Free The Last Notebook of Leonardo by B.B. Wurge Page B

quite a long distance. Noma seemed to have an easy trail worked out; she stepped from one rock to the next without a lot of strain. Then the serious part of the cliff rose up out of the rubble, and that’s where we had to stop.
    Probably that cliff had been straight up and down once, a thousand years ago, but a giant wedge of the front surface had fallen off. That must have been where all the rubble came from. The cliff face was slanted the wrong way. It didn’t slant back away from us; it slanted out over our heads. If you climbed it, you would be hanging out over empty space most of the time. Maybe if you had sticky pads on your feet and hands you could climb it, but even then I wouldn’t have wanted to try, because the rock all along the cliff looked brittle and full of shards that might break off as you grabbed them.
    â€œThere it is,” Noma said cheerfully, pointing up. “There’s the cave.” About three hundred feet up the cliff the sunlight poured into a gaping hole. From underneath we could see a bit of the roof of the cave, but that was all. It looked like a good-sized opening.
    â€œRight,” Dad said, looking up and around and inspecting the cliff closely. I couldn’t see how he would succeed, but he didn’t look discouraged. He
scratched at his head and then limbered up his fingers and toes, and then wound the rope around his waist so that he could lower it down to us once he got to the cave. I mean, if he got to the cave. For the first time, I began to worry about him.
    â€œRight,” he said again. “ This should be easy. Should take a minute. Three minutes, tops. I tell you. Look at it. I can go from here to that spot with the crack there, and then to that other spot with the twisty plant growing out of it, and then to. . . . Well, I’ll figure it out once I get to that spot. Here goes.”
    He crouched on all fours and then, as if he had springs coiled up in his arms and legs, Boing, he leaped into the air about fifteen feet. I had never seen him do that before. It was incredible. He was so heavy that I didn’t think he could leap very high. But he didn’t look heavy now. He looked as light and agile as a spider. He turned over in mid air and landed splayed out against the rock face, clutching on by his hands and feet. Then he paused for a moment, looking around for the next hold.
    â€œDad!” I said. “That ’s amazing! How did—”
    â€œJem,” he said, “don’t talk. I need to think.”
    I closed my mouth. Noma and I sat on some comfortable smooth rocks that were lying nearby. I think maybe Noma had put them there a long time ago as seats. It was a nice place to sit in the morning, the
sunlight on our faces, the rocks and the snow sparkling around us, but I couldn’t enjoy it while Dad was clinging above us and might fall any second.
    He seemed frozen to the spot, only his head moving, swiveling around like a giant bug searching for prey. Then one hand let go and moved two inches to a new spot. That was all. Then he was still again for about five minutes. I thought he had given up and was about to jump back down. I thought he had finally realized how impossible the cliff was. But suddenly his arms and legs went into motion, and he zipped up the cliff about another ten feet. He seemed to know exactly where to put his hands and feet. I suppose he had worked out the whole sequence in his head. Then he stopped again for another three or four minutes.
    I could see that having four hands was useful, but I could also see that he was climbing mostly with his brain. After every little bit that he climbed, he would pause and think very carefully for minutes. Sometimes, after a pause he would climb back down to a previous point, and try again in a different direction. Sometimes it seemed like he was climbing sideways more that up. A few times, after five or ten minutes all he did was move one hand. At other times he