The Eidolon

by Libby McGugan

  THE

  EIDOLON

  LIBBY McGUGAN

  First published 2013 by Solaris

  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,

  Riverside House, Osney Mead,

  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ISBN (epub): 978-1-84997-648-0

  ISBN (mobi): 978-1-84997-649-7

  Copyright © 2013 Libby McGugan

  Cover art by Dominick Saponaro

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

  To John, George,

  Richard and Catherine,

  for believing.

  And to Tom,

  for questioning.

  Prologue

  I DON’T REMEMBER the beginning. Only a vague dawning of being, fragmented lakes of feelings and thoughts. Somehow, over eons, they coalesced like the primordial ooze that gathers in the murky pond, gradually finding form. The sound of the orchestra tuning up, slowly, over huge swathes of time, discordant notes sliding into one until from them a single, clear tone is born. And in perfect synchrony, it vibrates as one being. I am. Purity, born of the minds of men. They gave me life, and for that I am indebted.

  With that life came a hunger that has nothing to do with the stomach. It became a need, a voracity, that for an age nothing would satisfy, until I found the answer lay in my creators. There, in the darkest recesses of the mind, that place where men are afraid to go, is where it germinates. A seed that takes root in thought and sends its tendrils out into experience to blossom. They are the incubators, I am the harvester. It is the perfect symbiosis.

  Chapter One

  IT’S FUNNY HOW everything changes when a couple of bricks fall out of your wall; those things that shored you up without you realising it. You only notice when they go and the rest of your life starts crumbling away.

  Six weeks ago I had a job, I had a partner; I had a life. Now I have a headache from the altitude. I also have one of the best views you could ask for. Below, sheep on the slopes blend with the grey earth and the muffled tinkling of yak bells comes and goes on the breeze as the beasts lumber across the pastures. Ahead, the sun glints on the lakes, one round, one crescent shaped. Above, white purity shrouds the mountains, becoming the sky. Unspoiled wilderness. Barren beauty. I still have a headache.

  The soft snow makes walking tricky. You don’t walk in this; you trudge. Look on the bright side – it’s not Middlesbrough, that’s what she would say. Cora. Always positive, always the optimist. Always with her head in the clouds. And then she’d say something like, Look at where you are – the Tibetan Plateau, the rooftop of the planet, where you can look down on the madness of the world and wonder what it’s all about. See how lucky you are? She’d be right, I suppose. Up here, nothing really matters, just that your steps are small enough to let your lungs catch up with the rest of you, and that you keep drinking through the rubber straw from your CamelBak. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Something to take my mind off redundancy and our dissolving relationship. Something to help me get my head straight. You know what, Cora? So far, it’s not working. Christ, Robert, if you can’t clear your mind in nine hundred thousand square miles of nothing, there’s no hope for you. It still hurts to think of her.

  Danny pauses ahead of me and I almost bump into him. His cheeks crinkle as he scans the skies. Blue-eyed, wiry, unconventional, Danny Mitchell has been a trekking buddy since we were students at Cambridge. He was doing politics, I was doing physics and computer science, and we met in the bar after an evening talk by the climber Joe Simpson. So would you cut the rope? Save yourself and drop your friend to certain death, when not cutting it means you both die? It made for an interesting opener to conversation. Danny knocked back a whisky. He would have done it, he said, and he meant it. Always so black and white. His philosophy is simple: work to live, and then only until you have enough to fund your next trip. Over the years we’ve climbed in the Andes, the Pyrenees, the mountains of Sarawak, the Cuillins of Skye; and when we do, the differences between us don’t matter.

  “I think we should pitch here for the night,” he says, still studying the clouds. “It’s getting dark.”

  “Good idea.” Whatever you say, Danny. I’m struggling to make decisions, however trivial they might be.

