by D. H. Dunn
“Nima!” Wanda yelled, her voice coming from a narrow passage to their left, a small opening in the far stone wall. “Drew! Come in here!”
The shaft seemed to lead into another chamber in the cave. Leaving the holes, Nima peered into the passage, getting on to her hands and knees to do so. She hadn’t even seen Wanda move off.
Drew knelt next to her, peering over Nima’s shoulder and into the opening. Behind him she could see Kad pacing back and forth in front of the worm-tube entrances, clearly not happy with the delay but making no attempt to stop them. Ducking her head farther, Nima crawled into the shaft.
It took less than a minute of slow movement on her hands and knees before she reached an opening, brighter light and colors coming with her arrival. Pushing herself out and getting to her feet, Nima stood next to Wanda, whose mouth was agape. Drew quickly joined them.
“My God,” he said, his quiet voice echoing in the large chamber. The walls and floors of the natural room were no different than the others Nima had seen. While larger than any other room they had seen, it contained the same collection of colored veins in the walls and glowing mushrooms of many sizes. The same skittery bats flitted about, now clearly belching small bursts of flame from their mouths, squeaking their complaints about being disturbed.
Other than the bats, none of this was any different than what Nima had seen in the chamber she had awoken in. What was different was the portals.
Dozens of them, all around her.
Each of them had little in common with the portal that had brought her and her friends in from Everest. They were all generally oval-shaped and about the same size, beyond that they were diverse and defied any pattern Nima could find. Each one was filled with mists primarily of one color, though none were orange like the one she had dived through on the Icefall.
Embedded into the walls and ceilings of the chamber, it looked to Nima as if someone had opened a bag of portals and simply poured them into the cavern. Several pulsed and throbbed, others appeared inert and lifeless. In some, the mists swirled like whirlpools, twirling down into a darker vortex.
One of the swirling portals was half in the wall and half in the floor near where Wanda was standing. Nima crouched to get a better look at this portal.
The gateway was bent at its center to follow the contours of the floor and wall. The swirling colors were a mixture of red and violet, both becoming darker as they got closer to the center of the vortex, the faint mists and vapors increasing in speed. Nima could feel a slight chill in the air, which grew in intensity the closer she got, as well as a pull, like suction. It was not strong enough to move her, but it was enough to pull some of her dark hair in its direction.
She reached a steady hand toward the surface of the mist, pulling it back sharply as a voice behind her cried.
“No!” Kad yelled, his body half contorted as he exited the crawlway. “Do not touch the mist!”
Nima shoved her hand back in her pockets, shuffling away from the crimson and lavender light. Drew and Wanda also stepped back from the portals they had been examining, seemingly just as entranced as Nima had been.
“We must go,” Kad repeated, motioning them back toward the narrow crawlway. His voice was gaining urgency. “The Others will come.”
Wanda folded her arms and made a show of planting both feet firmly on the dusty ground of the cavern. Drew sat on a large boulder situated next to a portal that looked completely inert, just a dull disk of gray and black. He rubbed his neck again.
Nima walked over to Kad, bending slightly to look in his eyes. “Kad, I know you want us to leave, and I believe you are trying to protect us. This is too much, though. Too much that is new, too much we do not understand. We need something from you, an answer to something.”
“You want from me. I understand this,” Kad said, sighing. “You do not trust―yet how can I trade with you here?” The small man stopped for a moment, picked up a nondescript pebble from the ground, and studied it. “Founders preserve me, how strange your Out must be.” Dropping the rock to the ground, he faced the trio. “What will you offer?” he asked, placing one hand atop another and holding them out to them.
“You expect us to give you something?” Drew asked.
“Of course,” Kad said. “I have much that you need. Knowledge, food, escape from the Others.” He looked behind himself, to the small crawlway. “The Others who are coming. What do you want, and what will you offer?”
“So, we have to trade with you to get an answer?” Nima asked, her temperature growing. She could feel the heat coming to her cheeks. They needed answers, not games.
“There are lots of customs, Nima,” Drew had his hands up, even he began to shuffle away from the group, taking a stronger interest in the numerous portals.
“You mentioned Others, Kad,” Nima said. That was an understatement, Kad had spoken of little else but others and the Others and something called a Vihrut. “Are these Others like us? We are looking for my brother, is he with them?”
Kaditula looked back at Nima, a small smile on his face. He gestured with his hands again, putting one palm of one hand over the other.
“Argh, this man!” Wanda cursed, moving a step closer to Kad. “Kaditula, we will trade with you, an answer for an answer. Answer our question, and you may ask one. Is that fair?”
Kad slapped the back of his hands together twice, laughing even as he stole another glance back down at the crawlspace.
“I answer, then I ask. Then we go,” he said. “Many dangers here. The Others, Vihrut . . . ”
“Yes, yes,” Nima said, slapping her own hands together in the hopes that mimicking the man’s gesture would get him moving. “What about these Others?”
“They come from our Out, my Out,” Kad said. “But they are not from our people. Their people were at war with ours before we were all brought here. To the Under. If your brother is like you, he is likely with them, as they have need and the beast is aligned with them.”
