it. He was talking to himself, company enough.
'How about one more go?' Daniel asked. 'We were so close. And I saw something. Up
in the cave. It might be good.'
'Sure,' said Abe.
'Or we can go down.'
'No,' Abe decided. 'Up. It might be good.'
'Can you belay?'
'Of course.'
For the next space of time, Abe belayed the ghost. He fed rope out with his good
arm.
Gus appeared. She was quite ugly now, but beautiful too.
'Hi, Gus,' Abe said.
'What's this shit?' Gus gasped. Abe followed her gaze. She was staring dismayed at
the anchor. It was in near ruins – a lone, bent screw – and she had just trusted her life
to it. Abe tried to see it from her perspective. He could have repaired the anchor. At
least he could have warned her. He felt a little bad about that. On the other hand he
couldn't say if she was any more real than Daniel. How odd, he thought. Even in death,
Daniel was somehow their higher standard.
Then Gus noticed the blood heating in a small pool on the glassy ledge. She knelt
beside Abe and peered inside his ripped sleeve.
'We have to get you down.'
'No. Up,' said Abe.
'Where's Daniel at?' she said. 'Does he know you're like this?'
'He fell.'
'No,' Gus determined. 'He's okay. Up there. He's in the cave.'
From above, Abe heard Daniel's voice. 'Abe. You can come on now.' Showtime again.
'What happened here?' Gus said.
'It doesn't matter,' Abe said.
Daniel's voice moved between them. 'Gus. Can he climb?'
'Are you kidding?' Abe could tell she was mystified and angry. He wondered idly
how it would be to kiss those torn lips smeared white with zinc oxide. She was his
angel. 'He has to go down,' Gus reiterated.
'It's a thousand feet down,' Daniel argued. 'Only one pitch up.'
'But he's hurt. He's in shock.'
Not so bad, Abe thought. In most respects, it was pleasant sitting here at Gus's
knees with the planet curving on the north horizon.
'There's a camp here,' Daniel said. 'It will be dark soon. We're best here.'
'I thought I belonged,' Abe confided to Gus. 'I'm sorry.'
'That's all right,' Gus said. 'Can you stand?' Abe stood.
'Let me check your jumars. And your harness. And fix this helmet.' She was trying
to take charge here. Abe could tell she was thinking of many things. 'Daniel,' she
shouted up the wall. 'Abe's pack. Can you pull it up on a rope?'
'I don't think so,' Daniel answered.
'No problem,' Abe said. He reached for his pack, his pack of wonderful heaviness. He
had hauled so much so high and there was only this eighty feet more to go.
'Leave that,' Gus said. 'I'll bring it up. Can you climb?'
Abe made his way up. It was much, much easier without the weight on his back. His
wings were freed. He could fly.
Daniel met him at the mouth of the cave. The cave was almost supernaturally
perfect for human occupation. The floor was flat, the ceiling was seven feet high, and
the walls were spaced wide enough to admit the two tents that were standing side by
side. One was a faded peach color, the other was still orange. The cave wasn't very
deep, maybe fifteen feet, and it looked like some equipment had been parked in the
very rear.
'Maybe you should lie down,' Daniel said.
'I'm fine.' Abe was enchanted. He had entered another dimension in here. Outside
there had been no respite. But here there was an inside to the mountain. There was a
sanctuary not only from the rockfall and the crucifying sunlight, but also from the
relentless verticality. He took a few prickly steps forward atop his two-inch crampon
teeth. The floor was flat. He couldn't get over that. He had forgotten what it was like
to stand on a horizontal surface.
'We lucked out,' Daniel said. 'Look at all this stuff. The Kiwis just left it all.'
Both tents were zipped shut, both were intact. Neither had so much as a tear in the
fabric or a split in the seams. In contrast to the Ultimate Summit's fancy dome tents,
these were old-style triangular structures with guy lines and center poles, the kind
that required daily attention or else they collapsed. But years had passed and these
tents were standing whole. Their spines were tight, not an inch of sagging, and their
walls drummed to Abe's finger tap. They could have been pitched yesterday.
Yellow urine stains to the side of each tent looked fresh. Empty food cans and paper
wrappers lay loose in nooks and crannies of the cave, unperturbed by so much as a
breeze. Ropes lay piled in limp butterfly coils, ready for use. Behind the tents, in the
deepest recesses, heavy oxygen bottles were stacked like firewood, and red stuff
sacks contained windpants and sweaters and personal gear – a Led Zeppelin tape, a
can of sweet condensed milk, a photo of a woman.
Tucked in this squared-off pocket of stone, the camp was free of the hazards that
normally plague Everesters. No falling rock or ice in here, no avalanches, no wind,
apparently not even the passage of time. In here the sanctuary was complete.
'Let's sit down,' Daniel said.
Abe sat in the open doorway of the faded peach tent. The air pads were still
buoyant. Tears of happiness welled up at this luxury of sitting on a thing that was soft
in a place that was safe. They were out of danger. Nothing could hurt him anymore.
'Pretty wild out there,' Daniel said. He turned from the cave mouth and carefully
eased himself to sitting beside Abe in the tent. He grimaced. Abe knew he would.
Abe's muscles and joints were stiffening. His arm wound was starting to burn. It was
logical that this hallucination would reflect his hurt.
Side by side, Abe sat with his other. They didn't talk. Eventually Gus appeared at
the cave entrance, wheezing for air. The outside had gone dark gold. The sun was
setting.
Gus pulled down her goggles and cast her fresh green eyes across them. Abe saw
that she had carried a double load, tying his pack on top of hers. Without ceremony,
she dumped the gear against one cave wall.
'Now what the hell's going on, Daniel,' she demanded. She was angry. She didn't like
mysteries.
'The mountain whacked me,' Daniel said. 'I whacked Abe.'
Close enough Abe thought, though his own telling of it would have elaborated on the
ferocity of sunbeams upon a rock in ice, the gentle unlocking of noisy fate.
'So fix him,' Gus said. 'Don't just sit there.'
'Gus...' Daniel held out his hands with a gesture of helplessness. That was the first
Abe saw of the flayed palms. Daniel's hands were laid open and bleeding. They needed
