Luca Signorelli (SignorelliL@alma.it)
--- RED TOWER, BLACK TOWER, GREY SLABS ---

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PART 2 of 4
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-- Outer space --
Even in the current situation - after four days of difficult climbing,
surrounded by miles and miles of wasteland, near the upper limit of
troposphere, alone as few people could ever be on our planet, their
heads rattling with traces of cerebral oedema, Ryouga couldn't avoid
noticing how Ukyou's features seemed more and more incorporeal, part
of the ice and rocks, the malevolent presence of the suspended
glaciers looming of the west ridge making a fit background for her
uneasy, statuary presence. He remembered the first afternoon spent at
their small base camp in the Savoia basin, well content to find, as
foretold, that no expedition was already in the area for the annual
combined assault to the flanks of world's second highest mountain.
Ukyou sunbathed on an platform made with tent covers and rucksacks,
seemingly careless of the dangerous effects that UVA have at 17000
feet. Ryouga had spent hours following with his eyes the contour of
Ukyou's naked body against the sweet, snowy waves of the glacier
surface, the blinding white contrasting with the black gashes of
crevasses. The silence, broken only by the rumble of the heat-induced
avalanches far over the American Towers, slowly became palpable, part
of the landscape as the glacier, the chrome coloured sky and Ukyou.
Before them towered the rectilinear shape of K2 West Face, enclosed
between the fantastic staircase of the ridge and the SW spur. The wall
itself seemed to recede inside the mountain - its most striking
feature, the so called Shield, overhung near the top. Its multiple
gneiss strata limited to the right a curvilinear ice couloir, shaped
as a giant scimitar slash. Seen from their position, the whole
composition reminded Ryouga the funereal mask of a dead god, like
those he had seen in many derelict Chinese villages on his way to
Jusenkyoo's springs, long time before, in what now seemed another
life.

-- The citadel --
The climb itself started few days later. They had attacked at midnight
the lower 45� tilted icefield, as aggressively as altitude (and
energy) allowed. Ukyou, the ice specialist, lead the first part in few
hours under the residual light of the moon. When the sun finally rose,
they had already entered the rock bands above. The climbing had turned
into a brutal affair, requiring all their stamina and skill. They were
alternatively leading every pitch, even if Ryouga's self-esteem could
have, in a different situation, exacted a stable leader role on rock.
They had climbed slowly but regularly, baked from the intolerable heat
reflected by the Savoia basin cauldron. When the evening came, they
had ascended nearly 2000 feet over the wall base, and had finally
reached a diagonal ramp that could have, according to Ukyou's
calculations made over an old Polish telephoto, got them to the left
of the overhanging area, near the border of the Shield.
Ryouga could not make any plan out of this. He was, already,
irremediably lost. He only knew that there was something up, something
down, rock before them and an increasing chasm behind their backs. He
didn't care - Ukyou was his guide, and he ever relished on his
sensation to be completely out of touch with their tridimensional
position in space. He used to think of himself as an impaired,
defective piece of the human race's gene pool, but Ukyou had taught
him that you can't find nothing of value if you don't lose yourself.
The important things is to learn how to find your way back.

-- Topography --
"If you look at Karakoram on a conveniently scaled map" said Cologne
during one of the preparatory meetings held on Ucchan's back "you'll
see that its major sub-ranges seem to run parallel, but they tend to
converge toward the Upper Baltoro basin." She inhaled another puff
from her pipe. "Usually, it is the Pamir that is referred to as the
Roof Of The World, because from its central position it seems to be
the originating point of the Greater Ranges of the Earth. However, any
practitioner of serious map reading - an overlooked but interesting
art - will immediately observe how it is Northern Karakoram that has
the honour to be the Mother Of All Mountain Ranges. It is the greatest
ice expanse of the world outside the Poles - and its average altitude
is higher than Himalayas. Not only that - it's located far north than
the Abode Of The Snow, so its climate is arid and cold."
"Have you been there, great-great-mother?" asked Shampoo, who was
following Cologne's description with wide-opened eyes.
"I've been learning and teaching in the Hunza's area for some time,
where people are said to be healthy and strong even at a venerable age
, but I've more or less explored much of the whole range. The peoples
inhabiting these places are rugged as their land - and they know many
forgotten things. There, I've made many friends and some enemies, not
all of the human variety. An interesting place for sure."