  We drop the packs and raise the tent. The wind’s beginning to strengthen but we work silently, familiar with the routine. For some reason, erecting a tent was like lighting the blue touch paper with Cora. Every time. It could be sunny, on the shores of a glassy loch, warm grass, no midges, a case of wine, and still we’d find ourselves bickering about the best way to anchor the guy ropes. It never lasted, though. Once we sat down and opened the first bottle, and felt the breeze on our skin, we’d remember why we were there. I’m going to miss that.

  Danny crawls inside and hangs the torch from the hook in the roof, and the orange fabric lights up. A small glowing refuge in a wild, unforgiving place. We get the stove going at the entrance to the tent, take off the waterproofs, unpack the sleeping bags, and soon we’re spooning mouthfuls of steaming rehydrated food into our mouths. Chilli con carne tonight, followed by plum duff. Stodge fit for a king. I didn’t know how cold my insides were.

  “Do you reckon we’ll make the summit tomorrow?”

  “The wind’s picked up a bit, but I think we’ll make it,” says Danny, the food still steaming on his tongue, as he tips the boiled water into two mugs of powdered chocolate. The sweet smell competes with the odour of damp socks. “If we get another clear day like today, we’ll be fine, but the weather’s due to turn after tomorrow.” He passes me a mug.

  I take a sip. “Everything tastes better when you’re camping.”

  “Yeah. You forget, don’t you? By the end of the trip you won’t want to go back.”

  “Not a whole lot to go back to, now.”

  He stares at his mug and stirs it slowly. After a moment he says, “It might not look like it yet, but maybe it’s an opportunity.”

  “An opportunity.” Why is it that when you’re in a bad place people who’ve never been there feel compelled to offer you advice on how to get out?

  “Yeah, you know, a blank slate. Start again.”

  “I loved the job.”

  “And what about Cora?”

  I don’t answer.

  He glances up from his stirring.

  “We were too different.”

  “So what’s with the ring, then?”

  He nods towards my left hand, which is absentmindedly rolling the small silver ring looped through a black leather thread. My fingers close round it and I return it to my pocket.

  He stares at me expectantly.

  “I gave it to her for her birthday a couple of years ago. She gave it back to me before I left. It’s nothing.”

  “Uh-huh.” He takes a sip then heaps another spoonful of chocolate into his mug. “You really loved the job? Cramped down some mineshaft looking for... what was it again?”

  “Dark matter.”

  “Dark matter, whatever that is. That’s not a job; that’s a sentence. I couldn’t do it.”

  “No, you couldn’t. You’re not bright enough.”

  He snorts. “Really? You spend your time studying life. I spend my time living it. Who’s the smart one? You tell me.”

  He has a point, but I’m not going to concede. I stab the air with my spoon. “It’s people like me who make it possible for layabouts li
ke you to bum around for your whole life, with your storm-proof tents and your gas stoves and your torches.”

  He grins and unscrews the cap of a hipflask, toasting me. “Well, here’s to you and all the other specky scientists who keep the rest of us in good times.” He takes a swig and hands me the flask. The wind keens and rumbles against the sides of the tent, bowing them inwards. Everything tastes better when you’re camping, especially the whisky.

  Danny wriggles into his sleeping bag, stuffing a pile of unwashed clothes underneath the top end to make a lumpy pillow. I lie back, my hands behind my head. The wind drops until it’s only a breath on the tent. Beyond its breathing is the silence of the mountain.

  “Listen to that,” says Danny.

  I stare at the roof, listening. “No traffic.”

  “Bet you’re glad you came along.”

  “Yeah. I’ll be even more glad if the weather holds for tomorrow.”

  “We’ll be fine.” He turns his gaze back to the space above him, one corner of his mouth smiling. “Picture it – looking down at the planet from up there. Nothing else comes close.”

  “If people knew what it was like...”

  He snorts again, reaching behind his head to plump up his pillow. “Just as well they don’t. They can stick to their mortgages and their pension funds and all that shit and stay out of the way, as far as I’m concerned.”

  The wind carries a howl from a distant place.

  “I tell you,” he says, “that mountain will sort your head out for you. You’ll be a changed man.”

