by Jeff Long
hiding the ray of hope lighting her face. Nor, a moment later, hiding the suspicion that
darkened it.
'I get it,' she said to herself.
'Gus?'
Her green eyes glittered in the afternoon sunlight. She was angry now, once again
with Abe. 'See here,' she said. 'I don't know what's with you two. But if this is how
Daniel wants to break his damn curse, great. It's worth the summit to have him done
with Diana. So don't play noble with me.'
'Nobility has nothing to do with it.'
'Daniel needs this, Abe. Go bury your ghost. Together. Whatever it takes.'
'Gus, you don't understand. I didn't come for an exorcism. I'm not ditching Kelly.
And I can tell you, Daniel's not ditching you. He was being dramatic, that's all.'
'Fuck off,' she said. 'If you want to patronize Kelly, be my guest. But not me, guy. I
don't need your help. I don't need your permission. Got it?'
Suddenly Abe was tired of trying to soothe this woman. He had no desire to be her
foil, but it was hard to turn his back on her. She was heartbroken. Something Kelly
had said came back to him.
'Love has nothing to do with it, Gus.' He kept it simple. Gus was speechless, just as
he'd hoped. Now they could both pretend ascent was built on colder realities. He
started to walk off.
'By the way.' Her voice caught him.
Abe heard the change in her tone. She had an ailment.
'Yes, Gus.' He took a breath and made himself the healer once again.
'While I'm here, did you bring any of those home pregnancy tests?' The way she said
it, the timing she used, even the fact that she said it at all, was meant to sandbag him.
Of course they hadn't brought such a thing.
Abe groped for a reply. 'You're late?' he finally asked.
'Three, four weeks.' She was right to shrug. Everyone's rhythms were out of sync up
here.
'What about other symptoms?'
'Besides nausea and loss of appetite and exhaustion? Last time I looked, everyone
had those.' Right again.
And yet there was the possibility. Abe pursued it. 'Gus, if it's true, and if you want
this baby...'
She held up a hand. 'One, if it's true, I don't know if I want it. And two, either way, I
don't need a lecture. You've already said your mouthful.'
'But, Gus.' He had a duty to warn her about the solar radiation, the bad food, the
raised blood pressures, and all the myriad dangers of high altitude. He stopped
himself. She'd had weeks to think it all through.
'Does Daniel know?'
'Nope. And it's not yours to say.'
'Of course not.' Another secret to hold. 'But don't you think...'
'Tell him? Tell him what, Abe? There's a chance I might be carrying his child? You
know what he'd do? He'd sack the climb, just on the very chance. And then what if it
weren't true?'
'But what if it is?'
Now she handed it back to him. 'I thought you said love has nothing to do with it.'
'I didn't mean that.'
She quit bantering. 'We'll never be this close again,' she said. 'We can make it.'
But on the eve of launching their final assault – on the very afternoon before they
were going to trek back to ABC and inhabit the mountain all over again – a Land
Cruiser arrived to kill the Ultimate Summit. It came roaring toward them like a small
dinosaur, smoking out plumes of white dust, and at first Abe had trouble integrating
the return of the twentieth century.
For nearly a hundred days now they had lived like the native denizens of this
strange, lost nation called Tibet. They had lapsed into a pack of trolls, mountain beings
who were ugly and twisted and hunchbacked beneath the sun. All their great works of
music and literature had been shucked as incomprehensible. These days, instead of
Proust and Milton, they applied themselves to Conan the Barbarian comic books,
scrupulously reading and rereading key balloons. It could take a full evening to
complete one issue.
The climbers gathered as if the white Land Cruiser were a spaceship landing and
watched three PLA soldiers dismount. The soldiers were marvelously clean, their hair
cut, cheeks shaved, their pea-green uniforms unscathed by the weather or rockfall.
None of them limped. The flesh on their faces was unblemished by the sun. Their
rifles glinted in the light.
The oldest of the three, an officer, was perhaps Abe's age. The other two appeared
to be in their late teens, and they couldn't pry their eyes away from the climbers. Abe
wanted to believe their shock held some measure of homage or at least mutual
respect, but all he saw in their look was a curious disdain.
Li came crisply dressed from his tent as if this visit were no surprise and their
timing was precise. The homesickness was gone from his face. He had spring in his
step. Still he was not prepared for what the officer told him in Mandarin, even less so
for what he next read in a dispatch that was handed to him. He was visibly shaken
and took another minute to read the dispatch again and ask the officer many
questions.
The climbers kept their distance, even after Li spoke to them. 'Mister Jorgens,' he
called.
'Hey, Lee,' J.J. bellowed. 'Those guys bring any mail for us?'
'Not bloody likely,' Carlos muttered.
'Mister Jorgens,' Li somberly repeated.
Jorgens detached himself from the climbers and walked over to Li and the soldiers.
The conversation was one-sided, with Li doing all the talking. The climbers couldn't
hear a word, but instinct told them something was off and wrong.
Jorgens leaned in to glean the softly spoken words. Li repeated himself. Jorgens
swayed back.
