"I'm sorry, Ben. I didn't think about that."

"You're not the type likely to. Anyway, I figured that if you couldn't make a climb you thought I had made, even with my game foot, you'd think twice about going after the Eiger."

"You're all that set against my going?"

"I am, and that's a fact. I'm scared of it, ol' buddy." Ben sighed and crushed his beer can. "But, like I said, my plot kind of backfired. Now that you've made this climb, I guess nothing in the world's going to keep you away from the Eiger."

"I have no choice, Ben. Everything's tied to the climb. My house. My paintings."

"From what I hear, dead people don't get much kick out of houses and paintings."

"Look. Maybe this will make you feel better about it. If everything goes well, I may not have to make the climb after all. There's a chance that I can finish my business before the climb starts."

Ben shook his head as though he felt something loose inside. "I don't get all this at all. It's too screwy-assed."

Jonathan touched his palms together to test for pain. They were tacky with the thick clear liquid of coagulation, but they did not hurt much. "Let's go back down."

Leaving the pitons for future climbers, and rappelling in great descending swoops, they reached the flat land in forty minutes, which seemed somehow unfair after the grueling six hours of the climb.

Immediately, they were surrounded by a throng of backslappers and congratulators who offered to buy drinks and gave suggestions on how they would have made the climb, if they had been climbers. Ben, one arm around each of two cute young things, led the crowd back to the lodge; and Jonathan, suddenly drained and leaden, now that nervous energy no longer sustained him, trudged along behind the convivial parade. He had been surprised to see Miles Mellough standing apart from the welcoming group, aloof and cool in a sky blue suit of raw silk, his well-combed Pomeranian squirming and whining in his arms. Miles fell in step with him.

"An impressive display. Do you know, Jonathan, that in all the time we were friends, I never saw you climb? It's rather graceful, in its way."

Jonathan walked on without answering.

"That last little part there was particularly tingling. It sent little thrills down my spine. But you made it after all. What's the matter? You seem rather done in."

"Don't count on it."

"Oh, I don't underrate you." He shifted the jittery dog from one arm to the other, and Jonathan noticed that it wore around its neck a ribbon of the same blue silk as Miles's suit. "It is you who insist on underrating me."

"Where's your boy?"

"Back in his room. Moping, I suspect. And looking forward to his next encounter with you."

"There better not be one. He's dog meat if I see him again on my side of the street."

Miles snuggled his nose into Faggot's fur and purred, "You mustn't take offense, little boy. Dr. Hemlock wasn't talking about you. He was using one of the little vulgarisms of his profession."

The dog whimpered and licked vigorously at Miles's nostrils.

"I hope you've reconsidered, Jonathan." The flat professionalism of Miles's tone contrasted sharply with the cooing purr he had used to the dog. Jonathan wondered how many men had been lulled into a lethal sense of security by Miles's feminine facade.

He stopped and turned to face Miles. "I don't think we have anything to talk about."

Miles adjusted his stance, putting the weight on one foot and pointing the toe of the other out in a relaxed variant of the fourth position in ballet, the better to show the line of his suit. "As a climber, Jonathan, your sense of brinksmanship is well developed. You're telling me now that you're willing to face an unknown target, rather than make your peace with me. All right. Allow me to raise the ante a little. Suppose I contact the target and identify you. That would put him in the shadow and you in the light. How would that feel? An interesting reversal of the normal pattern, isn't it?"

Jonathan had considered this uncomfortable possibility. "You don't have as good a bet as you think, Miles. Search is working on the identity of the man."

Mellough laughed richly. The sound startled Faggot. "That is lovely, Jonathan! You're willing to bet your life on the efficiency of CII? Does your barber perform operations on you?"

"How do I know you haven't already contacted the target?"

"And played away my last trump? Really, Jonathan!" He burrowed his nose into Faggot's fur and playfully nipped at his back.

Jonathan walked away toward the lodge.

Miles called after him. "You don't leave me much choice, Jonathan!" Then he nuzzled against Faggot's ear. "Your daddy doesn't have any choice, does he. He'll just have to tell on Dr. Hemlock." He looked after the retreating figure. "Or kill him."

Ben was grumpy and incommunicative throughout supper, but he manfully put away quantities of food and beer. Jonathan made no attempts at conversation, and often his attention strayed from the food and focused on an indeterminate point in space. At length he spoke without breaking his vacant stare. "Anything from your switchboard operator?"

Ben shook his head. "Neither of them has tried to call out, if that's what you mean. No telegrams. Nothing."

Jonathan nodded. "Good. Whatever you do, Ben, don't let them make contact with the outside."

"I'd sure give my front seat in hell to know what's going on around here."

Jonathan looked at him for a long moment, then asked, "Can I borrow your Land-Rover tomorrow?"

"Sure. Where you going?"

Jonathan ignored the question. "Do me a favor, will you? Have one of your people fill it up and put two extra jerry cans of gas and one of water in the back."

"This has something to do with this Mellough character?"

"Yes."

Ben was moodily silent for a time. "All right, Jon. Whatever you need."

"Thanks."

"You don't have to thank me for helping you put your ass in a sling."

"You know that shotgun we talked about yesterday? Will you load it and have it put in the Rover too?"

"Whatever you say." Ben's voice was grim.

Unable to sleep, Jonathan sat up in bed late into the night, working turgidly on the Lautrec article that had been the sponge of his free time for almost a month. George's scratching knock presented an excuse to abandon the arid labor. As usual, she was wearing jeans and a denim shirt, its collar turned up under her long black hair, the three top buttons undone, and her unbound breasts tugging the shirt up from the jeans in taut folds.

"How are you this evening, George?"

She sat on the edge of^ his bed and regarded him blandly with her large, dark eyes.

"Did you watch Ben and me make that climb today? Wasn't that something?" He paused, then responded for her. "Yes, that was something."

She slipped off her shoes then stood to unbutton and unzip her jeans with the brisk movements of a person with business to attend to.

"It looks as though I'll be leaving tomorrow or the day after. In some ways, George, I'll miss you."

With a clapper action of her bottom, she forced the jeans over her hips.

"No one can say that you've cluttered up our relationship with sticky sentiment or unnecessary chatter, and I appreciate that."

She stood for a second, the tails of her shirt brushing her olive thighs, then she began unbuttoning it, her placid eyes never leaving his.

"I have an idea, George. Why don't we give up this banal chatter and make love?" He barely had time to get his notes off the bed and turn off the light before she was tangled up amongst his limbs.

He lay on his stomach, his arms thrown limply across the bed, every muscle liquid with relaxation as George trickled her fingers from the small of his back to the nape of his neck. He hovered on the rim of sleep as long as he could, trying not to anticipate the eddies of thrill her fingernails churned up as they slid with barely perceptible contact around his waist, up his sides, and outward along his upper arms. By way of thanks, he hummed a couple of times with contentment, although he would rather not have put forth the effort.