“Need?” Nima said, jumping at the information. “What need? How far away are they? Is he safe?” She felt her pulse quicken at the mention of her brother, the sweat building inside her clothes.
“My turn,” Kad responded.
“I think it’s getting warmer in here,” Drew said, his voice just another in the shower of words flowing between herself, Wanda, and Kaditula. “Maybe we should leave. . . .”
“Yes,” Kad said nodding. He sighed, his disappointment clear. “Your part in the trade can be honored at the camp. The Others . . . we must go.”
Wanda shook her head, turning away from the small man and walking toward the nearest portal.
“We cannot just wander around these caverns, following this man,” Wanda said, her raised voice echoing through the room. “This area here represents great . . .” Wanda trailed off, as the chamber began to vibrate slightly. Nima noticed a red glow above her eyes.
Looking up, she saw a portal embedded in the ceiling directly above them, crimson mists parting as if a great wind had formed among them. With the mist removed, the oval shape was clear as glass, showing a hellish landscape beyond. Nima thought she recognized the mountains of Lhoste and Ama Dablam, their sides dark with red streaks instead of snow. It was like looking into a window on the ceiling, the mountains on their sides as if she was flying toward them.
Had the world changed in their absence, the mountains themselves seemingly on fire? Nima began to wonder how long they had been gone, and if this truly was a window onto the Himalayas she knew. It could be a trick, an illusion.
“Friends!” Kad’s voice came from behind her, filled with frantic energy. “It is dangerous to stay!”
Nima’s eyes stayed transfixed on the image, the heat increasing dramatically as the red oval began to pulse.
Drew’s hands suddenly pushed her away from the heat. Her mouth was still open, her eyes still staring at the scene even as he moved her away from a familiar landscape turned hellish. “Go!” he yelled, shoving her back towa
rd the crawlspace. “Move it, or I think we’re all about to be cooked!”
Looking down, she could see Kad’s legs already scurrying through the shaft and out of view, the small man’s voice muttering about doors as he disappeared into the dark. Nima allowed Drew to pull her farther away from the red portal, the heat in the room increasing as the sounds of the opening began to thrum, vibrating the chamber like a heartbeat.
Wanda was still looking up at the red maw as it pulsed, her mouth agape. The mists inside a second oval to her right began to move of their own accord, blue clouds turning purple from the overpowering strength of the portal in the ceiling.
“Wanda!” Drew yelled, the heat above them beginning to distort the air between them. Across the room, separated from them by the growing agitation from the portal, the Polish woman seemed transfixed by the scene unfolding in front of her.
“Drew!” Nima shouted, the air becoming electric with crimson pulses that rolled like distant thunder through the room. “Go after Kaditula! We cannot lose him! I will get Wanda!” She saw the doubt in his eyes, tried her best to silence it with a glare of her own. “Go!” she yelled. “Now, big brother! I will get her and be right behind you. I promise!”
He gave her one last look, and she knew he was remembering all the other arguments he had lost with her. He gave her hand a squeeze, then knelt to the crawlspace and climbed inside.
“Two minutes!” he yelled as his boots passed from her view. “Then I am coming back.”
Nima knelt, the temperature slightly more tolerable near the chamber’s rocky ground. She knew her climbing clothes were working against her, but she had no time to take them off. Looking over at Wanda, the woman had barely moved; she stood with her back to the wall, still staring up into the pulsing red swirl of the portal.
Taking one quick breath and holding it, Nima dove across the circular portion of the room, passing directly through the heat emanating from the ceiling. She felt the blast for only a second, her body immediately engulfed in sweat. She rolled into Wanda on the other side, deliberately knocking into the woman.
Wanda dropped to one knee, her eyes fixed on the portal.
“Nima,” the woman said, her voice almost too soft to be heard against the thrums and throbs that shook through the room. “How can it be? It is―there is so much I could do . . .”
“No time for that now!” Nima said, reaching up and shaking the woman’s shoulders. “You can’t do anything here! We have to go.”
Wanda nodded. “We have to go,” she said, yet still she did not move, still she stood staring at the hell above them, just beyond the rim of the gateway.
Reaching down she took both of Wanda’s hands and placed them on her own, yanking the woman down to a kneeling position. She then took Wanda’s face in her hands, forcing her to look into Nima’s eyes.
“You cannot help Poland if you are dead!”
She watched as Wanda’s eyes slowly looked away from the ceiling and stare into her own. The woman nodded, her cheeks shining from the perspiration.
“Right,” Wanda said. “Yes.”
Nima pulled Wanda across the floor, the pulses from the portal now making a physical impression on them as they passed. She could feel the energy run across her skin in waves, her hair standing on end each time.
Again, she crossed the heat beneath it, more slowly this time. The intensity of the heat above her was crushing, a hot wall pushing down on her.
Guiding Wanda ahead of her, she half pushed the woman into the crawlspace, staying in the heat herself long enough to feel her hair curling.
Wanda’s head was through the crawlspace, her backside just shuffling through when Nima heard the sound. The thrumming stopped, replaced with a noise that sounded to Nima like vegetables being strained into a pot. The air temperature increased, the chamber filling with a burning odor unlike any she had ever known.
