A Fire in Their Eyes #166

The lift lurched into motion like any office building elevator, but Crow felt the climb more in his stomach. Nerves. He told himself. The corridors through the window quickly gave way to the concrete interior of the gigantic shaft that made up the interior of the building. The rough and unfinished surface reminded Crow of the pebbled tongue of a lizard. "We're sliding down the gullet, except really we're sliding up it."

"Profound." Rebecca said. "We're about to become orbital vomit. You really have a way of alleviating a girl's acrophobia."

"What do spiders have to do with this?" Crow asked.

"Fear of heights numb-wit." Rebecca said.

"Spiders are afraid of heights?"

Rebecca snorted and tried to find a magazine to read.

"Okay." Crow said. "I got it, you're afraid of heights. Why?"

"Always have been." Rebecca said. "I get vertigo just looking at that Rockefeller Center photo."

"They say that every phobia has a basis in experience." Crow said. "That most people say they can't remember a basis for their phobia, but that's just because they repress the memory."

Broad glass sheets made the ceiling of the compartment translucent, and far above Crow could see a growing pinprick of light that he realized must be the end of the shaft. It grew quickly from a bright point into a dull patch of overcast sky, huge metal doors mounted to the sides of the opening. Crow for the first time noticed the cable itself running down to the center of the compartment, into a center mounted column that contained the gears and drive that climbed the cable like a tireless acrobat swinging hand by hand up an endless rope. More glass sheets lined the floor, but in more discrete corners and patches so that the curious could look without feeling the intense vertigo of standing on air. Crow was not afraid of heights, but stared anyway at those downwards windows with trepidation.