  WE SET OFF at a good pace, leaving the tent where it stands. The sky is clear and it looks like the weather might hold, but it’s not long before we’re trudging again. The air’s thinner here, a lot thinner. My lungs are sucking it in, in the hope that it contains a passing oxygen molecule. Our breaths rise in icy puffs, and underfoot the snow groans and rasps as our boots sink into it. We don’t talk much; there’s not enough air. I thought I’d use this time to work things out in my head, or just to forget, but it’s not like that. There’s not enough air to walk and think – it’s one or the other – so my brain elects to concentrate on breathing and trudging, leaving me with a vague awareness that I’ll still have a shitload of baggage to offload when I get home. Not what I had planned.

  Danny stops and drops his pack, breathless. We take a break, panting like we’ve run uphill, and sip hot sweet coffee from the flask. White peaks stretch out in all directions, like crested waves on a frozen sea, and the water in the lakes below glistens in the sunlight. Above, a buzzard calls, circling between tatters of inky cloud.

  “This is what it’s all about,” says Danny. He draws a slow, deep breath and closes his eyes, savouring the freedom. “This is real.”

  I nod, but say nothing as the wind slinks round us. My head’s thumping.

  “To life.” Danny gulps from the flask and hands it to me.

  “To life.” I down the remnants, then wipe my lips with the back of my glove. The wind has picked up, drawing in a mist that shrouds the distant peaks. “The weather’s turning,” I say, eyeing the changing sky. Wisps of snow billow in the icy air.

  “Yeah. We’d better get moving.” He stuffs the flask into his pack. “It’s not far now.”

  I frown at the sky, where fragmented clouds are coalescing, churning out from a grisly horizon. “Maybe we should head down and try again tomorrow.”

  Danny slings his pack over his shoulder. “It’s not too bad. Where’s your sense of adventure?” He grins and sets off again, in the lead.

  THE WIND’S PICKING up in bursts, moaning, whipping, splintering the snowdrifts into puffs of white mist that rise into the air and settle on our footprints, concealing them. When I turn to look back, it’s like we were never there. A fierce gust whips up from the lower slopes, and I stagger against it. It’s making me uneasy, this wind. I glance down the slope, but it’s all veiled in white. There’s no sign of the lakes. Turning into the wind, through the flurry of snowflakes, I peer up at the faceless ascent and it stares back at me – cold, unmerciful. The fear grips me for a moment. The kind of fear I’ve read about, when men who undertake this pilgrimage – anticipated it, planned for it, made friends with it – realise that they’re nobody to the mountain; that it doesn’t care if they live or die. It would be so easy to give in to it, but there’s no way back from that. Get a grip, Robert. Just keep your mind on your feet. Danny toils ahead, his head bent.

  Those clouds are moving in too fast. The sky blackens, pressing down on the white, squeezing the brightness from it. Snow gusts about in thick, fat flakes and dark clouds weigh heavily on the horizon, obscuring the peak. The wind is wailing like a tortured cat and it won’t let up, not for a moment. You could go mad with this wind. It’s almost as if it’s become personal, buffeting our steps into staggers. Mountain weather, like its mood, changes swiftly and with little warning. I know what she’d say. Can’t you read the signs? The mountain doesn’t want you here.

  Another blast knocks me sideways, shaking my balance and my confidence. Alright. Enough. There’s a point when pride needs to step aside for instinct, and it’s right here. “Danny! We won’t make it in this! We need to turn back!”

  He stops and turns towards me, from his place further up the slope, then looks up to the summit, or where it should be somewhere behind the thick, grey mist. “But we’re nearly there!” The wind keens and wheezes and he stumbles back a few steps. It’s making a point.

  “No, Danny, we won’t make it. We need to get down!”

  He stares through the cloud towards the peak, then turns his face to the sky. He drops his head and stands looking at his feet as the snow whips around him. I know how much this means to him. Eighteen months in a kitchen with an arsehole of a chef and a daily barrage of verbal abuse just to raise the cash for the flights. He held down the job because he knew it was a means to an end. The weather reports said it’s due to get worse, so it may be that we don’t get the break tomorrow or the next day, or at all. But it’s all relative. Let it go, Danny. Don’t be a fool. When he lifts his head again, he nods. He turns and tramps down the mountainside, passing me without meeting my eye.

