CLOUD: You've been watching me as I come here?

MARC: Watching, not listening. Believe me.

CLOUD: ... What do you want?

MARC: Your help. With Hagen.

CLOUD: It's too late.

MARC: I deserve to be rejected by both of you. I was negligent, distracted by my work. Unfeeling toward you. Impatient with his weakness. Harsh. The incident with the tarpon was unforgivable. But I want to ask his forgiveness. He can't help being what he is, no more than I can. But he must understand that I was not being capriciously cruel. It was misguided therapy.

CLOUD: It was a calculated act of violence. You know he's always been afraid of you. You thought to break him, and instead he gained strength for escape ...

MARC: He mustn't, Cloud. I must have a chance to explain to him-to both of you-why you mustn't go.

CLOUD: We won't let the Milieu authorities come back through the gateMARC: I know. That was never a serious worry. There's a far more important reason why you mustn't return to the Milieu.

CLOUD: What is it, Papa?

MARC: Let me meet with both of you, in person. I'll explain everything.

CLOUD: I'm willing to trust you, but I'm afraid Hagen never will.

Tell me what you want to say to him. I'll transmit your message.

MARC: It won't work that way. I have to talk to you face to faceCLOUD: To coerce us? Oh, Papa.

MARC: My dear, what I have to ask of you can never be gained through coercion. That lasts only as long as the coercer's grip holds. I need your free cooperation, your commitmentCLOUD: Papa, it's too late! Years too late! We've made our choice. To be free.

MARC: But that's just it. You wouldn't be free in the Milieu. Not truly, any more than I was. You are my children, with my heritage. There are things you don't understand ... that I had not intended to tell you until the star-search succeeded.

For your own peace of mind. But now you've forced my hand.

CLOUD: Papa, for G.o.d's sake!

What?

MARC: I must tell you both. Face to face. Everything I've done was for your good. You must believe it.

CLOUD: I-all I can do is tell Hagen what you've told me. But he's afraid, Papa. And now ... so am I.

MARC: You need not be. Not with me. If you only have courage, your future can be wonderful. I'll tell you everything if you'll only meet with me.

CLOUD: I'll tell Hagen what you said. We'll talk about it.

MARC: Thank you, Cloud. I love you.

CLOUD: I love you, too, Papa, butMARC: Please.

MARC: Cloud?

CHAPTER EIGHT.

As he vanished into the depths of the great creva.s.se, Basil's thought maintained its usual laconic tone: Falling. Everyone self-arrest.

Chazz, who was Number 2 on the rope, shouted an obscenity.

He fell on his face, ice-axe dangling impotently at the end of its keeper-strap, and was dragged through harsh, granular snow with arms and legs floundering. Derek, the Number 3, drove his axe into hard white ice simultaneously with Nirupam, the tail-man, just as Chazz reached the crack's edge. The rope went taut with a m.u.f.fled twung!

Nirupam said: How you Baz?

Basil said: Dangling upside down like a snared hare. A moment while I shed my pack ... ah. Over we go. Good heavens I just missed pranging into a rather bad shelf. Good show on the arrest even if a bit tardy. Is Chazz in the hole too?

Chazz said: Right on the mothering lip.

Nirupam said: Please don't move anyone. Derek are you belayed good and fast?

Derek said: I wouldn't bet on it.

An echoing yelp came from Chazz. and he screamed aloud: "The d.a.m.n rope's cutting into the creva.s.se edge like a knife into cheese! I'm going over-"

Basil said: I shall cut my rope to ease the strain.

"Don't do it, Baz, don't!" the man above cried. The image of Basil's body tumbling into a bottomless blue crystal chasm flooded his mind and was broadcast by his grey torc to the others.

Basil said: Easy my boy. I told you I was just above a shelf.

There. I'm down.

Nirupam said: Terrific. Everybody just hang cool or whatever while I drop anchor. Soon as I unpack a bit of gear we'll get the Death-Defying Baz & Chazz Rescue Act rolling.

Deep in his roofed canyon of blue ice, Basil moved cautiously along the shelf a few metres so he was no longer directly beneath the severed climbing rope, to which his pack remained clipped by a lighter line. Showers of soft snow dribbled constantly from overhead as Chazz was slowly winched back to safety. Then abruptly, a chunk of snow as large as an ATV module cracked from the lip and crashed onto the shelf, disintegrating into a sugary cloud.

Basil said: Not to worry. I believe I'll try walking out.

The others exclaimed: What?

Basil said: The shelf rises and the creva.s.se is closing as I move northward. h.e.l.lo. The ice is warping up here and the snow cover getting very thin. I believe-can you see me?

He had poked his arm up through the snow crust and waggled it. A moment later his entire upper body was at the surface. He laughed to see the expressions on the others as he traced a curved path back to the winch-belay.

"Will you look at the man?" Derek exclaimed. "Cool as the proverbial gherkin. My G.o.d-when I saw you drop out of sight and Chazz go sliding after, I thought you were both on the way to join poor Phillipe in Valhalla!"

Basil's pack came slithering over the snow, drawn in by the solar-powered donkey engine. The cla.s.sics professor and the three technicians hunkered to enjoy a fast cup of tea and a bar of chocolate algiprote.

"Creva.s.ses needn't be lethal," Basil said, "as long as one isn't injured in the fall-or, in the case of Phillipe, drowned in melt.w.a.ter. He was unlucky enough to fall into a moulin, a kind of drainpipe creva.s.se in the rotten ice of the glacier snout. With the tortuous nature of the fissure and the fast-moving water, there was no helping him-not even with Lord Bleyn's psychokinesis."