He's sent his share down. You get yourself pushed off and
we'll have to find someone else to do the runs. Just be careful."

"Careful is what I do best."

Fran lived around the corner, on the east face. She grew flowers, took in
sewing, and did laundry. When
she had the daylight for her solar panel, she watched TV.

"Why don't you live inside, Fran. You could watch TV twenty-four hours a day."

She grinned at me, a not unpleasant event. "Nah. Then I'd pork up to about a
hundred kilos eating that syntha crap and not getting any exercise and I'd
have to have a permit to grow even one flower in my cubicle and a dispensation
for the wattage for a grow light and so on and so forth. When they put me in a
coffin, I want to be dead."

"Hey, they have exercise rooms and indoor tracks and the rec balconies."

"Big deal. Shut up for a second while I see if Bob is still mad at Sue because
he found out about Marilyn's connection with her mother's surgeon. When the
commercial comes I'll cut and bundle some daisies."

She turned her head back to the flat screen. I looked at her blue bonnets and
pansies while I waited.

"There, I was right. Marilyn is sleeping with Sue's mother. That will make
everything okay." She tucked the TV in a pocket and prepared the daisies for
me. "I'm going to have peonies next week." I laced the wrapped flowers on the
outside of the pack to avoid crushing the petals. While I was doing that Fran
moved closer. "Stop over on the way back?"

"Maybe," I said. "Of course I'll drop your script off."

She withdrew a little.

"I want to, Fran, honest. But I want to get some fresh fruit for Mad Molly's
birthday tomorrow and I don't know where I'll have to go to get it. 9'

She turned away and shrugged. I stood there for a moment, then left,
irritated. When I looked back she was watching the TV again.

-The Howlers had claimed ten floors and the entire circumference of the Le Bab
Tower between those floors. That's an area of forty meters by 250 meters per
side or 40,000 square meters total. The tower is over a kilometer on a side at
the base but it tapers in

stages until it's only twenty meters square at three thousand meters.

Their greediness was to my advantage because there's only thirty-five or so
Howlers and that's a lot of area to cover. As I rappelled down to 529 1 slowly
worked my way around the building. There was a bunch of them in hammocks on
the South face, sunbathing. I saw one or two on the east face but most of them
were on the west face. Only one person was on the north side.

I moved down to 521 on the north face well away from the one guy and doubled
my longest line. It was a hundred meter blue line twelve millimeters thick. I
coiled it carefully on a roughing cube after wrapping the halfway point of the
rope around another roughing cube one complete circuit, each end trailing
down. I pushed it close into the building so it wouldn't slip. Then I clipped
my brake bars around the doubled line.

The guy at the other corner noticed me now and started working his way from
roughing cube to roughing cube, curious. I kicked the rope off the cube and it
fell cleanly with no snarls, no snags. He shouted. I jumped, a gloved hand on
the rope where it came out of the brake bars. I did the forty meters in five
jumps, a total of ten seconds. Halfway down I heard him shout for help and
heard others come around the corner. At 518 1 braked and swung into the
building. The closest Howler was still fifteen meters or so away from my rope,
but he was speeding up. I leaned against the building and flicked the right
hand rope hatd, sending a sinusoidal wave traveling up the line. It reached
the top and the now loose rope flicked off the cube above and fell. I sat down
and braced. A hundred meter rope weights in at eight kilos and the shock of it
pulling up short could have pulled me from the cube.

They shouted things after me, but none of them followed. I heard one of them
call out, "Quit'cha bitchin. He's got to pass us on his way home. We'll
educate him then."

All the rec guards deal. It's a good job to have if you're inside. Even things
that originate inside the tower end up traveling the outside pipeline. Ain't
no corridor checks out here. No TV cameras or sniffers either. The Howlers do
a lot of that sort of work.

Murry is different from the other guards, though. He doesn't deal slice or
spike or any of the other nasty pharmoddities, and he treats us outsiders like
humans. He says he was outside once. I believe him.

"So, Murry, what's with your wife? She had that baby yet?"

"Nah. And boy is she tired of being pregnant. She's, like, out to here. " He
held his hands out. "You tell Fran I want something special when she finally
dominoes. Like roses."

