Luca Signorelli (SignorelliL@alma.it)
--- RED TOWER, BLACK TOWER, GREY SLABS ---
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PART 3 OF 4
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-- All the way down --
"So, there it is" Ukyou said with a coarse voice "Down this slope
until the serac barrier. Then, we traverse under the serac wall to the
Bottleneck. After that, it's a matter of keeping our direction through
the Shoulder, until the second serac barrier and the Black Pyramid.
Later, we'll reach the fixed ropes - and from there it should be just
a matter of sliding down to safety. How do you feel?"
"Fine - just groggy from the altitude. And you?"
"Tired, but once we'll get into some thicker air we'll both feel
better. Down we go, Hibiki."
They were 100 meters under the summit, where they had stopped to brew
something on their way down the SE face and the Abruzzi spur. On this
side of the mountain, the wind was less violent - but it was snowing,
in heavy and irregular flakes. "The storm could break in earnest at
any moment. Let's try to stay clear from the exposed part of the
ridge." Ukyou stared again in the direction of Broad Peak and
Concordia, now invisible. "We've well earned our view, haven't we?"
She looked exhausted.
Ryouga was alert. He hated descents. The immense tension he had felt
before reaching the summit had been now released, and he could feel
all his weariness. He was worried for Ukyou - she looked really
distraught. Unfortunately, and particularly under these conditions, it
was out of the question that he could lead the descent, at least until
the Black Pyramid and the beginning of the fixed ropes. A direction's
mistake would have meant a jump down 3000 meters towards the
Godwin-Austen icefall, or even a longer distance on the Chinese side.
The most difficult part of their climb, the true ordeal, had finally
arrived - and they weren't in the best condition to confront it.

-- Descent --
The silence had returned. Ukyou was leading, keeping her balance with
one short axe, and placing carefully her crampons one in front of the
other. A few feet above Ryouga followed, keeping several coils of rope
around his waist. He was paying maximum attention to avoid any
quantity of snow to enter inside his carefully tied altitude jacket;
otherwise Ukyou would have to carry P-Chan down to the Base Camp. His
smaller lungs would have made him hypoxic in few minutes - and dead in
less than one hour. "I'm running the gauntlet here," Ryouga thought
again "Mom wouldn't have approved."
Ryouga noticed how his vision was much clearer, and he had no more
hallucinatory signs. He was curious to hear what Ukyou had seen on the
summit (if anything) - but this wasn't the place, neither the time.
Maybe back at the base camp or, better, back in Tokyo, before the
grill of New Ucchan's, with a cold Kirin and a freshly made
okonomiyaki...

-- Blast Furnace --
Ryouga's stomach closed in a fit of homesickness. It had been nearly
two months since they had left, and it would take them another month
to return home. I'm thinking much more clearly now, he thought, must
be all the silence and activity of the last few days. Maybe, Ryouga
considered, when I'm back home I could have something fixed. I must
not forget it again. That thing with Ranma isn't right - I must go
there and try to make him reconsider the situation, and make peace
with Ucchan. Maybe she doesn't care anymore, but maybe not. I know I
can make it - Ranma will listen to me, if I use the right words. And
even Akane will agree. It would be a little bit like the old days...
In a couple of hours, they had arrived at the serac barrier. Their
pace was agonisingly slow - Ukyou was evidently spent. Slowly, the
grey sky above them wasn't grey anymore. Like an immense ceiling, the
big serac closing the top of the Bottleneck was growing upon them,
with all its volume.
"OK - there's a fixed rope here. Must be a leftover of the Spanish
expedition last summer." Ucchan carefully considered the anchorage: a
group of steel, L-shaped pitons all tied together with a long runner.
"Looks like it can hold. What do you think?"
"Don't know - to me it looks really decrepit and moreover, I hate
fixed ropes. Better than downclimb all the way to the Shoulder with
that thing aiming at our heads, anyway." He pointed at the serac.
"I'll change the runner and I'll go down first. Try to rest a bit."
Ukyou smiled wearily.