-- The Old Ghoul --
She had been, alternatively, the foreigner ensnaring Ranma in his
plots, the fierce warrior training Ryouga over the mountains, the old
woman eternally smoking a pipe loaded with God-knows-what and managing
the Nekohanten with ruthless ability - or the learned explorer of
things old and mysterious. Through all his life, Ryouga had always
been attracted by Cologne's vague past, by her rigorously locked
armoires and closets - that Shampoo assured him to be full of nameless
wonders - by her books written in many languages and many alphabets
(that she seemed to know perfectly), by the confidence that she put on
everything she did. The failure to marry Shampoo, thus providing new
and strong blood to her family, was generally regarded as her greatest
defeat - but once Akane and Ranma had wed and Shampoo clearly stated
she wasn't going back  to Jusenkyoo (Mousse hadn't agreed, and had
returned to China in a bodycast), she had lost interest in the matter,
and turned her attention to Ukyou. Her reliance seemed to come from
the perception she had the entire eternity to reach her goals.

-- Decline and fall --
Ryouga suspected that much of Shampoo's new found friendship for Ukyou
had to do with her sense of guilt - after all, it was Shampoo who had
organised the failed bomb-plot that had disrupted Ranma's first
wedding, and Ukyou had been the only one to pay for the consequences.
Cologne had manoeuvred much to insure that authorities wouldn't
proceed against Shampoo, but Ucchan didn't had her connections. She
had seen her license revoked, and had been charged for attempted
manslaughter. Being underage, she would have probably got out with a


reprimand, but Ranma had insisted for a full scale legal action
against his ex childhood friend. Ryouga had tried in vain to turn
Ranma to a more lenient attitude. "I'm sorry, Ryouga - Ukyou could
have killed Akane. She'll not get away with it." The evidence that the
bomb probably wouldn't have killed anyone, the circumstances, even an
appeal for indulgence by Kasumi, nothing had moved Ranma (and Akane)
to forgive and forget. Through he could understand some of Ranma's
motivations, Ryouga had been infuriated. "One year ago they weren't
even admitting they loved each other and now that blockhead plays the
poor man's Valentino!" he had later told Shampoo. Ukyou had ended up
under probation for three years, but only the Saotomes final departure
from Japan had effectively ended her tribulations. She had got her
license back and opened, with Cologne's help, another restaurant.
Ryouga had found more and more difficult the idea to deal with Ranma
after all that, and he had politely turned down a free trip to the
States for their second child birth. Not only because of Ukyou - he
had never really come to terms with Akane's definitive loss. Ryouga
had now lost most of his old friends.

-- The only one remaining was the unlikeliest --
Kuno Tatewaki's calamity had been second only to Ukyo's: in the time
span of a morning he had found himself to be Furinkan's greatest
source of hilarity. The discovery that Ranma Saotome and the pig
tailed girl were the same person had been the last straw. The image of
himself - handsome, rich, heir of an ancient family, basically perfect
- had cracked to a myriad of opaque fragments. For one year he had
refused to leave Kuno's Castle. Word was that he had tried to kill
himself. He could have - only Sasuke's lasting devotion had prevented
the ex-Blue Thunder from putting an end to his anguish. Two years
later, his sister Kodachi married an American tycoon, and went to live
in a closely guarded community for rich people into New Age nonsense
("Basically it was Wired meets Castaneda meets Mein Kampf every
morning before breakfast - best thing for her, really"). Shortly
afterward, Kuno had entered college. He was a deeply changed man.
While attending University, he and Ryouga had established an atypical,
but still mutually beneficial relationship. Kuno needed someone to
help him gather the scattered bits of his life. Ryouga needed someone
to talk to - apart from Ukyou - and he had got unlimited access to
Tatewaki's library. It had been like opening an Easter Egg and
discovering that the present is actually far better that first
presumed. Most of the books were poetry classics: Ryouga, now timidly
turning his focus toward a writing career, had found some of the
lyrics strangely fitting his present state of mind. The two had spent
entire days discussing Ryouga's voyage memories and arguing over the
correct use of a word. Kuno's seriousness had first amused, the
puzzled Ryouga. "I'll never decide if this guy is a genius or a
psychiatric casualty", he had once remarked. Ukyou, faithful to her
roots, still didn't like the ex kendo's promise. "He's an upperclass
bastard - those people acts as if Tokugawa Hayeasu were still alive."
But when Kuno, after taking his PhD, had got a job for the UN and
left, she couldn't avoid noticing how Ryouga had suddenly become much
more uneasy than usual. Somewhere in him hung in balance - couldn't be
much longer before he had to make a choice.