"Christ, Murry. You know Fran can't do roses. Not in friggin pots. Maybe day
lilies. I'll ask her." I sat in my seat harness, hanging outside the cage
that's around the rec balcony. Murry stood inside smelling the daisies. There
were some kids kicking a soccer ball on the far side of the balcony and
several adults standing at the railing looking out through the bars. Several
people stared at me. I ignored them.

Murry counted out the script for the load and passed it through the bars. I
zipped it in a pocket. Then he pulled out the provisions I'd ordered the last
run and I dropped them, item by item, into the pack.

"You ever get any fresh fruit in there, Murry!"

"What do I look like, guy, a millionaire? The guys that get that sort of stuff
live up there above 750. Hell, I once had this escort job up to 752 and while
the honcho I escorted was talking to the resident, they had me wait out on
this patio. This guy had apples and peaches and cherries for crissakes!
Cherries!" He shook his head. "It was weird, too. None of this cage crap." He
rapped on the bars with his fist. "He had a chest high railing and that was
it."

"Well of course. What with the barrier at 650 he doesn't have to worry about
us. I'll bet there's lots of open balconies up that way." I paused. "Well, I
gotta go. I've got a long way to climb."

"Better you than me. Don't forget to tell Fran about the special flowers."

"Right."

They were waiting for me, all the Howlers sitting on the south face, silent,
intent. I stopped four stories below 520 and rested. While I rested I coiled
my belay line and packed it in my pack. I sat there, fifteen kilos of supplies
and climbing paraphernalia on my back, and looked out on the world.

The wind had shifted more to the southwest and was less damp than the morning
air. It had also strengthened but the boundary layer created by the roughing
cubes kept the really high winds out from the face of the tower.

Sometime during the day the low clouds below had broken into patches, letting
the ground below show through. I perched on the roughing cube, unbelayed and
contemplated the fall. 516 is just over two kilometers from the ground. That's
quite a drop--though in low winds the odds were I'd smack into one of the rec
balconies where the tower widened below. In a decent southerly wind you can
depend on hitting the swamps instead.

What I had to do now was rough.

I had to free ascend.

No ropes, no nets, no second chances. If I lost it the only thing I had to
worry about was whether or not to scream on the way down.

The Howlers were not going to leave me time for the niceties.

For the most part the Howlers were so-so climbers, but they had a few people
capable of technical ascents. I had to separate the good from the bad and then
out-climb the good.

I stood on the roughing cube and started off at a run, leaping two meters at a
time from roughing cube to roughing cube to roughing cube moving sideways
across the south face. Above me I heard shouts but I didn't look up. I didn't
dare. The mind was blank,
letting the body do the work without hindrance. The eyes saw, the body did,
the mind coasted.

I slowed as I neared the corner, and stopped, nearly falling when I
overbalanced, but saving myself by dropping my center of gravity.

There weren't nearly as many of them above me now. Maybe six of them had kept
up with me. The others were trying to do it by the numbers, roping from point
to point. I climbed two stories quickly, chimneying between a disused
fractional distillation stack and a cooling tower. Then I moved around the
comer and ran again.

When I stopped to move up two more stories there were only two of them above
me. The other four were trying for more altitude rather than trying to keep
pace horizontally.

I ran almost to the northwest comer, then moved straight up.

The first one decided to drop kick me dear Jesus through the goal posts of
life. He pulled his line out, fixed it to something convenient and rappelled
out with big jumps, planning, no doubt, to come swinging into me with his feet
when he reached my level. I ignored him until the last minute when I let
myself collapse onto a roughing cube. His feet slammed into the wall above me
then rebounded out.

As he swung back out from the face I leaped after him.

His face went white. Whatever he was expecting me to do, he wasn't expecting
that! I latched onto him like a monkey, my legs going around his waist. One of
my hands grabbed his rope, the other punched with all my might into his face.
I felt his jaw go and his body went slack. He released the rope below the
brake bars and started sliding down the rope. I scissored him with my legs and
held onto the rope with both hands. My shoulders creaked as I took the strain
but he stopped sliding. Then we swung back into the wall and I sagged onto a
cube astride him.

