The Abominable

by Dan Simmons

  After fifty hours had passed, said the Times tale, even the ever hopeful Noel Odell gave up hope and placed two sleeping bags in the shape of a T for observers with telescopes at the lower camps to see. The prearranged signal meant that no further search should be attempted—the two climbers were lost forever.

  Finally I lower the paper. The rising breeze tugs at it. The raven no longer marks the blue sky, and the sky itself is darkening now with afternoon. I shake my head, feeling the strong emotion from my two friends but not really understanding the depth and complexity of it. “There’s just a little more of the same,” I say, my voice hoarse.

  The Deacon moves at last. He puts his cold pipe in the chest pocket of his tweed jacket. “They said there were two more,” he says softly.

  “What?”

  “The first paragraph said that two men died. Who? How?”

  “Oh.” I fumble with the paper, running my finger down the last column to the final paragraphs. Everything is Mallory and Irvine, Irvine and Mallory, and then Mallory again. But there at the end. I read:

  After the main party had left Everest Base Camp, according to German explorer Bruno Sigl, who was on a reconnaissance mission for a possible future German attempt on Everest, Sigl witnessed thirty-two-year-old Lord Percival Bromley, brother of the fifth Marquess of Lexeter, and a German or Austrian climber whom Sigl identified as Kurt Meyer, being swept away by an avalanche between Camp V and Camp VI. Young Bromley—Lord Percival—while not a formal member of the Mallory Expedition led by Colonel Norton, had followed the expedition from Darjeeling to the Everest Base Camp. Although the monsoon season had arrived and Colonel Norton’s expedition had retreated from the mountain, it is thought that perhaps Lord Percival and Meyer were making one final attempt to locate Mallory and Irvine. The bodies of Lord Percival and the German or Austrian climber were not recovered.

  I lower the paper again.

  “Lord Bromley, a peer of your realm, dies on Mount Everest and it barely makes the newspaper,” mutters Jean-Claude. “It is all Mallory. Mallory and Irvine.”

  “ ‘Lord Percival’ or ‘Lord Percy’ is how we say it in England,” the Deacon says very softly. “ ‘Lord Bromley’ is his older brother, the marquess. And Percy Bromley would have been a poor excuse for a peer even if he had been next in line. George Mallory, although from a humble background, was the royalty on that expedition.” The Deacon stands, puts his hands in his trouser pockets, and strolls away down the narrow ridge, his head lowered. He looks like nothing so much as an absent-minded professor walking on campus, pondering some esoteric problem in his field.

  When the Deacon is out of hearing range, I whisper to Jean-Claude, “Did he know Mallory or Irvine?”

  Jean-Claude looks at me and then leans closer, speaking so softly that it is almost a whisper even though the Deacon is many yards away. “Irvine? I do not know, Jake. But Mallory…yes, the Deacon knew him for many years. Before the War they were students in the same small college in Cambridge. During the War they crossed paths on the battlefields many times. The Deacon was invited by Mallory to go on the nineteen twenty-one reconnaissance and nineteen twenty-two Everest climbing expeditions, and did so. But there was no invitation from Mallory or the Alpine Club for this year’s attempt on Everest.”

  “Good heavens!” Before today I thought I’d really begun to know my two new friends and climbing partners. Now it seems that I know—and knew—almost nothing. “It could have been Mallory and the Deacon, rather than young Sandy Irvine, missing on Everest,” I whisper to J.C.

  Jean-Claude bites his chapped lip, looks to make sure that the Deacon is still far away on the Italian-side summit, seeming to be staring out at nothing.

  “No, no,” whispers Jean-Claude. “During the first two expeditions, Mallory and the Deacon had several…how do you say it in English?…falling-downs.”

  For a moment I imagine the two climbers falling while roped together but then understand. “Falling-out,” I say.

  “Oui, oui. Serious outfallings, I am afraid. I am sure that Mallory had not spoken to the Deacon since they returned from the ’twenty-two expedition.”

  “Falling-outs over what?” I whisper. The wind has risen again and is blowing icy pellets of summit snow into our faces.