-- The last throw of the dice --
Once he rearranged the anchorage, Ryouga clipped a Stitch plate (they
had left their Jumar handles on the opposite side of the mountain),
and slowly applied all his not inconsiderable weight on the rope. Then
he started the descent. In a few seconds he was immersed in a grey
wall of clouds. He stopped to check Ukyou's position. She was up
there, sitting on a rock lump, her features blurred by the swirling
clouds. Ryouga focused again his attention on the descent.
At the end of the rope - that was anchored as well with a large
hexentric into a crack - Ryouga sat waiting for Ukyou to come. The
temporary solitude was oppressive - and he couldn't wait to get out of
the serac chute line. Incredibly, the terrain below seemed to decrease
in verticality: it was, with all probability, the upper border of the
Shoulder. Well, with a bit of fortune we'll get to the Black Pyramid
this evening - and tomorrow, or the day after, down to Godwin-Austen.
Then, a quick stroll to the Savoia base camp, and after that the long
trek back to Askole. Ryouga felt, for the first time, that they were
going to make it.
A noise came from above, like a mattress hitting against a remote
obstacle. The serac is coming down, he thought casually. He looked
around for a shelter, but the snow slope seemed uniformly featureless.
Ryouga stood rigid, waiting for something to come out of the upper
mist and crush him where he was. He felt no fear, only a vague sense
of disappointment.
Nothing came. Minutes passed. Ukyou, he thought. He was disoriented.
If she had fallen, the couloir would have channelled her fall, and
then the slope isn't so steep... Oh, damn it! She must have collapsed
on the rope, she was too tired... I must get up and see what's going
on. Once he had made a decision, he grabbed the rope and started the
long haul to the upper stance. The storm, as Ukyou had predicted, was
intensifying fast, and Ryouga had to break trail in two feet of
freshly deposited snow. The climb up was a torture. His muscles,
already tender from the compression on descent, were now simply
refusing to cooperate. Suddenly, he recognised the place where he had
stopped to check Ucchan's conditions. Reluctantly, he looked up. The
small platform was now covered again by some inch of snow, and the
small boulder was still there, but Ukyou was nowhere to be seen.

-- The Kyoto Stone Gardens --
On the belay stance, Ryouga Hibiki thought of Mick Burke, the British
TV operator vanished near the top of Everest in 1975. They had
discussed his fate in a smoky tea-house at Askole, on their way to
Baltoro. He could remember Ukyo's hooded eyes as she explained her
theory: 
"You can be on the top of a mountain, at the centre of a vertiginous
space completely empty. My father took me to the Fuji in pilgrimage
when I was 12, and I sat there on the top, as the horizon just grew
and grew again. My breath was condensing in visions, in complete,
utter indifference. I felt it again only another time, just after
Akane and Ranma's wedding. I was in Kyoto, at the Stone Gardens - I
stared at the boulders emerging from the white sand and I imagined
them as islands in the sky, the way I see big mountains. I just
couldn't leave - the empty space was the same as the top of Fuji, the
empty space where all sorrows are nothing but forgotten. I think that
Burke did the same. He didn't die on his way up, because the top, as
the garden's stones, would have attracted him irresistibly. And he
didn't die on the descent, because the consciousness to have reached
the top would have given him the strength to come back. I think he
just sat there, on the summit, oblivious of everything."