His buddy was dropping down more slowly. He was belayed but he'd seen what I'd
done and wasn't going

to try the airborne approach. He was still a floor or two above me so I tied
his friend off so he wouldn't sleepwalk and took off sideways, running again.

I heard him shout but I didn't hear him moving. When I paused again he was
bent over my friend with the broken jaw. I reached an external exhaust duct
and headed for the sky as fast as I could climb.

At this point I was halfway through Howler territory. Off to my right the
group that had opted for height was now moving sideways to cut me off. I kept
climbing, breathing hard now but not desperate. I could climb at my current
speed for another half hour without a break and I thought there was only one
other outsider that could keep up that sort of pace. I wondered if he was up
above.

I looked.

He was.

He wasn't on the wall.

He didn't seem to be roped on.

And he was dropping.

I tried to throw myself to the side, in the only direction I could go, but I
was only partially successful. His foot caught me a glancing blow to my head
and I fell three meters to the next roughing cube. I landed hard on the cube,
staggered, bumped into the wall, and fell outward, off the cube. The drop was
sudden, gut wrenching, and terrifying. I caught the edge of the cube with both
hands, wrenching my shoulders and banging my elbow. My head ached, the sky
spun in circles and I knew that there was over a kilometer of empty space
beneath my feet.

Dactyl had stopped somehow, several stories below me, and, as I hung there, I
could see the metallic gleam of some sort of wire, stretched taut down the
face of the tower.

I chinned myself up onto the cube and traversed away from the wire, moving and
climbing fast. I ignored the pain in my shoulders and the throbbing of my head
and even the stomach churning fear and sudden clammy sweat.

There was a whirring sound and the hint of movement behind me. I turned around
and caught the flash of gray moving up the face. I looked up.

He was waiting, up on the edge of Howler territory, just watching. Closer were
the three clowns who were trying to get above me before I passed them. I eyed
the gap, thought about it, and then went into overdrive. They didn't make it.
I passed them before they reached the exhaust duct. For a few stories they
tried to pursue and one of them even threw a grapple that fell short.

That left only Dactyl.

He was directly overhead when I reached 530. 1 paused and glanced down. The
others had stopped and were looking up. Even the clothesliners had made it
around the comer and were watching. I looked back up. Dactyl moved aside about
five meters and sat down on a ledge. I climbed up even with him and sat too.

Dactyl showed up one day in   the middle of Howler territory. Three Howlers took
the long dive before it was   decided that maybe the Howlers should ignore
Dactyl before there were no   Howlers left. He's a loner who does a mixed bag:
some free ascent, some rope   work, and some fancy mech stuff.

There was something about him that made him hard to see, almost. Not really,
but he did blend into the building. His nylons, his climbing shoes, his
harness were gray like the roughing cube he sat on. His harness was strung
with gray boxes and pouches of varying sizes, front and back, giving his torso
a bulky appearance, sort of like a turtle with long arms. He was younger than
I'd thought he'd be, perhaps twenty, but then I'd only seen him at a distance
before now. His eyes looked straight at me, steady and hard. He wasn't
sweating a bit.

"Why?" I said.

He shrugged. "Be natural, become a part of your environment. Who said that?"

"Lots of people said that. Even I said that."

Dactyl nodded. "So, like I'm doing that thing. I'm

becoming a part of the environment. One thing you should know by know, dude .
. ."

"What's that?" I asked warily.

"The environment is hostile."

I looked out, away from him. In the far distance I saw white sails in
Galveston Bay. I turned back. "What did I ever do to you?"

He smiled. "You make it too personal. It's more random than that. Think of me
as an extra-somatic evolutionary factor. You've got to evolve. You've got to
adapt. Mano a Mano shit like that."

I let that stew for a while. The Howlers were gathering below, inside their
territory. They were discussing something with much hand waving and punctuated
gestures.

"So," I finally said. "You ever walk through downtown Houston?"

He blinked, opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. Finally, almost
unwillingly, he said, "On the ground? No. They eat people down there."

I shrugged. "Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. Last time I was in
Tranquillity Park they were eating alligator tail with Siamese peanut sauce.
Except when the alligators were eating them."

"Oh."

"You even been down below at all?"

"I was bom inside."

