starvation. In fact there was just as much oxygen in the air – 21 percent – here and
on the top of Everest as at sea level. What varied was the ambient pressure needed to
force the oxygen from the lungs into the bloodstream. So they would have to breath
more air. Their bodies would produce more red blood cells to carry the oxygen. Their
blood would thicken almost to syrup, forcing their hearts to labor harder. Even the
youngest and fittest climbers would soon run an increased risk of heart failure. The
margins of normal health would wither away. And above 22,000 feet or so, their
bodies would slowly begin dying.
Out of his crash course in high-altitude physiology, Abe had derived one bit of
poetry. It turned out that even among people with a genetic tolerance for high
altitude, people like the Sherpas or Peruvian miners, life inside the womb was, in
effect, close to a sea-level existence. Newborns had to acclimatize like mountaineers.
Mountaineers had to adapt like newborns. For all its jagged contours, the world at
high altitude presented a level playing field.
Abe tried to identify some of the far peaks, but without luck. Over the years, he had
memorized the contours of Everest and Lhotse and Makalu and Cho Oyu and others
without stopping to think that all the pictures showed the range from the Nepal side.
Here in Tibet, the profiles were not only reversed, but distorted.
When Abe asked which were which, Robby said, 'Forget it. We're on the backside of
the moon now. Our labels don't count here.' But then he joined Abe at the window and
pointed out different mountains and gave their names. Even with Robby's help,
though, the range didn't become any more familiar to Abe, and that just made it seem
more alien.
'And that there's the Big E,' Robby said, pointing at a small, triangular bump to the
south.
'Sorry?' He wasn't paying attention.
'You know, like E Sharp, Big White,' Robby jived.
'Chomolungma, Mother Goddess. The Hill.'
Abe nodded: Everest. It looked very small from here.
'I wish we were there already,' Robby said. 'Daniel's been out there a week now,
nothing to do but smell the roses and do the hang with old Gus. But then luck's his
middle name.'
'Daniel?' Abe said. 'I never thought of him as lucky. Just the opposite.' Abe had
made a pact with himself not to preface his meeting with Daniel with expedition
gossip. But here it was getting handed to him and it was hard to turn away.
'Not lucky? Come on.'
Abe kept it general. 'Don't get me wrong,' he said. 'I don't know Daniel. But the
man's lost his toes. He's broken bones. Taken bad falls. And he's tried Everest how
many times now, and never made the top.' And seen his young fiancee eaten alive by
a mountain, Abe almost added. So far as he could tell, no one on the expedition knew
about the nightmare that bound Daniel and Abe.
'Yeah,' Robby agreed, 'but he's alive.' His eyebrows jumped electrically.
'That's something,' Abe conceded.
'I'd trade him any day. You know what he does for a living?'
Abe didn't.
'He's a crash dummy. A technical adviser to manufacturers of climbing equipment.
He has to try out all the new toys. He has to climb full-time. And not on scruffy little
backyard cliffs either. You know how car companies like to name their cars after
power animals? Mustang, Cougar, Stingray, right? Well it's Daniel's job to do power
climbs. He gets sent around the world to all the best faces on all the best mountains.
All expenses paid. Free air, free gear, free food. And everywhere he goes, Gus goes
too, and she is something. All in all, Doc, I'd trade a few toes to be in Daniel's shoes.'
For dinner they had gray, rubbery dumplings in the cavernous dining hall built to
feed a Western tourist trade that never happened, especially after martial law. The
hall was unheated and it leaked the cold wind. Everyone was feeling the altitude, so
dinner was brief. Jorgens spoke of their need to buy Chinese stamps for the
expedition's five hundred postcards, to be signed by all the members and sent from
base camp to contributors at ten dollars apiece, the standard scheme for raising
money. Stump, their wide-bodied co-leader, promised to score the stamps in the
morning. Then everyone scraped their chairs back from the table to go off to bed, but
Li intercepted them to offer a toast.
Li explained that he'd never climbed in his life nor been to Tibet before, but he
enjoyed Americans and he enjoyed the outdoors. 'The natural world is like an
unfinished poem,' he told them. 'It needs care and labor before it reaches
completeness. You Americans understand this because of your frontier days. Tibet is
our Old West, you see. And so, from one frontiers-man to another, I say let us write a
grand poem of friendship and adventure upon our mountain.'
'Give me a break,' Carlos rumbled at the end of the table. He started to stand and
leave, but Stump caught at his jacket.
'Shut it,' Stump commanded. Carlos paused and blinked, then sat back down.
'To friendship, to the mountain.' Jorgens seconded Li's toast, and everyone but
Carlos drank a few tablespoons of scotch from their dirty teacups.
Back in the room, just before hoisting the quilt up around his shoulders, Abe peered
out the window. The moon was up and the Himalayas were stretched long and white
in the moonlight like a vast, shearing coral reef.
Abe rode the last few hours to Everest on the front seat of the front truck in their
convoy, squeezed beside Jorgens, who couldn't seem to stop remembering old
mountain stories, all of them long and involved and about himself. They were
inoffensive tales, mostly designed to excuse his age, which was fifty-four, and Abe
didn't begrudge that.
Abruptly, with a suddenness that bounced Abe against the door, the truck turned
left off the road. This was the start of what became a long grinding crawl up the Pang
La, a 16,000-foot pass bridging the Tibetan plateau and the deeper range. They were
only forty miles from Everest now, but according to Jorgens, it was going to be a
tortuous forty miles of bad roads and wild scenery. 'The Pang La's our doorway to
Everest. All ye who enter, know your soul,' he joshed.
For the next two hours, the road switched back and forth past shields of gleaming
black granite. Here and there the road evaporated altogether under fresh slide scars
only to reappear again. Not a hint of vegetation graced the bleak stony land. It was
still winter here. Hour after hour, they saw no animals, no people, no houses. No
justification for this strange highway.
'The world's highest dead end,' Jorgens declared over the whine of downshifted
gears. 'The PLA hand-constructed it in 1960. They're very proud of it. They need to
get a three-hundred-man expedition in to Everest. So they cut this road in. And they
climbed their mountain.'
It was hard to tell which Jorgens respected more, the Chinese road or their climb.
Abe wondered if Jorgens had heard Carlos's theory, that the Chinese had merely
claimed the summit in 1960 in order to cement their occupation of Tibet. It was a
claim that remained dubious, since the Chinese had supposedly summited in the dark