Through the oval in the ceiling, a liquid began to drop into the room. Large, molten chunks of red and black seared the air as they fell. They splashed as they landed, sending smaller drops throughout the chamber. A growing pool formed on the chamber floor. The air was getting difficult to breathe.
Her clothing awash in perspiration, Nima dove into the crawlspace, narrowly missing gashing her forehead on the entrance. She shoved Wanda forward, the cacophony growing behind her.
Within moments she had pushed through to the other side, where the air was cool and fresh. She ripped off her climbing jacket and tossed it on the floor. Her hair stuck slickly to her skull. Her body was so exhausted she could only kneel on the floor, sucking the clear air into her lungs.
Distantly, she could feel a hand on her shoulder. Drew’s strong fingers offering strength but demanding nothing. She took one last breath, allowing the cool air to fill her lungs, and counted her heartbeats while sweat beaded and dropped off her nose.
Wanda and Drew were kneeling, looking through the darkened crawlspace to the scene in the room they had escaped.
“It is pouring magma over there!” Drew said. “I cannot believe it . . .”
“Believe it,” Wanda said, her voice having regained its normal edge. “Incredible, but we cannot stay.”
Kad paced in front of the holes to his worm paths, looking back and forth between the three of them. Nima was impressed the man had not left. She pushed herself to her feet.
“Kad,” Nima said, noting the dim, red glow coming from the entrance to the crack leading to the portal room. Whatever was pouring out of that portal, magma the Westerners called it, it was headed their way. “You said these paths would lead us to your camp.”
A quick smile crossed the small man’s face, and he quickly placed both hands behind his neck in some sort of gesture. He then grabbed the edge of the center hole and climbed in. “At the camp. Follow!” Kaditula slid away, his laughter following him down the tube.
Nima looked back at Wanda, who still seemed focused on the events in the other room. She was still kneeling, still peering into the crawlspace.
“Magma is coming through, but I think it slowing,” she said, wiping more sweat from her brow. The heat from the portal chamber was seeping through the narrow passage, raising the temperature and filling the air with its stench.
“Study it later, Wanda!” Nima yelled. She wondered if all scientists were like this, too busy looking at the snow to see the avalanche.
“Nima’s right,” Drew said, putting his hand on the Polish woman’s shoulder. “If it’s slowing, the chamber will still be here later. We can come back.”
“We should come back,” Wanda said with conviction, while getting to her feet. “Our way home may be in there.”
The red tint continued to grow in the crawlspace. The lava might have slowed, but it had not stopped.
“Right. Time to go,” Nima said, forcibly pulling Wanda away from the crack in the floor toward the hole Kaditula had used. The woman barely had an opportunity to register a complaint before Nima shoved her into the hole, where Wanda quickly slid out of sight.
“Get moving, little sister,” Drew said. “I’ll be right behind you.”
“You had better be,” Nima said, crawling to the edge of the same hole Kad had slid down. The veins of color lined the smooth edges of the hole, showing her the path she would take until it curved out of sight. If she died, there would be no one to save Pasang, to help her father. “Stay right behind me, big brother,” Nima said, and pushed off into the darkness.
9
“To travel, to experience and learn: That is to live.”
—Tensing Norgay
The trip through the worm hole was shorter than Nima had expected, and under other conditions she would have found it fun as well. After a few seconds, she found the speed with which her body slid through the smooth space to be exhilarating, not unlike when her brother and she would slide down the snowy slopes during the winter, the velocity and loss of control a kind of freedom. For the brief time the trip took, worries about worms and magma became a bit mo
re distant.
She dropped out of the hole a few feet off the ground, landing on some makeshift blankets that only partially reduced the impact of her landing. Nima rolled to the side and rubbed her bruised bottom. She supposed Kad might be used to the landing, but he could have warned her.
Knowing Drew was right behind her, she quickly stood and moved out of the way, lest he collide with her.
The hole emptied into a large chamber, significantly larger than the one the collection of portals had been in. Colored veins in the wall added to the light provided by a collection of glowing mushrooms in the center of the space. Nima guessed the chamber was as least as large as Dorjee’s, the biggest tent in Gorak Shep, and could hold many dozens of people if needed.
Here again there were portals scattered throughout the chamber, embedded in the walls and ceilings at odd angles and positions. Nima guessed there may have been the same number in the previous room, but the greater size of this space made them seem less concentrated.
The floor itself was somewhat uneven and shared the same rough daggers of stone hanging from the ceiling she had seen elsewhere. The walls were rippled with threads of color, and as in all the other spaces, mushrooms of many sizes littered the area.
Unique to this chamber was a small stream winding through its length, splitting the chamber roughly in two before disappearing into the far wall. She could hear the trickle of the running water as it rushed by.
Lining the banks of the stream were several small, rounded tents, which reminded Nima of the yurts she had seen in other parts of Nepal.
People wandered around the campsite, she guessed at least two dozen of them. Most were men, but she saw more than a few women scattered amongst the groups as well. There was little uniformity of dress, some wore makeshift clothes and had a ramshackle appearance, others seemed to have modern military uniforms. Some were Sherpa, others appeared African or East Asian or Caucasian.