"Well, don't let it bother you," I said as I stood up.

He frowned slightly. "What's that supposed to mean?"

I grinned. "It's not where you were born that matters," I said. "It's where
you die."

I started climbing.

The first half-hour was evenly paced. He waited about a minute before he
started after me and for the next seventy floors it was as if there was an
invisible fifteen meter rope stretched between us. About 600 he lowered the
gap to ten meters. I picked up the pace a little, but the gap stayed the same
for the next ten floors.
I was breathing hard now and feeling the burn in my thighs and arms. My
clothes were soaked in sweat but my hands were dry and I was in rhythm,
climbing smooth and steady.

Dactyl was also climbing fast, but jerky, his movements inefficient. The gap
was still ten meters but I could tell he was straining.

I doubled my speed.

The universe contracted. There was only the wall, the next purchase, the next
breath. There were no peaches, no birthdays, no flowers, and no Dactyl. There
was no thought.

But there was pain.

My thighs went from burning to screaming. I started taking up some of the
slack with my arms and they joined the chorus. I climbed through the red haze
for fifteen more stories and then collapsed on a roughing cube.

The world reeled as I gasped for the first breaths. I felt incipient cramps
lurking in my thighs and I wanted those muscle cells to have all the oxygen I
could give them. Then, as the universe steadied, I looked down for Dactyl.

He wasn't on the north face.

Had he given up?

I didn't know and it bothered me.
Five stories above was the barrier-a black, ten meter overhang perpendicular
to the face. It was perfectly smooth, made of metal, its welds ground flush. I
didn't know what was above it. There were rumors about automatic lasers, armed
guards, and computer monitored imaging devices. I'd worry about them when I
got past that overhang.

I was two stories short of it when Dactyl appeared at the northeast corner of
the building.

Above me.

It wasn't possible. I almost quit then but something made me go on. I tried to
blank my mind and began running toward the west face, doing the squirrel
hopping from block to block, even though my muscles weren't up to it. I almost
lost it twice, once when my mind dwelt too much on how Dactyl had passed me
and once when my quadriceps gave way.

I stopped at the corner, gasping, and looked back. Dactyl was working his way
leisurely after me, slowly, almost labored. I ducked around and climbed again,
until I was crouched on a roughing cube, the dark overhang touching my head. I
peeked around the corner. Dactyl had paused, apparently resting.

I took off my pack and pulled out a thirty-meter length of two-ton-test line,
a half-meter piece of ten-kilo-test monofilament, and a grapple. I tied the
monofilament between the heavier line and the grapple.

I peeked around the corner again. Dactyl was moving again, but slowly,
carefully. He was still two- hundred meters across the face. I dropped down
two meters and stepped back around the comer. Dactyl stopped when he saw me,
but I ignored him, playing out the grapple and line until it hung about
fifteen meters below me. Then I started swinging it.

It was hard work, tricky, too. I didn't think I had   the time to rig a quick
belay before Dactyl got there. At least the grapple   was light, three kilos at
most, but as it swung wider and wider it threatened   to pull me off at each end
of its swing, especially as the comer formed by the   barrier concentrated the
wind somewhat.

Finally the grapple raised far enough on the swing away from the corner. As it
dropped to the bottom of its swing I began pulling it in. As the moment arm
decreased the grapple sped up, gaining enough speed to flip up above the edge
of the overhang. I had no idea how thick the overhang was or even if there was
something up there for the grapple to catch on. I held my breath.

There was a distant clinking noise as it struck something and the rope
slackened. For an instant I thought it was dropping back down and I was scared
because I was already off balance and I didn't know how far Dactyl was behind
me. Then the rope stopped moving and the grapple didn't drop into sight.

I risked a quick look behind. Dactyl was still a hundred meters away. I took
the rope and moved back around the comer, pulling the rope cautiously tight.
As luck would have it, with the line pulled over, Dactyl wouldn't be able to
see any part of the rope until he rounded the corner.

It took me two minutes to tie the lower end of the rope around a roughing cube
and then to two more cubes for backup. Then I recklessly dropped from cube to
cube until I was three stories down and hidden behind a Bernoulli exhaust
vent.