  “The first expedition…it was officially called a reconnaissance expedition, but the actual goal for Mallory and the others was to find the fastest route to the mountain through all the icefalls and glaciers at its base, and then begin climbing as soon as possible. I know that both Deacon and Mallory believed they might summit during that first effort in nineteen twenty-one.”

  “Ambitious,” I murmur. The Deacon is still at his remote perch on the Italian end of the summit ridge. With the wind now blowing even more strongly from his direction, I doubt he could hear us even if we shouted. Still, Jean-Claude and I continue our conversation in little more than a hurried whisper.

  “So Mallory insisted that the best way to the North Col—the most obvious route from the north side of Everest—was from the east, up the Kharta Valley. It was a…how do you say cul-de-sac?”

  “Dead end.”

  Jean-Claude grins. Sometimes I think he enjoys the rough-edged quality of English. “Oui—a very dead end. And Mallory kept leading them all around the mountain, pursuing one dead end after the other. He even had Guy Bullock go so far up the West Rongbuk that they almost crossed the border into Nepal, looking over to the south approaches to Everest and deciding that the glaciers and icefalls approaching the South Face and ridges were totally impassable. The solution had to be on this North Face side.”

  “I wonder…,” I whisper, but more to myself than to J.C.

  “At any rate, months were wasted,” says Jean-Claude. “Wasted at least as far as the Deacon was concerned—exploring ever eastward and westward, measuring everything, photographing everything. Never finding a workable approach to the North Col.”

  “I’ve seen some of the photographs,” I say, glancing to make sure that the Deacon is still at the far end of the summit. He doesn’t appear to have moved a muscle. “They’re beautiful.”

  “Yes,” says J.C. “But the first series of photographs for which Mallory climbed a serious peak to gain the perfect vantage point, he put the plates in the camera the wrong way around. Nothing came out on the print, of course. Bullock and the others did most of the real photography.”

  “What’s this got to do with Mallory and the Deacon falling out?” I ask. “Almost becoming enemies after so many years of association and…I presume…mutual respect?”

  Jean-Claude sighs. “Their first base camp near the mountain was pitched at the head of a small valley where a river runs down onto the plain. They must have walked by that valley a hundred times but never explored it. The Deacon wanted to look into it as a possible approach to the North Col right from the beginning, but Mallory always overruled him, insisting that it just ran to the East Rongbuk Glacier and stopped. They could see the entrance to a side valley—easy walking with gravel and just pinnacles of old snow as all that was left of the former glacier—and the Deacon suggested that this valley might curve west again—which it does—and would give them a safe and easy path to the North Col and the beginning of their climb. Mallory said no to that…what is the word?…that opportunity, and the weeks of useless reconnoitering to both the east and west dragged on. Also, Mallory and the Alpine Club had decided the summer monsoon season was the best time to try to climb Mount Everest, but by June, even Monsieur Mallory had to agree that the summer monsoon season, with its endless snowfall, was bad, bad…a bad time to reconnoiter the mountain, much less to attempt a climb—since the storms were much…how do you say it?…more fiercer higher up.”

  “So that was their nineteen twenty-two falling-out,” I whisper.

  Jean-Claude smiles almost sadly. “The last brick…no…what do you say? The last something that breaks the back of the camel?”

  “Straw.”

  “The last straw was the De
acon’s constant urging that they climb Lhakpa La to get a view from there. For many weeks Mallory thought such an effort would be useless and said no to the Deacon’s request.”

  “What’s Lhakpa La?” I ask. My knowledge of Mount Everest’s immediate geography in this late June of 1924 is just about nonexistent. Essentially I know that the tallest peak in the world shares a border with Nepal and Tibet, that Tibet is the only way one could get to it—given the politics of the era—and that this meant the climb, should it ever happen, will have to be up the North Face. Up the North East Ridge above the North Ridge and the North Face, to be specific, if all of the expeditions’ photographs are to be believed.

  “Lhakpa La is a high pass to the west that separates the Kharta Glacier from the East Rongbuk Glacier,” says J.C. “They climbed to it in an absolute blinding blizzard, holeposting…is that the word, Jake?”

  “Postholing.”