-- The wait --
In the cramped darkness of their fourth night on the wall, lighted by
the small, modified stove, they had only spoken intermittently. Ryouga
felt tired - his muscles were stinging, he had a vague headache and
his throat was sore. While drinking the brew prepared by Ukyou he
checklisted all the medical preparation and pills he was supposed to
take before sleeping - Diamox to increase disposal of body fluid,
Decadron to prevent cerebral oedema, Roincol to stimulate circulation,
Zymox for his throat. He decided against a tempting dose of Valium -
its depressing effect on breathing centres was too risky for the
current situation. He put his aching head outside the tent, resting
over a flat rock. It was already completely dark, the mountain's
outline on the opposite side of the basin could only be vaguely
guessed. He wasn't familiar with stars patterns, but he could identify
Venus, shining brighter as anytime in the last ten years. Temperature
was dropping rapidly - he could no longer hear the noise of avalanches
on the lower slopes of the mountain. The stillness was absolute. He
vaguely outlined the increasing outward profile of the buttress over
its head, tomorrow's  target high above their current location: a
small rocky pulpit on the beginning of the ascending ramp. He took a
deep breath.

-- The staircase --
The last few days had been immensely difficult, and their attempts to
disentangle from the West Face upright labyrinth had drained all their
energies. The lower, slanting ramp had ended up well left of the
Shield's right margin, bordering the avalanche-stricken couloir, but
still right of the immense gneiss buttress, cleaved by a vertical and
inaccessible incision into the rotten rock. They were now on another
pulpit: above them the wall curved on a overhanging ceiling. On the
left, the rock was uniformly vertical, except for a sequence of vague
steps. So they had to attack the overhangs directly. It had taken them
three days of technical, exhausting  big wall climbing, that Ryouga
had constantly led, leaving to Ukyou only the task to find the correct
direction. The overhangs were a rotten, unstable inverted staircase,
held together only by the intense freeze - the afternoon heat had
triggered more than once several rockfalls. Most of their equipment
had gone there, including two of their invaluable climbing ropes. Once
there, no return was possible anymore - unless they reached the top or
some escape to the NW ridge was possible In any case, their last tie
with the horizontal ground had been severed.

-- Inside, Ukyou wrote in her diary --
"As we're getting into the heart of the wall, and we're just burning
more and more bridges behind us, I wonder how Ryouga's coping with the
disorientation and pressures of this condition. I've observed him
during our trip up to the Base Camp - he looked like a kid choosing a
new toy on some hyperstore's bench. Our knowledge of Ryouga's past is
so limited - he has spent most of his teens hiking through Japan from
corner to corner - probably the most crucial landscape on Earth. He's
seen a lot, more than anyone else of his age - he's more familiar than
me with these geological marvels. I was observing him as he climbed
the third class ground bringing up to the entrance of the ramp. He was
putting all his attention on the few feet of rock before him. As
always, when he's doing something important, his concentration seemed
sourceless, entirely disembodied."
She turned the page, then continued:
"For all the imageries and memories, Ryouga must start to experience
an intense claustrophobia - coming here could have been a way to
relieve his internal pressure, to put some order into his confused
inner world. Ryouga's always been so intense, taking everything so
seriously. I still remember the first time we met - and that plan to
have him engaged to Mrs. Perfection and Ranma posing as an Overtly
Annoying Female to prevent Ryouga  from accomplishing anything. It's
always a source of wonder for me that their relation didn't end in a
bloodbath - must be something with Ranma's luck."
"Discussing his direction's sense impairment with Obaba, I've often
suggested that it has to do with some form of gene alteration. But she
says that Ryouga loses his sense of space (and time) because,
differently from us, he's able to forget himself completely. Ten years
ago, his obsession, the object of his close attention was Akane; now
something else that even he doesn't know. Maybe this mountain, maybe
all the mountains he's seen through his life, or the tall structures
clawing the sky from Tokyo's centre... sometimes I wonder if it was
right for him to follow me into this trip."

