High Place — Part Three
By Graham J. Darling
“To escape into godhood, no?” said Denman. “To wake to one’s true nature, and so become perfect? The Sacred Pole may have stood, heh, for one way to do that. We do know its erection, heh, was in honour of Asherah—Mrs Jehovah, the Queen of Heaven—she who makes gods. Like any woman can of a man, if only for a moment. And the local Arabs still called that pillared prominence Zibb ‘Atuf, the Member of Love…”
This with a waggling of eyebrows and sidewise leer at Krushniski, who promptly zipped up her anorak, put up her hood, took up her charts, and stood. “Must feenish notes. Goot night… chentlemen.” Head held high, she stalked out of the communal mess tent towards her own bivouac farther along the roiling tarn, through the wind and wet.
We’d felt bad enough since Schlumpf announced from his satphone, hours ago, that the storm wouldn’t clear before our visas ran out—with grim outcome, in this politically tense region—so our assault on the summit was off. Now we discovered new depths of gloom.
D’Arcy hunched over his sewing. Takahashi’s beads clicked.
“Already you’re perfect, Denman,” I said. “A god of schmucks.”
He only laughed and took another bite of his biltong.
It was Latimer, roused from his mope, who winced. “Aw, crap, for all my whinin’ whyin’, I didn’t mean her—we all know she’s the only one of us with a real reason to be here. No cribbage for that climber: all day long, she cruises back an’ forth along these cliffs, chippin’ samples for that study of hers—”
“Up and down, too,” put in D’Arcy. “A wicked awesome wallerina!”
“An’ haven’t you heard her, on the way, read aloud these ranges like an open book, an’ tell us their story of a billion years? That beats your few thousand cold, Denman.”
“All that time, they were alone,” muttered Denman, loosening his scarf, leaning away from the light. “And we are alone. Only the union is real. In the High Place.”
“What I’m sayin’ is, she knows ’em up an’ down, inside an’ out—she belongs here. So do the Dani tribals we passed on the way, who live with ’em every day. But us silly baggers?” Latimer shook his heavy head. “Checkin’ off the highest point on each of the continents, one by one. Seven damn’ things to see before we die. Well, this is the last on my list.” Last, indeed—I had smelled it on his fishy breath, seen it in his yellow eyes, read it on his prescription labels. “Levine, you were with me on the slopes of Aconcagua.”
I nodded. “Only this and Kilimanjaro left, for me.”
“So why do it, man? Why climb a mountain?” The tent shook in a fresh squall; hail joined the rain.
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Graham J. Darling of Outer Ottawa Canada designs molecules such as the universe has never seen and demonstrates medieval science and technology to school kids and passers-by. His singular hybrids of disruptive Science Fiction, mythopoeic Fantasy and unearthly Horror have escaped through Sword & Mythos (eds. Silvia Moreno-Garcia & Paula R. Stiles), After Dinner Conversation and Strange Tales of Space and Time (ed. Stephen Rhoades); snarfed second prize in the annual National Fantasy Fan Federation (N3F) Short Story Contest; and will soon hatch in Sui Generis (UK)——residents are advised to lock their doors and windows, then tune in for survival tips to https://fiction.grahamjdarling.com/
Copyright © 2026 Graham J. Darling