  “Postholing up to their waists in the deepening snow, able to see nothing even when they reached the flat area they assumed was the summit. Even setting up their tents was a nightmare in the blizzard, and Mallory was furious at the waste of time. But then, in the morning, the weather completely cleared, and from their snow-covered camp on Lhakpa La they could see the perfect route to the North Col—directly up the valley and side valley which Deacon had argued so many times they explore, and then across snow and ice up onto the other side of the cwm and then, without any apparent difficulty, up onto the North Col itself. And from there, directly to the North Ridge all the way up to the high North East Ridge. But the monsoon snows kept burying them, the winds were terrible, and even though they reconnoitered the correct route all the way to a thousand-foot ice wall that led up onto the North Col, it was too late in the year to attempt the summit. They withdrew from the mountain on the twenty-fourth of September—without ever actually setting foot on the bare rock of Mount Everest.”

  The Deacon has been smoking his pipe again, but now he is batting out the ashes. He’ll be returning any minute now.

  “So that’s what caused their falling-out,” I whisper. “And it kept the Deacon from going with Mallory on this year’s Everest expedition.”

  “No,” says Jean-Claude. His whisper now is fast and harsh. “It was an incident at the end of the second expedition—the men had barely been in England a few weeks after the nineteen twenty-two expedition before they began mounting their return in ’twenty-four. The Deacon was invited, but grudgingly. A part of a letter from Mallory to his wife was somehow copied and distributed among climbers in nineteen twenty-three, and I mostly remembered—but later looked up—exactly what Mallory wrote: ‘Despite the years that I’ve known Mr. Deacon—and we were quite good friends at Cambridge, especially during the climbing in Wales after those school days were over, I don’t find myself greatly liking him. He is too much the don, too much the landlord, too much the coddled poet, and one with not only Tory prejudices that come into the open from time to time, but with a highly developed sense of contempt, sometimes bordering on actual hatred, for other sorts of people than his own. Our friend Mr. Richard Davis Deacon loves being called by his common nickname, given to him by the other men, and there were only fifty of us total, in his first year at our little Magdalene College, Cambridge—“the Deacon”—I am sure it flatters his inflated ego. At any rate, Ruth, after the last expedition I felt I should never be at ease with him—and in a sense I never shall be. He is well informed and opinionated and doesn’t at all like anyone else to know things he doesn’t know. And when he is lucky in his random guesses, as he was about finding our route from the summit of the pass called Lhakpa La, he takes his good fortune as his due—as if he were the leader rather than I.’”

  “You have a hell of a memory, my friend.”

  Jean-Claude looks surprised. “But of course! Are not young students in America required to memorize hundreds of pages of verse and fine literature and other materials? Word for word? And punished severely if they fail? In France, memory is learning and learning is memory.”

  The Deacon is looking back this way, his expression still vacant, obviously still thinking hard about something. But I am sure he will rejoin us in a minute.

  “Quickly,” I say to Jean-Claude, “tell me what happened on the nineteen twenty-two expedition which was the last straw that broke the back of the camel that was their friendship.”

  I admit it is not the finest sentence I’ve ever constructed, but Jean-Claude looks at me as if I’ve suddenly begun babbling in Aramaic.

  “In ’twenty-two they all felt that they had a strong chance for the summit,” begins Jean-Claude, as the Deacon starts to stroll back in our direction. “They climbed the imposing ice wall onto the North Col, traversed it to the North Ridge, climbed that ridge to the North East Ridge, and headed for the summit—but terrible winds drove them off the ridge onto the North Face itself, and there progress was slow and dangerous. They had to retreat to base camp. But on the seventh of June, Mallory insisted on another effort up the North Col—still imagining, despite day after day of deep monsoon snow, that they might still make the summit.

  “The Deacon argued against taking porters and climbers up the North Col again. He pointed out that the weather had turned and the summit was lost to them this year. More importantly, the Deacon knew much more about snow and ice conditions than Mallory—whose expedition time on glaciers and in the Alps was very limited—and the Deacon said that the conditions were perfect for avalanches. Just the day before, returning from a reconnoiter of the North Col, some of the climbers, upon descending toward the rope ladder they’d left on the ice wall, found a fifty-meter-wide area where a slide had wiped out their tracks during the past two hours. The Deacon refused to go.”

