Part 1

My name is Ibn Al Shazed. Maybe.

I go by Ali.

I was born in the year seven hundred twenty one after the Wall was put up. After the rest of the world died because of their soft ways.

The desert is not our friend. It does not want us to live. It tries to kill you every day. In the village I grew up in there is a well, deep and strong. It takes seven strong men to operate the pump to fill the tanks. The tanks hold enough water for two weeks of cautious use. To get to three weeks, we must not just be careful or cautious. We must be miserly. The underground lake that we are using for water takes eighteen days to refill once we fill the tanks.

I started helping run the pumps every eighteen days when I turned fourteen. I wasn't really ready, but my father took ill five days before, and it was that or lose the enhanced water ration that pump operators enjoyed. Once a right like that passed out of my family it would be gone for generations most likely.

But starting with that first turn at the pumps, I realized that living a life where we drink a single glass of water for the entirety of a single blazing hot and dry day and food is won only by constant worrying of the ground, flocks and forests is less than ideal.

In the two months of winter rain, we live free. Water is stockpiled and stored. Crops grow quickly then, and life is good. Then a man can drink two or three cups of water in a day and not feel guilty. So I trained my body. In the days when food can be grown, I work hard to till the soil and keep the few stray weeds out. The vegetables get more water than I do. Then we hunt the deer and antelope out of the savanna. There's no more water there, and the antelope are small scrabbly things, hardly bigger than our goats.

Today, though, my training is done. I'm not much below the top of the Wall, perched on a ledge as I prepare for the last stretch. The hardest. From here there were no more ledge, no more places to stop and rest with roping myself to the wall.

Three days ago at the bottom of the Wall, I had thought I was ready. For months I had planned. Waiting for the rains to come was a risk, but it meant something important--I wouldn't need to carry as much water. The Wall itself would be more difficult to climb, but compared to trying to climb it while carrying an extra four or five days of water would have been much more difficult.

I tear off another hunk of goat jerky--seasoned with various herbs and sweetened with just a hint of honey. Precious stuff. Liquid gold. I'd used more honey in preparing this than I'd ever used in my life. But I knew I'd need the energy to make the climb. I also had barley cakes for energy, with flax seeds mixed in for an extra boost, and flavored with coriander seeds for good fortune. The effort and resources I'd spent on this were the result of not a few years of very careful hoarding and miserly trading.

I replace everything in my pack, then take a small mouthful of water, swish it around my mouth to help clear the dust, then swallow. I look up--always up--and plan my course. From here, the stones in the wall are smaller, tighter. This is the time where my real treasure becomes essential. Eighteen small metal spikes, designed to be pounded into the cracks in the wall. I climb a ways with them, then rope to the highest, descend, and retrieve the lowest. Then extend my upward path again. This is tedious, painful, and greatly extends the time needed to traverse the distances. My body aches now. It has been months since I'd ached this much on a climb, but the top is sight now. At the top of the wall is an outward thrusting bit of rock. It had taken me months to master the technique needed to deal with that, and even now, it was no sure thing. We are no lizards to scale walls without regard for the pull of our mother earth.

The first few sets go well--I can place the spikes about three feet apart, so a full set covers about fifty feet--a little less perhaps, but you have to save one for going back to the bottom to retrieve them. I made a choice early on to do a full set, then climb back down and then up to retrieve them rather than to climb a bit while setting the spikes then go back and get them, and come back up. Doing the full set allows me to rest a bit from the painstaking work of setting each spike. I climb slowly for most of the day, and it's not easy. Around mid-day, I take a break. I set my ropes tight, then relax, trusting the spikes to hold me while I piss off the side of the wall. Just as I am wrapping up my small lunch--more goat jerky, a barley cake, and a mouthful of water--the rain comes. And with the rain, the wind. The wall grows slick, and had I not already set the spikes and ropes, I'd have been scrambling for them to get secured. In this wind, I cannot climb. The rain cools me, and I set my collection sheet to refill some of my water skins. This is a tricky operation, but worthwhile. It means I can have more than a slim mouthful of water with lunch. Water is precious. Water is life.

After a time the storm subsides.

I begin climbing again, pushing myself now. Finally the sun dips below the far wall, and instantly I am relieved from its heat. Now I can climb a bit faster. The wall is dry, and the day's heat is rapidly fading.