-- How wrong I was --
The certainty that Ukyou was dead fell on Ryouga. Knelt on the snow,
he remembered the first time they had meet, a morning long passed, in
a faraway place.. He sat there, thinking about the restaurant, the
school, the Wedding Fiasco, trying to control himself. I did not
imagine it would end that way. I'm always supposed to be the one
making a dumb mistake, dying in some stupid way. It's not fair.
He didn't really knew what to do. Try to find her? She must have taken
the wrong direction, and she's fallen through the external border of
the ridge, all the way down to the mountain base. Or maybe, she's just
lying ten meters from here, and I can't see her because of all this
fuckin' mist. He started shouting her name. But the storm's howl was
deafening: it was difficult for him to hear his own voice. Breathless
again, he stopped. He tried to look for footprints, but the snow had
cancelled everything
He opened his rucksack, looking for something. There it was, in a
lateral pocket - Ukyou's ribbon, that she had given to him before they
started the ascent. It used to be green, but through the tears Ryouga
thought that now it seemed to be of a bleached white.

-- I can't remember as well as I can't forget --
What's happening to me, Ryouga thought while opening his way once
again down the mountain, is nothing special. It's something  that has
already occurred to billions of people. We're all bound to lose our
beloved ones. It could have happened ten years ago in a car accident,
or thirty years in the future from a sudden illness. It's happened
today - it's just a matter of statistics. Why do I complain? Why
something so banal as the death of a human being, my Ucchan, should
matter to anyone but me? The mountain doesn't care, though. 
The depth of the fresh snow deposit was increasing. Ukyou died less
than one hour ago, Ryouga thought, and things are already changing -
the snow that I'm seeing now, in less than another hour, will be
buried by other snow that now is forming one mile above my head in
some cloud, and will melt once this storm ends. The storm, the snow,
the wind, the mountain - they don't care about Ucchan. I'm the only
one. As long as I live, as so long as I believe she's alive and I wait
for her, she'll be alive somewhere.
But I won't live much longer - he thought bitterly - I need to get out
of this storm soon, and I'll never found  the way alone. "Ici Michel,
Ici Michel...": a confused memory of a documentary he had seen ten
years before. It must have happened here, Ryouga thought. That French
guy who was radioed out of the Shoulder  in whiteout conditions, only
to die two years later over Everest. You see? It's just a matter of
being ripe for it. Just a matter of statistics.
For hours, he walked trying to keep a straight line. Several times, he
arrived on the icy perimeter bordering the abyss. He was terminally
tired and, what was worse, he didn't care. Weariness is like fear,
Ryouga thought, something that's in your stomach. But there's a point
after which you don't listen to your body anymore; your stomach wants
to live, but your mind doesn't care.
Maybe I should stop and wait for the storm to cease. But I've not the
strength to dig a snow cave and, in the open, I wouldn't last enough.
And all our remaining gas cartridges were in Ucchan's rucksack.
He fell in the snow. I feel so tired, he thought. I could probably win
a weariness championship. He laughed hysterically. He laughed again,
in anticipation, when he felt the dampness of the chunks of snow that
had sneaked through his altitude dress, and were now  inexorably
melting.

-- A very fragmented picture  --
P-Chan waded through the mass of bottomless snow, in an extreme and
futile attempt to find his way out of the storm. Almost weightless, he
swam over the sugary mass, but the snowfall was now so intense that he
was in danger of being literally buried alive. Everything was white -
uniform, sickening white. He couldn't discern the sky from the ground.
His lungs were burning like hell, and his sight was slowly going out
of focus.
P-Chan laughed again. And laughed more and more listening to his
piglet voice imitating a laugh. What an odd thing. Seconds ago
everything was white; now I'm into a jet black curtain. Oh, it doesn't
matter; because now the curtain will open, and in a few hops I'll be
in the back of the Tendo's dojo. Kasumi will offer everyone tea and
brownies, and Akane will hug me and sing something for me. And then
we'll go in her bedroom, and she'll allow me to sleep on her pillow,
and no, Akane, I don't feel like playing, I'm so tired, so bloody
tired. And there's too much snow, and I feel so cold - please, Akane,
let me sleep a little more, just a minute more...
But Akane was gone - and the curtain had lifted. Just for a second,
Ryouga glimpsed another image. In front of him, beyond a river, stood
a great city. It was burning - and he knew that he, and the other
people shivering from the cold as he was on the river bank, had to
ferry across the river and go into that city, because, at their back,
there was no more space to retreat.
"Ne sagu nazad", not one step back, Ryouga Hibiki thought in a
language he didn't knew. The line has been penetrated at several
points. We're the last reinforcement and we'll get there and try to
hold the beach-head across the river. What a strange thing - to be
here, and I'm not even P-Chan anymore. He clenched his fist, and
prepared to cross.
Miles above him appeared, immense, the face of Ukyou.