-- Spindrift --
The following day, the sun was a radiant cartwheel. The ramp narrowed
in a oblique chimney, few feet deep. While climbing simultaneously,
they tried to follow the bottom of the slanting crack, more to avoid
the unendurable heat reflected by the glacier, rather than for any
tactical consideration. 
As the temperature soared, the avalanches put themselves in motion
once again. As soon as the sun touched the upper tip of the West Wall,
their noise neared more and more. Their current position was
relatively safe, but the mere reverberation of thousands of tons of
ice and rock racing down the sinuous Scimitar Slash was terrifying
enough. Later, a bigger chute had literally resonated on the entire
basin. A vertical gneiss pillar screened the couloir at their right -
but they had seen, seconds after the concussion, white spirals of snow
appearing behind the pillar, racing down at terminal speed toward the
glacier. They were implausibly attractive. When the shockwave wind
came, only a pale leftover of the detonation that should have been
felt inside the channel, Ukyou had tried in vain to capture some of
the frozen spindrift floating around her head

-- The tightening arcs --
Ryouga looked down. The exposure was more terrifying than anywhere he
could remember: the falling rock and ice debris no longer hit the
lower rock steps. On any California big wall climb, you can spend days
with your feet dangling on mid air - but the surrounding panorama
seems to have been designed by a committee to reassure the climber
that he's still on our planet. Here, they were truly getting lessons
in vertigo - right on the shores of this petrified vertical landscape.
They stopped for a while, enjoying their progressive separation from
the valley floor. As usual on these long climbs, most of the time they
were silent - their heads full of the noise made by their own
heartbeat. The sounds could have been catalogued for their intensity
and variety - the distant thunder of avalanches, the unnerving
staccato of rock chute, the grim roar of the high winds against the
unreachable rock spires of the West Ridge, now plunging toward the
abyss in a near vertical rampart arc at their right. And silence, a
sound itself - Ryouga had never heard a silence like this. For him, it
was a signal that this place had been forsaken in a sense more true
than any other in the Earth.

-- The nightfall --
For the whole day, they had been troubled by an increasing fatigue and
dire warnings of imminent altitude problems. Ryouga's headache was
unrelenting, and Ukyou's breath had an ominous, gurgling sound. As the
night came, they decided that another bivouac, now well above the 8000
metres mark, would have killed them. So they got rid of most of the
heavy gear, and pushed forward after a couple of hours of
uncomfortable rest. The summit was still invisible, but they were now
on a prevalently icy terrain, so their speed had sensibly increased.
The first few hours they climbed into a dark but clear night,
illuminated only very late by the raising moon. But later, abruptly,
the sky became translucent and vibrating - a sure sign of weather
change. The gale erupted soon afterwards, this time arriving from the
north. In a matter of minutes, visibility was reduced to few meters.
Ryouga unroped quickly - there was no use of it in the current
situation. He had cut for the first time in five days this tenuous
link with Ukyou - the sense of isolation for an instant overwhelmed
him.
Ryouga pushed hard to keep pace with Ukyou, who was literally racing
toward the summit. He checked the altimeter again - 2:00 AM, 8450
metres. Darkness was absolute; the entire universe was limited to a
few inches of snow and rock illuminated by his frontal lamp. "As long
as I'm concentrating, I'm sure I'll not lose myself - just concentrate
and follow Ukyo's light." Ryouga felt his nerves stirring, his
determination focusing toward an point invisible in the darkness
above.

