"Three, four weeks."

Ben nodded. "Well, at least you don't have any fat on you. But you're going to have to sweat, ol' buddy. How are the legs?"

"They reach from the crotch to the ground. That's about all you can say for them."

"Uh-huh. Enjoy that beer, Jon. It's your last for a week at least."

Jonathan finished it slowly.

The insistent grind of the door buzzer insinuated itself into the narrative structure of Jonathan's dream, then it shattered his heavy sleep, and local reality flowed in through the cracks. He stumbled to the door and clawed it open without ever getting both eyes open at the same time. As he leaned against the frame, his head hanging down, the Indian bellboy wished him a good morning cheerily and told him that Mr. Bowman had left instructions to be sure Dr. Hemlock was wide awake.

"Whadymizid?" Jonathan asked.

"Pardon me, sir?"

"What... time... is... it?"

"Three thirty, sir."

Jonathan turned back into the room and fell across the bed, muttering to himself, "This can't be happening."

No sooner had he slipped into a vertiginous sleep than the phone rang. "Go away," he mumbled without picking up the receiver, but it rang on without mercy. He pulled it onto the bed and pawed around with his eyes clamped shut until he had located the receiver.

"Rise and shine, ol' buddy!"

"Ben—argh—" He cleared his throat. "Why are you doing this to me?"

"Breakfast in ten minutes."

"No."

"You want me to send someone up there with a bucket of ice water?"

"He better be someone you're tired of having around."

Ben laughed and hung up. Jonathan rolled out and groped his way around until he lucked into the bathroom where he let a cold shower drum consciousness into him until he felt the danger of accident by failing was remote.

Ben pushed two more eggs onto Jonathan's plate. "Put them down, ol' buddy. And finish that steak."

They were alone in the lodge kitchen, surrounded by glowing, impersonal, stainless steel. Their voices had a cell-block bounce.

Jonathan looked at the eggs with nausea constricting his throat. "Ben, I've never lied to you, have I? Honest to God, I believe I'm dying. And I've always wanted to die in bed."

"Sit back down and get at that chow!"

It was one thing to push food into his mouth, but another to swallow it.

Ben chatted on, impervious to the stares of hate. "I've been up half the night working out details of the Eiger climb. I'm buying the heavy equipment for the team and bringing it over with me. I'll order your climbing kit with the rest. You can go with jeans and soft shoes for the first few days here. We ain't going to do anything hard right at first. Come on! Drink the milk!" Ben finished his beer and opened another can. The beer for breakfast was more than Jonathan could stand to look at. "You still get your climbing boots in Spain?"

Jonathan nodded heavily and found the lower part of the motion so appealing that he let his head hang there and tried to return to sleep.

"All right. Leave me their name and your account number and I'll get a cable off today. Come on! Time's a-wasting! Eat!"

The one-mile, two-minute drive across open grassland in inky predawn dark brought Jonathan fully awake.

For three hours without a rest they climbed a rough, switch-back trail up one of the faces that ringed around the flat-bottomed depression in which Ben had established his lodge. Morning came while they were trudging upward, but Jonathan took no joy in the russet mantle. When the path was wide enough, Ben walked alongside and chatted. The slight limp from the missing toes was all but imperceptible, save that he pushed off more strongly from one foot. Jonathan spoke little; he puffed along concentrating on the pains in his thighs and calves. He was carrying a thirty-five pound training pack because Ben did not want him to get used to going light. That would not be the way of things on the Eiger.

About eight, Ben looked up the trail and waved. There was a figure sitting in the deep shadow of a rock, obviously waiting for them.

"Well, I'm going to turn back, ol' buddy."

"Thank God."

"No, not you. You need the work. George Hotfort yonder will take you on up."

The figure was coming down to meet them.

Jonathan protested, "Hey, she's a girl!"

"Yeah, there's been a lot of people notice that. Now, George," Ben said to the young Indian girl who had joined them, "this here's Jonathan Hemlock, my old climbing buddy. Jon, meet George Hotfort. Now listen, George, you bring him up another couple of hours, then get him back to the place in time for dinner." The girl nodded and leveled a scornful and superior look at Jonathan.

"I'll see you, ol' buddy." And Ben turned back down the trail.

Jonathan watched him go with genuine hate in his soul, then he turned to the girl. "You don't have to do everything he tells you, you know. Here's your chance to strike back at the white man."

The girl gazed on him without the trace of an expression on her wide-cheekboned, oriental face.

"Georgette?" he ventured.

She made a curt motion with her head and started up the hill, her long strong legs effortlessly pulling the trail under her swinging bottom.

"How about Georgianna?" He huffed along after her.

Each time she got a distance ahead, she waited, her back against a rock, watching his exertions calmly. But as soon as he came close enough to appreciate the filled denim shirt, she would push off the rock and move on, her hips swinging metrically with the long regular strides. Even at the steep angle of the rise, her ankles were supple enough to allow her heels to touch the ground, as the heels of Alpine guides do. Jonathan's calves were tight and inelastic; he was walking mostly on his toes, and feeling every step.

The trail steepened, and his legs started to wobble, causing him to lose his footing occasionally. Whenever this happened, he would look up and find her gazing at him with distant disgust.

The sweat ran from his hair into his eyes, and he could feel the thump of his pulse against his eardrums. The web straps of his pack chafed his shoulders. He was breathing orally by now, and his lips were thick and coated.

He wiped the sweat out of his eyes and looked up after her. Directly in front of him was a vertical bank about thirty feet high with only little dents in the baked earth for foot and hand holds. She stood on top looking down at him. He shook his head definitely and sat down on the trail. "Oh, no. No-o, no, no."

But after a couple of minutes of silence broken only by the distant whip of a lark, he turned to discover that she had not moved and was still regarding him placidly. Her face was smooth and powdery, not a trace of perspiration on it, and he hated her for that.

"All right, George. You win."

With a catalogue of pain, he clawed his way up the bank. When he had scrambled to the top he grinned at her, expecting some kind of praise. Instead, she archly walked around him, getting no nearer than three feet, and started on the return trip to the lodge. He watched her glissade easily down the bank and take the downward trail.

"You are a savage, George Hotfort. I'm glad we took your land!"

Back in the rock garden lounge, he consumed an enormous dinner with the concentration of a Zen neophyte. He had showered and changed clothes, and he felt a little more human, although his legs and shoulders still protested with dull, persistent aches. Ben sat across from him, eating with his usual vigor and drawing off great gulps of beer to wash the food down. Jonathan envied him the beer. George had left him a few hundred yards from the lodge and had returned up the trail without a word.