'Not good, not good,' Stump muttered.
Li turned his back on Jorgens then and led off toward the mess tent with the
soldiers in tow. Jorgens didn't move. As a group, the climbers surrounded him by the
Land Cruiser.
'Five days,' Jorgens said. He looked pasty and ill. 'We have five days.'
The climbers glanced at each other, mystified. Finally Robby spoke. ' No comprendo,
Captain.'
'They pulled the plug on us. In five days a convoy of trucks will arrive. We have to
leave.'
'Five days?' J.J. wailed. 'We can't finish in five days. We can't even occupy our high
camps in five days.'
Jorgens was squinting. 'No more climbing,' he breathed. 'We have to pack up and be
ready to go. We're done.'
The news stupefied them.
'But we have permission. We paid. It's ours.' Carlos tripped out his argument.
'They pulled the plug on us,' Jorgens said.
'I've never heard of such a thing...' Stump started. But they were too stunned to be
angry. They were scrambling just to understand the implications.
'Five days?' Thomas said. 'Even with yaks here right now, we couldn't start to strip
the mountain. We'll lose everything. From ABC to Five, we'll lose it all.'
Jorgens nodded slowly. 'Yes.'
'But they can't do that.'
'We have five days,' Jorgens said. 'They want us to load the trucks and leave the
same day. These soldiers will escort us to the Nepal border.'
'What the fuck happened?' It was Gus, quiet, furious. Now they started finding their
anger, too.
'There's been trouble in Lhasa,' Jorgens said. 'A Tibetan riot. A Chinese police
station was burned. Several Chinese stores were destroyed. The army opened fire.
That means bloodshed. They've declared martial law.'
'These fucking Tibetans, man,' J.J. shouted. 'Now we're fucked.'
'Say we stay. We climb,' Gus said. 'We make our way across the border when we're
done. Li can go home right now.' It was farfetched.
'The country's under martial law,' Jorgens said. 'They want all tourists out.'
'But we're climbers.' J.J. beat at his chest. 'We're climbers.'
Robby took care of that one. 'We're tourists, J.J. That's exactly what we are. And
keep your voice down.'
'Li said he'll recommend us for a permit. For the very next season, whenever
martial law gets lifted, whenever the mountain opens up again,' Jorgens said. 'He said
this is unfortunate.'
'So, carrot and stick.' Gus spat. Her disgust washed over them, more than enough
for them all. 'Go along, get along. Shit.'
But Stump considered the proposition. 'It just could work, though. Next season, if it
really was next season? The minute we leave the yakkies will plunder our stores here
and at ABC. But they won't go onto the mountain itself. And at least some of our
camps will survive the monsoon. We'd have a leg up, stock in place. It might just
work.'
'Yeah,' said Robby. 'A definite advantage.'
'Two, three months,' Carlos thought out aloud. 'Not so bad.'
'Like a sequel climb,' Robby added. 'I like it.'
It was Abe who popped their bubble. 'Count me out,' he said. 'I can't come back next
season. Med school starts in September.' He wasn't sure why he shared this nugget of
information. It presumed that he'd even be invited to return, and he'd barely been
invited along on this one.
Nevertheless, it reminded the rest of them of the realities. They had girlfriends and
wives, children and jobs. There were mortgages to pay, commitments that couldn't be
broken. From many dinners and small moments and shared days and nights together,
they remembered that Thomas was getting married in October and J.J.'s little girl
was starting first grade, Gus was lined up for an all-woman's expedition to the
Caucasus and Kelly was moving to Boise for a new teaching job.
The fantasy of a return to this climb – with these climbers in this perfect weather
upon this route – fell to pieces. The instant they left Everest they were going to
disperse into tales that would have nothing to do with their comrades'. Their joined
dream, such as it was, could never be recaptured.
They spent another half hour trying out other solutions to this sudden collapse of
their expedition, but the facts only weighed heavier. The Hill had won.
Then Kelly raised one final bittersweet thought. 'If only Daniel had gone the little bit
further,' she said. It was true. When even one climber reached the top, the entire
expedition did. But none had and time was out. In the end, Daniel's noble gesture of
waiting for them had disserved them all.
'So close,' Thomas said.
'And the radios,' Stump said. 'Just when I finally fixed the bastards.'
Abe had his back turned to Everest. When he turned to look at their lost prize, the
mountain attacked with a wave of raw white light. Unprepared, Abe gasped and
bowed his head, clawing for the sunglasses in his pocket. Ordinarily the sight would
have provoked a nod of admiration, but not this morning.
Even with the glasses covering his eyes, the mountain was too bright to look at for
more than a few seconds. All definition was gone, washed away by the pure
illumination. No lines or shadows, no stone or ice, no ridges or cols. Even the summit
pyramid was illegible in the midst of all that radiance. The mountain simply fused into
sunlight and sky, hiding itself in infinity. It made their ambitions seem fruitless and
tiny.