-- She was pining to go back home --
My, I can't control my limbs. My hands are shaking so much, and I
can't stop crying, and if I do the wrong move, I'll lose all the hot
water I've prepared. And it's not even really hot, just warm - God
please help me, hope it's warm enough. And simultaneously I'm pumping
pure oxygen into P-Chan's lungs, from the small bottle I had hauled up
the mountain, in the bottom of my rucksack. Hell, he's not reacting.
My goodness, I'm sure he's dead - he's probably got an heart attack
and now, when the water will be ready, I'll have back a dead Ryouga, a
stone cold, dead Ryouga. What sense does it make to come up such a
dreadful mountain if you turn into a bloody swine every time you step
into a drop of water! What a stupid idea it was from the beginning -
this dude's place is just in bloody Japan, with someone to watch over
him all the time. I can't wait any longer, I just hope it's warm
enough, just warm enough - I don't have any other gas cartridge
left... wake up, jackass, wake up wake up WAKE UP WAKE UP!!!!!!

-- Snow melts in the sun --
He perceived Ukyou's head pressing against his chest. The transition
had been instantaneous and disorienting, like waking up one morning in
the wrong bed. Ryouga perceived first mass, then gravity again - the
unique sensation to be back into our time and reality. Another thought
raced through his head. Maybe it isn't true, maybe it's me and Ukyou
and we're both dead. He felt again a surge of panic. He tried to
scream, but his throat seemed obstructed. 
Ukyou turned toward him. For one instant, she looked puzzled, as if
she were having difficulty identifying him. Then she stood against the
wall of the snow cave, unable to speak.
"Where are we?" The sound of his own voice surprised Ryouga.
Ukyou looked at him, and Ryouga thought that as she was probably going
to give some abrupt or sarcastic answer. But she simply stared at him,
with an expression of deep relief, then his hand and kissed it.
"What a stupid trick to do, Ryouga."
Ryouga looked at her. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever
seen, even with her deeply sunken eyes and broken lips.
"What happened at the Bottleneck?" He asked, but he wasn't sure he
really wanted to know.
"I don't know. A bit of the serac has fallen, and I've beaten the hell
out trying to stay on the right of the couloir. I called your name
many times, but the storm was too strong. Then..."
She paused, trying to find the words.
"Then?"
"Then, I don't know - maybe I'm too tired. Anyway, I stumbled onto you
while trying to get near the second icefall. I was sure you were going
to get straight in the most dangerous place. I wouldn't have seen you
if not for your bandanna. I thought you were dead, Ryouga. Or better,
you probably were and then you're resurrected. Welcome back to our
world, jackass." She smiled again.
Ryouga closed his eyes. He discovered he was happy, and considered how
mysterious and powerful was that sensation. He closed his eyes and
inhaled again the tenuous air of the 8000 meters.
"Sorry to interrupt your reveries, Ryouga, but I think you have to
dress, and try to help me out of here. I can't even stand on my feet."
She continued to smile.

