Fraq went first, then swooped back into the wind shadow of the main ridge. Chen just ascended into the full force of the rising wind. She kept at it and tried to skate along the ridgeline. She rose another few hundred meters. Rachel tracked the wavering image. Then a gust caught Chen and she tumbled. It happened fast and Rachel didn’t have time to even gasp.

Time barely moved. Each ticking second seemed like a bubble that bulged—swelled—popped. Then it was time for the next second to start.

Chen fought against the tipping and got a wrong angle to the wind.

She went down and hit the scree beneath a snow ridge. Rolled.

Fell off a bluff.

When the Lifter hit the bottom, it broke apart.

Dead silence.

7.

The chopper set them down on a ledge a few hundred meters away and below. Lifter parts were strewn that far down.

It was a deep, shady cleft in the mountain with rock surrounds on three sides. The wind raked Rachel with cold.

She started up the slope but she didn’t have much strength here even with the oxy. The cold seeped into her and her legs thumped. Her feet skidded off the ice-glazed rock. She fell hard, got up, sucked in cold thin air, went on. By the time she reached Chen, her fingers were wooden, useless things. But Chen was already dead.

Chen’s body had already started to stiffen in the cold when Fraq landed nearby a while later. The Lifter roared hard to land.

He came over in that curious waddle of his and said something in that scraping voice. The translator, who’d scrambled up the slope after Rachel, came hurrying up and said, “He got to the summit. How is—”

“Tell him we’ve paid again,” Rachel said, flat and stony. “Tell him we want more. Damn more.”

It was two weeks before feeling returned to her fingertips.

She and the others had had to rush off the mountainside, and the memories were all jumbled now. The wind had worsened fast and snow started, blowing in horizontally, and they’d had to get out with just the body.

She answered a summons from the Prefect Stiles and was surprised to find Fraq and the translator there as well.

The Prefect looked troubled as Rachel entered. His normally blank face showed little creases around the eyes and his hands twitched on his desktop. Rachel nodded to the humans and went through the ritual greetings with Fraq. When that was done a full five minutes later, Natal said, “I have explained to him that no Librarian wishes to accompany him in a Marianas Trench descent.”

Rachel nodded. “Not surprised.”

The translator nodded. “Indeed, the need has diminished.” One of Fraq’s expressions was to term as needs what humans would call desires. “Especially since… the accident.”

In tense situations, Fraq always used the translator. He did not want to give away his mood while struggling with Anglish.

Rachel bit her lip and thought that folly was not usually just called accident, but she let it pass. Nuance was subtle in interspecies communication, so they seldom attempted it.