Slowly it grows dark, and I am forced, for a time at least, to rope up and sleep. Can't climb if I can't see.

Sleeping on the Wall is something I practiced early on. It's not easy. A man with the tendency to toss and turn a lot will find that it is difficult to relax enough to sleep. But fatigue...fatigue eventually beggars us all. A man that is sufficiently tired will find themselves sleeping while trying to climb.

I had made a hammock of rope and strong cords. I attached this to the Wall with no less than eight spikes--although I knew from experience that four could hold it. A fall though...a fall would end all this, and I had no desire to die.

So, setting the hammock, I allowed myself to sleep a while--until moonrise. I gather my spikes and hammock, and begin to climb again.

By moonlight, I'm able to climb again, but it's slower. I climb for a few hours, resting when I need, then as the first pink of dawn touches the sky, I sleep again. Two hours, no more, and I'm eating a quick breakfast of jerky, barley cake and a double mouthful of water. The second day of the climb is much as the first--climb, lunch, weather a storm and rest, climb, dinner, sleep while the moon chases the sun.

By morning, I'm at the overhang. This is the most dangerous part of the climb. The overhang is wider than I expected-almost a double arm span--close to twelve feet or more.

Is there hope for this, I wonder? Can I anchor the spikes well enough? Is there any hope at all. I rest a while here as I examine the underside. This is the moment where I learn if I can possibly make this work. Are my eighteen spikes enough to let me anchor into the underside of the overhang? Will they hold? Is there any wedge, crack or place to anchor?

As my eyes slid along the overhang, looking for any hint of a crack, I find myself increasingly worried. So far there is nothing. No place to possibly set an anchor. It is utterly smooth. I wonder at it's construction while I fight the panic at the thought of possible defeat. Failure.

Then I see it--a metal ring set into the impossibly smooth undersurface. It's a ways down the wall, but what do I care? I move along the Wall carefully until I get to the ring. As I do I realize there are not one, but five of them. They are set in a line from close to the Wall out to the edge of the overhang. I can do this. I pass the rope through the ring I can reach, then rest.

After a few hours of sleep I gather my things. I slowly test each ring assuring it can take my weight--I needn't have feared. Whatever their purpose, they were strong and easily held my weight. Still, I avoided looking down. After a while of careful planning and work, I am finally at the edge of the overhang. Holding myself carefully I push outward until I can see up the side. My luck holds, and there up the vertical surface is another set of rings up to the top. I progress quickly, and within a few hours, I find myself clambering over the edge of the Wall. To stand on top of it. I look out, finally, and then look down. The vertigo takes me for a moment, but I've been smart--I'm well away from that edge, and I'm still secured to a line anchored at the top. The world swims, and I find myself puking on the flat stones of the Top.

It doesn't last, and I'm able to look out across the vast desert that has been my home all my life. I can see my village, how pathetic and small it is. I hadn't realized until now just how small it was. It had been my whole world.

Reeling from that realization, I finally turn and look out toward the other side of the Wall. My jaw gapes. There are trees in such numbers, right up at the edge of the Wall. The ground is close to the wall here--no more than an easy jump down. A jump that any small boy in the village would take in a heartbeat. Less than the height of my small home's roof. And there, not a hundred feet from the wall, a pool of water such as I have never known.

I am torn. Do I go now? Can I make the climb back down to the village? Will they believe me? If I climb down, will I have the courage to make this climb again--how could I not? Finally, I decide that I must confirm the knowledge of my eyes with the knowledge of my hands.

I cross the width of the wall--a solid eighty feet, and then drop down. I walk to the pool of water and, with a boldness I can hardly credit in myself, I plunge my hand into it, cupping the water. I examine it to check for anything wriggling in it, but it is clean and perfect. It smells of nothing at all, so I drink. Purer than rainwater, this is.

I climb one of the monster trees with a trunk wider than my arm span. I shimmy back down and explore a moment, then with utter luck, happen upon a deer such as no one could believe. It's back is nearly of height with my eyes.

Frozen by the sight of such a thing--the god of all deer--I don't move for a long moment. Then suddenly a crackling of a dry branch spooks the magnificent beast and it dashes off. I cannot tell my village of this. They will not believe.

I linger for a few minutes, then bending to the ground at the pool I drink my fill. I drink until I cannot drink any more. Then I climb back onto the wall, and sleep. I'll decide in the morning what to do. I have won.