Gus asked Jorgens to talk with Li again. It was hard for her to ask, because she
didn't like or trust Jorgens. But the mountain was a higher priority worth more than
her pride and she spoke the words. 'One more try, Jorgens, please.'
Jorgens didn't make her grovel. 'It won't work,' he said, 'but if that's what you want,
okay. I'll try.'
He was back from the mess tent within ten minutes. 'It's written in stone. Li said his
orders come directly from the Public Security Bureau in Lhasa. The army is out of its
cage. He wishes to ensure our safety.'
'You can't get any safer than our dead end,' Carlos pointed out, but of course that
wasn't Li's consideration anyway.
'One other thing, people,' Jorgens said. 'I want you to steer clear of our military
guests. No contact whatsoever. Is that understood?'
'Screw,' said J.J.
'I'm not asking, J.J. I'm ordering. Things are already bad enough without hard
words or more tension. Got it?'
J.J. didn't answer.
Jorgens put it bluntly. 'They've got guns.'
They spent the rest of the day cursing the Chinese and Tibet and the mountain,
finally dropping into an exhausted silence as alpenglow lit Everest orange. As
everywhere else in the world, bad news traveled quickly through the Rongbuk Valley.
Before nightfall, a tiny contingent of herders showed up driving seven yaks. They
were eager for work, and also eager to get a preview of the booty getting left behind.
At dinner that night, Carlos got the climbers drunk. He had stocked the expedition
pantry with enough Star beer for one big blow, and this was it. 'With victory in clear
sight,' he raised his toast, 'here's to blind defeat.'
It was not a happy drunk, but neither was it an ugly one. Someone pointed out that
at least they hadn't lost anyone on the climb. They hadn't lost so much as a toe or
finger. They were quitting the mountain in one piece, and that was always something
to be grateful for.
Finally Jorgens spoke. 'Somebody needs to go tell Daniel and bring him down.'
'I'll go,' J.J. volunteered. He had pulled out pictures of his daughter and had tears in
his eyes.
'Damned if I'm staying down here,' Stump said. 'I don't think I could put in five days
without hitting one of Li's soldier boys.'
'I've got cameras and film up there,' Robby remembered. 'And all my ice gear and
double boots. I can make two, three round-trips down with full loads in the time we've
got.'
In that way, the whole group decided to go up to ABC. Their spirits lifted by ounces.
En masse they would break the bad news to Daniel and strip the camp of their most
valuable gear. Above all they would get to pay their respects to the enemy. Stump
wanted to finish a water-color of the North Face. Thomas declared a great urge to piss
on the mountain once and for all. Carlos said he'd be happy just to sleep with the
Mother Goddess one final night. Few if any of them were ever going to return to the
Kore Wall. Abe could hear it in their voices.
Abe slept poorly that night. At daybreak he walked down to the water skull and sat
there to clear his mind. Overhead, Everest was floating in a scoop of soft dawn light.
With her manelike summit massif and outstretched ridges, the Hill had the aspec
t of a
sphinx splashed with rainbows this morning.
They had come close to cracking her riddle, Daniel closest of all. Abe felt the
closeness of it as a weight in his skull. He felt the frustration of having a perfect
summarizing word on the tip of his tongue and knowing it was forever beyond his
articulation. For the rest of his life he would have to carry around this freighted
silence.
He was thinking these thoughts and generally feeling sorry for himself when the
sound of a dislodged pebble interrupted him. An image – half man, half animal – took
shape in the glacier pond. Abe glanced up at the rim. Standing there, if a sideways
stoop upon ancient ski poles could be called standing, was the monk in old yak skins
and Daniel's black and orange baseball cap.
Abe's mouth came open. The two of them observed each other until Abe began to
wonder if this wasn't another one of his hallucinations. Then the monk teetered
between the ski poles as if he were fixed atop stilts and more pebbles pattered down
off the rim.
Abe didn't need Nima's translation to know he'd come to say good-bye. It was going
to be a two-way adios, Abe realized. Good-bye to the expedition. Good-bye to the
monk. The boy needed full-scale hospitalization. Yet four days from now he wouldn't
have even Abe's quackery for a stopgap. Abe let his breath out slowly. That was the
cold fact. This holy man was going to die.
The boy was in such bad condition that Abe wondered if he might have been hiding
near Base Camp the whole time. That or one of the yakherders had brought him in
overnight. One thing was certain, even if tulkus could fly, this one was anchored to the
few inches of soil he currently occupied. As if to confirm Abe's pessimism, the boy
sank his rump down upon a stone and stiffly lowered himself backward to rest. He
was too weak to take his hands from the ski pole straps, so the poles lay attached to
him, pitched askew.
'Tashi-dili,' Abe said, approaching. Nima had taught him that much. The monk
didn't return his greeting except to smile crookedly. He was wan and his eyes had a
dull luster. Closer up, Abe saw saliva stringing loose from his mouth. Abe didn't need
to open the boy's clothing to know the infection was back. He could smell the yellow
and orange fluid staining what had once been a clean white expedition T-shirt.
Abe squatted and palmed the boy's forehead. There was fever, though not so bad as