He stuck his head around the corner almost immediately. Saw the dangling line
and tugged it hard. The ten-kilo test line hidden above the barrier held.
Dactyl clipped a beaner over the line and leaped out, almost like a flying
squirrel, his hands reaching for the rope. He was halfway out before his full
weight hit the rope.

The ten kilo test snapped immediately. I heard his indrawn breath, but he
didn't swear. Instead, as he arched down, he tried to twist around, to get his
legs between him and the face as he swung into it.

It was only partially successful, slamming hard into the corner of a roughing
cube, one leg taking some of the shock. I heard the breath leave his lungs in
an explosive grunt and then he was sliding down the rope toward the unattached
end, grabbing weakly to stop himself, but only managing to slow the drop.

I moved like a striking snake.

I was already lower down the tower from where he'd hit the wall and took three
giant strides from cube to cube to get directly beneath him. Then he was off
the end of the rope and dropping free and my hand reached out, snared his
climbing harness, and I flattened myself atop the cube I was on.

For the second time that day I nearly dislocated my shoulder. His weight
nearly pulled me off the tower. The back of my shirt suddenly split. I heard
his head crack onto the cube and he felt like a sack of dirt, lifeless, but
heavy as the world.

It took some time to get him safely onto the cube and lashed in place.

It took even longer to get my second grapple up where the first one was. It
seemed my first attempt was a fluke and I had to repeat the tiring process six
more times before I could clip my ascenders to the rope and inchworm up it.

The building had narrowed about the barrier, to something like 150 meters per
side. I was on the edge of a terrace running around the building. Unlike the
recreation balconies below, it was open to the sky, uncaged, with only a chest
high railing to contain its occupants. Scattered artfully across the patio
were lounge chairs and greenery topped planters.

I saw a small crowd of formally dressed men and women mingling on the west
terrace, sheltered from the northeast wind. Servants moved among them with
trays. Cocktail hour among the rich, the influential, and the cloudy.

I pulled myself quickly over the edge and crouched behind a planter, pulling
my rope in and folding MY grapples.

The terrace areas unsheltered by the wind seemed to be deserted. I looked for
cameras and IR reflectors and capacitance wires but I didn't see any. I
couldn't see any reason for any.

Above me, the face of the tower rose another five hundred meters or so, but
unlike the faces below, there were individual balconies spotted here and there
among the roughing cubes. On more than one I could see growing plants, even
trees.

I had more than a hundred floors to go, perhaps 400 meters.

My arms and legs were trembling. There was a sharp pain in the shoulder Dactyl
had kicked, making it hard for me to lift that arm higher than my neck.

I nearly gave it up. I thought about putting down my pack, unbuckling my
climbing harness, and stretching out on one of these lounge chairs. Perhaps
later I'd take a drink off of one of those trays.

Then a guard would come and escort me all the way to the ground.

Besides, I could do a hundred stories standing on my head, right? Right.

The sun was completely down by the time I reached 700 but lights from the
building itself gave me what I couldn't make out by feel.. The balconies were
fancy, sheltered from the wind by removable fairings and jutting fins. I kept
my eye out for a balcony with fruit trees, just in case. I wouldn't climb all
the way up to 752 if I didn't have to.

But I had to.

There were only four balconies on 752, one to each side. 'Mere were the
largest private balconies I'd ever seen on the, tower. Only one of them had
anything resembling a garden. I spent five minutes looking over the edge at
planter after planter of vegetables, flowers, shrubs, and trees. I couldn't
see any lights through the glass doors leading into the building and I
couldn't see any peaches.

I sighed and pulled myself over the edge for a closer look, standing upright
with difficulty. My limbs were leaden, my breath still labored. I could hear
my pulse thudding in my ears, and I still couldn't see any peaches.

There were some green oranges on a tree near me, but that was the closest
thing to fruit I could see. I shivered. I was almost two kilometers above sea
level and the sun had gone down an hour ago. My sweat soaked clothes were
starting to chill.

Something was nagging me and, at first, the fatigue toxins wouldn't let me
think clearly. Then an important fact swam into my attention.

I hadn't checked for alarms.

They were there, in the wall above the railing, a series of small reflectors
for the I/R beams that I'd crawled through to enter the balcony.