-- Blind Cassiopeia --
For Ryouga, the next 48 hours were one long and continuos dive. Ukyou
couldn't walk anymore: her toes were frostbite, as all the fingers of
her right hand. She couldn't held onto the fixed ropes - Ryouga had to
literally drag her down, out of the Shoulder's limbo.
They found the ropes more easily than presumed. Ryouga made an
improvised harness for Ukyou, and tied her on his back. Anyone else
couldn't have found the strength to haul her down all through the 2000
meters of the Abruzzi spur but, now, Ryouga was a man with a purpose.
All his strength was returning. Whether it was because they were
plunging back into the denser strata of the atmosphere, or because of
some other internal drive, Ryouga hadn't felt so strong since his days
of training in the mountains along with Cologne.
However, their descent from the mountain was still a fighting retreat.
The Black Pyramid was completely white, plastered by a three-inches
coat of verglas. The ladders on the House Chimney were useless, buried
as they were under the ice. Ryouga had to rappel where possible, and
downclimb where not. Ukyou was semi-delirious, but her vital signs
were good. It was now a matter of coming down fast, and ask for help
at the military base at Liligo, a few miles south-west of Concordia.
The lower, easier slopes were even more arduous - there was an
unimaginable quantity of snow. Here, the only thing that Ryouga could
do was plod down, front pointing step by step and stopping every
twenty meters to take his breath. Nevertheless, he was feeling
exhilarated, albeit still worried for Ukyou's conditions. They didn't
even really bivouac: Ryouga's sleep was limited to a few and sparse
naps, resting his body against the rock, dozing intermittently,
awakening at Ukyou's every moan.
The second night on the spur the sky cleared partially for some
minute. Ukyou was laying on her back, her face exposed to the sky.
Suddenly, she covered her eyes. 
"Is everything OK?" Ryouga asked.
"I don't know - it's just that Vega is blinding me." 

-- Now, I'm back again into this city --
Three days after reaching K2's summit and eight after their departure
from the Savoia basin, in a steel grey morning, Ryouga Hibiki and
Ukyou Kuonji reached the Godwin Austen Glacier and, three hours later,
the site of the traditional base camp. No one was in. Using stones and
scavenging the remains of the previous expeditions, Ryouga made a
shelter for Ukyou. She was in pain, but more or less attentive.
Before leaving for the four hour walk to Concordia, Ryouga slept a bit
on a flat rock near Ukyou. When the alarm clock awoke him, she was
looking at the summit of K2, now peeking out of the clouds. The view
was fantastic - the Mushroom, a suspended glacier over the SSW ridge,
looked like an ancient fortress.
"We did it, Ryouga. We really did it. Didn't it seem to you as if it
had been impossible?"
She was right. It was a familiar moment after every difficult climb,
when you look back at the summit and ask yourself: have I really been
there? Really me?
Ryouga thought: hadn't we crawled up to the summit, it wouldn't mean
nothing to us. These pillars, the web of ice encrusted  the cracks and
couloirs, they are signals we give a significance each time we come
here.
In Ryouga's mind, the Godwin Austen moraine was a prehistoric highway
over the streaming bed of ice. On the opposite side there was the
small rocky pyramid of the Gilkey Memorial, with all the names of
climbers fallen on K2 written on improvised plaques, made out of
frying pans and tin plates.
He knelt near Ukyou: "While we were high on the mountain, I thought
that maybe, when back in Tokyo, I would get in touch with Ranma and
settle things." His voice sounded as if he finally felt all his
obligations had been finally met.
Ukyou lifted here eyes. They were beautiful, full of sadness and
understanding.
"There's no chance to repair the evil that I did to Ranma and that
Ranma did to me, if evil has it really been. Maybe Ranma could change
his mind, but I don't think so, and probably it wouldn't be right. You
can't change the rules of a game when you're losing, Ryouga. But it
doesn't matter anymore, because I feel for you something for which
there are no words. You're bound to fight against the inevitable as I
tried once, but you're the only person I know that could really do
this, and win his battle against time. And that's why I love you,
Ryouga Hibiki."
Ryouga smiled, and felt the darkness inside him rent asunder. He put
on his rucksack, and raced down the glacier, toward Concordia.

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END OF PART 3 - CONTINUE
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