  That same Deacon is less than 50 feet away now, and we would have to cease the conversation if not for the wind howling and certainly drowning our words. But still Jean-Claude hurries with the last sentences.

  “Mallory called the Deacon a coward. That morning, seven June, Mallory led a party of seventeen men up to the North Col, all the Sherpas roped together. The avalanche hit them about two hundred meters below the North Col on exactly the type of slope the Deacon had warned them about. Nine of the porters were swept away together. Mallory missed being carried away by only a few meters, but even he was caught up in the tidal wave. Two of the porters were later dug out, but seven died and their remains were buried in the crevasse to which they had almost been carried by the avalanche. It had been, as the Deacon had tried to explain, madness to attempt to cross those loose snow-slab slopes under such conditions.”

  “My God,” I whisper.

  “Exactly,” Jean-Claude agrees. “The two old friends have not spoken since that June day two years ago. And the Deacon was not invited on this year’s expedition.”

  I say nothing. I’m stunned that the Deacon might—had it not been for this “falling-down” between Mallory and him—have been invited on such an important adventure. Perhaps the adventure of the century. Certainly the heroic tragedy of the century, if the newspapers are to be believed. I think about immortality, such as it is, how it seems to come for Brits only after a hard death, and how it is being crafted for George Leigh Mallory now by words in the London Times, the New York Times, and a thousand other newspapers.

  We’ve missed all this the past four days—concentrating only on our climbing, our descending, our sleeping, and our climbing again.

  “How did…,” I begin, but immediately fall silent. The Deacon has almost reached us. The rising wind tugs at his wool jacket and tie. I can hear his hobnailed boots—almost certainly nearly identical to the ones worn this past week by Mallory and Irvine—crunching and see them leaving new prints in the shallow snow of the Matterhorn’s summit ridge.

  His hands still in the pockets of his woolen trousers, his pipe cold in his upper-right pocket, the Deacon gives Jean-Claude an intense look and says softly, “Mon ami, if you had a chance to try to climb Mount Everest, would you take it?”r />
  I expect Jean-Claude to make some joke—it would be in his nature to do so despite the sad news in the newspaper—but instead he looks up at our de facto leader for a long, silent moment. The Deacon’s disturbingly clear gray eyes look up from J.C. and seem so focused on a distant point that I actually check behind me to see if the high-flying raven has returned.

  “Oui,” Jean-Claude says at last. “Mount Everest is very large and very far away, far from my valley of Chamonix where I have duties as a guide and patrons waiting for me—and it is more a British mountain, I think, than one yet open to the world—and I think it is now and shall continue to be a cold killer of men, my friend Richard Deacon. But, oui, mon ami, if I were to get the chance to go climb the beast, I would go. Yes. Absolutely.”

  I’m waiting for the Deacon to ask me the same question and am not sure exactly how I’ll respond—but there is no question for me.

  Instead the Deacon says loudly over the wind, “Let’s go down the face and then take the Swiss Ridge toward Zermatt.”

  This is a small surprise. Our better tents and sleeping bags and the bulk of our supplies are on the Italian side, on the high slopes above Breuil. Ah, well. It will just mean another long hike over Théodule Pass and back. As junior member of the trio, I’ll probably get the duty. I only hope I can find a mule to rent in Zermatt.

  We start down the suddenly steep ridge toward the shaded, near-vertical roof of the mountain—“the bad bit,” Edward Whymper had called it when they ascended, and so it fatally proved itself when they descended—and the Deacon surprises me as well as Jean-Claude (I can tell by Jean-Claude’s almost infinitesimal hesitation) by saying, “What do you say we rope up for this part?”

  We had done the bulk of our climbing on face and ridge unroped. If one falls—well, he falls. Most of the ridge and large slab work here requires no ropes for belay, and the downward-tilting north face slabs such as we are going out on now are too treacherous for any real belay. There are almost no outcroppings or projections over which the highest climber can toss a safety loop, as is the alpine mountaineer’s habit in 1924.