Time to leave. Long past time. I stepped toward the railing and heard a door
open behind me. I started to swing my leg up over the edge when I felt
something stick me in the side. And then the universe exploded.

All the muscles on my right side convulsed spasmodically and I came down onto
the concrete floor with a crash, slamming my shoulder and hip into the ground.
My head was saved from the same fate by the backpack I wore.

Taser, I thought.

When I could focus, I saw the man standing about three meters away, wearing a
white khaftan. He was oder than I was by decades. Most of his hair was gone
and his face had deep lines etched by something other than smiling. I couldn't
help comparing him to Mad Molly, but it just wasn't the same. Mad Molly could
be as old but she didn't look anywhere as nasty as this guy did.

He held the taser loosely in his right hand. In his left hand he held a drink
with ice that he swirled gently around, clink, clink.

"What are you doing here, you disgusting little fly?"
His voice, as he asked the question, was vehement and acid. His expression
didn't change though.

"Nothing." I tried to say it strongly, firmly, reasonably. It came out like a
frog's croak.

He shot me with the taser again. I caught the glint on the wire as it sped
out, tried to dodge, but too late.

I arched over the backpack, my muscles doing things I wouldn't have believed
possible. My head banged sharply against the floor. Then it stopped again.

I was disoriented, the room spun. My legs decided to go into a massive cramp.
I gasped out loud.

This seemed to please him.

"Who sent you? I'll know in the end. I can do this all night long."

I said quickly, "Nobody sent me, I hoped to get some peaches."

He shot me again.

I really didn't think much of this turn of events. My muscles had built up
enough lactic acid without electroconvulsive induced contractions. When
everything settled down again I had another bump on my head and more cramps.

He took a sip from his drink.

"You'll have to do better than that," he said. "Nobody would risk climbing the
outside for peaches. Besides, there won't be peaches on that tree for another
five months." He pointed the taser. "Who sent you?"

I couldn't even talk at this point. He seemed to realize this, fortunately,
and waited a few moments, lowering the taser. Then he asked again, "Who sent
you?"

"Get stuffed," I told him weakly.

"Stupid little man." He lifted the taser again and something smashed him in
the arm, causing him to drop the weapon. He stopped to pick it up again but
there was a streak of gray and the thud of full body contact as someone hit
him and bowled him over onto his back.

I saw the newcomer scoop up the taser and spin sharply. The taser passed over
my head and out over the railing.

It was Dactyl.

The man in the khaftan saw Dactyl's face then and said, "You!" He started to
scramble to his feet. Dactyl took one sliding step forward and kicked him in
the face. The man collapsed in a small heap, his khaftan making him look like
a white sack with limbs sticking out.

Dactyl stood there for a moment looking down. Then he turned and walked slowly
back to me.

"That was a nasty trick with the rope."

I laughed, albeit weakly. "If you weren't so lazy you would have made your own
way up." I eyed him warily, but my body was't up to movement yet. Was he going
to kick me in the face, too? Still, I had to know something. "How did you pass
me down there, below the barrier? You were exhausted, I could see it."

He shrugged. "You're right. I'm lazy." He flipped a device off his back. It
looked like a gun with two triggers. I made ready to jump. He pointed it up
and pulled the trigger. I heard a chunk and something buried itself in the
ceiling. He pulled the second trigger and there was a whining sound. Dactyl
and gun floated off the floor. I looked closer and saw the wire.

"Cheater," I said.

He laughed and lowered himself back to the floor. "What the hell are you doing
here?" he asked.

I told him.

"You're shitting me."

"No."

He laughed then and walked briskly through the door into the tower.

I struggled to stand. Made it. I was leaning against the railing when Dactyl
came back through the door with a plastic two-liter container. He handed it to
me. It was ice cold.

"What's this?"

"Last season's peaches. From the freezer. He always hoards them until just
before the fresh ones are ready."

I stared at him. "How the hell did you know that?"

He shrugged, took the peaches out of my hand and put them in my pack. "Look,
I'd get out of here before he wakes up. Not only does he have a lot nastier
things than that taser, but security will do whatever he wants."

