cookstoves roared with blue flames and the wind thundered past like a waterfall and
their words settled as cold vapor onto their worn-out hands.
At last Abe spoke. 'I'm sorry,' he whispered. Was this why he'd come then? Yet it
didn't feel like reason enough.
'Now I know,' Daniel whispered back.
Sitting stock-still in the tent crammed with gear and injured humanity, Abe could
feel the chaos gathering all around him. Captured by a voice from long ago, he had
caused suffering that came from the suffering Daniel had caused, merely by taking a
risk. Neither he nor Daniel had ever meant to bring hurt into the world. And yet
neither of them could seem to exist without the pain. How strange, thought Abe. How
sad.
Then Gus spoke up. 'That's all there was to it?' She looked shocked.
'It was enough,' Daniel said.
'Enough?' she spat. 'But that's nothing.'
Daniel was unprepared for her outburst. 'What is it you want, Gus?' He glanced at
Abe, who was equally baffled.
'You guys,' she snorted, indignant. 'All this time it's been like, Jesus, one killed the
girl, the other ate her heart. I thought, these two guys, they must have shared a great
sin. Or sacrament. Something. Something bigger than this.'
She didn't understand, Abe realized. Or maybe she did. She had expected whatever
it was that bound Daniel to Abe – and through Abe, to the darker obsession – to be
profound. Yet all he and Daniel had revealed was a memory of the aftermath. To Gus,
it must have sounded like two old men trading tired gossip.
'It was between Abe and me,' Daniel tried to explain. 'It had nothing to do with you.'
'No?' She was angry now, a feat in this cold tent. 'Years now. Years, I've been
fighting her ghost for you.'
She turned on Abe. 'Remember? In the beginning I was afraid of you.'
Abe remembered the night in his Base Camp tent, but he wouldn't have termed her
warning shot 'afraid.' Before he could reply, she returned her attention to Daniel.
'I told him to stay away from you. I thought he'd dig her up and bring her back to
life. But I was wrong. Abe couldn't have brought her back. Because you never buried
her.'
Daniel fell silent.
'I live with her. In our house. In our bed. Yes, you talk to her in your sleep, Daniel.'
She drew at the air for breath. 'And now I come onto the mountain and she's here, too.
Her name, her ghost. And it has nothing to do with me?'
Gus glared at them both. Then her eyes started to glaze and her flesh darkened
with cyanotic blue. Her anger thinned out.
'Look, Gus,' Daniel murmured, 'I'm sorry.'
'Not as sorry as I am.'
Peeled back, her anger was pity and love, Abe marveled.
She lifted the mask back to her face. The wind's thunder took over.
Abe twisted away. One of the pots of water was ready. They shared, speechless, and
started more ice over the flame. It would go on like that until dawn, Abe knew. They
would eat and drink until it was safe to descend. No more sleep. No more words. Not
tonight, not in this dangerous place.
7
At dawn, standing at the cave mouth in streamers of cold light, Daniel changed his
mind. Abe was goosing his harness good and snug around his loins, and Gus was
resting on her knees, pacing herself for the long descent back to ABC and from there
down to Base for some rest.
'I don't get it,' she murmured. 'So tired.' No mystery there, Abe thought. Even
willpower could run out of steam.
Just behind Daniel, their orange line plunged off into the black depths. No rope led
upward into the sun, not even old Kiwi or Japanese stock buried under the green ice,
because Four was the highest anyone had ever climbed on the Kore Wall. Above this
point the route was a blank tablet, just as the entire face had been when Daniel first
approached it seven years earlier. Maybe it was that resonance – the tug of terra
incognita – which caused Daniel's about-face.
'I'm not going down,' he announced to them quietly. 'Not quite yet.'
After a moment, just as quietly, Gus said, 'Say again?'
'Believe me,' he said. 'I've been here before. And stopped. That was our mistake.
One camp more, then we'll be in position. We can rest. And when we come back up,
we can take this beast down. One stab. All the way.'
'We're tired,' Abe said. From here to Five would require fresh cannon fodder to
explore the way and build and stock the next camp. One thing Abe could say with
absolute certainty. He was scarcely fit to descend, much less climb to 28,000 feet.
'You're not invited,' Daniel said. 'It's my deal.'
'Negative,' Gus said. She tried to put some razor in her inflection, but it came out
slurred and dull. She couldn't even lift the orange rope to rig her descent and kept
fumbling stupidly with simple carabiners. Only yesterday this woman had carried two
heavy packs upon her back. Now she seemed feeble. If anything, her debilitation
spurred Daniel's resolve.
'Two more days, maybe three,' Daniel insisted. 'I'll use the gear the Kiwis left us.'
There was at least 1,800 feet of rope stacked in coils, he explained. He would climb as
high as possible each day, extending their reach. Each night he would return to the
cave. He could sleep on the Kiwi's bottled oxygen and eat from their cache of
freeze-dried food and nuts and even listen to their music. He was adamant.
Abe tried to gauge his recklessness. Daniel wasn't exactly restored to yesterday's
strength, but he no longer looked stripped and bloodless either. A night on oxygen
appeared to have layered flesh and muscle over his near transparency. His eyes were
clear, his strategy complete.
'It makes sense,' Abe argued. 'But not good sense. Gus is right. You can't push it
alone.'
Suddenly Abe heard himself. He'd heard words little different from these in the
thick of a Wyoming blizzard many years ago. Words hadn't swayed him from his
mission then, and words weren't going to convert Daniel now. Abe blinked. He quit
arguing. There was nothing to argue.
'At least let me tape your hands again,' he said.
Instantly Gus heard Abe's surrender. 'Screw you, both of you,' she said. She
undipped her rappel device from the rope and sat back against the cave wall and shut
her eyes. She was pulling herself together. She was Daniel's archangel and would
never leave him, Abe knew. If Daniel went up, she would not go down. There was no
point arguing that either.
Daniel had taken the bandages off and the ugly flaps of skin were still weeping. Abe
could see meat through one slice.
'I should sew these first,' Abe said. He'd hoped to wait until they got down to ABC or
Base, where the wounds could be properly cleaned and the thread wouldn't tear out in