  The descent is clumsy against the rising wind, and our footing uncertain; the snow has devoured the tracks and there’s nothing left. I catch glimpses of the plain below between the shifting white curtains, but there’s still no sign of the lakes. There should be lakes, below. This isn’t the way we came up.

  “Wait, Danny, we’re off track!”

  I catch his voice in a break between gusts. “No, this’ll take us down!” He ploughs on down the slope, head bent, undeterred. He’s so bloody pigheaded.

  I stop dead. Ahead, just beyond Danny, the cliff face disappears into a crevasse, white emptiness. He hasn’t seen it. “Stop! Danny, Stop!”

  He looks back up at me from under his thick, fur hood, then turns, glancing down the slope. The mountain mist closes the door on its secret, but not before he sees the drop. He stumbles onto his back. “Shit!” His voice is muffled through the scissoring snow as he scrambles to his feet and back up the slope, ungainly like a toddler wrapped in too many puffy winter clothes. I wade towards him and catch his arm, steadying him.

  “We’ll not make it down in this!” I yell, hoping he can hear over the din. It’s getting dark, beyond the clouds. Nightfall in the wings. “We’ll have to shelter till it blows over!”

  He nods and casts around, then points higher up the face to a place where the edge of the mountain rises steeply beside a level bank of snow. It might offer some shelter from the wind. Crouching into the storm, we tramp towards the bank, take the snow shovel from my pack, sink to our knees and begin to dig.

  I can’t feel my hands. I glance up at Danny. His lips are cracked, the colour of slate, and his cheeks are scorched red beneath his hood. He screws up his eyes inside his goggles. This fucking wind, it won’t stop. It just blows harder. “Keep digging,” he shouts.

  Slowly, he disappear
s inside the snow hole, his boots still visible between the sprays of snow he flicks out. We take turns. When it’s done, I sit back on my heels, dizzy, hot in my core, cold in my limbs, as Danny wriggles inside. I glance up at the sky. The clouds have leaked away with the light. I’ve never seen the sky like this. Millions of tiny, distant suns riddling the black in great trailing swathes. Tibet must be higher than I thought; closer to the heavens.

  Inside the cramped, dark hole, the sound of the wind dies a little. Thank God for small mercies. We loosen our laces, letting the blood back into our feet. A ski pole pokes through a small hole in the roof, enough to let some air inside. I struggle to light the small candle, my fingers frozen and clumsy, but finally it catches. Such a small thing – a tiny, yellow, flickering flame, a symbol of hope.

  Danny fumbles with his wrist and pulls off his watch. “We’ll take turns to sleep. Keep an eye on the candle.” If it starts to sputter, we’re running out of air.

  I’m dying for a drink, but we’ve nothing left, so I stuff some snow into my mouth.

  “No,” says Danny, catching my arm. “It’ll just make you colder. Get some sleep. I’ll wake you in an hour. God willing.”

  I’ve never heard him say anything like that before. He’s not religious. Like me, he’s an unabashed atheist. Damn right he’ll wake me in an hour. I’m not dying in some snow pit in the middle of nowhere. “Make sure you do.” I reach for Cora’s ring, still in my pocket. I wish I hadn’t been such an arsehole.

  MY INSIDES ARE cold now that I’m lying still. It feels like my limbs are only vaguely attached to the rest of me, like they’ve all been to the dentist for a jag then left in the deep freeze. Even my guts feel cold, and my lungs when I breathe in, and my headache’s changed from thumping to that feeling you get when you bite into ice-cream. Brainfreeze. Maybe there’s a neural pathway connecting ice-cream to the lining of the brain. An ice-cream-neuron, waiting to be discovered. The shivering hurts, but at least it’s a sign that I’m still here.