He swung up over the edge and lowered himself to arm's length. Just before he
dropped completely from sight he added something which floated up with the
wind.

"He's my father."

I started down the tower not too long after Dactyl. Physically I was a wreck.
The taser had exhausted my muscles in a way that exercise never had. I
probably wasn't in the best shape to do any kind of rope work, but Dactyl's
words rang true. I didn't want anybody after me in the condition I was in,
much less security.

Security is bad. They use copters and rail cars that run up and down the
outside of the building. They fire rubber bullets and water cannon. Don't
think this makes them humane. A person blasted off a ledge by either is going
to die. Security is just careful not to damage the tower.

So, I did my descent in stages, feeling like an old man tottering carefully
down a flight of stairs. Still, descent was far easier than ascent, and my
rope work had me down on the barrier patio in less than ten minutes.

It was nearing midnight, actually lighter now that the quarter moon had risen,
and the patio, instead of being deserted, had far more people on it than it
had at sunset. A few people saw me coiling my rope after my last rappel. I
ignored them, going about my business with as much panache as I could muster.
On my way to the edge of the balcony I stopped at the buffet and built myself
a sandwich.

More people began looking my way and talking. An elderly woman standing at one
end of the buffet took a long look at me, then said, "Try the wontons. I think
there's really pork in them."

I smiled at her. "I don't know. Pork is tricky. You never know who provided
it."

Her hand stopped, a wonton halfway to her mouth, and stared at me. Then,
almost defiantly, she popped it into her mouth and chewed it with relish.
"Just so it's well cooked."

A white clad steward left the end of the table and walked over to a phone
hanging by a door.

I took my sandwich over to the edge and set it down while I took the rope from
the pack. My legs trembled slightly. The woman with the wontons followed me
over after a minute.

"Here," she said, holding out a tall glass that clinked. "Ice tea."

I blinked, surprised. "Why, thank you. This is uncommonly kind."

She shrugged. "You look like you need it. Are you going to collapse right
here? It would be exciting, but I'd avoid it if I were you. I think that nasty
man called security. "

"Do I look as bad as all that?"

"Honey, you look like death warmed over."

I finished playing out the rope and clipped on my brake-bars. "I'm afraid
you're right." I took a bite out of the sandwich and chewed quickly. I washed
it down with the tea. It wasn't one of Mad Molly's roast pigeons but it wasn't
garbage, either.

"You'll get indigestion," the woman warned.

I smiled and took another large bite. The crowd of people staring at me was
getting bigger. Imere was a stirring in the crowd from over by the door. I
took another bite and another swig, then swung over the edge. "We must do this
again, sometime," I said. "Next time, we'll dance."

I dropped into the dark, jumping out so I could swing into the building. I
didn't reach it on the first swing, so I let out more rope and pumped my legs.
I came within a yard of the tower and swung out again. I felt better than
before but was still weak. I looked up and saw heads looking over the edge at
me. Something gleamed in the moonlight.

A knife?

I reached the wall and dropped onto a roughing cube, unbalanced, unsure of my
purchase. For a moment I teetered, then was able to heave myself in toward the
wall, safe. I turned, to release one end of the rope, so I could snake it down
from above.
I didn't have it. It fell from above, two new ends whipping through the night
air.

Bastards. I almost shouted it, but it seemed better to let them think I'd
fallen. Besides, I couldn't be bothered with any action so energetic. I was
bone weary, tired beyond reaction.

For the next hundred stories I made like a spider with arthritis, slow careful
descents with lengthy rests. After falling asleep and nearly failing off a
cube, I belayed myself during all rest stops. At one point I'm sure I slept
for over an hour because my muscles had set up, stiff and sore. It took me
another half hour of careful motion before I was moving smoothly again.

Finally I reached Mad Molly's, moving carefully, quietly. I unloaded her
supplies and the peaches and put them carefully inside her door. I could hear
her snoring. Then, leaving my stash under her house as usual, I climbed down,
intending to see Fran and make her breakfast.

I didn't make it to Fran's.

In the half dark before the dawn they came at me.