-- Mars --
Ryouga was now desperately breathless. He tried to keep a steady
rhythm but every ten steps he had to stop to swallow big bites of thin
atmosphere. Around his minuscule world of light, and the grey and
black outline of Ukyou ten steps forward, roared a netherworld of air
masses gunned at 100 miles/hour against the mountain walls - the
frightening voice of God, as Ryouga considered while, once again, he
checked his distance from Ukyou and the unknown abyss below. "We must
have three kilometres of emptiness under our feet - if the wind
changes direction, they'll not even find small bits of us." Forward
and upward, cutting their way up the icy summit, fifty meters of
vertical gain per hour, their march continued.
Ryouga was puzzled, because he could see, with the corner of his eyes,
a girl climbing on his right. Her traits were confused, but the face
was familiar. She seemed to enjoy the situation, but Ryouga knew that
she was alert and checking his progresses. Once, when he tried to
bypass a small rocky boulder on the left, she intervened. "You should
try on the right, dear Ryouga, on the left is dangerous." Ryouga
obeyed promptly - the girl was obviously familiar with the place.
"Hey, what's a cute girl like you doing here?" he thought.
The girl giggled, or at least, that's what Ryouga presumed. I must
remember to be polite: once on the summit, I shall introduce this girl
to Ukyou - strange that she's never told me we were three up this
damned mountain. But when will we arrive? I mean, it's been days since
we left our last bivouac, and I know that once up, there's something
very important I should do, but I don't remember what... I should ask
Ukyou, but she's always so busy with the restaurant... if only we
could stop for a minute and have some rest, maybe I could remember. If
only...
"RYOUGA! RYOUGA! IT'S HERE! WE'RE ON THE SUMMIT!"

-- See now, Ursa Major --
It was true. The ice slope subsided, and there it was, a long and
narrow snowy dome, like the top corner of a cathedral's roof. Ryouga
couldn't think of nothing: he felt an inexplicable sense of relief.
They were there - this was the only significant place of the world,
now, and an endless knot had been quietly extricated. He sat down,
unable to speak, searching for words and thoughts that had, suddenly,
slipped away. Around, everything was black and impenetrable. Just my
luck, Ryouga thought, I'm up here and I don't even have a view. Well,
who cares - we don't have to climb anymore. We can go home, now...
Then, the sky opened.

-- Worn codes and signs unknown --
Like a whale, the mountain top emerged from sea of cloud and for an
instant Ukyou and Ryouga were as two stranded surfers riding it,
pushed on by the force of the high winds. The light had changed - dawn
was not far away, and the entire eastern horizon, that they were now
seeing for the first time, seemed on fire. Abruptly, the sea of clouds
parted, and the entire space around them was freed. The triple summit
of Broad Peak, whose size Ryouga had found so oppressive while walking
up from Concordia, was nearly seven hundred meters below them - and
beyond stood the long theory of the Gasherbrums and the placid profile
of Baltoro Kangri. They were in the top of a vertiginous space,
surrounded everywhere by a multitude of mountains, white on the
southern side and black toward China, as prostrated worshippers before
an unimaginable deity. Ryouga could perceive, for the first time in
his life, the curvature of the horizon. He looked up to the canopy of
stars, and raised his fist in triumph. But when he looked down again,
for one instant glimpsed, hundred of miles away in the inhuman morning
light, the solitary mass of Nanga Parbat, the Naked Mountain, Earth's
highest wall around the bend of the river Indus.
He sat down, numb and suddenly tired. The girl had disappeared, but he
tried again to remember why they were there, and what was the
important thing he had to tell to Ukyou. For the first time since they
had reached the summit, Ryouga remembered he wasn't alone. He turned
his eyes to Ucchan.
She was sitting upright with her legs stretched out over the two sides
of the summit, calmly singing to the stars.

-- Tour Rouge, Tour Noire, Grey Slabs --
Her face seemed to be millions of years old, but all the grievous
years had vanished from her self-immersed eyes, and she was singing in
an unknown language, coolly measuring the invisible orbits of stars
with her chant. Ryouga didn't understand the words, but, in that
instant, he knew that Ukyou had finally made peace with her own
obsession. He sat nearby. The winds noise abated, and they stood
together in silence on the summit, hand in hand, waiting for the
sunrise to come over the forgotten mountains of northern Karakoram.

-- Later, Ryouga wrote in his diary: --
"Aurora's rising
showing up its multi-lights
I watch it coming
A fearsome growing
beheading my illusions,
empress of visions
The veil of Maia
has been torn before my eyes
Aurora's rising"
 
The silence lasted only few minutes. The clouds had gathered again,
and were upsurging at fearsome speed, like a tidal wave. In seconds,
the summit was engulfed. Ukoyu slowly rose, and put back her helmet,
the glasses and the hood of her altitude jacket. She turned to Ryouga.
"Let's go down. Now."

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END OF PART 2 - CONTINUE
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