'Sick,' Abe answered. More and more their language was getting truncated, cut
down to monosyllables their lungs could handle. Sometimes their dialogue sounded
like single-shot gunfire.
'At least she's not knocked up,' Thomas said. 'Let it flow.' His thin Yankee lips sealed
shut again, no sneer, just the sentiment. J.J. gave a small shake of his head, less
reconciled to the tiresome misogyny than Thomas seemed to think. In a flash, Abe
saw a whole lifetime of tiny mundane compromises in J.J., and realized the muscle
man wasn't so much stupid as judicious. For the first time since meeting him, Abe
didn't feel sorry for J.J.
But Thomas was correct, if impolite. Kelly was having her period and that's why she
hadn't made her carry today. By now Kelly's menstrual cycles were common
knowledge, and her cramps were notorious. Still it was none of Thomas's business, or
ought not be, and Abe almost said so. On the other hand, Abe was learning how every
sneeze and hangnail along the route moved up and down to affect the other climbers.
A missed carry could throw the logistics off for days.
Abe contained his annoyance. 'She'll come,' he said. 'Tomorrow.'
Thomas explored the hollow of one cheek with his tongue and looked off to the
north. Behind the bulging grasshopper goggles, his face said, We'll see.
'I'm hungry,' J.J. said. He was inhabiting his usual oblivion and Abe was grateful for
it. Surprisingly J.J.'s simpleminded cheer, so grating at lower altitudes, had become a
definite asset. One didn't want complications up here, and with J.J. you didn't get
them.
'How's it going up above?' Abe asked, indicating the Shoot's entrance.
'It's going,' Thomas grumbled.
'Daniel won't let go of the lead,' J.J. expounded. He seemed pleased J.J. had entered
into a fruitful bondage under Daniel, happy to harness his strength and courage to this
mountain, happier still to be serving under Daniel.
Thomas was just the opposite. A general contractor from northern California, he was
both older than Daniel and more serious about his chains of command. He seemed to
regard Daniel's brilliance in the mountains as an accident, and accidents could go
wrong just as easily as they went right.
'I've seen this before,' Thomas said. 'High altitude kamikazes. You try to keep up
with them. But nobody can. A guy like Corder can use up a whole team before people
say enough. Slow down. And by then it's too late.'
Abe didn't much care for Thomas's certainties and glumness, but the man had
climbed on a dozen expeditions and it would be foolish to discount his authority. 'So
we're going too fast?'
'Too fast?' barked J.J. 'Man, we're short. You can about smell the monsoon. We got
to go fast. We'll go bust without some pedal to the metal.'
'We'll go bust with it,' Thomas said. 'Another week at Daniel's pace, we'll hit empty.
You'll see. Kelly's just the first. He'll waste us all.'
Abe started to say that Kelly was having cramps, not bailing on the climb, but that
didn't change Thomas's basic point. Then he started to say it was all a matter of
degree – to most other people they were all kamikazes up here.
J.J. spoke first, though. 'We came to climb.' He shrugged heavily. 'We're climbing. I
want the Hill. Daniel wants the Hill. We're together.'
'Together?' Thomas squeezed a pair of pliers around a wire clip. 'Corder doesn't care
about together. He couldn't care less about you or me. Or even himself. He's a freak.
And he scares me.'
Just then a slight cloud passed across the sun, instantly reminding them of what was
what. The temperature plunged in a 70-degree gulp. Then the cloud passed and they
were panting and sweating once more. They quit talking. Soon voices came trickling
down from above and the limp orange rope looping across from the Shoot suddenly
came alive, jumping and jerking. People were descending. Daniel would be among
them.
'We've got to take it on our terms,' Thomas closed. 'That's all I'm saying.' Then he
clammed up, and Abe knew the man was more intimidated by Daniel than by the
mountain. Given the mountain's perils, that was a major league fear, and Abe
wondered how many others doubted or feared or maybe even loathed Daniel, too.
As the climbers rapped down, the orange rope twitched and curlicued like a dying
snake. The voices grew louder and Abe heard the tinkling of hardware on a sling. The
climbers sounded close because the Shoot funneled their sounds down, but their
descent took a while. Finally Gus appeared, running rope through the brake at her
belly.
'Hi guys,' she said, and blew a pink bubble of her private stock of Bazooka. She
snapped the bubble hard.
Thomas grunted at her and went back to fine-tuning the guy wires holding the
Japanese platforms together. J.J. greeted her with a lift of his chin, but then his chin
just stayed aloft and J.J.'s mind wandered off in some other direction. The altitude
had whittled their attention spans down to thin parentheses.
They had taken to using Swiss Army knives on their hair, at first snipping away
with the little folding scissors and finally, impatient, opening the long blade to saw
away whole hanks of hair. Under her scratched white helmet Gus's red locks looked
spikey and tattered and for some reason it brought to Abe's mind the scar along her
back. That in turn reminded him of her beautiful silvery front, her round, round
breasts. It seemed long ago, that night in his tent. He dug for some sort of context,
trying to remember if it had been warm beneath the moonlight, how her belly had
been muscled, if perhaps behind her warning there had not been the slightest of
invitations. But none of that mattered, not at these killing heights.
The memory closed itself off. The image of a mysterious moonlit nude vanished. In
its place Abe found himself staring dumbly at this wild, primitive female gnawing gum
and shaking ropes and now picking at a knot jamming her figure-eight brake. She
could have been his sister or his mate or his mother. There was nothing spiritual in
the recognition. She was part of his tribe, it was that simple.
Edging out of the Shoot, Gus undipped from the rope and peered up at activity Abe
couldn't see. She shouted up that the rope was free, then picked her way across to the
precarious campsite.
Close up, Gus looked cooked and shaggy and beat. Her energy and insouciance were
a mascara, Abe saw. They were aging fast up here, and no pretenses of youthful
vitality were going to change that.
Gus wasted no time resting. She poked her head through the door of the uppermost
box tent. Seeing it empty, she slung her pack in and claimed it for her and Daniel. She
got to work firing up a hanging stove to melt ice.
'Jorgens flamed out,' she remarked to anyone listening.
Thomas gave Abe the look: I told you so. Daniel's push was too extreme. 'Spell it
out,' he told Gus.
Gus goosed the butane flame hotter. It would take an hour to melt the ice into
water. Even boiling, the water would only be tepid, a function of the loosened air
pressure.