This is the place for a good line like "they came on me like the wolf upon the
fold" or "as the piranha swarm." Forget it. I was too tired. All I know is
they came at me, the Howlers did. At me, who'd been beaten, electroshocked,
indigested, sliced at, and bone wearified, if there exists such a verb. I
watched them come in dull amazement, which is not a suit of clothes, but an
amalgam of fatigue and astonished reaction to the last straw on my camellian
back.

Before I'd been hurt and felt the need to ignore it. I'd been challenged and
felt the need to respond. I'd felt curiosity and felt the need to satisfy it.
I'd felt fear and the need to overcome it. But I hadn't yet felt what I felt
now.

I felt rage, and the need to express it.

I'm sure the first two cleared the recreation balcony, they had to. They came
at me fast unbelayed and I used every bit of their momentum to heave them out.
The next one, doubtless feeling clever, landed on my back and clung like a
monkey. I'd passed caring, I simply threw myself to the side, aiming my back
at the roughing cube two meters below. He tried, but he didn't get off in
time. I'm grateful though, because the shock would have broken my back if he
hadn't been there.

I don't think he cleared the rec balcony.

I ran then, but slowly, so angry that I wanted them to catch up, to let me use
my fists and feet on their stubborn, malicious, stupid heads. For the next ten
minutes it was a running battle only I ran out of steam before they ran out of
Howlers.

I ended up backed into a cranny where a cooling vent formed a ledge some five
meters deep and four meters wide, when Dactyl dropped into the midst of them,
a gray blur that sent three of them for a dive and two more scrambling back
around the edges.

I was over feeling mad by then and back to just feeling tired.
Dactyl looked a little tired himself. "I can't let you out of my sight for a
minute, can IT' he said. "What's the matter? You get tired of their shit?"

"Right . . ." I laughed weakly. "Now I'm back to owing you."

'Mat's right, suck-foot. And I'm not going to let you forget it."

I tottered forward then and looked at the faces around us. I didn't feel so
good.

"Uh, Dactyl."

"Yeah."

"I think you better take a look over the edge."

He walked casually forward and took a look down, then to both sides, then up.
He backed up again.

"Looks like you're going to get that chance to repay me real soon," he said.

The Howlers were out there-all of the Howlers still alive---every last one of
them. In the predawn gray they were climbing steadily toward us from all
sides, as thick as cannibals at a funeral. I didn't think much of our chances.

"Uh, Dactyl?"

"Yeah."

"Do you think that piton gun of yours can get us out of here?"

He shook his head. "I don't have anything to shoot into. The angles are all
wrong."

"0h."

He tilted his head then and said, "I do have a parachute. "

"What?"

He showed me a gray bundle connected to the back of his climbing harness
between batteries.

"You ever use it?"

"Do I look crazy?" he asked.

I took a nine meter length of my strongest line and snapped one end to my
harness and the other to his.

The Howlers were starting to come over the lip.

"The answer is yes," I said.

We started running.

I took two of them off with me, and Dactyl seemed to have kicked one man right
in the face. The line stretched between us pulled another one into the void. I
was falling, bodies tumbling around me in the air, the recreation deck growing
in size. I kept waiting for Dactyl to open the chute but we seemed to fall
forever. Now I could see the broken Howlers who'd preceded us, draped on the
cage work over the balcony. The wind was a shrieking banshee in my ears. The
sun rose. I thought, here I am falling to my death and the bloody sun comes
up!

In the bright light of the dawn a silken flower blossomed from Dactyl's back.
I watched him float up away from me and then the chute opened with a dull
boom. He jerked up away from me and there came a sudden, numbing shock.
Suddenly I was dangling at the end of a three meter pendulum, tick, tick and
watching four more bodies crash into the cage.

The wind took us then, far out, away from the tower, spinning slowly as we
dropped. I found myself wondering if we'd land on water or land.

Getting out of the swamp, past alligators and cannibals, and through the Le
Bab Security perimeter is a story in itself. It was hard, it took some time,
but we did it.

While we were gone there was a shakeup in the way of things. Between my
trespassing and Howlers dropping out of the sky, the Security people were
riled up enough to come out and "shake off" some of the fleas. Fortunately
most of the victims were Howlers.

To finish this story up neatly I would like to add that Molly liked the
peaches-but she didn't.

It figures.

____________